Monthly Archives: November 2010

Guest Blogger Grace Elliott

Updated on November 21, 2010 by Amanda McCabe/Laurel McKee

Risky Regencies welcomes another debut author this weekend, Grace Elliott, who will tell us more about her release A Dead Man’s Debt! One commenter will win a copy…

Hello, Riskies, what a pleasure to be here today to share a little about my debut novel, A Dead Man’s Debt, and the inspiration behind the story. Believe it or not, a painting of the young Emma Hart (who married Lord Hamilton and was Horatio Nelson’s mistress) was the catalyst behind my novel. The painting by George Romney shows an innocent yet lush young woman, scantily clad with a hint of bosom, brazenly staring out of the canvas with an allure that is quite hypnotic. It struck me as sensational for an 18th century work, that the sitter was not prim, proper, straight-backed and starchy. It must have been scandalous at the time. But who would be bold enough to commission such a portrait? (As it happened Emma was ahead of her time and loved to flout convention–but that’s another story!)

What a delicious idea for a story! What if the woman in the painting wanted to shock? What if, years later, this rebellious streak threatened to disgrace her family? What if only the son she despises can save her reputation–but at the price of his secret love? Thus the stage was set for a story of blackmail, sacrifice, and redeeming love. This excerpt from A Dead Man’s Debt shows the young Lady Sophia Cadnum revealing the shocking portrait of her friend:
With a swoosh the drape hissed to the ground. Georgiana’s eyes widened, and she flushed crimson as a hand covered her mouth. “Oh my!” The oil showed Sophia Cadnum stripped of her satins and silks with her natural beauty shining like an exotic flower. In just a gossamer shift, with a rope of pearls wound round a swan-like neck, she reclined in a woodland clearing, happy as a nymph. Ringlets of rich raven hair, unpowdered and unrestrained, tumbling over her shoulder to provide a modesty not offered by the transparent gown. On closer inspection, the male viewer would be enchanted to discover the ghost of a nipple peeping between ringlets. Sophia smiled happily. “Isn’t it wonderful?” Georgiana grew quiet, nervously averting her eyes. “I speak as your dear friend and only with your interests at heart, but is it quite…” she glanced at Sophia then steeled herself. “…appropriate?” Black thunder darkened Sophia’s pretty face. “And by that you mean?” Georgiana took a deep breath. “Well, what with your being a mother now, something less…provocative…might be more correct?” Sophia scowled. “But that’s precisely the point. Producing a son was my duty…and I won’t be made into a dowdy matron because of it. I need to feel alive and have my heart race for joy. Heaven knows already the Duke talks of producing another brat for the nursery.” Comprehension dawning, Georgiana gulped. “Was it so very awful giving birth?” Sophia closed her eyes. “Hateful, from start to finish.” Silence stilled the air. Georgiana cleared her throat. “Has the Duke seen the painting?” “In truth I don’t think he cares enough to have an opinion. As long as I serve my purpose as mother to his heirs, he won’t object.” She stroked her tightly laced stomacher, resting a hand on the barely perceptible dome of her belly. The light went from her eyes as she whispered, “Please God grant me respite from my duty.”

Like ripples on a pond, the consequences of this scandalous portrait are felt years later, when Lady Cadnum’s offspring are all grown up. It is resentment over the children she bore that expresses itself in her son Ranulf’s sullen moods and coolness. But being a Regency romance, the latter is like a red rag to a bull for our heroine, Celeste Armitage, who is determined to break through Ranulf’s reserve and uncover the passionate man beneath.

And all this from one portrait of Emma Hart! Phew—I’m saving my energy for a trip to the National Portrait Gallery in London, heaven only knows what inspiration will strike there…

About the Author: Grace Elliott leads a double life as a veterinarian by day and author of sensual historic romance by night, and firmly believes that intelligent people need to read romance as an antidote to the modern world.

A Dead Man’s Debt is available from most ebook retailers and on Amazon Kindle, and at the publisher’s site. If you’d like to read more excerpts or learn more about what makes Grace Elliott tick, please visit her website

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Grace Elliott | 9 Replies

Writer’s Block

Updated on November 20, 2010 by Elena Greene

This fall, I’m getting back into writing after a nearly two year gap due to my husband’s stroke. It has been a rough reentry, but I’m feeling happy and productive again. I’m also thinking a lot about writer’s block, because things that helped me get over it before have helped me again this fall.

Let me clarify what I mean by writer’s block. I’m not talking about what happens with people who have been members of a writing organization for years and still haven’t completed and submitted a manuscript. That is writer’s block, but not a sort I feel qualified to write about.

Professional writers (regardless of publication status) learn to show up for work on a regular basis. The beauty of it is that writing begets more writing. You draft a crappy scene in the morning, then you go about your day job or errands and seemingly out of the blue, you get ideas for how to fix that scene and go on to the next. You ask why your hero is a loner and the next morning you wake up knowing.

What is going on is a partnership between your conscious and subconscious minds. It’s not always perfect, of course. Sometimes you need 10-20 minutes of warmup before the writing starts to flow. Sometimes you need to take a break to brainstorm a plot snag or murky character motivation. Sometimes you just have a bad day. These are minor blocks; you develop tricks to get through them. And when it’s going well, it feels great. Like an athlete who is in the zone, you are still working and sweating, but the work feels good and productive.

The writer’s block I’m talking happens when you are showing up for work but the ideas slow down or stop coming. At first you may think it’s just a bad day. But it happens again, over a period of weeks or even months. Your characters no longer feel real. They’re more like mannequins you laboriously push through their paces. You lose your gut feel for what works. You don’t know what to keep, change or cut.

What’s happened is like an athletic injury. Unlike a swollen ankle, you can’t see it. But it’s real. Your subconscious mind is on strike.

If you keep going, in a deadline crunch or just out of perseverance, you’re like an athlete compounding an injury. You start to associate writing with pain. You may have trouble finishing a book or starting the next one. It hurts like being at outs with your best friend. You may fall into depression and bad habits.

You could give up or wait it out, but I think it’s better to treat it as a professional athlete would an injury, with rest and therapy. You need to be both kind and tough.

The kind part means getting good sleep, nutrition and exercise if you weren’t already. It could mean massage, meditation, long walks or anything that makes you feel good and clears your mind. You need mental clarity for the tough part.

The tough part is figuring out what caused the block and what to do about it. Some writers say blocks are mysterious but I think one can figure them out. I find journaling (a process I first learned by doing The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron) helpful. I also talk through blocks with trusted writer friends. Some writers go to a therapist. (I think it’d be very important to find a good one.)

Blocks are caused by fear. It could be fear of rejection, decreasing sales, bad reviews, of not being able to do justice to your ideas, of your friends being jealous if your career progresses faster than theirs. If you fear being punished in some way for writing, your subconscious mind “protects” you by not sending any more ideas.

You can’t just dismiss your fears. Bad things do happen to good writers. You may have to teach yourself that you are strong enough to cope. You may have to work on surrounding yourself with supportive people but also learn to support yourself, too. You may want to change your career plan or writing process. Maybe you need to switch genres. Maybe you need to allow more time for each book.

While you’re doing all this, it’s also a good idea to try what Julia Cameron calls an “Artist Date”. Make time for a fun, creative activity that has no career baggage. It could be something you used to enjoy, or always wanted to try but haven’t had time for. Consider it a peace offering to your creative side.

Once you start back into the writing, be patient. Continue to take care of yourself and trust your gut.

So anyway, this is my theory on writer’s block. What do you think? If you’ve had it, what helped? If you haven’t, do you do things to prevent it?

Elena

Thankful for Boots and Arlo

Updated on November 19, 2010 by megan

So Carolyn talked this week about the fashion difference between East and West Coasts in terms of boot wearage, and the day she posted this–before I had even read it–I went and bought a pair of knee-high black boots (these are the VERY ONES I got).

Because, as Carolyn so astutely points out, that is how we roll on this side of the country.

Earlier this week, I sent my agent the novella I’ve been working on FOR EVER, the one I did a short excerpt of a few weeks back. And since then have done no fiction writing, but am THINKING awfully hard about it. Not that that counts.

The Thanksgiving holiday arrives next week, which means that I won’t have to cook for a few days! That is likely what I am most thankful for. I hope to catch up on sleep and hanging out with my husband, too, during those few days off.

One thing that will definitely happen on Thanksgiving is listening to Arlo Guthrie‘s “Alice’s Restaurant;” it’s a Thanksgiving tradition my family and I used to have, and now my husband has taken it up, which is so sweet. So we’ll listen to “the circles and arrows on the back of each one” and laugh on our drive down to South Jersey for turkey.

Of course the food is lovely, too, but I think the annual listening is my favorite part. What does your family do special at Thanksgiving? What are you thankful for?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Megan, Thanksgiving | 8 Replies

Recent discoveries

Updated on November 18, 2010 by Janet Mullany

I’m still on deadline and I am so looking forward to getting this book finished! In December I’m going to play … many Jane Austen activities of course since her birthday is on December 16 (and yes, we’ll be celebrating here too!).

But I have been doing a few other things that I wanted to share with you. First, I’m reading My Lady Ludlow by Mrs. Gaskell, one of her shorter and neglected novels, part of which was used to flesh out the wonderful BBC Cranford. It’s set in the first few years of the nineteenth century and is a wonderful series of snapshots of country life (Mrs. Gaskell was born in 1810 so I like to imagine she’s gathering together everything she’s heard about the good old days). Some of it is surprising. First, here’s a description of a gown and a use of pocket holes (slits to accommodate the pockets, discrete items which hung inside from the petticoat) I’ve never heard before:

She had a fine Indian muslin shawl folded over her shoulders and across her chest and an apron of the same; a black silk mode gown made with short sleeves and ruffles, and with the tail thereof pulled through the pocket-hole, so as to shorten it to a useful length: beneath it she wore, as I could plainly see, a quilted lavender satin petticoat.

Or how about this? Have you ever heard of this particular fashion craze?

Nor would my lady sanction the fashion of the day, which, at the beginning of this century, made all the fine ladies take to making shoes. She said that such work was a consequence of the French Revolution, which had done much to annihilate all distinctions of rank and class, and hence it was that she saw young ladies of birth and breeding handling lasts, and awls, and dirty cobbling-wax, like shoe-makers’ daughters.

She’s very much old school, absolutely opposed to anything that will upset the social order–and this is a decade after the Reign of Terror, so she was probably fairly representative. Here’s a description of her hiring a servant, which gives a really fascinating insight into master/servant relationships:

… Then she would bid her say the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed. Then she inquired if she could write. If she could, and she had liked all that had gone before, her face sank–it was a great disappointment for it was an all but inviolable rule with her never to engage a servant who could write. But I have know her ladyship break through it, although in both cases in which she did so she put the girl’s principles to a further and unusual test in asking her to repeat the Ten Commandments. One pert young woman–and yet I was sorry for her too, only she afterwards married a rich draper in Shrewsbury–who had got through her trials pretty tolerably, considering she could write, spoilt al, by saying glibly, at the end of the last Commandment, “An’t please your ladyship, I can cast accounts.”

“Go away, wench,” said my lady in a hurry, “you’re only fit for trade; you will not suit me for a servant.”

I’ve been enjoying the documentary series Circus on PBS–enjoying in the sense that I’ve seen snippets of them–really fascinating stuff. When I’m less busy I hope to catch them all.

And I’ve also started a singing group in my town, which is a wonderful, exciting project. Our lineup so far is five altos and one bass-baritone which is a bit limiting, but we have plans to go hunt down men (particularly tenors). This too was inspired by a British TV series, The Choir, in which a choirmaster, Gareth Malone, went into unlikely environments full of people who claimed they “can’t sing” and got them singing, enjoying it, and performing.

What are you doing for fun these days? Have you seen either of these TV shows? What’s your favorite Mrs. Gaskell?

Don’t forget to enter the LOLRegencies contest! Win valuable prizes!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged circus, Gareth Malone, LOLRegencies, Mrs. Gaskell | 8 Replies

Can There Be Too many Exploding Pencils?

Updated on November 17, 2010 by carolyn

I am back from visiting the awesome Risky Megan in Brooklyn. My son and I had a great time. We went to see Wicked at the Gershwin Theatre on Broadway, and it was fun and funny and possibly the highlight of the trip, aside from seeing Megan.

I met with my Berkley and Grand Central editors and did a Q&A recording and also read two excerpts from the paranormals while at GCP. I often dressed in black. Megan and I discussed the possibility of a fashion difference between left and right coasts, in that I observered that boots are big on the right. Many women wear awesome boots and maybe I’ll have to get some. Here on my part part of the left coast, the only women in boots, by and large, just came into town from riding and are also wearing riding pants; sometimes jodhpurs and but often heavy leggings with a suede lining on the inner thighs.

. ~~I forced the progeny~~ The progeny and I went to the Met to see, among other things the Jan Gosset exhibit. Gosset is a Renaissance painter and I am particularly interested in the period because I have a project that will be set in a Renaissance-like world and I wanted to find out more about clothing etc. When I have an extra $80 lying around I’ll buy the exhibit book.

My son pointed out several times after the exhibit that there was an old lady with cane who was going through the exhibit faster than I was. I needed to really study those portraits, for one thing and for another the portraits were amazing. His religious paintings I found to be far less interesting and at times downright disturbing. The face of an adult on the body of the Christ child is just . . . creepy.

But the portraits. Oh my.