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Author Archives: Janet Mullany

Rakish Lord Pooh destroys hearts and reputations with his honeyed words of seduction…

Returning from the Peninsula, Captain Ahab sees the statuesque woman dressed in white across a crowded ballroom. She must be his…at any cost.

She shocks the ton…driven by wild passion, Lady Constance Chatterley allows a male servant to remove her gloves.

Lady O goes beyond the green baize door and gets quite an education!

To the envy of his fellow collectors of antiquities, Viscount Spade adds another priceless figurine to his collection.

Seated in the famous bow window of the Cannery Row Club, the languid dandies of the ton wager on the outcome of a match between a seamstress and the local doctor.

Is his heart touched at last? Romance is in the air when the enigmatic recluse the Duke of Badger holds a houseparty at Wildwoods Manor in this sparkling Christmas regency–but then two mysterious strangers arrive.

Yes, yes, I will, yes…Lord and Lady Bloom ignite Dublin society.

Clad in her one of trademark diaphanous white gowns, Miss Darling must choose between a host of young suitors led by the boyishly handsome Lord Pan or a fascinating pirate with a dark past for whom time is running out…

OK, your turn.

Today we welcome guest blogger Elf Ahearn, here to talk about her new book, the second in the Albright Sisters Series. Currently at work on the third book, The Duke’s Brother, Elf (and yes, that really is her name) is giving away a download of A Rogue in Sheep’s Clothing (Book I) and Lord Monroe’s Dark Tower (Book II).

roses2Two years of bewildering silence have passed since Claire Albright’s passions were first inflamed by the powerful, brooding, Lord Flavian Monroe. On the brink of her debut in London he suddenly summons her, asking that she use her knowledge of healing to help his ward—a girl who hoards castoffs in memory of her dead brother. Embroiled in a desperate attempt to curb the child’s destructive madness, Claire struggles to understand Flavian’s burning kisses yet cold demeanor. Can she reach his heart before his ward’s insanity undoes Claire’s chance at love?
When he was fourteen, Flavian made a mistake so devastating it ruined all hope for happiness. Years later, he’s still paying for his sin. But before his ward’s troubled mind destroys his home and family, he must see Claire once more. Vowing to keep their relationship professional—she the healer, he the guardian—he finds the bonds of his resolve snapping. Somehow, he must content himself with the love that could have been . . . but he cannot resist . . . one final embrace . . .

Elf CloseupAnd now in Elf’s words, her inspiration for the book:

I find it exceptionally appropriate to introduce my latest novel, Lord Monroe’s Dark Tower, on a blog titled “Risky Regencies,” for its plot is risky indeed.

Naturally, the love story is front and center, but in this book I don’t limit my villain to occasional appearances – she is the hero’s ward – and therefore mingles and interrupts and winds herself around the budding couple’s every action.

My villainess, Abella, is very loosely based on my sister who became a hoarder following the death of my father. My sister is a brilliant, creative woman who ran her own theatre company, which my father supported in every way you can imagine. When he died, I think the floor dropped out beneath her and she just couldn’t cope.

He was a collector of books, maps and Asian antiquities, and our house, which was quite large, was jammed with his stuff. The moment any one of us left for college, he turned our bedroom into a library. By the time he died, we had more than 27,000 volumes in the house—about what a small local library might carry.

My mother invited booksellers from across the country to buy the collection. She emptied the majority of the shelves, but during my father’s last years, he’d taken to purchasing just about anything with pages and a binder. These were the books my sister felt obligated to protect.

In front of her small home by a running stream, under thick pines, my sister stacked about fifty boxes of books then covered them with a black tarp. This makeshift shed was so large the front door couldn’t be seen. The only way to access her house was through a narrow trail banked by teetering boxes. Then she filled the inside of her house with more boxes—boxes of old travel pamphlets, sheafs of the same theatrical flyer and resume shots of actors she’d never auditioned. When she ran out of floor space, she hung possessions from the ceiling.

A nearby theatre company threw out its sets. She brought them all home and built more tarp-covered sheds. Unscrupulous neighbors dumped garbage on her property. The moisture from the stream, trapped by the pine trees, and nurtured in the dense atmosphere in her house caused an outbreak of mold.

Sick from the foul air, my sister could no longer work. With no money she took to “shopping” at the local landfill. More sheds sprouted on her property, more belongings were crammed into her tiny space.

From this wreckage, she planned to start another theatre company. How would she use this string of Halloween lights with some of the owls cracked off? She’d found the other owls—she’d glue the string back together—put on a new plug. It was valuable. We couldn’t throw it out.

Finally, she was diagnosed with a lupus-like disease, and my mother lured her down to Florida for the winter. During their absence, another family member and I cleaned the place up. When she returned, her outrage was absolute. She still suffers from the sting of our betrayal—after all, we took everything of value from her.

What I try to portray in Abella’s character is the strange, impenetrable logic used by people who hoard, but I want to make it clear, her personality is nothing like my sister’s. Abella is a psychopath. My sister is a sweet lady who suffered a mental collapse, but has since gotten herself together, and now leads a successful life.

They say, “Write about what you know.” My hope is that readers will enjoy delving into the mind of someone who hoards, and that the action-packed adventure and steamy love story, will keep them turning the pages.

Hoarding has become increasingly prevalent. I’d like to ask if anyone knows someone who hoards; if they find themselves tending to pack the corners of their own households; or if they dig watching the TV show, Hoarders, which frankly, I find mesmerizing. There’s a free download of both A Rogue in Sheep’s Clothing AND Lord Monroe’s Dark Tower, for the best, most truthful answer.

 

Posted in Giveaways, Guest, Interviews | Tagged | 33 Replies

I’m on my way home after a week in San Francisco hanging out with Pam Rosenthal and staging the great SF mobile writing retreat. Mobile in the sense that we had no fixed address (apart from my solo turn at Pam’s kitchen table yesterday), but parked ourselves in whatever coffee shop had wifi–which is of course essential to good solid writing–and power. (btw, Starbucks, you cannot make a nice cup of tea. I don’t know what it is but it tastes stewed from the get go. I guess this is what happens when you order tea in a place renowned for its coffee.)

We both got a lot of stuff done and also polished up our presentations–mine was on writing humor, which I gave to the SF-RWA last Saturday (and it’s coming to Maryland Romance Writers in November). Pam’s was last night at the Pink Bunny, an upscale lingeries/sexy stuff store, about writing BDSM. Both very well received. All this and I got to have nachos with the lovely Ms. Jewel, Korean food with the lovely Isobel Carr, and lots of book talk. Lots more great food in good company and a memorable day in the Asian Art Museum.

It’s interesting how productive you can be with a friend parked opposite you also being productive. Why is this? We didn’t resort to cries of encouragement or word counts within a certain amount of time. I don’t know that either would have worked since we both have such different styles and I am doing a rewrite/reconstruction (don’t ask me how, I lost my final manuscript. Well, it was written seven years ago). We didn’t even talk to each other much (not while writing). We just sat there and plugged away.

An interesting process. I don’t know how long this would have taken on my own, weeks or months rather than days, and I got some icky plot problems solved from the original and figured out how to work in a final sex scene. Pam very wisely told me I needed more talk less action and she was right. And I got to see a couple of excerpts from her WIP. (No, I’m not saying a word.)

I don’t know why this particular chemistry happens, and I’d like to hear your thoughts. Is it because writing is such a solitary pursuit that having a bit of company is a comfort? That  if you get to one of those places where you get stuck knowing that you have someone to bounce an idea off gives you the oomph to move forward?

What do you think?

 

 

Greetings from San Francisco!

Yes, we’re talking about eels today. One of the stranger foodstuffs of history and one of the most odd life cycles of any critter, eels are an English delicacy, possibly not so popular now as in former times. I can’t imagine why not.

Say Wide Sargasso Sea to me and it makes me think of eels, not Jane Eyre or the first Mrs. Rochester. That’s where both European and American eels spawn in the beginning of an extremely odd life cycle of metamorposes. Eggs hatch into leaf-shaped larvae, drift to the coast, and become elvers or glass eels, and take to a fresh water habitat, swimming upstream and even traveling overland before settling into a river, growing and becoming yellow eels. They can live there for several decades before returning to the Sargasso Sea as silver eels where they embrace a salt water environment again, reproduce and die.

elversLike so many European species, eel populations are in decline. So the harvesting of elvers, in a season that lasts only a few days (the larvae will only enter waters at the right temperature), is now rigorously controlled. Once a local delicacy, most of them are exported to the Asian market. The Severn, England’s longest river, is one of the major elver rivers. (No, this is NOT dirty spaghetti).

As for mature eels, they’re mostly eaten now in a jellied form (the eel is naturally gelatinous, or slimy. Yum).

There are still establishments in London where you can sample the classic Victorian triad of eel, pie, and mash. pieshopFor an unbiased account of what jellied eels taste like at this pie shop, still around today, you can visit the Desperately Seeking Root Beer blog, written by an expatriate Californian.

Here’s even more eely deliciousness, an authentic sixteenth century recipe for Fish and Fruit Pie and an account of cooking it here:

With that, Fish Pies: to instruct the person who will be doing this job–because not everyone is a master of it–he should get his fish, that is, good bellies of tuna, good big filets of carp, good big fresh eels–and of all that he should get the quantity that is needed for the number of pies that he is ordered to make; take all of it and cut it into good-sized pieces and set it to cook in a good clean cauldron appropriate in size for the amount you have; when it is cooked, take it out onto fine tables which are good and clean, and cull through all your fish to remove any scales or bones, then chop it up well. Get good candied figs, prunes and dates and slice these up small, to the size of small dice; get pinenuts and have them cleaned thoroughly and get candied raisins and clean them well so there are no seeds left; of all of this take an amount proper for the amount of the fish filling you are making, wash it well in white wine, then mix it in with your fish in a fine pan. Then get another pan which is good and clean in which you will clarify good fine oil; when it is clarified put enough of that oil into your filling for that amount of it, then set it on hot coals to heat up, and stir it continuously with a good spoon. Then get good spice powder and put in a reasonable amount of it, and a lot of sugar. Then order your pastry cook to make large or small pie shells for you, and they should be covered.

 

What’s the weirdest food you’ve ever eaten? And if you’ve eaten eels, we want to hear all about it.

 

Posted in Research | 7 Replies
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