Monthly Archives: August 2013

A Picture and A Question

Updated on August 19, 2013 by diane

For wont of another topic, none of which come to mind, I decided to give you a picture.

I collect architectural prints of the Regency, when I can find them. Some I have framed and hung in the den. Most are in a folder in my “book room” (too cluttered to be called an office or a library). A few are scanned.

Here are the ones from the den. You will recognize some of them; they are often reproduced.

Here is a scanned one, Theatre Royal, Covent Garden:

Most of my prints are post-Regency, I believe around 1828 and I daresay they were cut from books at one time or another, but not by me!

They are one way the Regency stays alive for me. I can just about put myself in the picture and lose myself there.

That brings me to my question.

Even though I love Regency Historical Romances, I don’t read many of them these days (although I loved my friend Mary Blayney’s One More Kiss). I can’t read them when I’m writing one, because if I get lost in that book, I won’t get lost in mine, or I may forget which book I’m lost in altogether.

I am curious though. Have you read a Regency Historical Romance lately that just blew you away? And if so, why?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Posted in Reading, Regency | 4 Replies

Reasons Why We Stay in Jane Austen’s England

Updated on August 17, 2013 by Myretta

Megan sent me a link to 13 Reasons You Wouldn’t Want to Live in Jane Austen’s England. It’s hard to refute the horror of most of these things, although I find some of them (for example forced marriage) a tad spurious. But, regardless of the dangers of 18th-19th century England, we still live there in in our imaginations. Many of the 13 reasons apply to the lower classes and, whether it’s right or not, these are not the people with whom we commune in our reading and writing. We’re living with the gentry and the aristocracy as was Jane Austen when she wrote.

When we live in Jane Austen’s England, we’re living upstairs, where the air is fresh and someone irons our newspapers and brings us tea. We walk in the country and stroll through Hyde Park. We take in an exhibit at Somerset House. If want to do manual labor, we’ll go out in the garden and cut some flowers. If we’re worried about what’s for dinner, we’ll meet with cook. If our sheets need to be changed, we’ll consult the housekeeper.

Our gentlemen are sitting in Parliament (no doubt solving the problem of child labor), riding in the park, hunting, shooting, hanging out with friends at their club. If we’re at our country estate, they’re meeting with their steward and caring for their land and their tenants. They’re helping us host a house party. Or they’re beside us, making sure we are supremely happy.

Yes. This is fiction, where we rarely catch fire by standing too near to the hearth, we aren’t subject to poor medical attention and even worse dentistry, and we’d do anything rather than force a poor child to climb our chimney to clean it. But, as we now have a choice about which Jane Austen’s England we’d prefer to live in, why ever would we choose the one in the Huffington Post?

Posted in Jane Austen, Regency | 3 Replies

Winter is coming

Updated on August 15, 2013 by susanna

The instant I stepped out of the house this morning, I looked at the sky, sighed, and said, “Winter is coming.” (And, yes, that was a deliberate George RR Martin reference.) You see, I live in Seattle, and the sky above was a gloomy gray. It wasn’t raining right at that instant, but my car was dappled with raindrops from a recent shower.

Contrary to what the rest of the country seems to believe, it ISN’T always like that here. The weather gods console us for eight months or so of annual gray gloom with the best summers in the world. It hardly rains at all between July 4 and sometime in mid-September. Most days the highs are in the 70’s, maybe the 80’s, but even then it’s comfy in the shade because in keeping with our nonexistent summer rainfall it’s a dry heat. And because we’re so far north, we have long, long days to savor the perfection of our summer.

Summer in my city

And this summer? Arguably the best weather we’ve had in a generation. So you can understand why this morning’s cloudy reminder of what my city looks like the rest of the year made me want to weep a little:

Winter is coming for YOU.

That’s what my morning commute looks like in early November. In late December it’s still pitch dark, even though I don’t get to work till 7:45 or so.

Our local weathermen faithfully promise our sunshine will be back, maybe as soon as tomorrow. But I still can’t escape the signs of the changing season. We’re starting to get mail from the school district with logistical info for Miss Fraser’s fourth grade year, which starts in less than three weeks. We’re planning our holiday vacation time at work, since we have to juggle our schedules to make sure someone is in the office. The spam in my inbox is giving me great offers on new fall fashions.

But throughout the seasonal rhythm of the year, my writing remains a constant. Now that A Dream Defiant is out, I’m hard at work on my proposal for its sequel, which is set mostly in America in the aftermath of the Battle of New Orleans. And I’m already busy researching my next manuscript–one with a French hero, set during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812. The winter that’s coming for Jacques Gordon (yeah, he’s French, but he’s also half-Scottish, and related to the Gordons in my earlier books) is far more dire than anything Seattle is likely to throw at me….

Retreat

What does the changing season have in store for you?

Posted in Risky Regencies, Writing | Tagged Battle of New Orleans, Invasion of Russia, manuscripts, Seattle, Susanna Fraser | 12 Replies

The great SF mobile writing retreat

Updated on August 15, 2013 by Janet Mullany

I’m on my way home after a week in San Francisco hanging out with Pam Rosenthal and staging the great SF mobile writing retreat. Mobile in the sense that we had no fixed address (apart from my solo turn at Pam’s kitchen table yesterday), but parked ourselves in whatever coffee shop had wifi–which is of course essential to good solid writing–and power. (btw, Starbucks, you cannot make a nice cup of tea. I don’t know what it is but it tastes stewed from the get go. I guess this is what happens when you order tea in a place renowned for its coffee.)

We both got a lot of stuff done and also polished up our presentations–mine was on writing humor, which I gave to the SF-RWA last Saturday (and it’s coming to Maryland Romance Writers in November). Pam’s was last night at the Pink Bunny, an upscale lingeries/sexy stuff store, about writing BDSM. Both very well received. All this and I got to have nachos with the lovely Ms. Jewel, Korean food with the lovely Isobel Carr, and lots of book talk. Lots more great food in good company and a memorable day in the Asian Art Museum.

It’s interesting how productive you can be with a friend parked opposite you also being productive. Why is this? We didn’t resort to cries of encouragement or word counts within a certain amount of time. I don’t know that either would have worked since we both have such different styles and I am doing a rewrite/reconstruction (don’t ask me how, I lost my final manuscript. Well, it was written seven years ago). We didn’t even talk to each other much (not while writing). We just sat there and plugged away.

An interesting process. I don’t know how long this would have taken on my own, weeks or months rather than days, and I got some icky plot problems solved from the original and figured out how to work in a final sex scene. Pam very wisely told me I needed more talk less action and she was right. And I got to see a couple of excerpts from her WIP. (No, I’m not saying a word.)

I don’t know why this particular chemistry happens, and I’d like to hear your thoughts. Is it because writing is such a solitary pursuit that having a bit of company is a comfort? That if you get to one of those places where you get stuck knowing that you have someone to bounce an idea off gives you the oomph to move forward?

What do you think?

Posted in Risky Regencies, Writing | 2 Replies

I Dreamt I Went To Manderley Again

Updated on August 13, 2013 by diane

I watched Rebecca on TCM a few days ago. The movie opens with that line as, of course, does the book, which I read so many years ago I can’t remember. It has to be one of the best opening lines for a book ever:

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again . . . I came upon it suddenly; the approach masked by the unnatural growth of a vast shrub that spread in all directions . . . There was Manderley, our Manderley, secretive and silent as it had always been, the gray stone shining in the moonlight of my dream, the mullioned windows reflecting the green lawns and terrace. Time could not wreck the perfect symmetry of those walls, nor the site itself, a jewel in the hollow of a hand..

Who would not want to read on after such an opening?

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier was the hit of its day. First published in 1938, it has been continuously in print and as recently as 1993 was selling 4,000 copies a month. As we romance writers might expect, critics panned the book as “nothing beyond the novelette (The Times) or predicted that the novel “would be here today, gone tomorrow” (Christian Science Monitor ).

Books like Rebecca and other gothic romances (Phyllis A. Whitney, Victoria Holt, Mary Stewart) fueled my love of reading when I was young. I could not get enough of the woman-in-peril stories, the sinister mood and suspense–was the hero a villain or a saviour? I read as many as I could get my hands on. When the steamier historical romances became popular, I was ripe for them, too, and I quickly fell in love with Regency romances, the old traditional regencies, as well as Georgette Heyer, and back to Jane Austen.

Rebecca had early influences, not quite back to regency times, but it is clear the book was influenced by Jane Eyre. The innocent heroine, the dark “widower,” a mysterious servant, a big secret about the hero’s former wife, the fire at the end–all are there. I like that du Maurier wrote such a popular book based on a classic. I had my own Jane Eyre-inspired book, Born To Scandal, after all.

Daphne du Maurier has her own connection to regency times. Her great-grandmother was Mary Anne Clarke, former mistress of Frederick, Duke of York. It was Mary Anne Clarke who sold army commissions with the Duke of York’s knowledge, a scandal which forced Frederick to resign from his position as Commander in Chief of the Army. Du Maurier’s book, Mary Anne, is a fictional account of her great-grandmother’s life.

Have you read Rebecca? Or have you seen the movie? Can you think of any other great opening lines of books?

Posted in Reading | 4 Replies