Our Risky Regencies Read Along of Venetia, spearheaded by Carolyn, is turning out to be a great fun. It was a new idea and I’ve been enjoying it immensely.

There are a couple more new ideas that have also captured my interest in the last week.

The first is a new blog started by friends of mine, Kristine Hughes and Victoria Hinshaw. For those of you who write in the Regency and Victorian time periods, you probably have Kristine’s book, Writers Guide to Everyday Life in Regency and Victorian England. (If not, she’s selling that and more on CD-just follow that link). Victoria Hinshaw is the author of several traditional regencies.

What Kristine and Vicky have in common is a love of research, especially researching Georgian/Regency/Victorian England. They also have a great sense of fun, so when they told me they were starting a blog, I knew I’d love it.

The blog is called Number One London. It launched on March 20 and here’s what they had the very first day:
Curiosity Corner – a recurring feature, this time a portrait and the task is to guess who it is.
Announcement of a Writer in Residence program – you could be awarded a stipend to spend two month to a year in Stratford on Avon! (have I got your attention now?)
Sharpe in India
All you ever wanted to know about franking a letter
Waterloo Bridge
Archive CD books online (you know I was excited about that one!!)

So check it out! I’m betting it will be almost as fun and educational as Risky Regencies.

Next new thing is from YouTube via ABC Nightly News.
Remember the remake of We Are The World debuted during the Superbowl? I was watching ABC news and Diane Sawyer did a story of another version of We Are The World done by ordinary people from all over the world. It was the idea of Lisa Lavie, a singer, who chose 57 other singers from YouTube and asked each of them to tape themselves singing We Are the World. Then she spliced them all together.

Here is the result:

These everyday people, from all over the world, were simply fantastic.

(for an interview with Lisa Lavie with Diane Sawyer, look Here.

Next Monday I’ll have something new to announce! A new book (well, an anthology) and a book giveaway. And more!

What’s new with you? Any new experiences? Tell us!

Winner of a signed copy of The Wild Marquis is…..
Daphne!!

Email us at riskies@yahoo.com with your snail mail address!

I’m back from the dead (or at least not feeling all pooky and sick anymore), and am so psyched I’ve been able to write this week.

This week, I was also lucky enough (and not sick!) to go to Lady Jane’s Salon, a monthly romance event held in New York City. Romance readers get together to socialize and listen to authors read from their works. This Monday was even more specialer, ’cause Cara Elliott (who’s guesting here on Sunday) read from her book, To Sin With A Scoundrel.

What I really like about what Cara read (and I have the book in house, haven’t read it yet–the TBR pile is taller than my 10 year-old) is the fix she so clearly had on her characters. If I met either one of those folks on the street, I would TOTALLY know them. Even if they weren’t wearing Regency clothing. And the two characters, while seemingly familiar, had stuff about them that wasn’t quite–something that made them each distinctive in their own ways. Very, very cool.

That was in juxtaposition to something else I’ve read recently, where I wouldn’t know the characters at all, except they are so two-dimensional they’d likely be flat in real life (it’s a Euclidean reference, people!). The eeeevil villainess was so eeevil she had yellow teeth, just in case you missed her pointed dialogue; the villain guy was a rotund lech; and the heroine was a Mary Sue in the worst way. Yuk. My life is too short to continue past the first chapter, so I didn’t.

Everyone has dealbreakers in books; I can ignore almost any number of egregious faults and errors if I like the characters. Even if the characters do things that make my eyes widen (see: Lilith Saintcrow, Harry Pearce in MI-5, Season 7. Harry!). I wouldn’t like to hang out with that many of my favorite characters, but I love reading their stories. My dealbreakers happen when the characters are lifeless, cliched or do things, without explanation, that they would never do (it IS fun to have a character do something she would never do, but you have to set it up right).

Do I know where I am going with this? As usual, nope.

I am just glad to be back writing, not feeling lousy, and glad that there are so many awesome books in the TBR pile. Come back on Sunday for a lucid interview with Cara E.

Megan