On Sunday, May 27th, the Riskies will be interviewing award-winning author Andrea Pickens!
Andrea will be talking about her upcoming release, The Spy Wore Silk.
Comment for the chance to win an autographed copy!
On Sunday, May 27th, the Riskies will be interviewing award-winning author Andrea Pickens!
Andrea will be talking about her upcoming release, The Spy Wore Silk.
Comment for the chance to win an autographed copy!
Hello!
Bertie the Beau (our resident Regency time-traveling exquisite) and I watched the season finale of Heroes last night, and Bertie just can’t stop talking about it!
So I thought — why not have an online discussion with him, to see what a Regency dandy thinks about superheroes?
Luckily for me, he agreed.
Hi, Bertie! Thanks for joining us!
Delighted to be here! Thank you for the tea.
You’re very welcome! So, Bertie — what did you think of Heroes last night? Did it fulfill your expectations?
Oh, I found it fascinating. But I do wish there hadn’t been quite so much fighting. Firearms, swords, fists — I did wish it would stop!
Oh — did the violence bother you?
Bother me? Oh, no. I quite like violence.
You…like violence? (Should I be worrying about this? Are you going to start having melees in my living room?)
Goodness, nothing of the sort. When I say I like violence, I mean I enjoy watching things such as prize-fighting (the science, the agile movements, the beautiful bodies) and fencing (the sheer poetry of motion).
So…what part of the fighting in Heroes didn’t you like?
They got all messy. It was highly displeasing!
The characters in Heroes should look dapper, like this:
Ah, yes. Such a nice coat. And I do like the hair.
Precisely! That is what heroes should look like.
Not with their hair all over the place, and dust and dirt and whatnot randomly sprinkled about, like this:
Now I ask you: is that attractive?
Well, as that is the villain, I don’t think he’s supposed to be attractive.
Nonsense. Everyone should be attractive. (Particularly the villains. After all, isn’t it said that villains should be rounded characters, and not all bad? That’s a subtle way of saying they should be handsome and well-dressed. And definitely clean.)
Hmm… I fear we’ve gotten off the subject. (You do have a wonderful way of leading the conversation into unexpected paths.) So I’ll just finish by asking: if you could have one superhero power, what would you have? The ability to always be elegant, or never get dirty?
Ahem. I already have those powers.
Oh, yes, sorry. I knew that. So, what would your power be?
I would most like the ability to render all animals around me (particularly cats) magnetic, so that if they shed their fur, it still sticks to them, and never touches my coat.
Lovely. (Though I’m not sure you’ll be invited into the Justice League anytime soon. That’s not exactly a power to rescue people with, is it?)
Oh, very well. I will specify that my power will affect all cats everywhere on the globe — and I will so beautify the world that I will be hailed the most superb of all super heroes.
Thanks for joining us today, Bertie!
My pleasure. (And yours, too, of course.)
Cara
Amy, you have won a copy of Sabrina’s new book, BEWARE A SCOT’S REVENGE! Please email riskies@yahoo.com to claim your prize.
And thanks to all who commented! We’ll have more great interviews (and giveaways) soon — and don’t forget the Regency fun we have here every day! Thanks for joining us — and do come back often!
The Riskies
Since Amanda already disclosed our obsession with Dancing with the Stars (final competition tonight!) and Project Runway, Top Chef, Top Design, Shear Genius, etc etc, I thought I might update you on Bullrun.
Remember our interview with romance cover model Richard Cerqueira? He announced that he and his brother were competing in the reality TV show, Bullrun, a cross country road competition on Spike TV.
I watched every episode of the competition and it had much of the drama and excitement of those other reality TV shows mentioned above. There were petty rivalries, close calls, major obstacles to overcome. The personalities of the competitors were, of course, a major component of the show’s drama.
I’m pleased to announce that Richard and his brother came in second in the competition! They didn’t win the prize money, but they put forth a great effort, coming from behind, barely making the cut in the first weeks of the show. I was disappointed that they did not get more air time and mystified why the show’s producers thought that the mostly bleeped out dialogue of the other teams were more screen worthy. Team Cerqueira did not swear nearly as much as the others and they pretty much reached their position by using their own resources. Other teams made alliances in the early weeks, seeking to better their chances of winnng over other teams, but the Cerqueiras made it on their own. They came in second even with a major setback of having to use 2 hours to get their brakes repaired. I was really glad they made it to the top two teams.
Spike TV is not my cable channel of choice. I do watch a lot of the shows on the Style Network, like How Do I Look?, Fashion Police, The Look for Less. These shows all involve style makeovers of one sort or another. My very favorite makeover show is What Not to Wear, both the British version and the American one.
I’m also fond of reality shows such as Clean House and Clean Sweep (which I can’t find anymore!). These two shows basically go into a cluttered person’s home, clear out their cluttered room, sell the junk at a yard sale and redecorate the space into a neat, organized, pretty room. It is the stuff dreams are made of…come clean MY house and make it beautiful!! It is the turmoil the characters go through to give up their beloved but junky items in order to have a functional room that intrigues me.
I also love the drama of selling houses and so watch the HGTV channel and its House Hunters, Sell this House, and Designed to Sell.
Lately I’ve also been watching reruns of The Biggest Loser.
How this all fits in to writing risky regencies, I’m not so sure. I am certain some of my other Riskies are slack jawed with shock at my level of entertainment…..
But I know Amanda shares this folly. Keira, our Risky frequent poster is also with us….although maybe even they have not slid this deep into the mire….
(What reality tv shows are YOUR secret pleasure…mmmmm? And did anyone else watch Bullrun?)
Sabrina Jeffries is a New York Times bestselling author, a lover of outrageous jewelry, and lives in North Carolina with her husband and son. Her latest book, Beware A Scot’s Revenge, has just come out, and is the third in her School For Heiresses series. Commenters to the interview will be entered to win a copy of Beware A Scot’s Revenge; check out the official rules here. The winner will be announced on Monday night.
Welcome to the Riskies, Sabrina. Thanks for joining us.
1. Can you talk a little bit about your background, and how it helps—or doesn’t—in your writing?
Growing up in Thailand opened my mind to different cultures, which is good for any writer. Also, because we were isolated in the country and I had no other American kids to play with (and my Thai friends spoke little English while I spoke little Thai), I spent more time reading than most kids. Being out there alone must have also sparked my creative bent, because I made up stories all the time. There was nothing else to do.
2.Which of your books is your favorite?
That’s like asking which child you love best! I like them all, for different reasons. I loved the whole childless theme of Married to the Viscount (and I really love that it landed me on the New York Times Extended List for the first time ☺). I can identify with the heroine of Never Seduce a Scoundrel. I adore Lachlan Ross from Beware a Scot’s Revenge, just because I have a thing for Highlanders, and he’s my only one. I could go on and on.
3. You’re continuing your School For Heiresses series with Beware A Scot’s Revenge. What was the spark that series? Did it start with a character, a setting, or some other element?
The generation of this series wasn’t nearly as clearcut as for The Royal Brotherhood series. Pocket said something about wanting a character who went across all the books, and for some reason, I thought of Charlie’s Angels. Weird, I know, but I did love that TV show, and I think I’d just seen one of the movies. Anyway, I loved the camaraderie of the women in the show, and I especially loved the anonymous Charlie. I wanted so badly to find out who he was. So that was in the back of my head when I came up with the series — I wanted an anonymous benefactor who could end up in a romance with the school’s headmistress (whom I subconsciously named after Charlie by naming her Charlotte, even though the mysterious guy is Cousin Michael). Then it went from there.
4. Was Beware A Scot’s Revenge an easy or difficult book to write?
The beginning of any book is usually difficult for me. I tend to go back and revise the beginning several times before I’m happy with the characters and their motivations. Once I get to that point, writing the rest of the book generally comes pretty naturally. But Beware didn’t fit the pattern. I sailed along on it until about chapter 18, where I came to a grinding halt. It took a couple of weeks for me to figure out what was wrong in the book, so I could go on.
5. How do you do your research?
I‘ve accumulated several research books already, but for book-specific research, I use the internet and libraries (Wikipedia rocks!). I‘m lucky that I live in an area with several major libraries, so I can always find what I need at ONE of them. I usually don‘t do much research in the beginning—just enough to confirm that my plot will work in the period. But once I start writing, I have to research individual points, so that takes me lots of different places. My website has a page that discusses the research I did for each of my books, in case readers are interested.
6. What are you working on now?
I’m writing the fourth book in the School for Heiresses series—Once a Rake, Always a Rake.
7. In your writing, do you feel as if you are taking risks? How?
My risks are small ones—things like having a gay secondary romance in In the Prince’s Bed—but that’s only because I truly enjoy the classic romance, and have no great desire to mess with what I like. I don’t feel this incredible pressure to stretch. I just want to entertain. If being entertaining required me “stretching,” then I’d do it.
8. Your writing is deliciously light and very, very readable, especially as compared to your earlier books. Was that a conscious decision, or did it just evolve naturally?
Definitely a conscious decision. Early in my career I wrote darker historical romances under the pseudonym Deborah Martin, with less dialogue and more history and complicated plots. At some point I realized that I wasn’t writing the books I enjoyed reading, but the books I felt, as a former academic, that I somehow ought to write. What I enjoyed reading was Regency historicals by authors like Johanna Lindsay, Amanda Quick, and Judith McNaught. I finally decided that it was time to start writing what I liked reading.
9. Did you run across anything new and unusual while researching this book?
I always run across something new and unusual. In this case, I discovered that there were wildcats in Scotland in this period, and that they looked like giant tabbies. I even saw a woodcut of one. I just thought they were so cool that I had to put one in the book.
10. Is there anything you wanted to include in the book that you (or your CPs or editor) felt was too controversial and left out?
Not really. If I really want to include something in a book, I do. My CP’s job is more to give me a perspective on things that I, in my clueless way, sometimes don’t pay much attention to. For example, I had my hero nicknaming the heroine Princess Priss. Later, he utters some doggerel about how “Princess Priss hates to piss” (he was deliberately being coarse), and my CP said that from there on out, she heard Princess Piss every time he teased the heroine. Which was NOT a side effect I was aiming for. In fact, only once in my career did my publisher ask me not to do something because it was too unappealing, and that was YEARS ago.
11. You are a part of the GoddessBlogs group blog; what is your favorite part of participating there?
I love interacting with readers, but more than that, I really enjoy the authors there. We’re a good mix of fun-loving types, so doing the blog is sheer enjoyment for me. Which is what I was aiming for.
Is there anything else you’d like the Risky Regencies readers to know about you?
I can’t think of anything. But thanks for having me!
Thank you, Sabrina!