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Cara’s in London

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Right now, I’m in London. The high-minded (or higher-minded) things I like to do in London include going to the National Gallery (pictured) in Trafalgar Square, and staring at all the Canalettos and Gainsboroughs and Fragonards and Reynoldses and Corots.

I also love to go up to Hampstead, and see Kenwood House (pictured to the right), with its gorgeous interiors and impressive art collection.

But I like doing less high-minded things too. Like eating. I love having afternoon tea at Fortnum & Mason (on the quiet top floor, not the touristy bottom floor) or Richoux. I tried tea at Harrod’s once, and wasn’t impressed with the service. (Perhaps it was an off day.) I had tea at the Orangery at Kensington Palace, but it was like being in a crowded warehouse with mediocre service. So back I went to Fortnum & Mason, and Richoux.

I also like more simple fare. When Todd and I lived in the East End, we were near two different traditional pie & mash shops — one on Bethnal Green Road in Bethnal Green, and one on Roman Road in Bow. After we discovered them, we ate there a lot. I wasn’t a big fan of their “liquor” — i.e. the green parsley sauce that you can pour over your entire plate — but the pies and mash were scrumptious. Todd even tried the eels, and decided the stewed eels were eatable, but the jellied eels were foul.

This is the George Inn, which was a major coaching inn during the 18th century. Lovely, isn’t it? I think I’ll actually eat there this time. (I keep talking about food, don’t I? Perhaps I’m hungry. Or perhaps I really visit England for the food!)

My favorite part of London is just being there, walking around and looking at all the fantastic buildings. I never get tired of that.

And I never get tired of the theatre either. This time, I’m seeing Titus Andronicus! Then I will be further on my way to my life goal of having seen every one of Shakespeare’s plays performed live on stage. (If I fulfill that goal, and fulfill my goal of never reading Clarissa, I will have truly achieved something.) 🙂

Cara
Cara King, www.caraking.com
MY LADY GAMESTER — read it, it’s good! honest!

By the Sea

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I’m composing this by the sea (but posting later), a beautiful sea view out my hotel window at Daytona Beach, Florida where I am attending the Romantic Times Booklover’s Convention. It is a beautiful sunny day with blue skies reflecting in the water, gentle waves breaking into foamy white. The sand is hard packed, perfect for walking or sun-bathing. I love the ocean. I love the smell of it, the rhythmic sound of the waves, the soothing sight of the water, the warmth of sun on my skin.
In my imagination I’ve spent a great deal of time at another beach resort – Brighton in Sussex. The book I’m working on now, untitled as yet, takes place at Brighton, the seaside town the Prince of Wales, aka “Prinny” made fashionable and where he built his exotic Pavilion. In my book I am in Brighton of 1816 and it is cold.

1816 was “the year without a summer” with June snowstorms in the Colonies and rain and chill in the British Isles and Europe. It is thought that the year without a summer was caused by the April 1815 volcanic eruptions of Mount Tambora half a world away on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia. Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein that “wet, ungenial summer” of 1816, because she, Percy Byssh Shelly and Lord Byron were housebound and bored in Lake Geneva.

In 1816 the exotic renovations to the Prince Regent’s Marine Pavilion had not yet been completed, and the Prince Regent was not in attendance (that I could discover), but just as so many of us do today, the fashionable people came to the sea side for summer entertainment. Without sea bathing, my characters have had to pass the time at the Circulating Library, which was less like what we would think of as a library, and more like a Barnes & Noble or Borders, where one could purchase refreshment and gather for conversation. One could also gaze at the newest caricatures that arrived from London or try out the newest sheets of music on the pianoforte. The fashionable people also attended balls, assemblies and card parties at the Old Ship Hotel or the Castle Inn, and a dreadfully boring-sounding Sunday afternoon Promenade.

Unlike the view of people out my window here at Daytona Beach, there is no sea bathing in my book, which tells Blake’s story. Theobald Blackwell, Viscount Blakewell, is one of the Ternion introduced in The Marriage Bargain, the three men who have been friends since childhood. Blake reunites with the daughter of a con artist and sparks fly–passionate ones!

In the real world, I have been meeting with friends–fellow authors, booksellers, and readers–at the Romantic Times Convention. The Marriage Bargain, nominated for the Reviewer’s Choice Award for Best Regency-set Historical, alas, did not win, but I was interviewed about it for Dungeon Majesty, a website doing a documentary on Romance. I looked it up and it seems to also be a very clever Dungeons and Dragons site. Imagine me on a Dungeons and Dragons website!
Cheers!
Diane

More Lunacy

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This is sort of a continuation on my post about Mary Lamb and mental health care in Regency England. I snooped around online and found some great websites, for anyone who might like to know more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethlehem-Royal-Hospital (this just gives a little more history on Bedlam, a link to their modern museum, a few pics)

http://www.nwe.ufl.edu/~pcraddoc/places.html (some cool maps)

http://www.iwm.org.uk (The Imperial War Museum website–their building incorporates what is left of the original Bedlam, which I thought was fascinating, though I’ve never visited this museum)

http://www.bedlampk.com (I searched all over the web for a good pic of those statues, and only found one here, of all places, at the Bedlam Asset Management website. It’s a cartoony pic, but you can see sort of what they looked like. Not sure I would let this company manage my assets, though…)

http://bms.brown.edu/HistoryofPsychiatry/bedlam.html (more Bedlam history)

Some Mary Lamb stuff:

http://shakespeare.palomar.edu/lambtales/LAMBTALES.HTM (Tales from Shakespeare)

http://womenshistory.about.com/library/pic/bl_p_mary_lamb.htm (a pic of Mary as an old woman)

And, just because I feel like it, http://www.theorlandobloomfiles.com

Have a great weekend!

Freak About Words

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All writers have an extra-special fascination with words; they’re our toolbox, the hammers that drive in the nails. My word fascination started when I was about nine years old, and my also word-loving parents brought the game Perquackey into the house. The game is basically an anagram game, with the point being to make words out of letter cubes. Within about a month, I was beating my parents. Since then, no-one has ever beaten me at the game, and it’s also given me a life-long obsession with anagrams. When I’m particularly stressed or worried, I start doing anagrams in my head, and I’ve developed certain rules for my anagramming to make it interesting.

So when my book club read Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players a few years ago, I was in alt. Finally, I was reading about people even MORE obsessive than I was.

And its author, Stefan Fatsis, revealed a new type of word obsession, I was even more excited. He talks about names and words that have each and every vowel once and only once: Julia Roberts, for example (sidenote: My best friend, whom I call the Picky Vegetarian, has one of these names. Do you know how excited I was when I figured that out? She almost became my ex-best friend, I went on and on about it so much). Since then, I’ve added that obsession to my repertoire, and am excited to find words like “sequoia,” “Metalious” (as in Grace, author of Peyton Place), and “auctioned,” “cautioned” and “education,” which have the bonus of being anagrams of each other.

It makes sense, then, that I would have signed up for the daily email of Worthless Word of the Day. The email yesterday had this gem that was right up my alley:

the worthless word for the day is: gravedinous[ad. L. gravedinosus, fr. gravedo, heaviness]obs. rare : drowsy, heavy-headed {in Bailey}

this is one of those words that contains the 5 vowels (aeiou) in alphabetical order without repetition; some that are more(?) common: facetious, abstemious, arterious, arsenious,adventitous, abstentious, bacterious, and tragedious — the shortest word of this type seems to be the obs. term aerious (7 letters), meaning “airy” (if you’d like to include ‘y’,you can add -ly to these; e.g., facetiously) hence, gravedinously, I suppose.

To sign up for WWTD, go here: http://home.mn.rr.com/wwftd/

Oh, words just make me shiver. Some of my favorite words are interstitial, penultimate, roil, internecine and solipsistic. Do you have any favorite words? Or word/language obsessions? What are they? Which authors seem to have an especially developed word obsession?

Thanks for feeding my obsession,

Megan
www.meganframpton.com

Musical inspiration

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What do you listen to when you write or read? Or do you need dead silence? Do you have recordings you associate with particular books? I like to have music to write too, but I find it distracting when I read, although I was raised in a house where all the major activities took place in one room, and I learned to either block out or blend in the music.

I thought I’d share a few of my favorites with you. I’ve blogged before about how fond I am of opera, and I find the human voice very…inspiring, particularly when it comes in the form of Thomas Hampson, who is tall (6′ 4″) and unbelievably good looking with great blue eyes. And, oh yes, he can sing too, everything from Wagner to lieder to Annie Get Your Gun. (Pause to wipe off drool.)


This next one is a crossover album that actually works–mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter with Elvis Costello. Now I think Elvis Costello is sort of weird and I don’t much like his singing voice, but this collaboration was his idea and I thank him for it every time I listen to it (which is very frequently. This and an Ella Fitzgerald album were the greatest hits of Dedication). She sounds like an opera singer only in a good sort of way–great breath control, and the occasional amazing high note that comes effortlessly out of nowhere. Just gorgeous.

I don’t think this is the Steeleye Span album I have in mind (note to daughter: please return my Steeleye Span!)–I haven’t seen it in so long I can’t remember which one I own. A bit of pure nostalgia here–SS was one of the folk-rock bands around in the late 60s/early 70s. I didn’t realize how skilled they were until I came across their lyrics and realized what a genius their vocalist Maddy Prior was with the words and phrasing.


And, Rachmaninov to die for. Krystian Zimerman (sorta cute in a tortured artist way) is my favorite pianist and this is my greatest hit of the moment. I’m writing an erotic historical, and alternate between this and the Messiah as inspiration, something I can’t explain.

Tell us about your favorite background (or otherwise) music!