Hello from SF and the 1st Annual Historical Writers’ Conference (put on by the Beau Monde and the Hearts Through History Chapters). I’m drowning in riches here–so many appealing workshops that I long for the Time Turner Hermione Granger uses in Harry Potter III!

The first workshop I attended was “Black Powder Weapons Through the Ages”, by Gordon Frye, who brought examples of all sorts of period pistols, muskets, rifles and also swords and demonstrated how they were carried, loaded etc… Very, very cool, and many of us fell in love with the small Regency era pistol, perfect for a heroine to tuck into her reticule.

It seemed only natural to segue to the workshop on “Trauma Surgery” by Scott Moore, where I learned, among other things, how gunshot wounds were treated, how arrows were extracted and how amputations were actually performed (Hollywood usually gets it sooooo wrong). This was particularly interesting to me since my mess-in-progress features an army brat hero and also many ex-soldiers among the secondary characters.

“Sex Through History” by Delilah Marvelle was also brilliant and chock-full of interesting tidbits, naughty language and naughtier pictures that prove there’s nothing new under the sun. I am quite dying to go explore some of the sources in her bibliography!

Next many of us enjoyed “Kickshaws: Regency and Victorian Refreshments” by Kalen Hughes. We sampled rout cakes, pound cakes, seed cakes, Banbury cakes and much more. Yum! I’m so glad the handouts include recipes.

After I finish this post: dinner, booksigning and the soiree. I’m sure we’ll be posting many pics soon. And it’s been great meeting Keira, Jane George, Doglady aka Pam aka Louisa and others–wish all our Risky friends could be here!

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

Today I’m flying to San Francisco.

Tomorrow I’m attending the conference put on by the Beau Monde (the Regency chapter of Romance Writers of America) and Hearts Through History (RWA’s historical romance chapter).

Then Thursday through Saturday is RWA’s annual conference!!!

Busy, busy, busy. And I can’t wait!

I’ll see friends I haven’t seen in years.

I’ll be a suave gamester, and teach piquet and cassino and loo at the Beau Monde’s soiree. (I’ll wear my Regency gown, and maybe I’ll even have time to dance, too!)

I’ll attend fantastic workshops, acquire fabulous novels and research books, and probably share friendly mutual gripes about the elevators or the air conditioning or some other hotel feature. (Griping about elevators is a great way to bond.)

I’ll try desperately to write more of my novel-in-progress.

And I will buy many, many books.

Now off to write madly…

Cara
Cara King, author of MY LADY GAMESTER, which contains huge tracts of piquet

Congratulations to Santa and Cheri2628!

If you haven’t done so already, please email riskies@yahoo.com your snail mail addresses to receive your magnets and copies of LADY IONA’S REBELLION by Dorothy McFalls.

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Thanks to everyone for checking out these great interviews!

The Riskies

Because I’ll be teaching Regency card games at the Beau Monde soiree next week (ack! NEXT WEEK?), I’ve been refreshing my memory of the rules of cassino, speculation, and the like.

Which leads me to the question of the day, which is:

Were Regency gamesters sophisticated?

It is your job to examine the evidence!

FACT ONE: Piquet players kept score (and piquet scores go quite high, and are constantly changing) without writing anything down, or pegging anything, until the end of the hand. This is HARD. Even Trusty Todd, who can do Tensor Calculus in his head, can’t do this.

Okay, yes, in the “old” days, people were a lot more accustomed to doing arithmetic in their heads. But still. This is HARD.

FACT TWO: Read the game rules in a Regency Hoyle’s, and you’ll constantly trip over passages like the following:

Any person playing with less than four cards must abide by the loss, and should a card be found under the table, the player whose number is deficient, is to take the same.

I guess rules like “don’t drop your cards under the table” are a little too hard for these folks.

So, here we have two warring pictures:

That of the very clever, James-Bond-like gamester…

And that of the Three Stooges, constantly dropping cards on the floor.

So: which is it? Let the voting begin!

Cara
Cara King, author of MY LADY GAMESTER, who neither counts piquet in her head nor drops cards on the floor…