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Tag Archives: Jane Austen

Happy Birthday to Us!

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This week marks the 6th anniversary of Risky Regencies, the original, riskiest, and forever the friskiest Regency Romance Blog. (Actually, our first blog was August 11, 2005, but we reserve the right – like the Queen – to celebrate our birthday whenever we wish)

All this week we’ll be celebrating…..Us! And we’ll be giving away prizes! Today I’m giving away a signed copy of Regency Improprieties, a UK rerelease of Innocence and Impropriety and The Vanishing Viscountess. Comment for a chance to win.
Throughout Risky Regencies, we haven’t always remained the same. Things have changed and evolved over the years. When Risky Regencies began all the Riskies were writing traditional regencies. Now look at us! That love of Regency remains, but our lives have all evolved into many other areas.
I joined the Riskies April 12, 2006, (You can read that first interview here) and lots has changed for me, certainly!
In 2006, I was introduced as Diane Perkins, who also wrote as Diane Gaston for Harlequin Historical. I had just become a Rita finalist (as Diane Gaston) for A Reputable Rake, the book with my favorite cover ever. My first blog posting was April 17, 2006, called My First Time, about why I love the Regency. I’ve revisited this topic many times over the years, in various ways.
At the time I had also written two books for Warner Forever (as Diane Perkins), The Improper Wife and The Marriage Bargain, and was working on a third. Shortly after that, my Warner life ended and Diane Perkins retired.
Diane Gaston is still going strong, though, with 9 books, 2 novellas, and one short story. Valiant Soldier, Beautiful Enemy will be released at the end of the month and is available right now from eHarlequin.
Last week I challenged everyone to come up with five things that makes them happy. Five things that make me happy about Risky Regencies are:
1. My fellow Riskies. I think our Riskies are brilliant, clever, witty, impassioned, and completely individualistic.
2. Our Risky community. I love our frequent commenters who feel like friends to me. And I love it when someone new finds us.
3. Our Risky guests. We have had an incredible array of guests, from a cover model to an author of gay historical fiction. But our emphasis on new authors especially makes me happy.
4. Our diversity. I love that each of us has our own style, our own particular interests, and our own particular bent on the Regency.
5. The information! I learn so many things at Risky Regencies. All about fashion from Amanda, for instance, and the definition of “Steampunk” from Megan (I’d never heard of it before). Not to mention all the information about the Regency that I learn here.
What about Risky Regencies makes YOU happy?
Don’t forget to comment for a chance to win a signed copy of Regency Improprieties!
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Camping!

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This weekend I’m taking the kids to Salt Springs State Park for a church group camping weekend. Hopefully we will have good weather, but if it’s hot we can always wallow in the creek.

My family used to go camping every summer, usually in Canada, so we have a lot of camping anecdotes. My favorite is when my brother and I went out to play and brought a pair of baby black bear cubs back to camp. We were very young at the time, as were the cubs. They returned to their mother when she showed up and the family just left. Black bears aren’t typically dangerous but we were still fortunate that this mother didn’t become aggressive.

I’ve never read of anybody camping in the Regency for fun. The Regency characters we read about that might have camped are our Napoleonic War veterans. Here’s a picture from The Wheatley Diary. The caption says “two blankets thrown over a stick was our house.”
At some point they had better tents, but they still weren’t nearly as good as the ones we use today.

Here’s an account of the conditions from “Adventures in the Rifle Brigade” by John Kincaid.

“Encamped on the face of La Rhune, we remained a whole month idle spectators of their (the enemy’s) preparations, and dearly longing for the day that should afford us an opportunity of penetrating into the more hospitable-looking low country beyond them; for the weather had become excessively cold, and our camp stood exposed to the utmost fury of the almost nightly tempest. Oft have I, in the middle of the night, awoke from a sound sleep, and found my tent on the point of disappearing into the air, like a balloon, and, leaving my warm blankets, been obliged to snatch the mallet, and rush out in the midst of a hail-storm, to peg it down. I think that I now see myself looking like one of those gay creatures of the elements who dwell (as Shakespeare has it) among the rainbows!

By way of contributing to the warmth of my tent, I dug a hole inside, which I arranged as a fireplace, carrying the smoke underneath the walls, and building a turf chimney outside. I was not long in proving the experiment, and, finding that it went exceedingly wekk, I was not a little vain of the invention. However, it came on to rain very hard while I was dining at a neighboring tent, and on my return to my own, I found the fire not only extinguished, but a fountain playing from the same place, up to the roof, watering my bed and baggage, and all sides of it, most refreshingly.”

Hopefully we will have a more comfortable time of it this weekend.

Do you enjoy camping? What is your most interesting camping anecdote?

Elena

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Stunning!

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One of the reasons many of us love the Regency period so much is the clothing; the Georgian period, which preceded it, was often ridiculously overwrought, with men wearing red heels and patches and powder, and women wearing oversized, silly hats and wigs.

The Victorian styles were often fussy and constricting for women. The men looked okay, but really, I don’t fantasize about wearing a nice suit, whereas I do fantasize about wearing some lovely gowns.


I am hoping to make it to the Met to see the Alexander McQueen exhibit. It shuts soon, and I’m mortified I haven’t made it there yet. So I went looking at the website, and found some gorgeous designs, which I’ll share.

I haven’t been following fashion much lately–my son is, well, male, and he hasn’t gotten beyond manga t-shirts and jeans yet; my husband is a dandy, but he manages to stay on top of trends quite well without me. I did go out last night to see live music, and there were many twenty-somethings decked out in their glory; it was funny to see some of the fashion I wore as a high schooler thirty years later (yikes!).

I’d heard, and accepted, that McQueen was a fashion genius, but until I scrolled through some of these images I didn’t actually know. I will try to get to the Met soon, and meanwhile, do you have a favorite designer? Or a favorite look of these three?

Megan

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Kindling thought

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I joined the 21st century a couple of weeks ago when I returned from NYC and found I hadn’t spent nearly as much money as I’d anticipated. So, with a couple of gift cards burning a hole in my pocket I made the leap and bought a Kindle.

I wasn’t and still am not particularly comfortable about supporting the Amazon behemoth. My favorite online bookstore is bookdepository.com which offers free shipping worldwide and sells my Little Black Dress books, although, bizarrely, Mr Bishop and the Actress is available on Kindle on Amazon. Ah, those were the days when the digital rights were a paragraph blip that didn’t mean anything in particular in a contract.

But apart from that owning a Kindle has made me think about reading and how and why we read so this is a non-Regency type post. Physically, it’s different, to state the obvious. It’s small, it almost fits comfortably in your hand, and once you’ve stopped waving your fingers in the air to turn the page and decided which digit to use and on which side it’s fairly easy to use. But it’s a small screen and it’s rather like reading a children’s book.

Another objection I have is that the fonts of the books are all the same. I’m one of those typography geeks who enjoys reading at the end of the books something like: This book was set typeset in Dogbreath Seriffe, a font developed in 1657 by Melchior Astrolabe of Sicily … I like having a cover, particularly in any other genre than romance, and reading the credit for the original art on which the cover artwork is based.

I also suspect that reading is different. I’ve discovered I tend to skip the last line as I “turn” the page and frequently have to go back to make sense of the new page. This suggests that the physical act of reading and turning a page is far more ingrained than I thought.

But the major objection I have is that you can’t press the book you’ve just finished into someone’s hands and tell them they MUST read this. Reading is a solitary occupation but a great community of readers exists. Similarly, with the demise of brick and mortar bookstores we’re losing those places which were more than a building in which you could buy books; we all know that buying a cup of expensive joe was a small price to pay for a safe and comfortable environment in which the books may have been secondary, but they were there. Did you know that the average visit to a Borders was two hours? If you’ve lost your local bookstore, where will you meet your friends, or find a place to host a writing or reading group?

But back to the kindle. Do you own an e-reader? Have you found that your reading habits change? We all read a lot anyway, but there are many articles, like this one from the Wall Street Journal in 2010 claims that people are reading more with ereaders.

Here’s a useful free software I came across: Make Your PDF Files More eReader Friendly with Briss.

And finally, a light for your e-reader, the EbookLite. Do you own one or is there another you’d recommend?

Thoughts?

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Happiness in “Our” Time

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There are so many horrific events in the news I decided we need to focus on happiness today.

The Romance genre celebrates happiness. After all, isn’t that what the “happily ever after” ending is all about? We’re such optimists, we romance writers and readers. We believe that love conquers all. We relish stories where the hero and heroine face seemingly insurmontable barriers to happiness, but, through love–and the ability to change–they achieve their happy ending.

The Regency period lends itself very well to the these ideas of love conquers all and happily ever after. The idea of marrying for love was a relatively new concept by the Regency period. Before then, people married for advantage or security or power, but the concept of the individual and individual happiness was a new idea. I think this was partly what made Jane Austen successful in her time period. Her books, especially Pride and Prejudice, juxtaposed the old concept of marriage for advantage with the new ideas of love and personal happiness.

Not only is the concept of happiness relatively new, the concept of beauty changes in the 1700s and early 1800s. More natural beauty became desirable. The formal gardens of the 1600s were torn down to create the “natural” landscapes of Capability Brown. The powdered wigs, brocades, lace, and voluminous skirts of the 1700s gave way to more natural silhouettes. Men’s clothing, influenced by Beau Brummell, became simplified and form-fitting. Women’s dresses, with empire waists and filmy fabrics also showed off the female body from top to toe.

When wars closed Europe for the Grand Tour, it became fashionable to tour the British countryside, searching for the “Picturesque.” Touring the Lake District, visiting ruins (or building faux ruins on your country estate) became the thing to do. Taking pleasure in the natural became a new source of happiness during the Regency.

Who of us doesn’t smile when we see beautiful clothes or a beautiful landscape? Enjoyment of beauty is a part of happiness.

Love, happiness, beauty….that’s my idea of the Regency. And I love escaping “real” life by spending my reading and writing time in such a lovely place.

What part of the Regency makes you happy? What else makes you happy? I challenge you to think of 5 things that make you happy. Then go out and smile at someone today.

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