I thought I’d try to write some Regency limericks…and so here goes!

Scientific discussions at White’s,
All too frequently ended in fights.
Until one gloomy day
When Beau Brummell did say:
“Far better invent brighter lights!”

Tom Belcher yelled “Miserable brat!
He’s splattered mud on my cravat!”
But Brummell looked glad,
And said “Don’t hit the lad,
You’ll be famous for looking like that.”

This world lit by candle and lamp,
Which all bears the Regency stamp,
Seems quite free and easy
In flicks from the BBC,
But the real thing was cold and too damp.

Anyone else want to give it a try? Or revise my limericks?

Cara
Cara King, who is hoping Bertie will write one in a comment…

I’m over at the History Hoydens today, talking about sewing boxes and embroidery–or at least I think I will be, since I have notes but nothing written yet.

I woke up today thinking that I really should send out my allegedly quarterly newsletter. It really depends what you mean by quarterly. Sometimes my quarters are only about two months long, and sometimes, as now, they span the seasons. Because I’m a great believer in only sending out a newsletter when I have something to say, and for long chunks of time I don’t.
I can’t produce giggly writerly stuff about what my family and/or cat is doing (mostly asleep) and my fabulous writerly life (because I don’t seem to have that sort of life), and exciting places I’ve visited (because generally I don’t go anywhere). And, oh, yeah, sign up here.

And at the moment I do have something to say, which is that I’m getting a new website from designer Haven Rich, who gave us this beauteous new Riskies blog–we’ve just started work and I’m very excited about it. When it goes live on May 1 I’ll have a contest. And there’s more, like a book coming out in August, and sneak peeks and so on.

Now the Riskies newsletter always has something to say–that’s how you get advance warning on guests, contests, and special topics for the month–and I squeeze it out every month from yahoo (which really don’t like you to send great chunks of mail). What, you’re not signed up for the Riskies newsletter? Good heavens. Sign up now, please. Send an email to riskies @ yahoo.com (without the spaces) and put newsletter in the subject line. (We’re still getting lots of mail from people who want bank account information and/or prayers or something else I’m not likely to release, and I don’t want to miss you.)

There are a couple of newsletters I find really informative and which I’d like to share with you:

The Jane Austen Center. This is a fabulous resource with both scholarly and fun articles about Austen, Bath, and her times and, if you browse around the site, you can spend large amounts of money (still, even now the dollar is stronger) in the gift shop which does indeed ship worldwide.

Book Marketing Experts–written by a team who are the leaders in book marketing online and who really understand the Internet and how web sites and newfangled things like Twitter work.

And nothing to do with the Regency or writing, but just incredibly entertaining, Cartalk’s Time Kill Weekly, which always includes a lame joke and, they, like me, have a rather fluid sense of time.

What do you think makes a good newsletter, and which ones do you enjoy?

Santa, if you sent your email to collect your Jane Austen Evening prize, it was eaten by the monsters of cyberspace, because we never received it. Please resend it to riskies@yahoo.com by Monday night, or we’ll have to give the prize to another worthy commenter!

The Riskies

Did you do Mad Libs as a kid? I certainly did. I loved how the random words we all submitted turned into wacky stories.

I didn’t know until recently that they were still published, but they are! So I was happily able to buy my nephew some Star Wars Mad Libs recently…

Now, just for the heck of it, I’m going to try to do one myself: a Jane Austen Mad Lib.

So: please suggest words that fit the following categories, and then later today I’ll post the finished version!

ABSTRACT IDEA:
ADVERB:
KIND OF PERSON:
POSSESSION:
MEMBER OF FAMILY OR HOUSEHOLD:
DEGREE/EXTENT:
PLURAL NOUN:
ANOTHER PLURAL NOUN:
PLACE:
GROUP OF HUMANS:
ANOTHER MEMBER OF FAMILY OR HOUSEHOLD:

So just suggest as many as you like, and I will take a random assortment of suggestions, and we’ll see what we get!

And don’t forget: next Tuesday, we’ll be discussing the Leslie Howard version of THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL!

Cara
Cara King, who owns many plural nouns

The winners of the prizes that accompanied Tuesday’s Jane Austen Evening post are:

Maddie

and

Santa!

Maddie & Santa, please send your info to me at riskies@yahoo.com, and I’ll email you your prize choices… 🙂

Cara & the Riskies