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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.

Another Retreat…

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I’m just getting caught up on Risky Regencies posts (and everything else), because I, like Elena, have been to a Retreat. Mine was more conference-like–Washington Romance Writers Spring Retreat, always titled In The Company of Writers.

The WRW Retreat is more conference-like, because there are workshops and speakers but it is also retreat-like, because we dress casually and the number of attendees stays small, about 110 this year.  No paddling on a lake, like Elena could do, but lots and lots of mixing with friends, old and new.

As in other years, the agents and editors attending are always asked what is selling these days; what is hot.

Contemporaries, especially small town stories and romances, are doing well, apparently. But all agreed that a good book will find its home and as soon as someone declares something won’t sell, a wonderful book will burst out and become the next big trend. They said it was much more important to feel passionate about the book you are writing than to try to write to trends.

One of the editors said that Regency remains an appeal because readers feel they know the time period and are comfortable there.

Mary Jo Putney talked about her 29 years in publishing and about her return to the Regency genre after writing some contemporaries, fantasies, and YA. Mary Jo also very much advocated writing what you are passionate about and, in the past, she took some big chances with her career to do just that.

What I took away from all this, was how important it is to write a book you are passionate about, no matter what the genre or subgenre.

Speaking of Mary Jo, she said her new release, No Longer A Gentleman, is on bookstore shelves. If you’ve purchased the book before today, check to see if page 362 is missing. A printing error left out page 362 in the first printed books. Ebooks are complete. Go to Mary Jo’s website for the text of the missing page.

Speaking of subgenres. Amanda’s blog yesterday was posted late. Go there and read all about The Taming of The Rogue, Amanda’s latest. Look at its fabulous cover and post a comment for a chance to win a signed copy!

What do you think? Can you tell if the author is passionate about the book you are reading?

Come to Diane’s Blog on Thursday for more about the WRW Retreat.

 

Posted in Writing | Tagged , | 3 Replies

My Buddy

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I am just starting my next book and am in that situation where the plot is rudimentary and still fluid. I can keep or change any of my plot elements or my characters.

This is a gaming hell story, a gaming hell being a private and illegal establishment for the purpose of card-playing and other games of chance such as Hazard, a dice game, and Faro, a game of chance which does use cards. You can read more about gambling in Regency England here.

In writing the first chapter, I realized (through the suggestion of my brilliant writing friends, Darlene Gardner and Lisa Dyson) that I needed more….I needed to give my hero a buddy.

How did we realize this? In my first draft of my first chapter, my hero thought back to an incident in his past, but that passage put the reader in his thoughts for too long and it slowed down the pace. We realized it would be better if he could tell someone about this incident and that’s how the idea of giving him a friend came about.

The friend character serves a useful purpose in Romance for this very reason. The friend gives the hero or heroine someone to talk to, so that information can be given to the reader in an interesting, natural way.

Michael Hauge (Story Mastery) calls the friend a reflection character who is commonly used to support the hero in the achievement of his goal. Hauge would say that the reflection character sees the hero’s “essence,” his true-self, which we want him to achieve by the end of the book, and by so doing, shows the reader the hero’s essence as well.

I also think that the friend character can illuminate the hero’s character by being the total opposite. Think of Bingley in Pride and Prejudice. Darcy is uncomfortable among the people at the Assembly, but Bingley is friendly and eager to enjoy himself. Bingley believes only the good in people and Darcy is wary of others, more certain that their motives are not good ones. Bingley is also easily led, but Darcy is firm in his opinions and decisive in his actions.

For readers, the glimpse of a buddy can be very intriguing. How many of us have emailed authors to ask when the hero’s friend will have his own book? I still get emails asking about the hero’s friends in The Marriage Bargain, my 2005 Diane Perkins book. (You’ll see them someday!!!! I don’t know when…)

Almost all my heroes have had buddies, and most of the buddies went on to have romances of their own, so it will be fun to create this new friend for my new hero. I already have an image of him….actor/model  Raphaello Balzo.

Now aren’t you intrigued????

Do you like your Regency heroes to have buddies? Is there anything that annoys you about the “buddy” character?

Posted in Reading, Writing | Tagged | 9 Replies

To Mothers

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Yesterday was Mother’s Day, a lovely day for me. My daughter gave me a gift, selected from my Amazon wish list- a vegetable grilling pan for the outdoor grill. And this lovely card:

This image is called “Another World” by artist Paul C Milner

To me it perfectly conveys that feeling of being lost in a book

My daughter’s boyfriend gave me flowers, which one of the cats promptly chewed on. We rescued this one:

Along with the dh, we went to brunch, sat outside in beautiful weather and had a very enjoyable meal.

So in my lazy afternoon, I went searching for Regency quotes about mothers for today’s blog:

Let’s start with the Bard, earlier than the Regency, of course, but known to them:

Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime—
William Shakespeare

I found a quote from Coleridge:

The love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly father—
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

That was it! That was the only Regency era quote I found. There were plenty of quotations about mothers in the later years which made me wonder if Motherhood only started to become revered during the Victorian era.

Here’s a really beautiful example:

Women know
The way to rear up children (to be just)
They know a simple, merry, tender knack
Of tying sashes, fitting baby shoes,
And stringing pretty words that make no sense, 
And kissing full sense into empty words–
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

And here’s one, no time frame known, just for fun:

A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest—
Irish Proverb

Do you have a favorite saying about mothers?
Did you have a good Mother’s Day?

Posted in Regency | Tagged | 4 Replies

Regency Gaming Hells

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Long ago when I was writing The Wagering Widow, I created a fictitious gambling house run by “Madame Bisou.” I used the gambling house again in A Reputable Rake and Innocence and Impropriety. So, as I was starting my new gambling house story, I resurrected Madame Bisou’s establishment. Why reinvent the wheel?

Gambling houses or gaming “hells” appear often in Regency romances, but what were they really like?
The History of Gambling in England by John Ashton gives us a good idea.
Ashton quotes a 1817 pamphlet that describes some of the actual gambling houses of the period:

BENNET STREET, ST JAMES’S. CORNER HOUSE–RED BAIZE DOOR–called A CLUB HOUSE: This is what is called a topping house, where high rank and title resort. We mentioned in the poem (the Annual Register also included a long poem about gaming houses) the luck of a certain Duke’s son there; and, of late, there has been a lucky run in favour of the frequenters of the bank–but lauda finem. Its crisis has arrived. The noble  Marquess, on the night that he lost the money at No. 40 which was closed against him, went full charged with the Tuscan grape, and attacked poor Fielder, vi et pugnis, and, at length, was necessitated to leave this house also….The receipts of these houses are immense: We know the wife a proprietor of a hell…who was so majestic in her attire, that she gained the name of Proserpine.

MRS. LEACH’S, No. 6 KING STREET, ST JAMES’S: is a particularly snug and quiet shop, and the name of the proprietor is singularly appropriate. This concern is suspended.

THE ELDER DAVIS, No. 10 KING STREET, ST JAMES’S: Is but a small affair, recently opened. It gets on swimmingly.

Most of the gambling houses had a Hazard Table. Hazard is a dice game, the precursor to Craps. There is some strategy involved in which numbers the player selects to role, but it is essentially a game of chance which always favors the house. Some houses had other games of pure chance like Rouge et Noir and Faro, both played with a deck of cards.
Gaming houses could make vast fortunes with these games of chance as this description states:

No. 10 ST JAMES’S SQUARE. A low HOUSE, HUMOROUSLY CALLED the Pidgeon hole: This snug little trap is doing remarkably well. Fama volat, that it has netted thirty thousand within twelve months.

My fictional gambling house needs to make lots of money quickly, so needless to say it specializes in games of chance!
Do you like gaming hell stories? What are your favorites?
Did you ever read the traditional Regency (a Signet, I think) that had the villain taking secret photographs in a gaming hell at night? Great research on that one….
Don’t you love the smattering of Latin and French that crops up in some of the writings during the Regency?
Posted in Regency, Research | Tagged , , | 7 Replies

Memorial Day and Movies

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Today is Memorial Day in the USA, a day of remembrance that began as Decoration Day, a day freemen (freed slaves) decorated the graves of Union soldiers. The holiday eventually became a day to include remembrance of all who have died in defense of our country.

Most of us do not know first hand what soldiers face when they are sent into combat. We suppose their valor, their fear, their willingness to face enemy fire. We imagine it and recreate it in books and movies. I’ve certainly imagined battle for my Three Soldiers series.

Today seemed a fitting day to talk about my favorite war movies.

I’ll start with a Regency era one, of course.

Waterloo (1971) starring Christopher Plummer as Wellington, and Rod Steiger as Napoleon. The battle scenes in this movie are magnificent. Once scene almost perfectly recreates the painting by Lady Butler of the charge of the Scots Greys. The aerial photography of the French cavalry attacking the Allied squares was incredible. I loved how the important and memorable incidents from the battle were depicted.

The Longest Day (1962) from a book by Cornelius Ryan, a book I actually read! This movie tells the story of D Day, not with, perhaps, the graphic horror of the battle as in Speilberg’s Saving Private Ryan (which I have not seen), but a great movie for its scope of the battle and its ensemble cast including Henry Fonda, John Wayne (of course), a young not-yet-famous Sean Connery, Richard Burton, Eddy Albert, Paul Anka…and more. Like in Waterloo, important parts of the battle are shown and woven together to show how the victory was accomplished.

Zulu (1964), my favorite war movie of all time!  Zulu is the true story of an attack in 1879 by 4000 Zulu forces on a small hospital and supply depot guarded by 139 Welsh infantrymen, many who were hospitalized. Narrated by Richard Burton and starring Stanley Baker, Nigel Green, and a very young Michael Caine, this movie shows true valor and celebrates, in the end, the respect all soldiers are due.

Zulu and The Longest Day are available on Netflix and other dvd vendors. Waterloo might be harder to find but is worth the search.

Notice all these movies were made decades ago. The distance in time helps me favor them. I have a more difficult time watching more recent depictions of war, especially if the movies involve Vietnam or Iraq and Afghanistan. Too close for comfort…

Here’s a Memorial Day video that literally made me cry. It was created by a 15 year old girl and is going viral on the internet.

What are your favorite war movies? Have you seen any of my three? What do you think of them? What did you think of the video?

Posted in Research, TV and Film | Tagged , | 6 Replies