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Author Archives: Amanda McCabe/Laurel McKee

About Amanda McCabe/Laurel McKee

Writer (as Amanda McCabe, Laurel McKee, Amanda Carmack), history geek, yoga enthusiast, pet owner!

Happy New Year, everyone!!  I hope you had a great, fun New Year’s Eve and are looking forward to 2013 like I am.  It really feels like a fresh start this year.

But Janet’s “best of” list inspired me to take a look back as well!  I’ve read (as always) A Lot of books this year, and most of them are now forgotten.  I didn’t keep a list of what I liked/didn’t like/found useful, but these are a few that stuck with me:

Paris to the Past by Ina Caro–this had a fabulous travel tip for history geeks like me–visit sites in historical consecutive order (in this case, France, using Paris as a base).  I found lots of obscure, new-to-me museums and sites to visit the next time I’m lucky enough to get to Europe

Clover Adams by Natalie Dykstra–a short-ish, easy to read, engrossing biography of a fascinating, sad, mostly-forgotten life.  I remember visiting Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington DC and seeing Clover Adams’s incredibly striking, melancholy tombstone carved by Augustus St. Gaudens, and was so happy to finally find out more about the woman who inspired it

BernadetteWhere’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple–my favorite novel this year! As soon as I finished it I ran around telling everyone they need to read it…

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel–the follow-up to Wolf Hall, which I also loved.  Even though it employs literary devices I usually can’t stand (present tense, sometimes unclear who is talking/thinking, etc) I do love these books for the way they capture the dangerous, precarious, lavish, bawdy fascinating Tudor world.  In the case of this books, the ferocious power struggle between Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell.

 

 

 

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn–for once, a much-hyped book is right.  Smart, sharp, weird, complicated, completely un-put-down-able

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo–another much-hyped book, which I was reluctant to pick up, but it was so, so worth it.  Not easy to read, but gorgeous beyond belief.  I think it was possibly the best book I read last year, and definitely the one that’s stayed with me the most.

I’m kind of ashamed to say I haven’t read a lot of romance this year.  I’ve had such tight deadlines and lots of research to do, especially for the Tudor mystery, not much time to read for fun.  Plus since I’ve been a romance reader since I was 10 years old, it’s gotten hard to settle down and really get into a romance the way I used to (it often feels like, no matter how well-written and well-plotted, I’ve read everything before.  Lots of times), and I really, really miss that.  But there were some I loved.

LadyCoverA Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant–wow, this was great!  Complicated, not always likeable characters in twisty situations, yay.  I can’t wait for the follow-up.  I also loved Meljean Brook’s Riveted (hands-down the best steampunk series I have come across).  And I’ve been using our own Megan’s Vanity Fare to help me get through the last of this nasty strep outbreak!  It’s wonderful, though it really, really makes me want to eat cookies.  Which would go against my New Year’s goal of eating better. 🙂

What have you read this year??  Does anyone have any romance recs to get me out my slump???

Posted in Reading | 4 Replies


In case you’ve missed it, today is Valentine’s Day! The day when stores look like they’ve exploded with a red and pink bomb, there are jewelry ads every 5 minutes on TV, and local papers and magazines want to interview romance authors. It’s a cheesy, silly, goofy holiday full of chocolate…so of course I love it!!

This Valentine’s Day is also special because Signet is re-launching its Regency line as ebooks, and my very first Regency, Scandal in Venice, is the first title in the series! I am very excited about that (and hope it means new Regencies out there!), and I also love the new cover. To celebrate, I’m running a contest on my website to win a Venetian glass heart pendant on my Amanda site. You also have until tonight to enter a contest on my Laurel site

And since I am feeling contest crazy today, I am having one here at the Riskies! I have two brand-new shinny ARCs of my next Laurel McKee book (One Naughty Night, not out until June!). I will give away one copy to a commenter on today’s post!

Here are a few fun history-geek facts I found out about Valentine’s Day…

–Historians trace the origin of Valentine’s Day to the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia, a holiday on February 14th to honor the goddess Juno (among other things the patron of women and marriage, though maybe Venus might have been a better Valentine’s Day choice!). On the following day, February 15th began the fertility festival called ‘Feast of Lupercalia,’ which often turned into a big, wild party.

An interesting custom of the Feast of Lupercalia was to bring together young men and women who otherwise were strictly separated. On the eve of the festival names of young Roman girls were written on a slip of paper and placed into jars. Each young man drew out a girl’s name from the jar and was paired with the girl for the duration of Lupercalia. Sometime this pairing lasted until the next year’s celebration, and sometimes the couple would fall in love with each other and marry.

–But it was actually due to the Christian priest and martyr St Valentine that today’s holiday got its name. The story goes that during the reign of Emperor Claudius, Rome was involved in several bloody and unpopular wars. Recruting new soliers was hard because a lot of men didn’t want to leave their wives and families to take part in such hopeless campaigning, so Claudius canceled all engagements in Rome. Saint Valentine defied Claudius’s orders. and performed secret marriages. When his defiance was discovered, Valentine was brutally beaten and put to death on February 14, about 270 AD and later became a saint.

Around 498 AD, Pope Gelasius declared February 14 as St. Valentine’s Day to honor the martyr Valentinus and to end the pagan celebration. By the Middle Ages, Valentine became a heroic and romantic figure in England and France, perfect for the cult of chivalry. Valentine’s Day Cards are even said to have originated in medieval France. Charles, Duke of Orleans is said to have written the first Valentine’s Day card. He was captured at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 and wrote a poem or ‘Valentine’ to his wife while locked in the Tower of London. This letter is still in the collection of the British Library in London, England.

–There was a popular belief in Great Britain and France during 14th and 15th century that birds begin to mate on February 14, halfway through the month of February. In the Paston Letters, Dame Elizabeth Brews writes thus about a match she hopes to make for her daughter (spelling modernize), addressing the favored suitor:

And, cousin mine, upon Monday is Saint Valentine’s Day and every bird chooses himself a mate, and if it like you to come on Thursday night, and make provision that you may abide till then, I trust to God that ye shall speak to my husband and I shall pray that we may bring the matter to a conclusion.

–Unmarried girls in Britain and Italy used to wake up before sunrise on Valentine’s Day. They believed that the first man they glimpsed on Valentine’s Day (or someone who looked like him!) would marry them within a year. Girls would wake up early to stand by their window and wait for the right man to pass by. Shakespeare mentions this tradition in Hamlet (1603). Ophelia sings:
Good morrow! ‘Tis St. Valentine’s Day
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your valentine!

What are your plans for the holiday?? What are some of your favorite romantic reads for the day?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 18 Replies

Yesterday, February 6, marks Queen Elizabeth II’s Accession Day, and the start of a momentous Diamond Jubilee year! Though I imagine it’s a day of some personal sadness for her (marking the death of her father, George VI, who she was quite close to), it’s an extraordinary achievement for an extraordinary woman who has seen and done so very much during her long reign. I wish I could be in London for some of the festivities this year (especially the Jubilee River Pageant on the Thames on June 3)!!!

Princess Elizabeth was only 25, a young wife with two small children (Charles, 3, and Anne, 1) when she and Prince Philip were sent off on a Commonwealth tour in February 1952. She probably didn’t expect to assume the responsibilities of queen for some time yet. Her parents waved her off, and only a few days later her father was dead. She was in Kenya, and hurried home to be proclaimed Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, and Defender of the Faith before the Privy Council at St. James’s Palace. It was a solemn occasion, as the king was being brought from Sandringham to lie in state at Westminster Hall and then to St. George’s Chapel at Windsor, where the funeral was held and he was buried, to be joined many years later by Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother.

The coronation didn’t take place until June 2, 1953–I’m sure I will be talking more about that later! In the meatime, I’m in the middle of reading Sally Bedell Smith’s new bio, Elizabeth the Queen…will let everyone know how it is when I finish…

Are you going to be in England this year?? What festivities would you attend if you were there?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 4 Replies


I seem to be talking a lot lately about books I’ve been reading, but I seem to be in the middle of a good reading run!! I just finished the tons of fun Much Ado About Loving: What Our Favorite Novels Can Teach You About Great Expectations, Not so Great Gatsbys, and Love in the Time of Internet Personals by Jack Murnighan and Maura Kelly, which mines works of literature for modern dating advice. (PW called it “…a clever, amusing hybrid of lit crit and relationship advice”). I’ve often thought novels are a great source of guidance when it comes to dating and love myself, so I snatched up this book and spent a wonderful afternoon laughing at its lessons!

Some of my favorite chapters: “The Blabbers Karamazov: The dangers of revealing too much too soon”; “Not-so-great-Gatsby: Is it flattering or creepy when a guy persists?”; “Bride and Prejudice: Does wanting to get married give you champagne goggles?”; “Madame Ho-Vary: Is cheating ever okay?”; and “Jane Erred: Why it’s silly to put principles over passion” (“When and if you’re lucky enough to find true love, don’t muck it up with mindless adherence to convention. Throw away that list of requirements….”)

And then there is “Lady’s Chattering Lover: 10 things not to say after sex.” Example #8–Tread with caution when talking about his penis (“And now it’s tiny and soft like a little bud of life!”
What romance lessons have you learned from your favorite books??

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