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Category: Regency

Style. Sort of.

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For me, the early stage of writing a book tends to be the most difficult. The story I see and feel in my head is not what’s getting down on paper and, despite the fact that I know better, I continue to be stubborn about the direction to go. And every time I go through this I think about the story I read about celebrated mystery writer Rex Stout, who, this story went, would sit down at his typewriter and write his story and keep going until he was done. One version, no revisions necessary. Done. And what about Michael Moorcock whose book on the subject of writing seemed, to me, to be so blithe about the difficulties– I know I came away with the impression that he didn’t feel writing was difficult at all. Whenever he felt stuck, he put his characters under attack. Not plot moppets but plot attacks!

I’m at that dangerous place in my story where I always think about giving up and writing something else… That shinier story that has the advantage of not having 15 chapters of awful.

Inspiration!

But then I’ll see something inspiring, like the dress pictured in this blog post: I found that, by the way, from a tweet by Candice Hern. If you’re not following her on twitter, you should be.

Go look at that dress.

It’s just gorgeous. Now I want to write a scene where my heroine is wearing a gown like that. How, how I ask you, could a hero NOT fall in love with a woman wearing a dress like that? Imagine how it would look in candlelight. :::sigh:::

Step Away From the Keyboard, Ma’am

This is why I should never be allowed near the internet:

First, I thought, WAIT! PINTEREST! I can pin that beautiful gold gown! So I go to pinterest and wonder, when I get there, why there are so many pictures of Arjun Rampal and then I got distracted (safe for work except, well, if anyone sees you it will be obvious you’re not working….) Really: I have 4 boards (5 now) and the only ones with more than one pin are my books and Arjun Rampal.

Anyway, I managed to create a board to pin the gold gown and THEN I ended up at this website Regency Society of America with its posting section on fabrics and then Esty where I looked at gorgeous pictures of Regency-style wedding gowns AND THIS website, Reproduction Fabrics.

So right. I better end this post here.

Who’s on Pinterest? Leave your pinterest info in the comments so I can follow your stuff.

Posted in Former Riskies, Frivolity, Regency, Writing | Tagged , , , , | 6 Replies

Diving into Regency London

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I’ve pulled out my copy of The Epicure’s Almanack for this post. This will appear to ramble a bit, but it’s only an illusion, K?

Rambling….

The Blind Beggar of Bethenal Green described as “a house of entertainment” Let’s put that in oh, riiigght. Entertainment.

tossing up piemen “that attend executions, fairs, boxing-matches, and other polite assemblies.” Category: local color (apparently it was a thing to toss a coin and allowing the vendor to call heads or tails. Free pie if the customer won. If the vendor won, he kept the money and the pie.) This was also called “tossing the pieman.”

Plympton’s Pastry shop: Category: local color. Although we think of pasty shops as a place to buy things with sugar in them, Plympton’s sold sweet and savory pastries.

A ham and beef shop: Category: puzzling. Why ham and beef? Why not ham, beef, and veal?

Eating House: Category: vernacular. Not a restaurant, but an “eating house.” Even so, some of these eating-houses had accommodations upstairs. One displayed a variety of meats in the window.

Hyde Park Coffee House, Hotel and Tavern: Category: Regency Starbucks. Located at 242 Oxford Street. Commanded a view of Hyde Park and the hills of Surrey

Copping’s Ham and Beef Shop: Category: less puzzling now. 178 Oxford Street. “A good mart for purchasing those articles, and tongues ready drest, by weight, to carry away with you, which you must do, since there are no eating-rooms attacheed to the shop. Mr. Copping has acquired fame by the sale of his excellent plum puddings.”

There’s more than Gunters!

The Prince Regent’s famous confectioner, Monsiuer Parmentier, had a shop (“emporium”) at No.9 Edward Street. At 29 Duke Street was the emporium of Signor Romualdo. The nobility ordered supplies from these two places. In this area [Mayfair] there are china and glass shops that on “a few hours notice” could “furnish a splendid equipage for tea and turn out, as well as all the moveables and ornaments for large rout parties.”

Our author, Mr. Ryland, in this book, is having us on. He describes a party at the Earl of Shrewsbury’s new, but empty, house. A party that, alas, did not actually happen as descried. The local emporiums, he says, completely furnished the house from a room ablaze with light — lots of chimney glass — and another “somber” room decorated so as to resemble an Acadian grove. “It was filled with orange and lemon trees in full bearing, myrtles, and a great variety of odoriferoius shrubs and plants, in part natural and in part artificial, tastefully disposed and arranged in gradins.”

I had to look up gradin, but it’s what you’d suspect: an arrangement of tiered seating– in this case for the plants.

Impressions

It makes sense, when you think about it, to have someone supply the china, glasses, and silverware for a large party. Otherwise, the family china might disappear, be damaged or broken. When I planned my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary party, I found a place that would deliver the correct number of place settings, dishes, etc. And they came the next day to take away the dirty dishes, too. Boy, was that nice!

What I find fascinating about this is the dozens of clues about what London was like — A London I wish we saw more of in the pages of books. Eating-houses, dozens of “ham and beef” shops, where you might, or might not, be able to sit down and eat your purchase. And all around Mayfair, shops to cater to the wealthy. Things feel close together for us because, well, relative to what it can be like in the US, you didn’t hop in your car (or the metro) and zip across town and back to run your errands. You walked, rode a horse, or drove a carriage. For us, Regency London would be smaller in every way, more condensed and compact.

Ironically, I just moved my WIP out of London and into the countryside.

Has your vision of London changed at all?

Posted in Former Riskies, Regency, Research | Tagged , | 4 Replies

Guess Who?

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Ammanda cannot be here with you today so I, Risky Carolyn, am filling in for her.

Can you guess who I’m thinking of? Here are some clues.

1. A man who was born in Dublin, Ireland.

2. He’s a Gemini. His characteristics are: Communication, Indecision, Inquisitive, Intelligent, Changeable

3. He died in 1822.

4. College: Cambridge.

5. If you take the first 3 letters of his Christian name, change that 3rd letter to the first letter of a word that is the opposite of “cat” and leave his last name alone, you would have the name of a blond Rock Star from the 80’s who is still touring today.

6. He was once a Whig

7. From 1797 to 1800 he was a member of the Privy Council of Ireland

8. He was involved in an infamous duel and shot his opponent in the thigh. His opponent had never fired a gun before.

9. In 1821, he became the 2nd Marquess of Londonderry

10. in 1822, his half brother became the 3rd Marquess of Londonderry.

11. Byron had these unkind words for him:

Posterity will ne’er survey
A nobler grave than this:
Here lie the bones of [XXXXXXXX]:
Stop, traveller, and piss.

12. Per Wikipedia: In a profile of XXXXXXX published within months of his death, he was reported to have had, prior to his marriage, a son by a maidservant who lived near the Mount Stewart estate, and whom it was rumored he supported.

Leave your guess in the comments.

Posted in Former Riskies, Regency | Tagged , , | 7 Replies

Ideal Homes – NOT what you think edition

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I’ve been writing historical romance for quite some time. You’d think I’d know EVERYTHING by now. But I don’t. I know that shocks you, but it’s true. Like most authors who set books in the past, I have a good grasp of the basics of my era (The Regency, doh) and a decent big picture of the Regency era. That’s never enough, of course.

With every book, I’ve either run across something I didn’t know or hadn’t seen before, or else needed some specific detail not in my research library or collection-O-Links. In Not Wicked Enough, for example, I ended up with a need to know about doorknobs. Really, really specific information. I found it, too, from a kind gentleman who is a member of a Doorknob collectors group. For Indiscreet, I had to go big and wide — Turkey in the Regency era. One of my first posts (possibly NSFW, as the post has naked women paintings) for the Riskies was the result of some of that research.

Sometimes I come across something while I’m doing something else ::cough::procrastinating::cough:: and I end up with a fact that I just have to use. Chimney ornaments and chimney glass in Not Proper Enough.

My current project is no exception. Yesterday I came across an amazing website. Before I send you off there to have a look, here’s how it came about: I was writing The Next Historical (Sinclair Sisters Book 2!) and I needed my heroine to call on my hero’s fancy Mayfair house which in Lord Ruin, I’d said was on Charles Street. So I went to Google maps and entered Charles Street, London England — not specific enough to be useful. I made up a street number (25) and THEN I had good results. I switched to Street View and uh-oh. Those houses were cute and clearly close to period, but they were small. I needed a mansion. For some reason I then searched for something like “historical regency interiors charles street” clicked on images and voila! 137 Charles Street is Dartmouth House and the street view is awesome. It’s also now a hotel/wedding location so there were lots of pictures of the interior, including some historical pictures.

In the middle of that Googling, I ended up at a site that was NOT on point as it turned out. Including the word “Regency” in a google search even with other words to filter out the not-even-close stuff, typically hits Real Estate sites. What I thought was one of those had a very interesting, atmospheric picture of Montague House, which I decided to look at. I like to pretend I can buy an English mansion. The website name was Ideal Homes, so, hey!

Since the picture is copyrighted, and since you should go look, here’s a link to the page I landed on. But come back! There’s more!

Obviously, 1) totally awesome 2) Not about buying or selling Real Estate. Oh, ho ho no!!

But what is this site?

Using a generous selection of old photos, old maps, and historic documents from the rich and unique archive and local history collections of Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich, Lambeth, Lewisham, and Southwark, Ideal Homes explores the origins and significance of suburbia as revealed through the history of South London. The site is hosted by the University of Greenwich and was funded by the New Opportunities Fund.

I clicked the link A-Z Galleries

Carolyn About Faints: Historic Maps

People, this site is the motherlode for historical researchers. Then I randomly clicked around the South East London boroughs and wow. I am SO grateful to the UK for getting the funding out there to put this kind of resource out there for people. And grateful to the University of Greenwich for doing this. Here’s the about page. While I understand why they’ve called the website Ideal Homes, I’m not sure it was the best choice from a Google-Fu point of view, but I don’t care! I found it! It’s awesome.

Anyway, I wrote my scene, inspired by Dartmouth House (and unable to get Montague House of Blackheath Park out of my head) and when I was all done, I realized my heroine could not go to the hero’s house after all. So yeah. I’ll save most of it for when she DOES have to go.

But it was one of my better writing days.

My hero needs a rather run down estate and I think I’m inspired!

Posted in Former Riskies, Regency, Research, Writing | Tagged , , , , | 3 Replies

The Plot Thickens … Or Does it? The Plot Poll!

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There are a lot of Regency plots out there. Some I love, some not so much. What do YOU think? I’ve listed a few. Let me know how much you like the plot!

For the purposes of answering, assume the book is well written and you find the blurb interesting. I totally get that a great author can rock any of these plots. What other plots do you love, love to hate, or hate like poison? Tell me in the comments.

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Posted in Former Riskies, Regency, Writing | Tagged , , | 9 Replies