Author Archives: Diane Gaston

About Diane Gaston

Diane Gaston is the RITA award-winning author of Historical Romance for Harlequin Historical and Mills and Boon, with books that feature the darker side of the Regency. Formerly a mental health social worker, she is happiest now when deep in the psyches of soldiers, rakes and women who don’t always act like ladies.

It’s Here (Almost) A Reputation For Notoriety

Updated on May 20, 2013 by Diane Gaston

I have had such a busy couple of weeks with a family reunion in California and my daughter’s college graduation (Yay!) that release day of A Reputation for Notoriety has sneaked up on me. It is tomorrow!

In honor of release day, I’m giving away one signed copy of A Reputation for Notoriety to one lucky commenter chosen at random.

The back cover blurb of A Reputation for Notoriety

Raising the stakes…

As the unacknowledged son of the lecherous Lord Westleigh, John “Rhys” Rhysdale was forced to earn a crust gambling on the streets. Now he owns the most thrilling new gaming establishment in London.

Witnessing polite society’s debauchery and excess every night, Rhys prefers to live on its fringes, but a mysterious masked lady tempts him into the throng.

Lady Celia Gale, known only as Madame Fortune, matches Rhys card for card and kiss for stolen kiss. But the stakes are raised when Rhys discovers she’s from the very world he despises…

The Masquerade Club.
Identities concealed, desires revealed…

The first review!

4 Stars! “…It’s passionate, intense and seductive. The characters are lively with pulsating sexual tension and there are enough secrets, scandals and complications to make a lady swoon with glee!” — Maria Ferrer, RT BOOKReviews (read the whole review)

I wanted to write a gaming hell story and a story about a bastard son. Thus A Reputation for Notoriety was born. The question for me was what kind of gaming house did I want? I certainly did not want my hero to run a disreputable gaming house and I wanted one that society ladies could attend. The only way I could think of that a lady could attend would be in a mask, but I’d already used that idea in The Wagering Widow. I couldn’t repeat that idea.

Or could I? I decided to use the same gaming house that appeared in The Wagering Widow and to use the hero’s memory of the wagering widow as the idea for his house. I suppose this “proves” that all my Regency people really do live in the same “world.”

I like to think of it that way. I like to think that they all really existed and lived the lives I imagined for them. I like to think that they might pass each other on a Mayfair street or choose the same books from Hachards. While characters in one book are enmeshed in conflict, I like to think that others are living their happily-ever-after.

The latest of my Regency people will begin their story tomorrow. Look for A Reputation for Notoriety on bookstore shelves tomorrow or for sale from online vendors. The ebook version will appear June 1.

Do you like to imagine the people in books are real? What has been keeping you busy these days? Comment for a chance to win a signed copy of A Reputation for Notoriety.

Posted in Giveaways, Reading, Regency, Risky Book Talk | 23 Replies

Sick of the Regency?

Updated on May 13, 2013 by Diane Gaston

Last week on my Diane’s Blog, I mentioned the discussion on Dear Author titled We Should Let The Historical Genre Die.

At the end of the blog Jane says:

I’m not going to launch a historical romance campaign. I think I’m actively looking for the historical romance genre to die. For Regency dukes to molder into dust. For dashing earls to be crushed. Only then can the genre reinvent itself. I don’t want to save the historical romance genre. I want it to die and from the ashes, maybe then, a new and fresh historical voices will arise unconstrained by both reader, editor and agent expectations.

Of the 122 comments, several remarked about being tired of Regency and blaming the “demise” of the Historical Romance on the fact that the vast majority are Regency. One commenter said:

I have tried writing Regency but, as you pointed out, there are no original plots and the readership for this period is so knowledgeable I wouldn’t dare get the slightest flick of a fan out of place!

No original plots? (and I try so hard….)

Other commenters complained about what we’ve discussed here many times, the “wallpaper” historical, one that puts the characters in costume but has them acting in 21st century ways. Can’t disagree with that personally, although I know some readers prefer this sort of Regency.

The discussion apparently began with a blog on All About Romance, asking Where Have All The Historical Romances Gone? with some of the same points made, especially in the comments.

Evangaline Holland joined the debate in her blog post, The Trouble With Historical Romance. In the comments she remarked that other romance genres ebb and flow with changing tastes and audiences, but she cited this parenthetical example:

(look at how quickly Harlequin’s contemporary romance lines shift and morph based on audience response, whereas Harlequin Historical–once in danger of being axed completely–shifts at a comparatively glacial pace).

I must remark that saying this about Harlequin Historical is a misconception. HH has never given up Westerns, even when other publishers did, and they’ve experimented with lots of different time periods and settings: Jeannie Linn’s Chinese historicals, Ancient Rome, Vikings, Irish Medevials, Amanda’s Elizabethans and more.

Suffice to say that I found all these discussions about historical romance very interesting. The various opinions about Regency Historical Romance was often daunting and discouraging–I also thought they were at least partially true.

That little anxious mini-me who lives inside my brain was wailing, “What’s the use!” Her chin was on the floor and she was halfway to believing that nobody liked Regencies anymore.

Until my dh and I went to Old Town Coffee Tea & Spice in Alexandria with a friend. We were there a long time, picking out lots of loose tea, so we were getting pretty chummy with the salesclerk, a woman in her 50s, I’d guess.

My dh asked her, “Do you read romance novels?” (I was as surprised as she was at the question. My dh is not usually my publicist!)

She responded, “Yes.” She paused for a few seconds. “But I only read Regencies.”

Next time we go, I’m bringing her a book!

So what do you think?
Do you think the Historical Romance genre should die so it can be resurrected into something better?
Do you think Regency plots are over done? If so, which ones?
Do you think the problem with Historicals is there is not enough diversity of time periods? If so, what time periods and settings would you like to see more of?

Posted in Reading, Regency, Writing | 31 Replies

Ms Mullany Regrets

Updated on May 9, 2013 by Diane Gaston

Janet cannot appear today. Rest assured that all is well and she will return next week.

Posted in Risky Regencies | Leave a reply

English Gardens

Updated on May 6, 2013 by Diane Gaston

Janet’s and Myretta’s blogs and spring itself has me thinking about gardens. Spring in Virginia is at its most beautiful right now with the azaleas and dogwoods in bloom, the grass and trees a lush green and spring flowers popping up all over.

I just got back from California where my cousin had the most amazing garden with a hodgepodge of plants of all kinds and colors. It reminded me of an English cottage garden, although she had several succulents, which I imagine are not common in the English version. She also had a lemon tree that was filled with bright yellow ripe lemons.

It is believed that the English cottage garden arose after the Black Death of the 1300s when land became available for small personal gardens of vegetables and herbs. Flowers were typically those that had medicinal properties. Certainly by the 19th century, farm workers kept cottage gardens where they could grow their own food. These personal gardens provided vegetables, and herbs and, increasingly, flowers for decoration.

In the late 1800s such gardens became romanticised and more decorative than practical. Cultivating flowers as a hobby became more popular and eventually this sort of garden gained popularity in the United States.

My cousin’s garden actually looks a bit similar to the one in this painting, The Goldfish Seller, by English painter Leslie George Dunlop (1835-1921). Of course, her house was a typical California ranch style, not a vine-covered brick cottage.

My garden is confined to a small space in front of our house, which I’m in the process of making more like an English garden. Right now my shrubs are tiny, and I need to plant some annuals, but I have gardenia bushes that I expect to bloom and a lilac bush with two blooms on it already. For me, who is so-not-a-gardener, this is a major achievement.

How does your garden grow?

Posted in Risky Regencies | 2 Replies

To Google or Not to Google….

Updated on April 29, 2013 by Diane Gaston

In Sunday’s Washington Post there was an article about Google’s effort to digitize all the books in the Stanford University Library…and their dream to digitize all the books in the world.

Here is the article “Search Me? Google Wants to Digitize Every Book. Publishers Say Read the Fine Print First” August 13, 2006
(you may have to register with The Washington Post to read it)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/12/AR2006081200886.html?sub=AR

In a nutshell, Google will digitize Stanford’s collection and provide what they consider “fair use” of the material. They will provide the ability to search the text of the books, but will only show “snippets” of the work, what they feel fits the “fair use” stipulations of copyright law. I won’t go into the complicated details, but suffice to say that the Author’s Guild and several publishers have filed suit against Google.

I’m ambivalent.

As an author, it makes a frisson of trepidation crawl up my spine, like discovering someone stealing my book without paying for it. Google argues against this, but the gist of the lawsuits have to do with using material without renumeration for the publisher or author, who create the book in the first place.

As a researcher, however, my response is, “Wow!” Imagine all that information at my fingertips! Imagine me being able to enter “Castle Inn Brighton 1816” (a setting of my next Warner book, Desire In His Eyes, aka Blake’s story, now in the revision stage). It would take me hours in a library, days perhaps, to search out such information. Wouldn’t it be great if I could have it at my fingertips?

Then I think of out-of-print books, like The Regency Companion by Sharon Laudermilk and Teresa L Hamlin. I am lucky enough to have obtained a copy of this regency research classic years ago by bidding $40 on ebay on a Thanksgiving evening, but now ABEbooks.com lists this book as going for a low of $224.50 and a high of $595.00. Obviously this puts the book out of reach for 99.9% of regency writers and readers, but wouldn’t it be great if everyone had access to its information?

Well, what would be great is if Laudermilk and Hamlin would just authorize a re-release of the book. I’d happily buy another copy! If it were a searchable e-book copy, like Dee Hendrickson’s Regency Reference Book, I’d like it even better.

I empathize with the fact that Laudermilk and Hamlin didn’t get one penny of the money I spent on their book, and would not get a penny of that $595, if anyone chose to spend such an amount. If I think of this being multiplied a brazillion amount of times for every author—-shudder! There goes that frisson again.

What do you, dear readers and friends, think of Google’s plan? Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Posted in Reading, Writing | Tagged Google Books | 5 Replies