Real Life Love

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend! All the leftovers here have been consumed, and I spent far too much money online for Christmas presents--both for my family and for myself. Most of these were books of course, because books make stupendous holiday gifts!

My own new book, Duchess of Sin, is out now (shipping today from Amazon!), and I'm setting out on a blog tour (see the dates here on my blog!). I'm so proud to see Anna and Conlan's story on the shelves now, as they had to work so hard to find their HEA.

I had lots of inspirations for this "Daughters of Erin" series, and one was my love of non-fiction about historical marriages. I can't seem to get enough of reading about how couples of the past, whether middle-class sorts like Jane Austen's family or the nobility, made their relationships work--or not work, as the case may be! There are certainly some spectacular failures in marital history (hello, Prinny and Caroline!). I like to imagine how my own characters will build a life together.

I recently read two books about just such couples. Couples who really had almost nothing in common with each other, except that both wives were unusually strong women and both couples were very much in love. Also they lived through times of immense conflict.

The first was Joseph J. Ellis's First Family: Abigail and John Adams. Ellis calls them the "premier husband and wife team in all American history" and for 54 years they were lovers and friends, real partners, through very turbulent times. I love the Adamses--theirs was an enviable marriage, and I like to imagine my Anna and Conlan end up something like them, working together in everything and always passionate about each other!

The other was Katie Whitaker's A Royal Passion about Charles I and Henrietta Maria. Unlike the Adamses, this was an arranged marriage that didn't start all that well. But it grew into a passionate and devoted marriage. A partnership that ended in disaster, but was fiercely united. Whitaker says that this marriage was both Charles's greatest strength and greatest weakness. I highly recommend both books!

So, what are your favorite historical couples? Do you find inspiration (or warning!) in their stories??

What to Give an Earl?

Yesterday Amanda stole Gerard Butler from me, to use as the model for Conlan, her hero in Duchess of Sin. Today I'm taking him back!!

Take a look at this soon-to-be commercial.

http://www.theexfoliator.com/2010/11/nuff-said.html

Only a manly man can hawk moisturizer!!!

Will you put L'Oreal's Men Expert, new Hydra-Energetic, Anti-Fatigue Moisturiser on your shopping list for the man in your life?

If this were Regency England, what might you purchase for that special Earl in your life?

Would you go to Floris at 89 Jermyn Street in Mayfair and ask them to create a special scent for your man?

The Floris Shop was founded in 1730 by Juan Famenias Floris. England from his native island of Menorca to seek fortune. Shortly after his arrival in England from his native Menorca he secured premises in Jermyn Street, where the shop still uses the mahogany counter that was purchased directly from the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park in 1851. Beau Brummel used to discuss scents with Floris. Mary Shelley sent an order to Floris to send her two brushes and a toothbrush during her time abroad when she wrote Frankenstein.

Perhaps your dear Earl is a studious sort of man. He might prefer a book from Hatchards, the oldest surviving bookshop in London. Hatchards, on Piccadilly since 1797, has served such famous historical figures as Wellington, Byron, Queen Charlotte.

What book would you buy him? Endymion: A Poetic Romance By John Keats, perhaps? Or something educational, like The History of England: From The Earliest Times To The Death of George II by Oliver Goldsmith.

Maybe you cannot give your dear Earl such a personal gift such as scent or a book of poetry. You can always fall back on the holiday standby. Food. He might delight in some tea or spices or preserves from Fortnum and Mason, right next door to Hatchards.

Fortnum and Mason have been selling quality foods since the 1700s, started by a footman to Queen Anne, who enterprisingly remelted and sold the candle stubs, supplementing his income.

I can hardly believe we have to start thinking of holiday gifts! I don't know about you, but I wish I could be doing my Christmas shopping in Mayfair.

Where in the world would you like to shop?

Come to Diane's Blog on Wednesday, not Thursday, this week to learn about the exciting Harlequin Historical Holiday Giveaway, with 22 days of prizes and a Grand Prize of a Kindle, complete with several Harlequin Historicals to start your ereading!

Amanda and Nicola Talk About Books!

Today I'm so excited to welcome my friend and fellow Harlequin author Nicola Cornick back to the blog so we can chat about our December books! My own release is my second Laurel McKee book, Duchess of Sin, Anna's story, and Nicola's is the third of her back-to-back releases, Scandalous Women of the Ton! I've been waiting for Merryn's story ever since the first book came out, and now it's here in Mistress by Midnight. We sit down to tea and cakes to chat about hunky dukes, intelligent heroines, and history....



"A one-of-a-kind read! Truly an amazing tale, a love to warm the heart and an adventure that never ended. I found myself enraptured by Conlan and Lady Anna, by the surprising love I felt for the Angel of Kildare, and the strong desire for the next story." --Fresh Fiction, on Duchess of Sin

"(An) emotionally charged romance and a powerful love story!" --RT Book Reviews on Mistress by Midnight

Amanda (pouring the tea and helping herself to a chocolate cake): Welcome to the Riskies today, Nicola! I'm so excited to see the last book of your new trilogy on the shelves. Tell us about it!

Nicola (sipping tea, and trying to ignore that Amanda took the only chocolate cake): Thanks for having me here today! Well, my new series, The Scandalous Women of the Ton, is all about heroines doing outrageous things--traveling to the far-flung corners of the globe, working for a living, marrying five times. Each of my heroines manages to shock society's sensibilities in a different way.

Merryn, the heroine of my December book Mistress by Midnight, is a bluestocking, very unfashionable, with total scorn for everything she sees as superficial about society. She prefers to attend lectures rather than balls and even has a job, although she has to keep this a secret. Merryn is a sweet girl but she does tend to see everything in black and white and a lot of the book is about how she learns that often the truth is nowhere near as straightforward as she thinks. She's on a mission to ruin Garrick, Duke of Farne, because she holds him responsible for her brother's death. But she hasn't taken into account her raging attraction to Garrick or that fact that he's out to stop her from revealing the truth!

Amanda: I do love scandalous heroines! Anna Blacknall, heroine of Duchess of Sin, doesn't have a job like Merryn, but she does like a good party--a lot. She likes to dance, ride her horse fast, and find places she's not meant to be. She also likes to sneak out of the house and look for adventure, something different from her constrained life as belle of the Dublin social season. But she's also trying to cover up her deep-seated fears and some bad memories from the Uprising of two years ago. She's looking for acceptance for who she really is, and she wants to find something useful in life beyond being a Diamond. She's also looking for a strong man to match her, though she doesn't know at first that she's already found him...


Nicola: Oooh, a yummy dark hero! My hero Garrick, is a total sweetie to my mind (I do admit to a bias!). He's a very honorable hero. I love heroes who are strong protectors and Garrick has made it his life's work to protect those who are weaker than he is and who need him. When he meets Merryn he has a terrible conflict because she threatens to reveal all the secrets he has kept for years as part of his role as defender. He is very attracted to Merryn and he wants to help her too, but he cannot tell her the truth without betraying others. He's completely torn.

Amanda: He sounds so much like my own hero, Conlan, Duke of Adair! Besides both being dukes, that is. Conlan's whole life is dedicated to protecting his people from all the dangers of Irish life, and he'll do anything to fulfill that responsibility. The last thing he needs is a beautiful Ascendancy lady finding out all his secrets! But Anna needs him too--and he needs her. They're true soul-mates, it just takes them a while (and several dangerous adventures) to find that out! It doesn't help that Anna is being courted by Conlan's villainous cousin, either.


One thing I love to do is find actors or models that look like my idea of my characters, and then I make character collages. (It's not time wasting procrastination, it's Very Important Research!). Conlan looked to me like a dark manly-man, like Richard Armitage or Gerard Butler (sorry, Diane! I borrowed him for a bit...). Anna is an aristocratic blonde, like Gywneth Paltrow or Diane Kruger. What about your characters? Who did you "see" while you were writing?








Nicola: Well, one of the things I love about Garrick is that he has auburn hair. I know red-haired heroes aren't every reader's cup of tea, but I think a man with red hair can be very sexy. My inspirations for Garrick were Damian Lewis, Prince Harry, and Toby Stephens in his Mr. Rochester guise! If I was to cast Merryn, I think Kate Winslet would be a good choice to play her.


Amanda: Yummy inspirations all! I know that, like me, you enjoy doing research and finding historical tidbits to put into stories. What can we look for in this book?


Nicola: Mistress by Midnight is set against the background of the London Beer Flood of 1814, a real event in which 7 people died. It was a freak accident. the vat on the top of the brewery in Tottenham Court Road exploded, setting off a chain reaction from the other vats and releasing a tidal wave of beer that swamped the surrounding streets. Several people drowned, some were crushed by falling masonry, and one died from drinking too much alcohol. It was all reported in The Times newspaper of the day.


Amanda: OMG, how have I never heard of this??? A real beer flood? There's no flood of booze in my book, but there is a visit to a pub. I set Duchess of Sin around the upheaval concerning the Act of Union of 1801. Things had calmed down (though the atmosphere was still very tense) after the Uprising of 2 years before, but this political act was like setting a match to gunpowder again. Conlan is right in the middle of the fray, of course, and Anna finds herself embroiled in it as well. I talked about the historical background last week on your own Word Wenches blog!


Nicola: I love how your Daughters of Erin trilogy captures the wildness and spirit of Georgian Ireland. What inspired you to write a book there?


Amanda: I've always wanted to do an Irish book, but I just had to find the right characters! You're so right that Georgian Ireland was full of a wild spirit. It was a place of contrasts, between high fashion and gorgeous architecture (much of which can still be seen), and hot tempers and a love of partying. There's also so much conflict, it's ideal for a book! And I also love an Irish Christmas, so I was excited to find out this was to be a holiday release.

Nicola: Did you have an idea of what your heroines were going to be like when you started writing? The Blacknall sisters are all strong characters, but very different from each other.

Amanda: I was so lucky! Each sister kind of sprang into the story fully-formed. Eliza is the eldest sister, very strong and sure of herself, very protective of the others, but also idealistic and strong-minded. Anna was the middle one, the beauty, whose intelligence was sometimes disregarded as she grew up. She feels she has something to prove, to the world and to herself. And Caroline is my bluestocking, the quiet one who prefers reading to dancing. But she finds herself embroiled in quite an adventure with an unlikely hero in her own story, Lady of Seduction (June 2011)! I love each of them, by this point they feel a bit like my own sisters.

Nicola: I feel the same about my Scandalous Women! After all this time, I feel as if I know them so well.

Amanda: And what's next for you?

Nicola: Next is the fourth book in the Scandalous Women of the Ton, Notorious, in August 2011!

Amanda: Wonderful! Have some more tea. We can toast to gorgeous heroes and the scandalous heroines who love them.


I hope you've enjoyed our little tea-table chat today! Comment or ask a question for a chance to win both Duchess of Sin and Mistress by Midnight, and be sure to visit our websites for excerpts, more historical background, and contests. You can find me here, and Nicola here!

Chills

Earlier this week, I went to NYU's Fales Library, which holds a fiction collection that is particularly strong from mid-18th century to today. The 2011 Conference for the International Association For The Study of Popular Romance will be held there, just prior to RWA's 2011 New York Conference in late June.

So worth coming in early if you're academically minded and also attending RWA 2011.

But I digress.

The Library's Head Librarian took me and IASPR's President, Sarah Frantz, into the stacks to see some of the collection. And, OMG, we got to touch a first edition of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. The book was a lot smaller than books today, and was packaged in a few volumes. Running your hand over the type, you could feel the raised type. Very cool.

And I'm not one to geek out over such things, but looking at the book, at is size, and print and all, I could definitely picture one of our bluestocking heroines reading it, her head bent over to peer at the pages. It'd be small enough to hold in one hand and turn the pages with the other, and discreetly titled enough to hide what she was reading if it was necessary.

So duringthis busy holiday season, let's all take a moment and sneak away to re-enact our favorite heroines' favorite pastimes, and open a book and lose yourself for just a bit. It's research, you see!

LOLRegencies Thanksgiving

I hope your Thanksgiving Day is going well (or, if you're outside the US, your regular old Thursday). First, a picture that needs no caption at all.

You all excelled yourselves this year, with lots of entries, particularly from Karen who ... well, Karen (and her husband) had time on her hands. She sent in a record breaking number of entries and I'll post more another time. But she is my first winner with this little gem (how did I judge, may you ask? I drank tea. Any entry that cleaned my sinuses and endangered the keyboard was a finalist):

She also displayed remarkable ingenuity and imagination with these other entries:

The other winner is Kelly, of the Jane Austen Sequel Examiner, on a subject dear to my heart:
And many honorable mentions to Alison, our own Diane, Amy Katherine ...

Louise, Teresa, and Maggie...













Kwana, Kathleen, and Tracey...













and Tracenga!


Thanks for playing, everyone! I hope your day is full of reasons to give thanks.

Winners, email your snailmail addresses to me at riskies AT yahoo.com.

Thanksgiving Eve or Coffee Musings

I was going to share some 1815 era advice about "Turkies" but the Swedish Method of Fattening Turkies is brutal at best and anyway, for those of you celebrating Thanksgiving, it's too late to fatten your bird in that manner.


I can, however, share To Make Chocolate From Cocoa Nuts

Chocolate is made of the small cocao bean separated from its shells, which being first coarsely pounded in a stone mortar, is afterward levigated on a slab of the finest grained marble; to this a small quantity of vanilla is added. The mixture is heated, and put into tin molds of the size in which the cakes appear.

I'm still getting my head around the size of the tin molds which appears to be recursively defined.

Then there's this, which I advise you to read closely as it applies to most everyone who reads this.

Coffee

[blah blah blah Coffee] and when mixed with a large proportion of milk, is a proper article of diet for literary and sedentary people.

 Woot! I had Vietnamese coffee when I was in New York and it was awesome. There was a pretty good proportion of cream in it, too. We were talking about books mostly and there you have it. The wisdom of the ages.

File this one under LIES and Inventions Before Their Time

Cheap and valuable Substitute for Coffee
The flour of rye, and English yellow potatoes, are found an excellent substitute for coffee. These ingredients are first boiled, then made into a cake, which is to be dried in an oven, and afterwards reduced to a powder, which will make a beverage very similar to coffee in its taste, as well as in other properties, and not in the least detrimental to health.

 You see what this is? It's not a coffee substitute, it's Regency Instant Mashed Potatoes. Except they drank it. Ick.

Here's an interesting comment found in a recipe for Acorn Coffee:

Since the duty was taken off, West India coffee is so cheap that the substitutes are not worth making.

And then there's this from a section titled For Improving Coffee:

To an ounce of coffee add a common teaspoonful of the best flour of mustard seed, previous to the boiling. To those unacquainted with the method, it is inconceivable how much it improves the fragancy [sic], fineness, transparency, and gratefully quick flavor of the beverage, and probably too it adds to its wholesomeness.

 Also this, which I actually find rather interesting:

Let one ounce of fresh ground coffee be put into a clean coffee-pot, or other proper vessel well tinned; pour a pint and a quarter of boiling water upon it, set it on the fire, let it boil thoroughly, afterwards put by to settle; this should be done on the preceding night, and on the following morning pour off the clear liquid; add to it one pint of new milk; set it again over the fire, but do not let it boil. Sweetened to every person's taste, coffee thus made is a most wholesome and agreeable breakfast, summer or winter, with toast, bread and butter, rusks, biscuits, &c.

I might try that one.


On Thanksgiving Eve, I will be making pies. I baked three pumpkins this weekend and have already made my special super duper to die for pumpkin bread (with and without cranberries). I'm making pumpkin pie and also coconut cream pie (by special request).

What are you making?

Winners!

I've been so remiss in posting winners!! Here are two to make up for that:

Rachel/Jane Austen you've won Grace Elliott's A Dead Man's Debt

Amy Kathryn you've won Elyse Mady's Debutante's Dilemma

Congrats! Please email us your contact information at Riskies AT yahoo.com

Dance Party

A few weeks ago, I finally got around to watching a film I've meant to see for ages, Visconti's Il Gatopardo (The Leopard). It's an epic from 1963, with Burt Lancaster (dubbed in Italian!) as the patriarch of a great, aristocratic Sicilian family on the cusp of massive changes in the mid-19th century. It was gorgeous, and I couldn't believe I waited so long to see it!

The last scene was my favorite, a 45-minute ballroom set-piece full of Verdi and swirling gowns, which manages to look fabulously authentic, draw the viewer deep into that world, and still be a meditation on mortality and change, youth and age. It's so full of emotions that simmer just beneath the sparkling surface. Writing historical romance means writing lots of ballroom scenes, of course, and they're some of my favorites to work on. So much can happen in a dance, so much that has to be hidden or that bursts out suddenly with vast consequences. It can mean so much in a story. And this scene in The Leopard was very inspiring.

It also made me think of other dance scenes I love in movies, especially with the holiday parties looming! I did a little informal polling on Facebook and Twitter, asking people's favorite dance scenes. I heard about Rogers and Astaire (I especially love the "dancing in the gazebo while it rains" scene!), Gene Kelly dancing in the rain, Dirty Dancing (also a guilty pleasure of mine, I confess), and lots of Pride and Prejudice. It seems like every Austen adaptation has a dance scene (or two or three), including the most recent Emma, where Emma leaped around and shrieked like she was at a rugby match!

I'm partial to the Netherfield ball in the 2005 P&P, where the room slowly vanishes around Elizabeth and Darcy as they dance and stare smolderingly. I like The Age of Innocence, where the camera rises up from Newland and May to show the swirling characters on the polished floor while Strauss plays. The coronation ball in Young Victoria (I seriously covet her gown), the volta in Shakespeare in Love, the tango in The Mask of Zorro, Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in the empty tennis court in Sabrina, the meet-cute at the Bath assembly rooms in Northanger Abbey. The cell-block tango in Chicago. And who could forget "Other way, Mr. Collins!"??

Now that I think about it, there are lots of dance scenes I love. What are your favorite movie dance scenes? Do you like reading/writing ballroom scenes?








And don't forget, I'll be back here this Sunday, along with Nicola Cornick, as we launch our December releases (and give away copies!), and I'll be at the Word Wenches on the 24th. For more info on various blog appearances, excerpts, and a December contest, be sure and visit my Laurel site...

Cooking A Regency Turkey

This is the week we start preparing for our Thanksgiving Day holiday. We generally think of the first Thanksgiving as taking place in Plymouth in 1621, with Pilgrims and Native Americans celebrating out of doors at food-laden tables. This is a very important holiday to us, a commemoration of all the gifts bestowed upon, all the things we are thankful for.

Our Thanksgiving celebrations usually involve a turkey dinner. The wild turkey is actually indigenous to North America, so my question is, did they eat turkey in Regency England?

The answer is YES. The The 16th century English navigator William Strickland introduced turkeys into England. His coat of arms includes a turkey, so it must have been a big deal.

I wondered, if I were a Regency scullery maid (which I'm convinced I must have been in a previous life), what would I see Cook do to prepare a turkey for our lord and lady?

Here's what The Art of Cookery Made Plain And Easy: Which Far Exceeds Any Thing Of The Kind Yet Published by Hannah Glasse
said:

To Roast a Fowl with Chesnuts.

FIRST take some chesnuts, roast them very carefully, so as not to burn them; take off the skin and peel them; take about a dozen of them cut small, and bruise them in a mortar; parboil the liver of the fowl, bruise it, cut about a quarter of a pound of ham or bacon, and pound it; then mix them all together, with a good deal of parsley chopped small, a little sweet herbs, some mace, pepper, salt, and nutmeg; mix these together and put into your fowl, and roast it. The best way of doing it is to tie the neck, and hang it up by the legs to roast with a string, and baste it with butter. For sauce, take the rest of the chesnuts peeled and skinned; put them into some good gravy, with a little white wine, and thicken it with a piece of butter rolled in flour; then take up your fowl, lay it in the dish, and pour in the sauce. Garnish with lemon.

Hey, my mother-in-law has made chestnut dressing. The dressing in my family is mostly made of bread!

I can't quite picture the hanging by the feet part.

Here's one of the traditional Thanksgiving/Christmas dishes that I (who am so-not-a-cook) will make for our Thanksgiving. It is from my husband's Italian side of the family:

"The Peas"
1 package frozen peas
1 15 oz can of tomato sauce (or a small jar of spaghetti sauce)
1 chopped onion
3 or 4 cloves of garlic
olive oil

In a saucepan, brown the garlic in a little bit of olive oil.
Add the peas, onions, and tomato sauce and stir
Cover and cook on low for about an hour

It is easy. Even I can do it! I'm also making the green bean casserole, but everybody knows how to do that.

For Thanksgiving we're going to my in-laws in Williamsburg, where Amanda and I stayed when we met with Deb Marlowe to plan The Diamonds of Welbourne Manor. Most of my dh's side of the family will come and I'm happy because both my son and daughter will be there!

Where are you going for Thanksgiving?
What, if anything, will you be cooking?

Don't forget to enter Janet's LOL Regency contest! I sent her my entry.

Come to Diane's Blog . Today I'm announcing my Thanksgiving winner for the website contest, and on Thursday I have a big exciting Christmas contest to announce!

Guest Blogger Grace Elliott

Risky Regencies welcomes another debut author this weekend, Grace Elliott, who will tell us more about her release A Dead Man's Debt! One commenter will win a copy...









Hello, Riskies, what a pleasure to be here today to share a little about my debut novel, A Dead Man's Debt, and the inspiration behind the story. Believe it or not, a painting of the young Emma Hart (who married Lord Hamilton and was Horatio Nelson's mistress) was the catalyst behind my novel. The painting by George Romney shows an innocent yet lush young woman, scantily clad with a hint of bosom, brazenly staring out of the canvas with an allure that is quite hypnotic. It struck me as sensational for an 18th century work, that the sitter was not prim, proper, straight-backed and starchy. It must have been scandalous at the time. But who would be bold enough to commission such a portrait? (As it happened Emma was ahead of her time and loved to flout convention--but that's another story!)

What a delicious idea for a story! What if the woman in the painting wanted to shock? What if, years later, this rebellious streak threatened to disgrace her family? What if only the son she despises can save her reputation--but at the price of his secret love? Thus the stage was set for a story of blackmail, sacrifice, and redeeming love. This excerpt from A Dead Man's Debt shows the young Lady Sophia Cadnum revealing the shocking portrait of her friend:
With a swoosh the drape hissed to the ground. Georgiana's eyes widened, and she flushed crimson as a hand covered her mouth. "Oh my!" The oil showed Sophia Cadnum stripped of her satins and silks with her natural beauty shining like an exotic flower. In just a gossamer shift, with a rope of pearls wound round a swan-like neck, she reclined in a woodland clearing, happy as a nymph. Ringlets of rich raven hair, unpowdered and unrestrained, tumbling over her shoulder to provide a modesty not offered by the transparent gown. On closer inspection, the male viewer would be enchanted to discover the ghost of a nipple peeping between ringlets. Sophia smiled happily. "Isn't it wonderful?" Georgiana grew quiet, nervously averting her eyes. "I speak as your dear friend and only with your interests at heart, but is it quite..." she glanced at Sophia then steeled herself. "...appropriate?" Black thunder darkened Sophia's pretty face. "And by that you mean?" Georgiana took a deep breath. "Well, what with your being a mother now, something less...provocative...might be more correct?" Sophia scowled. "But that's precisely the point. Producing a son was my duty...and I won't be made into a dowdy matron because of it. I need to feel alive and have my heart race for joy. Heaven knows already the Duke talks of producing another brat for the nursery." Comprehension dawning, Georgiana gulped. "Was it so very awful giving birth?" Sophia closed her eyes. "Hateful, from start to finish." Silence stilled the air. Georgiana cleared her throat. "Has the Duke seen the painting?" "In truth I don't think he cares enough to have an opinion. As long as I serve my purpose as mother to his heirs, he won't object." She stroked her tightly laced stomacher, resting a hand on the barely perceptible dome of her belly. The light went from her eyes as she whispered, "Please God grant me respite from my duty."

Like ripples on a pond, the consequences of this scandalous portrait are felt years later, when Lady Cadnum's offspring are all grown up. It is resentment over the children she bore that expresses itself in her son Ranulf's sullen moods and coolness. But being a Regency romance, the latter is like a red rag to a bull for our heroine, Celeste Armitage, who is determined to break through Ranulf's reserve and uncover the passionate man beneath.

And all this from one portrait of Emma Hart! Phew---I'm saving my energy for a trip to the National Portrait Gallery in London, heaven only knows what inspiration will strike there...

About the Author: Grace Elliott leads a double life as a veterinarian by day and author of sensual historic romance by night, and firmly believes that intelligent people need to read romance as an antidote to the modern world.

A Dead Man's Debt is available from most ebook retailers and on Amazon Kindle, and at the publisher's site. If you'd like to read more excerpts or learn more about what makes Grace Elliott tick, please visit her website

Writer's Block

This fall, I’m getting back into writing after a nearly two year gap due to my husband’s stroke. It has been a rough reentry, but I’m feeling happy and productive again. I’m also thinking a lot about writer’s block, because things that helped me get over it before have helped me again this fall.

Let me clarify what I mean by writer’s block. I’m not talking about what happens with people who have been members of a writing organization for years and still haven’t completed and submitted a manuscript. That is writer’s block, but not a sort I feel qualified to write about.

Professional writers (regardless of publication status) learn to show up for work on a regular basis. The beauty of it is that writing begets more writing. You draft a crappy scene in the morning, then you go about your day job or errands and seemingly out of the blue, you get ideas for how to fix that scene and go on to the next. You ask why your hero is a loner and the next morning you wake up knowing.

What is going on is a partnership between your conscious and subconscious minds. It’s not always perfect, of course. Sometimes you need 10-20 minutes of warmup before the writing starts to flow. Sometimes you need to take a break to brainstorm a plot snag or murky character motivation. Sometimes you just have a bad day. These are minor blocks; you develop tricks to get through them. And when it’s going well, it feels great. Like an athlete who is in the zone, you are still working and sweating, but the work feels good and productive.

The writer’s block I’m talking happens when you are showing up for work but the ideas slow down or stop coming. At first you may think it’s just a bad day. But it happens again, over a period of weeks or even months. Your characters no longer feel real. They’re more like mannequins you laboriously push through their paces. You lose your gut feel for what works. You don’t know what to keep, change or cut.

What’s happened is like an athletic injury. Unlike a swollen ankle, you can’t see it. But it’s real. Your subconscious mind is on strike.

If you keep going, in a deadline crunch or just out of perseverance, you’re like an athlete compounding an injury. You start to associate writing with pain. You may have trouble finishing a book or starting the next one. It hurts like being at outs with your best friend. You may fall into depression and bad habits.

You could give up or wait it out, but I think it’s better to treat it as a professional athlete would an injury, with rest and therapy. You need to be both kind and tough.

The kind part means getting good sleep, nutrition and exercise if you weren’t already. It could mean massage, meditation, long walks or anything that makes you feel good and clears your mind. You need mental clarity for the tough part.

The tough part is figuring out what caused the block and what to do about it. Some writers say blocks are mysterious but I think one can figure them out. I find journaling (a process I first learned by doing The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron) helpful. I also talk through blocks with trusted writer friends. Some writers go to a therapist. (I think it’d be very important to find a good one.)

Blocks are caused by fear. It could be fear of rejection, decreasing sales, bad reviews, of not being able to do justice to your ideas, of your friends being jealous if your career progresses faster than theirs. If you fear being punished in some way for writing, your subconscious mind “protects” you by not sending any more ideas.

You can’t just dismiss your fears. Bad things do happen to good writers. You may have to teach yourself that you are strong enough to cope. You may have to work on surrounding yourself with supportive people but also learn to support yourself, too. You may want to change your career plan or writing process. Maybe you need to switch genres. Maybe you need to allow more time for each book.

While you’re doing all this, it’s also a good idea to try what Julia Cameron calls an “Artist Date”. Make time for a fun, creative activity that has no career baggage. It could be something you used to enjoy, or always wanted to try but haven’t had time for. Consider it a peace offering to your creative side.

Once you start back into the writing, be patient. Continue to take care of yourself and trust your gut.

So anyway, this is my theory on writer’s block. What do you think? If you’ve had it, what helped? If you haven’t, do you do things to prevent it?

Elena

Thankful for Boots and Arlo

So Carolyn talked this week about the fashion difference between East and West Coasts in terms of boot wearage, and the day she posted this--before I had even read it--I went and bought a pair of knee-high black boots (these are the VERY ONES I got).

Because, as Carolyn so astutely points out, that is how we roll on this side of the country.

Earlier this week, I sent my agent the novella I've been working on FOR EVER, the one I did a short excerpt of a few weeks back. And since then have done no fiction writing, but am THINKING awfully hard about it. Not that that counts.

The Thanksgiving holiday arrives next week, which means that I won't have to cook for a few days! That is likely what I am most thankful for. I hope to catch up on sleep and hanging out with my husband, too, during those few days off.

One thing that will definitely happen on Thanksgiving is listening to Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant;" it's a Thanksgiving tradition my family and I used to have, and now my husband has taken it up, which is so sweet. So we'll listen to "the circles and arrows on the back of each one" and laugh on our drive down to South Jersey for turkey.

Of course the food is lovely, too, but I think the annual listening is my favorite part. What does your family do special at Thanksgiving? What are you thankful for?

Recent discoveries

I'm still on deadline and I am so looking forward to getting this book finished! In December I'm going to play ... many Jane Austen activities of course since her birthday is on December 16 (and yes, we'll be celebrating here too!).

But I have been doing a few other things that I wanted to share with you. First, I'm reading My Lady Ludlow by Mrs. Gaskell, one of her shorter and neglected novels, part of which was used to flesh out the wonderful BBC Cranford. It's set in the first few years of the nineteenth century and is a wonderful series of snapshots of country life (Mrs. Gaskell was born in 1810 so I like to imagine she's gathering together everything she's heard about the good old days). Some of it is surprising. First, here's a description of a gown and a use of pocket holes (slits to accommodate the pockets, discrete items which hung inside from the petticoat) I've never heard before:

She had a fine Indian muslin shawl folded over her shoulders and across her chest and an apron of the same; a black silk mode gown made with short sleeves and ruffles, and with the tail thereof pulled through the pocket-hole, so as to shorten it to a useful length: beneath it she wore, as I could plainly see, a quilted lavender satin petticoat.

Or how about this? Have you ever heard of this particular fashion craze?

Nor would my lady sanction the fashion of the day, which, at the beginning of this century, made all the fine ladies take to making shoes. She said that such work was a consequence of the French Revolution, which had done much to annihilate all distinctions of rank and class, and hence it was that she saw young ladies of birth and breeding handling lasts, and awls, and dirty cobbling-wax, like shoe-makers' daughters.

She's very much old school, absolutely opposed to anything that will upset the social order--and this is a decade after the Reign of Terror, so she was probably fairly representative. Here's a description of her hiring a servant, which gives a really fascinating insight into master/servant relationships:

... Then she would bid her say the Lord's Prayer and the Creed. Then she inquired if she could write. If she could, and she had liked all that had gone before, her face sank--it was a great disappointment for it was an all but inviolable rule with her never to engage a servant who could write. But I have know her ladyship break through it, although in both cases in which she did so she put the girl's principles to a further and unusual test in asking her to repeat the Ten Commandments. One pert young woman--and yet I was sorry for her too, only she afterwards married a rich draper in Shrewsbury--who had got through her trials pretty tolerably, considering she could write, spoilt al, by saying glibly, at the end of the last Commandment, "An't please your ladyship, I can cast accounts."

"Go away, wench," said my lady in a hurry, "you're only fit for trade; you will not suit me for a servant."

I've been enjoying the documentary series Circus on PBS--enjoying in the sense that I've seen snippets of them--really fascinating stuff. When I'm less busy I hope to catch them all.

And I've also started a singing group in my town, which is a wonderful, exciting project. Our lineup so far is five altos and one bass-baritone which is a bit limiting, but we have plans to go hunt down men (particularly tenors). This too was inspired by a British TV series, The Choir, in which a choirmaster, Gareth Malone, went into unlikely environments full of people who claimed they "can't sing" and got them singing, enjoying it, and performing.

What are you doing for fun these days? Have you seen either of these TV shows? What's your favorite Mrs. Gaskell?

Don't forget to enter the LOLRegencies contest! Win valuable prizes!

Can There Be Too many Exploding Pencils?

I am back from visiting the awesome Risky Megan in Brooklyn. My son and I had a great time. We went to see Wicked at the Gershwin Theatre on Broadway, and it was fun and funny and possibly the highlight of the trip, aside from seeing Megan.

I met with my Berkley and Grand Central editors and did a Q&A recording and also read two excerpts from the paranormals while at GCP. I often dressed in black. Megan and I discussed the possibility of a fashion difference between left and right coasts, in that I observered that boots are big on the right. Many women wear awesome boots and maybe I'll have to get some. Here on my part part of the left coast, the only women in boots, by and large, just came into town from riding and are also wearing riding pants; sometimes jodhpurs and but often heavy leggings with a suede lining on the inner thighs.

. I forced the progeny  The progeny and I went to the Met to see, among other things the Jan Gosset exhibit. Gosset is a Renaissance painter and I am particularly interested in the period because I have a project that will be set in a Renaissance-like world and I wanted to find out more about clothing etc. When I have an extra $80 lying around I'll buy the exhibit book.

My son pointed out several times after the exhibit that there was an old lady with cane who was going through the exhibit faster than I was.  I needed to really study those portraits, for one thing and for another the portraits were amazing. His religious paintings I found to be far less interesting and at times downright disturbing. The face of an adult on the body of the Christ child is just . . . creepy.

But the portraits. Oh my.

Portrait by Jan Gosset

They were just astonishingly good. Fantastic exhibit.

Some of you may recall my post about exploding pencils from September 2009. Well guess what?

Seriously. Guess.

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SPOILER

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OK, I'll tell you.

I'm going to use a phosphorus pencil in The Next Historical, and I'm thinking maybe it will start a fire.

Watch out!

On Holiday!

I'm off for a few days, giving a workshop on historical fashion at the LERA RWA chapter, eating Mexican food in Santa Fe, and taking yoga lessons in the mountains. Will be back with a regularly scheduled blog next week In the meantime, these are a few fashions I'm talking about this weekend:


Tudor fashions, from early Tudor to Elizabethan frufferies...



Georgian fashions




Regency gowns and accesories (hats, spencers, pelisses, etc)



1880s bustle dresses

I'm also hauling piles of dresses and accessories in the car, so wish me luck!

What's your favorite fashion era?

Regency Weddings

Today I'm on the road, traveling back home from a family wedding this weekend. So, because I'm thinking about weddings, I've adapted a blog I wrote a couple of years ago for Harlequin Romance authors who had a blog promoting their series, The Wedding Planners. I was their guest blogger, talking about Regency Weddings.

I was married a brazillion years ago, long before I started writing or reading Regency romance. It wasn't too long ago I realized I actually had a Regency Wedding!

Here I am with my bridesmaids. Notice that our dresses are all empire-waisted. Notice the leg-o-mutton sleeves on my dress and the puffed sleeves on the bridesmaids dresses.

Now compare these dresses to two Regency Fashion Prints from the fashion magazines of 1815.



See the similarities?

I had a Regency Wedding!






And you can have a Regency Wedding, too. There are many sites on the internet offering custom made Regency wedding dresses. Here are two of them:

Regency Reproductions

Fashions in Time

Or if you are handy you could make your Regency gown:

McCall's Pattern M6030

In fact, if you so desire, you can have a Regency wedding in one of the historic sites in the UK.

This is St. George's, the church on Havover Square in Mayfair, London, where many Regency lords and ladies held their weddings. You can, too.






You can also have your wedding in the Prince Regent's summer home, the Brighton Pavilion in Brighton Hove.

In a room like this:

If that is too fussy for you, or if you must marry in a hurry, like many couples in Regency Romances, you can elope to Gretna Green over the border in Scotland. Here I am standing at the historic anvil. Regency couples were married "over the anvil" in Gretna Green.
No, this isn't another wedding photo. It is me with the tour guide at Gretna Green when I visited in 2005. I'm holding a copy of The Wagering Widow which began with a Gretna Green wedding.



How about it? Have I convinced you to have a Regency Wedding?

Ask me any questions you like about Regency Weddings, but I won't be home until after 7 pm. I'll let you know then how this wedding was. What do you think? Do you think the bride will have worn: a) Leg o' mutton sleeves b) empire waist dress c) stapless dress?