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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.

What a Doll!

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On January 10 our Risky Regencies guest will be my friend and debut author, Christine Trent. Christine marked the New Year by finding her book on the Barnes and Noble shelves for the first time ever!

I’ve been waiting for this book ever since Christine answered my question “What are you writing” with, “I’m writing a historical about a dollmaker who makes dolls for Marie Antoinette.” I just knew that she would sell that book and here she is in her local Barnes and Noble holding the book in her very own hands.

The Queen’s Dollmaker is receiving great reviews, including 4 stars from RTBook Reviews. I don’t want to say more because we’ll hear all about it from Christine herself on Sunday, Jan 10.

I finished the very extensive and coming right around the holidays revisions for Book 2 in my Soldiers Trilogy last night at 1 am and am too brain-dead to think of a wonderfully creative blog post. (You’ll get that from Carolyn, I’m sure!) I thought I’d just show you a doll.

Years ago, my friend Helen transformed this Barbie doll into a Regency lady to promote my second book, The Wagering Widow. The doll was part of a raffle basket we made up for that year’s Washington Romance Writers Retreat. The trouble was, I loved the doll so much that I stuffed all my raffle tickets into the bag. As a result, I won my own raffle basket!

And, guess what? The Wagering Widow is being re-released by Mills & Boon in February as one of their Regency High Society Affairs series. The Wagering Widow is paired with Georgina Devon’s An Unconventional Widow in a two-in-one volume and is available for pre-order at Book Depository where shipping is free!

The Wagering Widow, by the way, was the one book I’ve written that needed no revisions at all. None. I’m just saying….

Anyway….for me this week will be catching up on all the things I’ve neglected during the holidays and my frantic revisions.

What’s up for you this week?

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The Shape of Books to Come–and Those That Came Already

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All this week on Risky Regencies we’re going to discuss books we’ve read in the past year and books we plan to read in 2010.

It’s been a great year of “must-reads” for the Riskies, book-wise, Amanda’s and my (and Deb Marlowe’s) Diamonds of Welbourne Manor, Amanda’s High Seas Stowaway, Spirited Brides, The Winter Queen, The Maid’s Lover, my Gallant Officer, Forbidden Lady, The Unlacing of Miss Leigh; Janet’s A Most Lamentable Comedy, Carolyn’s Scandal, Indiscreet and her paranormal, My Forbidden Desire.

Even more exciting, this was the year I got my Kindle! As you might have heard me say, I LOVE MY KINDLE! I can take my Kindle anywhere. (Colleen Gleason aka Joss Ware even takes hers into the bathtub–in a ziplock bag)

Regency Historicals I’ve read on my Kindle include:
Lavinia Kent’s A Talent for Sin (nominated for Best First Historical by RTBook Reviews)
Mary Blayney’s Stranger’s Kiss (nominated for Best Innovative Historical by RTBook Reviews) – Way to go, Lavinia and Mary!

NonFiction books about the Regency that I’ve read on my Kindle include:
Regency England by John Plowright – a history about the life an times of Lord Liverpool.
Wedlock: The True Story of the Disastrous Marriage and Remarkable Divorce of Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore by Wendy Moore – a fascinating story of a woman tricked into marriage and how she got out of it, pre-Regency, actually.
Waterloo Days by Charlotte Anne Waldie Eaton – a memoir that’s been very helpful in writing my Soldier books.

I’ve also been on a self-help kick. My Kindle Self-Help books include:
Finally Thin! How I Lost Over 200 Pounds and Kept Them Off–and How You Can, Too by Kim Benson – I love an inspirational weight-loss story
Breaking Murphy’s Law by Suzanne C Segerstrom PhD – a book about Optimism. I was sure it wouldn’t be good, but it was!
The Game of Life and How to Play It by Florence Scovel Shinn – a 1925 book foreshadowing The Law of Attraction.

For Christmas my sisters and I buy each other Gift Cards and I asked for Amazon.com gift cards. So now I have a tidy sum of $$ to purchase some 2010 books!

I’ve downloaded some samples to consider:
Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy by Peter S Canellos – a departure from my usual sort of book
The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History by Linda Colley – I think Janet (or Amanda? maybe Megan…) recommended this one, about a woman who lived in the 1700s
Fossil Hunter by Shelley Emling – about Mary Anning, who found the first ever dinosaur skeleton in 1811.

I’m just scratching the surface of possible books to buy. I’ll save some of the money for Romance books, more self-help (because I need a lot of it), and, of course, nonfiction, research books relating to the Regency.

I’m open to suggestions!

What books did you get for Christmas? If you got gift cards, what books are you planning to buy? And, most important, what books should I buy???

Come to my website. I’m about to pick a grand prize winner in my contest. There’s still time to enter!

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A White Christmas

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As you know Washington DC joined the rest of the mid-Atlantic in experiencing a record-breaking December snowstorm. Here in the Northern Virginia suburbs, the snow started Friday night about 9 pm and didn’t stop until late afternoon Saturday. We got 2 feet of snow. Here is a view of our snow, taken from my upstairs window at 12 noon Saturday.

One nice thing about snow is it covers all the dirt and darkness in a blanket of pure white, everything becomes quiet and life, of necessity, slows down.

One can almost imagine what it would be to live in the country in Regency England, to take walks through the wood, perhaps even to go skating on the pond or zipping over to your neighbor’s house in a horse-drawn sleigh.

Of course, a Regency winter walk might be like this:

And zipping along in a vehicle, might be more like this:

In the newspaper you might read about stories like this one from the 1814 Annual Register:

Extraordinary Instance of the Sagacity of a Dog.—Mr. T. Rutherford, of Long Framlington, was, about a fortnight ago, overcome in a snow storm, near Alnwick, and fell. In this state he was exposed to all the horrors of the night, till seven o’clock in the morning. His faithful dog at this time observing a shepherd at a small distance, used every exertion to attract his attention, such as howling, going from and returning to the spot where his master lay. This induced the shepherd to follow the dog’s motions. Mr. Rutherford was found, (then covered by the snow,) carried to a neighbouring publichouse, and, after five hours’ exertion, life was restored, and he is now quite well.

On the other hand, one might have a lovely Regency Christmas, eating Christmas pudding, drinking wassail, playing Christmas music on the pianoforte, dancing or playing cards.

What do you imagine a Regency winter and Christmas to be like? What do you think you’d like best about it?

It’s been a great gift to have such a wonderful Risky Regencies community. I wish all my fellow Riskies and everyone else a very happy holiday season!

Marmion
by Sir Walter Scott

Heap on more wood! – the wind is chill;
But let it whistle as it will,
We’ll keep our Christmas merry still.

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Jane Austen Week WINNERS

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Congratulations to our Jane Austen Week Winners, chosen at random from all the comments we received this week.

JANE AUSTEN wins a copy of A Charming Place: Bath in the Life and Novels of Jane Austen by Maggie Lane

LOIS wins signed copy of Carrie Bebris’s Mr. and Mrs. Darcy mystery Pride and Prescience

Email us at riskies@yahoo.com with your snail mail addresses!

Thanks to everyone who stopped by to share our celebration of the incomparable Jane Austen!

The Riskies

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Jane Austen Week – Jane in Bath

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All this week Risky Regencies celebrate Jane Austen’s birthday. Monday through Saturday each of our blogs will relate in some way to Jane Austen, one of the greatest novelists of all time, a novelist who wrote with such acute authenticity about her own time that she gave subsequent generations such love of it that we still savor Regency novels today.

In celebration (and appreciation) of Jane Austen we will be giving away prizes to two of our Risky Regency commenters this week. Amanda has donated a signed copy of Carrie Bebris’s Mr. and Mrs. Darcy mystery Pride and Prescience, and I have a copy of Maggie Lane’s A Charming Place: Bath in the Life and Novels of Jane Austen to give away. Our winners will be selected at random from all the comments of the week and will be announced next Sunday, Dec 20.

Jane Austen visited Bath as a young woman, once the guest of her aunt, Mrs. Leigh Perrot, who was later falsely incarcerated for stealing a bit of lace. In 1801 Jane’s father decided to retire to Bath, thus Jane had to leave the country village of Steventon to live in a busy city with her parents. Not being wealthy, their circumstances in Bath were less than ideal and the years from 1801 to 1805 (when her father died) were not happy ones for Jane. It is thought that she did no writing in Bath. Still, the city provided her with many opportunities to observe the various characters who lived in Bath and those who visited to take the waters. Perhaps Catherine Moreland of Northanger Abbey reflects the youthful Jane’s impressions of Bath. Anne in Persuasion showed Jane’s more mature, less admiring view.

When Amanda and I visited Bath on the 2003 Novel Explorations Regency Tour, what often filled my mind was that Jane Austen had walked these same streets and saw the same sites.

This is one of the places she called home.

I could imagine her walking a street like this one.

To visit the shops

And gaze in the shop windows.

Maybe she would explore the city and walk down steps like this.

Or visit someone’s Georgian garden.

She, of course, would view the Royal Cresent

And, like we did, she would have danced in the Assembly Rooms.

That’s me, second to the left in the dark blue dress. Amanda is just a little left of center and Deb Marlowe is a little right of center.

If you have visited Bath, what was your favorite place to see? If you’ve never been to Bath, what would you like to see? Do you have any tidbits about Jane Austen’s time in Bath?

Remember to comment for a chance to win! And to visit every day this week

And, don’t forget, Gallant Officer, Forbidden Lady is still in bookstores. Visit my website. I have a contest too.

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