Author Archives: Elena Greene

About Elena Greene

Elena Greene grew up reading anything she could lay her hands on, including her mother's Georgette Heyer novels. She also enjoyed writing but decided to pursue a more practical career in software engineering. Fate intervened when she was sent on a three year international assignment to England, where she was inspired to start writing romances set in the Regency. Her books have won the National Readers' Choice Award, the Desert Rose Golden Quill and the Colorado Romance Writers' Award of Excellence. Her Super Regency, LADY DEARING'S MASQUERADE, won RT Book Club's award for Best Regency Romance of 2005 and made the Kindle Top 100 list in 2011. When not writing, Elena enjoys swimming, cooking, meditation, playing the piano, volunteer work and craft projects. She lives in upstate New York with her two daughters and more yarn, wire and beads than she would like to admit.

At the lake

Updated on May 3, 2013 by Elena Greene

I’m writing from a house on Cayuga Lake, where I’m on a writers’ retreat with some friends. Here’s a picture of this morning’s sunrise.

I can’t say enough about how wonderful these retreats have been for me. Given that I’m a stroke caregiver and a mother of teenagers, having great stretches of time to write is a luxury I hardly know what to do with!

Which actually presents something of a challenge. There’s a part of me that says pedal to the metal, make sure you write X pages, X thousand words, etc… Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with having goals, but too much pressure can make me choke.

So I take these retreats as something akin to a romantic getaway with my muse. A leisurely approach works best. A while back, I spoke to composer Carlos Sanchez Gutierrez, who composed Ex Machina a piece first performed by my local orchestra, the Binghamton Philharmonic. I asked him how he dealt with creative blocks. He replied that when he’s blocked, he takes a nap.

So although my goal is to finish the balloonist story, I’m resolved to mix work and relaxation as needed, trusting that will actually help to make it happen.

Wish me luck!

Elena
www.elenagreene.com
www.facebook.com/ElenaGreene

Congrats to Nicole and a Contest for Writers

Updated on April 29, 2013 by Elena Greene

Congratulations, Nicole! As I mentioned Wednesday, I did a drawing (highly official, one of my children picked the name and my husband was the witness) for a visitor to receive a copy of my first book, LORD LANGDON’S KISS. You’re the winner. Please send your snail mail addy to egreene@stny.rr.com and I’ll pop it into the mail.

Also, I recently found out about a contest that should interest the writers in our Risky community. My friends at Writer Unboxed are giving away a spandy new Alphasmart 3000 to a deserving unboxed writer. If you don’t already have one of these delightful devices, head on over and check it out.

Cheers,
Elena
LADY DEARING’S MASQUERADE, Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice, Best Regency Romance of 2005
www.elenagreene.com

Posted in Giveaways | 4 Replies

Anniversary Eve for the Riskies

Updated on April 27, 2013 by Elena Greene

Tomorrow will be the first anniversary of the Risky Regencies!

A little history for those who may have joined us more recently. About a year ago, I went to the RWA conference in Reno, where I roomed with Cara and Amanda and met Janet and Megan in person for the first time. Each of us was looking forward to releases of Signet Regencies within the upcoming months. Each was also well aware that the writing was on the wall for the line, though no announcement had yet been made.

Soon after the conference, we decided that starting this blog was better than donning blacks and mourning the demise of Signet Regencies, that this would be a fun way to share our passion for the Regency while searching for new publishing “homes”. And it has been. One of the nicest things for me has been working with this talented and highly individual group of women, including our newest member, Diane.

The idea of calling ourselves the Risky Regencies stemmed from the fact that many of us did things in our upcoming books that felt risky to us. My September release, LADY DEARING’S MASQUERADE is a Super Regency. It’s longer and more complex than anything I’d written before, which led to some serious midnight-oil-burning as the deadline approached. It also deals with more serious issues than I’d tackled in previous books. And it’s sexier.

My first traditional Regency, which came out in 2000, was on the “sweet” side. In my second full-length Regency I wrote my first sex scene. Some readers loved it; others castigated me because “ladies didn’t do that in the Regency”. Over the next few books, my stories kept getting sexier (blame my characters did it, I have no control over them!) and I continued to get a mix of rants and raves from readers.

So I was pretty nervous when LDM finally came out. Now the problem child has made me proud, winning the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best Regency of 2005 and the Desert Rose RWA’s Golden Quill in the historical romance category.

Meanwhile my fellow Riskies have earned all sorts of awards, as this week’s posts amply prove. So many different books have been honored this year, and so many of them have been ours! It says to me that readers want variety, and the Riskies have been offering just that.

As we near our one-year anniversary, I’d like to ask the visitors what you think of our blog. What have you most enjoyed? Anything you’d like to see more of?

In a spirit of nostalgia, and as a thanks to our visitors over this past year, I’d like to send an autographed copy of my first book, LORD LANGDON’S KISS, to a visitor chosen at random from comments on this post. Sometime this weekend I’ll announce the winner.

To my Risky friends and visitors, thanks for a great year!

Elena
LADY DEARING’S MASQUERADE, Golden Quill, Best Historical Romance
www.elenagreene.com

Posted in Reading, Risky Book Talk, Writing | 13 Replies

Dragged kicking and screaming…

Updated on April 27, 2013 by Elena Greene

I used to be a software engineer by profession, but I have to confess even then I had this love/hate relationship with technology. Even though I learn pretty quickly, I resent the time it takes to figure out how new stuff works. I’d rather be writing! You would not have believed how much I was cussing when I helped my daughters set up their new laptop, which uses Windows 8. What brilliant soul invented a FOUR STEP process just to power off?

I’m also cheap and I don’t care if other people have shinier gadgets, as long as my own gadgets meet my needs.

But I’ve made some progress recently. After over a year of successfully self-publishing e-books, I now actually own a Nook reader myself. I really do like it, especially the ease it brings to taking LOTS AND LOTS of books with me on a plane.

However, my recent trip to Florida showed me another thing I need to upgrade. My father-in-law passed away last year and my mother-in-law not only discontinued their internet service but also threw away all their maps. Since our poor old cell phones aren’t good for anything but phone calls, there was no good high or low tech way of figuring out how to get places we wanted to go on the spur of the moment. OK, maybe we do need to upgrade from what my daughters tell me are “loser phones.”

If I lived in Georgian times, would I be so averse to new technology? Perhaps my cook would resist using one of the new closed stoves, but I can’t imagine that I would resist advances in personal hygiene, like the invention of the shower. Even though it did recirculate the same water… Here’s a cool article from Jane Austen’s World on Regency showers.

Are you a technophobe or do you embrace new technology? What do you rely on now that you never dreamed of needing a decade ago? What would you miss most going back in time?

Also, in the spirit of upgrading, I have a shiny new mailing list. If you don’t always have time to get here to the Riskies but would like to know the big stuff—new releases and special deals—please sign up here.

Elena
www.elenagreene.com
www.Facebook.com/ElenaGreene

Posted in Rant, Research | 3 Replies

Gorgons and Hydra’s, and Chimera’s dire

Updated on April 12, 2013 by Elena Greene

I am reading Paradise Lost (from which the title line is a quote) and enjoying many of the ideas in it, along with the erratic spelling and punctuation. Things like “smoak” for “smoke” and the use of apostrophes for pluralizing certain words. And Milton isn’t even consistent within his own work, as in the phrase I quoted. I’ll forgive Milton anyway! In the 17th century English certainly wasn’t as standardized as it is now.

But what’s our excuse? Here are a few notices I’ve seen while running errands over the past month:

“Attention, Patient’s. The office will now be open on Monday’s and Wednesday’s….”

“Parking for ACS Customer’s Only”

I have even (gasp) read notices from teachers to the effect, “Parent’s, please have your children bring a bag lunch on the day of the field trip.”

Apostrophes are used to make plurals ONLY in very specific cases. The rule used to be that they were used to pluralize acronyms, numbers and letters, but the most recent guides say they should only be used with lower-case letters. I won’t freak if someone writes “ABC’s” or “1990’s” since these are common forms and recommended in older style guides. I’ve probably used them myself, so anyone who freaks about them is obviously taking things too far. 🙂

But for every other plural, please stop the madness! Save the apostrophes!!!!

OK, the heat has addled my brain. But I think I was upset about this even before the heat wave. Do you have any grammar and punctuation pet peeves? What are they?

Elena
LADY DEARING’S MASQUERADE, Winner 2006 Golden Quill, Best Historical Romance
www.elenagreene.com

Posted in Rant | Tagged grammar | 13 Replies