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Monthly Archives: April 2008

A noise like of a hidden brook
In the leafy month of June
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune — Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Ancient Mariner. Part v

My we were a quiet bunch last week. After the explosion of 59 comments to Keira’s guest blog, things became unusually quiet. Not only here but on the Wet Noodle Posse blog as well. And on my loops.

Many people were at RT, I’m sure, but I’ve been to RT and not that many people attend. Most of the Riskies were out of town. I think Janet and I were the only ones staying at home.

Because of the quiet, we’re going to extend our tagline contest. The new deadline is Wednesday, April 23.

This gives me an opportunity to ask, what would you like us to be talking more about at Risky Regencies?

Do you want more about writing? About Research? About our lives? Do you like our selection of Guest Bloggers?

This is a chance for you to tell us What Risky Regency Readers Want. Spill

A bit of follow-up.
Remember my blog about the Gerard Butler Charity Convention?
The Convention raised $30,451.92!! The money is donated to Kids Kicking Cancer.

Here’s a photo of Patty and me at the banquet with our lunchboxes.

What I’m Up To Next:
Next weekend is our Washington Romance Writers Spring Retreat. Usually we have the Retreat in Harpers Ferry, WV, in an old historic hotel called Hilltop House. In the last year, Hilltop House was sold to new owners who are busy renovating and WRW was out of the location that has housed the Retreat continously since about 1998 (and many years before that). Our Board and Retreat Committee did a masterful job of finding The Bolger Center, in very nearby Potomac, MD. It is costing us more, but at least we will be able to meet.

Our main speakers are Victoria Alexander and Kresley Cole (see Kresley’s Author Talk interview here) and we’ll have workshops by Margie Lawson, Pam Spengler-Jaffee, Director of Publicity, Paperbacks at William Morrow/Avon, Karen Rose, Mariah Stewart, and our own talented members…Elizabeth Holcombe, Kathleen Gilles Seidel, and Denise McInerney. We also put our visiting agents (Elaine English, Emmanuelle Alspaugh, Becca Stumpf) and editors (Tracy Farrell, Lucia Macro, Kate Duffy, and Jennifer Enderlin) to work on workshop panels and in individual and group interviews. Kathleen Gilles Seidel always opens the Retreat with a terrific speech and Nora Roberts closes with one equally terrific…but different.

Anything you want me to find out for you at the Retreat? Anything besides discovering if O Doggie One (aka doglady) wins the Historical category of the Marlene, that is?

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Greetings! We’ve decided to extend the deadline for our contest for anyone returning from RT or other parts.

You now have until Wednesday, April 23rd, to vote for your favorite tagline for the blog–or suggest another. You will be entered to win a $25 Amazon gift certificate!

The candidates:

1. A great deal of conversation and a liberality of ideas (Austen, Persuasion)

2. A Regency salon for readers and writers

3. The first Regency Romance Blog…and still the best

4. The original, riskiest, and forever the friskiest Regency Romance Blog

Send an e-mail to riskies@yahoo.com with TAGLINE in the subject line and in the body of the e-mail, please put your name, your favorite tagline, and, if you’re feeling inspired, your own suggestion. One entry per person, please.

At close of voting, April 24, the Riskies will put their heads together and come up with a winner, to be announced in May. Or possibly two winners … because we’ll have a random drawing from all entries; and if we choose your tagline, you’ll get a prize too.

Good luck and have fun!

The Riskies

What i’ve done on my vacation (so far!):

1) Helped Megan unpack and move books (she may think I’m being helpful, but really I’m scheming ways to steal her research collection. Bwa-ha-ha!!!)

2) Pestering Megan to start her new book

3) Having lunch with editor and agent. Pretending for two hours to be a reasonably professional and socially presentable person (I did not even squeal when given some free books! Yay!)

4) Visiting the Frick Collection, looking at Parmigianino’s painting “Antea” and standing in the Fragonard room, pretending it’s mine. All mine!

5) Going to the Yale British Art Center with Andrea Pickens and looking through boxes full of Regency-era satirical prints and Gainsborough drawings

6) Gawking at people on the train

More next week, complete with pictures!


Today–today!–I will open up a new Word document and start writing Road to Desire, the next book in my vastly imagined Road series.

Yay!

And I owe it all to Amanda McCabe. Let me explain. Amanda is in New York City for business and meetings and such, and is staying in our office/guestroom (which for Amanda’s purposes is a guestroom/office), and she and I and Andrea Pickens went out for a splendiferous meal on Wednesday. As writers do, we talked about writing and our next projects (Amanda is about to turn in one book, will begin another; Andrea just agreed to another trilogy with Grand Central), and I? Well, I had to admit I hadn’t written for months.

So the pressure started. Good pressure. “You’re going to start writing, right?” Amanda asked later in her surprisingly low, not so surprisingly mellifluous voice.

“Mm,” I murmured noncommittally.

“Right?”

“Yeah, of course, right,” I said in a firmer tone.

So here I am. Of course I have a gazillion things to do before that precious moment, but it will happen, sometime today.

Thanks, friends!

(And friends, please vote in our Risky Regency tagline contest. Details here.

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This is strictly speaking a fall event, when the UK edition of The Rules of Gentility is released by Little Black Dress UK–their first ever historical. But here’s the cover, with a whopping big typo on it because designers can’t spell. Isn’t it cute … and pink. Very pink. Girly. I like it.

And my horn-tooting over, I want to talk about summer even though it’s only April. What are your plans?

I walked from work to the Metro in gorgeous weather–sunny and in the seventies (divine intervention–the Pope is in town, with nuns leaping out of birthday cakes yesterday and forming cheerleader squads at a mass Mass in the new baseball stadium today). The cherry blossoms were giving way to azaleas, and all I could think was oh my god I don’t have any sunscreen.

That’s on the list. Plus, summer pants. I wore mine to travel to Dallas last year for Nationals and upon arrival found they had a huge hole in the butt and my luggage was lost. I kept my knees together until my suitcase arrived. And t-shirts. Why aren’t there any cotton t-shirts in nice colors anywhere this year??? For less than a small fortune, that is. Another question, why can’t I wear a cream-colored t-shirt (not that I can find one this year) without spilling something truly horrible on it within minutes which will never wash out?

So, salvage not-too-stained t-shirts from last year. Find sunhat which my daughter hates (but isn’t nearly as silly as this one) and has probably hidden somewhere. Find stain remover in travel form (I know I have one somewhere) to anticipate future food/tea disasters.

When I came home I looked at the wreck that is my front yard and decided I must get out there, even thought I have to write, because in a couple of months it will be too hot and mosquito-y to do anything.

What are your summer plans? If you’re a writer, are you attending RWA National in San Francisco this year? Are you planning a real vacation? I’m not, as far as I know, and the plans to visit My Father Who Is Not a Tree in England are on hold until I actually have some cash freed up.

Tell us about what you’ll be doing this summer–and apologies for this being so late. Blogger has been a very naughty boy today.

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