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Author Archives: diane

About diane

Diane Gaston is the RITA award-winning author of Historical Romance for Harlequin Historical and Mills and Boon, with books that feature the darker side of the Regency. Formerly a mental health social worker, she is happiest now when deep in the psyches of soldiers, rakes and women who don’t always act like ladies.

In Praise of the Beau Monde

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Diane Report:
Still Working on it!

In my rush to get this manuscript done, I’ve had to dip into some quick research and, as happens in every book, The Beau Monde comes to the rescue.

Usually I have some obscure question to which I can’t find the answer and I email the Beau Monde loop. Boom! the answer comes back within a day. Sometimes my question even spurs a discussion and all kinds of interesting information comes my way.

In The Vanishing Viscountess, I needed to know about coaching routes from Liverpool to Ediburgh and, voila! Delle Jacobs came to the rescue. Anke Fontaine gave me information about how they should care for the horses. Nancy Mayer and Alyssa Fontaine answered all my legal questions, for The Vanishing Viscountess as well as my October release, Scandalizing the Ton. Even Jo Beverley and Gaelen Foley helped!

With this Work-In-Progress I haven’t had questions of the Beau Monde loop, but this week I needed quick answers to some fashion questions. I rediscovered the del.icio.us links compiled by Beau Monde Members (and spearheaded, I believe, by our Risky Friend, Kalen Hughes). This is a gold mine.

I wanted to see a pelisse, because I get pelisses and spencers mixed up and I didn’t want to be wrong. I also had questions about corsets. Beau Monde pointed me to Kalen’s website and her article, How to Undress Your Heroine.

Looking at the category “Clothing,” the Beau Monde del.icio.us site had this Regency Fashion link. I especially liked it because it included the descriptions of the fashions from the period fashion magazines, including a description of a pelisse.

There is so much at the del.icio.us site; it is worth joining the Beau Monde just for that. Beau Monde also offers the Regency Realm, a “continuing compendium of references on Regency England.”

This is annotated bibliography is another treasure. Need to know about the Napoleonic War? There’s a list of dozens of books and other sources, each commented upon by Beau Monde members. My only regret is that even I do not own all these books!

You know another wonderful thing about The Regency Realm? It is compiled by our own Risky Elena Greene!

There’s MORE. The Beau Monde gives a wonderful day-long conference the Weds before RWA each summer, with workshops to die for (e.g. Candice Hern showing her collections ), plus a Tea, a silent auction, and A Regency Soiree after the Literacy Signing. This year the conference is a joint venture with Hearts Through History Romance Writers, and it has a great schedule.

How about it? Are you ready to join yet? Or are you already a member?

If you are a member of Beau Monde, what do you like about it?

(Come visit my website for a Sneak Peek of my October release, Scandalizing the Ton, and enter my new contest.)

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Bookshelves

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Diane Report:

Number of pages written since past rant of two weeks ago: I have no idea
Daily average: I have no idea
Daily goal: totally not met
Number of pages to go: 139
New Daily Goal: 20 pages
New Deadline: June 16 (I broke down and asked for 2 more weeks)

Megan’s talk of organizing bookshelves got me to wishing for time to organize mine. I’m still in crazy mode of writing (see above) which automatically increases my desire to organize my bookshelves. I believe the urge will pass as soon as the book is turned in.

Speaking of bookshelves, I was in my local Borders Express recently and again got burned up. They shelve the Romance novels against the side wall, floor to ceiling. This makes it impossible for a woman of average height (me) to reach or even see the top shelves, and nearly as difficult to reach what is on the bottom. There is a stool nearby to climb on to reach the top shelf but even I am wary of falling. It is far easier to confine my search to books within easy reach.

This means, of course, that authors such as Gaelen Foley and Elizabeth Hoyt were unreachable and thus were less likely to sell.

When I first encountered this new shelving, the cashiers told me it was a corporate decision. Whoever made the decision certainly did not think it through that it was possibly not a good idea to make the best-selling genre hard to reach, especially when women are the most likely purchasers and most likely to be too short to reach the top shelves. “You can ask a cashier to help,” I was told, but when was the last time you saw cashiers wandering around the bookstore waiting to climb up on a stool for you? And would you be likely to ask them to browse the shelves for you? What’s more, some romance readers like to browse with a little more privacy, not out in plain view so everyone in the store can see you are looking at books with “man-titty” covers (as Janet would call them).

I can see it all now…the stores will sell fewer romance novels and will thereby convince the corporate decision-makers that romance novels are not selling as well as they used to. Then they will decrease the shelf space for romance novels and order fewer of them, thereby making the sales go down even more.

When I first saw this I asked the cashiers for a phone number to call to complain. They gave me a corporate number, they said, but it was a wrong phone number. This time I didn’t bother to ask because the unhappy-looking cashier who waited on me had been reading “Resumes for Dummies” and I supposed he didn’t want to hear me rant about romance novels.

Has anyone else encountered shelving like this? What do you think is most conducive to selling romance novels?
And (totally self-serving question) does shelving Harlequin Historicals in with the other Harlequin series books make it easier to find them or more difficult?

On this Memorial Day take a moment from your fun and remember all soldiers who dedicated their lives to their country — like my father!)

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Regency Weddings

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Amanda is attending her brother’s wedding today so I volunteered to blog for her. I hope she’ll show us photos of her dress, but until then, let’s talk about Regency weddings.

Regency brides did wear white, but they didn’t have to. In the Regency, white gowns were popular for many occasions. Other colors like pale pink and blue were also worn at weddings. The older the bride, the darker the color. Wedding dresses were worn after the wedding, too. By the time Queen Victoria became a bride and wore white, the white wedding dress was well on its way to becoming a tradition.

Princess Charlotte, who wed Prince Leopold in 1816, wore a dress of silver lamé, embroidered in silver.

Sites that tell more about Regency Weddings:

Jessamyn’s Regency Costume Companion

Regency Weddings

Quick facts about Regency Weddings:

1. Weddings could take place after reading of the Banns, a license, or a special license. Banns must be read for three consecutive Sundays in the parishes of both the prospective bride and groom. A license, purchased from the bishop of the diocese, did away with the banns but the couple still had to be married in the parish church. A special license, purchased from the Archbishop of Canterbury, allowed the couple to be married in a location other than a church and without banns. Licenses were never blank; different names could not be substituted.

2. Scottish weddings went by different rules. In Scotland couples could be married by declaring themselves married in front of witnesses, by making a promise to marry followed by intercourse, or by living together and calling themselves married.

3. Weddings could not be performed by proxy. Both the bride and groom had to be present.

4. Ship captains could not perform marriages. Couples could be married aboard ship, but only by clergy. (How many times have you read that plot?)

5. Brides had wedding rings; grooms did not. The bride could give the groom a ring as a wedding gift, but it was not part of the ceremony and didn’t symbolize he was married.

Do you want a Regency Wedding? There are many sites on the internet offering custom made Regency wedding dresses:

Regency Reproductions

Fashions in Time

Or if you are handy, like Cara, you could make your Regency gown:

McCall’s Pattern 202 Regency era Empire Waisted Wedding Gown

I was married a Brazillion years ago, before a bride would even DREAM of a strapless gown. Before I married, I’d never read Georgette Heyer or Regency Romances and it had been a few years since I’d read Jane Austen.

Take a look at my wedding dress.
It’s a little hard to tell here, but it has an empire waist. It’s a Regency Dress!

Do you have any questions about Regency weddings?

Did anyone else have a Regency wedding dress?

Don’t forget to stop by on Monday for Grand Central Publishing editor Alex Logan

And while you are blogging on Monday, stop by The Wet Noodle Posse. My friend Darlene Gardner is blogging about researching character occupations.

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Another Manic Monday

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Diane Report:

Number of pages written since past rant of one week ago: 32
Daily average: 4.5
Daily goal: 10 pages
Number of pages to go: 158
New Daily Goal: 12 pages

Deadline: June 2

Arrrrrgggghhhhhhh!

Good news! I have my new contract in hand. More books. More deadlines…………….

Investigation:

This is the book Amanda said she pines for. She mentioned it in Megan’s Friday post.
Doesn’t this look like Amanda?

(photo of Amanda from our Williamsburg trip)
Amazing!!!

I’ll be back on Saturday – substituting for Amanda. I’ll give you another update then–on my deadline, not on Amanda.

(Why did I ever get myself into this tight deadline–do you all get yourself into things like this deadline dilemma I’ve gotten myself into?)

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The Blank Page

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You must not come lightly to the blank page–Stephen King

This will be a short post, because I can’t take it lightly that I’m facing a blank page, and I have a great deal of writing to do to meet my June 1 deadline.

I’m starting a new series! At least three books about three soldiers. I don’t want to say too much more about it, except that I’m at least one-third the way through it.

This has got me wondering, though…

How many pages do you usually write on the days that you write?

What is the greatest number of pages you have written in one day?

I am about to step up the pace and write more pages per day than I’ve ever done. I have no idea if I can do it! I’ll give you a count next Monday.

Which brings me to another question.

What do you do when you look at the blank page and you can’t figure out what comes next? What do you do to get over that hump when you don’t have any time to fool around?

Of writing well the source and fountainhead is wise thinking–Horace

By the way, go see Made of Honor at the movies. It’s great!

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