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Monthly Archives: January 2007

First off, apologies for flaking on last week . . . I know ALL of you were at home, beating your chests, screaming ‘Where is that Frampton Friday post?!? I will die without it.’ And in other news, it was awfully frigid in Hell last Friday, too.

Second, this week I wanted to talk about voice. For me, voice is what makes or breaks a book. And a blog. The reason I started thinking about this was a post Abby Godwin made on her blog about blogs. There are a bunch of bloggers, and authors, I read just because of their voice.

The best example of this is ESPN’s The Sports Guy. Yeah, I like some sports–basketball, mostly, ’cause I’m fond of tall, thin men, but I could really care less about most sports. But when writes about sports–and the latest Rocky movie–I care. It’s because his voice is so powerful.

You know how some people say ‘such-and-such an author could write a grocery list, and I’d read it’? Count me among those folks.

Even if the plot is weak, or ludicrous, if the voice is there, I’ll be there, too. The best situation is when the author’s voice AND plot are strong, but if there’s a choice, I’ll stick with the author who’s got the former. And voice is such a nebulous thing; is it the author’s personality coming through the work? Their distinct choice of language? Their sense of humor (or not)? It’s all of these things, plus something more–something that makes the author (or blogger) unique.

So who’s got the strongest author’s voice you’ve ever encountered? How about bloggers? (my favorite blogs are in a sidebar on my Writer’s Diary, go over and click around if you want. You don’t have to, though. I’m just too lazy to write them all down here. So they’re there.)

In romance, I’d say authors Carla Kelly, Anne Stuart, J.R. Ward, debut author Meljean Brook, Jennifer Crusie, and Mary Balogh.

In Blogland, I’d mention (okay, so I’m not as lazy as I look) Cindy, Suisan, Ilene and of course the Smart Bitches. There are many more (and I did not include any authors’ blogs), these are just some of the strongest voices whom I’ll read, even if they’re talking about vegan desserts.

How important is an author’s voice to you? Are you willing to overlook plot and other problems if you like the voice? Who’s got the strongest voice? What blogs do you like to read, even if the subject is not your favorite?

Thanks for reading!

Megan
www.meganframpton.com
P.S.: The painting is by John Singer Sargent, one of my favorites. Just because.

One of the advantages–I guess it’s an advantage–of having a twenty-something move back into the house (upon graduating from college, hooray! This is not a picture of her–the cakes wouldn’t last a minute in our house) is that you get to see a lot of tv you wouldn’t generally. And, yes, I’m talking about the American Idol auditions, which we have been following with horrified fascination. What makes those people think they can sing? What makes them so eager to expose themselves to humiliation and ridicule?

And what on earth does this have to do with the Regency? (And, incidentally, why is Marie Antoinette’s maid wearing a late Victorian uniform?)


Well, I started to think about the Regency period as one of ostentatious display and a certain lack of shyness in self-revelation–Harriet Smith’s Memoirs, for instance; Lady Caroline Lamb–yes, I could see her auditioning and berating Simon Cowell for being sarcastic, and leaving in floods of tears. What, he didn’t like me? Me?

It was a period represented both by the vulgar exuberance of Prinny (seen at right being laced in for the day) and the uh, jewel in his crown, the Brighton Pavilion, as well as all that elegance and self-restraint and gorgeous classical design.


Beneath his severe, beautifully tailored coat, your hero might well be sporting a lavishly embroidered waistcoat–and he’d make sure everyone would catch a tantalizing glimpse.

That’s what I love about the period, the contradictions and the sense of change–it might all be about the tailoring and the classical line, but it was equally about decoration for decoration’s sake. My theory is that this all ties into the developing sense of domestic privacy that began in the eighteenth century.


Houses were now designed so that family members could sequester themselves into private rooms–no longer was the typical house plan one where you had to go through everyone else’s room to get to the lord’s chamber, the seat of power in the house, where his bed was displayed as the best piece of furniture. Bedcurtains had always been to provide warmth and now they also provided that new luxury, privacy; chances are your servant would have his own sleeping quarters, and not a trundle bed in your bedchamber (a fairly new word in the English language).

I’d be interested to hear your take on the growth of privacy and ostentation vs. restraint, and also how you think your favorite Regency character, fictional or real, would do in his or her American Idol audition!

Janet

Last week I blogged about tear-jerkers and bittersweet endings. This week I want to talk about Happily Ever After. I love HEA myself—if I didn’t I’d be writing in the wrong genre! I find it interesting that people criticize romance endings as unrealistic.

I know some people who bash romance endings haven’t read the books and seem to think they’re all a romp in a flowery meadow or something. They don’t realize that in a good romance the hero and heroine deal with the “bitter” in the course of the story. They earn the “sweet” at the end.

It’s also a bit like what Paul Gardner said about painting: “A painting is never finished – it simply stops in interesting places.” Romance novels end at a happy spot.

I figure the hero and heroine will likely face some more rough patches, though nothing as bad as the author has already put them through. I doubt anyone wants to imagine one of them dying of cancer a year after the story ends. (At least I hope no one wishes that on my characters!) But they still have life to deal with and that means problems. The thing is they’ll face them together. Is that so unrealistic?

Romance readers don’t always agree on what constitutes a happy ending either.

Often the HEA involves a huge brood of children, angelically cute and well-behaved. In a Regency this would certainly be historically accurate as many though not all couples did have large families. (One can also imagine servants handling many of the messier parts of parenting.)

Even contemporary romances frequently include children in the HEA. Jennifer Crusie’s BET ME generated a lot of discussion because the couple in that story chose to have a dog instead. I liked that, as a change, but more because I felt that was what was right for those characters. I also read a lot of reader comments to the effect that it was a more romantic ending because children ruin everything.

OK, they often do! Babies certainly have some sort of sixth sense for detecting when parents are trying to make love, even a few rooms away. Maybe it’s a survival mechanism to ensure there aren’t younger siblings too soon! And all too often “normal” family life is a façade of happiness with a lot of repressed tension. There are certainly bratty kids around, the result of people who didn’t really want them in the first place, maybe.

But functional family life shouldn’t be an unrealistic goal. We aren’t perfect, but my husband and I try to keep it fun and not let things fester. Our kids are pretty fun to be around, at least 80% of the time. I can certainly think of adults with a far worse fun-to-be-around ratio!

Of course real life HEA with children is hard work. Exhaustion battles lust at times. You call a dozen sitters just to set up one night out. Maybe not everyone’s idea of HEA. Sometimes it’s not mine either! Sometimes I yearn for the life Crusie gives the BET ME characters. But that book works for me also because of the realistic characters, the heroine who predicts she’s going to put on weight in middle age, the hero who finds her sexy anyway, the way they nurture his nephew.

Which sorts of HEA do you like? Fairytale? Do you prefer to see her as always slim and him with all his hair, (no matter how much he’s raked his fingers through it, as romance heroes are wont to do)? 🙂 Or more realistic? Are there some HEA elements that you find too perfect to enjoy? Or are there elements of reality that spoil the romance for you?

Do you ever try to imagine characters’ lives after The End?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

P.S. Image is an illustration by Eleanor Vere Boyle, from Beauty and the Beast: An Old Tale New-Told. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, 1875.

Hello! Cara here. Have you ever had one of those Mondays… You know, the kind after a long and very busy holiday weekend… The kind of Monday when you think, “I’ll go see what Diane posted today on the blog,” and then you do — and then you sit there puzzled for a moment, because you know you read that post yesterday?

The kind of Monday that you suddenly realize is actually Tuesday?

Tuesday… And your day to blog?

Not that that’s ever happened to me.

However, as (coincidentally, of course) it is my day to blog today, and I’m sitting here with my tea (not earl grey, not very hot, but lovely nonetheless) and needing a topic for my post, I shall interview everyone’s favorite Regency time-traveler, Bertram St. James, the self-titled Exquisite.

Welcome, Bertie! How are you today?

Beautiful, of course! But oh, so cold.

Here, I’ll make you some more tea. So, did you enjoy the modern American version of Christmas?

Quite a bit. It was rather like the King’s Birthday — everyone was celebrating. Oh, and the best part was when I saw that Nutcracking Ballet Thing.

I take it you enjoyed it?

Quite a bit! The music was entrancing. I am still humming it. And the grace and elegance of the dancers was a thing of beauty unparalleled in my poor experience. (Dancing was nothing like that during my day, I fear!) However…

However?

Well, I did keep wishing I had seen a more prosperous troupe of performers.

Prosperous? Why do you think these weren’t?

Oh, please. To begin with, the ladies were wearing ragged costumes, which were so old that the skirts had all been (I blush to say) rendered rather shorter than even modern decorum would dictate.

Moreover, it was painfully clear that none of these dancers has had a decent meal in a very long time. I felt compassion every time one of the twig-like ladies stretched her arms upward, as I imagined her imploring the heavens — or perhaps Mr. Santa Clause — to give her a little food. A pizza perhaps. (I adore pizza. It was worth coming to this century purely for pizza. Particularly pizza with pine-apple and anchovies.)

Ah, I hear the kettle whistling. Thank you for joining us here today, Bertie dear! I’ll go make the tea.

My pleasure, as always.

Cara
Cara King, author of My Lady Gamester, and brewer of tea

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 12 Replies

Okay. I confess. I have a googlealert on my own name. Well, on Diane Perkins, Diane Gaston—and Gerard Butler. A google alert sends a message to your email anytime something new comes up on whatever topic you select. As you can see, I’ve selected three of my favorite topics for this service!

This week Diane Gaston popped up on my googlealert email, and I discovered that my RITA winner, A Reputable Rake, is an ebook! Harlequin has bundled A Reputable Rake with Nicola Cornick’s The Rake’s Mistress and Georgina Devon’s The Rake into an ebook available for order on eHarlequin and other ebookstores such as Fictionwise. It is called Rapturous Rake Bundle.

I’m delighted to enter the ebook market! A number of years ago I saw an ebook reader that intrigued me and made me feel that there would be a strong future for books in this format. Since then the market has grown. You might even say it provided the impetus for an entirely new romance subgenre – Erotic Romace – when Ellora’s Cave burst on the scene.

Many of us would never want to give up books, the feel of them, the smell of them, the sight of them three deep in our bookcases and piled next to our beds. When I see kids playing on their Game Boys (or whatever the “in” handheld game device is now), my own young adult offspring with their new IPods, and young career men and women with their Blackberries, I think that maybe ebooks will be the preferred way of publishing books in the future.

One idea I heard was to put textbooks on electronic reading devices. What a great thing that would be! Our high school and college students, even elementary school student, would not need to carry fat backpacks. Think of all the trees we would save! And one would hope that the cost of such books would decrease. Think of the innovations one could add to textbooks — short videos, animated diagrams, sound.

Most things I’ve read on the issue of ebooks say that there is still not an affordable, user-friendly
device on which to download books. Let’s face it, the IPod screen is a little small and even that device isn’t exactly inexpensive.

I haven’t yet read an ebook, but there is one on my TBR pile. My friend Delle JacobsHis Majesty The Prince of Toads (A Regency!) is my first ebook download and I’m eager to read it!

Ebooks tend to have very long shelf life so an author’s backlist is readily available and ebook publishers often publish books that don’t fit a typical print publishing niche.

So, have you read any good eBooks lately?
Do you hate the idea of eBooks or are you a little bit intrigued?

To set up a google alert of your very own, go here:
http://www.google.com/alerts?hl=en

And this is why I google Gerard Butler! Here he is on the set of 300, due for release in March!

Cheers!
Diane

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