Author Archives: carolyn

About carolyn

Carolyn Jewel was born on a moonless night. That darkness was seared into her soul and she became an award winning and USA Today bestselling author of historical and paranormal romance. She has a very dusty car and a Master’s degree in English that proves useful at the oddest times. An avid fan of fine chocolate, finer heroines, Bollywood films, and heroism in all forms, she has two cats and a dog. Also a son. One of the cats is his.

Me Me Me Me Meme!! Plus Contest Winner

Updated on February 9, 2011 by carolyn

Here are my answers to last Friday’s Meme:

1. When I think of Mr. Darcy, he is buck naked.

2. Lord Masterful greets YOU at a ball. You look down to see what he’s staring at and discover a billet-doux from Lord Hawt.

3. One of my favorite Regency-set novels is Mary Balogh’s A Summer to Remember.

4. If you could meet Lord Byron, what would you ask him? WTF? Seriously, dude, WTF?

5. You wake up and find yourself in a Regency historical novel. What’s the plot? I inherit a vast fortune that comes with an evil guardian who wants to off me. As I’m climbing out the window to save myself, I fall into the arms of a masked highwayman who turns out to be Lord McHunkyPants who, just my luck, is looking for a rich heiress to marry and ravish him.

6. A Regency fairy-godmother grants you three Regency wishes. What are they? 1) Suffrage 2) The ability to sing like an angel and 3) Good taste in all things fashionable.

7. If you could change ONE fact about the Regency what would it be? Voting rights, including women. But I might insist that Shelly rewrite his essay on poetry so it actually makes sense.

8. Napoleon writes you a letter. What does he say? Darling, the key to the treasure is under the 5th floorboard in the seventh room in your cottage. Spend it madly, my love.

9. How many exquisite slippers are in your wardrobe? None unless my wishes get granted in #6, in which case the answer is 15 and I vote for Reform.

10. How do you take your tea? As hot as Lord Hawt and as black as our sins.

The Winner of the Friday Meme is…. M

M – email me (carolyn AT carolynjewel.com) so I have your email address and can set up your prize! (An Amazon Gift Card!!)

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged contest winner, meme | 6 Replies

Why I Heart the Regency – also Chocolate

Updated on February 2, 2011 by carolyn

My second historical was set in 1844, which is firmly Victorian. I picked that year because I really liked the clothes. But the book got a Regency cover:

That’s the power of the Regency, folks, that a novel set in 1844 got a Regency cover. Yes, there were orchids in the story, so someone knew enough about the book to get that right. And now I confess that at that time I DID NOT WANT to write in the Regency. I didn’t like the dresses. Those Empire waistlines made everyone look pregnant and they reminded of the hideous maxi dresses that were briefly popular while I was in High School about a bazillion years ago. But as I was flogging my doorstop book and etcetera it was clear that Regency sold because readers loved the Regency. I finally abandoned the doorstop book and started another one which, eventually, became Lord Ruin, which was set in the Regency and for which I had to do LOTS of research because I’d been writing Georgian and Victorian. And the period kind of got to me. I began to understand the appeal. I had never read Georgette Heyer, you see, and I did not, myself, read Traditional Regencies and had the somewhat inaccurate notion that books set in the Regency did not have sex, and I wanted to write books where the door did not close.

So, I researched the Regency — pre Google days mind you — and learned there was a war on and all kinds of transition stuff going on as the Georgian Era ideal of class began to crack just the teensiest bit from the tension of behaving as if poor people wanted and probably deserved to be poor. People were getting different ideas about that— Reform???? Gasp! And the poetry rocked. The Regency won me over. I must say.

Getting around to the Chocolate

Over a my blog, I’m having a contest where the prize is 2 lbs of Leonidas chocolate. Go enter Also, at my blog, there’s a poll about what kind of fiction you read. Paranormal Romance is now leading Historical Romance . . . Just saying.

So, why do you love the Regency? Did you ever NOT love the Regency? Were you seduced? How did it happen?

Posted in Regency | Tagged Chocolate, Luuurve | 9 Replies

Can we Reconstruct the Social Past?

Updated on January 19, 2011 by carolyn

I had an interesting conversation recently regarding present-day misconceptions about the past. In this conversation we floated the idea that historical romance had created its own, essentially false, depiction of life during the Regency. We talked about whether or not these inaccurate ideas were so deeply embedded that an accurate depiction of them could be roundly denounced.

There is a difference between history and historical fiction. In the case of the former, the point, one hopes, in writing about history, is to be accurate. Fiction serves a different role. Fiction, at some level, has to recognize the ways in which, say, a Regency Romance, privileges the needs of modern readers over historical accuracy.

What I constantly find odd, however, is that way in which we sometimes talk about the past as if those people were a different species. There is, I think, a speed at which evolution progresses — over millions of years, punctuated by the odd catastrophe that challenges the very survival of a species, and the speed at which social culture evolves. Millennia vs. a few years.

The human sex drive is an evolutionary survival tactic and our bodies have evolved to make procreation likelier than not. The way human cultures deal with that fact seem to be fairly fluid. I think historical researchers sometimes conflate cultural sexual norms with the human sexual drive.

In the West, we have this notion of sexual repression that comes to us from the Victorian age — women weren’t supposed to like sex, everyone was all uptight and people, particularly women, who appeared to embrace their sexual nature were punished. We could talk all day about the ways in which Western cultures have attempted to control and repress human sexuality. There is plenty of evidence of that.

However, no amount of social repression negates the fact that sex feels good. Our bodies are hard wired for sexual desire and to experience sexual pleasure. Repression is bound to fail. It cannot help but fail. We exist today because it did, in fact, fail.

My point, after all that, is that this trope of the innocent, unsexual female who has no curiosity or drive to engage in sex (and I do mean the act) seems to me to be fundamentally false. Of course there were people who refrained from sex until marriage, but there simply had to be a lot of people who didn’t. The idea that women didn’t have any non-social way to control their fertility also seems suspect to me.

The Heyer-esque innocent, however compelling she is on the written page, with an almost complete denial of female sexual agency sometimes bothers me and is, I think, more a representation of Heyer’s social millieu than the actual Regenecy — In other words, she wrote about a world as her culture norms imagined it ought to have been. Lydia in Pride and Prejudice is an example of that tension.

So, after all these ill-formed thoughts, what do you think about the accuracy of Regency Romance and do you care?

Posted in Regency | Tagged sexual norms | 5 Replies

Backlist titles – The invisible Disruption

Updated on January 12, 2011 by carolyn

I have turned in my revisions for My Dangerous Pleasure (Book 4 of my My Immortals series) and am now FREE, FREE AT LAST for a while and can totally concentrate on The Next Historical, which is shaping up to be awesome. I am hoping I get to keep my malfunctioning door hardware scene.

Other Historical Book News

I have my rights back for two of my historicals, Lord Ruin and The Spare, and hope to be hearing something on another in about three months. My exciting news is that I am in the process of getting new cover art for Lord Ruin and hope to have that available in digital formats and POD by the end of this month or early February.

Publishers Not Leveraging Backlist

It’s always been interesting to me that publishers and other industry professionals like to point out that Publishers make quite a lot of money on backlist titles. But they’re always talking about Books We’ve Heard Of. Makes sense, since many of these titles sell a lot. To Kill a Mockingbird, anyone?

But there’s a hidden backlist that publishers have not been taking advantage of, and that’s the vast pool of genre fiction. For the purposes of this post, let’s limit the discussion to Romance. There are out of print (OOP) titles that consistently show up on lists of reader favorite, years after they were first published. The only way to get these OOP books are to find them used (if you haven’t saved your copy) or find a pirated version.

Invisible Demand for Out Of Print Books

There is a pent up demand for a lot of OOP Romance titles but it’s largely invisible to publishers because the titles were mass market and intended to have a short life and, to my knowledge, publishers aren’t tracking demand for used books– which is (almost) the only way to get your hands on these OOP titles.

The reality is that publishers were wrong about the short shelf life. This might be true for certain titles or certain authors — the book or writing is mediocre, let’s say. (and this is true of literary fiction, too.) The reality is that there are genre authors who are talented, amazing writers and their stories are worth re-reading. I bet Amazon has the data that proves this, and I bet that data would be very interesting to see. I bet that data shows there are certain OOP titles that are in demand.

I believe Publishers have missed a revenue stream with genre fiction. Popular OOP titles are sitting there, entirely unmonitized except for used book dealers. Digital publishing has created a whole new way to monitize that wide pool, but publishers are in a difficult situation now because 1) they’re blind to the demand and 2) the current system isn’t suited to the digital reality. (And that’s a whole other post!) They’re also not looking at authors with backlist as potential partners in a different publishing scheme, again, a whole other post.

Meanwhile, savvy authors are moving faster.

Until recently, there was nothing authors could do to satisfy continuing demand for their OOP backlist, other than hope readers could find used copies. There wasn’t much point in asking for a rights reversion, because, what would you do with the rights if you had them?

The Kindle changed everything.

Now authors can do something with backlist titles that publishers allow to languish. Now there’s a very good reason for authors to get rights reversions for OOP titles. Those books can now be reintroduced into the author’s stream of commerce, whether as a book that can be purchased or offered free as a way to seed front list sales. Or both.

If publishers were more agile and wired into their authors, maybe they would be thinking of ways to help send that stream of commerce their way. Right now, Amazon is doing that instead. From what I’m seeing and hearing from other authors, there’s another disruption on the way, and that’s the reintroduction of OOP backlist into what is a frontlist-like commerce stream.

I’m looking forward to the Future

I can’t wait for the time when I can sit around yakking about great romances from the past and if a title being discussed intrigues me, being able to pull out my iPhone or eReader and get my hands on that book within seconds. I can’t wait to read a book I love and be able to get my hands on ALL of that author’s backlist within seconds.

What do you think?

Opine in the comments.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged books, Out of Print Titles, Reading and Writing | 9 Replies

Regency Demons?

Updated on January 5, 2011 by carolyn

My Immortal Assassin

Book 3 of my My Immortals paranormal series is out! Quick, go buy it from one of the links on my website! (Because you can pick your favorite bookseller. I don’t do any affiliate link stuff because it’s one more thing to fail to keep track of.)

Believe it or not, I have a Regency link to this book which is that I modeled my hero on a Regency Romance hero, kind of like Mr. Darcy. He’s all about decorum and awesome clothes, and the heroine is all — not that stuff. So, it’s a little like Mr. Darcy meets Buffy, if Mr. Darcy was a demon and didn’t know about Elizabeth yet.

Revenge. It’s all Grayson Spencer wants. Christophe dit Menart, a human with dark magical powers, destroyed the life she loved. She wants the pleasure of killing him, no matter the cost to her. If not for Durian, a dangerously sexy demon fiend charged with keeping Christophe alive, she would have succeeded, too. Now, she’s certain all hope is gone. But he has a plan and an offer she can’t resist…

Durian has spent his life as a trained and sanctioned assassin. His duty: to enforce the laws against demons harming humans. He’s always prided himself on staying out of the fray, carrying out his orders and honoring his fealty to his warlord, but never getting attached. Never until Grayson, a spunky and determined woman clearly gifted with magic herself. He convinces her to swear fealty to him so he can protect her and teach her to use her magic to taste the revenge she so desperately wants.

They’re soon bound together in a forbidden desire–a dangerous passion that calls into question Durian’s oath of loyalty to his warlord. When he refuses to return her to Christophe, his disobedience threatens to inflame the tumultuous war between demons and the magekind. Can they–and their love–survive?

Read Chapter 1.

Reviews

Romantic Times 4 1/2 stars
The lines in the war between Magekind and Fiends continue to blur in the next installment of Jewel’s exhilarating My Immortal series. The protagonists in this drama have both suffered terribly, giving them a common ground and enemy. Jewel provides her fans with a terrific tale that has action aplenty and drama to spare. Great stuff!
Jill M. Smith

Alternative Worlds
Fast-paced from the moment Gray and Durian meet on the streets of San Francisco
Read Full Review

Publisher’s Weekly
Jewel’s third paranormal (after 2009’s My Forbidden Desire) is an exciting return to a world of demons and mages.

BookPage – Romance of the Month – Top Pick!
Dark, edgy and laced with thrilling desire, My Immortal Assassin will set readers’ hearts racing.
Christie Ridgway

Book Reading Gals
Carolyn Jewel is a master storyteller. The world that she has created is in this reviewers humble opinion one of the best in the paranormal and romance genre. The conflict between the fiends and the mages is a perfect combination. The hero and heroine are a perfect complement to each other.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming. Thanks for sharing the excitement with me!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Hijacked, Mr. Darcy, My Immortal Assassin, Regency Demons | 10 Replies