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Author Archives: Janet Mullany

Agent Rose’s life in the shadows and a book trailer

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I’m in a combination of deadline hell and getting ready for the Baltimore Book Festival, where I’ll be talking and signing this Saturday with a whole bunch of other writers from my local chapter. And I’m getting excited about the release of Jane and the Damned and Bespelling Jane Austen, both of which come out in just a few days on September 28.

So this is going to be a short post, but first I wanted to share a story that I heard on the news yesterday. Eileen Nearne died, poor and alone in Newquay, UK, and it was discovered after her death that she was “Agent Rose,” a hero of World War II who worked with an elite spy force helping the French resistance. She was captured by the Gestapo, did not break under torture, and was sent to a concentration camp. One tough, courageous lady. Here’s an account of her life and how she was honored with a full military funeral from the Guardian.

She said this of her experiences as a spy, which I think could well be attributed to our fictional men and women who experienced great danger during the Napoleonic wars, as spies or fighters. How would they adapt to “real life” after such events and how they would they see the world?

It was a life in the shadows. I think I was suited for it. I could be hard and secret. I could be lonely, I could be independent, but I wasn’t bored. I liked the work. After the war, I missed it.

And now for something completely different, as they say. Here’s the book trailer for Jane and the Damned. Things to look out for: On the soundtrack, a French soldier saying Ton pere est un hamster (Your father is a hamster) and a depiction of me carrying a flag in the last frame (my initials are on my apron).

Can you identify any of the music?

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Liz Carlyle and her BFF

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A big Riskies welcome today to Liz Carlyle and her Best Furred Friends.

Today your comments and questions are very important. Not only will you have fun and enter to win the drawing for a copy of Liz’s book, but Avon has very generously agreed to donate $1 per comment to Cat Angels, Liz’s favorite animal rescue organization. HarperCollins will donate up to $3,000, but you will only be counted once in the entire blog tour, not by the number of comments you make. But please don’t let that inhibit you today! Get talking and become a furry godmother.

Grace’s tenacity, wit, and compassion make her a very believable, multidimensional character and the perfect match for Ruthveyn’s brooding and dark secrets. The romance sizzles, its unpredictability propelling this complex story far beyond its contemporaries. Starred review, Publishers Weekly.

First, let’s talk cats. Are there any cats in the book?

I do love to have animal characters in my books, and Lord Ruthveyn is definitely a cat person. So I gave him a pair of solid silver tabbies, in honor of Pelham and Mary, two of our rescue cats. Ruthveyn’s silver cats are named Silk and Satin. They sleep on his bed, and love only him — isn’t that so cat-typical? Here’s a picture of Pel and Mary just a few days after they came to us as terrified feral kittens. They have really blossomed since, but I think they will always be a little more shy than most cats.

(Aaaw) And these other adorable critters belong to Liz. What are they gazing at so intently? But let’s get to the book: Tell us the story behind the story of ONE TOUCH OF SCANDAL. What sparked the original idea for the trilogy?

I think the spark came from spending too much time in the British Museum, and reading too many books. But I’ve always been fascinated by psychic gifts, and the many forms such talents can take across the broad sweep of world cultures. One of my older novels—THREE LITTLE SECRETS—was about a young boy who had inherited “the Gift” from his Scottish ancestors, and he is the character around whom this new series is very loosely built. His book is the second in the series, ONE WICKED GLANCE, which will be out in late May, I believe.

What’s your favorite scene in the book?

Strangely, I think it’s a quiet little scene in Hyde Park where Grace and Ruthveyn must confront their mutual doubt and distrust. For the first time in his life, Ruthveyn has found himself in a relationship in which he is “blind”—he cannot read Grace, which is at once a relief to him, and a bit unsettling. He realizes he has reached a turning point in his life; that he must learn to trust his ordinary human instincts, which tell him that Grace is a woman he can believe in. A woman he can love. This is all very new for him. It makes for a very emotional scene; a moment of bonding, if you will.

What’s the appeal of the Victorian age for you?

It is the Age of Empire, so we still have the elegant society of the Regency with dashes of expansionism and intellectualism. Science was becoming fashionable, India was exploding, steam and train travel were shrinking the world, we had a woman on the throne again, the Continent was in constant political turmoil—and then, oh my!—the clothes! Crinolines, corsets, bustles—and then there’s the incredible jewelry! Really, what’s not to like?

What do you find particularly challenging about the Victorian age?

I’m not quite as well-versed in the history of the era as I was the earlier third of the 19th century, so my research takes a little longer. The Victorian era spanned over six decades, a period of time during which almost everything we knew—society, science, literature, the role of women, the primacy of the aristocracy, even our cultural mores—was in flux. The phrase “it’s complicated” was probably coined in the Victorian era. It really is a lot to take on!

Tell us about your research and any favorite research books you use.

My fall-back source is always the good old Encyclopedia Britannica, but a fairly old edition, one which leaves out all the unnecessary stuff—like most of the twentieth century. My mother-in-law was a professor of European History, so I inherited a vast library from her. Over the years I’ve bought a lot of reference books from the National Trust—particularly in their shops around the UK, and I keep a membership with them which includes some wonderful periodicals that are always chock-full of inspiration. But there’s nothing like seeing something firsthand, so I travel as much as possible.

What the buildings are on your website banner–they’re gorgeous!

That is a sort of mini-montage of photographs I shot several years ago in Castle Combe, an absolutely breathtaking village in Wiltshire on the edge of the Cotswolds. (I used to be quite the photographer, but digital has thrown me a bit.) Castle Combe is a little off the beaten path, but well worth the drive. It really is like visiting another century—which is just the sort of experience I aspire to give my readers. If you don’t like driving on the left, you can visit Castle Combe here!

What’s next for you?

Oh, I’m so excited! Next I’ll be finishing the third book in the Fraternitas series, which will feature the impenitent scoundrel of the bunch—Lord Lazonby, a man who takes very little of life seriously. He’s served a long tour of duty in the French Foreign Legion, and spent several years in prison for murder. He also has a nasty—and somewhat undeserved—reputation as a bit of a card sharp. My critique partner Deb Marlow says Lazonby is the most unrepentant bad boy she’s seen in a while. But I’ve got just the character to flog Lazonby into shape—perhaps literally, if that’s what it takes. It’s too soon to tell yet, but I’ve got the whip to hand.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to visit with the Riskies!

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Cats and book giveaway

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Bibliophile and Barbara E., you’re the winners. Please send your snailmail address to my cat, elailah AT yahoo DOT com, and congrats.

In celebration of receiving my author copies of BESPELLING JANE AUSTEN, I’m giving away two copies, here, today! I’ll pick winners at midnight EST (groan, I’m sure I’ll still be up) and post them at the top of this post, so check back in.

To enter, tell me what sort of Regency character your pet would be.

This is by way of a build up to a terrific event this Sunday, September 19, when Liz Carlyle visits here on her charity blogtour, not only giving away a signed copy of her latest ONE TOUCH OF SCANDAL, but HarperCollins has generously offered to donate up to $3,000 ($1 per person per post on the entire blogtour) to Liz’s favorite cat rescue charity, Cat Angels. Wow!

So, here’s my cat. (Liz’s, I assure you, are much cuter and there will be pics of them on Sunday).

This is her usual unpleasant expression, as she expresses concern that the landing really does need to be painted (I put undercoat on about ten years ago. You don’t want to rush these things). She was a stray who, as soon as she realized she was getting three squares a day, ignored us for the next eight years or so except when she was hungry.

You think she looks cuddly? Ha.

But she almost died a few years ago and suddenly got friendlier, realizing that possibly I had something to do with her recovery.

As she ages she is getting slightly friendlier and although not a big sitter on laps (or a “real cat” in my terminology) likes to cuddle up next to you. Every morning she wakes me by affectionately digging her claws into my face and then accompanies me to the bathroom where she gnaws on my shins while I tell her to stop it. When I put food in her dish, which I gather is the whole point of the claws, biting etc. she walks away and sits staring into space.

If you stroke her in the wrong way, absentmindedly, or too much, she bites. Sometimes she just bites for the hell of it. She is absolutely terrified of everyone except me, my husband, my daughter, and inexplicably one of my daughter’s friends a few years ago, who was photographed holding her. (He was also wearing my daughter’s prom dress. It was a strange evening, I guess.)

I think she’d make a good old-style virginal Regency heroine who lives in a gothic mansion. One of those shy ones who then gets mad and throws things. Yep, timid but morphing into a feisty, passionate one with fish breath.

What sort of Regency character would your pet be?

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Great Fire of London, 1666

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Following our visit from Judith James this week with her Restoration-set book The Libertine, I thought I’d write a little more about that period.

Today’s the anniversary of the Great Fire of London, which began on September 2, 1666 in the appropriately-named Pudding Lane in the bakeshop of one Thomas Farriner, who apparently forgot to bank his fires for the night. At first the fire wasn’t thought to be anything out of the ordinary–after all, in a city built mostly of wooden/daub and wattle structures, fires happened.

But the fire raged out of control, with closely packed, wooden buildings after a dry summer and with no formal fire protection going up like tinder. Over a three day period, the City of London was almost totally razed to the ground, leaving a hundred thousand Londoners homeless and destitute with an estimated 13,000 houses and 89 churches, including Old St. Paul’s Cathedral, destroyed. The estimated restoration cost was over ten million pounds and rebuilding took over thirty years, explaining why historic London, even after the Blitz, is now predominantly an eighteenth century city. eyewitnesstohistory.com has a map showing the comparative damage of 1666 to that of World War II bombings.

Samuel Pepys was in the thick of things, acting as liaison between the King and the Lord Mayor of London, who was instructed to pull down houses to prevent the spread of the fire:

… all over the Thames, with one’s face in the wind you were almost burned with a shower of Firedrops – this is very true – so as houses were burned by these drops and flakes of fire, three or four, nay five or six houses, one from another. When we could endure no more upon the water, we to a little alehouse on the Bankside over against the Three Cranes, and there stayed till it was dark almost and saw the fire grow; and as it grow darker, appeared more and more, and, in Corners and upon steeples and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the city, in a most horrid malicious bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire.
We stayed till, it being darkish, we saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to the other side of the bridge, and in a bow up the hill, for an arch of above a mile long. It made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, and all on fire and flaming at once, and a horrid noise the flames made, and the cracking of houses at their ruin.

This was the second disaster in as many years to hit the city, following the Great Plague of London in 1665 which killed 20% of the population. Oddly enough, only a handful of deaths from the fire were reported, the first casualty being Baker Farriner’s maid; but this has to be inaccurate. There was no formal record of the entire population, and parish records were destroyed. It’s quite likely that thousands of people were incinerated in their houses.

So what does this have to do with the Regency? Well, back to the rebuilding. Christopher Wren, among others, had ambitious plans to build a modern city and had the commission not run out of money after restoring public buildings (Newgate was one of the first) and churches, London might look considerably different today. More about the rebuilding here. But wooden buildings were banned, as was the style of building more and more storeys upon existing buildings, which made the spread of fire likely and lethal.

Two interesting footnotes:

When Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre was built in Southwark, special permission had to be obtained to build a predominantly wooden structure.

And in 1986, the Worshipful Company of Bakers held a ceremony in Pudding Lane in which they offered a formal apology for the fire. As the then Lord Mayor of London, Allen Davis said, “It’s never too late to apologize.”

Samuel Pepys and fellow-diarist John Evelyn are amazing resources for this period. Have you read them? How about diaries from the Regency? Or, do you journal, and what sort of things do you write about?

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Dreams

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Last night I dreamed I was in a car crash, nothing serious, just an annoying fender bender, but it felt very real.

Then, today, when I drove to the post office … nothing happened. Did the dream make me more careful? Or, did the dream mean nothing at all, but it was one of those rare ones that I remembered? It certainly made a change from the ones where I’m looking for a bathroom and when I find one it has glass walls and is situated on Paddingston Station in London during rush hour.

I often wish I could dream plots, because I have so much trouble with them. The closest I’ve got is having things click into place as I’m falling asleep and my brain is doing whatever it does at that point–beginning some sort of unwinding process that may be part of the dream process.

But years, decades ago, before I even thought of writing I had an extraordinarily vivid dream which was entirely third person, in that it wasn’t about me but I was the observer.Now, on the occasions when I revisit the dream, I’m the incompetent manipulator. I suspect it was the plot of a book I read or started reading and never finished, so if anyone can identify it, that would be fascinating. On the other hand, the plot devices might be from any number of books.

The heroine is a courtesan in late-ish nineteenth century … somewhere. Not England, not the Regency, somewhere eastern European. Her current official lover is an officer who is not always around because he’s engaged in some sort of futile military silliness but he comes into town occasionally and usually finds her with a drawing room full of lefties and poets and intellectuals. I borrowed bits of this for Dedication, my first book; I think it may also have its origins in minor characters in Tolstoy.

So he falls in love with a sweet young thing who the family want him to marry as his duty etc. (Kitty and Levin in Anna Karenina? Who knows). He tells the heroine, who isn’t too pleased, and asks if she’ll return a necklace he gave her. Because, and he really shouldn’t have done this, he gave her the family jewels (pause for other English people to recover from their merriment). She doesn’t say yes but she doesn’t say no either, and at this point I get stuck.

In some versions of the dream, she stages a grand revenge when she flings the necklace at his feet at the opera in front of the fiancee. And I think that probably is from an opera, but I don’t think I’d ever write a heroine who behaves badly in such an unsubtle way. Or, in other versions, it becomes A Scandal in Bohemia, which features the fascinating adventuress Irene Adler:

To Holmes, she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex…

In other words, she’s smarter than the male protagonists and surrenders the necklace only when a reciprocal sacrifice has been made. At this point I surrender to my usual plotting technique (if it can be described as such) and start considering other characters: the newspaper editor who is the heroine’s rebound affair; the fiancee–does she have any idea what lover boy has been up to? If there’s a revolution, which sometimes there is, who is on which side?

And I must digress here and ponder the photograph in which Irene Adler and the King of Bohemia appeared, and how it was enough to throw the whole delicate balance of Europe into disarray. Was it, gasp, a naughty photograph? Is that why Holmes wanted to keep it, to while away the long hours when Watson was tending to his mostly neglected patients?

Anyway, let’s talk about dreams. Have you dreamed things that have happened? Do you dream about characters when you’re reading or writing a book? Do you recognize “my” plot?

In this special All Contests All The Time edition, there’s still a few days to enter the contest on my site, and a new one where I ask for help in vampire terminology at Supernatural Underground. Also you can enter to win a copy of Jane and the Damned at Goodreads.

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