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Monthly Archives: April 2007

I’m just back from Washington Romance Writers Spring Retreat in beautiful Harpers Ferry*, West VA, one of the writing highlights of my year.

On Thursday, April 26, I had the pleasure of transporting guest speaker Julia Quinn and her sister and workshop speaker, Emily Cotler of Waxcreative Design, from the DC area to Harpers Ferry. On the way we had a very pleasant dinner together and lots of time to talk. Both of these ladies are just so pleasant and friendly. I’m delighted I had the time to spend with them.

On Friday, Apr 27, we went to Boonesboro, MD, to Turn the Page Bookstore Cafe, Bruce Wilder’s (Nora Roberts’ husband) bookstore for a mega-author booksigning. Here’s a photo of Julia and me and Lisa Gardner, another of the guest speakers. Lisa, by the way, is a doll, inside and out, and has the most captivating eyes. Lisa also speaks without notes and with great poise. Madeline Hunter (whom I had the privlege to introduce) was the third guest speaker and was also at the signing. If you can believe it, all three ladies speeches involved lists of various sorts and all were great. Synergy happens!

Back to the signing. I sat next to Michelle Willingham who is a brand new Harlequin Historical author with her first book, an Irish Medevial called Her Irish Warrior. I was signing Innocence and Impropriety.

We were right at the doorway where the visitors entered. They were our captive audience and we had the best time chatting with them! Here is one of the happy customers who bought our books. And another treat! My friend Toni stopped by. In all there were about 100 visitors who came to the signing.

Just to prove Michelle and I really were at Turn the Page, here we are with Nora (that’s her husband Bruce in the background looking harried)

After the signing it was back to Hilltop House, the old hotel that WRW takes over totally for the Retreat. The workshops were fabulous. Emily Cotler did two workshops on website design, including critquing three members’ websites. It was fascinating! The agents and editors do a variety of workshops, but one is our American Author workshop, a take off on American Idol, only kinder. Members volunteer to have the first pages of their manuscripts read out loud and three editors, Kate Duffy, Jennifer Enderlin, and Tracy Farrell, respond with their impressions. They don’t always agree, either. Another workshop I attended was with Sue Grimshaw, the Romance buyer for the Borders Group and she talked about the marketing side of books. Another workshop speaker was Michelle Buonfiglio of Romance Buy The Book, who made an exciting announcement. Her column and blog will soon exclusively be on LifetimeTV.com! Check her site for details.

On Sunday morning Nora Roberts entertained us with a talk about the difficulties in publishing that she faced at the beginning of her career which were not so different than the ones we face today. As always, the serious message of her talk was delivered with wit and humor. Nora also answers questions. One thing I love about Nora is that she always makes it clear that there is no one right way to write a book. Whatever way works for you is fine. She also stresses that the only thing the author truly has control over is writing the book. So all the periphery we worry about should not distract us from writing a good book.

Even though I love the workshops and the speakers, my favorite part of the Retreat is the time I spend with old friends and the opportunity to make new friends. At the end of it all, that is what gives me that happy sigh when I drive back home.

Do you have any questions about our Retreat? Are there any get-togethers you attend that leave you with that happy sigh at the end?

Cheers,
Diane (who has NOT unpacked yet!)

*Photo of Hilltop House courtesy of WRW’s website


Loretta Chase has written some of romance’s most favorite books, including Lord of Scoundrels and Mr. Impossible. She has won the RWA’s RITA award, and her new book, Not Quite A Lady, has just been released. Loretta lives in Massachusetts, worships Barbie, and took time out from her schedule to answer a few questions (Commenters on this interview can win a copy of Not Quite A Lady; refer to Bertie The Beau’s Official Risky Regencies Contest Rules for the rules).

Q. Readers frequently list your books as their favorite of all time; what do you think it is about your writing that readers respond to?

A. I think that most readers respond to the author’s voice. Starting a book is like meeting someone for the first time. The voice is the first impression–the personality and attitude of the story–and either it appeals to the reader or it doesn’t. How they respond to my voice will determine whether they can enjoy the dialogue, say, or the humor, or the way I develop characters. It’s a lot like dating, actually. How happy will the reader be, spending several hours with the personality of my book–or will she/he want to dump me for someone else?

Q. How has your writing changed since your first book?

A. Well, I’d hope it’s improved, what with all the practice.

Q. How did you think of writing this particular book? Did it start with a character, a setting, or some other element?

A. It always starts the same way: I need new clothes, so I’d better get to work. My most powerful source of inspiration is that line of retailers along Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue.Where the story itself started, I’m not quite sure. The process is a jumble of illogical happenings, like a dream. But here’s as much logic as I can apply to it:In some stories, I’m trying to right the wrongs of Victorian fiction, especially the way the female characters are treated. Say Character A comes to a bad or pitiful end or behaves foolishly or self-destructively. I say, “Grrrr,” and then set about reworking that character. For NOT QUITE A LADY, the trigger was Lady Dedlock of Dickens’s BLEAK HOUSE. I worship Dickens & BLEAK HOUSE is my favorite book & I watched the BBC adaptation several times, but that doesn’t mean I’m thrilled with the way he deals with women. I know this is where the spark for the story came from, and the spark led first to the heroine, Lady Charlotte Hayward. In other books the hero comes first, or the setting, and sometimes a lot of things seem to happen simultaneously.

Q. How long did it take? Was this an easy or difficult book to write?

A. Oh, they all seem to be difficult mostly and easy in just enough places to keep me from giving up completely. The main challenge of NOT QUITE A LADY was maintaining a balance between the humor that I hope is my trademark and the emotional aspects.

Q. Tell me more about your characters. What or who inspired them?

A. Lady Dedlock wasn’t the sole inspiration for Lady Charlotte Hayward, whose personality and social situation is quite different. She’s also drawn from the “good” women in 19th C fiction, and the “ladylike” women of our time. They’re apparently patient, gracious and even-tempered, and always do what’s expected of them. But inside may be a great deal of frustration, stifled anger and hurt. So the inner Charlotte is a seething cauldron, which the hero brings to a boil and explosion. Inspiration for the hero is harder to pin down, but I think my sexy scholar was inspired by Thomas Young, one of those brilliant polymaths of the late 18th-early 19th C, as well as all those aristocrats who studied and wrote papers about farming. The Don Juan side of his personality added a fun element for me to work with. He isn’t the classic bookworm but a rake who seduces women as methodically and detachedly as he carries out agricultural experiments.

Q. Did you run across anything new and unusual while researching this book?

A. My hero inherits a tumbledown estate that he’s expected to restore in short order. This plot element had me studying the less glamorous side of the English stately home, and discovering many interesting details about how laundry was done, for instance, and the design and functions of dairies (about which more appears in the Word Wenches blog archives and on my website)–and, basically, a lot more of the nuts and bolts of running those grand places than appears in the book. The most fun research, though, was meeting the pigs at Old Sturbridge Village http://www.osv.org/, a living history museum in Massachusetts (also on the blog).

Q. What do you think is the greatest creative risk you’ve taken in this book? How do you feel about it?

A. Writing feels to me like jumping off a cliff, again and again, day after day, sometimes hour after hour. It’s all risk to me, so if there are any significant creative breakthroughs in this or any other of my work, someone else will have to point them out to me.

Q. Is there anything you wanted to include in the book that you (or your CPs or editor) felt was too controversial and left out?

A. I can’t recall that ever happening to me, in any book. I’ve put in things that seemed controversial, and expected someone would ask me to cut them or reword them, but I don’t remember anyone ever doing so. That may change with the WIP.

Q. How do you develop the humor in your books?

A. It isn’t conscious. It has to do with the way I see the world and interpret it and that comes mainly from my father. He had a wonderful sense of humor and a dry wit and a great store of awful jokes, which still crack me up. Some of his jokes, in fact, are themes or plot elements in my books. So it seems that genetics may explain why I spent a large part of my youth watching screwball comedies over and over. And why I gravitated toward comic writers rather than tragic ones.

Q. What else would you like people to know about you and/or your writing?

A. The easiest way to cover that question is to point readers to my website www.LorettaChase.com, for the essential info. But for writerly trials and tribulations, musings, informed and uninformed opinions, and bits of research that don’t make it into the books, readers might want to stop by www.WordWenches.com, where I blog with six other historical writers.

Thanks, Loretta! Comment for your chance to win Not Quite A Lady!

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“…burn, burn, burn, like fabulous roman candles, like spiders across the stars…”

I’m writing this post from an Internet cafe in Santa Fe, where I’ve come for a much-needed vacation (all that writing–196 pages so far!–and Dancing With the Stars Cardio Workout-ing wears a person out!). This morning I went to the museum at the Palace of the Governors, to see a display of the original manuscript–a 120 foot scroll, see pic–of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. It’s touring the country for the 5oth anniversary of publication.

When I was in high school, my friends and I considered ourselves quite artsy and bohemian, far above jocks and cheerleaders and their ilk! 🙂 We loved books like Tender is the Night (1920s bohemianism), Dharma Bums, The Journey to the East, and On the Road. Stories of free spirits living wild lives, wandering the world. Now, when I look at OTR, I see how tiresomely foolish the characters, Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty (thinly fictionalized versions of Kerouac and his friend Neal Cassady) really are. But I still like the crazy crash-up of sex, drugs, jazz, energy, and freedom. (Mostly because I only have to live it vicariously, then go back to being my boring self!!)

What were some of your favorite books in high school? How do they hold up for you now?

This Sunday, Risky Regencies will be interviewing Loretta Chase (well, duh, Megan, we can all see the blog header). Fine, then. What’s the point, you ask?

Anticipation. Just yesterday a package, a much-anticipated package, arrived from Amazon. In it was:

50 Great Curries of India, Tenth Anniversary Edition
Anne Stuart, Ice Blue
Loretta Chase, Not Quite A Lady

I bought the 50 Great Curries cookbook because my friend Myretta Robens had it at her house when I visited a few months ago, and I love cooking and eating Indian food. But that’s not the point, either.

I got Stuart and Chase because they are two of my personal author goddesses. They are, in romance vernacular, on my auto-buy list. Other authors on that list include my fellow Riskies (and my budget thanks you for putting out so many books, Diane! NOT.), my writing friends, and other of my favorite authors: Mary Balogh, Eloisa James (who is also a friend), Laura Kinsale, J.R. Ward, Carla Kelly, Stephenie Meyer, Lilith Saintcrow, and yeah, there are more.

BUT, because I am so goal-oriented, I am going to have to wait to read Loretta and Anne (First-name basis? Sure, why not?). What will I have to do before I get to open the pages? A few ideas:

Lose three pounds
Write 50 pages
Dust the living room
Go through the 7″s in the closet that are haunting me (
vinyl records, Janet, you filthy thing!)
Write 100 pages
Lose five pounds
…well, you get the idea.

So–do you hold out books as rewards for yourself, or can you not resist diving in as soon as the mailman has turned his back? What must you do before you indulge in reading? Are any of my auto-buy authors yours, too?

Megan

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Last week I blogged about how I was about to spend a weekend as a housemaid/lady at Riversdale House Museum’s Ladies Regency weekend. I’m happy to report I had a great time and I now know what theorem painting* is, how to quarter a chicken, and how to play Haymarket (a dice game) and Sept (a card game pronounced set–it’s French for seven), although Faro had me stumped.

Here are some of us in our finery on the steps of the house (note the original sandstone pillars and solid mahogany front doors)–I’m in the middle of the back row wearing blue-gray. The lady to my right with the red gloves drove down from Pennsylvania wearing stays! To my left are writers Kristina Cook (whom I laced into her stays) and Sally McKenzie, and Katherine Spivey who is the Museum’s official Rosalie Calvert (and sometimes impersonates Dolley Madison whom Rosalie loathed).

And we’re finally having good weather at last–I’d been afraid of how I’d keep warm in my silk and was planning to wear a strange assortment of long underwear beneath it, but it was a beautiful sunny weekend. Spring is finally here, and summer is just around the corner, and this coming weekend I’ll be going to the WRW Retreat in Harpers Ferry. Then in July there’s National.

What are you doing this spring and summer? Share your plans with us!

* Nothing to do with math. Creating artwork, usually of fruit and flowers, on velvet with stencils.

Sign up for my newsletter at www.janetmullany.com and I’ll send you one of my short stories!

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