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Author Archives: Elena Greene

About Elena Greene

Elena Greene grew up reading anything she could lay her hands on, including her mother's Georgette Heyer novels. She also enjoyed writing but decided to pursue a more practical career in software engineering. Fate intervened when she was sent on a three year international assignment to England, where she was inspired to start writing romances set in the Regency. Her books have won the National Readers' Choice Award, the Desert Rose Golden Quill and the Colorado Romance Writers' Award of Excellence. Her Super Regency, LADY DEARING'S MASQUERADE, won RT Book Club's award for Best Regency Romance of 2005 and made the Kindle Top 100 list in 2011. When not writing, Elena enjoys swimming, cooking, meditation, playing the piano, volunteer work and craft projects. She lives in upstate New York with her two daughters and more yarn, wire and beads than she would like to admit.

“Beach” Reads and Roller Coasters

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The term “beach reads” is a bit of a misnomer as torrential rain early in the week and then record-high temperatures later in the week limited beach activities during my vacation last week. And if anyone thinks rain means more time indoors and more time to read hasn’t been on vacation with 3 kids between the ages of 4 and 11. To avoid too much cabin fever at the cottage we made excursions to local caverns and children’s museums instead–fun places but not conducive to reading.

So I read only about half as much as last year but thoroughly enjoyed what I did get to. I am desperately trying to catch up with my fellow Riskies’ new releases. Though I couldn’t get a copy of Amanda’s A Notorious Woman (had to order it) I did bring along Janet’s The Rules of Gentility. A delightful spoof of a Regency (IMHO the best spoofs also show love for the subject) and had me laughing out loud a number of times. I couldn’t explain it all to my children, of course, but now they want to read it when they’re old enough. 🙂

Next I picked up Pam Rosenthal’s The Slightest Provocation. I’m not surprised it finaled in the RITAs. The characterizations are deep and true, the sex is earthy and more real for not being perfect. Sorry, Pam, I know I’m not doing the book justice here but my brain is too fried to come up with better descriptions. Anyway, I recommend this to anyone who hasn’t read it yet.

On the last day I picked up Loretta Chase’s lastest release, NOT QUITE A LADY. In the flurry of unpacking and such I still haven’t finished it but so far it’s got the classic Chase mix of angst and humor. I can’t wait for things to settle down so I can enjoy finishing it!

As to other vacation activities, I can’t resist talking about roller coasters. Tuesday we had the perfect day to visit Cedar Point: overcast and late in the season, lines were short to nonexistant. It was great fun riding the coasters I rode as a teenager–the Blue Streak, the Wildcat, the Gemini–and taking my kids on them for the first time. Because we had to deal with a lot of different ages in our party I wasn’t able to try some of the new, scarier coasters–like the Top Thrill Dragster, pictured right. I’m told the G forces are amazing. Maybe next year. Maybe.

Bringing this post back to relevance, I couldn’t resist checking out the history of roller coasters. I was delighted to learn that there even were two roller coasters built in France in 1817: the Les Montagues Russes a Belleville (the Russian Mountains of Belleville) and Promenades Aeriennes (The Aerial Walk). You can read more about them at www.ultimaterollercoaster.com.

I suspect it would not have been considered ladylike (particularly for an English heroine) to ride one of these French coasters but wouldn’t it be fun to work it into a story?

So before it’s completely over, what were your best reads and rides of the summer?

Elena, still wrestling mountains of laundry
www.elenagreene.com

Posted in Risky Regencies | Tagged | 14 Replies

Do You Wish You Read Faster?

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Sometimes I wish I read faster.

I had friends in college who could read a novel in an hour. There are times when I sigh, and think how many books I could read if I were like that.

And I don’t read particularly slowly, either — but I have so many books I want to read…and I get further behind every month.

Sometimes, though, I suspect that I get more from a book than those old friends of mine. Maybe they were really skimming the book, and getting the story but missing the details, the setting, the subtleties.

And even if I’m not getting more details of the story than they were, perhaps I’m paying more attention to the prose. (Or is that just wishful thinking?)

How about you? Do you wish you read faster? Or do you think you’d miss too much if you did?

Remember: next Tuesday in the Jane Austen movie club we discuss the Ang Lee/Emma Thompson Sense & Sensibility!

Cara
Cara King, author of My Lady Gamester and writer of silly taglines which no one reads

Posted in Risky Regencies | Tagged | 16 Replies

Kemble’s THE WINTER’S TALE

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Hurrah! I finally got my hands on John Philip Kemble’s version of Shakespeare’s THE WINTER’S TALE.

For those of you who don’t know — during the Regency (and for a while before), Kemble was an actor and manager at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, and later Theatre Royal Covent Garden. He valued Shakespeare highly. Under his wise yet despotic rule, London theatre saw (for the first time in a long time) Shakespeare plays that the bard himself might actually have recognized.

By contrast, the Great Garrick (the theatre despot in the early to mid 18th century), although respected for also being a restorer of Shakespeare to high repute, nonetheless produced things like “Florizel and Perdita” and “Catherine and Petruchio” — hour-long things that were part Shakespeare, part bizarre rewriting. Even better: in Garrick’s King Lear, Lear and Cordelia live, and Cordelia marries Edgar.

Kemble, though, did his best to be true to Shakespeare.

The illustration here, by the way, is Sarah Siddons playing Hermione in THE WINTER’S TALE.

My favorite part of reading Kemble’s versions of Shakespeare is seeing just how prudish (or not prudish) the Regency stage was. My conclusions in the past have been that, though Regency theatregoers clearly tolerated less vulgarity than their Elizabethan ancestors, Kemble’s scripts are far closer to Shakespeare’s than to Bowdler’s.

Or, to be more precise, sex and violence are welcomed on Kemble’s stage, but indelicate expressions rather less so. (For example, the characters still talk about virginity, but don’t use such a crude word for it, instead terming it purity or honour or the like.)

(To read my earlier posts on the subject, click Regency Shakespeare or Regency AS YOU LIKE IT.)

So much for my past impressions of Kemble’s changes. Now, today’s project: let’s find some bits in THE WINTER’S TALE which Kemble changed!

This is a picture of Drury Lane Theatre in 1804.

What follows is the original passage of Shakespeare’s in which King Leontes rants (half-madly) about his conviction that his wife has slept with his best friend, and is pregnant with the friend’s child. I have put in purple the portions that Kemble cut out:

There have been,
Or I am much deceiv’d, cuckolds ere now;
And many a man there is (even at this present,
Now, while I speak this) holds his wife by th’ arm,
That little thinks she has been sluiced in ‘s absence
And his pond fish’d by his next neighbour, by
Sir Smile, his neighbour; nay, there’s comfort in’t,
Whiles other men have gates, and those gates open’d,
As mine, against their will. Should all despair
That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind
Would hang themselves. Physic for’t there’s none;
It is a bawdy planet, that will strike
Where ’tis predominant; and ’tis powerful, think it,
From east, west, north, and south; be it concluded,
No barricado for a belly. Know ‘t,
It will let in and out the enemy,
With bag and baggage: many thousand on ‘s
Have the disease, and feel ‘t not.

When the first cut above appears, Kemble has Leontes trail off (indicated by a long dash), and a hand-written stage direction reveals that another character approaches Leontes at this point (the implication perhaps being that Leontes would have finished the thought, had he not feared being overheard.)

So, that’s one example of things Kemble cut out. What are some passages, risque though they might be, that Kemble let alone? Here are a few:

You may ride us,
With one soft kiss, a thousand furlongs, ere
With spur we heat an acre.

How she holds up the neb, the bill to him!
And arms her with the boldness of a wife
To her allowing husband!

Go, play, boy, play;–thy mother plays, and I
Play too; but so disgrac’d a part, whose issue
Will hiss me to my grave;

My wife ‘s a hobby-horse; deserves a name
As rank as any flax-wench, that puts to
Before her troth-plight:

There you have it! Kemble’s alterations of Shakespeare — one of my little obsessions.

However, I have no idea if any of you are at all interested in this subject. I could happily do more posts detailing which bits of Shakespeare Kemble left in, and which he cut out — but I’ll only do so if I know it’s of interest to someone! So if you’re interested, do let me know in a comment.

And remember: our next Jane Austen bookclub meets the first Tuesday in September, to discuss the Ang Lee/Emma Thompson version of SENSE AND SENSIBILITY!

Cara
who thinks those flax-wenches got a bad rap

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Napoleon and Jane

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Janet reminded me that it was Napoleon’s birthday today. My first reaction was not to blog about Napoleon because I didn’t have time for research not related to mess-in-progress and most of what I know about him comes from my reading about the English. The ones who called him the Corsican monster and lived with a not unfounded fear of invasion (despite the cartoon at left depicting an imaginary balloon-and-Chunnel attack).

My one more objective source on Napoleon is The Age of Napoleon, by J. Christopher Herold. It’s a good higher level history of the period, yet I still don’t see much to admire in Napoleon himself. There’s a line in the concluding chapter: “his historical role was that of an unconscious tool of destruction, clearing the way for a modern age that little resembled the age he thought he was creating”. I suspect Herold meant clearing the way politically but my first reaction was: Were there just too many able-bodied young men in England and Europe standing in the way of progress? When I think about the mothers, wives, sisters and sweethearts who lost their loved ones I just can’t see any glory in it.

I used to not get the whole world domination thing. Too Pinky and the Brain for me. More recently I’ve thought about it in light of controlling people I know and I’ve realized the impulse comes from fear. People who need to dominate every situation are afraid that if they’re not on top A) everyone will attack them and/or B) that nothing can get done right. It’s pretty delusional and again I see no glory in it.

So what do you think? Anything to say in Boney’s defense? Do you find villains intent on domination of some world, greater or lesser, over the top or believable?

And in case the subject of Napoleon doesn’t fire you up, I have to mention that I just saw Becoming Jane and (don’t eat me!) enjoyed it. Of course I did not take it as serious biography but thought it worked well as a story in itself.

It occurred to me that if one set out to make a movie of Jane’s life, the known facts add up to an interesting but not a dramatic story. There’s much we don’t know. Cassandra destroyed a portion of her letters and I can’t help suspecting they held more insights into Jane’s inner life than we will ever have. I’m not saying that the events depicted in the movie really could have happened, only that I can understand why the creators of Becoming Jane chose to embroider in the gray areas. If the result will cause some of those teenaged girls I saw in the theatre to go out and read even one of her books, that can’t be a bad thing.

So my apologies for this long post and I look forward to hearing what you all think!

Elena
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A Book By Any Other Name…

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I am delighted to announce that MY LADY GAMESTER will be translated into German — and so I will join the other Riskies as one of the many foreign authors published by German romance publisher Cora. (It’s old hat for a lot of authors, but it’s a first for me, so I’m excited!)

So now I’m wondering….what will they call it? To educate myself, I checked out how Cora has changed the titles of some other Regencies. (I have had Todd and his dictionaries translate the German titles for us, to the best of his abilities, but he doesn’t vouch for their correctness. If anyone spots an error, please mention it!)

ANNE ASHLEY:

Betrayed and Betrothed

becomes

A Gentleman Bets and Wins! (Ein Gentleman Wagt — Und Gewinnt!)

And, yes, the exclamation point is in the German title — it wasn’t added by me!

I think the English title here is sharp — I love it — but I have to admit, the German title is fun.

LOUISE ALLEN:

The Marriage Debt

becomes

My Beloved Angel (Mein Geliebter Engel)

I think “The Marriage Debt” is an intriguing title, whereas “My Beloved Angel” seems a tad overdone to me… What do you think?

KATHRYN KIRKWOOD:

A Match for Melissa

becomes

Only a Long Waltz? (Nur Einen Walzer Lang?)

I think the English title is fine here, but the German title is really interesting, at least rendered in English! I’m guessing it means something like “Was it love…or was it only a long waltz?” 🙂

SUSANNAH CARLETON:

Twin Peril

becomes

With the Eye of Love (Mit Den Augen Der Liebe)

I’ve always liked the title “Twin Peril” — it’s fun, it’s unusual, and it actually tells you something about the book. “With the Eye of Love,” on the other hand? Not so much. (If a title can be used for any romance ever written, how can it not be boring?)

KATHLEEN BALDWIN:

Cut From the Same Cloth

becomes

Enchanting Lady Elizabeth (Zauberhafte Lady Elizabeth)

Here too, the English title is less generic than the German. Not that there’s anything particularly wrong with “Enchanting Lady Elizabeth” — but it doesn’t do anything. “Cut From the Same Cloth,” on the other hand, is unusual enough to make me curious.

MADELEINE CONWAY:

Rosamund’s Revenge

becomes

Secret Love Letters (Geheime Liebesbriefe)

To me, “Rosamund’s Revenge” has more oomph, but “Secret Love Letters” is definitely interesting. (I presume it sounds a little more poetic in German.)

So…what do you think? Which titles do you prefer in the original, and which in the German?

And the question of the day: what do you think they’ll call MY LADY GAMESTER? (Bizarre or random guesses heartily welcomed!)

Cara
Cara King, author of MY LADY GAMESTER (not to be confused with My Lady Hamster)

Posted in Risky Regencies | Tagged | 13 Replies