Congratulations to jennybrat, who has won a copy of Candice Hern’s IN THE THRILL OF THE NIGHT. Please send your snail mail address to egreene@stny.rr.com to receive your prize.

Thanks to all who visited during our interview with Candice, and to Candice for sharing her stories and fabulous collections with us!

The Riskies

This weekend I’m off at a writing retreat. Well, I hope there will be writing, or at least a little anyway. I have a new idea I’m dying to tackle (maybe I need to do Janet’s BIAW? Sans fruit, of course!). But a friend who makes her own wine is coming, with several new bottles. Plus there are hiking trails, a swimming pool, horses, and lots of people to get caught up with–you see the problem. 🙂

The place where the retreat is being held is a beautiful, “rustic” lodge on a lake, totally different from the noisy town where I live. Internet and cell phone access is complicated, and there are no shops or restaurants to distract. I’m really looking forward to the getaway–and I really have to start packing! So, I’m going to turn to Miss Austen for help on this post. Here are some of her thoughts on town vs. country:

“One day in the country is exactly like another” —Northanger Abbey

“…the influence of London is very much at war with all respectable attachments” —Mansfield Park

“They come from Birmingham, which is not a place to promise much, you know, Mr. Weston. One has not great hopes from Birmingham” —Emma

“…I have heard that there is a great deal of wine in Oxford” —Northanger Abbey

“I am quite convinced that, with very few exceptions, the sea-air always does good” —Persuasion

“She sighed for the air, the liberty, the quiet of the country” —Sense and Sensibility

“…to sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure, is the most perfect refreshment” —Mansfield Park

“What are men to rocks and mountains?” —Pride and Prejudice

And now I’m off! I’ll be back next week with a report on the proceedings. Where would YOUR ideal retreat be?

Maureen, who has won a copy of The Slightest Provocation by Pam Rosenthal, for participating in our interview/contest. Maureen, please email elailah@yahoo.com and send us (actually you’re sending Janet’s cat) your snailmail address.

Thanks to everyone who responded and thanks, Pam, for being so chatty!

Check out the Risky’s current contest, an interview with Candice Hern.

The Riskies are delighted to welcome Candice Hern as our guest!

Candice has been a voracious reader all her life. For many years she had been a devotee of Jane Austen, Fanny Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Susan Ferrier, and other women writers of the Regency period. When she discovered Georgette Heyer and the Regency Romance genre (not so very long ago — it is not clear how she remained ignorant of the Great Georgette for most of her life) she was instantly hooked. After a few years of reading Regency Romances by the bagful, she decided to try her hand at writing one.

Her first book, A PROPER COMPANION, was published in January 1995. She went on to publish five more traditional short Regency Romances, and now writes longer Regency-set historical romances. Candice’s books have won the Holt Medallion, Golden Quill, Write Touch Readers Award, Booksellers’ Best Award and Colorado Romance Writers’ Award of Excellence, and have made it into the Top Five Romances of the Year by Library Journal and Top Ten Favorite Books by Romance Writers of America.

Learn more about Candice at www.candicehern.com.

Enter a comment or question for Candice by Sunday, September 17 for a chance to win an autographed copy of IN THE THRILL OF THE NIGHT (winner to be chosen by the Riskies).

Praise for JUST ONE OF THOSE FLINGS

Effervescent, unconventional, and brimming with honest sensuality, Hern’s second installment in her clever, well-conceived Merry Widows series about five wealthy widows bent on avoiding marriage but experimenting with affairs is a lively, thoroughly delightful tale that is sure to please. – Library Journal

It might be just one of those flings, just one of those crazy things, but it’s a rare reading experience in Hern’s capable hands. She brings the Regency to life with her endearing characters whose steamy passion (and May-December romance) only serve to heighten the powerful emotions and leave you begging for more. – Romantic Times BOOKReviews

Praise for IN THE THRILL OF THE NIGHT

Funny, fresh, and outrageously original, this lively, Regency-set historical hooks readers from the start and sweeps them right on to the satisfying conclusion. – Library Journal

This delectable tale shimmers with humor and sexual tension that only someone with Hern’s sensibilities about the era and women’s fantasies could write. – Romantic Times BOOKReviews, Top Pick

Tell us about your new release, and the next book to come!

JUST ONE OF THOSE FLINGS is the 2nd in my Merry Widows trilogy. Each book is the story of one widow’s search for a lover. Each of them has decided she does not wish to marry again but prefers to retain her social and financial independence. That does not mean, however, that they are also willing to give up physical pleasure for the rest of their lives.

I wanted each book to have a different type of love affair, coming from different experiences of men and sex. In the first book, IN THE THRILL OF THE NIGHT, the heroine had been madly in love with her husband, but the sex was ho-hum. In JUST ONE OF THOSE FLINGS, the heroine’s marriage had been good but was no love match, though the sex was fabulous. In fact, the heroine misses it. And she finds that spark of physical connection again with a younger man. Unfortunately, he is also the man her niece, for whom she is acting as chaperone, is determined to marry. You can imagine the difficulties that arise!

The third book, LADY BE BAD, comes out next year and is about the most proper and prudish of the friends, the widow of a famous bishop. She finds her stiff-backed inhibitions threatened by a sexy Bad Boy. 🙂

What gave you the idea for your new release/Widows series?

I originally conceived the idea for the first book, IN THE THRILL OF THE NIGHT as a standalone book about a respectable widow who decides to take a lover. But I like connected books and I think readers do, too, so I started to think about different ways I could make that book part of a trilogy. I decided not to use a connection with the heroes, since everyone was doing that with brothers and spies and soldiers and other groups of men. I wanted to connect the books through women, and considered doing sisters, but it just wasn’t clicking with me. Then I was watching Sex and the City one night and bingo! –­ it came to me. I would use a group of friends to connect the books. Like the heroine of THRILL, they would all be respectable widows. I decided they would make a secret pact to find lovers, and I would have them talk candidly about it, as Carrie and her friends do on Sex and the City. And just like those women, my Merry Widows would always have their female friendships, no matter how many men came into, and out of, their lives. So the theme of female friendship is important in all three books.

And just for fun, I decided to lampoon the Regency cliché of Almack’s and its formidable patronesses by making the Merry Widows a group of wealthy, respectable widows who sponsor charity balls. In private, however, they speak frankly about men and sex and love. I like to think of the trilogy as Sex and the City meets Almack’s.

Were there any challenges in researching these books? Any new or surprising historical information that you discovered?

The challenge for me is always to STOP researching and get on with the story. Research is so seductive. For JUST ONE OF THOSE FLINGS I wanted the hero to have been away from society for many years so that his appearance in Town for this particular season is something rather exciting for all those matchmaking mamas, making him the Catch of the Season. But where had he been all those years? I decided to send him to India for 7-8 years, and of course then I needed to know what he was doing there, so I did a lot of research on India. It was fascinating research and I became totally absorbed in it for quite a while. Of course all that research ended up being little more than a few paragraphs on the page. And I learned all about Indian dress just so I could put him in the right clothes for the masquerade ball that opens the book. I found some gorgeous books on Indian fashion and textiles that totally seduced me.

But I also got to use some “old” research for this book. I studied Indian art in college and did some serious graduate work on the subject. So I gave the hero a collection of Indian sculpture, just for the sheer pleasure of describing it. I even gave his collection my favorite piece of Indian sculpture, which you can see on the Behind the Scenes page for this book on my website.

We pride ourselves in writing “Risky Regencies.” Tell us what’s “risky” or different from the norm about your books?

I have to confess that my books aren’t what I’d call risky. I write fairly simple love stories. No complex plots with intrigue or mystery, no villains, no violence. I always strive to place the romance, the development of the romance, front and center. It’s something I honestly believe a lot of Regency writers lose track of sometimes, allowing the history (that seductive research) to overwhelm the romance.

JUST ONE OF THOSE FLINGS does have an older woman/younger man romance, so maybe that’s a bit risky. And perhaps the idea of a bunch of early 19th century women deciding to control their own lives is a risky notion. I have actually read complaints about the series and how the women’s openness about sex and men is too modern. I disagree. I think the Regency was a pretty bawdy age. Just think of all the rather “public” love affairs. Emma lived with Nelson. The Duke of Devonshire kept his mistress under the same roof as his wife, who bore another man’s child herself. And her sister, Lady Bessborough, had two children by a young man who later married her niece. And consider Jane Austen. She has a young girl run off to live with a man in PRIDE & PREJUDICE. And the heroine’s married cousin in MANSFIELD PARK runs off with another man. And then there’s Willoughby and all his sexual escapades in SENSE & SENSIBILITY. So I tend to believe that the Regency period was much more sexually liberated that some of us like to think. Many of us have taken Georgette Heyer’s version of the Regency as fact, but we have to remember that her own post-Victorian prudishness and social snobbery informs her stories, and they are more a mirror of her own age than of the Regency.

Given all that, I don’t really think my Merry Widows are that risky at all!

What is it about the Regency era that draws you in?

It all started with the fashion for me. I fell in love with regency fashion years and years ago, and I started collecting fashion prints of the age about 20 years ago. I just love how those beautiful, slender, revealing fashions were squashed between two eras of wide hooped skirts and unnaturally cinched waistlines. It’s like a few years of enlightenment between decades of darkness. 🙂 Over the years I also collected other Regency and Georgian antiques, and I read a lot of history etc to put my collections in context. A history buff since childhood, I soon fell in love with the Regency period and soaked up every bit of history — social, political, and artistic — that I could find. One of the reasons I am comfortable writing in this period is that I have years of dilettante-ish research behind me.

But what is it that draws me to the Regency? I love the Regency period because it is on the cusp on the Modern age. It is not so far away that it seems foreign, but still enough removed that it represents a fantasy world. Socially and politically it is a fascinating period, with the Industrial Age just beginning and the long wars in Europe touching everyone’s lives. It’s a time of change, of the beginning of social reform, with lessons still being learned from the French Revolution.

Tell us about your fabulous collections, which are such a great part of your website? How did you start collecting? What is your favorite item?

Like I said above, I’ve been collecting Regency and Georgian antiques for years. Our house is full of old bits of furniture — Georgian tea tables and Louis XV chairs, etc. But the fashion prints, my first “real” collection, started me off in several other directions. I never had the desire to actually own a Regency gown, but I began to look for accessories, like purses and jewelry and quizzing glasses. I even have a fichu! And I became fascinated with vinaigrettes quite early, which led to other “dressing table” items, like scent bottles and cosmetic cases. One thing always led to another. But sometimes I’d just stumble upon an item I loved and bought it, then ended up finding another one and another one until I had a collection. That’s what happened with paste shoe buckles. I bought the first pair just because I thought they were pretty. Now I have dozens of pairs. And one time I bought a small lot of Georgian silhouettes at auction for a song, and that led me to crave more of them. Collecting is an addiction. It’s never enough to have one or two of something. One has to have a COLLECTION. It’s a sickness.

As for the website, it was my designer who suggested the Collections articles as a way of having fresh content between book releases. I love writing those articles and sharing my collections with people who share my love of the period.

A favorite item? That’s a tough question, but I have actually given some thought to it. Greg and I have often discussed what we’d grab first in the event of a fire (or in our case, an earthquake). I have decided that if I could only take one thing, it would have to be a painting. We have a couple of large portraits, some watercolors, and a small collection of old master drawings. If I had to choose, I’d grab the portrait of Mrs. Urquhart by Sir Henry Raeburn. I adore her! She’s got those eyes that follow you all around the room, giving the heebie-jeebies to my house cleaner!

Let’s talk covers! How thrilled are you with the gorgeous new NAL covers???

I love them! Especially after all those dreadful clinch covers on my Avon books. I can’t begin to tell you how much I hated those covers, even as I understand why they are used.

NAL does beautiful covers. They told me they wanted to use “upscale” art to play against the “fun” titles I was using for the trilogy (twisted Cole Porter song titles for the first two, a twisted Gershwin song title for the third). My editor described my books as “elegant but fun” and wanted that same feeling for the covers. I think they did a great job. Each of the covers is based on a real painting. You can see the evolution from painting to cover on the Behind the Scenes pages for each book on my website (THRILL; FLINGS).

And, are you making any appearances or booksignings in the near future?

You just missed my big bus tour!!! I was part of the “Sizzling Summer Reads Author Tour” last month, sponsored by Levy Home Entertainment, the distributor that supplies books for Wal*Mart, K-Mart, Target, Walgreens, grocery stores, etc. There were 13 authors on a luxury bus touring the Chicago and Detroit areas. Other Regency authors on the “love bus” included “Queen Mary” Balogh, Sabrina Jeffries, Jacquie D’Alessandro, and Pamela Britton. We had a blast!

But I have nothing else on my calendar until next March when I’ll be speaking at a writers’ conference. I’m always happy to do workshops and such if anyone is interested. I have a list of prepared workshops on my website. Invite me to speak, and I’ll show up!

Thanks so much! 🙂

Thanks for having me! I’m a regular lurker here at Risky Regencies and pleased to be your guest!

Candice

Last week, we had a lot of discussion about the lives of famous courtesans after Pam’s interview. And a few weeks ago Elena gave us a great post about women scientists in history. I always find the lives of people–especially women–who make their own way in the world against tremendous odds very fascinating. What was it in them that gave them such strength and tencacity, such faith in themselves? So, I was delighted to come across a new book, The Women of the House: How a Colonial She-Merchant Built a Mansion, a Fortune, and a Dynasty by Jean Zimmerman. I devoured this story of self-made success in just a couple of days. (OK, I know I’ve been talking too much about books I’ve bee reading, but I’ve had such a great run of reading luck lately!).

While neither Regency nor English, Margaret Hardenbroeck Philipse could easily star as the heroine of her own novel. She came from Holland to New Amsterdam (New York) as a very young woman in 1659, with an unusual job–she was a factor, or business manager, for a well-to-do merchant cousin, managing his New World dealings. But she was very ambitious and highly energetic, and didn’t stay a factor for long. She built up her own shipping business into a fleet that carried furs, sugar, and slaves all over the world, owned real estate from Albany to Barbados, and became one of the richest people in the colony–all while marrying twice (the first one didn’t live long, the second was pretty ineffectual), raising five kids, and keeping an impeccable household (she was especially proud, as most Dutch women were, of her bright white linen). It’s not a perfect story–there was marital discord, and the aforementioned slavery dealings (plus the author calls her “the she-merchant” way too often, making me envision the old She-Ra cartoon from when I was a kid), but it is a fascinating one.

Of course, Margaret’s ambition was helped by the fact that she lived in an extraordinary moment in time and place for women’s rights. I know very little about Dutch history, having concentrated mostly on England and Italy, and what I learned in this book was very interesting. The Dutch, while their social manners were often rough-edged and Brueghel-esque compared to the slick English and French, were very forward thinking in their gender dealings (and religion, too, but that’s a different story). Commerce was everything, and women could run a business as well as men and thus add to the national prosperity. Free, public primary education (reading, writing, figures) was available to all children, male or female. Women who held jobs like Margaret’s as a factor were not unique in this atmosphere of high literacy rates and intense commercial activity.

Dutch matrimonial laws were the most liberal of the time, including two different types of marriage a woman could choose from. There was “manus”, which is the sort we usually associate with the time period. The woman assumed the status of a minor under the guardianship of her husband. The second option was “usus”–a wife retained all the rights she had as a single woman (which were the same as any Dutch man), and the marriage was a partnership of equals. This was the marriage agreement Margaret entered into.

Dutch inheritance law also prohibited parents from relying on gender or birth order when apportioning property in wills. So, daughters were not deprived of an inheritance, and widows received at least fifty percent of an estate. Dutch law also gave unwed mothers the right to prosecute the alleged father in a paternity suit (“vaderschapsactie”), or force him to marry her. If he was already married, she could demand he pay her a dowry and compensation for childbirth expenses, as well as child support. A husband’s adultery, abandonment, or venereal disease gave his wife grounds for divorce. If a wife believed her husband was squandering their property, she had legal recourse to request her half of the estate plus the return of her dowry in full.

Of course, all this started to change drastically as soon as the English took over the colony in the 1680s, and this brief moment of women’s rights would not be seen again for 300 years. But Margaret Hardenbroeck took full advantage of this, building a vast empire that would allow her descendents to live at the wealthy pinnacle of New York society until the Revolution. She did it all in a relatively short life (she died at 53), and all on the force of her own ambition and intelligence. Her story was very absorbing, and I would love to read about someone like her in fiction. 🙂

What are some “heroine types” you’d enjoy seeing more of? Any real-life examples you can envision as romance heroines?