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Author Archives: Janet Mullany

Two People, One Brain

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Okay, I admit it. This is an excuse to show you the cover for my HarperCollins release (October, 2007) which is so awesomely beautiful I cannot keep it to myself. This is the book whose title has changed more times than my hair color. The last time I blogged about this, we were still in the throes of finding a title (not too romance-y! Not too funny!), and now progress is being made.

Meanwhile, I’m about to start revisions on the book by The Other Person, Forbidden Shores, and life being the funny old thing it is, in this one I’m being told to make it more romance-y, since it’s coming out (also in October) as a Signet Eclipse. I am, however, allowed to keep the heaps of writhing sweaty bodies this book is all about.

Moving on from stuff about me–me–me, here’s something interesting. There are specific areas of the brain related to reading, speech, and writing, Exner’s Writing Area and Broca’s Expressive Speech Area in the left frontal lobe, and Wernicke’s receptive speech area in the left temporal lobe. (I’m giving you the locations to impress you, not to encourage digging around in someone’s head, by the way.) They’re the bits of the brain that don’t function properly when someone suffers from agraphia, the inability to write and spell. I discovered this in research I was doing for work as part of a new book, The Elements of Internet Style: The New Rules of Creating Valuable Content for Today’s Readers. Sign up here if you’d like to receive more information on the book (scroll down to the bottom left of the screen). And the question all this raised was what were these bits of the brain doing before humans spoke, or wrote? Did they merely lie dormant until someone picked up a piece of charcoal and thought, Hmm, better let Ig know about that big herd of buffalo I saw down by the lake?

And does this mean there are other parts of the brain ready to spring into action? I wonder what those would be. The driving while gabbing on a cell phone area is extraordinarily primitive and should be surgically removed on those who attempt it. Teenagers have a new area for IM-ing friends while talking to another friend on a cell phone, watching American Idol with the sound turned down, and doing homework. The area for making sure your feathered headdress doesn’t catch on fire while not worrying too much about whether the skirt of your gown will fall off after your maid hastily re-fashioned it and whether the gentleman you are waltzing with is holding you far too closely is a part of the brain rarely used nowadays.

Any new or old brain areas you’d like to invent?

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How to Keep Warm

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It’s cold here, but I’m one of the lucky ones in my area who still has power, and of course in a modern house it’s only a question of turning up the thermostat, or, as I urge my family, to put on another layer of clothes. I haven’t lived in a house with a fireplace for years and on nights like this I think I’d like to have one….and in the Regency that’s all you would have–if you were lucky.

If you were in fairly humble circumstances you would also be cooking on the only source of heat in your house. (An interesting fact–scholars have determined that one of the major causes of death for women in the eighteenth-century was not from burns while cooking over an open fire. Basically, you can tell if your skirts catch on fire and back off.)



Further up the social scale, you might have a fireplace that looked like this, and maybe even a grate designed by the great (sorry) John Nash himself.

And naturally, you’d commission some fine marble decoration for your fireplace. You’d have a staff to keep the marble–and the rest of it–clean, because coal is dirty. Very dirty. The reason London doesn’t have infamous “pea soup” fogs anymore is that coal was banned in the city about forty years ago. So your unfortunate housemaids would battle the black dust every morning, and meanwhile a nasty accumulation would build up inside the chimney itself, necessitating a visit from the sweep.

The sweep would bring with him a little boy to climb inside the chimney and clean where the long brushes wouldn’t go–one of the worst jobs a small child could have. Many Georgian houses have flues which take odd twists and turns (for instance, not all the chimney pots on the roof may be functional but they are there for aesthetic symmetry). William Blake wrote about the wretched life of the child chimney sweep in the Songs of Innocence and Experience, and later in the nineteenth century Charles Kingsley’s novel The Water Babies was an expose of the trade.

But unfortunately, however much of a roaring blaze you had, you’d still be wearing muslin, and one side of you inevitably would be cold. So you’d have to do what I continually urge my nearest and dearest to do to keep the heating bills down–put something else on. Shawls, made a fashion item by the Empress Josephine, were something of a necessity.

So what’s your favorite way of keeping warm? Do you like a real fire, do you put on more clothes, or do you snuggle up with a hero (picture not provided!)

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Interview with Kate Dolan

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Welcome, Kate! Tell us about your road to becoming a writer of Traditional Regencies for Cotillion.
I set my first two books Langley’s Choice (Zumaya Publications) and Restitution (Cloonfad Press) in Maryland since I live here and thought it would be easiest to research in my own backyard. It was tremendously interesting to research colonial life, but not as easy as I’d expected–although my experience as a living history interpreter helped–since Maryland has not traditionally received as much study as New England, Virginia, etc. The editor of my first book observed that it was obvious I was a Jane Austen fan, so I decided to try to write a Regency before the publishers dropped the lines entirely.
I was too late. By the time I had the story revised and ready to send out, the publishers had already frozen new acquisitions, and soon they announced the end.
I was surprised to learn that Ellora’s Cave decided to bring out a traditional Regency line–after all, they’re not known for books with lots of witty dialogue from fully clothed heroines. But not only are they launching the line, they’re really supporting it with ad money and an earlier than usual print launch. They’re fighting a tough battle though, because their main print seller, Borders, says they won’t stock traditional Regencies.

What’s your Cotillion debut, A Certain Want of Reason, about?
It’s the story of a guy who decides that the best way to get out of a bad engagement is to pretend he’s crazy. The heroine, who has spent most of her life watching out for a younger brother and sister who really do have mental issues, is somewhat less than pleased when she learns that the hero would stoop so low just to break an engagement. In a way, the book shows that everyone, certainly those in society, exhibit a want of reason at times.

How did you research the topic of madness and its treatment in the Regency, and what interesting facts did you turn up?
I found an excellent, detailed history of Bedlam, or Bethlem Hospital, as the institution prefers to be known. I had no idea that the facility began treating mentally ill patients back in the middle ages, nor had I realized that by the 18th century, the physicians actively worked to cure patients. I thought they just locked them up to keep them from bothering people. My research on Bethlem provided the date for the story–I decided it should be set soon after the hospital moved to St. Georges Fields, because the layout of the buildings at that location worked better for the scenes where the heroine and her friend disguise themselves as nuns to sneak her brother out. Thank heavens for inter-library-loans!

You’re a very diverse writer. Tell us about your other projects, and your next book.
I have a three-book series of contemporary cozy mysteries coming out with Barbour Books, but since they’ve pushed back the launch of their new mystery line until next year, I’ve been able to set those aside for a while to keep working on the historicals. (And I’ve managed to sneak history into the contemporaries as well. The first one, George Washington Stepped Here, deals with conflicts between living history interpreters at a historic site. And the sequel deals with an antique gallery.)
This May, I have a book coming out about another of my favorite subjects, pirates. (And I could go on for a long time, so I won’t even get started.) I had so much fun writing Avery’s Treasure (Zumaya Publications) that I felt rather let down when I finished the first draft. I wanted to crawl into the book and live there (probably because it’s set in the Caribbean and Bahamas while I’m stuck wintering much further north). Right now, I’m just finishing the first draft of the sequel to A Certain Want of Reason. This is the story of what happens to the sisters left behind in London while everyone else is breaking out of Bedlam, etc. It’s actually as much fun as writing about the pirates, but with no rum or tropical islands.

And the Riskies question: What are the risky elements of A Certain Want of Reason?
I think some of the subject matter is politically incorrect. There are characters in a rich asylum in the country playing chess with toys and bowling in the hallways, etc. I will make fun of anyone, if given the chance. Nothing is sacred.
The book is also risky because it’s ridiculous and unrealistic. It’s a goofy, silly, Wodehouse world, and the romantic relationship is probably not any more realistic than the rest of the book. I spend enough time in the real world. When I read or write, I want to go someplace else.

Come and chat with Kate–as usual, a question or comment makes you eligible to win a copy of A Certain Want of Reason, today only!

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Cooking for Kings

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I like food. I like to read about food and cooking although I rarely follow recipes. So I very much enjoyed this entertaining book by Ian Kelly (Diane blogged about his biography of Beau Brummell a few months ago) about the great chef Antonin Careme, who cooked not only for Napoleon but also for the Prince Regent (who was delighted to hire his rival’s chef), Talleyrand, the Rothschilds, and the Tsar of Russia.

It’s hard to believe it now, when reading Careme’s lavish recipes–for instance, Les Petits Vol-Au-Vents a la Nesle–that his techniques and innovations formed our modern dining experience. He introduced dining a la russe–that is, with food individually plated and served, which, by the end of the nineteenth century, replaced dining a la francaise (where the food was placed on the table and diners fended for themselves). He believed vegetables should be served slightly crisp and that cooks should wash their hands. He invented the chef’s toque. He cooked for kings but he came from very humble beginnings–like a Dickensian hero, he was abandoned when very young to fend for himself on the streets of Paris.

Early on he developed an interest in architecture, taught himself to draw, and later became famous for his extraordinaires–elaborate architectural centerpieces made of spun sugar. These huge, fragile masterpieces were recycled and in some cases outlived their creator, who succumbed, like many in his profession, to charcoal poisoning at a relatively young age.

This is the entire picture from which the cover art was created–the kitchen of the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, pretty much as it was during Careme’s time there (1816-1817)–the palm tree leaves were added later. The center table is a huge steam table to keep food warm.

You can visit the kitchen as it looks now–scroll down the page to look at a 360 panoramic view.

And if you’d like to buy the book, it’s on sale at a massive discount (along with many other goodies) at Daedalus Books.

I don’t think I’m going to attempt any of the recipes, even the simpler ones–and Kelly warns that the modern palate may find them a little bland. But I do like reading about food and life below stairs, so I really enjoyed this book. How about you? Are you a cookbook junkie? Have you ever attempted a historic recipe?

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Jane Lockwood invites you to The Spiced Tea Party

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Jane Lockwood, Janet’s naughty alter ego, has joined up with some other writers of erotic historical romance, Celia May Hart, Colette Gale, Kate Pearce, Lacy Danes, Pam Rosenthal, and Sharon Page, to launch a new blog, The Spiced Tea Party. Jane’s blogging today, and through February 7 we’re running a contest with some great books as prizes. Come and visit!

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