Today is the Grand Opening of Diane’s Blog.
Click on my pretty graphic and it will take you right there!
(Then come back to discuss Venetia in our Regency Read-Along)
Today is the Grand Opening of Diane’s Blog.
Click on my pretty graphic and it will take you right there!
(Then come back to discuss Venetia in our Regency Read-Along)
Wow. What a lot of new announcements for the Riskies in the last week. New books by Janet and Amanda, and our new RITA nominees, Carolyn and Amanda. And it seems like just yesterday that Amanda was announcing her new Laurel McKee release!
Well, I didn’t want to be UNDONE by Amanda, Janet and Carolyn. I have my own news!
Remember last year at this time I announced the release of my Undone eStory, The Unlacing of Miss Leigh? I’m announcing it again. The news is, The Unlacing of Miss Leigh is one of the stories available in the new Harlequin Historical anthology, Pleasurably Undone, now available as a mass market paperback in your bookstore. This is the first print anthology of the Harlequin Historical Undone stories.
We’ve featured my anthology mates before: Louise Allen, Terri Brisbin, and new RITA finalist, Michelle Willingham. (We’ll invite Christine soon). These ladies and I recently made an appearance on the Borders True Romance blog. You can read our interview here.
The Unlacing of Miss Leigh is my unabashed homage to The Phantom of the Opera (the Gerard Butler version, of course). Graham Veall, a disfigured and masked Penisular war veteran, advertises for female companionship, and Margaret Leigh, a virginal vicar’s daughter, answers the ad. When Margaret agrees to spend two months with Graham, it is not for the money she desperately needs. Will Margaret help heal Graham’s wounded spirit? (You have to buy Pleasurably Undone to find out.)
Or comment on this blog! I’ll give away one signed copy of Pleasurably Undone to one lucky commenter chosen at random.
Something else new with me!
I’m starting my own personal blog……. Why? you ask.
I really enjoy blogging here at Risky Regencies and I won’t give that up! I just thought it would be fun to branch out a little. Try different things and have even more fun. My wonderful webmistresses at Waxcreative have made it so my blog will appear on my website. Isn’t that grand?
My blog launches this Wednesday, March 31, at my website. For the month of April I’ll be blogging every Wednesday and Friday. And every Wednesday and Friday in April there will be a contest, each time the prize being a book. You’ll see more of me and more of my Pleasurably Undone anthology mates.
I also have a special theme planned for the April blogs. Stop by to see!
I am so hoping my Risky friends will visit me at the new blog. Help me build another “community” as lovely as the one we have here. You can test out how to get there by clicking on my pretty little graphic!
What do you like to see in a blog?
What topics are your favorites?
Who are some of your favorites?
I need to know these things!!
Our Risky Regencies Read Along of Venetia, spearheaded by Carolyn, is turning out to be a great fun. It was a new idea and I’ve been enjoying it immensely.
There are a couple more new ideas that have also captured my interest in the last week.
The first is a new blog started by friends of mine, Kristine Hughes and Victoria Hinshaw. For those of you who write in the Regency and Victorian time periods, you probably have Kristine’s book, Writers Guide to Everyday Life in Regency and Victorian England. (If not, she’s selling that and more on CD-just follow that link). Victoria Hinshaw is the author of several traditional regencies.
What Kristine and Vicky have in common is a love of research, especially researching Georgian/Regency/Victorian England. They also have a great sense of fun, so when they told me they were starting a blog, I knew I’d love it.
The blog is called Number One London. It launched on March 20 and here’s what they had the very first day:
Curiosity Corner – a recurring feature, this time a portrait and the task is to guess who it is.
Announcement of a Writer in Residence program – you could be awarded a stipend to spend two month to a year in Stratford on Avon! (have I got your attention now?)
Sharpe in India
All you ever wanted to know about franking a letter
Waterloo Bridge
Archive CD books online (you know I was excited about that one!!)
So check it out! I’m betting it will be almost as fun and educational as Risky Regencies.
Next new thing is from YouTube via ABC Nightly News.
Remember the remake of We Are The World debuted during the Superbowl? I was watching ABC news and Diane Sawyer did a story of another version of We Are The World done by ordinary people from all over the world. It was the idea of Lisa Lavie, a singer, who chose 57 other singers from YouTube and asked each of them to tape themselves singing We Are the World. Then she spliced them all together.
Here is the result:
These everyday people, from all over the world, were simply fantastic.
(for an interview with Lisa Lavie with Diane Sawyer, look Here.
Next Monday I’ll have something new to announce! A new book (well, an anthology) and a book giveaway. And more!
What’s new with you? Any new experiences? Tell us!
Winner of a signed copy of The Wild Marquis is…..
Daphne!!
Email us at riskies@yahoo.com with your snail mail address!
This week we start our discussion of Georgette Heyer’s Venetia, led by Carolyn. I’ve already read the first seven chapters and then some.
Georgette Heyer, 1902-1974, is credited with creating the Regency Romance, even now the most popular historical romance genre. Heyer’s first book came about when she was 19. She created The Black Moth, a Georgian story, as a way to entertain an ill brother. It was the start of a wonderful career of writing both Georgian/Regency novels and mysteries.
Heyer tended to depreciate the importance of her works. She wrote of one of her books to her editors:
“I think myself I ought to be shot for writing such nonsense, but it’s questionably good escapist literature and I think I should rather like it if I were sitting in an air-raid shelter, or recovering from flu. Its period detail is good; my husband says it’s witty—and without going to these lengths, I will say that it is very good fun.”
Reviewers also did not take her work seriously, dismissing her books as “froth.”
Still, Heyer was very serious about crafting her works. Her historical novels were based on impeccable research and her interpretation of the Regency world has formed the basis of the traditional regency genre (in my opinion), even though we now know Heyer did not always get it right and, to ferret out plagiarists, she is known to have inserted historical facts of her own creation.
Heyer was married to a mining engineer turned barrister. She had one son (who became a judge). She was an intensely private person. No book tours and publicity appearances for her.
The Private World of Georgette Heyer by Jane Aiken Hodge is a lovely biography of Heyer’s life. You can read her introduction here.
One of the vignettes Hodge writes of was how carefully Heyer researched the battle of Waterloo for An Infamous Army, claiming, for instance, that all of Wellington’s dialogue in the book was actually spoken or written by him. Around the time Heyer wrote An Infamous Army, she took her young son to the National Army Museum in Chelsea where Siborne diorama of the Waterloo battle is displayed. As she stood there explaining the battle to her son, a crowd gathered to listen, amazed that this mere woman spoke so knowledgeably. Little did they know they were in the presence of greatness!
In my 2005 trip to London we visited the National Army Museum. As I examined the diorama, I thought of Heyer explaining the battle to her son. The difference was, I knew I was standing where a great woman had stood.
I cannot wait to begin our discussion of Venetia!!! Be sure to join us for it!
What do you know of Georgette Heyer’s life? If you could, what would you like to ask her?
