Last week I mentioned Lord Byron’s weight loss diet, and the week before that I said you could find anything on YouTube. This week I’m merging the two.

Here is Richard Chamberlain as Byron in the movie Lady Caroline Lamb (Sarah Miles)
I think he looks very Byronic!

When We Two Parted is a lovely poem about lovers breaking up, as relevant to young lovers today as it was when Byron wrote it. I could not discover who Byron was writing about, but I like to think it was some true love now lost to the ages.

The poem endures, even on YouTube.

Here is the version that I think channels Byron the closest:

Here is the version as I would have recited in my youth, when in pain over a lost love.

Here is an animated version:

The moog synthesizer-jellyfish version (I kid you not)

And the most mind-boggling of them all, the I-cannot-believe-this version:

Vote for your favorite! And what do you think of Richard Chamberlain as Lord Byron?

(Thanks to Nebula whose comment last week about the Jonny Lee Miller miniseries of Byron got me started on YouTube)

Take a look at my website, all updated for April. A new contest, too.
Don’t forget, you can order The Diamonds of Welbourne Manor from eHarlequin right now. And The Unlacing of Miss Leigh is instantly available from eHarlequin and other ebook vendors.

Probably due to some snafu on my part, our guest blogger for today is Missing in Blogland.
Shudder!!
So Sorry.
To console you, I’ll announce that The Unlacing of Miss Leigh is available on eHarlequin and with other online vendors. I’m just saying……

Diane

I’m starting in on a new book, the second in my Three Soldiers Trilogy. The last book ended at Waterloo and this one begins there, in the battle itself.

The battle of Waterloo really had three parts: the fighting on the ridge; the fighting at La Haye Sainte, and the fighting at Hougoumont. La Haye Sainte and Hougoumont were farms positioned at strategic places.

So my first decision was what part of the battle to use.

Some limits were imposed by just where in the battle my hero’s regiment would be, but I solved that problem. I first selected La Haye Sainte and read up on that part of the battle. The problem was, La Haye Sainte fell to the French right at the end of the battle and that didn’t work for me, so I started reading about Hougoumont.

I found some very interesting sites about Hougoumont.
Project Hougoumont, which aims to restore the site
A very detailed model of Hougoumont
Summary of the whole battle
Detailed timeline of the defense of Hougoumont, including how Victor Hugo got it wrong in Les Miserables.

Still not enough….
I started pining to watch Waterloo, the epic 2 hour movie starring Rod Steiger and Christopher Plummer. I had a VCR copy but no working VCR. So I ordered the DVD.
I discovered another DVD about Waterloo, a documentary I’d seen on the History Channel. I ordered that, too (only to discover that I’d ordered it before…)

Then I hit on the idea to look on YouTube (Note to Everybody: you can find anything on YouTube). Sure enough they had clips of the movie Waterloo, enough to fill me with the sounds and sites of the battle.

I also ordered a book on Hougoumont. Hougoumont: The Key to Victory at Waterloo by Julian Paget and Derek Saunders (I always order some reference book when I start a new book)

I also poured through some of my relevant reference books on my bookshelves and braved falling over the clutter to get to them. Because they are shelved two (or three) deep, this was much like an archeological dig.

After all that I finally was able to write the opening scene of Chapter One.

Book One of my Three Soldiers Trilogy is scheduled for release in 2010, so who knows when this Book Two will come. Chances are I’ll be blogging about researching this book again!

How do you go about researching a scene or a topic? Have you found any other helpful things on YouTube?

Visit Diane’s website for a sneak peek of her eShort Story, The Unlacing of Miss Leigh, and her novella, Justine and the Noble Viscount, in THE DIAMONDS OF WELBOURNE MANOR. Diane’s contest is still on, too!

Things change, people change, and time moves on.

(Unless one has a time machine. And Todd hasn’t built one for me yet, though he did give a talk this week to a group of eminent physicists on the cool things one could do with a time machine! That’s my trusty Todd. Who else would have the nerve to do something like that?)

But, as I said, time moves on. And I’ve decided that now is the time for me to move on.

I think I really need to focus on my young adult writing now, for one thing. (I’m not great with focus, and I find that cutting out distractions helps there.)

Plus, I really need to focus on my writing. That is, my work-in-progress. I love the Riskies, I love being here with all of you wonderful folks, and talking about Drury Lane and the rules of duels and the writing process and great covers and Gerard Butler and Clive Owen and Orlando Bloom and great Jane Austen (and Scarlet Pimpernel) movies…but sometimes I love it too much.

Sometimes it takes up too much of my time, and energy.

So I’ll be leaving the Riskies. (Wow, it’s hard to type that!)

Next week will be my final week here…and so I decided I wanted to do a humorous post next week, and give you all the heads-up and farewell today….so that next week I can sign off with a lighthearted post, if not with a light heart.

I will miss you all so much! Though I will stop by from time to time, and I may even do a guest blog every now and then…who knows? (I still owe Diane that Jane Austen’s Phantom that I promised!)

As to the Jane Austen Movie Club, it will be up to the other Riskies whether or not it will continue. We were getting fewer and fewer comments on it anyway, so I think if it goes, it goes at a sensible time. We did have some great discussions!

So to my five fellow bloggers and all of you wonderful readers and commenters: thanks for all the fun, all the education and information. Thanks for your friendship and warmth and concern. Thanks for years of good times!

I’ll miss you all….

Cara
Cara King, who will still try to stay Risky

Milka!
You are the Winner of Miranda Neville’s debut novel, Never Resist Temptation.
Email us at riskies@yahoo.com with your snail mail address.

Congratulations!!!!