Amanda's Winner!

Evangeline Holland, you've won a copy of The Girl in the Beaded Mask! Please send us your info at Riskies AT yahoo.com to claim your prize...

Schedule OMG.HEA.2010 revisited

This is an update of a post that appeared in April 2010 but since the IRS has updated the form and instructions I thought it was worth revisiting.

Schedule OMG.HEA.2010 is specifically for romance writers.

Turn to the Subgenre Definition pages beginning on page 17 and pick your subgenre. You may pick only one. If you write in a variety of subgenres, choose 21, Indecisive wallower, 22, Overachiever, 23, I'm just a girl who can't say no, or 57, Desperately trying to save career by changing subgenres because last book tanked. Enter in Box A.

Take your zip code, divide it by the number of pages completed in your WIP and enter the number in Box B.

Add the number of times your book has been pirated. Multiply by -15. If you were not paying attention in math class because you were writing torrid romances starring you and David Bowie and do not remember how to multiply with a minus number, you're in trouble.

On the following lines enter the following numbers from the first fifty pages of the book:

1. Times your h/h have sex. If you are writing an inspirational, you should enter 10.
2. Times your h/h have sex with another person(s) or being(s) (including, but not limited to, shapeshifters) and multiply by five. If you are writing an inspirational, you should enter 50.
   
3. Heroic hair-raking within the first fifty pages.
4. Heroic striding indoors, enter either the distance traveled, calculated in feet or the number 300, whichever is smaller.
5. Heroic striding outdoors, enter either the distance traveled, calculated in feet or the number 300, whichever is larger.
6. Mentions of heroine's eye/hair color. Note: if colors for 2 or 3 change, please refer to Publication CE.AA.2010.

Enter your total for Box B.

Transfer the number in Box B to Box K for no apparent reason.

Note: If your score is less than 2, please make sure you are writing within the correct genre. Refer to Publication WTF.2011 for more guidance and complete the appropriate Genre Form.

Now turn to your most recently published work. Enter its ISBN, page count, and predominant font family used on the cover in Box C.

Please check the appropriate box if your cover contains the following:

1. Historically inaccurate shirt.
2. Mullet.
3. Green or blue eyeshadow (hero or heroine).
4. Chandelier with lightbulbs instead of candles.
5. Physically impossible stance.

Write the total number of checked boxes on the next line. On the following lines:

1. Instances of egregious photoshop art, add 10 for each.
2. *Extra nipples, limbs or digits (hero or heroine), multiply each by 10 and enter.
3. Glaring typo on your back cover blurb, enter 20.
4. Mantitty, enter 50.
   

* Unless you are writing paranormal romance and this is purely representative.

Enter your total for Box C.

If your cover art contains none of the above, please refer to Publication WTF.2010 as you may be writing a different genre.

The totals for Boxes B and C, plus the ages of your children and/or pets and your agent's and editors' heights in centimeters when sitting down.
Multiply by 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375
Multiply by 10 to make a nice big fat number and round off to the nearest thousand. This is your owed tax for 2010.

Take the sheet that contains Box K, put it aside in a file, and worry about it for a few months.

Please feel free to share your tax expertise with the rest of us. Only sixteen days to go!

Announcements and Confessions

The Announcement

My Regency Historical title from 2004, The Spare, is now available on Kindle, Kindle UK and Nook. It's a little bit of a Gothic tale in that it has a castle and a ghost (or does it?) There's also amnesia (not total amnesia) and a hot Navy captain and a little (grown up!) red-headed girl. Here's the cover, which a friend of mine called an erotic watercolor and Disney Does Dirty. I'm going to do some cover research with this title by switching out the cover in a bit and seeing what happens to sales.

What do you think? Different, yes, which is good. But too different?

Regardless, my long Out of Print title is now available! Yay!!!

The Confession Portion of The Blog

My TBR.  OMG. And this is just the pile I can reach from my chair, in absolutely no order. There are more, but I'm not getting up to look.

• Devil's Own, Veronica Wolff
• What I Did For  Duke, Julie Anne Long
• Visions of Magic, Regan Hastings
• Silver Borne, Patricia Briggs
• The Lady Most Likely, Quinn et al
• Lion's Heat, Lora Leigh
• How to Marry a Duke, Vicky Dreilling
• Miss Madcap, Joan Smith
• Ravished by a Highlander, Paula Quinn
• Wise Man's Fear, Patrick Rothfuss (loaned out hard copy, have eBook on iPad)
• No Control, Shannon K. Butcher
• Tall Tales and Wedding Veils, Janes Graves
• No Regrets, Shannon K. Butcher
• Hostage Zero, John Gilstrap
• Dreamfever, Karen Marie Moning
• Living Nightmare, Shannon K. Butcher
• Luck of the Wolf, Susan K. Krinard
• Wolfsbane, Patricia Briggs
• Unveiled, Courtney Milan
• The Mockingbirds, Daisy Whitney
• Dreams of a Dark Warrior, Kresley Cole

And that doesn't include eBooks, except for Rothfuss.

The pile is only going to get bigger and deeper as my deadline approaches because I can't stop buying books.

What's in your TBR (print or eBook)?

Charleston All Night

"There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars" --The Great Gatsby


Happy Tuesday, everyone! I am on my way back from the Vampire Diaries convention as we speak, exhausted but happy--watch for posts in the very near future about all my adventures in Mystic Falls. But today I'm talking about my April release from Harlequin Historical Undone, a 1920s short story called The Girl in the Beaded Mask, which I am sooooo excited about!

Ever since I read my first F. Scott Fitzgerald story in school (A Diamond As Big As The Ritz) I've been in love with this era. I love the gorgeous clothes, the music, the fancy cars, the cocktails, the sense of wild new freedom. But the 1920s were also so much more than that, a period of extreme and swift change after the horrors of World War I (which wiped out almost a whole generation of young men, and changed the way society worked in Europe forever). There is so much scope for drama and beauty in a story, not to mention beaded gowns and t-strap high heels. So I was practically jumping up and down when Harlequin gave me the go-ahead to write Lulu and David's story.

Another thing I love is a good friends-to-lovers story, which Girl sort of is. Lady Louisa "Lulu" Hatton has been in love with David Carlisle for as long as she can remember. He was friends with her older brother and often visited the Hatton home, and he always loaned her books, took her swimming--and then danced all night with other girls. Until the war. Her brother was killed and David horribly injured. He's turned into a recluse, never leaving his country manor, but she's heard he will attend the infamous Granley masquerade ball, a wild, debauched spectacle beloved by all the "Bright Young Things." So of course Lulu devises a way to sneak off to the party and find him, make him see how much she loves him, how much he has to live for--from behind her beaded mask.

Since I switch up time periods in my writing, I always try to immerse myself in whatever the setting of the next WIP will be, even for a short story like this one. Reading books of the era (non-fiction, primary stuff like diaries, even novels), watching movies set in the era and digging around on-line for images gets me in the right mood for Elizabethan, Regency, Georgian, whatever, and I had so much fun with the 1920s. (Did you know there was a version of Gatsby with Toby Stephens aka Mr. Rochester as Gatsby?? And Baz Luhrman is making a new version with Leonardo DeCaprio and Carey Mulligan...). Here are a few of the books I found really useful, if you'd like to look into the era more closely yourself:

Ronald L. Davis, ed: The Social and Cultural Life of the 1920s
Stuart A. Kallen, ed: The Roaring Twenties
Nathan Miller: New World Coming: The 1920s and the Making of Modern America
DJ Taylor: Bright Young People
Humphrey Carpenter: The Brideshead Generation
Mary S. Lovell: The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family (a bit later than the 1920s, but very useful for seeing how a certain segment of English society lived in the period; also lots of fun!)


And I will be giving away a free download to one commenter on today's post! What do you like best about the 1920s? What would you wear to a "Gatsby" party???

A Spring Celebration

It snowed in Virginia Saturday night, just a dusting, but enough to make me yearn for Spring. By the afternoon, though, it was like my wish had been granted. The snow melted, the air smelled fresh, the sky turned blue and the sun shone brightly.

So here in celebration of Spring, is a poem by William Blake:

To Spring:

O thou with dewy locks, who lookest down
Thro' the clear windows of the morning, turn
Thine angel eyes upon our western isle,
Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!

The hills tell each other, and the listening
Valleys hear; all our longing eyes are turned
Up to thy bright pavilions: issue forth,
And let thy holy feet visit our clime.

Come o'er the eastern hills, and let our winds
Kiss thy perfumed garments; let us taste
Thy morn and evening breath; scatter thy pearls
Upon our love-sick land that mourns for thee.

O deck her forth with thy fair fingers; pour
Thy soft kisses on her bosom; and put
Thy golden crown upon her languished head,
Whose modest tresses were bound up for thee.

More celebration is in order for Risky Amanda McCabe/Laurel McKee. Countess of Scandal by Laurel McKee is a finalist for RWA's Best Historical Romance. Hooray!!!

We're celebrating for all the RITA and Golden Heart finalists!! (But especially for Amanda/Laurel!)

I'm in the throes of copy edits and finishing Leo's Story, my Diamonds of Welbourne Manor book. I'll really be celebrating when those are done. Tune in to Diane's Blog on Thursday to see how I'm progressing.

What are you celebrating today?

Waiting...

I'm posting on the fly today and apologize in advance for not being as witty as Megan or as talented a photographer as Carolyn (these are pictures from my front yard).


So we had yet another snow day on Wednesday and today's forecast doesn't even hit the 30s. I also haven't had time to write for most of this month, in part because of the snow day disruptions and also other assorted Dumb Stuff I Have to Do.


So I'm just waiting for spring and waiting for a time when I'm past some of the Dumb Stuff and can get back to my balloonist story.


I'm trying to have a better attitude about missing the writing. What I used to do in situations like this is 1) feel guilty about not writing (because serious writers write every day) and 2) feel guilty about missing the writing (because a proper stroke caregiver and mother is perfectly satisfied with dedicating all her time to her loved ones). Instead I'm just telling myself it's OK not to be writing (because I really do have some higher priorities right now) and it's OK to miss it (because I'm human).

And while I'm waiting, I'm trying to live in the moment too. But also thinking about how fun it will be when I can finally put on a skirt and sandals again, and watching those daffodils poke out of the snow. :)

How do you cope with waiting?

Elena

I ♥ Language

There's nothing that can pull you out of a good historical like an anachronism.

Of course, that can be taken too far; which among us has not rolled our eyes (if not literally, then mentally) when some member of the Historical Police has said that something could not POSSIBLY be because it didn't exist until a year later.

To which I always say, "It's fiction. Deal with it."

(That doesn't excuse just missing or poor research, such as when a Duke is called My Lord instead of Your Grace, or if a divorce is regarded as blithely in a Regency romance as it is today.)

But there are circumstances, certainly, where things existed prior to being documented. For example, language. Many of us Regency authors own Captain Francis Grose's 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (I have two copies, myself), and it's fun to skim through and realize many words were in existence then that you wouldn't have thought.

And just this week comes news that the Oxford English Dictionary has added new words to its definitive tome: he words "OMG," "LOL" and "FYI," as well as ♥, as in "I ♥ NYC."

The last one is just nuts! It's the first time a symbol has been defined as a word. But certainly it has been around for much longer than its acknowledgment within the OED, and one can surmise that certain words and phrases were around a lot longer in Regency times than documentation allows for.

What words jar you from a story? What words surprised you by being extant at the time? What word do you think the OED should add next--or never allow within its pages?

Megan

Recent discoveries online

I've found a couple/few websites that I find fascinating and I want to share today.

First, an amazing if heartbreaking online exhibit, Threads of Feeling, from the Foundling Museum in London. Four thousand babies were left anonymously at the hospital between 1741 and 1760 and sometimes a note, and a small token, usually a piece of fabric or ribbon (but sometimes a key) was left with each infant and kept as part of the admission record. The fabric was either provided by the mother or cut from the child’s clothing by the hospital's nurses. If, as occasionally happened, a mother returned, she could identify the scrap of fabric to claim her child. These fragments represent the largest collection of eighteenth fabrics in Britain.

You can find more examples of the fabrics and the ledger entries in a review at The Fort Collins Museum & Discovery Science Center Blog or at the exhibit's Facebook page.

The museum tells the story of the 27,000 children who were left at the Foundling Hospital between 1739 and 1954, in art, interiors, and social history, and the museum is close to the site of the original building which was demolished in the early twentieth century. The founders of the original Foundling Hospital were philanthropist Thomas Coram, the artist William Hogarth and the composer George Frideric Handel, and the museum also houses the Gerald Coke Handel Collection.

The Handel House Museum in Mayfair, London was one of the many projects restored with the expertise of Patrick Baty, a specialist in historical paint and color. His blog, News from Colourman, is fascinating. His interest in architecture led to speculation and then research in authentic historical decoration and color, and if the idea of peering into a microscope to view pigments makes you go all tingly, well...

Talking of going all tingly, you've got to check out the hilarious Bangable Dudes in History, "Dead man porn for your still-beating heart." I love this site. Not only do you get pics of the dudes but pie charts of their attributes. For instance, Robert Cornelius, American chemist and pioneer in photography, Joined father's lamp company...must've been fighting off the chicks; Nicolai Tesla, Was besties with Mark Twain--another potential hot threesome. Find out why Shostakovich was one hot brooding bitch or Sherman was red-ginger hot. Byron is coming soon!

Have you found anything good online recently?

Hey, winners

We need to hear from you--yes, you, cyn209, who has won a signed copy of The Scandal of Lady Elinor by Regina Jeffers and Barbara E who has won a copy of The Vampire Voss by Colleen Gleason.

Email us at riskies AT yahoo.com.

Oooh, pictures!

I am in deadline mode. Ack!!! :::arms failing::: Oh, hey, hold on while I go organize my soup cans and sort the vegetable bin.

While I do that, here's some pictures from around Jewel Central. Also, this post is Regency related because I am writing a Regency. Oh, and also, I am using the exploding pencil AND the falling off doorknob in this book.

Random Tuesday

So, today I have nothing of interest to say about anything coherent! I am:

1) Finishing the current WIP and diving into the next one, so moving from Mary Queen of Scots's Edinburgh to Victorian London! It's not the smoothest of transitions, and will probably require much watching of Young Victoria

2) Packing to leave for the Vampire Diaries convention this weekend! Look for an article on the Heroes and Heartbreakers blog when I get back, as well as squeal-y, fan-girl posts here and on Twitter. I am still trying to decide what to wear for the masquerade ball...

3) Gardening. Now that the temps are in the 80s here and my lilacs are blooming out, I need to clean out the vegetable beds and get them ready for lovely summer plants, yay!

So, while I do all this, let's look at some pretty, pretty hats!










Speaking of great hats, and dresses, and cars, and music, next week I'll be talking about my April Undone! release, The Girl in the Beaded Mask, set at a big, wild Gatsby-esque party in 1922. This is one of my favorite historical periods, and I was so excited to get to write this story! (I'll be giving away a copy, too...)

What are you doing this week? What are some time periods you'd like to read more about? And which hat is your favorite???

A Tax on Light and Air

Like so many others, I'm working on my taxes, which takes me hours, because I save all my record-keeping for tax time and then have to find, organize, and record all my necessary information. And all this is just to take the stuff to the accountant.

I have no complaints about paying taxes. As a former public employee, married to a public employee, I have an acute sense of what taxes pay for in our society. In Regency times, however, some of the taxes seem pretty odd to us.

Window Tax.
In 1697 Parliament passed a tax on windows. The more windows in a dwelling, the higher the tax. At the time it seemed a fair way to levy taxes without requiring citizens to divulge personal financial information as they would need to do for income tax. It was assumed that the wealthier the person, the bigger the house and the more windows. The wealthy embraced this idea and began to use windows as a way to display status and success. On the other hand, landlords who owned buildings that housed the working classes, resented the tax and bricked up windows to avoid payment. The resulting lack of ventilation simply made bad living situations worse.

Glass Excise Tax.
First levied in 1745, the Glass Excise tax was initially levied on the raw materials that produced glass, but later became a tax on the glass products and was based on weight. Again, the rich embraced the use of glass in large and numerous windows as a way of showing the world how affluent they were. Glass green houses were further proof of wealth. The tax but a burden on glass manufacturere and over the years the law was tweaked, easing the tax on production houses manufacturing small glass products or those making optical glass. In 1845 it was appealed altogether. In 1851 so was the Window tax.

Have you come across any other strange taxes of the Regency period or of any historical period? Have you filed your taxes yet???

Regina Jeffers and Lady Eleanor

Today the Riskies welcome Regina Jeffers, the author of several Jane Austen adaptations including Darcy’s Passions, Darcy’s Temptation,Vampire Darcy’s Desire, The Phantom of Pemberley and Captain Wentworth’s Persuasion. Her latest release, The Scandal of Lady Eleanor, described by Publishers Weekly as "a knockout," is a departure from her Austen-generated works, and she's here to talk about the book and give away a signed copy! So please jump in and chat.

Welcome, Regina! After five successful Jane Austen related novels, how do you feel about leaving Miss Austen behind?

Well, first, I am certainly not deserting my Austen sequels and adaptations. I have an Austen short story coming out in the soon-to-be-released The Road to Pemberley, and I am currently writing a Christmas-themed Pride and Prejudice sequel. Yet, I must admit that it was liberating to write a story from beginning to end, without a framework in place. When an author tackles an Austen storyline, he must stay somewhat true to the original characters or “suffer the ire” of Janeites. In my Austen books, I work in her original wording and use what I know of the lady. With this series, I could create the characters and the conflict without my readers having a preconceived idea of how the story should go. Plus, when I returned to my current Austen book, I was happy to see “my old friends” again. Absence makes the heart grow fonder rather than out of sight, out of mind.

The Scandal of Lady Eleanor is the first book in the “Realm” series. Tell us about the Realm.

The Realm is a covert group working for the British government during the Regency Period. They rescue British citizens, bring about diplomatic portals, etc. Its members are titled aristocrats and minor sons–therefore, the name “the Realm.” The members in this series number seven: James Kerrington, Viscount Worthing (and future Earl of Linworth); Brantley Fowler, the Duke of Thornhill; Gabriel Crowden, Marquis of Godown; Aidan Kimbolt, Viscount Lexford; Marcus Wellston, the Earl of Berwick; Baron John Swenton, and Carter Lowery, the youngest son of Baron Blakehell. These men have served together for several years in India and Persia, and they possess a stout camaraderie. Each holds reason for fleeing his home and title, and each must reclaim his place in Society, while still occasionally executing a mission in the name of the government. Unfortunately, not only must these men fight their own demons, they must foil the plans of Shaheed Mir, a Baloch warlord, who believes one of them has stolen a fist-sized emerald; and Mir means to have it back.

Specifically, tell us about The Scandal of Lady Eleanor.

James Kerrington, the future Earl of Linworth and a key member of the Realm, never expected to find love again after the loss of his beloved wife, Elizabeth. But upon his return home, Kerrington’s world shifts on its axis when Eleanor Fowler, literally, stumbles into his arms. However, not all is as it seems with Eleanor, as she hides a deep secret. She had hoped the death of her father, William Fowler, the Duke of Thornhill, would offer her family a chance at redemption from their dark past, but when Sir Louis Levering produces proof of Eleanor’s father’s debauchery, she is thrown into a web of immorality and blackmail. It is up to Kerrington and his friends in the Realm to free Eleanor from Levering’s hold.

Why have you chosen to include very “modern” issues in a Regency-based romance?

Just because life appears “simpler” does not mean Regency England did not reek of scandal. Women lacked options. Even women of a wealthier class were the property of first their fathers and then their husbands. As such, Lady Eleanor Fowler is no exception. When her mother dies, her father’s debauched lifestyle invades her privacy, and she is sucked into a situation because she “loves” a parent who does not really understand the meaning of the word. Eleanor’s brother Brantley escaped the Duke of Thornhill’s hold on his household, but Eleanor is left behind to cope in the only way she knows how: Survive.

If this series were brought to film, whom would you choose to play the roles?

I have been a Matthew Macfadyen fan long before he played Mr. Darcy in the 2005 film – back to his days in Wuthering Heights, Warriors, and The Way We Live Now. He is always the Darcy in my head when I write my Austen pieces, and he is the man I see and hear in my other works. In this series, Macfadyen is James Kerrington. James Mcavoy is Carter Lowery; James Scott is Aidan Kimbolt; Matthew Goode is Brantley Fowler; Toby Stephens (as he was in Jane Eyre) is Marcus Wellston, and Alex O’Loughlin faces Gabriel Crowden. As weird as it may sound, I do not have famous women in my head when I choose the females. I see their faces and recognize their movements, but they are ordinary women. In this series, Velvet Aldridge came to mind because I fondly remembered a former student named “Velvet.” I stole Brantley Fowler’s name from a young man I met at an Enterprise Rental Car outlet. I told him I would make him famous. Inherently, I suspect, there is something wrong with me.

Thanks Regina, and congratulations on the release! Questions and comments, please, and isn't that a gorgeous cover! We'll pick a winner on Monday!

Soup!

It’s been a long winter, even for people like me who like to frolic on the slopes. Yesterday felt spring-like but based on the forecast, winter still hasn't quite lost its grip on upstate New York.

One thing that makes it easier to deal with the cold and damp is soup. Although I've always liked soup in restaurants, I didn’t get serious about making it myself until last year, when I bought a French Market bean soup mix at a fundraising event. The first time I made it, I used the entire container of beans rather than two cups as stated in the recipe, and produced a rather ugly sludge. But it was delicious sludge and the next time I tried, it looked better and was still tasty and comforting, as soup should be.

Another recent (and successful) experiment was Butternut Squash and Pear Soup from The Gracious Bowl, which I served to my local writing buddies at a retreat. It has ginger and curry in it—yum! Then after enjoying soup at another writer buddy gathering, I decided to get The Daily Soup Cookbook, by Leslie Kaul and others. I’m looking forward to trying their Wild Mushroom Barley with Chicken, Moroccon Chicken Curry with Couscous and Tuscan Shrimp and White Bean and many others.

I haven’t tried any Regency era recipes yet. The Jane Austen Cookbook, by Maggie Black and Deirdre Le Faye, lists several: a Curry Soup which sounds yummy, a Summer Pease Soup (with cucumbers and mint, which sounds nice but I know my husband will not eat) and White Soup, in the section on “Assemblies and Suppers”. I’ve seen white soup mentioned in novels before, but did not know what it was. First one makes a chicken stock using chicken, bacon, rice, peppercorns, onions, anchovies, herbs and celery. The next day, ground almonds and egg yolk are added to the stock. This doesn’t sound like a very substantial soup, but that makes sense if it’s just a part of a supper.

I suspect many of the soups served at the tables of the wealthy were not the full meal soups I like to make at home. But there were definitely some more hearty soups, like oxtail soup.

One soup that was the height of fashion during the Regency which I will definitely never attempt is Turtle Soup. I doubt I’d try Mock Turtle Soup either, even the versions not involving a calf’s head!

You can find more historical information at "An Appreciation of British Soups" at British Food in America.

The Daily Soup says “You rarely hear anyone emphatically say, ‘I don’t like soup’, and the person who does cannot be trusted”. So I won't ask if you like soup! I'll only ask what are your favorites? Have you ever tried any historical recipes? How did they turn out?

Elena

Screen Time: Best Adaptations?

Hoo, boy, it's Friday again! And I've been trying, valiantly, to find time to write, but the day-job, the other day-job, the Son, the Works-All-The-Time Spouse--well, it's been hard to find time to match socks, much less get creative.

I don't know how writers with full-time jobs--I'm looking at you, Carolyn and Janet--do it.

Over at my first day-job, HeroesandHeartbreakers.com, we've been talking about book-to-movie adaptations, and discussing which are the Worst Ones Ever.

Eventually, of course, we'll ask which films are the Best Adaptations? So, as Regency fans, I'll be more specific: Which historical period films are the best adaptations of Regency (or Georgian, or Victorian--can't be that specific, or all we'll talk about is Austen)-era novels?

Off the top of my head, I'd say:

North And South
Clarissa (with a totally foxy, but evil, Sean Bean)
Wives And Daughters
Pride & Prejudice (what--like that wouldn't be here?)
Persuasion (ditto--but not the Rupert Penry-Jones spittle one. Ugh!)

So what would you choose?

Megan

Colleen Gleason

I'm thrilled today to welcome Colleen Gleason to the Riskies. Colleen is known for her Gardella vampire series, about a Regency vampire hunter and she also leads a double life as Joss Ware, author of the Envy Chronicles, post-apocalyptic urban romances (try saying that with a mouthful of popcorn). But now she's back to the Regency with a whole new world of vampires who mingle with the haute ton in 19th century London. Called the Draculia, these vampires are strong and sexy, and a match for any mortal...except for the women who love them.

The first in the series is The Vampire Voss and Colleen is giving away a signed copy to one lucky winner who comments or asks her a question today! (And happy St. Pat's. Note the green questions.)

Welcome Colleen! How are these vampires different from the vamps in your Gardella books?

Because I wanted to write vampire romance novels this time around, meaning I wanted there to be a romance with the vampires, the mythology had to be different. In the Gardellas, there are no good vampires. None of them are dukes or viscounts or even heroic at all—so I had to think about the mythology and come up with a way to make it different from the Gardellas, yet not to completely destroy the world I created with them as well.

In this series, the vampires are part of a secret society that is beholden to Lucifer. Each member of the Draculia has sold his or her soul to the devil at some point, and now they are living an immortal life with everything they could ever want: pleasure, money, power, and all without the fear of death.

Each book is about one vampire in particular who falls in love, and, in this context, realizes that his/her soul belongs to Lucifer and is no longer their own.

But--as I’m sure the Regency fans out there will appreciate--along with the vampire aspect, readers can expect everything else we love about the Regency-era: balls and masquerades, the haute ton, titled bad boys and brooding earls.

What was your original inspiration?

My publisher was interested in me trying my hand at sexy vampires in a Regency setting. So, that was the kernel of my inspiration.

And then I had to think about how I could have both good and bad vampires…and then I had to think about the overall issue of an immortal falling in love with a mortal and the ways in which that might be resolved.

Why do you think the Regency works as a supernatural setting?

Oooh….I think for me it has to do with the coaches and carriages, the balls and masques…and of course, foggy, mysterious London. All of those aspects can give the era a sense of the mysterious and of intrigue. Plus the fact that Society at that time really lived late in the day and well into the night—a perfect setting for an immortal who can’t go out into the sunlight!

Of the three Draculia books, which is your favorite hero? Why?

I think Dimitri (April, 2011) is my favorite hero, only because I love, love, love the brooding, grumpy, closed-off hero who meets his match.

But I adore Voss too, for he is just so fun…until he realizes that things aren’t just fun and games. He has a rude awakening.

You must have been writing your Joss Ware books at the same time as these. How did you switch mentally between the two very different series?

I love being able to switch between two series, two time frames. It helps keep me from being bored, and it also forces me to think about things in each series from the perspective of the other. I might be writing in one series, but something will spur me to think about the other series. It helps me to become more well-rounded in the series.

Do you like to listen to music while you write? What did you listen to for these books?

I love to listen to instrumental music when I write, or things that are chantlike. That way I can get into the feel of the music, but there aren’t any words to distract me.

I listen to soundtracks a lot when I work—particularly Harry Potter and also some meditative music.

Here's book #3 The Vampire Narcise (May, 2011). Don't you love that she's on top?! What do you think of vampires in the Regency? Here's your chance to pick Colleen's brain about (zombies, sorry), vamps, vampire-hunters and the evil--or otherwise--that lurks in the depths of foggy London.

The Lustful Turk : A Review (possibily NSFW but no pictures)

Regency Era Smut

You may recall that last week I mentioned a Regency-era tale called The Lustful Turk. I suppose it's erotica. I had high hopes for this book going in. After all, it's Regency-era smexiness. What could be better except maybe pictures, which the print version has?

On the whole I would rather troll Shakepeare for dirty puns. (I'll be right over, Amanda.)

In Preview This Book on Amazon, the pictures looked nice and clear.  In the book? Not so much. I could tell the subject matter was racy, but in the print book, the pictures were too small and pixelated. What a disappointment, because there was some artistic merit in them.

The Text of The Turk

The text wasn't a disappointment, but not in a good way. Early attempts to tell extremely racy stories (de Sade excluded since he could at least write his way out of a paper bag) were predictably bad since 1) the desire to write hot doesn't necessarily coincide with a talent for such and 2) there was a fairly universal lack of elements we today consider necessary to an entertaining story. Things like plot, character development and something-- some nugget of something-- that readers can care about.

I don't know for sure if this is something peculiar to men writing about sex but for pre-20th century raciness, the lack of story elements is the norm. More on that in a bit. Although, I'm pleased to say that this book did have a discernible plot. I'm not saying it's a good one, but stuff happens!

Great Lines in Literature

However, plot points aside, The Lustful Turk is notable for what I consider one of the greatest lines of literature ever written:

"Seize the virgin!" repeated Ozman, 'she will be only too honored and happy to escape the pollution of this blaspheming wine bibber.' 

Imagine this Regency buck sitting at his club with pen and paper and writing his magnum opus between drinks and bad jokes. What should Ozman say, he probably wondered at this point. He wants his heroine to get kidnapped at her wedding and then nailed by the Lustful Turk, who is not Ozman, by the way. Yes, it's quite a turning point and full of conflict. Will someone pop her cherry before the Turk gets his chance? Our erstwhile author is at least attempting to create tension. He has another drink and inspiration swells!

Rest assured, the Turk gets his virgin. Several of them actually.

In Which Carolyn Sighs. Many times.

The women are all horrified at being raped until the Turk convinces them they like it, and then hey! Turk-y baby I love you because you can get that big engine ready on a moment's notice all night every night.

I was not convinced, I'm afraid.

It was authorial wishful thinking with a big dose of stupid ideas that need to die a horrible death. It's a distasteful trope that lasted well into the 1980's when Feminists saved all our asses by pointing out how absurd, destructive, hateful and just plain wrong it is to think a man can rape a woman and she'll eventually like it. It's pervasive in too much literature and lingers still.

In fact, you can probably yourself think of several literary books that include such false and damaging notions. And, of course, early Romances aren't sometimes called Rapetastic for nothing. But, then, these women didn't have a better example. That they often turned that trope on its head is something to celebrate as we also celebrate having moved past that in Romance.

There are all kinds of slurs, cliches and stereotypes. Everywhere you look. Religion? Yup. (An abbott demands sex in return for saving a womans' life, otherwise, he leaves her to die) People who aren't white? You betcha! (the whole damn book) The lower classes? But of course! (The heroine's beautiful servant is badly beaten but the heroine? She is too white and tender and upper class.)

While the distasteful representation of female sexual agency is front and center there's plenty more in the background. (Dear Anonymous Author: Worried much about women?) I get that he didn't know any better, but did it have to take us 200 years before we did?

Meanwhile, Back in the Harem

Anyway, the story is told in epistolary fashion, with all the extreme awkwardness of that device that you could possibly imagine. No, imagine more. More. More..... Yes!

Now you're close.

So more virgins get kidnapped and deflowered and the Turk is indeed very lustful. But he is also a nice guy. Because his very last conquest cuts off his penis and he is totally cool with that! He sends all his ex-virgin white girls home to their loving families.  To be fair, one of them is Greek or something.

There is also sequel bait in the form of the heroine's baby. She's knocked up at one point, and I think we never find out what happened to the baby. Or maybe we do. But I'm NOT reading through that again to find out.

Byron

Any connection with Byron is quite a stretch. He may be inextricably linked now with the revolution in Greece, but he's not the only Englishman to go there or be aware of the politics of the revolution. Mentioning Greece in no way connects this book with Byron except for the modern reader who only knows, yeah, Byron -- he went to Greece. I doubt very much the author was thinking of Bryon. He was thinking about whether the Turk should deflower another virgin.

Thoughts? Reactions? Opinions? Share in the comments.

Dirty Minds In History

So I now have 17 days to get to the end of this WIP! How did that happen?? Last time I looked it was January and I had weeks and weeks until deadline, but it always happens this way. Now I am living on green tea and protein bars as I try to wrap up the story arc, but I've enjoyed spending time with these characters in this time period, learning more about Mary Queen of Scots and life in Scotland in the early 1560s.

There are so many things I love about the Elizabethan period--the raw passion of the era that inspired such a golden age of the arts (there was never a time when more genius poets and playwrights and composers were living in one place at one time!), the clothes, the strong women, the dances, the earthiness and bawdiness. It can make such an exciting backdrop for romantic tales! And since I have no creativity left in the well at the moment, I will turn this post over to Shakespeare, the personification of the era.

Warning: Dirty words ahead! But they're Shakespeare so they're good for you... One of the books I got with my Christmas giftcards is a delightful look at Shakespeare's real themes--Filthy Shakespeare: Shakespeare's Most Outrageous Sexual Puns by Pauline Kiernan. I laughed so hard at some of them I almost fell off my chair. It's too bad they don't teach this stuff during the obligatory Shakespeare unit in high school--I'm pretty sure it would catch students' attention in a big way....

The Introduction features a quick look at life in the Elizabethan era, the major role the theaters played in everyday life, the importance of espionage and codes, and bits like "Dildos and the rediscovery of the clitoris," "Women win the prize for raunchy punning," "The Bard makes up a new word or two, or three thousand and counting," and "Shakespeare's sexual puns sizzle" where the author states "Shakespeare's sexual puns are sometimes simple, often complex, and range from the cheeky and playful to the blatantly filthy. A ribald joke...is invariably a means of revealing character, creating mood and tone, exploring the moral world of a play, or even forwarding the action. He can offer straightforward, obvious sexual quibbles like other playwrights of time, but he often does something more...expressing subtle, ambiguous interpretations of a character or a situation where we are not quite sure of the precise meaning. Creative, inventive, clever wit makes many of his sexual puns sizzle." (There's also an extensive appendix at the end listing Elizabethan slang terms for sexual acts and genitalia--very useful!)

I knew some of the hidden meanings in Shakespeare's plays and poems from my college work, but many of these took me by surprise or were deeper than I imagined! Here are a couple of the cleaner examples I came across:

From a chapter titled "Pertaining to Dildos" from The Merchant of Venice (the play text in blue, the hidden meaning in red):

Portia: They shall think we are accomplished
With that we lack. I'll hold thee any wager,
When we are both accoutered like young men
I'll prove the prettier fellow of the two,
And I'll wear my dagger with the braver grace,
And speak between the change of man and boy
With a reed voice, and turn two mincing steps
Into a manly stride, and speak of frays
Like a fine bragging youth, and tell quaint lies
How honorable ladies sought my love,
Which I denying, they fell sick and died...

Nerissa: Why, shall we turn to men?

Portia: Fie, what a question's that
If thou wert near a lewd interpreter!
But come, I'll tell thee of my whole device
When I am in my coach...

Portia: They'll think we're equipped with pricks which we haven't got. I bet you anything when we're both dressed like young men, I'll prove the sexier of the two, and wear my false penis with its most fine erection. I'll certainly be well-hung. I'll turn two mincing steps into a manly stride, and speak of sexual conquests like a youth talking out of his arse, all cock and codpiece, and tell quaint lies about the cunts of chaste ladies who wanted to make love to me. Ladies who, when I turned down their advances, crouched down and begged to be f*****

Nerissa: What, shall we turn into men and f*** women?

Portia: Don't be stupid! What sort of question is that? You're talking like a greasy interpreter! But come on, I'll show you all of my vagina and my dildo when I get into the privacy of my coach...

And from the chapter "Pertaining to Virginity" from The Tempest:

Prospero: Take my daughter. But
If thou dost break her virgin-knot before
All sanctimonious ceremonies may
With full and holy rite be ministered,
No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall
To make this contract grow; but barren hate,
Sour-eyed disdain, and discord, shall bestrew
The union of your bed with weeds so loathly
That you shall hate it both.

Prospero: Take my daughter, but if you break her virginal membrane before all sacred ceremonies are carried out with full and holy ritual, no sweet-tasting showers of semen shall the heavens let fall to make this marriage grow. Barren hate, cruel-eyed disdain and discord shall be strewn on the union of your semen with weeds so abhorent that you shall both ending up hating to have sex.

Scary.

And that doesn't include anything from the other chapters like "Pertaining to the Clap" or "Pertaining to Brothels"! What are some of your favorite "dirty" works in literature? And what are you planning for St. Patrick's Day this week???

(Here are a few Shakespearean scenes to enjoy for your Tuesday! The last clip from Get Him to the Greek is not, of course, strictly Shakespeare, but Aldous Snow struck me as a weirdly modern Shakespearean character--plus the song is hilarious)

Yale Center for British Art Redoux

I'm still flying high from my trip to the Yale Center for British Art two weeks ago. I've blogged about the special Thomas Lawrence exhibit Victoria Hinshaw and I went to see, the place also has a treasure of other British art from the 18th and 19th century.

Here Vicky and I stand before a bust of Prinny (George IV), looking very Roman, however. Prinny, not us!

(Check out Vicky's blogs from the trip at Number One London)

Here's the most spectacular painting by George Stubbs (1724-1806). Stubbs is most famous for his paintings of horses and this one is brimming with action.

All the great portrait artists are represented:

Gainsborough

Reynolds

Hoppner

Copley

And another of my favorite artists of the period.

Turner

This museum was just wonderful. Everywhere I turned I found something spectacular to look at and almost all in "our" time period, give or take a few years!!

Have you ever visited a place that stayed with you like this? There is something about this artwork that just won't let go of me. I felt this way about England when I visited, too.

On Wednesday I'll be at eHarlequin talking about a certain kind of art, vedute, the souvenir paintings of the Grand Tour.

P.S. My heart goes out to all of Japan in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami. The devastation is massively horrible. May we all figure out some way to help. I lived in Japan as a child when my father was stationed there. I'll blog about that on Diane's Blog on Thursday.