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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.

I love outtakes and bloopers. When the mess-in-progress is not cooperating, I need a good laugh. It also helps to remind me that other creative people make mistakes, too.

Surfing around on Youtube, I found some good bloopers from the 1995 Pride & Prejudice and the 2006 Jane Eyre.  Note that horses play a major role in each set.

As to bloopers in romance novels, some that I remember are also horse-related. The mare that turned into a gelding in the course of a ride. The phaeton, a type of 4-wheeled carriage, that turned into a curricle, which has two wheels. (Admitted, a lot of readers wouldn’t know that.) The funniest blooper I can recall is where the hero referred to his “bullocks” instead of “bollocks”.

This is what copy editors are for, but they do miss stuff sometimes.

Ditto for cover artists. You may already have heard of the legendary cover for Christina Dodd’s 1993 release, Castles in the Air.  The rest of the story is here on her website.

dodd

As for bloopers I’ve made, I hope most were caught by me or my critique partners, like the scene where a gun mysteriously jumped from one character’s hands to another’s. I’d accidentally deleted the sentence with the handover. Another sort-of blooper is a sex scene in which I had the hero remove most of the heroine’s clothing, except I forgot about her boots. Once I realized, I let it be. Maybe that’s how they wanted it.

What are some of your favorite bloopers, whether on film or in books?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

Posted in Reading, TV and Film, Writing | Tagged | 6 Replies

It’s spring break, so I’ve been in Florida visiting family.  I’m supposed to be enjoying the break—and I am, to a degree. But what non-writers (everyone in my family except my daughters, who write fan fic) can’t understand is that what I’d really like best is quiet time to write.  So I smile and go along with the planned activities, and I don’t tell them that there’s a part of me that’s eager to get back to cold and dreary upstate New York so I can write.

I’m finally getting close to the end of the balloonist story (current working title The Height of Desire).  It’s not the best time to take a break, because this is a time when there’s a risk of something Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, calls creative U-turns, i.e. fear-induced backsliding just at the point of a creative breakthrough.

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The good thing is that I’ve been writing long enough to recognize when I’m tempted to do a creative U-turn. The other thing I’ve found is that telling friends my plans can help me stay on track. So friends, this is my plan:

– I will finish this version of the story by the end of April.

– I will go on a writing retreat during the first weekend in May with my writer buddies at a house on Cayuga Lake. There I will do a deep, thoughtful review of the whole thing and very likely a lot of rewriting and polishing.

– Then it’s off to my critique partners, and probably another round of revision and polishing. Meanwhile I can start thinking about cover art. J

Wish me luck.  What challenges are you facing? What helps to keep you from backsliding?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

Posted in Writing | Tagged | 3 Replies

carriageI was down much of this week due to a stomach bug, but I’ve had a great time catching up today.  What an interesting week we’ve had at the Riskies!

Diane started out with Real Research? a discussion of whether it’s OK to base one’s research on that of popular authors in your genre. Then Amanda posted on Real Things (objects from Jane Austen’s life), Carolyn posted an Interview with Susan Broadwater of the Regency Library and Janet brought us the fascinating story of Anne Lister in Same Sex Marriage, 1834.

Diane’s original post reminded me of a recent writers’ loop discussion of historical accuracy. Some people were shocked when I put forward my belief that HISTORICAL ACCURACY IS NOT IMPORTANT when it comes to having a successful career writing Regency era romance.

I’ve read enough bestsellers, RITA finalists and even RITA winners in the genre that include errors of title usage, people traveling from London to Cornwall in the matter of a few hours, horses galloping for hundreds of miles without dropping dead, etc… to know this is true. Their popularity proves that there are vast numbers of romance readers out there who don’t care much about such things.

I don’t even mean this as a criticism of these authors. Not at all. Their popularity proves that they are consummate professionals. They are providing good entertainment for their loyal readers, they are supporting themselves, putting their kids through college, etc… All things I want to do. And they’re doing it by writing good STORIES.

The lesson I take away is that the story (in this case, the romance) comes first.

Does this mean I don’t research any more? Not at all, for several reasons. First, why annoy the smaller percentage of readers who are knowledgeable enough to be annoyed by things that can be checked relatively easily?

But the main reason I research is because it’s part of my process. It helps ME write MY stories. I have never gotten reader mail complimenting me on my meticulous research (and heck, I make mistakes too). But I have gotten mail and reviews saying my stories were a bit different, in a good way.

The point is, research inspires me.

I’m feeling more inspired this week, having added some books to my TBR list and resolved to subscribe to the Regency Library!

What inspires you?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

I’ll give almost any genre or author a try normally, but when I’m on vacation (beach or otherwise) I’m less adventurous in my reading. I think it’s because vacation time is so precious I don’t want to risk wasting it on something I won’t enjoy enough to finish. And since many of my vacations are outdoorsy, chances are there might not be a bookstore nearby to supply a more satisfying read.

So I usually stick to favorite authors.

For my next vacation, I’ll make an effort to catch up on Amanda’s and Diane’s backlists, though these ladies are so prolific it’s a challenge (albeit a worthy one!) to keep up. The pile will also include books by some of the following authors: Jo Beverley, Judith Ivory, Laura Kinsale, Mary Jo Putney, Jean Ross Ewing aka Julia Ross.

But I have a confession to make. While the pile (constrained only by luggage space) may have some weightier stories, there also have to be what I think of as quintessential beach reads: pageturners with plenty of humor.

That’s why I almost always vacation with something by Loretta Chase. In recent years, I’ve romped through a few of her two-in-one Regency reissues. Her long historicals are also fantastic, of course. But I guess most of you know that already!

Here are a few other books I’ve read recently that are great beach reads.

BET ME by Jennifer Crusie–great characters, dialogue and what the hero does with a chocolate Krispy Kreme is just…well, believe me when I say it’s good. Very good.

DISAPPEARING NIGHTLY by Laura Resnick. It’s not a romance though it has a romantic thread that ends in a kiss. Really, it’s Chick Lit meets Ghostbusters. Kooky stuff, but I devoured pages as if they were potato chips. If I were allowing myself to eat potato chips during swimsuit season, that is. Which I don’t. Mostly.

So anyway, here are just a few more authors and titles you might want to consider trying this summer. Along with, of course, anything by the Riskies. 🙂

Elena
LADY DEARING’S MASQUERADE, RT Reviewers’ Choice for Best Regency of 2005
www.elenagreene.com

Posted in Reading | Tagged | 4 Replies

Last week, Megan posted about birthday parties. We’re about to celebrate my oldest’s, and having it a local observatory, the Kopernik Space and Education Center.

Did you know there was an important woman astronomer during the Regency? Caroline Herschel was born in Germany, in 1750. She accompanied her brother, William Herschel, to England, to serve as his housekeeper and also his assistant, and continued to study the stars until her death in 1848.

I found this letter from Caroline to her sister and thought I’d share.

William is away, and I am minding the heavens. I have discovered eight new comets and three nebulae never before seen by man, and I am preparing an index to Flamsteed’s observations, together with a catalogue of 560 stars omitted from the British Catalogue, plus a list of errata in that publication.

William says I have a way with numbers, so I handle all the necessary reductions and calculations. I also plan every night’s observation schedule, for he says my intuition helps me turn the telescope to discover star cluster after star cluster.

I have helped him polish the mirrors and lenses of our new telesope. It is the largest in existence. Can you imagine the thrill of turning it to some new corner of the heavens to see something never before seen from earth? I actually like that he is busy with the Royal Society and his club, for when I finish my other work I can spend all night sweeping the heavens.

Sometimes when I am alone in the dark, and the universe reveals yet another secret, I say the names of my long lost sisters, forgotten in the books that record our science:

Aganice of Thessaly,
Hyptia,
Hildegard,
Catherina Hevelius,
Maria Agnesi,

–as if the stars themselves could remember. Did you know that Hildegard proposed a heliocentric universe 300 years before Copernicus? That she wrote of universal gravitation 500 years before Newton? But who would listen to her? She was just a nun, a woman.

What is our age, if that age was dark? As for my name, it will also be forgotten, but I am not accused of being a sorceress, like Aganice, and the Christians do not threaten to drag me to church, to murder me, like they did Hyptia of Alexandria, the eloquent young woman who devised the instruments used to accurately measure the position and motion of heavenly bodies.

However long we live, life is short, so I work. And however important man becomes, he is nothing compared to the stars. There are secrets, dear sister, and it is for us to reveal them. Your name, like mine, is a song.

Write soon
–Caroline

Doesn’t she sound like someone we’d like to meet? I would love to tell her that in our day, there are little girls who think it’s cool to celebrate a birthday at an observatory. I think it would make her smile.

Elena
LADY DEARING’S MASQUERADE, RT Reviewers’ Choice Award, Best Regency Romance
www.elenagreene.com

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