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Monthly Archives: July 2012

First some News

I just turned in my story for Midnight Scandals, a historical romance anthology with Courtney Milan and Sherry Thomas. I immediately started work on Book 5 of the My Immortals series. Now that Free Fall, my My Immortals novella is out of Kindle Select, I’ve also worked on getting it published to all other vendors. It should start showing up shortly.

Naturally with all this writing to do, I’ve been reading a lot because I can tell myself it’s practically work and almost writing! Writers need to read!

One of the many books I’ve read recently is Eric Jager’s The Last Duel. I’m really surprised I never heard about this book when it first came out in 2004. It’s exactly the sort of book I would have bought right away.

The gripping, atmospheric true story of the “duel to end all duels” in medieval France: a trial by combat pitting a knight against a squire accused of violating the knight’s beautiful young wife.

I loved this book. It’s everything I adore about history books and more. While I read the Kindle version– more about that later –I bought it in hardback for my dad, who I think will like it a lot, too and will also get my mom a Kindle copy. I’ve been pimping it to everyone. Even you. Especially YOU!

Based on extensive research in Normandy and Paris, The Last Duel brings to life a colorful, turbulent age and three unforgettable characters caught in a fatal triangle of crime, scandal, and revenge. It is at once a moving human drama, a captivating detective story, and an engrossing work of historical intrigue.

The quote sounds like it’s overblown, but you know what? It’s not. I finished this book nearly 10 days ago, and I read it steadily until I was done. I’m STILL thinking about it. At times I forgot I was reading about something that really happened. And then I remember that lives were truly at stake.

One of the things I really enjoyed about the book was the meticulous research. The duel and the circumstances surrounding it were sensational at the time and for centuries afterward. There is, therefore, an unusual amount of surviving documentation.

I fell in love a little with LeCog, the attorney for the defendant in the matter. It was plain that he was a meticulous man and quite insightful. I changed my mind once or twice about the two men, by the way. When the duel took place, I was glued to my chair, because not only did I have to know what happened, I was very much aware there was no guarantee that the outcome would be the one I hoped for.

The Kindle version was, in the main, very well put together. The footnotes actually worked, for example, in that I ended up at the right footnote and that footnote took me back to my place.

My Gripes

I have two gripes and one of them is a big one. At normal size, the images in the text were crisp and clear, but too small to read. Once I expanded them to examine maps and artwork in more detail, the images were blurry. Text in the images was unreadable.

My other gripe is that the images were in black and white. I was reading on my iPad 3, by the way, so this mattered to me a lot. Unlike print, color in an ebook does not cost a cent.

Let me say that again: color in an eBook does not cost a cent.

Those source images, many of them contemporary artwork, are in color in real life and my guess is that the original photographs were probably submitted in color, too. The image IN COLOR on the cover is also in the book. In black and white.

I would have paid extra for an eBook with those images in color and in high-resolution.

If you have any interest in the Medieval period, this is a great book to have.

My Very First Novel – Passion’s Song

At last, my reversion for the first novel I wrote, Passion’s Song, came through. And now you can read it. (I’m working on the POD version). Cover art by the wonderful Patricia Schmitt.

Passion’s Song was originally published in 1987. Yes. That’s right. 19 and 87. Before the internet was anything but a really neat tool for academics and DARPA. Before the World Wide Web. “Portable” computers were the size of 3 breadboxes end to end.

I was shaking after I heard the message on my answering machine tape offering to buy my book. Shaking. I had to go walk around the block just to calm down enough to think straight.

I wrote it on an Apple IIc using a nifty program called Word Juggler. I once wrote to the developer of Word Juggler about a problem I felt was a bug and he wrote me a very long personal reply explaining how hard he worked on his program. Then he called me an idiot.

It took 9 hours to print out the manuscript. NINE hours. I had to wait for a weekend to print it out. Editorial comments were actually in red pencil and queries were on special pink tearaway flags pasted to the MS page. I had to MAIL the MS and there was no overnight delivery option.

It reflects the writer I was then. I look at it now, and well. There is is. The book I wrote in 1987. Bought two weeks after my one query made it to NY. Edited to DEATH and then given back to me with instructions to “put it back the way it was.” So, yeah.

The Neo-Blurb

American orphan Isobel Rowland learns she is the illegitimate daughter of an English aristocrat only when her father at last locates her and brings her to England. Her father intends to find her a husband, and if she can catch the interest of Alexander, Marquess of Hartforde, all the better. She hopes to continue her musical studies but finds it impossible unless she masquerades as a young gentleman. Alexander’s interest in remarriage is close to nil, though he finds Miss Rowland intriguing. He is more than happy to act as patron to a promising American musician, Ian Rowland. When Alexander discovers that Ian and Isobel are the same person, their lives collide and before long, they have no choice but to marry and attempt to make a life together.

I couldn’t really read it because then I’d want to completely re-write it. Because I am not the same writer. I’ve learned a lot about writing and the business and, of course, changed as a person and a writer.

Passion’s Song is my words in 1987, and I totally own them. It’s a fun story, with an evil step-brother, a (late) wife who wasn’t very nice, a perky younger sister, and a jaded aristocrat hero with blond hair and a queue. There’s puppies, too.

All I’ve done is had it proofread and corrected some typos that were in the original. Like, somehow the copyeditor (and me!) missed that Brooks’s is s’s. I had to scan it from paper, so there were a lot of OCR errors to correct. My proofreader did an amazing, amazing job of catching OCR errors and original typos. Of course, I did my own proofing for errors with the digital display. I’ve already re-uploaded to correct a few more errors I made.

It’s $3.99, no DRM, available worldwide.

Where you can get it now:

Hopefully SW will get the book on sale at places like Sony, Diesel Books and other wonderful sellers of eBooks.

I was trying to figure out what I would blog about and I thought that, in honor of it being Wednesday (“Hump Day”) when you read this, I would find out something about camels in the Regency. So I Googeled Regency Camels. Sometimes the Internet surprises me.

The #1 Regency Camel related result?

Regency Camel Toe.

I am not kidding.

Of course I clicked. http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/regency-camel-toe So should you. It’s safe for work except for the part where if you click it won’t look very work-related.

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I almost died laughing. Camel toe indeed. Pink breeches!

It Gets Better

The link above will guide you here: Regency Camel Toe. Essentially safe for work except for the not working part.

Here is a picture of a real camel.

Via Adam Foster | Codefor

You may read about Camels here:

Yup. Sometimes the internet surprises me.

Friday night the Washington, DC, area experienced a freaky thunderstorm with bursts of high winds of 80 miles per hour. During the storm, we were unscathed and didn’t think too much about it, but the next morning we discovered that right near us there was some incredible damage. The wind apparently shot through the neighborhood like a locomotive. In fact, our neighbors said it sounded like a locomotive. Two houses  away the wind toppled their huge oak tree.

On the road that intersects with our street, another tree fell, directly across the street. A young man driving in the pitch black night ran into the tree and this is the result. Luckily he was not hurt.

For my blog today, I thought I’d look for a description of storms in Regency England. This is from the Annual Register for the year 1816.

A tremendous storm of and lightning with heavy rain was experienced in Lancashire and the adjoining counties. The electric fluid struck a public house near Tockholes which it greatly damaged and killed the landlord. About three o’clock in the afternoon at Longpark after a considerable deal of thunder and lightning, a dense whitish cloud was observable apparently about Barrock which advanced with great rapidity and, on its nearer approach, presented the appearance of the waves of the sea tumultuously rolling over each other. This phenomenon was doubtless occasioned by the hail composing the body of the cloud and whirled along by the hurricane which enveloped it. On reaching Longpark a scene of desolation commenced within ten minutes a most tremendous volley of pieces of ice, some of them an inch in diameter, shattered the windows of the houses, tore up the turf, beat down the vegetable products of the earth and did great and extensive damage. Mr James had the whole of his crop of barley, oats, etc., completely cut down as with a scythe. More than half the produce of the inhabitants of the village is lost. The like destruction occurred in the neighborhood and a few houses were unroofed. At Whaldub about 14 acres of barley were entirely destroyed besides other injuries. At Parkbroorn Walby, the garden vegetables were nearly all destroyed. The same afternoon the hurricane visited Longtown and the neighborhood at Netherhy upwards of 700 panes of glass were broken in the hot houses of sir James Graham and sixty squares in the house were driven in with great violence by the hail stones. A particularly large tree at Kirkandrews-upon-Esk and more in the neighbourhood were com pletely torn up by the roots.

Our storm did not have much “electric fluid” or hail, or even rain. It was at night, so we couldn’t see what the clouds looked like. Our storm didn’t even last very long. It was the wind that did the damage.

I’ll leave you today with this much tamer image of a rainstorm.

Stay dry and safe!
Thanks to everyone who played our Harlequin Historical Authors Beach Bag Giveaway. The Grand Prize Winner will be announced at any second!
Posted in Regency, Research | Tagged , | 4 Replies
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