P&P Movie trailers and clips!

For those who can't wait, here are some links to trailers and movie clips.

Enjoy!!!! :)

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/prideandprejudice.html

Clips (from www.waytoblue.com)


News of Mr. Bingley coming to Netherfield

Assembly at Meriton

Ball at Netherfield

Jane and Lizzie talking about the guys

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

Upcoming Pride and Prejudice movie!

I thought I'd mention how I'm looking forward to the upcoming PRIDE AND PREJUDICE movie! I hear it has a (tentative) release date of November 18.
Does anyone want to talk about it? (Yes, I know it's ridiculously early to talk about it, but why not!) :-)

What I'm excited about:

Judi Dench as Lady Catherine De Bourgh! (Okay, I'd be excited seeing Judi Dench as anyone or anything -- I adore her! Did I ever mention I once saw her star in a RNT revival of A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC?) And she's perfect for Lady Catherine! (Though I'd also love to see her do Northanger Abbey's Mrs. Allen some day too!)

Brenda Blethyn as Mrs. Bennett. Too, too perfect!!!!

Rosamund Pike as Jane. I think RP is breathtakingly beautiful and
conveys serenity so well -- perfect for Jane.

Okay, those are three reasons I'm looking forward to it! Anyone else?

Cara
Cara King, MY LADY GAMESTER, Signet Regency 11/05
check out more movie info on my website! www.caraking.com

Jane Austen Answers

OK, as promised, here are the answers to the JA quiz I posted a few days ago. (I could only answer 6 of them):

1) Emma Woodhouse
2) Sotherton
3) Whist
4) Ward
5) Collarbone
6) Broadwood
7) Eliza
8) Catherine Morland
9) Heir at Law
10) Muslin
11) A snug farmhouse
12) Gowan's Lotion
13) M and A
14) Meryton
15) The Laconia
16) Steward

Why the regency?

I'd like to share why I like this period, and why it's so rewarding to read-write about.
First, the clothes. Yeah, I know this sounds really superficial, but it was a period of about twenty years when women were not corseted and constricted, and I think that's very significant. Stays were for support more than shaping. If you look online on costume sites, you can see that some stays were virtually like sports bras. Women could actually move--look how often Jane Austen's heroines stride across-country. The men's clothes are a tribute to beautiful, athletic male bodies--hideous on overweight slobs, of course, but then what fashion isn't--and those tight pants--well, say no more...consider too that women wore no underwear. Oh, the possibilities.
There was so much happening in the early years of the 19c--terrific architecture, music, and literature, the abolitionist movement, and great political change. There were women writers, musicians, and artists, and at least one female astronomer. England was considered a sort of maverick country by the rest of Europe--its monarch, under the control of Parliament, was not a despot; there was a very high level of literacy and many regional newspapers, each issue of which was read by several people, and although a small minority (of men) could vote, the public held the effective and powerful tool of the petition.
And of course the fairy-tale world of the Ton, which I guess I do have to mention. I have to admit a few aristocrats go a long way with me, although I find the concept of great families and their politicking fascinating--one of my favorite books is "The Other Boleyn Girl" by Phillippa Gregory, which is rather like the Sopranos at the Tudor court. And generally my heroes are motivated by family honor and duty to the family name, which leads to some tremendous conflict.
So, what about everyone else?

Just for fun

I'm on a Jane Austen email loop, and a few weeks ago someone posted this great JA quiz from BBC Mastermind. Since I know many Regency fans are also Janeites like myself, I thought this might be a fun way to celebrate Friday! I'll post answers in a couple of days. (Note: I'm a dedicated Janeite, and couldn't answer all of them)
1) Which is JA's heroine's had lived in the world for 21 years with little to distress or vex her?

2) Name Mr. Rushworth's country house.

3) Which card game did Mrs. Jennings arrange for old friends while Marianne awaited word from Willoughby.

4) What was the maiden name of Mrs. Norris, Mrs. Price, and Lady Bertram?

5) Which bone did little Charles dislocate allowing Anne to avoid meeting Captain Wentworth?

6) Which manufacturer made the mysterious piano sent to Jane Fairfax?

7) What was the name of Col. Brandon's ward over whose seduction he fought a duel with Willoughby?

8) Which of JA"s heroine's prefers cricket to books, particularly books of information?

9) Which play does Tom Bertram 5 times propose to put on before agreeing to Lover's Vows?

10) Which material does Mr. Tilney claim to be an authority on?

11) What does Edward Ferrars say he takes more pleasure in than a watchtower?

12) To what does Sir Walter Elliot attribute Anne's improved compexion, claiming it has done away with Mrs. Clay's freckles?

13) At the Box Hill picnic, which 2 letters of the alphabet did Mr. Weston claim were the most perfect?

14) In which town did Mrs. Bennet's sister Mrs. Phillips live?

15) In which frigate, captained by Frederick Wentworth, had Richard Musgrove served?

16) In what capacity did Wickham's father serve old Mr. Darcy?

As my own bonus question--which JA heroine do you think you most resemble? (A long time ago, I took a quiz on this topic, too. It was lots of fun, but alas now I can't find it! The quiz said I'm most like Marianne Dashwood. So watch out if I take it into my head to give a dramatic reading at the Beau Monde soiree next summer!)

Megan's Cover

Here's my cover (I figured it out! Thanks, Elena!). Like Cara, I was asked to submit three possible scenes from my book. This scene? Doesn't happen. The only thing I was adamant about, however, was that the heroine NOT have any curls and have black hair. I also said the hero looked a bit like Hugh Jackman, with extra-broad shoulders. The artist got all those details right, and they look like my characters. I really like this cover, actually, even though there's no strolling about with flowers scene in the book. To me, it looks like the morning after (ahem). The night before scene is the last one in the book. YES! There's sex! Oh, how Utterly Risky of me! Anyway, now that I know how to upload pictures, I'm going to be a terror. Ha, ha, the monster has been unleashed! Okay. I think I should cut back on the coffee. More later.

One more cover...

Since we're talking about covers (though everyone will probably be sorry the topic was brought up, as I can talk about it pretty much forever!), and also cleavage (this woman has her share), I'll go ahead and post my latest cover. Since it's the newest, it's also therefore my favorite, but I love it for the colors and the "headless character" image. I'm a sucker for those.

Another "risky" cover?

Tee hee on the Grease guy, Amanda!

Here's the cover I was talking about earlier. Is it any wonder Verwood has such a big smile on his face? Or maybe he's telling her to lean over just a little further????


Elena
---

www.elenagreene.com

Risky covers?

After all this talk about cleavage and highlights and strange outfits, I thought you might enjoy seeing this cover! The guy from "Grease" and the girl who buys her clothes at Victoria's Secret. At least they read...

Unlike the GF couple, who spend all their time in the gaming hell. Tsk tsk.

Yay McCabe!

Amanda's Lady Midnight gets a glowing review at All About Romance. And, speaking of which, how many people buy books based on reviews?Word-of-mouth? Word-of-blog? The covers (Please don't say the covers.)?

on the subject of covers...

here's my cover! It's really, really pretty, but... they're too young, too scrubbed-looking, and almost certainly too well-behaved. I asked for Harrison Ford with a bigger nose and Juliet Binoche. Personally I think it's a mistake having people on covers, period, particularly on romances and particularly particularly on historicals where they get the costumes all wrong. (A red neckcloth???!)

If I could have the same art, but without the people, and with a stocking and a book lying on the sofa, that would have been fab. The worrisome thing about this cover is that it doesn't deliver. It looks like a really sweet regency and it isn't.

Janet

Another risk-taker here

Hi! I'm just back from Maine (authors of risky Regencies need relaxing vacations). So what do I think is a risky Regency? To me, it's a story that has some element that may seriously upset some readers.

Before I started writing Regencies myself, I didn't realize that there were some readers with rigid expectations of the genre. I'd read books ranging from Georgette Heyer (and endless imitations) to unusual stories like Karen Harbaugh's VAMPIRE VISCOUNT, Gail Eastwood's THE CAPTAIN'S DILEMMA (hero is a French POW), Mary Jo Putney's THE RAKE AND THE REFORMER (an alcoholic hero, a non-virgin heroine) and didn't see a problem with any of this glorious variety.

When my own books started coming out, I was startled by some of the comments on Amazon, both rants and raves. I never intended to upset anyone, but a couple of things did set some readers off:

1) Sex. One reader even insisted that "Regency women didn't do that". Um, have sex with their husbands? Where did the Victorians come from, then? But I understood her point: she just didn't want to know about it.

2) Heroines who are desperately seeking something, even if they don't know what it is, and make mistakes or misbehave in pursuit of that something.

My next book, LADY DEARING'S MASQUERADE, has both those risky elements and more. Ah well... I'm braced for mixed responses. At least I don't think I will bore anyone!

BTW I can't wait to read Cara's book; Atalanta sounds like my kind of heroine. If heroes can be rakish and tortured, why can't the heroines cause some trouble, too?

When I think of risky Regencies....

Hello! This is Laurie Bishop. Great cover, Cara!

I’ve been reading everyone else’s comments and trying to decide how I would qualify what makes a Regency risky. I find it isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. But since I have to come up with something ;) , to me a risky Regency is one in which the heroine, and/or the hero, do something extraordinary for their sex/time/station—or must act in an unexpected way to address their dilemma. Also, in addition to this, they must do or be in this way without violating the attitudes of the time.

Hence the trickiness.

Let us say that I want my heroine to be courageous and able to take command to save the family estate. She might come to the traumatic conclusion that she must ruin herself by becoming the mistress of Snidely Whiplash; and she can acknowledge this by having all of the appropriate thoughts and feelings about what she feels forced to do. But…she will not use language that a gently reared young lady does not use, and she will otherwise behave with all the decorum within her power that she has been raised to use. And she will not know something that a gently reared young lady does not know.

Of course, if she is not a gently reared young lady, we have a different bucket of peas. She will have the perspective of a farmer’s daughter, a soldier’s daughter, or what have you. And that can be quite different. Even middle class daughters were different than the daughters of the highest peers. In PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, the Bennett daughters walked to town alone. Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s daughter would never been allowed to do such a thing.

In my first Regency, THE BEST LAID PLANS, the heroine was a very independent-thinking American heiress who was not raised in high English society. She was therefore allowed to be a little outrageous—and was a ball to write!

Laurie

http://www.lauriebishop.com/

WHEN HORSES FLY Oct. 2005
LORD RYBURN’S APPRENTICE Jan. 2006

Cara's Cover!

Here's my cover! Hmm...does anyone want to talk about covers? Good covers? Bad covers? How you can have a cover that all your author friends tell you is really good, and you should be really grateful, but somehow you still whine about it? (Aw, come on, don't say I'm the only one!) :-)

Cara
Cara King, www.caraking.com
MY LADY GAMESTER -- Signet Regency, 11/05

What are your favorite Regencies?

So -- what are some of your favorite Regencies? I'm not asking for a definitive list, just list any that occur to you. Are they particularly risky ones, or classic Regencies, or does it vary?

I love many many Regencies, but included on my favorites list would be:

-- "Sweet and Twenty" by Joan Smith. I suppose it's risky in a way, in that there's a lot of politics involved, and perhaps less romance than in a "classic" Regency. But for an older Regency, I wouldn't exactly call it unusual (except that I like it so much!)

-- "Poetic Justice" by Alicia Rasley. Again, this isn't a book with just a romance plot -- there are a lot of other things going on. But again, I'm not sure it screams "different!" (And if it did, wouldn't that be odd? My other books would be so annoyed when they were trying to sleep.)

-- "An Ideal Bride" by Nonnie St. George. Stylistically this is somewhat risky, I think -- it's delightfully weird in some ways, almost farcical at times, and occasionally just a tiny bit surreal. I think she made a big splash with this book partly because it was a bit unusual -- but it's so very funny (and sexy too) that that alone could have made the book so popular!

Well, there are three from me. How about you?

Cara
--
Cara King, www.caraking.com
MY LADY GAMESTER -- Signet Regency, 11/05

Risk-taking . . . and a few mistakes

Hi, it's Megan Frampton, another dangerous risk-taker here. I have many, many theories about what makes a traditional Regency different from a Regency-set historical (not all of which I'll share, thank your lucky stars), and when I wrote A Singular Lady (which comes out October 4, mark it on your calendars), I thought I was writing a Regency-set historical. I have since figured out I did not, not least of which is because Signet bought my book to publish it as a trad.
What makes my Regency different from the pelisse-and-Almack's crowd? Well, first of all, my heroine is out to marry for money. Her father's reputation means she is not allowed into Almack's, she is not classically beautiful, and she swears on occasion. My hero wears scuffed boots, worn clothes, and hates the social scene. Plus they have sex before they're married, and she doesn't yelp about how much it hurts the first time.
Oh, and I screwed up my hero's title, big-time, which means I'll be getting plenty of finger-wagging mail from folks who know a lot more about titles than I do. But I hope people enjoy the story, because it's fiction, after all.
I'm looking forward to meeting my fellow risky Authors, and whomever stumbles across our blog. Enjoy, post, share, discuss!

Megan

Another Risky Regency Writer here

Hi, I'm Janet Mullany and my book Dedication comes out next month. What makes my book a risky Regency? It's actually like a blueprint for what not to have in a romance:
1. Older, almost celibate hero.
2. Older and not at all celibate heroine.
3. Character who is a writer.
4. Character who is an artist.
5. The higher in rank my characters are, the worse they behave.
6. Unless they're French.
7. And for a regency, sex.
Frankly I'm just confused by what makes a traditional regency. I always thought it meant a short book with no sex and Mr. and Ms. Middle America wearing their regency costumes on the cover, smiling idiotically. Lots of regency slang, descriptions of clothes, aristos being polite in drawing rooms, and the only balls mentioned were the ones that include dancing.
But let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.
I'm gonna see if I can upload my cover art now.

risky heroines

I'll start the discussion by sharing what I think is risky in my Regency -- my heroine.

I have always adored Georgette Heyer's
FARO'S DAUGHTER, but every time I read it, a little part of me is disappointed that, of course, the hero is much better at cards than the heroine. She runs a gaming house, but he still knows more than she does. When they play piquet, he tells her she's weak in her discards -- and then he piques, repiques, and capots her. Argh! I love the hero, but sometimes I wanted to smack him across his self-satisfied face. Or have the heroine capot HIM for a change!

So when I wrote MY gambling Regency, I made my heroine, Atalanta, brilliant at cards. My hero, Stoke, is strong, smart, and stubborn as can be, but he's not better at piquet than she. Oh, he THINKS he is--he assumes he is--and she helps along that assumption because, well, she's a card-sharp. :-)

I was hoping all along that I would not be forced to tone down Atalanta, to make her weaker so that Stoke seems stronger -- and I am delighted to report that my wonderful editor never hinted that my heroine should be turned into a kinder, gentler version of herself. No, when MY LADY GAMESTER appears in November, Atalanta will be as fierce, as uncompromising, and as ambitious as she was when I first wrote her.

Will the readers like her? I guess I'll find out in November! :-)

Cara
--
Cara King --
MY LADY GAMESTER -- Signet Regency, 11/05

What is a Risky Regency?

What is a Risky Regency? Who writes
Risky Regencies? What are the challenges,
pitfalls, and benefits of writing Risky
Regencies?

That's what this blog is all about! We have
a great bunch of Regency writers (including
Amanda McCabe, Elena Greene, Laurie Bishop,
Megan Frampton, Janet Mullany, and me,
Cara King) who will all discuss this subject,
plus our writing lives, our research,
and anything else pertinent to the life of
a Risky Regency Writer!

Have a comment? Please join in!

Cara
(Cara King -- author of MY LADY GAMESTER,
debuting November 2005 from Signet Regency!)

Risky Books