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.

Signs of Spring

Updated on February 17, 2013 by Elena Greene

It’s been a mild winter, weather-wise, but a rough one for my psyche. I won’t go into the details, but some stressors I’ve been dealing with should ease up in the next month or so, and I’ll have more time to write and do other fun things.

Seeing my crocuses looking this gorgeous (with my Ice Follies narcissi not far behind) helps me feel hopeful! Also being able to paint my toenails and wear sandals again.

I’m also looking forward to a retreat my writing buddies and I are planning for next month. As in past years, we’ve rented a house near Taughannock Falls on Cayuga Lake, where we always do a lot of writing, interspersed with walks through the park or kayaking on the lake. In the evenings, it’s romantic historical films, wine and chocolate. I can’t wait!

Below are pictures I took last year of the falls and of a patch of wildflowers we admired on one of our walks. Later, I discovered that this plant is called bloodroot, for its red sap which was used as a dye by Native American artists. We also see trilliums, trout lilies, Dutchman’s breeches and many other wildflowers during our spring retreats.

Anyone else into flowers, wild or otherwise? What are you looking forward to this spring?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

www.facebook.com/ElenaGreene

“A dreadful accident”

Updated on February 17, 2013 by Elena Greene

I’ve been reading the Letters of Harriet Countess Granville, daughter of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, who married Viscount (later Earl) Granville. She moved in the highest circles, lived an active social life in England and abroad, for her husband served as ambassador to France for intervals between 1824 and 1841. There are lots of interesting tidbits in her letters and I’ll probably talk more about them in future posts.

This week I’d like to talk about how often she wrote about the dangers of carriage travel.

At one point she writes to her sister:

“Let me warn you of Alconbury Hill, that is, of a horse there that will not back. Off we pelted from the middle of a hill with a curl at the bottom, and would not stop for ages. In short, Granville owns that we were run away with. I never met with such a dreadful danger before.”

In another letter she writes:

“As I was turning into Berkeley Square I met four soldiers carrying a litter covered with a sheet. I asked Samuel what it was. He said they were carrying a dead man home. I tried to avoid it, but the people got round me and I was obliged to stop whilst they passed quite close to me. I asked one of the crowd how it had
happened and he said he had been squeezed by a mob in Pall Mall. A sort of nervous horror made me scarcely able to get on, when I saw Granville Somerset galloping up to me. He said, ‘You must have seen Worcester’. ‘No.’ ‘You must, they were taking him this way.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘They say he has had a dreadful accident, and I am going to my mother.’ I leave you to imagine with what feelings I almost ran to Brook Street. Here I found the lobby full of soldiers and servants, the men standing by the litter, and the Duke of Beaufort above, leaning his arms and head on the banisters. To end my story, they found him on examination only stunned, and severely bruised, but not dangerously hurt. I staid whilst they shaved and probed the head. He had been bled on the spot eighteen ounces by a surgeon who fortunately passed at the time. My first account was incorrect. His horse took a fright, ran away and threw him out of his gig against a door-post.”

I’m not sure which is scarier, the thought of being crushed in a mob, thrown from a gig, or being bled 18 ounces. It’s clear that life in London was not all balls and lobster patties.

In historical romance, we authors sometimes use carriage accidents to kill people off, usually so someone can inherit something: a title, wealth, debts or other serious responsibilities. I’ll admit to killing off the hero’s parents in one book, in an accident going down Kirkstone Pass in the Lake District. My husband and I drove down that pass while on vacation. Later, when I read a historical account of an accident there, I wasn’t surprised. It must have been quite treacherous during the Regency and probably still is, in bad weather.

Other times we use carriage accidents in a more fun way, to force our characters into situations where they’re forced to get to know one another better. Georgette Heyer used the combination of a snowstorm, a curricle-and-pair and a donkey to strand the hero and heroine of Sylvester at a secluded country inn.

What I think is great about these plot devices is they are totally believable. Much as I love horses—I used to ride regularly—some can be a bit nuts, and even the gentlest horse can be spooked. I’ve only once been run away with. Though I managed to stay calm and in the saddle until the horse tired, but it brought home the dangers of the sport to me in a very real way.

To me, the occasional horse-related accident in romance feels realistic, far more so than scenarios in which the hero’s black stallion gallops for hours without rest or teams of horses transport characters from London to Cornwall in less than a day.

Here’s a great page I found at the Regency Collection on the dangers of carriage travel, which apparently ranged from floods and snow to escaped lionesses.

What do you think of horse-related accidents in romance? Do you find them realistic, or do you think they’re overused? Any favorites?

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

Posted in Regency, Research | Tagged accidents, carriages, countess granville, lady harriet cavendish | 6 Replies

Beer, glorious beer!

Updated on February 16, 2013 by Elena Greene

Alfie Dolittle, who sings this in MY FAIR LADY, definitely would have agreed with Cobbett’s analysis of why beer is better than tea.

Put it to the test with a lean hog: give him the fifteen bushels of malt, and he will repay you in ten score of bacon or thereabouts. But give him the 730 tea messes, or rather begin to give them to him, and give him nothing else, and he is dead with hunger, and bequeaths you his skeleton, at the end of about seven days.

Proof positive. At least, that beer can fatten you like a hog. Did we really need Mr. Cobbett to tell us that?

I used to be exclusively a wine drinker, but I fell in love with English ale during the three years my husband and I were on international assignment in England. The first time we walked across the road to the Fox and Hounds, our neighborhood pub in Funtington, West Sussex, my husband ordered a pint of Ruddles Best Bitter. Intrigued by the deep color, I took a sip. He had to order himself another. Some time after that, we joined the Campaign for Real Ale and used their Good Beer Guide and Good Pub Food Guide to help us plan our weekend excursions.

Now I no longer have any excuse for the mistake of having a Regency hero dash angrily into a pub and order lager. (I cringe a little when I read such scenes, but won’t go as far as book-flinging.) During the Regency, they would have drunk “real ale”. Here’s CAMRA’s definition:

Real ale is beer brewed from traditional ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide.

Real ale is also known as ‘cask-conditioned beer’, ‘real cask ale’, ‘real beer’ and ‘naturally conditioned beer’.

Here are a few of the terms to describe varieties and styles of real ale:

bitters: well-hopped, copper-coloured, stronger versions are called “best” or “special”
pale ales: premium bitters that are not pale, just lighter than brown ales
India Pale Ale: pale ales adapted for transport to India, stronger, more heavily hopped
brown ale: reddish-brown to dark brown, somewhat sweet
mild: usually dark brown, lightly hopped
stout: extra-dark, almost black, strong flavored
porter: also dark, but lighter-bodied than stout.

Here’s one of my favorites: Morland’s Old Speckled Hen (the website explains how this ale was named). Fortunately for me, it is not impossible to find on this side of the pond.

Have you tried real ales? If so, what are your favorites? If not, it’s worth trying if only to better one’s understanding of Regency beverages. Anything for research, I say. 🙂

Elena, beer connoisseur and tea slut, hoping Cara will not cut my acquaintance 🙂

LADY DEARING’S MASQUERADE, an RT Reviewers’ Choice Award nominee
www.elenagreene.com

Posted in Regency, Research | Tagged beer, Campaign for Real Ale, CAMRA, William Cobbett | 8 Replies

Moving into the body

Updated on February 16, 2013 by Elena Greene

In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron writes:

“Most blocked creatives are cerebral beings. We think of all the things we want to do but can’t. Early in recovery, we next think of all the things we want to do but don’t. In order to effect a real recovery, we need to move out of the head and into a body of work. To do this, we must first of all move into the body.”

I follow the exercise routine from the Body for Life, with some adaptations. I work out six days a week, alternating weight training with swimming. Although I’ve found it harder to keep to the eating program (I just love food too much) and it hasn’t given me a Victoria’s Secret supermodel figure (ditto on loving food too much!) I’ve found it’s been helping my writing in ways I didn’t expect:

It reminds me to feel the satisfaction of small accomplishments, the laps swum in the morning, the pages written later in the day.
Since lifting weights, I’m less prone to back strain from sitting at the computer.
Endorphins that fight the mild to moderate depression I feel from time to time.
Better sleep equates to better writing in the morning.
Rhythmic exercise soothes worries, frees up creative paths in the mind.

Another excerpt from THE ARTIST’S WAY could easily describe me.

“Every day, as she swims the aquamarine oblong of her neighborhood pool, her mind dives deep into itself, past the weeds and clutter of its everyday concerns—what editor is late with a check, why the typist persists in making so many errors—and down to a quiet green pool of inspiration. That rhythmic, repetitive action transfers the locus of the brain’s energies from the logic to the artist hemisphere. It is there that inspiration bubbles up untrammeled by the constraints of logic.”

At the risk of sounding preachy, please go out and find some exercise to do if you aren’t already. Swim, walk, run, bike, whatever works for you. It really does help!

Elena
LADY DEARING’S MASQUERADE
www.elenagreene.com

Posted in Writing | Tagged Exercise, The Artist's Way | 3 Replies