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Monthly Archives: December 2013

IMG_0198Last week I discoursed (i.e. complained) about dipping temperatures and the arrival of winter weather. Lest you think Virginia has gone into another Little Ice Age, we had temperatures near 70 F last week. This past Sunday, though, winter returned.

Like most of the Midwest and MidAtlantic, we had a winter storm. Sunday we had snow and freezing rain. Today it has turned to rain. Here’s the view of our deck. Icicles on the bird feeders!

Luckily we don’t have to leave the house. I did what all good Virginians do when winter weather is forecast. I went to the grocery store and stocked up on milk, toilet paper, cat food and assorted snacks, so we are free to hibernate–at least until the cat food runs out.

Mail Coach in SnowIn the Regency, that is what people did in winter weather. They stayed at home and stayed as dry and warm as they could. Of course, not everyone could do that. Coaches did get caught in storms.

There are some wonderful blogs about Regency winters in Jane Austen’s World, one of my go-to sites for great information:
1. Snow Sports and Winter Transportation in the Regency Era 
2. Keeping Warm in the Regency Part One and Part Two

1312_hp_community_promo_squareIf you are snowbound today (or even if you aren’t!) come to the Harlequin.com’s Holiday Open House. Today the Historical Authors are hosting a Holiday Ball. Come and see what refreshments are offered and what heroes are waiting to ask you to dance. There’s a chance to win prizes, too!

And don’t forget. The Harlequin Historical Authors Holiday Giveaway is still progressing. Access the Advent calendar here and see how to enter my part of the contest herehh_CALENDAR_2013_small-150x150

What is your favorite thing to do when winter weather shuts you in?

What Not To Bare by Megan FramptonThis past week, my book What Not to Bare was included in a Barnes & Noble post titled 4 Romance Novels Too Sexy to Read in Public. Which was awesome, since of course that is bound to pique people’s interest, particularly people who might not normally pick up a historical romance.

And while I would like to proudly read whatever I want to in public, the truth is I am grateful for e-readers, and am happy I can read whatever I like without anyone judging me. Because while the content might be awesome, the truth is that some of our covers are pretty egregious. Just think of the original covers for two of the best (if not the actual best) historical romances out there–Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels and Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm.

Blech! I like them now, because they are so awful and over-the-top, and I seem to have shed some shame as I’ m advancing in years, but imagine how people who first bought them must have felt, and have had to explain that the books inside were brilliant, even if the covers weren’t.

The worst thing about e-readers is when you have the size magnified, because of that age thing, and you can tell someone is glancing over at what you’re reading while on the subway, and you’re at a really salacious part of the book, and you have to turn off the e-reader for a bit. Not that that’s ever happened to me.

Have you ever felt judged for the books you read?

Megan

Having finally finished the clean-up from Thanksgiving (the wedding crystal goblets I have to wash by hand tend to decorate the kitchen counter for days), I am now looking ahead to the next holidays, and more meals to be planned in celebration. Special occasions and special food always go together. Do you have a traditional holiday food you make or fondly remember? For Christians, this past Sunday was the first Sunday in Advent, the season leading up to Christmas, and in some parts of England, is also known as “stir-up day” –the day you are supposed to stir-up the batter for your Christmas cake or pudding so it will have enough time to age properly. (The day can also be the last Sunday before the start of Advent.) There’s a double meaning to the name, as one of the old texts used by the church for the start of Advent begins “Stir up , we beseech thee O Lord” and one site claims “this activity of stirring-up the ingredients symbolizes our hearts that must be stirred in preparation for Christ’s birth.” Christmas cakes (aka fruitcakes) have a pedigree as long as the technique of using rum or brandy to preserve food. “Plum Pudding” was also around long before the Victorians popularized it as “Christmas pudding”. Either one could include meat with the dried fruit in their early forms, but one is baked and the other was boiled –steamed in later times.

For someone who’s not a great cook, maybe it’s ironic that I’ve always been interested in period food, but it comes honestly from my interest in the daily life of other times. The Regency isn’t my only pet period –I’m a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism and indulge in medieval interests, too. I collect cookbooks on period food, and recently added Dinner with Tom Jones: Eighteenth Century Cookery Adapted for the Modern Kitchen, by Lorna Sass (1977, the Metropolitan Museum of Art). Sass also wrote To the King’s Taste (Richard II) and To the Queen’s Taste (Elizabeth I).

Cover-Dinner with Tom Jones.jpgI can’t believe I found this treasure in my church yard sale!! I recommend it as a research gold-mine; it has notes about menus, how dishes should be arranged on the table, and all sorts of extra goodies besides the recipes, and while it covers a period slightly earlier than our beloved Regency, back then things did not change as rapidly as they do now. Casting about for what to feed our characters, a ragoo of asparagus or heavens, yes, a chocolate tart(!) might be just the thing we need to serve them. And the book is illustrated with delightful sketches of county life by Thomas Rowlandson (behaving properly for a change).

Cover-Dinner with Mr DarcyOn my Christmas list is another cookbook just released last month which should also be of great interest to us all —Dinner with Mr Darcy by Pen Vogler, a new addition to the existing canon related to food in Jane Austen’s books and life. Besides recipes inspired by Jane’s novels and letters, it also promises notes about table arrangements, kitchens and gardens, changing mealtimes, and servants and service, etc.

Both of these books use Hannah Glasse’s first cookbook, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747), as a chief source. A reviewer of Vogler’s book (http://tinyurl.com/mlrxl6j) says this was “one of the first commercial cookbooks to capture the public imagination and was used by middle-class families like the Austens well into the 19th century.” Does food history interest you? Do you care about what our story characters eat? (The book I’m editing now for reissue, The Captain’s Dilemma, has a running joke about the family’s inventive but not very good cook.) What are some of your favorite resources?

I wish you all very happy holidays and some memorable meals with friends and family, whatever you celebrate!

P&P Dinner Scene

Mr Collins (Tom Hollander) distracts Elizabeth Bennett (Keira Knightley) from her meal in the 2005 ‘Pride and Prejudice’ -Photo Credit: Rex Features/Everett Collection

Lost In A Royal Kiss (eBook)I’m delighted to welcome Vanessa Kelly to the Riskies today, with a contest to win an ARC of the first book in her Renegade Royals series, Secrets for Seducing a Royal Bodyguard. The novella Lost in A Royal Kiss–just released introduces the series, in which readers are transported to the court of King George III, where a London street urchin unwittingly plays Cupid, ushering in a new era—and ultimately a new kind of royal…

Welcome, Vanessa! What’s the premise of the Renegade Royals series?

vanessaThank you for hosting me on Risky Regencies, Janet.  I’m very happy to be here!

The basis for the series was a tidbit of information in a book about the daughters of King George III.  Queen Charlotte had taken in a boy as charity case to be raised as a companion to the royal princes.  It was a misguided impulse since the Prince of Wales, for one, resented the unfortunate child.  I found that historical snippet intriguing.  What would life be like for a boy of humble origins raised with royalty and yet never truly a part of their world?  And where in life did he end up?

In my series, this boy became Dominic Hunter, who grows up to be a magistrate, a spymaster, and a trusted liaison to the Court of St. James.  But Dominic has never forgotten the ill-usage he suffered in his youth, and the bad behavior of the royal princes continues to irk him. For one thing, they tend to scatter the landscape with illegitimate children, some lacking a proper name or place in the world.  So Dominic decides to track down these offspring who are royal in everything but name.  He does everything he can to help them find their rightful places in society and make good marriages.

SECRETS, SEDUCING,BODYGUARDLost in a Royal Kiss is set in 1786, but the first of the Renegade Royals series, Secrets for Seducing a Royal Bodyguard (January 2014), is set in 1814. What do you find most interesting in the differences between these two periods almost thirty years apart?

One interesting difference was in the way the royal court conducted itself.  King George III and Queen Charlotte lived modestly, by royal standards, preferring a simple life and a more relaxed protocol at Windsor or Kew to a grand court scene in London.  They enjoyed country pursuits and a life that revolved around family entertainments.  This dismayed many courtiers, who found life at Kew Palace or Windsor to be boring and lacking in grandeur.  Of course when the king fell ill there were even more restrictions, since the queen and her daughters all but lived in seclusion at Kew Palace.

Under the Prince Regent, however, court life was a great deal more extravagant and lively, often to the point of dissipation.  But for all his faults, the Regent was a great patron of the arts and architecture, a legacy we see today in structures like the Royal Pavilion at Brighton.  George III, often referred to as Farmer George, would not have approved.

Another significant change was with clothing.  Georgian attire was quite different from Regency attire:   more ornately decorated and with rich materials, particularly for the men.  Long hair, wigs, powder…styles changed dramatically under the influence of men like Beau Brummel.

I too was introduced to the Regency by the books of Georgette Heyer, and you and I both read Regency Buck as our first. Do you still like to read/re-read Heyer and do you think she’s stood the test of time? What’s your favorite?

I re-read Georgette Heyer on a regular basis.  She’s my go-to author when I’m sick or in need of a little comfort reading.  I absolutely think her books stand the test of time, although I laugh now at all the exclamation points she uses—I never thought about things like that until I started writing my own books.  My favorites are The Grand Sophy and Arabella.  Such witty, entertaining books!

What do you love about the Regency?

The clothing, the architecture, and the absolute gusto for life in that era—Regency folk really knew how to have a good time, sometimes to an insane degree.

Hate about the Regency?

The profoundly disturbing levels of poverty, especially in the cities, and the crime rate.  Life for the poor was incredibly grim, and their treatment by the middle and upper classes was often callous beyond belief.  The way the Irish were treated was also horrible, although that had been going on for a very long time.

You have an alterego, V.K. Sykes, the combined writing genius of you and your husband. What’s your writing process? Do you find it difficult to switch gears?

Thank you for calling us geniuses!  The V.K. Sykes books are contemporary romance or romantic suspense so it can be a bit of a challenge to get into the headspace.  Fortunately, I don’t write the first drafts for those books.  I do the revisions and the editing, and I write all the sex scenes (hubby just can’t seem to bring himself to do that).  We rarely work on the same book at the same time, which is a good way to avoid wrangling over specific elements.  Whoever is working on the book has ownership over it.  It’s a process that is surprisingly stress-free.

What’s the last great book you read?

The Ape Who Guards the Balance, by Elizabeth Peters.  I had read the first few books in the Amelia Peabody mystery series back in college, but I re-discovered them a few months ago.  I’ve been tearing through them—they’re so skillfully written and the characters are fabulous.  The books are witty and smart, and I love the setting and the archaeological background.  Amelia Peabody and her family are the best kind of brain candy.

What’s next for you?

I’m finishing up the second novella in The Renegade Royals before moving on to book three in the series.  My husband and I are also working on a new contemporary romance series for Grand Central—small town romances set on an island off the coast of Maine.  That will be out in 2015.

Vanessa is giving away an ARC of Secrets for Seducing a Royal Bodyguard as a prize today. She’s told us what she loves and hates about the Regency–to enter the contest, share what you love and hate about the period, and help spread the word!

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