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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.

Oh, dear. I had Monday off and just realized that yesterday was Tuesday which makes today Wednesday, not Tuesday.

Ahem.

I am preparing a post on crystalizing stuff per instructions from 1807, which I guess I will debut NEXT Wednesday. As a teaser, the process clearly works, but requires refinement. I have some pictures and, I just realized, a jar of alum sludge in the pantry that by now must be a god awful mess, since I was only supposed to leave the item in there for 24 hours and now it’s been days. Uh-oh.

I think my pictures should be sufficiently disgusting that you guys should calendar the Wednesday post next week. You won’t want to miss it.

My historical, Not Proper Enough, is done and turned into my publisher. But not before discovering that I had written TWO marriage scenes. Yes. My hero and heroine got married twice. I thought I’d deleted one of them but didn’t!

So, how’s the New Year been for you so far?

Normally, I don’t cross-post my own blog with this one, but I’m making an exception because this has me hopping mad.

Last night, I posted this on my blog:

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Go take a look at what Mr. Cale McCaskey has to tell us about Romance: The Problem with Romance

Women are, of course, quite familiar with arguments like his. They’ve been used for centuries to denigrate anything associated with women that would, if left unremarked, disprove the bias.

Basically, he’s saying that all Romance novels are inferior because if a book that might otherwise be called a romance is actually good, it’s necessarily anything but a romance. This is EXACTLY like the Victorian era physicians who performed an autopsy on a respected colleague only to discover that their colleague was a woman. When faced with the presence of female genitalia, they pronounced her a hermaphrodite. Because it just wasn’t possible for a WOMAN to have been successfully masquerading as a physician and to have been good at it, too.

Right. When the evidence contradicts you, redefine the world rather than adjust your assumptions.

I’m told he’s busy deleting comments he doesn’t like, so feel free to read his post and come comment here if you worry he’ll disagree with you and have to delete your comment in an attempt to keep his narrow world view safe from anything like truth or an open mind. [Risky Readers can comment here if they like.]

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  • For him, Jane Eyre is a good novel so it’s not a Romance. (Forget the HEA)
  • Pride and Prejudice is trash (Because he didn’t like it, never mind that it’s still being read, critiqued, analyzed, transformed into other media and used as inspiration 200 plus years later.)
  • Those two Bronte sisters didn’t write anything besides Jane Eyre and [Wuthering Heights]. Forget Charlotte Bronte’s brilliant Villette (he might like it, though, because it’s not a romance.) And wait, wasn’t there THREE Bronte sisters? Why yes! There were. Ann Bronte wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which, OK, isn’t the greatest, but I’ve always thought it showed promise.

The intellectually challenged among us, which, I guess is anyone who reads romance, can comment about rainbows, unicorns and glitter. If you need help forming a coherent thought, I’m so sorry I’m too dumb to help you.

I left you last Wednesday on a bit of a cliffhanger. If you missed it, that post is here. I was attempting to follow an early 19th century recipe that, one supposes, any young Regency lady might do as a project to pass the time.

A few general observations and hyptheses about my results, which were not the Epic Failure of last week’s post, but not quite an unqualified success. Then we’ll move to pictures

1. The instructions say to leave the item in the alum solution for 24 hours. My best results came when I removed the item after something like 2 hours.

2. Based on No.1 I began to wonder if today we have what might be called Super Alum from the perspective of a Regency lady trying to impress her bother’s hot friend with her artistic abilities. Is today’s alum so pure I need to considerably dilute my solution? Or is a beer quart of water more like a gallon?

3. Could I possibly have a crystallizing super power? (If so, why did it take so long to manifest?)

4. The crystals are not even remotely orange. Or that unfortunate yellow. They are still white. Super Alum may be impervious to red food dye and rose pigment.

5. I believe my finest results would be displayed on a Regency mantle by an indulgent papa, to be, alas, thoroughly mocked by the brother, as any sibling would do, regardless of the century.

Edited to add: I just discovered that if you click on a picture, you get a slide show. And since I uploaded very high-resolution pictures, you can see an amazing amount of detail. I high recommend doing that. Really. One of the pictures has a reflection of the view from the kitchen window…

Picking up from the Cliffhanger in Pictures

Fern Frond. It is Green

Surely this is delicate enough? Frond snipped and dipped.

24 hours later . . . .

Fern Frond?

Or the Loch Ness Monster?

This picture (above) looks more successful than it was. It’s definitely prettier and not a rotting mess. But the crystals are quite heavy. The frond used to be delicate. now it’s not, except to touch. But this IS a crystallized fern frond.

A clump. The crystals are still too big and heavy for the delicate fern fond. Your brother’s hot friend will not be sufficiently impressed. Damn.

The Technique Requires Refinement

So….

I reheated my solution and went looking for more victims.

Witches Brew, Poison Dart Frog Color

A doomed fuschia.

I used a quarter to weight my clothes pin so it would stop flipping over because of the bouyant fuschia. I thought that was pretty clever, actually. When I was done, my son insisted on the return of his quarter.

Help me!!! Helllllloppppp Me!

The fuschia looks like a monster. A scary monster. Don’t go in the water!

Here’s the fuschia and the fern frond. Hanging out together. Thinking they’re safe. They’re not.

The Final Results?

Picture Taken Several Days Later

CRYSTALS!!

Well, this is somewhat successful, in that there’s crystals but as you can see, the fuschia is drying up, and it’s not what you’d call pretty.

So, I went and got another kind of fern frond, reheated my solution, and uttered my sacrificial prayer. Two hours later I walked past my Jar Of Science and saw there were crystals all over my frond. So I removed it even though there were, strictly speaking, 20 hours to go.

You’ll note that these crystals are considerably smaller.

AND…..

It’s kind of pretty!

Diamonds!

Not really.

This is the other side of the last fern frond. Again, kind of pretty. I could suspend them from something and it might look kind of cool if you only got a quick look!

Conclusions

I’m going to try again with a rose and a bath time of maybe an hour or two. I may also further dilute my solution.

The process works. But would the young Regency lady win the heart of her brother’s hot friend?

Or would she get revenge and attempt to crystallize someone’s pen knife?

I recently purchased two reference books that I adore.

The first is The Great Houses of London by David Pearce (The Vendome Press) in which there is a floor plan for 26 Grosvenor Square (Derby House) c 1773 by Adams.

The floor plan shows two stories on a rectangular lot that was 50 feet wide. The house is shaped a bit like a squared off lower case b with the bottom portion of the B being the street facing side. The gap between the upstroke of the b and the rectangle of the lot appears to be a garden or other outdoor area. There was also a square structure at the back, the width of the lot, also two stories. That housed the kitchen on the ground floor and was connected by a walkway to the main house. The first floor of this structure housed the laundry, the hayloft and the groom’s room.

In the house proper, in the lower (square) of the b, the entry is on the left into the hall. To the right of the hall is an ante-room. “Above” the hall are two staircases, one to the left, the other to the right. To the right of the right-most staircase is a parlor.

In the upstroke of the b, from bottom to top are:

Great Eating Room
Library
Lord Derby’s Dressing Room
Staircase || Cabinet
a staircase || a space into which the kitchen passage would exit.

Following that same pattern for the 1st floor:

Ante Room || First Drawing Room
Stairs || 2nd drawing room

In the upstroke of the b:
Third Drawing room
Lady Derby’s Dressing Room
Bed Chamber
stairs || Closet

Do you notice there is only one bedchamber?

The library is an oval (on its side)

Lady Derby’s Dressing Room is easily 1.5x the size of the bedchamber and, since it is over the library, it is also oval.

Lord Derby’s Dressing Room is really pretty small, and on the ground floor, while Lady Derby’s HUGE dressing room is on the 1st floor.

The 3rd drawing room as built opens into Lady Derby’s Dressing room and the opening is wide wide wide with columns. There would be no privacy between the two spaces.

The other book I bought is The Lost Mansions of Mayfair by Oliver Bradbury (Historical Publications). It is, as you might guess, all about Mayfair mansions that no longer exist. There are a LOT of pictures and illustrations. This book is lovely, but it makes me sad.

Question

So. Why do YOU think Lord Derby’s Dressing Room is so small and where did he sleep?

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