I remember meeting Eloisa for the first time. It was in Chicago, I think, and I was just planning to start writing a Regency set historical. I was at the RWA National Conference and I was introduced to Eloisa whose first book, Potent Pleasures, was coming out in hardback. Needless to say, I was very impressed!

Eloisa, in addition to being a wonderful author of great books, is also very generous to other authors, sharing her expertise in all parts of the publishing process. I never met anyone who was so smart at the business side of writing. She is also a terrific speaker and very generous to New Jersey Romance Writers, of which I am a long distance member.

I’m thrilled that we Riskies have had the opportunity to sing the praises of Eloisa’s Pleasure for Pleasure and to have her visit with us!

And I am sure Eloisa’s work habits are a lot better than mine!

I generally allot myself four to five months to write a book. I come up with an idea, usually based on a character. My characters generally appear in a previous book, but when I write that book, I never know what their story will be. The next step in the process is to write a synopsis, because my editors want to approve the story before I write it. This means I have to at least figure out the main plot of the story and I have to dip into the research books enough to make sure I can fit the history in correctly. I also write them the first chapter, which is usually an easy chapter for me. I like to start out my books with something very exciting and that sort of scene is fun to write.

When I sit down to write the book, I never really know how I’m going to bring the book to the end. I usually know the hero and heroine fairly well, though – I could probably sit for hours and tell you incidents from their lives before the book starts, but I really have not figured out “what’s next.” I also have to think up secondary characters and subplots, otherwise it is going to be a short story, not a book!

I always write on a laptop, usually in my den on my couch, although I also might sit on the top of my bed, spreading research books around me. I try to start writing by 9 am and I pretty much continue until about 4. If I am very good, I will go to Curves at noon for a break. If I’m not worried about my deadline, I try to take weekends off.

I’m making myself sound very virtuous. I also check my email, play scrabbleblast, see what’s for sale on ebay…..there are a bunch of ways I can waste time when I should be writing. Blogging, the reading of it or the writing of it, is not a waste of time, however!

I research as I go along. I mostly research online (one favorite site www.answers.com), but I have a brazillion research books up in my “book room” a bedroom turned into a …book room, lined with bookshelves. My bookshelves have only cursory organization. Someday I’ll figure out how to arrange them so I can find things in an instant. Name a research book you like and I either own it or my fingers are tapping out abebooks.com and I’m going to buy it (right, Kalen???)

I have two lovely critique groups who read my stuff as I write and my favorite way of doing things is to take their suggestions and fix the chapters we’ve discussed before moving on to write a new chapter. This last book (I’m almost finished!!) I had to write in only 2 1/2 months so I tried something new. Just write and fix later. That works pretty well, actually. I may do things this way from now on. So I wrote the whole thing and then went back and revised that draft.

I am definitely not someone who plots out everything ahead of time, but I stopped worrying about that when Nora Roberts said she also does not plot ahead of time.

So with this book, I am finishing the revision of my first draft and should turn it in by Thursday. Make that will turn it in…

Ask me questions about what else you might want to know! And, those of you who are writers, tell us how you do it, too, this week.

Cheers!
Diane

In honor of Thanksgiving, I thought I’d let you all in on part of the reason I’m thankful for the job of writing Regency Romance. In my current Work In Progress, which you may recall is a road story, I have spent my days wandering around the north of England and the south of Scotland. Through the magic of the Internet I have visited many places and discovered wonderful things.

I can’t really share the visual images I’ve used to create my story, because most of the images are copyrighted, so I went into my own photographs from my 2005 trip to England and Scotland for some similar visual images.

My characters wound up in Liverpool which might have looked a little like this:

They rode over the countryside. Imagine these hills in the Autumn with all different colors:

They might have passed through villages like this one:

Or stayed in a castle ruin like this one:

My heroine may have gazed upon the home of her childhood:

And, finally, my hero and heroine may have shared a bed similar to this one:

Do I have the greatest job in the world or what?

For a wonderful virtual adventure, immerse yourself in this website!
http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/index.html

Is part of what you like to read about the Regency imagining what it looked like?
How much setting do you like in our books?

Happy Thanksgiving, Everybody!

Diane

A Twelfth Night Tale in Mistletoe Kisses “…splendidly satisfying…” BOOKLIST

This week the Riskies have graciously allowed me lots of extra attention because of the release of Mistletoe Kisses, Harlequin Historical’s Regency Christmas anthology. See the intervew with the other authors of the anthology here.

We also have a contest, giving away THREE autographed copies of Mistletoe Kisses. All you have to do is comment on our blogs this week – from now to Saturday. Say more than, “Great blog” please; we love to hear from you. Winners will be announced next Sunday Nov 19. See contest details here.

I apologize for talking about Christmas before Thanksgiving, I really do! But the Historicals, like other Harlequins, are only on the bookshelf in stores for one month (longer at online stores and eharlequin.com) and if we waited until the “proper time” you might not be able to find Mistletoe Kisses at all.

During the Regency era Christmas had some of the same customs we still follow today. Decorating one’s house with evergreens. Hanging mistletoe and kissing under it. Even one that surprised me–roast turkey for dinner.

In my family growing up we, unfortunately, did not have a wassail bowl, nor did we have a yule log, but then in some of the houses where we lived, we didn’t have a fireplace so maybe that was a good thing. We did cut greenery from our yard and use it to adorn our mantlepiece and to create centerpieces for the table, like Elizabeth and Zach in A Twelfth Night Tale. And we always had a live tree (a later tradition than “our” time period). We decorated our tree on Christmas Eve and took it down on New Year’s Day.

My favorite tradition has always been to decorate the Christmas tree. As a child, my sisters and I loved to unwrap our tree ornaments, to find our favorites, the ones we remembered having our whole lives, the ones we made ourselves, the ones that were souvenirs from various trips. We always had a certain way to hang the ornaments, showing our favorites in the front and those dumb plain blue ones my mother bought one year to the back. In my family growing up, the annual debate was always whether we ought to have the lights blink or not. I always voted for no blinking.

With my husband and children, decorating the tree has never been quite the valued experience it was when I was growing up. Maybe it was because Christmas had become more hectic -school parties, parties for every other activity my children were in, church pageants, work parties, Christmas shopping, visiting two sets of relatives. In fact, I always thought the time between Halloween and Christmas passed like a blur. So now that my children are grown, I often decorated the tree myself, an artificial tree so the cats won’t eat it. (I do have a great memory from my childhood when our cat knocked down the tree on New Year’s Eve just as my parents were getting ready to go to a party)

Thing is, I still love it, the tree decorating. I have some of those same ornaments from my childhood and some really lovely antique ones that were given to me long ago. My tree has twinkling lights now. My tastes have evolved with the technology.

I do not like the hectic nature of the holiday still, but I love the beauty of the season. I love the decorations, the holiday music, the Christmas Story. I love Christmas movies and TV episodes that celebrate the holiday. I love that we honor the winter holidays of all faiths now, making the season a time for loving everyone.

Last Christmas I had the additional joy of writing my Christmas novella during the holiday season. It was wonderful inspiration, both enriching my holiday and inspiring my writing.

So this year it is a great joy to share the story with you. I hope you all enjoy A Twelfth Night Tale and the other novellas in Mistletoe Kisses.

This week the Riskies are going to be talking about our favorite holiday customs or other holiday related themes, so this is an opportunity to share yours with us (and earn chances to win Mistletoe Kisses)

Tell which you would vote for and why: Live tree vs Artificial; Twinkling lights vs Non-Twinkling lights. Or share any pet-related tree stories. The Riskies want to know…

(Holiday) Cheers!
Diane

Last year I read Discipline by Mary Brunton (1778-1818). Mary was a Scottish novelist, a contemporary of Jane Austen, whose life, like Austen’s, was cut short by her early death–in childbirth for Brunton. She left us just 3 books, one Emmeline, unfinished.

Self Control, her first published novel was popular and mentioned in Austen’s letters, albeit with less than admiration.

I read Discipline because someone somewhere said that it had a good description of a Regency era ball. It did. The London part of the story was very interesting. The characters had a great deal more freedom than we ever give our heroines. The book’s plot wandered, but there was a lot going on in it. It tells the story of a wealthy but impetuous young woman whose folly and happenstance cause her to descend into poverty and despair, until she reforms her ways and vows to live a disciplined and moral life.

In some ways the book is difficult to slog through. In today’s fiction-world it would be in for some extreme tightening, but Brunton’s voice is an authentic voice of the past, and, to me, it felt like a peek into the real Regency world. One of the things I liked was that Brunton’s characters misbehaved in a grand way. She did not treat their scandals with the delicacy that Jane Austen achieved, but plopped the scandals on the page, front and center. I can just see a Regency teenage girl sneaking her mother’s copy of Discipline and relishing it, like we relished those first romance novels pilfered from our own mothers’ bookshelves.

Here is a very nice piece about Mary Brunton. http://www.chawton.org/biography.php?AuthorID=49

And here is a link to what Jane Austen said of Brunton’s Self Control, complete with links to the complete text of Discipline, Self-Control and Emmeline, her unfinished manuscript.
http://labrocca.com/marybrunton/

Has anyone read Mary Brunton?
What other novels popular in our Regency time period do you recommend, besides Austen, that is?
What romance novel did you sneak from your mother’s bookshelf?

Cheers!

Halloween is all about scary things, and, let me tell you, writing a “Road Trip” story is enough to give me a fright!

It did seem like an excellent idea originally. Send my hero and heroine on a road trip. It put them into close contact, forced them to spend night together and seemed exciting, because the villains were chasing them. Great idea!

But I forgot I had to have them travel from real places, like Liverpool, Penrith, Carlisle, Edinburgh. At least I’ve been to Edinburgh and I did look out the window of the bus to see what the countryside looked like, but that had been in the summer and this story takes place in the autumn.

For this road trip, I had to figure out how what route the would take from Liverpool to Edinburgh. My friend Delle Jacobs (Her Majesty, The Prince of Toads) came to my rescue with the coaching route between the two towns. But then I had to figure out what the land would look like from one location to the other, and what villages might have been in between the larger towns.

The internet came to my rescue. I discovered that mapquest.com has UK maps and the little town names were right next to the highlighted line. Then I discovered Google Earth also would show the route and give a hint to the terrain as well.

Next I searched on the various town names to find as many images as I could so I could see what the villages might have looked like.

Then I had to figure out how my hero and heroine would travel on this road trip- public coach? mail coach? Post-chaise?
I decided to have them ride horses, which I know very little about, my experience with the animals being confined to pony rides as a child. My friends from the Beau Monde and the Regency Loop came to my rescue there, with decisions about issues such as sidesaddles and how far they could travel in a day.

Then, of course, I had to write the story.

My hero and heroine are not quite to Edinburgh at this moment, but they are getting there….

Do you even like road trip stories, now that I’m almost done with mine and it is too late to change it now?

Do you mind if an author accidentally puts in some moors where mountains should be? Will you forgive her such mistakes and trust that she really did try to get it right?

Cheers!
Diane

Coming to bookstores Nov 1 (That is THIS WEDNESDAY!), Diane’s “A Twelfth Night Tale” in Mistletoe Kisses, Harlequin Historicals Regency Christmas Anthology