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.

A Spring Celebration

Updated on March 28, 2011 by Diane Gaston

It snowed in Virginia Saturday night, just a dusting, but enough to make me yearn for Spring. By the afternoon, though, it was like my wish had been granted. The snow melted, the air smelled fresh, the sky turned blue and the sun shone brightly.

So here in celebration of Spring, is a poem by William Blake:

To Spring:

O thou with dewy locks, who lookest down
Thro’ the clear windows of the morning, turn
Thine angel eyes upon our western isle,
Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!

The hills tell each other, and the listening
Valleys hear; all our longing eyes are turned
Up to thy bright pavilions: issue forth,
And let thy holy feet visit our clime.

Come o’er the eastern hills, and let our winds
Kiss thy perfumed garments; let us taste
Thy morn and evening breath; scatter thy pearls
Upon our love-sick land that mourns for thee.

O deck her forth with thy fair fingers; pour
Thy soft kisses on her bosom; and put
Thy golden crown upon her languished head,
Whose modest tresses were bound up for thee.

More celebration is in order for Risky Amanda McCabe/Laurel McKee. Countess of Scandal by Laurel McKee is a finalist for RWA’s Best Historical Romance. Hooray!!!

We’re celebrating for all the RITA and Golden Heart finalists!! (But especially for Amanda/Laurel!)

I’m in the throes of copy edits and finishing Leo’s Story, my Diamonds of Welbourne Manor book. I’ll really be celebrating when those are done. Tune in to Diane’s Blog on Thursday to see how I’m progressing.

What are you celebrating today?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Celebrating, William Blake | 8 Replies

A Tax on Light and Air

Updated on March 21, 2011 by Diane Gaston

Like so many others, I’m working on my taxes, which takes me hours, because I save all my record-keeping for tax time and then have to find, organize, and record all my necessary information. And all this is just to take the stuff to the accountant.

I have no complaints about paying taxes. As a former public employee, married to a public employee, I have an acute sense of what taxes pay for in our society. In Regency times, however, some of the taxes seem pretty odd to us.

Window Tax.
In 1697 Parliament passed a tax on windows. The more windows in a dwelling, the higher the tax. At the time it seemed a fair way to levy taxes without requiring citizens to divulge personal financial information as they would need to do for income tax. It was assumed that the wealthier the person, the bigger the house and the more windows. The wealthy embraced this idea and began to use windows as a way to display status and success. On the other hand, landlords who owned buildings that housed the working classes, resented the tax and bricked up windows to avoid payment. The resulting lack of ventilation simply made bad living situations worse.

Glass Excise Tax.
First levied in 1745, the Glass Excise tax was initially levied on the raw materials that produced glass, but later became a tax on the glass products and was based on weight. Again, the rich embraced the use of glass in large and numerous windows as a way of showing the world how affluent they were. Glass green houses were further proof of wealth. The tax but a burden on glass manufacturere and over the years the law was tweaked, easing the tax on production houses manufacturing small glass products or those making optical glass. In 1845 it was appealed altogether. In 1851 so was the Window tax.

Have you come across any other strange taxes of the Regency period or of any historical period? Have you filed your taxes yet???

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Taxes | 10 Replies

Yale Center for British Art Redoux

Updated on March 14, 2011 by Diane Gaston

I’m still flying high from my trip to the Yale Center for British Art two weeks ago. I’ve blogged about the special Thomas Lawrence exhibit Victoria Hinshaw and I went to see, the place also has a treasure of other British art from the 18th and 19th century.

Here Vicky and I stand before a bust of Prinny (George IV), looking very Roman, however. Prinny, not us!

(Check out Vicky’s blogs from the trip at Number One London)

Here’s the most spectacular painting by George Stubbs (1724-1806). Stubbs is most famous for his paintings of horses and this one is brimming with action.

All the great portrait artists are represented:

Gainsborough

Reynolds

Hoppner

Copley

And another of my favorite artists of the period.

Turner

This museum was just wonderful. Everywhere I turned I found something spectacular to look at and almost all in “our” time period, give or take a few years!!

Have you ever visited a place that stayed with you like this? There is something about this artwork that just won’t let go of me. I felt this way about England when I visited, too.

On Wednesday I’ll be at eHarlequin talking about a certain kind of art, vedute, the souvenir paintings of the Grand Tour.

P.S. My heart goes out to all of Japan in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami. The devastation is massively horrible. May we all figure out some way to help. I lived in Japan as a child when my father was stationed there. I’ll blog about that on Diane’s Blog on Thursday.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art | 8 Replies

Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power and Brilliance

Updated on March 7, 2011 by Diane Gaston

Last week I was fortunate enough to visit the Yale Center for British Art to view the art exhibit, Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power and Brilliance. I must credit Victoria Hinshaw of Number One London with the idea to go to New Haven for this exhibit. The only other time this collection of paintings was shown was at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Every year Vicky visits Washington, D.C., and we have lunch with my friends Julie and Carol. The four of us went on the same tour of England in 2005 and we’ve been friends ever since. This year we not only had lunch, but Vicky and I conned my husband into driving the two of us to New Haven (6 hours from here) on Thursday and back on Friday so Vicky could get her plane home on Saturday. The dh thought we were crazy but he went along with the scheme!

Vicky had also contacted the Public Relations staff for the exhibit and so when we arrived we were treated as VIPs! But even if we hadn’t been welcomed so warmly, the exhibit would have been worth it. It was spectacular!

Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) began his art career in Bath at age eleven when he supported his family by selling portraits in pastels. At age eighteen, he moved to London and trained for three months at the Royal Academy. By age twenty-one he exhibited twelve portraits, including this one of Elizabeth Farren, and actress who eventually married the Earl of Derby.

This is my absolute favorite of all the portraits and that is saying a lot, because there were so many beautiful ones.

This painting is on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Here is another beautiful lady on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago, Isabella Wolf.

Isabella Wolff was an intimate friend of Lawrence’s. Some say she bore him a child, although there is no conclusive evidence that this was true. Certainly she was a long time friend. This portrait was thirteen years in the making.

Here is another one on loan from the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, an image of Rosamund Hester Croker, later Lady Barrow.

The portrait of Miss Croker was exhibited before she was presented to society. You can imagine it attracted a great number of gentlemen admirers. It figured in the arrangement of her eventual marriage to George Barrow, oldest son of Sir John Barrow, author of Mutiny on the Bounty.

Dated 1827, the portrait is a bit later than the Regency, but, to me, she epitomizes a Regency heroine.

For more about Thomas Lawrence, read Jo Manning‘s blogs on him at Number One London.

And if you can get to New Haven before June 5, the end of the exhibition, GO!!!!

Vicky and I toured the exhibit twice. Once upon arriving at Yale on Thursday and then again the following morning before we had to leave. I rather wish I could go through it again….

Today I showed you some of the beautiful ladies of the Lawrence exhibit. This Thursday on Diane’s Blog, I’ll share some of the gentlemen who could possibly be heroes in a Regency romance.

And I’m giving away a prize! Some postcards from the gift shop of the Yale gallery. Comment here and on Diane’s Blog for a chance to win. Winner will be announced on Diane’s Blog next weekend.

Tell me which of the ladies above is your favorite. Or tell me what has been your favorite experience with art. Or anything!!

And visit Heroes and Heartbreakers for my first blog with them, The Naked Truth: Courtesans in Real Life vs. Fiction

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, Thomas Lawrence | 14 Replies

Celebration of Movies!!!

Updated on February 27, 2011 by Diane Gaston

Did you watch the Academy Awards?

I really loved the show, mostly because Colin Firth and The King’s Speech won. Yippee!!! Wasn’t Colin Firth just so witty and charming? And handsome.

What did you think of Anne Hathaway and James Franco as hosts? I thought Anne was beautiful and I loved her changes of clothing, but I’ll leave the fashion assessment to Amanda.

I also thought James Franco had the most amazing smile. It totally transforms his face. He intrigues me, because in addition to being an Academy Award nominee for Best Actor, he’s a Yale Ph.D. student, and he really does seem to put his schoolwork above everything else.

This weekend I’m thinking about movies a lot. I spent the weekend at Inn Boonsboro, the boutique hotel that Nora Roberts renovated in her home town. Fifteen of my Washington Romance Writer friends filled the Inn for an informal writers weekend. More on that experience in my Thursday Blog.

One of the things we did was to watch the movie Die Hard and discuss its “Seven Anchor Scenes,” Lani Diane Rich’s concept about plotting. The seven anchor scenes are those where a turning point occur and the main character makes a decision that furthers his story arc.

I don’t know about seven anchor scenes, but it was fun to discuss the movie as we were watching it. Lots of fun.

While watching the Academy Awards it occurred to me that what movies and books have in common is that, in order for us to like them, they must have interesting characters undergoing some sort of transformation. When we use movie plot structure to help us plot our books (as we were when we watched Die Hard), we should also look to movies to see how they build characters we care about.

Take Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy….I think why we all love his Mr. Darcy was revealed in his face. Jane Austen didn’t write from the male point of view, so in the book, we only know Darcy from his descriptions and his dialogue. Firth gave us so much more in his interpretation of the character.

And in The King’s Speech, he “showed” us King George VI’s emotional and physical struggle in such a realistic way that we fell in love with the character. But it was because he performed the role so realistically, and that is another lesson for us writers. The emotions and behaviors of our characters have to ring true every time or readers will not be interested in them.

So…Did you see the Academy Awards? Any awards that surprised or disappointed you? If you write, do you look to movies to learn about plotting and character? If you are a reader, do you sometimes “see” books as if they were movies?

Come to Diane’s Blog on Thursday to see more about my weekend at Inn Boonsboro!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Colin Firth | 13 Replies