Posts in which we or our guests offer a giveaway.
This is the 237th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth and the official end of the Riskies’ Jane Austen celebration….’til next time!
But it’s not the end of our giveaways. You have until midnight tonight to comment on each of our blogs for a chance to win each of our prizes, and for a chance to win the grand prize– a $50 Amazon gift certificate.
So work your way back and make sure you leave a comment on each blog!
The winners will be announced tomorrow (Monday).
The Riskies
I blame it all on Azteclady who made the suggestion in the discussion following Pam Rosenthal’s recent appearance here. She suggested LOLRegencies, after we talked about the implied silliness of the Elgin picture at right, a marvelous mixed bag of a portrait that begged for a caption. Or several.
So I indulged in a little time-wasting.
And here’s my idea. Send me your LOLRegency (as a low-res jpg) and I’ll post them for Thanksgiving Day. I have a couple of copies of the English edition (pink!) of The Rules of Gentility to give away to my favorites. Please let me know what form of your name to put with your artwork. Also, don’t make your art too big or too small–that said, I’d suggest you make them about the same size as the ones here, whatever that may be.
The email address is riskies@yahoo.com. Put LOLRegencies in the subject line, and send your efforts to me before midnight (EST) on Wednesday, November 26.
Update following Diane’s questions: if you don’t have photoshop, or some such (I used Appleworks), send me the pic and the caption(s). And I’m hoping to assemble these early on Thanksgiving morning, hence the deadline of late Wednesday, because I know so many of us will be dealing with a rock-hard frozen turkey and a hairdryer late at night…
Here’s a LOLRegencies insight into Jane Austen’s creative process:
and an insight into mine:
Looking forward to seeing much silliness and creativity….
Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, was born on this day in 1904.
Although he published the book in 1949, his interest in mythology, particularly Native American mythology, was sparked by a visit as a kid to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show at Madison Square Garden.
It’s from his work that the concept of the Hero’s Journey derives, something Campbell describes as
A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.
Yes, it sounds like Tolkien, but I love it as a reality check for writing fiction, and one of the few writing books I like is Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey.
Here are a few more quotes from Campbell I thought you’d enjoy. To my very great amusement, when I followed the link to Campbell quotes, the first thing I read was:
Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.
Love is a friendship set to music.
I’m off fairly soon to the New England Romance Writers Let Your Imagination Take Flight conference, where I’m doing a workshop on servants, signing, hanging out with other writers, and shutting myself away to write.
Pam Rosenthal, who was nominated for a Rita (go Pam!) for The Edge of Impropriety, is having a contest–the prize, a copy of my August 2009 release A Most Lamentable Comedy. Go read an excerpt and enter now!
What are you up to? Reading, writing, nominated for a Golden Heart or Rita? Tell us!
Today’s the anniversary of the day Edward Jenner (1749-1823) introduced the smallpox vaccine in 1799.
Smallpox was a terrible disease, now eradicated, that killed one in three of those who caught it and could severely disfigure anyone who survived. Yet folklore, as Jenner knew, held that milkmaids or others associated with cows, caught a minor form of the illness (cowpox) which seemed to protect them from smallpox. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, during her time in Constantinople, became a convert to variolation, an early form of vaccination, and brought the practice back to England. There were several other contemporaries of Jenner’s, including a Dorset farmer who successfully vaccinated his wife and two children, who were thinking along the same lines.
In 1796, Jenner tested his theory by inoculating an eight year old boy with material from the cowpox blisters of milkmaid Sarah Nelms, who had caught it from a cow named Blossom. Blossom’s hide hangs in the library of St. George’s Medical School, University of London–sadly, I could not find a picture.
In 1801 James Gillray produced this cartoon of the Smallpox Inoculation Hospital in St. Pancras, London.
And here, yuk, is the arm of William Pead, from an 1800 engraving, an illustration used by Jenner in An Enquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variola Vaccinae.
Jenner named the procedure vaccination from the Latin word for cow, vacca.
His home in the town of Berkeley is now a museum. This is his Temple of Vaccinia in the grounds. The museum has a petition to sign to return Jenner’s statue to Trafalgar Square this year to commemorate thirty years of the eradication of smallpox, so if you’re a UK citizen, please sign it!
I’m having trouble thinking of an appropriate followup question. I don’t want to know about any pustules you may have developed and I doubt many of us own cows so I can’t ask you the name of your favorite cow.
So, how about inventing a bit of dialogue for Jenner and his milkmaid, Jenner and his cow, or someone about to receive a vaccination without knowing exactly what is involved, such as:
“Just a little prick, my dear.”
“Oh, la, sir, you are too modest.”
The one I like best will receive a prize, a truly dreadful collection of the plots of Austen’s novels in verse, that I was sent by my favorite ex-sister in law in England, who probably acquired it at a church jumble sale. It is signed by the author.
So get busy!
What if it was Mr. Rochester chained up in the attic?
It’s Tuesday, but I’m not Amanda! We’ve swapped days this week so I can celebrate the release date of my novella Reader, I Married Him, published by Loose-Id today. AND I’m offering a download as a prize to one lucky person who makes a comment or asks a question.
First off, big thanks to editor Treva Harte at Loose-Id for making me an offer on this novella five (gulp) years ago and making me another offer last year, and to fabulous cover artist Christine M. Griffin who obligingly made Rochester look a bit more grubby at my suggestion. And although the flying critters may be bats elsewhere, they’re crows, I’m telling you. Crows. This is Bronte country.
This novella has been in the works a long, long time. I blogged about it here in a post on Jane Eyre in 2005, which was around the same time a NY editor sent me a wounded rejection that included the phrase I don’t want Jane to be a slut. I still think that’s one of the most fabulous rejections I have ever received. It’s also interesting how things have changed in five years. Re-reading the novella in preparation for editing and sending in to Loose-Id, I was struck at how tame most of the dirty stuff is. All fairly ho-hum (oh, go wash your mouth out with soap) vanilla stuff.
So why did I take that great icon of romance, Jane Eyre, and subvert her? I guess I’m just a troublemaker. Also, Jane isn’t the heroine, although she does behave, er, sluttishly (but no more and no less than anyone else in the book). I wrote it because Jane Eyre fascinates and impresses me and lures me in to read it again and again; and also because I admire Bronte’s marvelous, spare, sinewy prose. I wanted to include quotes within the novella, and I’ll be really interested to see if readers recognize them–some, the title for instance, are obvious. I’m particularly proud of the way the last line falls into place. You’ll see why.
It’s a bit of a departure for me but I’m writing under my own name; I have no innocence or innocents to protect. And I’m very proud of this novella.
I’d love everyone to rush off and buy it and I will be picking a winner here on Wednesday at noon EST. But–WARNING–do not buy this e-novella if you have strong feelings about Jane Eyre as the iconic great grandmother of romance.
So, let’s talk about Jane Eyre. Why is the novel important to YOU?
