The Importance of Scenery

Scenery is not only important in a story for your reader to "see" the setting of the book, but its also important for writers to be able to see that scene vividly in their minds. Obviously as writers we might have a grand imagination and most of the time can picture our settings in our minds. But I really love to get visuals on settings. It helps me to not only put myself in that scene, but to get a sense for everything that might be happening--the temperature, the weather, the scents, the surroundings, and also a real live picture can really get the mind working creatively.

Recently, we took a trip to the Smoky Mountains and went hiking at a botanical gardens. It was different than any other garden I'd been too--it was just all natural greenery. I took tons of pics because even though I write in historical European settings a lot of the places I saw were bringing my own story ideas to life.

My advice--if you pass something in your daily travels that you think would be a great setting for your book, take a picture.

This reminded me of  a road that my characters might ride on in a carriage or by horseback.

Perhaps a cave where characters might seek shelter from the rain.

Took this in the car, I just couldn't resist the rolling hills and water.

Doesn't this bridge bring all sorts of scenes to mind?

A babbling brook my character might stop to drink at.

Hanging offenses

My debut romance, Ruined by Rumor, comes out this Monday, May 21. It’s the story of a shy, dutiful politician in love with the acknowledged beauty of his neighborhood, though she’s engaged to a dashing soldier. I wanted to give my hero a political cause he could feel passionate about. Then I read this description of public executions, from Hanging in the Balance: A History of the Abolition of Capital Punishment in Britain by Brian P. Block and John Hostetter:

According to The Times the crowds at the hangings made the atmosphere like that of a fairground and included ‘the dregs and offcoursings of the population of London...Irish labourers smoking clay pipes and muzzy with beer, pickpockets plying their light-fingered art, little ragged boys climbing up posts...’ As to the hangings, the newspaper continued; ‘In an instant [the executioner] withdrew the bolt, the drop fell...They died almost without a struggle...The mob during the terrible scene exhibited no feeling except one of heartless indifference and levity.’

I figured that was something my hero would feel strongly about.

Before Britain established its first modern police force in 1829, the nation’s chief weapon in the fight against crime was the threat of execution. Property crimes--robbery, burglary, even vandalism--were punished as severely as murder. Children as young as seven could be held criminally liable. And because forgery, coining, and “uttering” (passing forged or counterfeit currency) constituted high treason, those crimes were likewise punishable by death—in fact, until 1790 women convicted of such crimes were burned at the stake. A woman could also be burned to death for murdering her husband, since he was considered her lord and master and the crime therefore constituted petty treason.

Ann Beddingfield was burned at the stake in 1763 for killing her husband.

(The reason women were burned at the stake for treason but men were hanged had to do with the original punishment for the crime, drawing and quartering. Since carrying out such a sentence required the condemned to be stripped naked and even emasculated, women were instead accorded the modesty-sparing courtesy of being burned at the stake. The sentence remained in force even after the penalty for men was changed to hanging. In later years, the executioner began by strangling the condemned woman to spare her the worst agonies of the fire. The last such burning in England so horrified the Sheriff of London that he pushed for the abolishment of the penalty in the House of Commons the following year.)

The Black Act of 1723 alone made more than fifty property crimes relating to theft and poaching capital offenses. By the regency, more than 200 different offenses carried the death penalty. They included sending an anonymous extortion letter, “wandering as or in the manner of gypsies for one month and more,” and impersonating a Chelsea pensioner (a retired army veteran). In 1801, the peak year for capital punishment, 219 felons were executed in England and Wales for crimes ranging from scuttling a ship to sheep theft.

A number of politicians attempted to address the penal code, most of them Whigs. William Wilberforce, best known today as the leader of the British abolitionist movement, introduced a bill in 1786 titled “For Regulating the Disposal after Execution of the Bodies of Criminals Executed for Certain Offences, and for Changing the Sentence pronounced upon Female Convicts in certain cases of High and Petty Treason.” The bill failed, mostly because its twin objectives--making more bodies available for medical dissection and changing the method of execution for female traitors from burning to hanging--lacked a unified message.

Sir Samuel Romilly met with more success in 1808, when he managed to have the sentence for “privately stealing from the person” (picking pockets) reduced from hanging to transportation.

Sir Samuel Romilly, a barrister by training, sought to reform the penal code.

Romilly hoped to work his way systematically through the long list of capital crimes, but his first success provoked a backlash, most notably from the harshly law-and-order Chief Justice, Lord Ellenborough, and the equally severe Lord Chancellor, Lord Eldon. (Lord Ellenborough, who also favored the use of the pillory and the jailing of debtors, had in 1803 added ten new capital crimes to the penal code by sponsoring the Ellenborough Act, which, among other provisions, included the first statutory prohibition of abortion, making it a hanging offense to procure a miscarriage or abortion for a woman “quick with child.”) Romilly’s next three bills, designed to eliminate the death penalty for shoplifting, met with failure in the House of Lords. Romilly did manage in 1812 to repeal the Elizabethan statute that made it a capital crime

Unlike Romilly, Lord Ellenborough believed whole-heartedly in capital punishment.

for soldiers and sailors to beg or wander the streets without a pass, but when Luddite riots broke out, the resulting government crackdown led to the creation of yet another capital crime, frame-breaking. Though Romilly re-introduced his shoplifting bill in 1812, it was quickly shot down, and Ellenborough and Eldon saw that it was likewise defeated in 1816 and 1818.

Sadly, it wasn’t until after Romilly’s 1818 suicide (he slit his throat in a fit of despair following the death of his wife) that reform met with real success. The 1823 Judgement of Death Act gave judges the ability to commute the death penalty for any offense except murder or treason, and the Punishment of Death Act of 1832 swept aside a third of the old capital penalties. In 1861, a series of Parliamentary acts reduced the list of civilian capital crimes to five: treason, espionage, murder, arson in royal dockyards, and piracy with violence. (Certain military offenses, for example mutiny, continued to carry the death penalty.) Public executions were outlawed in 1868, and beginning in 1908 those under 16 years of age could no longer be sentenced to death. It wasn’t until 1965, however, that the death penalty for murder was eliminated in Great Britain, and not until 1998 that the death penalty was eliminated for treason, piracy, and the remaining military offenses, altogether abolishing capital punishment in the UK.

The account that the hero of Ruined by Rumor, Alex, gives of a hanging he witnessed in London is not based on a specific execution but is a composite of actual cases.

Enjoy friends-into-lovers romance? Ruined by Rumor, Alyssa Everett's marriage-of-convenience regency, debuts Monday, May 21. Alyssa hopes you'll visit her website and follow her on Twitter and Facebook, where she promises not to spam you relentlessly.

Dream A Little Dream

The new season of America's Got Talent started this week. I don't watch that much TV but this has always been one of my favorite summer series. I like the variety of acts. Some, of course, are really bad. Then, there are the brilliant ones like this season's Earth Harp. My favorite so far. But, what I really love about this show is the contestants and their dreams.

I think dreams, hope, and happiness are entwined. I just finished writing a story and the core theme is about having a dream and believing in yourself. From experience, I can tell you that nothing is more exciting that pursuing your dreams and having them come true. This year has been a great year for me as a writer but I had to summon up the courage and belief in myself to make it happen. Dreams don't come true unless you act. Wishing is fruitless.

So, if you are reading this and you have a dream, something you would love to accomplish in this lifetime, what are you doing to make it come true? What action are you taking? Are you taking action each day? Doing something to bring you closer to your dream? Are you nurturing hope? If not, you need to start now. Summon up the courage.  Joy will be the end result. 

Patricia Preston

Check out my new website:

www.patriciaannpreston.com

Living History Museum

Today we're fortunate to have fellow Carina author Juliana Ross on the blog, telling us about her work as a guide in a living history museum. Over to you, Juliana.

For nearly four years of my life, from age 15 to 19, I spent most weekends between May and October dressed in petticoats, a homespun gown and a bonnet. No, my parents weren’t dedicated historical re-enactors. And, no, I hadn’t developed an obsession with Laura Ingalls Wilder.

I just happened to have one of the best part-time jobs ever. I was a guide at the living history museum in my small town.

Before you get carried away, I urge you to banish all thoughts of Colonial Williamsburg. The museum where I worked was constructed on a far more modest scale. It was a village, pure and simple, made up of a score of buildings that had been painstakingly relocated in the 1960s and 1970s when they’d been threatened with demolition by widening roads or changing tastes in architecture.

The buildings themselves spanned nearly the whole of the 19^th century, from a simple one-room log cabin built by some of the first Europeans to settle in central Ontario, where the museum was located, to a spacious late Victorian farmhouse with all the mod cons of the era. There was also a smithy, a print shop, a general store and a tiny church.

I loved that job, although I can still remember how cold it got in the early spring and late fall, when the heat from the fire or woodstove never managed to chase the chill from my bones. And I will never forget how difficult it was to work in the gowns we had to wear, which for the sake of simplicity were cut in a plain, mid-century style, with tight-fitting bodices, close-fitting sleeves and skirts that were full (but not comically so).

Those skirts were forever getting in my way, or catching a spark from the fire, and the sleeves were so tight that I couldn’t raise my arm any higher than my shoulder. No Anne Shirley puffed sleeves for me!

At the end of the day, I’d change out of my 19^th-century garb into my shorts and tee-shirt, drive home in my little Toyota, and happily return to my late-20^th-century life. So I can’t honestly say I truly know what life as a 19^th-century woman would have been like.

But I did learn a few things along the way. I know how to bake bread in a wood-fired oven. I know how to darn socks. I’ve made beeswax candles over an open fire (with a bucket of water nearby in case my clothes caught on fire). And I spent countless hours smoothing the wrinkles from linens with flatirons that cooled before I could count to ten.

None of this, of course, is of much use today, unless my husband and I decide to turn our backs on city life and go back to the land, or take part in one of those reality series where modern families are expected to fend for themselves as pioneers.

But those years at the museum gave me a taste—just a taste—of what life as a 19^th-century pioneer might have been like. The feel of heavy skirts as they swirled around my ankles. The perpetual scent of wood smoke in my hair. The sting of chapped, cracking fingers that had been washed too many times in caustic homemade soap. The ache of my shoulders after chopping a mountain of logs for the fire.

I like to think my work in the village has made me a better historian, one who is perhaps more sensitive to the difficulties of life in an age with none of the modern conveniences for which we barely spare a thought. And I really hope that it might, some day, help me become a better writer.

In the meantime, you can count on me the next time you need the creases ironed out of your chemise, a bonnet frill mended or a sock darned. Just don’t ask me to make any more hand-dipped beeswax candles. That hot wax really stings!

Juliana

We were real once...

When I visited the British National Gallery a few years ago, one portrait really caught my attention. It was Don Justino de Neve by Bartolome Esteban Murillo. What made the portrait stand out was the fat little dog with the red bow painted in the corner. In a room full of formality, the trappings of wealth and power, this little dog staring adoringly at his master added a level of humanity to the sitter.

 

The dog also provided me with a connection to the gentleman, and to all the other people hanging around him who’d been painted with their pets. I know there are artistic symbols attached to dogs, but there is also love and affection that even the passing of a few centuries cannot obscure. It is a powerful reminder that those people in the portraits were real once and, despite the many years between their time and ours, they were not so different from us.   

A Brief History of Tequila

In honor of Cinco de Mayo, it might be fun to take a look at the history of tequila. First, let’s dispense with the myth of the worm in tequila, a myth I subscribed to until I started research for this blog. Tequila doesn’t come with a worm (actually a moth larva) in the bottle. Mexcal, another Mexican liquor, may contain the worm. Tequila, however, is only made of the blue agave (Agave tequilana Weber var. ‘azul’), whereas mexcal can be made of any agave. Although the agave is a succulent, it isn’t a cactus but a member of the lily family.

By the time the Spaniards landed in the area we now call Mexico in 1521, the Aztecs had been drinking the fermented juice of the agave for centuries. A beer-like drink octli poliqhui was used in rituals and ceremonies. The Spanish bastardized the name of the drink into pulque. Still, the aguamiel (nectar) of the agave had never been distilled until the Spanish ran out of their own brandy and turned to the local flora to make hard liquor.

The blue agave grows best in state of Jalisco, and it was there that the Spanish first produced tequila in 16^th Century, thereby creating the first indigenous distilled spirit. Around 1600, Don Pedro Sánchez de Tagle mass produced tequila near what is now Jalisco. Later, King Carlos IV granted the Cuervo family the first license to make tequila commercially. In 1656, the city of Tequila was founded. Don Cenobio Sauza first exported tequila to the United States in 1873. One hundred years later, the US was importing over a million cases a year.

There are two basic types of tequila -- 100% pure blue agave and mixto, which may contain as much as 40% of other sugars. Tequila can be either blanco (white) or can be reposado or anejo, both of which are stored in oak and take on a golden color. I can personally attest that both white and golden taste really good, especially with the traditional wedge of lime and salt or with a chile pepper mixture appropriately called fuego as a chaser.

Dead Blonds

Now that I've got a total of four completed manuscripts under my belt (three published or contracted, one under the bed), not to mention a fair number of false starts and abandoned ideas, I'm starting to notice certain subconscious habits and pet words. Personal cliches, if you will.

One of my most consistent cliches--and I swear it was entirely unconsciously done--is the Dead Tall Blond First Husband. In The Sergeant's Lady, Anna's abusive first husband, Sebastian, is blond, blue-eyed, handsome, and over six feet tall.  After his death, she finds happiness with Will, who's brown-haired and a few inches shorter.

The heroine of my upcoming An Infamous Marriage is also a widow. Her first husband, Giles, is entirely the opposite of Sebastian in character. He's kind, gentle, smart, sensitive--he really would've made a lovely beta hero had I been inclined to make him the star of a book.  But he looks  almost exactly like Sebastian, being a tall, blond, golden god type. Again the hero, Jack, is dark and just a smidge shorter.

And that book under the bed? Well, it doesn't actually have a Dead Tall Blond First Husband, but only because it was Book One of a projected fantasy series rather than romance, and my hero hadn't yet met his one true love. The hero in question? Think James from my A Marriage of Inconvenience, albeit 3-4 inches taller. Dark curly hair, bright blue eyes, athletic in a slim, lithe way rather than burly and muscular. In Book Two he was going to meet and fall in love with his eventual wife, with the <i>slight</i> initial objection that she's happily married to someone else. The hero, being heroic, keeps his feelings bottled up until Husband #1 dies--in the hero's arms in the aftermath of a battle, no less--but after that I'd planned to have things get messy, angsty, and passionate in a hurry.  Naturally Husband #1 needed to present some kind of physical contrast with Our Hero, so I immediately pictured him as...you guessed it, tall and blond.

I swear I don't have a death wish for blond men. I can even name several I think are very hot.  I mean, Sean Bean, ammirite?

And Matthew on Downton Abbey (Dan Stevens) is really quite pretty:

But in real life, my husband has black hair, and my ex-boyfriends and serious crushes from middle school on up? Brown or black hair. The last time I wanted to go out with a blond was, oh, fourth grade. So my default hero coloring is dark, and when I want to give the heroine a past with someone handsome, but not really my type, I go blond. And I like writing widows, since it allows me to write heroines slightly older and sexually experienced without needing any complex or historically unrealistic backstory. Therefore, by definition, the men in my heroines' pasts tend to be dead.

Still, I'm due for a blond hero soon.  At the very least, I promise to find a way other than hair color to draw a contrast between my heroes and their heroines' first husbands.

What about you? Writers, do you have Personal Cliches? Readers, have you noticed such patterns in authors you follow?

Pass the Plumber's Rods

Writer's Block.

I am blocked. I think I can stop using other excuses after a year and five months and admit to myself that I am good and blocked and I need to do something drastic about it. You can see I'm blocked by the fact this post is a few days late... Trouble is, when I feel like this, I don't want to do anything writerly. I avoid my online friends, (because they are all writing and there's only a certain number of time before they get fed up with asking about the WIP), I don't want to promote, because I have nothing coming up--it's a bit of a dark spiral into depression, to be honest.

I've been stuck on a Work in Progress, set in 1922 England for well over a year now. I should have finished it (to my own deadline) in December 2010, but I didn't quite do it--being about five chapters short of ending it--and here we are 17 months later and I'm hardly more than two chapters further along.

Oh, granted in that time I have done other stuff, but it's nothing to be proud of. One published short story (let's be honest, I could have written one short story a month, at least, just to keep busy) and a few started new WIPs.

The reason I haven't continued with the new WIPs, even though I've found them interesting and compelling is that I don't want to end up with several unfinished manuscripts. I'm notorious (in my home life) for starting things with great enthusiasm but petering out and losing interest and the thought of that happening to my writing frightens me to death. I don't want this to be a nine day (or even, as it really has been, a nine year) wonder.

So what can I do to push on, get this albatross off from around my neck and get on with something else?

1. Stop playing online games obsessively, for a start.
2. Turn off the internet for two hours a day?
3. Give myself smaller targets. Better, surely to write 300 words a day until I'm back in a groove than to write nothing for 17 months.
4. Use Write or Die, this seems to motivate me (if I can motivate myself hard enough to open Word in the first place, that is!)

As to what causes it with me, I don't really know. I had the same problem when I was writing Transgressions. I just stopped for two years, but at least I was then writing fanfic, so keeping my juices flowing as it were. I wonder if it's a fear that my next book won't be anywhere as well-liked as my last book (Junction X) and then I think that that's stupid, because of course it won't be, but you still have to try and do better and better each time. I know it's not a problem with plots and such drying up as I have more projects in my head and in my WIP folder than I'll ever be able to write, and I am inspired anew every day, so it's not that.

All I know is that I'm sick of it.

Does anyone else have problems like this? I dread to ask, because I know the answer will be no - you lot are all writing!

Wish me luck! I'm going to get the lunch started and then write.

I hope...
~~~~~~
Erastes is the penname of a female author living in Norfolk, England with 3 cats and a mad dog. She writes gay historical novels and short stories with gay themes from many genres. Her two books for Carina are: Muffled Drum (Austro-Prussian War) and A Brush with Darkness (19th Cent. Florence) Her website is www.erastes.com and she can be found easily on Twitter and just about everywhere else.

The Old Bailey

I’m having fun writing the second in my series, The Forster Dynasty. The hero is a barrister struggling to make a living by defending common people, who often couldn’t pay him, against the draconian laws of the day. I’m learning quite a lot about the British legal system during the Regency period and about that grand old institution, The Old Bailey, in particular.

The Old Bailey, also known as Justice Hall, the sessions House and the Central Criminal Court is located just off Newgate Street and next to Newgate Prison in the City of London. The Bailey was rebuilt several times from 1674 onwards but the basic design of the courtrooms remained the same. They were arranged so as to emphasise the contest between the accused and the rest of the court. The accused stood at the bar, or in the dock, directly facing the witness box, with the judges seated on the other side of the room. Before the introduction of gas lighting a mirrored reflector was placed above the bar, reflecting light from the windows onto the faces of the accused. This allowed the court to examine their facial expressions and assess the validity of their testimony. A sounding board was also placed over their heads to amplify their voices.

The jurors sat on the sides of the courtroom to both left and right of the accused but from 1737 were brought together in stalls on the defendant’s right, close enough to be able to consult each other and arrive at verdicts without leaving the room. Seated at a table below where the judges sat were clerks, lawyers and the writers who took the shorthand notes which formed the basis of the proceedings.

When the courtroom was remodelled and enclosed in 1737, the danger of infection increased and at one session an outbreak of gaol fever (typhus) led to the deaths of sixty people, including the Lord Mayor and two judges. Subsequently the judges spread nosegays and aromatic herbs to keep down the stench and prevent infection.

A further reconstruction of the Bailey in 1774 saw the area surrounded by a semi-circular wall to provide better security for prisoners and prevent communication between them and the public. The passage between Newgate Prison and the Bailey was also enclosed with brick walls.

The new building provided a separate room for witnesses so that they were no longer obliged to wait their turn in a nearby pub. I bet they still did, though!

Wendy

CHANGE. The Good. The Bad. The Ugly.

LIFE IS CHANGE. GROWTH IS OPTIONAL. CHOOSE WISELY.

Anonymous

We’ve all know that there are two things we can rely on in life: death and taxes. Well, for writers, there is another.

Change.

Change is all around us and it is a part of life. We see change in the seasons and the weather. People come and go in our lives, jobs change, our health changes, new businesses spring up, others fall victim to the economy. Or even the death of an owner (our town’s yarn shop) can cause unwanted and sad changes.

Sometimes change is good, other times, it is not welcome. Either way, it is a part of our daily lives whether we want it or not.

Most people do not like change because change is scary but I have always embraced change whether it is a new home or rearranging my house or even a new job. Change freshens my life. It is a renewal of heart, mind and soul–a breath of fresh air to chase away the stale and stagnant.

For writers, it is a part of our careers for if we do not change, then we dry up and fade away like a pile of autumn leaves. In the publishing world, what’s selling now will eventually fade away to be replaced by something new and fresh. Or perhaps something old will be reborn. Like historicals, angels, time travels and ghosts. Think of the writing world as a big circle with cycles and seasons. Nothing remains the same.

I, as a writer, must be open to not just riding the winds of change, but to grow as a writer and a person. While writing White Vengeance, book 11 in my White Series, I felt as though I was slogging through muck. Each word, each scene was a struggle. I loved the characters, loved the story, but something was happening to me as a writer–I was growing and changing yet my White books were not. At least not much.

My stories all had a bit of the mystical with the use of visions, gifts of sight and other aspects of Native American culture. As the series grew, I wanted as a writer to explore the mystical aspects of Native American beliefs and go deeper into the mystical world yet my books were historicals, not paranormals. Suddenly, I had a choice: continue to fight the change happening within me as a writer or give in and grow as a writer.

So I gave in and let myself write what I wanted for that last White book. And I had a blast. Writing was fun again. Things were happening that I never imagined. I allowed
myself to listen to that inner need to change and it revitalized the entire book. I loved the book, the characters, the writing. The change in me, my writing attitude was a wondrous feeling. I knew then that as a writer I had to embrace change–let myself grow. I gave myself permission and the freedom to grow and change. It was a scary step but one I have no regrets in taking
.
I also realize in writing this, that Change was responsible for the birth of the White Series. When I wrote White Wind, I didn’t have a series in mind. Just one book. My next book was set on the Oregon Trail. I had the Jones family all set to head west and I needed a wagon master. For Jessie of course.

Enter a half-breed with issues who needed a past, reasons for his conflicts and of course, I turned to his family. Well, I decided to give Golden Eagle & White Wind (Sarah) a second son and named my wagon master, White Wolf. Okay, so now I have two connected books. Still not really a series.

But it became clear that Wolf’s family needed to make a showing in White Wolf. I already knew that Wolf had a powerful warrior brother named Striking Thunder as this was revealed in White Wind. Then I, in my “Godly” role of Creator, gave the two brothers, two sister. Nice even number of children for my original hero/heroine.

Well, it became quite clear that these children all need some major changes in their lives in order to grow and become the adult characters I envisioned! A series was born with the simple act of allowing myself to be open to change.

Change is still happening in my writing. My SpiritWalker series was born of the changes that took place in writing White Vengeance. I’m currently nearly done with my second SpiritWalker book that demanded many changes in my writing. I’ve also taken this new series to contemporary settings and surprise, it changed again.

There are more than just SpiritWalkers in this world. My SpiritWalkers are at the top of the “myth” chain of special humans but there are a whole host of other beings walking my world. Some good, some bad and some truly ugly beasts. None of any of this would have been possible if I had stuck to the same old thing.

Today, change has made me a better person. Even the disaster of losing my retail business is revealing the good. That change wasn’t just bad. It was ugly in so many ways yet due to my positive outlook and my belief that change is ultimately good even when it looks horrid, I’ve come out ahead.

So what is changing for you? Is it a good change? If it’s bad or ugly, is there good that you can see and hold onto? How do you view change? Is it refreshing or something you resist? If you resist change, why? I believe we should all think about change, see and analyze changes around us and allow change to make us better people.

What are your thoughts?


Susan Edwards
Susan Edwards ~ Magic, Myth & Wonder
White Series
SpiritWalker Series
http://susanedwards.com
http://susanedwardsauthor.blogspot.com/
http://twitter.com/susan_edwards
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Susan-Edwards/40226247104

The Drawing Room

A middle-class drawing room (Victorian era)

Before I became a voracious reader of the Regency era, an amateur researcher, and writer, if someone had told me they entertained their guests in the drawing room, I would have thought they were having an actual drawing party--crayons, pencils, chalk, markers, paper--the whole nine yards.

Why was it named the drawing room? It actually stems from the term withdrawing room or chamber. A host would take their guest to the withdrawing chamber to entertain them, or those of the household would withdraw their for privacy to relax.

Ladies might disperse after dinner to the drawing room for conversation, sewing, reading, a small (or many small) glasses of something tasty, while the men took to the cigar room for drinks, cigars and man-talk. (And I HAVE to add here, that while I was at the Romantic Times Convention a couple weeks ago, I went to a Jane Austen Happy Hour, where they let us taste several Regency era beverages--I enjoyed sherry and port! Give it a go, if you haven't already.) 

The Blue Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace

Perhaps the entire dinner party might converge upon the drawing room for some games or to listen to music. Or the family, if they aren't entertaining might take to the drawing room to listen to some music, read to each other, or just "be".

But mostly, the formal drawing room was used to entertain guests, and for those calling on you during the day--they would be taken to the drawing room where you'd receive them.

An eligible maiden, would entertain her suitors (with a chaperone of course) in the drawing room. She might also gossip with her friends in the drawing room over tea.

Today's drawing room, might be called a living room. I remember growing up, when we visited my grandparents, they had this WHITE room, I mean, everything was white. We weren't allowed in there unless it was a special holiday, we were dressed up and no shoes. It was very special to go into their white room, and we sat prim and proper on the very white couch.

Eliza Knight is the multi-published author of sizzling historical romance and erotic romance. Visit her at www.elizaknight.com or www.historyundressed.com

The Beauty of Buttermere

My marriage of convenience regency, Ruined by Rumor, arrives May 21. In it, the heroine and her best friend discuss a young lady who's been (to use the regency term) "ruined." My heroine mentions the Beauty of Buttermere—a real-life regency celebrity, famous for having been the victim of a heartless seducer.

Mary Robinson was the pretty daughter of an innkeeper, so pretty that when she was fifteen, she caught the eye of a travel writer who was visiting her village in the Lake District. He described her in such glowing terms in his guidebook that she became something of a tourist attraction, earning the nickname “the Maid of Buttermere.”

Ten years later, in 1802, Mary met a smooth-talking man more than twice her age. He claimed to be the Honourable Alexander Augustus Hope, officer, gentleman, member of Parliament and younger brother of the Earl of Hopetoun. He was actually a con man named John Hatfield. He'd been married twice and was already engaged to a third woman, though the second of his two wives was still living.

Mary Robinson, drawn from life by James Gillray.

Hatfield was staying at an inn in nearby Keswick, where some denizens of the town were inclined to doubt he was really the brother of an earl, since he was given to occasional vulgarities and questionable grammar. But he also had a fine carriage, and he franked his letters—meaning instead of paying for postage, he merely signed his name, a privilege accorded to members of Parliament. Since doing so under false pretenses qualified as a capital offense—it was not merely forgery, but treason—people were inclined to take his claims at face value. And since the relatively cosmopolitan citizens of Keswick accepted Hatfield as the brother of an earl, the humble villagers of Buttermere never doubted him for an instant. He wooed and won Mary Robinson, and the two were married in a church wedding on October 2, 1802.

The marriage of a nobleman’s brother to an innkeeper’s beautiful daughter was the kind of storybook romance beloved by newspaper editors, and the news soon made its way to Scotland, where acquaintances of the real brother of the Earl of Hopetoun realized that an imposter was posing as Colonel Hope. Meanwhile, the people of Keswick had learned of the wedding, too, and since Hatfield had been drawing spurious bank drafts there and was supposed to be engaged to a young lady of their town, they realized he was (at the very least) a scoundrel and not to be trusted. One of the spurned young lady’s friends immediately wrote to the Earl of Hopetoun. Hatfield's lies were about to catch up to him.

Mary began to suspect—too late—that something about her new husband was not entirely on the up and up. Soon afterward, a warrant was issued for his arrest. Hatfield was taken into custody, but he escaped and bolted for the coast, then to a hotel in Cheshire. He left behind a dressing-case, and beneath its false bottom poor Mary discovered letters from his wife and children, addressed to him under his real name.

Hatfield was eventually caught in South Wales, questioned in London, and sent to the Cumberland assizes to be tried for forgery. Mary wrote the magistrate who questioned him in London, “The man whom I had the misfortune to marry and who has ruined me and my aged parents, always told me he was the Hon. Colonel Hope, the next brother of the Earl of Hopetoun. Your grateful and unfortunate servant, Mary Robinson.”

At Hatfield’s trial, witnesses included respectable citizens who knew the real Colonel Hope and those who had known Hatfield under his real name. A letter was produced, written by Hatfield and endorsed in lieu of postage Free, A. Hope. The jury returned a verdict of guilty. Hatfield was hanged in Carlisle on Saturday, September 3, 1803. The jurymen later admitted that they had been reluctant to see Hatfield condemned merely for franking a letter, but they overcame their scruples because of the heartless way Hatfield had seduced and betrayed poor Mary Robinson.

In the end, the public’s sympathy was entirely with Mary, and despite the scandal of her invalid marriage, fortunately she was seen as more innocent victim than damaged goods. In 1807 she married a respectable farmer named Richard Harrison, and they went on to have four children together. Still, she remained famous both for her artless beauty and for her victimization, with William Wordsworth calling her in his poem The Prelude, “Unspoiled by commendation and the excess/Of public notice—an offensive light/To a meek spirit suffering inwardly.” To the newspaper-buying public of the regency, the beauty of Buttermere was the epitome of virtue seduced and betrayed.

Ruined by Rumor, Alyssa Everett's regency romance, will be published by Carina Press on May 21 and is currently available for reviewers on Netgalley here. She hopes you'll visit her website and follow her on Twitter and Facebook, where she promises not to spam you relentlessly.

Beware the Ides of April

  

Tax day is nearly upon us. If you haven’t already fired up the Turbo Tax software, then you have some homework to do this weekend. While you’re slogging through numerous forms more complicated than quantum physics, take heart, our tax system is much better, and far more forgiving than the ancient methods.  Today, I’m going to give a very, very quick and dirty history of ancient civilization and medieval English taxation.

If you were living in the ancient world, you would be squeezed not by Rome or Thebes directly but by “tax-farmers”. Men who’d bid to obtain the office and whose job it was to make you pay. These men were loathed across the ancient world because if they came up short, they were required to make up the difference themselves. Since they were not usually from the ruling classes, they didn’t have the social clout to make the rich pay. As a result, they tended to squeeze every last denarii out of the middle class and the poor. Later in the empire, the office of tax collector became hereditary, so some people were bound by birth to be the most unpopular person on the block. When the Roman Empire finally collapsed in 480 AD, the knowledge, learning and complex civil service of Rome disappeared, but taxes remained.

Under the Anglo-Saxons, land was taxed and the proceeds paid to the king. When the Vikings showed up, the money was used to either fight them or pay them to go away (the “Danegeld”).  Once the Normans arrived, William the Conqueror instructed his men to find out what everyone owned and how much they owed him. Thus, the famous, or should I say infamous, Domesday Book was compiled. Landowners were taxed based on how much land they held, but, if they were friends with the king, the king could grant them exemptions. As time went by, too many exemptions meant too little tax money, and the monarch started getting testy. The testiest monarch was King John, but his nobles weren’t having it. They rose up and forced him to sign the Magna Carta which forced the king to get permission from the nobles before he could raise taxes.

So, when you’re filling out your 1040 this weekend, be thankful the Vikings aren’t at your door, King John isn’t seizing your land, and you weren’t born into a tax collecting family in ancient Rome.

A Few Tips on Writing Love Scenes

I’ve been writing romance since 1990.  Even in the beginning, I wrote hot.  That’s what I liked to read, and I sometimes would poke around the middle of a new book looking for the love scene.  As I created my own story, I most looked forward to scenes of physical of intimacy between my characters, ranging from the first innocent brush of hands, to the first kiss, to the first scene where they almost make love, to the first time they consummate their passion.  And then, of course to repeat performances because they just can’t get enough of each other.

Twenty-two years is a long time to have been doing something, and over that time, the romance genre has branched out and experimented, boldly going places where our foremothers didn’t imagine.  A subset of the genre has ventured into the frankly erotic, and I’m one of the people who’ve followed it there.  My Carina titles aren’t erotic, but they’re hot.  Romantic Times even characterized Miss Foster’s Folly as a “scorcher.”

Today, I’d like to offer a few tips on writing the physical side of love.  They’re not exhaustive.  I don‘t have time or room here to give a complete course on writing love scenes.  As always, you should certainly ignore my ideas if they don’t feel right for you.  In any case, here they are.

1) Climaxes aren’t the main point.  That may sound odd, but I once wrote in the margin of a contest entry “to many climaxes.”  Several times in the chapters I read, the main character would become overcome by lust and dash into the bathroom or somewhere else private to give herself some relief.  It wasn’t convincing.  What we need to experience as readers is the realization that our characters have committed to making love to each other, followed by the first touches and then the climb to full arousal.  In fact, the plateau right before the ultimate moment has the greatest potential for showing how excited the characters have become.  Draw that moment out in great detail and follow it with the ultimate reward, and you’ll have satisfied readers.  It’s possible to linger too long in the plateau phase, but I’ve seldom seen that happen.  Rushing things is more common.  Ask for feedback from other writers if you’re having a difficult time with this.

2) Euphemisms and other problems with language.  Back in the olden days, we weren’t allowed to use crude words for things.  “Manhood” and “hardness” were pretty much necessary as was “her most sensitive scrap of flesh” because the real words for these things didn’t appear in romance novels.  Of course, even back then, we all laughed at things like “his purple-tipped dart of love.”

Now, we use more straightforward language, but we still have a problem with the use of language during high arousal.  Namely, just about nothing rational we can say will accurately reflect what goes on in someone’s mind as s/he approaches climax.  While we certainly don’t think of “my most sensitive scrap of flesh” or “my throbbing organ,” we also don’t really reflect on those body parts by their more down-to-Earth or clinical terms, either.  Mostly we think in simple concepts, our intellectual brains having tuned out long before.  We might think “harder, lower, there, don’t stop” but that’s about it.  Similarly, we don’t talk a whole lot but only make noises that are pretty much impossible to translate to the written word.  Trust me on this.  I’ve tried.

I think, in the end, we have to compromise between what’s real and what written language allows us to convey.  So, while we won’t use long, flowery descriptions of body parts and what who’s doing to whom, we will have to give our characters a little more coherent thought than what actually takes place during sex.  Similarly, although our characters won’t speak in long sentences with subordinate clauses, we can allow them a little bit of teasing or telling the other how very turned on they are.

This issue is something I’m still grappling with in my writing, and I’d love to hear your thoughts and any solutions you may have come up with.

3) She did/he did.  While we’re writing love scenes, it’s easy to slip into a rhythm of describing our characters’ actions and reactions to the acts of love.  It comes out something like:

“He pressed a kiss to her earlobe and then another against the corner of her jaw.  She sighed and dug her fingers into his hair to urge him downward.  He moved lower, now caressing her neck and skimming his fingers over her ribs.  She arched her back and stretched at the pure, sensual pleasure of his body moving over hers.”

That’s extreme, but I used to write in something similar to this rhythm until an editor finally told me to cut it out.  I’ve also seen it in other people’s writing.  As a matter of fact, I think this pitfall is what results in what readers see as “tab A into slot B” love scene writing.

Of course, inserting emotion in bits between the lovely caresses will help to fix this problem.  Express her joy that this magnificent man loves her.  Show her surprise that anything could feel so good.

For a different rhythm, you can insert a sentence fragment or even a one-word sentence.  You can also change the sentence structure.  Above, I could have written, “Moving lower, he caressed her neck while his fingers skimmed over her ribs.”  Be careful, though, not to have characters do two things at once if doing both is impossible.  For example, a woman can walk slowly toward her lover while removing her bra.  If she tries “Removing her panties, she walked slowly…” she’s like to end up flat on her face.

Give these a try while you're writing your next love scene and let me know if they help.

http://www.alicegaines.blogspot.com

authoralicegaines@yahoo.com

Help me name my next heroine!

I turned in the manuscript for my next Carina book, An Infamous Marriage, less than a week ago, so I’m taking the first half of April off from writing. But that doesn’t mean a break from thinking about my next (as yet uncontracted) project.

I’m still in the earliest research and brainstorming stage, but I’m planning to write a novella, working title Widow’s Choice, set in the same milieu as my debut book, The Sergeant’s Lady--i.e. with Wellington’s army on the Iberian Peninsula. Only this time neither the hero nor the heroine is an aristocrat.

The hero already has a name--Elijah Cameron--and as soon as I thought of it I knew I couldn’t possibly call him anything else. The heroine remains nameless...but you can help me change that!

I’m still working out the details of her backstory, but I know she’s an English country girl, possibly a farmer’s daughter or a former dairymaid. She’s very pretty in what I think of as a classically English way--chestnut hair, blue or gray eyes, and rosy cheeks. She’s the kind of woman you’d expect to meet walking down a lane like this, if you happened to be walking down it 200 years ago:



So I want her name to capture that essential Englishness, and in a way that sounds distinctive without sounding upper-class. Here are my ideas for her first and last name. The last name list is much longer because, as I sometimes complain to my critique partners, The Big Book of Historically Accurate Regency Baby Names is more like a pamphlet. Let me know which combination you think would best fit my character, or feel free to suggest alternatives. Right now I’m waffling between Jenny Steptoe and Rose Longshaw, but I’m willing to be persuaded.

First Names:

Sarah
Jenny
Rose

Last Names:

Barnshaw
Fairbrother
Hawcott
Holyoak
Hopcraft
Lamborn
Longshaw
Lovegrove
Maycock
Mellidew
Merrifield
Narroway
Snowhouse
Steptoe
Wellstood
Dowsing
Oxborrow

----------
Susanna Fraser writes Regency romance with a focus on the Napoleonic Wars. The Sergeant's Lady and A Marriage of Inconvenience are available now from Carina Press.

A Brush with Darkness - out now!

My second novella for Carina Press came out on the 21 March. It's my first paranormal--and possibly my last--there are many people doing the genre better than me. It's called "A Brush with Darkness" and is set in 19th Century Florence.

Why Florence? I hear you say. And the God's honest truth is, I haven't a clue! I've been to the city, but then I've been to dozens of European cities and Florence was lovely but no lovelier than Venice or Amsterdam. However, as the story is about an ancient vampire matriarch, her "grandson"? and a very talented up and coming painter, the medieval gorgeousness of Florence seemed to be right for the setting.
I wanted to emphasize the corruption of Florence too, as it was terribly corrupt for many, many years despite it being officially a democracy - the Medici--bankers to the Popes--ruled the city from behind the scenes, Not that A Brush with Darkness is political but I simply hint at what might be going on.

Michel is the protagonist of the story and he narrates in first person. His father died, after having lost his buisness to a partner and Michel, his mother and sister are now dependent on the "good graces" of that business partner, Michel's patron, Signor Bettano. It is Bettano who introduces Michel to Signora Guildeccia who wishes him to paint a relative of hers, the exquisitely beautiful Yuri. Who is he? Is he her son? Her lover? Her grandson? Michel can hardly imagine.
The story explores the light and the dark of corruption and of relationships of many types--sometimes the worst of us do the best things, and sometimes the best of us sink into horror we can never recover from.

Here's an excerpt for you. Michel is ordered to attend a ball with his patron:

After initial introductions to our host and hostess, Bettano left me with instructions to be available when called, and he swept into the glittering throng with a greasy smile on his fat face.

Standing sullenly near a corner out of sight of my patron, I wondered how long it would be before I could escape, how many glasses of champagne it would take before he stopped trying to find me every time he wanted to show me off.

As I lurked, a voice spoke from the other side of the column. “Don’t move. He’s looking this way.”

I flattened myself against the marble instinctively. The voice spoke again. “Now. Round the back. This side, he’s moving.” I obeyed without thought, sliding around the pillar, the stone cool through my jacket.

The man had his back to me, scanning the glittering dance floor, broad shoulders filling black velvet. He turned and my knees weakened.

The smile on his face had made Lucifer throw himself from the gates of heaven in unrequited passion. “Well done. Now I have you. He has been claimed by Count Dimillio, and he will not escape from him and his ever-so-grateful family for at least an hour.”

He took my hand to shake it, but instead pulled my glove off before taking my hand in his. The touch shook me to my core—impossible to describe and yet I can feel it still—it was as if my arm were suddenly boneless. It seemed I had no control over the muscles and sinews which held me together. 

If he had let me go, I was certain I would have poured to the floor like quicksilver. The nerve endings in my hand seemed to burn under his touch; his cool skin singed my flesh.

He used my hand to pull himself closer, keeping my hand in both of his. His fingers danced over my knuckles, entwining and tangling with mine until I could not tell which belonged to me and which to him. My cock, which had stirred on first seeing his face, now seemed boiled in its prison of cloth. 

The lust sweeping through me was a guttural, visceral rumbling, seeming deafening to my ears, making the blood drain from my face.

“A pale and silent artist,” he said in the lowest of tones. “A rarity, then. How will you pose me without words?” His eyes reflected the glitter of the room, the pupils so large I could hardly make out the colour of the irises. The flames of the candles accentuated the highlights in his golden hair, and he seemed more alive than anything I’d ever seen before—light radiated from him.

The impulse I felt to pull him closer was unbearable. I imagined I could feel the heat of his body even though we were still inches apart. He leaned forward—he was only a little taller than I, but that night he seemed to tower over me like a god.

“Are you as hard for me, I wonder?”

The words should have shocked me, but they did not. I was and I wanted him to know it. I knew nothing more of him than his face and his voice, and yet he owned me completely.

Softly, he pulled my hand down, down, and my breath was held in a prism of sound, suspended by a cobweb. One swift cut and my heart would have stopped. His mouth opened and a deliciously moist tongue ran its course along his pale, slender lips. He pressed my hand to his trousers, and my palm encountered such rigidity beneath the velvet that I gasped, the breath returning to my lungs like a forest fire, scorching and burning

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Buy here from Carina Press  $2.69 - a bargain! - and I hope that if you try it, you enjoy it! 
I am offering one free copy to one lucky commenter - simply ask me anything in the comments and I'll pick a winner and will email them on Friday 6th April.

The Perfect Impostor

For me, tomorrow is the day that writers both anticipate and dread. My latest baby, The Perfect Impostor, hits the digital book shelves. What will people think? Will they appreciate all the blood, sweat and tears that went into creating it? Will all those lonely hours pounding away at a keyboard, doing research, wrestling with edits, agonizing over every last comma, speech and internal thought process give pleasure or will readers simply shrug, wonder what I was on when I wrote it and look for something else?

Why do we do it?

Because we're writers, that's why. Because there's never been an easier time to go through the physical process of writing a novel. I attempted my first tome almost forty years ago. Promise not to laugh but I had to bash it out on an electric typewriter, using carbon paper so I could make a copy and white fluidy stuff to correct errors. There was none of this copying and pasting business, moving chunks of text around, correcting errors as I went and...well, you get the idea. My point is, you had to really want to do it.

Then there was research. Remember encyclopedias? No, not the on line type but the heavy dusty books that used to line shelves in houses and libraries. If you wanted information about a particular location, or house, you had to write to the local tourist board or National Trust and ask nicely. And I don't mean you sent an email. You actually had to put pen to paper, buy a stamp, find a post box...

Yep, times have changed. Modern technology had made the whole writing/research process, not to mention editing and communication a whole lot easier. But one thing will never change. That feeling of fear/anticipation that grips this particular writer on the eve of publication.

The Perfect Impostor a sparkling Regency mystery/romance now available from Carina Press and all good online ebook stores.

Stop by my website at http://www.wendysoliman.com where you can read the first chapter of The Perfect Impostor. I'm running a contest there. Just answer a simple question and you could win a copy of the book.

Good luck!

Wendy

How Did a Regency Heroine Stay in Shape?

In the majority of romance novels, our heroines have trim bodies. Some are thinner than others, some are lithe. But how, without the use of a gym, Zumba classes and running shoes would a heroine stay in shape?

Here is what I'm thinking...

• She walks daily. Even if its just from room to room in her house or in her own gardens. A lot of ladies would also walk the parks, walk while shopping.
• She dances at least once or twice a week (if not much more!). There are dancing lessons as well as balls.
• She rides a horse several times a week--a good workout for the hips, buttocks, thighs, and her arms.
• She takes the stairs. She would walk up and down the stairs several times a day.
• There was no access to sodas, candy bars and extremely refined products. Most sweets were made using more "whole" products (but even these would give a girl a few more unwanted pounds if eaten in the extreme). And speaking of whole foods--she wouldn't eat the processed foods we consume today.
• She was taught from an early age to eat smaller amount so food--it was more lady like.
• The portion sizes were smaller.
• She drank tea, which has been linked with a faster metabolism.
• She got plenty of sleep. Not sleeping enough has been linked with a thicker middle.
• She was able to relax more during the day. Stress has been linked to weight gain.

In conclusion, even without a pilates video and a stability ball, she could keep herself in relatively good shape.

Any other ideas?