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Category: Jane Austen

World On Fire

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Happy Tuesday, everyone! What a crazy week, right? Luckily here there have been no earthquakes or floods, just continuing heat and drought (two straight months of 105+ temps–I want autumn already!) and I am buried in trying to finish revisions before I go on vacation on the 12th. So this post will be short….

I’ve been reading Amanda Foreman’s fascinating new book, A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War. It’s 900 pages so it’s taking me a while, but every time I sit down to read I find myself totally engrossed. I’m embarrassed to admit I know so much less about American history than European history, and very little about the Civil War (except what I learned as a kid touring some battlefields with my grandparents!), but almost nothing about European attitudes toward the war, but Foreman’s book reads like a novel about complex, fascinating, and very human characters of all sorts (both known and unknown). Their world, much like ours, was caught in the grip of profound uncertainty, and Britain was no exception despite their official neutrality. (British attitudes were especially complex, given how attitudes were overwhelmingly in favor of abolition but Northern mills were heavily dependent on Southern cotton–the blockade threw tens of thousands into unemployment…)

I highly recommend this book! And now I need to get offline and get back to work, so let’s look at some historical photos (which I love doing!). Have you read anything good lately? Gone on any good summer vacations?


















Posted in Former Riskies, Jane Austen | Tagged , | 8 Replies

An Anniversary

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I just realized something this weekend–I have been writing now for ten years. Ten Years!!! How is that even possible? The time has just flown by, and it’s hard now to remember which story came in which year, but my first came out in 2001.

I wrote Her Kind of Man (which had a different working title then, but now I can’t remember what it was!) when I was in college. It was mostly an escape from writing term papers, and a challenge to myself to see if I could actually write a whole book. I had been reading romances since I was ten years old (getting started with Barbara Cartlands, a few Heyers, the old Sunfire YA historicals, stuff like that), so naturally I thought of writing a romance. This story was my first (and only!) Western, and I had no expectations of it beyond something fun to try. But then I happened to go to an RT convention with another romance-reading friend (with no idea of what to expect there, since I did not read the magazine at the time!), sat in on a workshop about how to submit manuscripts, met some editors, and decided to give it a try. It was bought by Kensington’s now-defunct Precious Gems line…

And now I can’t believe it has been that long. I’ve never looked at the story again–I am too scared, since it was my “learning book” (plus I never re-read my stuff when it’s an actual book and can’t be changed–too frustrating!), but if you’re curious it is no available as an ebook from Belgrave House.

What was the first book you ever wrote, or the first romance you ever read? (I’m pretty sure my “first” was Cartland’s Elizabethan Lover, where the heroine disguises herself as a boy and stows away on the hero’s ship as he sails off the New World. It was quickly followed by a Viking romance whose title has been lost to the mists of time…))

Posted in Former Riskies, Jane Austen | Tagged , , | 12 Replies

Birthday Celebrations

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Here at Riskies, we just finished celebrating our blog birthday celebration! This week is Risky Megan’s birthday, plus another friend of mine is having her birthday party tomorrow night (note to self: go buy card!), so birthdays are on my mind today. And what’s the best part of a birthday? (besides getting bookstore gift cards, that is…) Cake of course! So I was curious and looked up a very brief history of the birthday cake…

It seems that our idea of a birthday cake dates to around the middle of the 19th century (the Victorians liked to do everything up big–weddings, funerals, birthdays), but cake associated with special occasions goes back to the ancient Greeks. In Greece and Rome, cakes that resembled flat rounds made with nut flour, leavened with yeast and sweetened with honey, were served at important birthdays and weddings. Candles seem to have come from this time as well, since it was believed that covering a cake with lighted candles made it glow like the moon (so it was often an offering to Artemis, virgin huntress goddess of the moon). It’s also thought that the smoke from the candles could carry prayers to the gods–maybe a precursor to our idea of the birthday wish?

In parts of Germany in the 15th century, some savvy bakers hit on the idea of making special one-layer cakes for customers’ birthdays. By the 17th century, the upper classes had cakes much like our own idea of a proper birthday cake–multi-layered, icing, decorations. Elaborate birthday parties seem to be a Victorian thing–the Victorians really liked doing everything up big (weddings, funerals, etc). In the Regency, birthdays would be celebrated but in a more low-key way–a special dish at dinner maybe, cakes, gifts like handkerchiefs or books. But a well-known personage’s birthday was always more elaborate. A letter written in 1799 by Goethe says, “…when it was time for dessert, the prince’s entire livery…carried a generous-size torte with colorful flaming candles – amounting to some fifty candles – that began to melt and threatened to burn down, instead of there being enough room for candles indicating upcoming years, as is the case with children’s festivities of this kind…”

Oh, and the song “Happy Birthday” became popular in the early 20th century (it first appeared in print in 1912). Now it’s the number one most recognized song in the English language…

Here is a recipe for a black forest chocolate cake I always like on my birthday! (but I’ll have to wait a while for it, since my big day is not until January…)

Ingredients

  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 tablespoon vinegar
  • 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 cups white sugar
  • 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 2 teaspoons baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 cup strong brewed coffee, cold
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 (21 ounce) can cherry pie filling
  • 1/2 cup cherry liqueur
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour two 8 inch cake pans. Make sour milk by combining milk and vinegar. Set aside.
  2. Sift together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, oil, coffee and vanilla. Stir in the sour milk. Gradually beat in the flour mixture, mixing just until incorporated.
  3. Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Allow cake layers to cool completely before filling.
  4. To make the cherry filling: Combine the cherry pie filling and cherry liquor. Refrigerate cherry mixture until chilled, then fill cake

Of course, if you feel like going the opposite direction, there is always Cake Wrecks for inspiration. I love that site!

What do you do on your birthday? What’s your favorite kind of cake?

Posted in Former Riskies, Jane Austen | Tagged , , | 7 Replies

Everyone Is A Critic

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Happy Tuesday, everyone! Hope everyone’s weekend was good–I went on a writing retreat with a few friends, where we all sat down and worked on our WIPs during the day and went out to eat and gossip in the evening, which was wonderful fun and very productive besides. Sometimes at home it can be hard to concentrate, but when I’m accountable to people for my progress I tend to get more done. Plus spending time with friends–a bonus!

One aspect of writing that can be not-so-fun sometimes is reviews. Good, bad, wrong, right, whatever, if you’re a writer (even unpublished) you will get them. I’ve been reading a funny new book called How Shakespeare Changed Everything by Stephen Marche. It claims that “…Shakespeare permeates our everyday lives: from the words we speak to the teenage heartthrobs we worship to the political rhetoric spewed by the twenty-four-hour news cycle.” For instance–Shakespeare coined over 1700 words, including abstemious, accused, addiction, amazement, anchovy, assassination (and that’s just a few of the A words!). One chapter I found interesting talks about how Tolstoy hated Shakespeare, loathed him, and in fact wrote a whole book (Tolstoy on Shakespeare) about why Shakespeare was so horrible. See–everyone gets bad press sometimes….

It seems Tolstoy, when he met Chekhov (whose characters are rather Shakespearean in their complexity) “Shakespeare wrote badly, but you’re worse still!”. In his book, he had these main complaints about Shakespeare’s plays:

1) “Shakespeare’s bad technique. He finds the characters weak and spoiled. He finds the language overblown and exaggerated.”

2) “Shakespeare’s amorality.

3) “Shakespeare’s lack of religion.”

In other words, according to Marche: “Shakespeare is a messy writer in which virtue and vice are fluid and no definite conclusions about God emerge. And he is absolutely correct.” Just one of the reasons Shakespeare appeals in every time period and to all sorts of people, I suppose. “The reason we love such a messy writer, with a contingent sense of right and wrong and a vague attitude toward the ultimate meaning of the universe, is that we are messy, and the ultimate meaning of right and wrong is contingent…’It depends’ is the accurate answer to most questions…Tolstoy objected to the messiness of Shakespeare’s means and purposes.” Tolstoy also objected to the complicated endings of the plays and Shakespeare’s loose sense of time and place.

So even Shakespeare has people (even people as important as Tolstoy!) who don’t like their work. 🙂 But I definitely recommend Marche’s book, which is a lot of fun. (And I like to read both Shakespeare and Tolstoy…)

What have you been reading this week?? What are some of your favorite “messy” Shakespeare plays?

Posted in Former Riskies, Jane Austen | Tagged , , | 7 Replies