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Monthly Archives: April 2017

Let’s have fun and look at a male accessory today. I give you sleeve buttons!

During the Georgian era shirts did not open all the way down the front (no matter what you see on covers). They had a partial neck-opening from the collar to about mid-chest. So the shirt had to be pulled off over the head. They buttoned closed at the throat, though this is hidden by the cravat. The cuffs of the shirts were generally wide (2”-3”) and buttoned closed in an overlapping fashion (like a modern dress shirt, not like a French cuff). I have found extant sleeve buttons (aka cuff links) dating back to the 18th century, but all the extant shirts I’ve seen have buttons; I have not seen shirt studs pre-Victorian). So while they may not have been a common accessory, they’re something a man could have worn and something you can use as a plot point.

 

Late Georgian sleeve cuff

 

Silver and paste sleeve buttons, late 18th century.

Silver and agate sleeve buttons, 1770s-1820s

 

Gold sleeve buttons, early 19th century.

 

Are there any clothing items or accessories you’re curious about? Let me know and I’ll cover them in future posts!

No release date yet for The Magnificent Marquess! Possibly end of this month? Or early May? In the meantime, I’d like to share a recent, new-to-me discovery.

Do you listen to the radio all day or play music on your computer while you work? In the Regency, was there any way to listen to music that wasn’t being performed on live instruments? Actually, there was. You might have received the gift of a music box from your forever-love, or at least have been wealthy enough to own one. Or your parents’ parlour might sport an automaton of singing birds!

I was inspired to explore this topic by my recent visit to Phoenix, Arizona, where we visited the very impressive Musical Instrument Museum (affectionately known as “the MIM”). The international collection there ranges from some very early and exotic instruments to items as recent as the broken guitar Adam Levine threw into the air during a Maroon Five concert. Many of the instruments are gorgeously decorated works of art beyond their artistic function. But I digress.

When I’m in museums I admit I tend to focus on anything that is from our period (obsessed much?). At the MIM I thoroughly enjoyed seeing guitars and pianofortes that were played by upper class women and made during the Regency. I was delighted to discover a video clip from Pride & Prejudice used to illustrate the significant social role of such musical performance.   But I already knew about those things. My favorite discovery was some early music boxes in the “mechanical music” room. I had never thought about when those first became available. Did you know that musical snuff boxes were the forerunners of the modern music box?

As with most inventions, earlier developments led to a needed breakthrough in technology. For music boxes, those steps included the 14th or 15th century creation of mechanisms for playing carillons in bell towers,  and the realization by German clockmakers that small bells and the rotating cylinder could be combined with clockworks to produce chiming or musical clocks. In the17th century the first fully automated musical clock was created in Germany, and the first “repeater” pocket watch was created in England.

Chiming English mantel clock

I’m not going to give the whole history with dates and names in this blogpost (especially since sources don’t all agree), but in the 18th century watches and snuffboxes were being made that played tunes using a tiny pinned cylinder or disc and bells.

The generally accepted big change happened in 1796 when Swiss watchmaker Antoine Favre-Salomon (1734–1820) — some sources name him as Louis Favre –replaced the tiny bells with a small, resonating steel “comb” tuned by varying the lengths of the “teeth”.  This snuff-box music box showing the working cylinder and comb is in the MIM in Phoenix.

Favre’s invention not only saved space but also allowed more complex sounds. In 1800 another Swiss watchmaker, Isaac Daniel Piguet, used a pinned disc with radially arranged steel teeth. Watchmakers were the first to produce music boxes. But by 1811 the first specialized factory for making music boxes was established in Saint-Croix, Switzerland, and by 1815, 10% of Swiss exports were music boxes. A new fad for the wealthy was born!

There’s a story that Beethoven was so charmed by a music box that he composed a piece especially for the music box maker.  Improvements soon included adding more teeth to the comb, methods to shift the cylinder or disc position to play more than one tune, and experimenting with different types of wood to improve music box resonance. Here is a picture from the MIM of a piano-shaped music box c. 1835 that was also a lady’s sewing box.   Music boxes became more and more elaborate over the course of the 19th century, and also less costly. The music box industry in Europe and America eventually employed more than 100,000 people. The invention of the player piano and then the phonograph put most of the makers out of business by the early 20th century.

Let me not forget the singing birds! Those have a long history, too, but the first mechanical birds that “sang” are generally credited to the Jaquet-Droz brothers, clock and automaton makers from La Chaux-de-Fonds, in 1780. The same sort of mechanism as music boxes provided their sounds. Singing bird automatons were a fad for the parents or grandparents of our Regency characters, so there is no reason why a set might not still be lurking in a parlour, or parked in the attics of the family home. Automatons could be the topic of another entire post, a separate fascinating rabbit hole!

Do you love music boxes? Do you own any, or did you as a child? Did you know they first gained popularity during the Regency? I didn’t, but many thanks to the MIM in Phoenix for pointing me to that discovery!

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Bound By Their Secret Passion is now in bookstores, with online vendors, and in ebook version.

This is the last book in my Scandalous Summerfields series–Lorene’s story. Here is the back cover blurb:

A forbidden attraction… A hidden desire!

Years ago, penniless Lorene Summerfield wed for duty, giving her siblings the chance to marry for love. But now the generous-hearted countess finds herself widowed…and the man she’s loved in silence for years is falsely accused of her husband’s murder!

Although he closed his heart to love long ago, the Earl of Penford has always found Lorene irresistible. Their newly ignited passion may be scandalous, but now he’ll stop at nothing to clear his name and win Lorene’s hand!

Book 4 of The Scandalous Summerfields—
Disgrace is their middle name!

Here are what some readers/reviewers said about Bound By Their Secret Passion:

BOUND BY THEIR SECRET PASSION is an emotional romance packed with heartache yet also hopeful longing.
With this being the last book in the series, I was delighted to see all the past couples featured, thus letting me get caught up with their current lives. There are also plenty of other secondary characters in the story that I came to know well, as their personalities were brought to life with colorful behavior. The author inserted historical facts into quite a few scenes, and I enjoyed these moments of reality.
A. Richard, Amazon reviewer

Diane as always never ever disappoints, went through every emotion and was fully immersed into the book and it was a complete honour to read it, fell in love with the hero, usually in historical romance its the Hero’s you want to shout honour be damned listen to your heart first, utterly adore also the epilogue, and seriously want to slap the ever interfering Duchess but you need characters to love and hate to balance an amazing book Diane definitely does this, thank you Diane and Mills and Boon for letting be an insider reader member so I could read and review this amazing story
–GT, Goodreads

I have followed the fortunes of the Scandalous Summerfields as each of them found happiness. Each of the four books in the series has been immensely satisfying, and the final one, “Bound by their Secret Passion”, was no exception. It managed to tie up the loose ends and round off the series clearly, while also being a complete story in itself. And what a story! It had everything: intrigue, extortion, star crossed lovers and a scandal.
–HM, Goodreads

Read all the Goodreads reviews.

I’m a little sorry to say goodbye to all the Summerfields. I grew very fond of them and was happy to give each of them their happily ever after. I do, however, have a new book to be released by Harlequin Historical. I don’t know when yet, but more on that as soon as I know.

Meanwhile, I need to start another book. I’m open to all suggestions of what sort of Regency Historical I should write. A governess story? A story with some suspense? Heroes and heroines who are not aristocracy? Or would you like to see me write about a duke? How about more soldiers? How about another road story? Or popular themes like secret baby, a fairtale theme, reunion story, marriage of convenience?

Let me know!

Bound By Their Secret Passion can be purchased at any of these sites.

I have been absent at the Riskies for a bit, but I am here today. ::hand waving:: as to reasons, but the short version is Life. I have had my head entirely in my very overdue current project, Surrender To Ruin, which is currently out for the second round of editorial.  Here’s the cover:

Cover of Surrender to Ruin. Hot guy sitting on the arm of a couch. He's super hot and has the legs for breeches.

Surrender to Ruin

It’s Book 3 in the Sinclair Sisters series, and I expect the book to be out by summer, though right now it feels like the Never Ending Project. (Life. Yeah That.)

Anyway, my birthday is coming up very soon and I would like all the Risky Readers to celebrate. I will assemble a prize of some of my favorite books (across all genres) and a few other surprises, and we’ll work out the shipping etc and select a winner or two or several from among the commenters.

Rules:

Void where prohibited. Must be 18 to enter. No purchase necessary. Contest closes at 11:59PM EST April 30, 2017.

This blog is in EST!! Your comment timestamp serves as the guide for timely entrance.

Winner chosen at random from among the qualified comments. Alternate winners will be chosen if I don’t hear from the winners within 7 days of notification.

To enter:

  1. Leave a comment to this post in which you tell me something interesting or tell a funny joke or anecdote. No judgment here. “I like pretty flowers” is kind of short, but hey. That’s sufficient.
  2. Provide a valid email when you comment so you can be contacted. The email for the comment form is sufficient.

I want to thank all the lovely readers who’ve been patiently waiting for my next book. I also need to apologize for how long it is taking. I tried to work on a new romance project last fall, but realized that I needed to do a lot of therapeutic journaling to unblock. I’ve been doing that and making peace with a lot of inner demons in the process. At the same time, I’m feeling the urge to reconnect with my career as a Regency author, so I’m working on a couple of related projects.

Halley Hixson, one of those lovely readers and also a writer, asked me to teach an online class for Low Country RWA. Since I’m more of Regency jack-of-all-trades than a mistress of any specific topic, I decided to offer an introductory class. The goal is to help writers who enjoy reading Regencies but are just getting started writing their own and could use a jump-start with the research including some basics and suggestions for further exploration. My challenge has been to figure out what to include and what to leave out–each lesson could be whole class of its own! But I’m having fun with it and it’s helping me to get the Regency world back into my head again.

If anyone would like to register (or suggest this class to someone else), here’s the registration form.

Below is a cute cartoon of “A Receipt for Courtship” that I found while putting together the section related to courtship.

My other project is to connect my concern for social issues with my writing. (One of my friends calls my books “social justice smut”—from her, it’s a compliment!) I’m planning to start running sales of my backlist titles and donating my portion of the proceeds to a different cause each month.

This week, Lord Langdon’s Kiss is on sale for 99 cents. The heroine, Nell, is a vicar’s daughter and very involved with the families in her father’s parish. She would be moved by the plight of refugees from Syria and many other places, so I decided to share the proceeds of this sale with the International Rescue Committee, a 4 star charity. Here’s a short description from their website.

International Rescue Committee responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and gain control of their future.

One of the many things they are doing is helping the medical response for civilians in Syria suffering from recent attacks using chemical weapons. Learn more at www.rescue.org

Lord Langdon’s Kiss is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, and Kobo.

Please consider giving directly as well. I’ve created a fundraiser page at Crowdrise where you can make a direct donation.

What projects has everyone else been up to (writing or otherwise)?

Elena

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