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Category: Former Riskies

In an Interesting Condition

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I turned in The Next Historical, which will be titled Not Wicked Enough (here’s a link to to the first chapter: Chapter 1 of Not Wicked Enough) and found myself at loose ends that I didn’t know what to do with.

I’m not starting the next book (another historical, Not Proper Enough) until June 1, so you’d think I’d be all, yay!! Three weeks to relax and do whatever I want!

Uh, no.

First, of course, I had to catch up on all the stuff I’d been ignoring since Deadline-itis kicked in. That took quite a while. I got mostly caught up on the backlist ePubbing tasks. I did some promotion related stuff for My Dangerous Pleasure that had been hanging over my head. But all that felt like, and was, work.

Then, whenever I walked into my room, my little writer brain said, “There’s the computer. YOU MUST SIT DOWN AND WORK OR TERRIBLE THINGS WILL HAPPEN.” So like a good little drooling dog writer on deadline, I sat down at the computer and . . .

stared.

There’s all kinds of stuff I do when I’m avoiding writing. Twitter, other blogs, checking email. But there was no pay off for the behavior. (Take that, controlling writer mind! I am AVOIDING YOU!) because I wasn’t avoiding anything.

I don’t actually know how to work the TV anymore and even if I did, I wouldn’t know what to watch unless Game of Thrones or True Blood was on.

I have several books I MUST read, but I was effectively avoiding that because I have to read them.

So, dear Readers, how do you relax? I need tips.

Posted in Former Riskies | Tagged , | 13 Replies

The Wednesday Melange

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First, an announcement:
The winner of Isobel Carr’s book is
Dtchycat


Dtchycat – email me with your mailing information at carolyn AT carolynjewel.com

In other news

My Next Historical is done and turned in and now titles Not Wicked Enough. The book that follows will be Not Proper Enough.

I leave you with this picture because in the post deadline haze it’s all I’ve got:

Posted in Former Riskies | Tagged , , | 5 Replies

Interview with Isobel Carr

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Let’s Give a Big Risky Welcome to Isobel Carr!

Today I’m thrilled have Isobel Carr visiting the Riskies to tell us about her new book, Ripe for Pleasure, dish some secrets and give away some books.

Welcome to the Riskies Isobel!

About Isobel Carr

Isobel is originally from Boulder Creek, California, but she’s lived in the Bay Area (San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland) since finishing undergrad at Hollins College in Virginia and moving “home” for graduate school. Her BA is in philosophy and English (wrote her thesis on the Absurd Skeptical Hero as the living embodiment of the existentialist), but she minored in creative writing and history. She won the Intro Journals Award when she was an undergraduate, and went on to study poetry at San Francisco State University under Frances Mayes (yes, as in Under the Tuscan Sun).

After finishing graduate school, it became painfully clear that a job in the arts wasn’t going to pay enough to eat, so she set about looking for a “real” job and ended up putting the analytical skills she learned as a philosophy major to work as an international trade consultant (basically, she fights with lawyers for a living). When not doing that, Isobel is usually writing, though very occasionally she still takes a day to go to a historical re-enactment . . . in the name of research of course.

Currently, she lives in a 1916 bungalow in Oakland, California with her Mastiff, Clancy, a crowntail betta named Nigel, and Nigel’s minions, the kuhli loaches (who can’t be told apart, and thus do not get names). If you’re ever at The Heart and Dagger by Lake Merritt and you see a woman with a giant, dark-brindle dog, say hi. There’s a 99.9% chance it’s Isobel.

http://www.isobelcarr.com/ You can find her as Isobel Carr on both FaceBook and Twitter.

Ripe for Pleasure

London’s most sensual former courtesan, Viola Whedon, is incapable of being seduced-she does the seducing. Until she meets Leonidas Vaughn. Her salacious memoirs have made her the target of half the lords in England, and Vaughn is the only man she can turn to. When he promises to protect her-and to make her beg for his touch-the alluring beauty finds both offers impossible to refuse.

Leonidas Vaughn secretly believes Viola possesses a fortune given to his family by the King of France. So the strong and sexy Vaughn charms his way into Viola’s life . . . and her bed. But when their arrangement is consummated, he’ll experience pleasure far beyond his wildest fantasies-and realize his heart may need the most protection of all.

Carr is a born storyteller. — RT Book Reviews

Buy Ripe For Pleasure
ISBN-10: 0446572756

Read an Excerpt (pdf)

1. Tell us about your book (or the series)

RIPE FOR PLEASURE is the first book in the LEAGUE OF SECOND SONS series. I’ve always been intrigued by younger sons. Wellington was a younger son. So was Nelson. So was Charles James Fox. And so is Lord Peter Wimsey in Dorothy L. Sayers’s brilliant books, which I was reading at the time. These guys have to find something to DO with themselves. They have to make their own way (to a certain extent). I just think they have more scope than a man who’s fated to inherit a title and money, but has to wait in the wings for his father to die before he actually has any power (there’s a reason why kings and princes rarely get on).

I was watching THE LIBERTINE, and loving the sexy carriage ride after the opening monologue. The whole idea of abducting a wife, of her being complicit in it, got me thinking about the profound changes caused by the Marriage Act of 1753. If you could no longer easily abscond with an heiress, what might you do to better your odds? Who would you rely on? A club, made up entirely of younger sons, seemed ideal (and utterly practical).

Everything just kind of fed into the idea (because, really, it all feeds the beast one way or another). I’d been kicking around the idea of using the lost fortune the King of France sent to support Bonnie Prince Charlie in a book, and I’d also been toying with a courtesan heroine who was publishing her memoir, a la Harriette Wilson. I ended up combining all my ideas into one plot and calling it NO GENTLEMAN (because really, the hero is behaving very badly at the outset, when he’s planning on seducing the heroine and stealing a fortune out from under her). We lost the title due to another author’s series already having something quite similar in the works [shakes fist at Eileen Dryer], but I love the titles we hit upon for the series. So sexy, and unusual enough that I think they stand out in a sea of “How to F*ck a Duke” titles (as my editor calls them, LOL!).

So in RIPE FOR PLEASURE, we have Lord Leonidas Vaughn, new owner of his grandfather’s hunting box, frantic to keep it, but without the fortune to maintain it. He finds hints of Jacobite treason in the family tree and sets out to find the missing money. It’s not fun and games for him. He HAS to find it, or he’ll have to sell the estate he loves.

The last known whereabouts (per the letters he finds) are a house in London. A house that now belongs to a retired courtesan who’s making the male half of the ton miserable with her memoir. Leo sees the perfect opening to insinuate himself into her life and hunt for the treasure . . .

2. I hear you have a cute little dog who inspired one of the characters in RIPE FOR PLEASURE. Is that true?

I’m not sure “cute” is the word most people would use for my 170lb drool machine, but I think he’s cute, LOL! My friend Jess calls him a handsome beast, and my mom calls him disgusting. The truth is somewhere in-between.

Clancy is a 2 year-old Mastiff mix (momma was a Bullmastiff and daddy was a Neapolitan Mastiff), and he does seem to have the magical ability to make other people want to own a giant breed . . . after I got him, my best friend and her husband went and got a girl from the same litter, and then my sister did the same. Last Thanksgiving my best friend from college came to visit, and he promptly went home to Manhattan and got a Giant Schnauzer puppy. There’s just something undeniably awesome about having a person-sized dog. They’re so huggable. And boy do you feel safe!

The mastiff in RIPE FOR PLEASURE is probably more like a combo of my boy’s sisters and the Staffordshire Terrier I had before him, but yes, still inspired by “my” dogs. Clancy is super mellow, while his sisters are bit more obvious about being “on guard” (but when we have them all together, the girls are the second line of defense, and he’s clearly expected to meet whatever bogyman they’re identified head-on).

3. A lot of our readers probably already know about your expertise in period clothing, but could you tell us about that anyway? How’d you get into the area and what do you think led to the development of your expertise in that instead of something like, uh, doorknobs?

Well, those who know my secret, alternative identity might, LOL! But I imagine my background is new to a lot of people. I grew up doing historical re-enactments of all kinds, so costumes and history were simply an everyday part of life. There were always events to go to, new costumes to be made, and weekly “stitch and bitch” sessions (frequently accompanied by costume dramas). My first solo costume project came when I was twelve. I’d picked out a 12th century Spanish gown and my mom just laughed and said, “You want it, you make it.” So I did. After college, I fell in with a group of truly crazy re-enactors who wanted everything to be uber-period. They researched period sewing techniques and made all their costumes by hand. They made their own trim. They made their own hook and eyes. I tried to resist, but eventually I succumbed, and I couldn’t be happier. I LOVE hand sewing, though I don’t really have time to costume right now. *sigh*


4. What’s the strangest or most surprising historical fact you’ve learned? Bonus points if the answer is Risky!

Hmmmmmmmmmm. So many options . . . but the “riskiest” is probably the stuff in “Aristotle’s Masterpiece”. There are recipes for tonics to purge “moles” and bring on menses. Basically, it’s an 18th century morning after pill.

The most surprising, and annoying, historical fact is that scones are Victorian! Oh, the word was in use, but a scone in late-Georgian/Regency England was a type of Scottish griddle cake (peasant food)

5. If you had a bazillion dollars, what would you buy me? (I would buy you the V&A, just so you have a benchmark.)

Well, if you’re getting me the V&A, I’ll get you the Kyoto Costume Institute, and then we can join forces, move them both to San Francisco, and make the mean girls at the MET cry.

Give Away!

I’ll be giving away 5 copies of RIPE FOR PLEASURE here on Risky Regencies today. Let’s make it simple: What the title of the second book in the LEAGUE OF SECOND SONS series (answer can be found on my website or on Amazon)?

So, leave a comment folks!

Posted in Former Riskies | Tagged , , | 25 Replies

The Case Against Dukes

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That was Then, This is Now

Last week I blogged in support of dukes. You can read that post here. But the gist of my argument had a fairly narrow focus, in that I blogged about people who complain that dukes in stories far out number real dukes during the Regency.

This week I take up the opposite case, and that’s in spite of the number of people who anticipated this in the comments.

The Real, the Hyper-Real and the Meta-Real

Genre fiction has several challenges one of which is home grown. Focusing on Romance as the genre of choice for this discussion, when a writer is working with some set of known parameters (a happy ending, say) then BY DEFINITION the reader knows that certain terrible things, even if threatened, will not actually happen. Neither the hero or the heroine will die. The obstacles in the path to love WILL be resolved.

Because of this, a Romance writer has to be even more adept at crafting those elements of the story so that they rise above the trope (or don’t fall into cliche, take your pick) and still give readers the satisfaction they expect from a Romance.

Let’s Get Historical

In Regency Historical Romance, the world is typically a rarefied one. The characters tend to be socially comfortable, and given the gender/class/economic divisions and that emergence of a true middle class is several years down the road, the characters tend to be the economic and social elite and the men tend to wield more power than the women.

That is, the heroes are wealthy and the women marry up into a strata and to a husband that offers them protection that is economic, physical and emotional. The women are made safe in all these realms while the hero tends to be made safe in the emotional realm since he’s usually already safe economically and physically and almost always safe socially.

Why Dukes?

Readers love that social imbalance of power and the rise of a heroine into that balance. The hero is powerful in all the things that will offer a heroine safety during a time when women were dependent on men for their safety. He’s Prince Charming and his heroine is going to democratize him. Within that socially elite setting the nobleman is almost (but not exclusively) the only option for the hero.

Trouble On the Horizon

Part of any story is the adept use of contrasts. The hero needs to be socially and economically powerful. A nobleman pretty much fits the bill. So, says the author. My hero must be UBER powerful so he better be a duke! (Because, rats, there’s only one Prince and that job is filled, and there’s only one King, and he’s incapacitated.)

And right there’s the problem that so many pointed out in last week’s comments. My Hero must be the MOST powerful so he’s a duke! Yay! Duke. And that’s all the thought that goes into it. He’s a duke the way a 21st century rich man drives a Lamborghini. Because it’s a symbol.

If all a writer does is pick the symbols and nothing more, that way lies tedium.

And that, my friends, is why it can feel like there are too many dukes.


Now What?

I adore a well done duke. I really do. But I want him to actually be a duke. I don’t want his nobility to be just a symbol.

What about you?

Posted in Former Riskies | Tagged | 17 Replies

In Defense of Dukes

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Too Many Dukes? Or Not Enough to Go Around?

There’s this pernicious statement that keeps popping up among authors of historical romance to the effect that In Real Life there were only a very small number of dukes and that historical romance as a genre has more dukes than ever existed in the entire universe and isn’t that just completely unrealistic?

I get a little hot under the collar every time I hear (read) someone say that because it misses the ENTIRE POINT. Which I will get to after I point out a few things.

A population explosion

Every genre of fiction is over-populated with its principal archetypes. There sure are a lot of detectives in mysteries. And Romantic Suspense seems to be dealing with an absolute deluge of serial killers. Throw in Thrillers and maybe you should be wondering about your neighbors. Because if you aren’t the serial killer on your block, then sure as heck someone else is. Right? Is he REALLY just taking out the garbage or is that body parts? And dukes in historical romance! You can’t swing a dead cat in 1815 without hitting a duke.

Give ’em The Boot!

If we follow the logic of the argument against dukes in historical romance, then we should ask the other genres to stop with the detectives and sleuths and serial killers. And elves, let’s do something about them too, because you know what? There are too damn many elves in High Fantasy. Don’t get me started on the dragons. Those don’t even really exist and they’re all over the place. They should leave town with the hero raised in poverty who is actually the King’s long lost son AND HE CAN DO MAGIC!!!

A Book is An Island

Here’s my problem with statements like there are too many dukes. It conflates the world of a book with the world of every other similar book. But each book, each story, is a world unto itself. That story is an island unto itself and when the bell tolls, it’s only for that book. In this book in which the hero is a duke, it doesn’t matter if there is another fictional duke in another book. It just doesn’t.

It’s up to the author to make him real in the story in which he is the hero.



Let’s Keep our Arguments Straight
The argument against dukes in historical romance conflates cliche and familiar tropes with the fictional world of the book. Those are two separate problems. A reader might well decide she’s tired of dukes in stories and wish for a story without one. But that is not the same problem as pointing out there are more fictional dukes than there ever have been IRL. That last one, in my opinion, is a big so what?

A duke in a story is a cliche if and only if he is written badly and without care. A story that doesn’t somewhere in its guts think about why the hero is a duke and then use that in subtle and non-subtle ways is a book that will probably feel cliche. And it won’t be because the hero is a duke. It will be because the author was lazy,

It’s also not the same problem as wishing there were historical romances without dukes. And, I’m happy to say, there are.

What do you think? Are you tired of dukes?

Posted in Former Riskies, Risky Regencies | Tagged | 22 Replies