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Author Archives: Janet Mullany

Welcome Erica Ridley

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HIS TOUCH HOLDS HER CAPTIVE…
From the ravens circling its spires to the gargoyles adorning its roof, Blackberry Manor looms ominously over its rambling grounds. And behind its doors, amid the flickering shadows and secret passageways, danger lies in wait.

TO HIS EVERY DARK DESIRE…
Evangeline Pemberton has been invited to a party at the sprawling estate of reclusive Gavin Lioncroft, who is rumored to have murdered his parents. Initially, Gavin’s towering presence and brusque manner instill fear in Evangeline…until his rakish features and seductive attentions profoundly arouse her. But when a guest is murdered, Evangeline is torn. Could the man to whom she is so powerfully drawn also be a ruthless killer?

TOO WICKED TO KISS!

A big welcome to the Riskies, Erica. Tell us how you made your sale.

As luck would have it, I got The Call while I was in Costa Rica for a month. More accurately, I missed the call while I was in Costa Rica, because the last time I’d traveled, I’d managed to rack up a $600 bill in roaming charges, and had decided not to use my cell phone. One day, I’m checking my email in an internet cafe, and I open one from my agent that says, “What do I have to do to get you to call me back??? I’ve been leaving you messages for days. We have an offer for your book!!!” (After I picked myself up off the floor, I decided that this phone call would have been worth the long distance roaming!)
What was the inspiration for your book?

I was sitting in a conference workshop where the speaker explained the term “High Concept” as the juxtaposition of two disparate things, such as a cross between Movie A and Movie B, or two things that don’t normally go together, such as “killer dinosaurs in Disney World” (Jurassic Park). I immediately began daydreaming unusual elements to bring into the world of Regency-set historicals, and ran with a “Dead Zone” style heroine caught up in a house party murder. The first draft was okay, but when I blank-page rewrote it in a more Gothic voice, I fell in love.

What do you love about the Regency–and what do you dislike about the period?

What I love about the Regency could fill pages! I love the fashion, the attitudes, the parties, the various coping mechanisms used to deal with the political instability in England and the reality (and aftermath) of the Napoleonic wars. I love the attention to detail, from the letters discussing sandwiches with ham sliced whisper-thin to the fashion plates with every button and flounce done just so. Above all, I love the many, many rules–from the unwritten societal norms to the laws regarding rights and inheritances–and I love characters who try and bend them. The only thing I dislike about the period is the unfortunate lack of methods to record more details. How I would love to see video footage of a ball, or listen to a taped conversation between unsavories using true canting slang!

What do you like to read and who has influenced your writing?

The very first romance I ever read was a historical (Johanna Lindsey) and from that moment, I was hooked. I inhaled Julie Garwood, Jude Devereaux, Judith McNaught (er… apparently only people whose first name begins with J. I knew I should’ve taken a pen name!) From there, it was an addiction, and I read every Regency author I could get my hands on. Before I discovered romance, however, my shelves were mostly filled with thrillers, mysteries, and paranormal horror novels by authors like Stephen King and Dean Koontz. Those roots are definitely where I get my love of a strong suspense element, but now that I found my home in Regency England, I cannot imagine life without an emotional love story and an HEA!

What’s risky about your book? (The Standard Risky Question!)

Some of my favorite Regencies take place in the world of the ton, where the heroine falls in love with the titled hero as they dance and swirl about a London ballroom (or seek a clandestine corner in which to steal a kiss or two.) Too Wicked To Kiss, however, features a rich but untitled hero who lives apart from Society in his remote, forbidding mansion. He’s dark, dangerous, and likes it that way–the perfect antihero for the very Gothic tone and feel of the novel. The heroine, Evangeline Pemberton, has her own risky element–she’s cursed with psychic visions that come with skin-to-skin contact. And then there’s that murder…

What’s next for you?

A connected book tentatively titled Too Sinful To Deny will be released in 2011, featuring one of the main characters from Too Wicked To Kiss. (There’s even a sneak peek chapter in the back of 2W2K!) This heroine definitely does not have her best foot forward in Too Wicked To Kiss, and will have to deal with some hard truths about herself before she can live happily ever after with the sexy (pirate!) hero of Too Sinful To Deny.

TOO WICKED TO KISS has been selected as a March book club pick for Barnes and Noble! Erica will be at the book club forum all month long, so please stop by to say hi or to talk about the book!

Get extra content and bonus features for Too Wicked To Kiss on the Unauthorized Scandal Sheet. For contest, blogs, embarrassing photos, and other fun stuff, check out Erica’s author web site . Please join Erica for lots of games and prizes on Facebook. And if you have Twitter, please come tweet with Erica.

But before you rush off all over the Blogosphere, make your comment here and enter the drawing for a signed copy of Too Wicked To Kiss.

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What Do Readers Really Want?

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There’s much excitement over at Salon.com with Laura Miller’s Readers’ Advice to Writers, which has generated both cries of Philistinism! and Yes, my reading life is justified. Ms. Miller, by the way, is qualified to give advice as a reader, not a writer.

I don’t have time to wade through over one hundred responses, but there’s one statement from Ms. Miller that resonated with me:

Desire is the engine that drives both life and narrative.

While other pieces of advice, for instance, Remember that nobody agrees on what a beautiful prose style is and most readers either can’t recognize “good writing” or don’t value it that much, I absolutely disagree with. I don’t want to read anything that shouts beautiful prose style but if it strikes me as beautiful that’s an added bonus (and may keep me reading). And even if a reader doesn’t acknowledge or care about style, clunky prose may well give them that odd, seasick feeling that makes them close the book without really knowing why they couldn’t keep going. Shouldn’t good writing be something that flows and that you don’t really notice because it is so appropriate to the narrative?

Ms. Miller’s article was inspired by the Guardian’s two-part Ten Rules for Writing Fiction which was actually much more interesting from my point of view and I haven’t read all of it, but I did pick up a few gems that I wanted to share. The article was prompted by the releases next month of Elmore Leonard’s book of the same name and his ten basic rules begin the article.

I went first to the writers I liked and then browsed around. I had a grudging admiration for Philip Pullman‘s contribution:

My main rule is to say no to things like this, which tempt me away from my proper work.

Okay, Mr. Pullman. Moving on. Nearly everyone agreed a writer should read:

Read like mad. But try to do it analytically – which can be hard, because the better and more compelling a novel is, the less conscious you will be of its devices. It’s worth trying to figure those devices out, however: they might come in useful in your own work. Hilary Mantel

When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else. Zadie Smith

Except for Will Self, who claims it’s too late:

Stop reading fiction – it’s all lies anyway, and it doesn’t have anything to tell you that you don’t know already (assuming, that is, you’ve read a great deal of fiction in the past; if you haven’t you have no business whatsoever being a writer of fiction).

Zadie Smith gives this cogent piece of advice (yes! yes!)

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the ­internet.

And then mentions that Jean Plaidy used to write five thousand words before lunchtime and spend the afternoon writing fan letters. Just thinking about it makes me want to lie down.

I loved these gems from Roddy Doyle:

Do keep a thesaurus, but in the shed at the back of the garden or behind the fridge, somewhere that demands travel or effort. Chances are the words that come into your head will do fine, eg “horse”, “ran”, “said”.

Do, occasionally, give in to temptation. Wash the kitchen floor, hang out the washing. It’s research.

And again from Zadie Smith:

Don’t panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick succession, the derisive reviews, the friends’ embarrassment, the failing career, the dwindling income, the repossessed house, the divorce . . . Working doggedly on through crises like these, however, has always got me there in the end. Leaving the desk for a while can help. Talking the problem through can help me recall what I was trying to achieve before I got stuck. Going for a long walk almost always gets me thinking about my manuscript in a slightly new way. And if all else fails, there’s prayer. St Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers, has often helped me out in a crisis. If you want to spread your net more widely, you could try appealing to Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, too.

Have you read either of these articles? What did you think?

If you’re a writer, what’s the most valuable piece of advice you were ever given?
And as a reader, what advice would you give writers?

Guest blogging and giving away a copy of Improper Relations (later) today at Lust In Time, and tomorrow I’m a guest at Victoria Janssen‘s blog. And don’t forget my contest.

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Mousetraps and Sun-Pictures

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I was inspired to write this post because of the question it raised, which I think is kickass. Today, February 11, is the birthday of William Fox Talbot (1800-1877) who is credited with being the inventor of photography.

As with many scientific discoveries, the bits and pieces of evidence–optical and chemical–were lying around for some time, and it took an enquiring mind to put them together.

The optical side of photography was provided with the Camera Obscura, which had been around for centuries as an aid to drawing. Leonardo da Vinci used it, and his contemporary Daniel Barbaro described it thus:

Close all shutters and doors until no light enters the camera except through the lens, and opposite hold a piece of paper, which you move forward and backward until the scene appears in the sharpest detail. There on the paper you will see the whole view as it really is, with its distances, its colours and shadows and motion, the clouds, the water twinkling, the birds flying. By holding the paper steady you can trace the whole perspective with a pen, shade it and delicately colour it from nature.

An early sci-fi novel by Charles-Francois Tiphaigne de la Roche (1729-1774), Giphantie, predicted the invention of photography.

For centuries people had been aware that some colors bleach in the sun, but it wasn’t clear whether this was the effect of heat, air, or light. In the seventeenth century, Robert Boyle, a founder of the Royal Society, reported that silver chloride darkened with exposure. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Thomas Wedgwood of pottery fame experimented with capturing images but couldn’t make them permanent.

The first successful picture was made with an eight hour exposure by Joseph Niepce in 1827, using material that hardened on exposure to light–he named it a heliograph. Rejected by the Royal Society, Niepce went into partnership with Louis Daguerre, who reduced the exposure time to half an hour and discovered that salt stabilized the image, and invented the daguerrotype.

Interestingly, neither Niepce nor Fox Talbot could draw, which is why they were so interested in artificial means of producing images. Niepce was forced to look elsewhere to continue his interest in lithography when his artist son went to war in 1814 (and may have died at Waterloo–something I couldn’t confirm). Fox Talbot continued his own experiments, successfully producing his first photograph of the oriel window at Lacock Abbey,Wiltshire, in 1835.

The photograph at the top of this post is also by Fox Talbot, showing Nelson’s column under construction in Trafalgar Square in 1843.

He nicknamed his cameras mousetraps.

In 1844-46 he published a collection of photographs, The Pencil of Nature (get your mind out of the gutter), demonstrating that this technology had both artistic and practical possibilities–in inventorying possessions, creating likenesses, and possibly also being of use in the legal system. He reminded readers:

The plates of the present work are impressed by the agency of Light alone, without any aid whatever from the artist’s pencil. They are the sun-pictures themselves, and not, as some persons have imagined, engravings in imitation.

If Talbot Fox had been born earlier, or if he had been a particularly precocious teenager, we might have had photos of the Regency. So, the kickass question. Imagine you’ve gone back in time with your digital camera carefully concealed in your capacious muff or elegant reticule (or, okay, tucked inside your stays):

What would you photograph and why?

And in the shameless self-promotion area, I’m guest blogging today at the Knight Agency blog for their Valentine’s Day celebration about my favorite pair of literary lovers and offering a copy of Improper Relations as a prize. Also check out my website which has been updated with excerpts, news, and a CONTEST!
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Welcome, Laura Kinsale

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One of the most beloved writers of romance is back…. She’s better than ever, and she’s worth the wait! Her wit is laugh-out-loud funny and her poignant moments are so heartwarming. I’m glad she is back, and I do believe she is better than before and I know, like me, all her fans will be saying her new book was worth the long wait!

Amelia Gray, author of A Duke To Die For.

There is such intelligence and wit behind the perfectly English dialogue and French innuendos that the characters fairly crackle with energy and life. … Callie and Trev are tremendous champions for each other. I adore their story, and am quite sure they will find a place in your heart as well.

A big Riskies welcome to Laura Kinsale, who is here to chat about her new release Lessons in French. She’s offered a signed copy to one person who makes a comment or asks a question. So come on in and chat!

RR: Welcome, Laura, it’s great to have you visit. Let’s jump straight into the interview: What’s your favorite part of writing?

LK: That deep sense of flow and concentration, when I’m living in the story with the characters. It doesn’t come on demand, but when it does, it makes it all worth doing.

RR: What do you think the key to writing comedy is?

LK: Putting an unexpected twist at the end of a sentence or paragraph.

RR: If Lessons in French were made into a movie, who would play the leads (can be any actors at any time; mix and match, if you want)?

LK: I’m a fan of USA’s White Collar at the moment. Matt Bomer would be perfect for Trev, just that sense of devil-may-care elegance and mischief.

Callie, hmmm–maybe a very young Julie Andrews.

RR: Why do you love Heyer so much? What is your favorite book?
LK: My favorite Heyer is Sylvester, for the hero’s intense low moment and grovel. I love Heyer’s dry wit, mixed with a little craziness. It’s hard to top the Baluchistan hound in Frederica for finely-tuned character comedy.

RR: What’s your favorite part about Twitter? What’s the funnest experience you’ve had there?

LK: I secretly enjoy tweeting animals. My dog Ventoux (who tweets as me, oddly enough!) has a couple of particular friends, a great dane, @dooleybug8 and a horse in New Zealand, @stationbred . They keep life in perspective, tweeting back and forth about visits to the vet, opening gates, and how to get under Mom’s skin.

RR: (Aaaaw) (And the standard Risky question) What’s “risky” about Lessons in French?

LK: From a writing standpoint, the conflict. Callie and Trev are in love from the start, thought they don’t admit it to themselves, much less to one another. So the things that keep them apart have to be something the reader can comprehend as real obstacles that are true to the characters. I had to be very convincing in developing the characters, their beliefs about themselves and the world, because it’s largely those self-concepts that drive the conflict. That’s a fairly difficult writing challenge. But worth it. Readers seem to really like both the hero and heroine.

Thanks for having me on the Riskies!

Your question or comment? Ask away …

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