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Author Archives: Amanda McCabe/Laurel McKee

About Amanda McCabe/Laurel McKee

Writer (as Amanda McCabe, Laurel McKee, Amanda Carmack), history geek, yoga enthusiast, pet owner!

August always feels like the doldrums of the year to me. I wish I could be like the French, and spend the whole month at the beach or the mountains. The weather is hot (over 100 degrees for the past week, and likely to stay so for the rest of the month!), nothing much gets done at work and yet everyone is strangely cranky. Workplace Sweetie is gone for a couple of weeks. I’m having a hard time concentrating in reading or writing, or doing anything besides watching dumb summer TV and drinking gallons of iced tea. If it wasn’t for Anthony Bourdain’s hilarious stint guest-judging on Top Chef, I would have nothing. It’s a good thing I’m going on vacation next week, visiting Risky Diane and taking in the colonial fun of Williamsburg! Shopping for tricorne hats is just what I need to escape the August blahs.
Luckily, I haven’t spent all my time watching America’s Got Very Mediocre Talent! I got the Official word I’ll be doing 4 more books for Harlequin. You can look for Nicolai’s story (still with no Official title!) in April ’08. And you can see a review of A Notorious Woman here. And I got to see Becoming Jane this morning!

I went in telling myself sternly, “This is not a story about the author Jane Austen who lived from 1775 to 1817. It is just a Regency romance with a heroine named Jane.” And that seemed to help. The movie did seem to have many elements in common with some modern Regency-set romances. So–I didn’t hate it. Neither did I love it. It was quite silly in many ways, and what is worse, was sometimes quite boring. But I enjoyed some of the costumes; most of the acting (Anne Hathaway was better than I expected, though Anna Maxwell Martin, who was so good in the recent Bleak House, was mostly wasted as Cassandra); James McAvoy with his shirt off. And those boots he wore. I got to see a preview for Elizabeth: The Golden Age–Clive Owen, excellent choice to play Walter Raleigh. And the theater was air conditioned, and I got to eat a packet of Sour Patch Kids. Maybe silliness was what I needed today.

How do you pull yourself out of summer laziness? Any advice for me? And what’s your favorite movie snack? (Told you I was feeling silly today…)

I’m something of a visual writer–I like to know what my characters look like when I start work on a story! Sometimes they’re just an image in my mind. Sometimes, like what we chatted about last week with Rufus Sewell as ‘my’ hero Marc in A Notorious Woman, they look like an actor or celebrity, in which case I cut out pics of them and post them around my computer (these are some of the photos I had while I was writing ANW, hence the atrocious scanning quality!).
(My heroine, Julietta, BTW, looks like Isabelle Adjani in the movie Queen Margot, though not as fancily dressed as in this pic! )

I feel the same about setting. It’s especially fun when a book has a dramatic setting to reflect its action, like Venice, or, in my current WIP, 1818 Sicily. The island’s rugged beauty and complex mythos are a significant part of the story. But even with less “flashy” settings, such as an English country house, an art museum, or Henry VIII’s palace at Greenwich (which now exists only in sketches), I want to know what it feels like to be there. So, I also put pics of landscapes and buildings up around the computer. My desk gets pretty cluttered, what with all the photos and good-luck charms.

Right now, I’m trying to get a vision for that Sicilian book (the second of the “Muses of Mayfair” series–Clio’s story!). I’m not too sure yet about the hero. I think he looks a bit like the actor from that uber-cheesy Barbara Cartland TV movie Duel of Hearts. The one where that blond Nazi woman from the Indiana Jones movie plays a duchess or something who pretends to be a lady’s companion (while still wearing her jewels and silk gowns) to get close to the hero and warn him his eeeeevil cousin is trying to kill him, which he is too stupid to see for himself even though the villain practically twirls his mustache in every scene. There’s a circus, a crazy woman in the attic, phaeton races, and a big costume ball, plus a sweet secondary romance. If you haven’t seen it, it’s fabulous in a totally cornball way. Anyway, the point is my new hero, the Duke of Averton, looks sort of like him, but is a much better actor, and would have dispatched that cousin immediately because he is not a complete numbskull like the Cartland hero.

My heroine stubbornly wants to look like Keira Knightley. Tall, lanky, beautiful but sort of tomboyish (she goes off alone a lot, digging for antiquities). Since Clio is rather willful (but not, I hasten to add, the dreaded feisty), I let her have her way. “Fine,” I say. “Be Keira Knightley. But no pigs in the house.”
And speaking of Keira Knightley, I read this week that she is set to star in a movie called The Duchess, where she’ll play Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. I can’t find any info about who might play the other parts, or if they will actually film at Chatsworth or anything. I always get very excited about big costume films, and certainly Georgiana’s turbulent life has “Exciting Movie” written all over it. I’m just not sure Knightley is exactly what I picture Georgiana looking like (not that they asked me). Not sure what I would picture, though. But I guess really there is no getting away from Keira Knightley. She seems to pop up in so many projects I find interesting (the remake of Dr. Zhivago, where I thought that actress who played Tonya totally overshadowed her; the film of Ian McEwan’s excellent Atonement; Pride and Prejudice, of course). Can’t wait to see what happens in The Duchess.
Do you “picture” your characters, or the characters of books you read, as real people? Are there any favorites who crop up a lot (Diane+Gerard, for example. Or Amanda+Orlando, and Megan+Clive!)? And if you were to make a movie of a favorite historical figure, who would you cast? (I find this especially fascinating right now, as I’m hoping to see Becoming Jane this afternoon!)
p.s. Since I wrote this, I found out Becoming Jane is not yet playing anywhere near me! So that will have to wait. I might go see No Reservations instead…


Megan: So, what made you think of this story?
Amanda: Well–Romeo and Juliet! Or the Zeffirelli movie version of it. Along with movies like A Dangeous Beauty and Casanova. I love the aesthetics of Renaissance Italy, the clothes, the villas, the whole juxtaposition of violence and feuds with the most amazing art and learning. And Venice is so romantic and mysterious! Julietta and Marc just seemed to belong there.
Megan: And what made you change your writing venue from Regency England to 16th century Venice?
Amanda: The Regency well had run dry! After the books and novellas at Signet, I had a very hard time getting excited about any Regency ideas. But I’ve always been interested in the Renaissance (being a complete history geek). The tremendous optimism of the time period, the advances in science and exploration, the rise of humanism and art–not just in terms of technique, but in what it meant to be an Artist. What it meant to really be human. Tremendously exciting. (Plus those great gowns!). And now even the Regency well is refilling with new ideas!
Megan: How did you do your research?
Amanda: I read a lot! (Plus forced myself to watch those movies over and over again. It was terrible, but anything for my craft…) I also found a great treasure at a book sale just as I was starting this story–a reproduction of a 16th century souvenir book full of colored sketches of Venice during Carnival. Masked revelers pelting each other with eggshells full of perfume, dance barges on the Grand Canal, sword duels, the Marriage of the Sea ceremony. It was a great inspiration, many of those scenes found their way into the A Notorious Woman! Masked balls at the Piazza San Marco, for instance. Some other great sources were Cohn’s Women in the Street: Essays on Sex and Power in Renaissance Italy; Ruggiero’s Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage, and Power at the End of the Renaissance; Wills’ Venice: Lion City; and Newton’s The Dress of the Venetians, 1495-1525. (These are just a few).
Megan: What’s with the codpieces? How did they work exactly?
Amanda: Heh heh, you said ‘codpieces’!! (Sorry, immature moment there. Ahem). In short (ha! short!), a codpiece is a flap or pouch attached to the front of trousers/hose, held closed by string ties or buttons. At first, anyway, this was a matter of modesty–hose were very snug, open at the crotch, with a man’s, er, equipment loose under the doublet. As doublets got shorter, this was just not going to work anymore, and the codpiece became a thing of vanity. They became padded to emphasize the genital area, weirdly shaped. To see some examples, you can go here. (BTW, in Middle English, cod or codd means “bag”. Get it? Tee hee).
Megan: It seemed as if you might be thinking of continuing this with one of the other characters; do you have plans to go on with the series?
Amanda: When I first wrote this story, I didn’t mean to set up sequels! But, as characters sometimes do, Nicolai and then Balthazar caught my imagination. They needed their own stories! Their own heroines! I had also been thinking of another character for a while, a beautiful French assassin, et voila! She turned out to be a great match for Nicolai (even though she tried to kill him in the past. Oops). Balthazar was a bit tougher to matchmake for–he’s handsome but, well, complicated. He has to go to the Caribbean to find his love (and no, it’s not Elizabeth Swann!). I also may have to go there, and do in-depth research on beaches and pina coladas for this book…
Megan: Your heroine is a perfumier (is that the right word??). What’s your favorite scent?
Amanda: I love perfume, and read way too many perfume blogs! (Check out this and this). Unfortunately, I seem to have a weird body chemistry that makes scents I love in the bottle (like Chanel #5 and Joy) smell like motor oil when I put them on. But I have two stand-bys–Evelyn by Crabtree & Evelyn (a summery rose smell!) and Coco Mademoiselle for special occasions (why this works and #5 doesn’t, I dunno). It was so much fun to research Renaissance methods and styles of perfume bottles.
Megan: Are there real people who were the inspirations behind Julietta and Marc?
Amanda: I wish there was a Marc! As for Julietta–I guess she is a bit like me (sadly not the tall part). Most of my heroines are either something like me or something like how I wish I was. Or a mix. And heroes are guys I wish I could meet.
Megan: What are you working on now?
Amanda: I just started working on a Regency-set story (book #2 in the upcoming “Muses of Mayfair”–Clio’s story), which is set in Sicily. After that, on to Balthazar’s Caribbean story!
Megan: In your writing, do you feel you’re taking risks? How?
Amanda: I think trying an Italian Renaissance setting was a risk. And some editors felt the story was too “dark” (even though no one dies or gets tortured or anything!!). I was lucky Harlequin loved it, and saw the potential! Sometimes there are stories we just have to tell, and this was one for me. Also, I find myself drawn more to experienced, more complex heroines lately, women who are making their own way in a dangerous world. (Julietta owns a perfume shop, and dabbles in some alchemy on the side; Marguerite, Nicolai’s lady, is a spy/assassin; Balthazar’s heroine, Kate, runs a tavern in Santo Domingo). They’re more of a match for the heroes, LOL!
Megan: Is there anything you wanted to include in this book that you (or your CPs or editor) felt was too controversial and left out?
Amanda: Originally, there was more about Julietta’s alchemical experiments! But it was cut due to word count constraints. I do tend to ramble on when not given perimeters! They did let me keep the Greek fire, which I really enjoyed…
Be sure and comment for the chance to win a signed copy of A Notorious Woman, on shelves now! Winner will be announced Monday morning. And sign up for the Risky newsletter at riskies@yahoo.com, to get news of upcoming interviews and contests, and other fun stuff!




My first RWA was in New Orleans in (I think) 2001, and I’ve been to every one since. I look foward to it all year! I see people I consider some of my closest friends (even though I only see them at RWA), and meet ‘online friends’ in person, as well as get inspired by all the creativity floating around. I get to hear gossip, learn some new promo and plotting ideas, have fun–and come home totally exhausted, counting down the days until next year. But I have to say that this conference proved to be one of my favorites.

Not for the hotel or the food (the hotel was majorly confusing, not within walking distance to anything at all, and the food–well, it sucked). It was for something intangible that I can’t entirely figure out. A ‘positive vibe,’ maybe, that’s been missing for a couple of years. An overall atmosphere of happiness and excitement, and a sheer love of books and writing. I’m not sure where it came from, or even if I was imagining it (since I am, after all, pretty darn happy about my own upcoming books–preorder Notorious Woman now!). But I think I smiled and laughed more in those four days than ever before (and, yes, squealed when I met people).

And those people were a major part of the fun. I met Keira and Santa, RR regulars who are every bit as fabulous in person (and I saw Jane George in her lovely lace dress at the Beau Monde soiree, but she was dancing whenever I went to say hi! So “Hi!” Jane!). I met Elodie and Manda from Romance Vagabonds (where I will be appearing on Tuesday! Look me up there), and so, so many others. The luncheon speeches were inspiring (I don’t feel so bad now about writing in my old Hello Kitty pajamas, and I see armadillos in a new light…), and the awards ceremony mercifully quick and fun, with Regencies and historical novels well-represented. And there were so many lovely gowns, too!

And the Harlequin party–ahhhh, the Harlequin party. I have heard stories of the fabulosity of this event for years, but have never had the courage to ‘crash.’ I had to wait until this year, when I am bona fide, but it was worth it. So much exuberant happiness, such a sense of celebration, in one spot. Plus ’80s music, and a ride in a spectacularly tacky Hummer limo! What more could I ask for? (Except maybe Orlando to escort me…)

All was not perfect, of course. My books weren’t there for the literacy signing. And when I got home and started scanning the blogs I found Controversies had reared their heads (honestly, it’s not a conference unless there is Controversy). But, as usual in Amanda Land, such things went over my sleep-deprived head while I was actually there. I need to get more observant.

And the good always outweighs the not-so-good. Like most writers, I’ve had my share of ups and downs, lots (and lots) of doubts, much stress. I expect this will continue as long as I write. So, don’t I–don’t all of us!–deserve those 4 happy days? Days to meet friends and celebrate, and be glad romance novels exist in the world.

See you in San Francisco! I’m already planning my wardrobe…

(And the pics are: The Harlequin party, me with Deb Marlowe at the Beau Monde soiree, me with the Vagabonds, and me with Keira!)