We’re all about taking risks here. Normally ones found in books, but heck, we like a good risk-taker no matter what the genre.

So this week the nominations for the Academy Awards were announced, and Michael Fassbender was not a nominee for Shame, which (by all accounts–I haven’t seen it) is a daring, riveting film, and MF (great initials!) is fantastic in it.

And he showed it all on-screen. Not the first time he’s done so, but it drew mass attention because of George Clooney at the Golden Globes, suggesting MF doesn’t need a golf club to play golf. Personally, I think that’s a weak joke, but then I don’t have a faux golf club myself–maybe it’s a man thing?

Hooray for the Risk-takers! What risks have you taken recently?

To be honest, I am not the best researcher out there (I know! Color you all surprised).

What I am is a good mimic. I cut my teeth on Regency-era romance, and spent a lot of my formative years alone, so a lot of my language and vernacular was formed by what I read. For example, I use “disguised” to mean drunk, as Heyer did. I always say a lady is “mutton-y” (as in mutton dressed like lamb) when she is wearing clothing too young for her age, think (in my head, at least) that they’re mushrooms if they’re aspiring above their station in an aspirational way, and also use phrases like ‘cut my teeth’ (see above).

I also love language, and vernacular, and how idioms come about. We all know what we mean when we say something has “jumped the shark,” but the first time someone used it, they were likely met with puzzled stares (as I recall, it is the example of Happy Days when Fonzie was out waterskiing and literally jumped a shark, which was the precipitous downfall of the show’s quality). I think my love of language has made it possible for me to write in the Regency period, even though I might not know what exactly happened during certain years (not to mention the whole title thing–oy! I stink at that!)

Do you have any favorite phrases? What Regency-era terms delight you?

Megan

There are a few things in romantic fiction I don’t care for; they include spies, people eating steak and salad in contemporaries (why is it always steak and salad?!?), children who do not act like children, and telling a story using time period shifts.

But forget the kids and the food; I am currently reading Joanna Bourne’s The Black Hawk, and damned if I’m not liking it, despite it being about spies and using time period shifts to reveal the story.

Bourne’s use of language and description is incomparable–it’s as close to Kinsale and Ivory as it can get without being anything like either of those. Plus I like that her hero isn’t hugely tall or overly buff without reason:

The muscles of his belly, his shoulders, his arms, were stark as rocks jutting from a hill, smooth as peeled wood. He was a fierce and violent simplicity, like a force of nature. There was not the least softness upon him anywhere.

I have had to tell myself to be patient as the story unfolds. But it’s worth it. And shows me that all rules–even my own!–are meant to be broken, if the circumstance is extenuating enough (I have to say, though, that the cover guy looks very little like how I picture Hawker. But I’m reading on my e-reader, so I don’t see the cover a lot).

What are your reading idiosyncracies?

Megan

One of the things that readers prize so much is the anticipation, the sexual tension between characters even before mouth touches mouth.

If an author throws her characters into bed without teasing out the tension, it’s almost like she was too easy. But writing that tension is hard (for me, at least), since I also want to make my characters happy. But the whole point of writing a book is to make them suffer.

Because if characters are too happy, they’re boring. Just remember the opening lines of Anna Karenina:

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

And, to prove the point, last night’s series return of the Vampire Diaries featured a kiss that has been anticipated since the Salvatore Brothers first arrived in Mystic Falls (Amanda will back me up, I know!). If you don’t watch the show, just scoot halfway through the clip to see the relevant parts.

Sexual tension. Who does it best?

Megan

As Amanda commented in her post earlier this week, it’s been a challenging year. But, then again, is any year not challenging?

This weekend is my annual Megan is Alone weekend, where the Frampton Boys head out of town and leave me by my lonesome. I plan to read, sleep, work out, and write.

I love this time alone. I really need time by myself to recharge (some people require other people to get more energy–I think those people are strange creatures whom I envy).

Earlier this week, I got the news from my editor that the revisions for Vanity Fare were accepted, so that work is all done. I’ve got some other projects I am working on, but nothing that is all pickmepickmepickme! so I might open a document here, fix a word there, add a few sentences, but not sit down, nose-to-grindstone.

It’s weird, in fact, not to have something to do every single minute of every single day. I bet this is how some of our heroines felt most of the time, hence the looking forward to a huge treat for days in advance. And speaking of our heroines, I recently reread The Ideal Wife by Mary Balogh, and it sure stood up in revisiting. My heart got squozen when the heroine doubted herself, and the handsome, honorable, tolerant hero was almost too perfect. I loved him.

This is a very all over the place post, but that’s how my mind is going, so there you go.

How do you recharge?

Megan