What do you get...

When you combine:

• a small group of mommy writers


• a lake house rental


• chocolate


• laptops


• coffee and tea


• DVDs featuring gorgeous men in period garb


• chocolate


• notebooks


• wine


• and (in case I forgot) chocolate?

The makings of a fabulous writers' retreat and what I'm doing this weekend. After my recent writing time drought, it is wonderful to be writing again.

My local writer buddies and I try to have a retreat like this each spring and sometimes in the fall as well, when the weather is often pleasant and we don't have to pay peak season rates.

Non-writers somehow get the idea that we're just there to party but they couldn't be more wrong. We socialize and share our progress over meals and in the evenings (when the DVDs with gorgeous men come out). But in between, we immerse ourselves in our stories, only coming out for the occasional thinking walk or paddle (sometimes we get a canoe or kayaks).

Sometimes I come out with a new or expanded outline and sometimes with oodles of new pages. I always come out with renewed energy to finish the mess-in-progress.

Have you ever gone on a retreat, for writing or some other purpose? What are your favorite ingredients for a successful retreat? Anyone else doing something fun this weekend?

Elena

P.S. This picture is of a sunrise from the deck of the house we rented last spring. Sometimes the muse doesn't sleep!

On The Road!

Happy Friday!*

I know it's not very sporting of me, but I had no interest in Royal Wedding shenanigans (not maligning those who did!--just not for me), so I won't be discussing it here today.

In fact, I haven't seen any of it except for in my Twitter stream, since I am on a train heading to the New England RWA Conference, where I'm meeting up with my friend and fellow author, Myretta Robens.

It's cool doing this traveling, and I'm thinking about the hours our heroines spent in carriages on the road heading to country estates, Scottish castles, or remote cottages where their old governesses live. That's a lot of time to spend inside with not much to do; in this day and age, where free time is at a premium, it feels like a veritable treat not to have anything else one can do, but back then, for an active person, it must've been maddening!

Of course, there were always books to read, but as we also know from our heroines, there weren't a lot of fun books. Maybe their stodgy uncles would have forced some uplifting sermon-y thing on them, or they could have snagged a copy of Ovid's poetry or something if they were being daring.

But books in massive TBR piles? Not happening for our ladies. No wonder they had time to moon about the hero! But for me now, I'm working on the train (this isn't work, I am doing other work), and I do have no fewer than four books with me for a long weekend trip. About enough, right?

What would you do with long hours of travel time? What else do you suppose our heroines did while traveling?

Megan

*I know this isn't the right type of carriage I'm discussing; YOU try to find good images while on a train and slowish Wifi.

Interview with Isobel Carr

Let's Give a Big Risky Welcome to Isobel Carr!

Today I'm thrilled have Isobel Carr visiting the Riskies to tell us about her new book, Ripe for Pleasure, dish some secrets and give away some books.

Welcome to the Riskies Isobel!

About Isobel Carr

Isobel is originally from Boulder Creek, California, but she's lived in the Bay Area (San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland) since finishing undergrad at Hollins College in Virginia and moving “home” for graduate school. Her BA is in philosophy and English (wrote her thesis on the Absurd Skeptical Hero as the living embodiment of the existentialist), but she minored in creative writing and history. She won the Intro Journals Award when she was an undergraduate, and went on to study poetry at San Francisco State University under Frances Mayes (yes, as in Under the Tuscan Sun).

After finishing graduate school, it became painfully clear that a job in the arts wasn’t going to pay enough to eat, so she set about looking for a “real” job and ended up putting the analytical skills she learned as a philosophy major to work as an international trade consultant (basically, she fights with lawyers for a living). When not doing that, Isobel is usually writing, though very occasionally she still takes a day to go to a historical re-enactment . . . in the name of research of course.

Currently, she lives in a 1916 bungalow in Oakland, California with her Mastiff, Clancy, a crowntail betta named Nigel, and Nigel’s minions, the kuhli loaches (who can’t be told apart, and thus do not get names). If you’re ever at The Heart and Dagger by Lake Merritt and you see a woman with a giant, dark-brindle dog, say hi. There’s a 99.9% chance it’s Isobel.

http://www.isobelcarr.com/ You can find her as Isobel Carr on both FaceBook and Twitter.

Ripe for Pleasure

London's most sensual former courtesan, Viola Whedon, is incapable of being seduced-she does the seducing. Until she meets Leonidas Vaughn. Her salacious memoirs have made her the target of half the lords in England, and Vaughn is the only man she can turn to. When he promises to protect her-and to make her beg for his touch-the alluring beauty finds both offers impossible to refuse.

Leonidas Vaughn secretly believes Viola possesses a fortune given to his family by the King of France. So the strong and sexy Vaughn charms his way into Viola's life . . . and her bed. But when their arrangement is consummated, he'll experience pleasure far beyond his wildest fantasies-and realize his heart may need the most protection of all.

Carr is a born storyteller. -- RT Book Reviews

Buy Ripe For Pleasure
ISBN-10: 0446572756

Read an Excerpt (pdf)

1. Tell us about your book (or the series)


RIPE FOR PLEASURE is the first book in the LEAGUE OF SECOND SONS series. I’ve always been intrigued by younger sons. Wellington was a younger son. So was Nelson. So was Charles James Fox. And so is Lord Peter Wimsey in Dorothy L. Sayers’s brilliant books, which I was reading at the time. These guys have to find something to DO with themselves. They have to make their own way (to a certain extent). I just think they have more scope than a man who’s fated to inherit a title and money, but has to wait in the wings for his father to die before he actually has any power (there’s a reason why kings and princes rarely get on).

I was watching THE LIBERTINE, and loving the sexy carriage ride after the opening monologue. The whole idea of abducting a wife, of her being complicit in it, got me thinking about the profound changes caused by the Marriage Act of 1753. If you could no longer easily abscond with an heiress, what might you do to better your odds? Who would you rely on? A club, made up entirely of younger sons, seemed ideal (and utterly practical).

Everything just kind of fed into the idea (because, really, it all feeds the beast one way or another). I’d been kicking around the idea of using the lost fortune the King of France sent to support Bonnie Prince Charlie in a book, and I’d also been toying with a courtesan heroine who was publishing her memoir, a la Harriette Wilson. I ended up combining all my ideas into one plot and calling it NO GENTLEMAN (because really, the hero is behaving very badly at the outset, when he’s planning on seducing the heroine and stealing a fortune out from under her). We lost the title due to another author’s series already having something quite similar in the works [shakes fist at Eileen Dryer], but I love the titles we hit upon for the series. So sexy, and unusual enough that I think they stand out in a sea of “How to F*ck a Duke” titles (as my editor calls them, LOL!).

So in RIPE FOR PLEASURE, we have Lord Leonidas Vaughn, new owner of his grandfather’s hunting box, frantic to keep it, but without the fortune to maintain it. He finds hints of Jacobite treason in the family tree and sets out to find the missing money. It’s not fun and games for him. He HAS to find it, or he’ll have to sell the estate he loves.

The last known whereabouts (per the letters he finds) are a house in London. A house that now belongs to a retired courtesan who’s making the male half of the ton miserable with her memoir. Leo sees the perfect opening to insinuate himself into her life and hunt for the treasure . . .

2. I hear you have a cute little dog who inspired one of the characters in RIPE FOR PLEASURE. Is that true?

I’m not sure "cute" is the word most people would use for my 170lb drool machine, but I think he’s cute, LOL! My friend Jess calls him a handsome beast, and my mom calls him disgusting. The truth is somewhere in-between.

Clancy is a 2 year-old Mastiff mix (momma was a Bullmastiff and daddy was a Neapolitan Mastiff), and he does seem to have the magical ability to make other people want to own a giant breed . . . after I got him, my best friend and her husband went and got a girl from the same litter, and then my sister did the same. Last Thanksgiving my best friend from college came to visit, and he promptly went home to Manhattan and got a Giant Schnauzer puppy. There’s just something undeniably awesome about having a person-sized dog. They’re so huggable. And boy do you feel safe!

The mastiff in RIPE FOR PLEASURE is probably more like a combo of my boy’s sisters and the Staffordshire Terrier I had before him, but yes, still inspired by “my” dogs. Clancy is super mellow, while his sisters are bit more obvious about being “on guard” (but when we have them all together, the girls are the second line of defense, and he’s clearly expected to meet whatever bogyman they’re identified head-on).

3. A lot of our readers probably already know about your expertise in period clothing, but could you tell us about that anyway? How'd you get into the area and what do you think led to the development of your expertise in that instead of something like, uh, doorknobs?


Well, those who know my secret, alternative identity might, LOL! But I imagine my background is new to a lot of people. I grew up doing historical re-enactments of all kinds, so costumes and history were simply an everyday part of life. There were always events to go to, new costumes to be made, and weekly “stitch and bitch” sessions (frequently accompanied by costume dramas). My first solo costume project came when I was twelve. I’d picked out a 12^th century Spanish gown and my mom just laughed and said, "You want it, you make it." So I did. After college, I fell in with a group of truly crazy re-enactors who wanted everything to be uber-period. They researched period sewing techniques and made all their costumes by hand. They made their own trim. They made their own hook and eyes. I tried to resist, but eventually I succumbed, and I couldn’t be happier. I LOVE hand sewing, though I don’t really have time to costume right now. *sigh*


4. What's the strangest or most surprising historical fact you've learned? Bonus points if the answer is Risky!

Hmmmmmmmmmm. So many options . . . but the "riskiest" is probably the stuff in "Aristotle's Masterpiece". There are recipes for tonics to purge "moles" and bring on menses. Basically, it's an 18^th century morning after pill.

The most surprising, and annoying, historical fact is that scones are Victorian! Oh, the word was in use, but a scone in late-Georgian/Regency England was a type of Scottish griddle cake (peasant food)

5. If you had a bazillion dollars, what would you buy me? (I would buy you the V&A, just so you have a benchmark.)

Well, if you're getting me the V&A, I’ll get you the Kyoto Costume Institute, and then we can join forces, move them both to San Francisco, and make the mean girls at the MET cry.

Give Away!

I'll be giving away 5 copies of RIPE FOR PLEASURE here on Risky Regencies today. Let’s make it simple: What the title of the second book in the LEAGUE OF SECOND SONS series (answer can be found on my website or on Amazon)?

So, leave a comment folks!

Royal Wedding Mania!

Happy royal wedding week, everyone! I had planned on pulling together a post about royal wedding traditions, but caught a sore throat this weekend and writing two WIPs on cold medicine is, frankly, kicking my butt over here. Who knows how these chapters will read once my head has cleared???

But I am definitely excited for this Friday! Some of my friends are having a wedding party, complete with cake, champagne, and (possibly) large hats, and you can be sure I will have opinions next Tuesday. In the meantime, let's look at some pretty dresses. Here are a few royal brides, both of recent and vintage varieties (and I am sure I am missing some good ones, but these are the ones I have pics of that are ready to go!). Which are your favorites? What do you predict for Kate's dress? Which tiara will she wear? Do you have your wedding party planned?

Regency Poll

I have an exciting, busy week ahead of me. Today I pick up my friend Melissa James from the airport. Melissa is my Australian friend living in Switzerland and is coming for a visit and to attend the Washington Romance Writers Spring Retreat. Tomorrow we are taking a quick trip to New York City so that Melissa can meet with her agent, coming back on Wednesday. Thursday Melissa's friend Mia Zachary is coming to spend the day with us and we are going to my friend Lisa Dyson's house to have a critique group, also including Darlene Gardner. Friday to Sunday we go to the Retreat. Next Monday, I take Melissa back to the airport.

Whew!! I'm exhausted just writing this!

So, today, all I have time for is a poll I've devised for....no reason at all!

Diane's Regency Poll

Pick your favorite:

a. Wellington

b. Napoleon

a. Keats

b. Shelley

a. Austen

b. Brunton

a. Thomas Lawrence

b. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

a. Floris Scent Shop

b. Gunter's Tea Shop

a. George Brummell

b. Banastre Tarleton

a. Elizabeth Armistead

b. Harriette Wilson

a. Vauxhall Gardens

b. Astley's Amphitheatre

a. Castlereagh

b. Sidmouth

a. Brighton Pavillion

b. Gretna Green

How many a's did you score? How many b's?

The more a's you have, the more you think like me!

What Regency choices would you create? Add to my poll.

This Thursday at Diane's Blog, I'll tell you about my New York trip with Melissa! Next Monday here you'll hear about the Retreat.

Celebrities

I recently picked up two books from my research TBR pile, Ian Kelly’s BEAU BRUMMELL: The Ultimate Man of Style (2006) and HARRIETTE WILSON’S MEMOIRS: The Greatest Courtesan of her Age (1957), edited and with an introduction by Lesley Blanch. I’m not done with the latter yet, but one thing caught my attention in both Kelly’s and Blanch’s introductions: their views on the subject of personality and celebrity.

Blanch’s introduction begins: “The nineteenth century was an age of great personalities, a last splendid flowering before twentieth-century anonymity and mass living engulfed them in its drab tide.” I was rather surprised. Even though this was written in 1957, surely they had celebrities then as we do now.

Contrast this with Ian Kelly’s prologue, in which he writes of Brummell that: “His fame eclipsed even that of his royal master, and his personal cult was described as so bizarre and alarming by his contemporaries it is reasonable to posit him not only as a key personality in the first anonymous metropolis, but as the first truly modern celebrity.”

Further, Blanch writes with what seems rather like nostalgia that the courtesan “does not flourish in an industrial age. She may be said to have vanished with the nineteenth century, the first half of which, specifically, was the heyday of all those women whose personality and style, more than beauty alone, were such that they could command, besides large sums of money, independence and respect.”

I would agree that we no longer have exactly this sort of courtesan, but I think this type of celebrity still exists, though in somewhat different form and not constrained by gender.

Here are some more snippets from BEAU BRUMMELL that seem apropos:

“He came to symbolize a new attitude in response to the novel urban landscape. He was indifferent to politics, above the vagaries of fashion, sought only to be envied and make people laugh and accrued around his person a cult based on his perceived personality. He was a celebrity in the first age when such a term was used.”

“Like a modern celebrity, his image—of an insouciant, audacious, stylish brat—had a power of its own that overcame truth.”

This makes me think about modern celebrities. Some are famous for their activity in the areas of politics, social action, music, film or other arts. I find them interesting and like to know what they’re working on, though I don’t care who they’re sleeping with. Then there are celebrities like Paris Hilton and the Kardashians. I find them a snooze but maybe that’s just me. Perhaps they are something in the tradition of Beau Brummell and Harriette Wilson.

Still, I find the Regency personalities more entertaining and more witty. Beau Brummell has also left an enduring legacy in his influence on men’s clothing. I think the style he promoted really is flattering to most men. When ordinary guys look good in business suits or in their tuxes at a wedding party, we have Brummell to thank for it. Harriette, on the other hand, hasn’t left much beyond her memoirs. They do provide a fascinating glimpse into a side of Regency society we don’t often read about elsewhere.

What do you think about the cult of personality and celebrity? Do you have any favorites, historical or current, and what do you think makes them interesting?

Elena

Reading Delights: When Beauty Tamed The Beast

I know I've gone on and on about how busy I am these days (really, people with full-time jobs: How do you do it?).

And also gone on and on about how great it is to commute by subway because I can read. So this week I read Eloisa James' latest book, When Beauty Tamed The Beast.

I've long been a fan of James' work, and I marvel at how intricately she wraps up her great casts of people and finds small moments that become big events in the course of her books. But this book, I feel, is a game-changer for her, one that takes her talent and catapults it to the next level.

If you've paid attention to this new release at all, you know that the hero is modeled after the character of House, MD, played on TV by Hugh Laurie. And James gets it all right: The irascibility, pain, frustration, impatience, and despair at the thought of losing patients.

Her heroine is not normally someone with whom I would have a lot in common: She's stunningly gorgeous and used to having men fall at her feet. But, and this is what is frustrating to her, she is also very clever, but no-one sees that because they stop assessing her after they see her beauty.

James does a few unusual things in this book, most notably not having an HEA when you would reasonably expect it to happen, and she strips away the things that each character holds most dear in order to make them vulnerable enough for love.

I appreciated, also, having the main romance be the Main Romance, not muddled by a lot of ancillary stories--speaks to the linear person in me, I suppose.

I did that delicious sigh of satisfaction as I finished the book, and I was really impressed that after writing for so long, James has improved with this release; it seems, sometimes, as though authors start to cycle downwards after a long and successful career.

Have you read this book yet? What's the most recent book you sighed over?

Megan

Thinking about Jane Eyre

In honor of Charlotte Bronte's birthday and as a followup to last week's post about the latest movie version of Jane Eyre, I'm recycling a post from 2005 about the book.

Even people who haven't read Jane Eyre know what it's about. They know who Mr. Rochester is, they know about the mad wife in the attic, they know the heroine is a friendless governess. I found this out after writing an alternative erotic novella based on JE (called Reader, I Married Him, one of the book's most famous lines)--and I showed it to a few other writers for critique. They immediately knew what it was about whether they'd read JE or not. (In my version, btw, it's Mr. Rochester who's chained up in the attic.)

[Update: I did finally publish Reader, I Married Him, and it's a finalist in Passionate Ink's contest for pubbed books, The Passionate Plume. Huzzah!]

It's not my favorite Bronte--that's Villette, also by Charlotte Bronte, a real kick-ass book that is even more brave, puzzling, difficult, and frustrating than JE.

I hate the fact that JE runs away from Rochester because he wants her to become his mistress--the fact that he's lied through his teeth to her and taken advantage of her lowly status and lack of connections doesn't really seem to bother her as much. The sexiest part of it is not the love scenes with Rochester (which I find cringeworthy), but life at Lowood. I remember reading it during adolescence and getting all steamed up in the early part of the book and bored with the rest of it, and couldn't really understand why. Wasn't it Mr. R who was supposed to float my boat? Although I have to admit that first meeting with the hound and the mysterious figure on horseback has a wonderful, mythic quality to it. The first sentence of the book is extraordinary for an era that specialized in purple prose (in which Charlotte Bronte did pretty well)--blunt, atmospheric, spare:

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

Very fitting for a book that is about repression, choices made from necessity, and the lack of opportunity for action.

My daughter, a tough, cynical sophomore (and English major) [in 2005] told me she was quite shocked by JE. Why? Well, there's all that talk about mistresses, she said. It is an extraordinarily frank book in that regard--although of course all of Mr. R's messing about took place on the Continent, where Englishmen went to behave like, well, foreigners. That makes it all the more shocking when he sets out to entrap Jane into a bigamous marriage. As for the fate of the first Mrs. R, it does make you wonder how many mentally ill female family members were quietly tucked away under the eaves. Better than sending them to a mental hospital, of course, but the same treatment could be meted out to disobedient or eccentric wives.

JE may be the first historical regency gothic. It was published in 1847, and is placed somewhere in the regency period. There are a few hints--a reference to a novel by Walter Scott, for instance--that place the novel anywhere in the first twenty-five years of the nineteenth century. I think Bronte is being deliberately obscure--it's set in that period when England hovered on the brink of change that came about with the 1832 reform bill. It was a period that fascinated the Victorians--much of Dickens and George Eliot is set in the late 1820s--because afterward, everything was different. She's writing about a time that is now history, from the perspective of the present, deliberately manipulating fact to fit fiction.

So, I really can't avoid this: JE as a great love story. Well, yes, but... There's Jane's capitulation and surrender (on an emotional, not physical level) to Mr. R--almost--she's always holding herself back, playing it safe, exercising caution and control. Jane is constantly reminding us of Mr. R's brooding physical presence, his size, and ugliness, a Beast she cannot tame. It's only when he's debilitated by the fire that he become safe enough to domesticate. I don't necessarily agree with the favorite theory that it's more than his arm and eye that got damaged in the fire (and then how on earth did Jane get pregnant--I mean, I wonder anyway, but really, that's just dumb...), but now Jane is the strong one, the heroine who makes the choice to begin her journey with him.

Comments, anyone?

The Case Against Dukes

That was Then, This is Now

Last week I blogged in support of dukes. You can read that post here. But the gist of my argument had a fairly narrow focus, in that I blogged about people who complain that dukes in stories far out number real dukes during the Regency.

This week I take up the opposite case, and that's in spite of the number of people who anticipated this in the comments.

The Real, the Hyper-Real and the Meta-Real

Genre fiction has several challenges one of which is home grown. Focusing on Romance as the genre of choice for this discussion, when a writer is working with some set of known parameters (a happy ending, say) then BY DEFINITION the reader knows that certain terrible things, even if threatened, will not actually happen. Neither the hero or the heroine will die. The obstacles in the path to love WILL be resolved.

Because of this, a Romance writer has to be even more adept at crafting those elements of the story so that they rise above the trope (or don't fall into cliche, take your pick) and still give readers the satisfaction they expect from a Romance.

Let's Get Historical

In Regency Historical Romance, the world is typically a rarefied one. The characters tend to be socially comfortable, and given the gender/class/economic divisions and that emergence of a true middle class is several years down the road, the characters tend to be the economic and social elite and the men tend to wield more power than the women.

That is, the heroes are wealthy and the women marry up into a strata and to a husband that offers them protection that is economic, physical and emotional. The women are made safe in all these realms while the hero tends to be made safe in the emotional realm since he's usually already safe economically and physically and almost always safe socially.

Why Dukes?

Readers love that social imbalance of power and the rise of a heroine into that balance. The hero is powerful in all the things that will offer a heroine safety during a time when women were dependent on men for their safety. He's Prince Charming and his heroine is going to democratize him. Within that socially elite setting the nobleman is almost (but not exclusively) the only option for the hero.

Trouble On the Horizon

Part of any story is the adept use of contrasts. The hero needs to be socially and economically powerful. A nobleman pretty much fits the bill. So, says the author. My hero must be UBER powerful so he better be a duke! (Because, rats, there's only one Prince and that job is filled, and there's only one King, and he's incapacitated.)

And right there's the problem that so many pointed out in last week's comments. My Hero must be the MOST powerful so he's a duke! Yay! Duke. And that's all the thought that goes into it. He's a duke the way a 21st century rich man drives a Lamborghini. Because it's a symbol.

If all a writer does is pick the symbols and nothing more, that way lies tedium.

And that, my friends, is why it can feel like there are too many dukes.


Now What?

I adore a well done duke. I really do. But I want him to actually be a duke. I don't want his nobility to be just a symbol.

What about you?

Andrea Penrose Winner!

The winner of a copy of Sweet Revenge is...Louisa Cornell! Please send us your snail mail info at Riskies AT yahoo.com

Stories Retold

I've been busy lately writing/working on the yard now that it's warm outside/reading research books, but I just finished reading an absolutely terrific new novel, The Great Night, Chris Adrian's San Francisco-set, modern retelling of Midsummer Night's Dream. (I knew I had to read it when I came across a review that said "Events turn ever wackier, ever more sinister and seductive, as Adrian's narrative spins outward from its Bard-based core to its near-hard-core bawdy apogee, in which both the mortals and the underworld fairies engage in phantasmagorically depicted sexual, familial, ancient, childhood, professional, and political debaucheries-cum-memories-cum-dreams-run-amok." Also, that the modern "rude mechanicals" stage a musical-theater version of the movie Soylent Green. I was not disappointed.


Reading this book (and Diane's classic-lit post yesterday) had me wondering what other modern-day retellings are out there. There are tons of movie reworkings, of course (like Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You, the wonderful BBC "Shakespeare Re-Told" films, Bride and Prejudice, and, er, Gnomeo and Juliet), and I'm sure there are far more books out there than I can thinkof. But here are a few I found:

Jane Austen is big for this sort of thing. I really enjoyed Paula Marantz Cohen's Jane Austen in Boca (P&P in the retirement community, where Lizzy is a retired librarian) and Jane Austen in Scarsdale (Peruasion in the suburbs, where the Anne character is a high school guidance counselor reunited with her girlhood sweetheart). There is Cathleen Schine's The Three Weissmanns of Westport (Sense and Sensibility), and the YA novel by Kristina Springer, The Esperessologist (Emma as barista, who can match people up according to the coffeees they drink).


YA actually seems to have a lot of adaptation titles. There is (among many others) Troy High by Shana Norris (The Iliad as football rivalry), and many Shakespeare stories, especially ones based on Romeo and Juliet.

And there's always Michael Cunningham's The Hours, Virginia Woolfe's Mrs. Dalloway in 3 interlocking stories.

What is your favorite adaptation, either book or movie? What story would you like to see adaptated to a modern setting--or what would you definitely not like to see??

Classic Novels: How Many Have You Read?

As I have said many times, I am probably the world's worst read romance novelist. I am in awe of how many books my fellow Riskies and our commenters are able to read, but I just can't keep up, even though my love of books is deep and heartfelt.

Somehow (don't ask me how), Janet's and Megan's blogs about movies made me think of movies I've seen and those I haven't. That led me to books. That led me to wondering just how poorly read was I.

There are tons of must read lists on the internet, but most were too long or included obscure (to me) titles I figured most people would not have read. Others seemed to be confined to one person's opinion. I settled on Booklist's Classic Novels list. This would be a good test of how poorly read I am.

Here's the list and my scores as well:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

yes

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

no

Beloved by Toni Morrison

no, but I think I'd like this book

The Best Short Stories by O. Henry

I'm not sure if I've read them all, but I've read O. Henry

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

surprisingly enough, no. My schooling somehow did not include this book.

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

no

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

yes, read by choice, not for class

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

yes. A must-read for any adolescent

The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

(don't hit me!) no

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

no

Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton

no. I confess, I had not heard of this book.

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

yes

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

yes

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

yes

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

no

The Great Gadsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

no

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

no

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

yes, thanks to a wonderful Black Literature course in college

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

yes, of course

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

yes

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

yes

My Antonia by Willa Cather

no, but I'm certain I read some of her short stories

Native Son by Richard Wright

yes, that Black Lit course, again

1984 by George Orwell

no. It was never required of me

Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham

no

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

maybe...but somehow I think I read it as a play

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

yes

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

yes!!!

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

no

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

yes

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

yes

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

no, but I would like to read this one

Silas Marner by George Eliot

yes

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

no

The Stranger by Albert Camus

no

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

yes

Tales by Edgar Allen Poe

yes, at least some of them

Tess of the D'Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy

yes

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

no, but another one I'd like to read

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

yes. In fact, my high school English teacher, Miz Lee, was Harper Lee's cousin, but I'd read the book before then

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

no

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

no - are you kidding?

Wineburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

no. Another collection of stories I'd not ever heard of.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

yes

My score is 23 out of 44, a tad above 50%. I suppose that would be a failing grade, wouldn't it?

I have excuses! Although I was an English major in college, I steered myself primarily to English authors, not American ones. In fact, that Black Literature course, innovative for its time, was probably the only course I took covering American authors.

Even more appalling, I asked my adult daughter if she'd read some of these books. She took lots of English in high school and some in college. She's even worse than I am, which makes me wonder about the state of schools these days. She never read Moby Dick, for example. Or The Old Man and The Sea. She did read The Grapes of Wrath, but for an economics course, not English.

Who is brave enough to share their scores? If you graduated high school in the last 10 years, we might need to give you consolation points.

Visit me again on Thursday at Diane's Blog. I'm going to talk about asking for what you want, and NOT in The Secret kind of way. And on Wednesday I'll be writing something historical for the Harlequin Historical Author blog.

The Riskies Welcome Andrea Penrose!

Cara Elliott (aka Andrea Pickens, aka Andrea DaRif) is a longtime visitor to the Riskies, but today we welcome her new persona, historical mystery author Andrea Penrose! Comment for a chance to win a signed copy of Sweet Revenge, and be sure and visit Andrea's website for more behind-the scenes info and fun contests...



Welcome (back) to the Riskies, Andrea! Tell us about your new book--and your new persona.

Sweet Revenge is my debut into historical mystery--a world I love as a reader as well as a writer. And my publisher thought a new genre needed a new name (oh, don't ask!) so here I am, wearing my Andrea Penrose chipstraw bonnet...

I chose to set the new series in the Regency because, as we all know, it was a world experiencing change in so many facets of life--political, social, artistic, scientific, economic. Add the intrigue of the Napoleonic Wars, and what better setting is there for a mystery series? For me it presents a wonderful change to explore themes and issues that are true to the era but also resonate with modern readers: Here's a small taste of the story:
Lady Arianna Hadley's desire to discover her father's murderer has brought her back to London from exile in the Caribbean. Masquerading as a male chef, she is working in one of London's aristocratic households. But when the Prince Regent is taken ill after consuming Arianna's special chocolate dessert, she finds herself at the center of a scandal. Because of his expertise in chocolate, the eccentric Earl of Saybrook is asked to investigate the crime. But during his first interrogation of Arianna, someone tries to assassinate both of them, and it quickly becomes clear that something very sinister is afoot within the highest circles of government. They each have very different reasons for wanting to uncover the truth, yet to have any chance of doing so they must become allies. Trust Treachery. Arianna must assume yet another identity as their search takes them from the glittering ballrooms of Mayfair to the slums of St. Giles. And their reluctant alliance is tested in more ways than one as it becomes clear that someone is looking to plunge England into chaos...


What is the inspiration behind the story?

Actually, if I told you that I'd give away the mystery! But the inspiration for my heroine--the series is tagged "A Lady Arianna Regency Mystery"--came in a roundabout way. Several years ago, for my "real" job, I interviewed the head of a gourmet French chocolate company, which was founded by Marie Antoinette's personal physician, and was fascinated to discover someamazing tidbits about the Regency and chocolate. I worked on a story idea that never saw the light of day, but was always determined to find a way to weave that chocolate research into a book. When I started to create Arianna, her Caribbean background suddenly made an expertise in chocolate a perfect ingredient to her character.

Did you run across any interesting research tidbits you can share?

Oh, don't get me started! There's a lot of real history woven into the plot, based on discoveries that surprised me. Researching chocolate provided a number of "delicious" little discoveries. Marie Antoinette complained about the unpleasant taste of her medicines, so her physician came up with the idea of mixing it into a solid form of chocolate--a pistole or wafer-like disc that the queen is said to have adored. (The company, Debauve & Gallet, still offers Pistoles de Marie Antoinette. A 1.7 lb box costs the princely sum of $200. Her favorite flavor was said to be almond milk). And Napoleon commissioned a chocolate treat to commemorate his victory at the Battle of Friedland.

What are some of the challenges of switching genres?

In romance, love is at the heart of the story--it's primarily about the two main characters, and how they overcome obstacles, bot exterior and interior, to come together. For me, the core element of mystery is the idea of justice. So the characters in the story see themselves and those around them not just through a personal prism, but through the lens of conundrum. This adds a different slant to creating personas, but I've really enjoyed the challenge of seeing things from a new perspective.

Since this is a romance novel blog, we have to ask--is there romance in the story??

Yes, there is! It would be pretty hard for me to write a book without having a relationship be a core element of the story, because I really enjoy exploring the interaction between people. So I felt I got to do with the best of both worlds in creating a mystery with a romance.

The hero and heroine start out as very reluctant allies, and then it becomes--complicated. They are both loners, with a lot of conflicted feelings about their past, and I enjoyed being able to thread in more ambivalence into their interaction than I might be able to do in a romance. And since the relationship will carry on for a number of books (I hope!) it allows me to wrap a lot more layers around their cores. I'm looking forward to slowly revealing who they are. (Hey, they constantly surprise me, which is part of the fun!)

What's next for Andrea Penrose? And what about Cara Elliott?

This year is a little crazy for me, in a very good way! In february I finished off my Cara Elliott "Circle of Sin" trilogy (To Surrender to a Rogue is a RITA nominee!), and in November Cara has a new trilogy debuting. Too Wicked to Wed begins the "Lords of Midnight" which stars 3 hardbitten rogues who are tamed by love.

As for Andrea, The Cocoa Conspiracy, the second LadyArianna mystery, will hit the shelves in December. It's set at the Congress of Vienna, and once again chocolate does play a small part in the plot. In my research I discovered...but that would be spoiling the fun! I hope you'll enjoy Arianna and Saybrook's adventures through the Regency world.

On Holiday

I’m writing this a week in advance, because on the Saturday it will post I will be returning from a week in Florida, where we are visiting family during my children’s spring break.

Frankly, I must say that Florida is not my favorite vacation spot. There are fun things to do, of course, and it’s good to see relatives. But the Orlando area is Too Crowded and Too Hot. I am hardened by our upstate NY winters, I guess!

I did enjoy my visit to the Florida Keys, because I went scuba diving and saw a shark, just the right kind: about four feet long and swimming the other way! Tropical vacations for me have to include some sort of snorkeling or diving.

Otherwise, I prefer temperate climates, lakes and mountains. I love Maine, especially Acadia National Park, and I’ve had many wonderful vacations in Canada. I think I’d enjoy going out to the Rockies sometime.

During the Regency, the trend for seeking out the picturesque was satirized in William Combe’s poem “The Tour of Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque,” illustrated by Thomas Rowlandson. I wouldn’t have cared; I would have gone anyway.

Here are some of my favorites among the picturesque spots I visited while on international assignment in the UK. My own pictures are buried; these are all from www.geograph.org.uk.

First, the Lake District. There’s a famous incident where a visitor, after boring Beau Brummell with stories of a tour in Scotland, asked him which were his favorite lakes. To depress the bore’s pretensions, Brummell consulted with his valet before replying “Windermere, will that do for you?”

My own real favorite in the Lake District is Ullswater, of Wordsworth’s “Daffodils” fame. My husband and I rented a canoe there one breezy afternoon. We paddled against the wind both ways (it turned just as we did) and enjoyed the movement of the clouds and the play of light over the hillsides until a light drain drove us toward shore and a nice pub in Glenridding.

Tintagel: crags, ruins and Arthurian legend. Who could ask for anything more?

The Isle of Skye: more fantastic scenery and sheep with an attitude. At one point in our travels, a ram planted his feet in the middle of the road in front of us and glared at us. I had to get out to shoo him out of the way and frankly, I was a little unnerved!

The Cotswolds: pastoral countryside, churches, cottages all built of a lovely golden stone. When my husband accidentally damaged our old brick fireplace in a fit of home improvement, we decided to rebuild it with stone that reminded us of the Cotswolds.

Do you enjoy the picturesque? What are some of your favorite destinations, in Britain or elsewhere?

Elena

Will They Or Won't They?

Apologies for the delay in posting!

Anyway, onto the talk. Last week, I flew to LA for the Romantic Times Conference, and on the flight out, the airplane showed The Tourist, starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. A beautiful cast, on paper at least.

My flight companion Liz Maverick and I watched it, without the sound, and found it as execrably horrible as most, if not all, reviewers had said.

(Worse even was today when I realized Jolie affects this weird faintly European accent. Ugh!) There was zero charisma between the two of them, and we didn't buy it for a second that either would fall in love with the other. Here is their first meet:



Now, we've all got our favorite swoony they MUST get together moments from book and film; why do some pairings work and others absolutely do not? It's so hard to gauge, which is where good authors have to come in; for example, I've just finished reading Elizabeth Hoyt's Notorious Pleasures where, on the first page, the heroine meets the purported hero while he is in the middle of schtupping a married woman. And, somehow, Hoyt convinces us that those two--Lady Perfect and Lord Shameless, as each tag the other--are perfect together.

In one of my favorite meetings, North & South's Margaret Hale meets John Thornton for the first time. She's brave enough to stand up to him--and his temper--and even though during this scene it's hard to imagine it, it's not impossible to imagine that by the end they'll have fallen in love.



What is similar between Margaret and John is their passionate protection of people, even if during this scene they are diametrically opposed.

But in The Tourist--to come back to that atrocity--there is no question, at their first meeting, that Depp's character will do absolutely whatever Jolie's character wants him to. There's no tension, no will they, won't they? about it.

It's the question that keeps us reading or watching--will they or won't they?--even when we can predict the outcome (reading romance, and all).

Who are your most electric pairings on screen or in book?

Megan Frampton

Jane Eyre

Yikes, I'm late. It's spring. I saw a bee today, the first one I've noticed, and I've been dealing with all sorts of vegetation problems outside, the result of several years' neglect while I wrote, or, more likely, lurked around inside thinking about starting to write. But never mind all that.

I finally got to see Jane Eyre, weeks after everyone else, and I think it's a good enough interpretation that it could stand a little more discussion. So I loved it, unreservedly, and reader, I would marry this movie given half the chance.

I believe--is this true?--that it's the only film version that does not resort to a voiceover to link plot elements. Yet the director took some liberties with the timeline, beginning it as Jane flees Thornfield, and actually repeating about a minute of footage when the story catches up with itself. The whole Lowood part of the book (ooh, all that discipline!) is shortened, skimming over Helen Burns and ignoring the saintly Miss Temple. The Rochester-in-drag as a fortune-teller scene was wisely abandoned and if I had any complaint it was that Michael Fassbender was too hot (even in a silly nightie. Oooh). However, even that worked; at the end, he was frail and diminished and sporting a beard a woman could get lost in.

And Jane herself--well, I've never liked any of the others, such as the permanently cross and overbitten Ruth Wilson in the 2006 BBC version, the too-pretty Charlotte Gainsbourg (1996), and I thought at moments in the 1970 version with Susannah York that she almost got it. But Mia Wasikowska was amazing; she portrayed such a sense of inner passion behind the mask.

One scene that was omitted, which surprised me at first, was that in which Jane's wedding veil is ripped in half by Bertha (uh, you do know she's the mad wife in the attic, right? oops, spoiler). But it made sense in the understated interpretation, abandoning the more obviously gothic elements.

There were some lovely moments--the sexy, and again, understated scene after the fire when Jane and Rochester almost kiss (they rub noses. Aaaw); when Jane's wedding gown drops around her feet, mirroring the earlier scene where her "fine clothes" are taken from her at Lowood.

The locations and lighting and soundtrack were incredible. Most of it was filmed in Derbyshire, and here are some of the locations. Haddon Hall, left, is Thornfield:









Have you seen the movie? What did you think? What was your favorite scene?

In Defense of Dukes

Too Many Dukes? Or Not Enough to Go Around?

There's this pernicious statement that keeps popping up among authors of historical romance to the effect that In Real Life there were only a very small number of dukes and that historical romance as a genre has more dukes than ever existed in the entire universe and isn't that just completely unrealistic?

I get a little hot under the collar every time I hear (read) someone say that because it misses the ENTIRE POINT. Which I will get to after I point out a few things.

A population explosion

Every genre of fiction is over-populated with its principal archetypes. There sure are a lot of detectives in mysteries. And Romantic Suspense seems to be dealing with an absolute deluge of serial killers. Throw in Thrillers and maybe you should be wondering about your neighbors. Because if you aren't the serial killer on your block, then sure as heck someone else is. Right? Is he REALLY just taking out the garbage or is that body parts? And dukes in historical romance! You can't swing a dead cat in 1815 without hitting a duke.

Give 'em The Boot!

If we follow the logic of the argument against dukes in historical romance, then we should ask the other genres to stop with the detectives and sleuths and serial killers. And elves, let's do something about them too, because you know what? There are too damn many elves in High Fantasy. Don't get me started on the dragons. Those don't even really exist and they're all over the place. They should leave town with the hero raised in poverty who is actually the King's long lost son AND HE CAN DO MAGIC!!!

A Book is An Island

Here's my problem with statements like there are too many dukes. It conflates the world of a book with the world of every other similar book. But each book, each story, is a world unto itself. That story is an island unto itself and when the bell tolls, it's only for that book. In this book in which the hero is a duke, it doesn't matter if there is another fictional duke in another book. It just doesn't.

It's up to the author to make him real in the story in which he is the hero.



Let's Keep our Arguments Straight
The argument against dukes in historical romance conflates cliche and familiar tropes with the fictional world of the book. Those are two separate problems. A reader might well decide she's tired of dukes in stories and wish for a story without one. But that is not the same problem as pointing out there are more fictional dukes than there ever have been IRL. That last one, in my opinion, is a big so what?

A duke in a story is a cliche if and only if he is written badly and without care. A story that doesn't somewhere in its guts think about why the hero is a duke and then use that in subtle and non-subtle ways is a book that will probably feel cliche. And it won't be because the hero is a duke. It will be because the author was lazy,

It's also not the same problem as wishing there were historical romances without dukes. And, I'm happy to say, there are.

What do you think? Are you tired of dukes?

Victorian Tuesday

Happy Tuesday, everyone! I finally got to catch the new Jane Eyre movie this weekend, after waiting weeks for it to open here, and I am so glad I did. I enjoyed it very much--despite the fact that many aspects of the story had to be cut (as they always do for feature-length films), I thought the atmosphere and complexity of the characters was still there, as well as the dark intensity. Highly recommended! (My favorite Jane Eyre is still the old Timothy Dalton version, but this might be a close second. I'll need to see it again to make sure...)

It was also very timely for me, since I'm deep into the first book of a new Laurel McKee series, this one set in the early Victorian era (1840s) and centering around two families who are old enemies, one a ducal family and one a family with underworld connections (and having done quite a bit of research now on the Victorian underworld, I can only say--I thought the Elizabethans were naughty, but those Victorians were nasty. Maybe it's the whole hidden/repressed thing the Victorians had going on, where the Elizabethans had it all out there for everyone to see. The contrast is fascinating). You'll be hearing a lot more about my research on this period later (I've never done a Victorian setting before, and I'm really loving being immersed in this new world), but for now let's do what I always like to do--look at some clothes!

One reason this story ended up being set in the early Victorian period rather than the later 1860s-70s-80s was the fashion. I love the gowns of this decade (and was inspired a lot by the costumes and general aesthetics of the movie Young Victoria--my heroine, Lily, looks a lot like Emily Blunt in my mind, and she also has a great wardrobe!), before things get a little high-Victorian excessive. But I have to remember in the love scenes that there are a lot more underclothes to deal with....

So let's look at some of the images from my Victorian Research File. I especially love that red gown--my heroine is definitely going to wear that one!
















Also this week, I'm enjoying watching the new Upstairs Downstairs (though I keep getting the naughty housemaid and the naughty younger sister mixed up--why do they look so much alike?) and reading Giles Tremlett's new bio of Catherine of Aragon, as well as working on the WIP and getting ready to go to Kansas City in a couple of weeks to see a Princess Di fashion exhibit (as well as watching the new royal wedding?). What are you doing this week? What do you think of fashion, the Victorian era, Upstairs Downstairs, or anything else in the world??