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Author Archives: Sandra Schwab

So I spent most of the day staring at my computer screen half-petrified because I realized this morning that today is April Fool’s day & I have to write a post &, oh my gosh, do I need to write something funny?!!?!? I’ve toyed with several amusing headlines – “The Riskies Will Only Write Zombie Books From This Day On! (and our heroes’ manly appendages will all fall off all the time!!) (or something),” or, “We Just Wanted To Tell You That We Are All Aliens From Outer Space Pretending To Be Romance Authors, But Please Don’t Mind Us & Carry On” – but, well…

Instead of talking about zombies, wonky manly appendages, and aliens, I’ve decided to turn to much nicer things, like my super-seekrit project: I’ve taken part in a multi-author box set of sweet romances, which came out earlier this week. And did I mention that the box set is free? 🙂

the cover of Love Is All You Need, a box set of sweet romances
I also caved in and added a few more titles to my research library. Among other things, I’ve finally ordered Chatsworth: The Attic Sale, the catalogue of the auction at Sotheby’s in 2010. In expect to find many interesting items in there! Here’s a short YouTube video about the auction:

Moreover, I also stumbled across a number of fascinating research experiments in the form of historical enactments, of which two are of particular interest to the Regency period: in Pride & Prejudice: Having a Ball a Regency ball is staged at Chawton House, the estate of Austen’s brother. The documentary is only 90 minutes long (or rather, short), but it still provides some fascinating insights into the practicalities of preparing the food, of the dancing itself, and the supper that followed.

And then I also found a series about music in the country house. I briefly dipped my toe into this field when I wrote Springtime Pleasures and had my heroine swapping music books with her new friend. “Music’s Hidden Histories” is a joint project of the University of Southampton and Tatton Park. The short videos are all available via the Humanities Southampton YouTube channel:

For now, though, I’m going to return to Roman antiquity and my dashing centurion Marcus Florius Corvus. I’m really looking forward to celebrate the launch of this new series with you next month!

the covers for Sandra Schwab's new series EAGLE'S HONOR


You can find Love Is All You Need on Amazon US, UK, CA, Kobo, Apple, B&N. Happy reading!

A Map of the Rhine, 1832

I have the unfortunate habit of getting rather obsessed with minor points of  research – like travel. When I wrote my second novel, Castle of the Wolf, I spent at least a week if not more (probably more given that I have a fat folder full of notes and research material) reading up on travels on the Rhine. I pushed the date of the story back several years in order to make it feasible that my heroine would take one of the early steamships for traveling to the south of Germany. Indeed, I even unearthed timetables for the steamers that transported people up and down the Rhine.

And all of this for not even half a chapter. Wheee!

(On the left you can see a part of a map of the Rhine that was included in the third edition of Baedeker’s guide book Die Rheinreise from 1839. You can view the whole map here.)

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the ease with which people were able to travel was, of course, largely dependent on their income. Indeed, most people would have never traveled far from home: just as far as their feet could carry them. Hiking tours were apparently quite popular among students, and in the 1790s it was one such tour – a trip of the two friends Ludwig Tieck and Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder through southern Germany – that brought about the birth of German Romanticism.

In Britain meanwhile, the eastablishment of a network of turnpike roads in the 18th century improved travel considerably. Turnpike roads opened up the countryside and made the country estates of the aristocracy and the gentry more accessible. Various new forms of passenger transport came into being, with the fastest form of transport being the mail coach (they didn’t have to stop at toll gates, and horses were changed frequently), followed by stage coaches, which could carry up to 18 people. Moreover, several inns specialized in the renting of post coaches and horses to wealthier travelers. Yet the cost for carriages, horses, and toll fees made traveling still expensive.

Thus, perceptions of distances could vary widely as the following conversation between Lizzie and Mr. Darcy from Austen’s Pride and Prejudice shows (from Chapter 32; they’re at the Collinses’):

“It must be very agreeable to [Mrs. Collins] to be settled within so easy a distance of her own family and friends.”

“An easy distance do you call it? It is nearly fifty miles.”

“And what is fifty miles of good road? Little more than half a day’s journey. Yes, I call it a very easy distance.”

“I should never have considered the distance as one of the advantages of the match,” cried Elizabeth. “I should never have said Mrs. Collins was settled near her family.”

“It is a proof of your own attachment to Hertfordshire. Any thing beyond the very neighbourhood of Longbourn, I suppose, would appear far.”

As he spoke there was a sort of smile, which Elizabeth fancied she understood; he must be supposing her to be thinking of Jane and Netherfield, and she blushed as she answered,

“I do not mean to say that a woman may not be settled too near her family. The far and the near must be relative, and depend on many varying circumstances. Where there is fortune to make the expence of travelling unimportant, distance becomes no evil. But that is not the case here. Mr. and Mrs. Collins have a comfortable income, but not such a one as will allow of frequent journeys — and I am persuaded my friend would not call herself near her family under less than half the present distance.”

(Hmmm…. It might be time for another re-read of Pride & Prejudice.)

When I dug into travel in Roman times this weekend, I was quite surprised to find a number of parallels to Georgian and Regency England: not only do several of the major roads in Britain (and in other parts of Europe) still follow old Roman routes even today, but along the Roman roads you could also find a network of inns and way stations. Ideally, every 6 to 12 Roman miles you would have had a way station, where you could change horses, and every 25 Roman miles an inn where you could spend the night. 25 Roman miles, approximately 37 km or 23 modern miles, was probably meant to be the distance somebody walking on foot could cover in a day.

Many of these stations were meant to be used by traveling officials or by merchants transporting goods like fabrics or building material. They could change horses for free and could also spend the night at the inns for free. The costs had to be covered by the local towns and communities, which led to many tensions between the provinces and Rome.

But what perhaps surprised me most was the fact that maps were already available in Roman times: they listed all the towns along the chosen route and also gave the distances between towns. Here is a snippet from one such map, the Tabula Peutingeriana from 250 (from a facsimile from 1887/88; the whole map can be found here):

a part of the Tabula Peutingeriana

A cartoon of Astley's by Richard DoyleWhen you’ve spent more than a decade reading books from the 19th century, reading books set in the 19th century, writing books set in the 19th century, and researching everyday life in the 19th century, you’ve got a fairly good idea what life was like in the 19th century. Or at the very least, you’ve got a fairly good idea where you can look stuff up, and chances are, you have the relevant research books somewhere on your bookshelves.

You are familiar with all the itty-bitty details: ice cream from Gunter’s, betting book at White’s, weak punch at Almack’s, circus at Astley’s. You also have a fairly good idea what kind of clothes your characters would have been wearing, from what kind of tableware they would have been eating, and what their homes would have looked like.

But one day you let yourself be persuaded by a bunch of people on Twitter that it would be an awfully good idea to write a book set in a time period you’re only superficially familiar with (let’s say … um … how about the time of the Roman Empire?). You’re suddenly faced with all these questions about things like underwear (what the heck did a Roman legionary wear underneath his tunic??? a loincloth or the kind of thing that real men wear under a kilt?), normal everyday clothes (to wear a toga or not to wear a toga, that is the question!), food (fried dormice – really????), about tableware (glass – thumbs up or down?), sexual practices (eh … um …), or names (yes, that’s right, names; the naming problem alone would justify that I hide behind my couch sobbing quietly).

And then there are the things that you think you know (haha!) like, say, gladiators. After all, everybody knows that the Romans loved going to the circus in order to watch guys kill each other in interesting ways and people being torn apart by wild animals, right? We have seen Spartacus, after all! (Well, as far as the TV series is concerned, one might have at least watched a few bits and pieces – not all the ugly, bloody fighting stuff, mind you! – but the romantic bits. They had some truly great romantic subplots in that show!) (Unfortunately, nearly all of the romantic couples died in gruesome ways – except for the cute gay couple. Yay for the cute gay couple!!!)

So there you are, thinking you know all those wonderful things – until you decide that it wouldn’t hurt to properly check up on them, say, one or two days before you’re supposed to send the manuscript to your editor.

OMG! *breaks down*

And suddenly you have a host of horrible problems at hand:

  1. Nope, gladiator fights were not held at the circus. (Duh, Sandy, duh! You’ve seen Ben Hur! You’ve read Ben Hur!) (Okay, so the latter was when you were 12 or 13 and you were mostly impressed by the intriguing bits about Ben Hur’s manly beauty.) The Circus Maximus was a purpose-built building for chariot races. If you wanted to see gladiator fights, you needed to go to the Colloseum.
  2. In Imperial Rome, the staging of gladiatorial games was actually quite rare (in contrast to how such things were organized in the republic) and typically happened on specific holidays (*frantic googling for exact dates ensues*)
  3. Trying to find out on which days of the year (or at least around which time) the gladiatorial games were held, you stumble over a lot of extremely vague info as well as a lot of conflicting info: gladiatorial games happened only during the Saturnalia in December – happened during the Saturnalia and in March – were put on as often as possible!!!!! (*sobs quietly*)

Why exactly did I think it would be a good idea to write a romance set in ancient Rome????? That book is killing me!!!! And it’s still not finished!!! I’m still working on one scene that seems to go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and…. *runs out of breath*

In happier news: the digital art experiment is progressing nicely and apart from the occasional guy with skin made of green brocade, I’ve actually managed to produce a number of pictures with people who look like real (!) people. I’ve already put together one new cover that I rather like. It’s not live yet, and you’re the first to see it. I hope you like it! Also, please wish me luck with that dratted manuscript!

the new cover of BETRAYAL by Sandra Schwab
Edited to add: I’VE FINISHED THE BOOK!!!!!!!!!!! FIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNIIIIIIIISHHHHHHHHHD!!!!!!!!! And it’s already with my editor! Woooohooooo!!!! *hops around the room waving her arms*

(Of course, as always, I now worry that the book is utterly horrible and that reading it will probably kill of my poor editor. *sigh*)

*Unless you’ve managed to dislocate your heroine’s shoulder

I’m a bit late with posting today because I spent a really long day at university, inflicting Shakespeare’s Othello on my students around midday and then grading for the rest of the day. As a consequence this post is going to be rather short — sorry about that!

I’m currently on deadline for my Roman romance (cue blood-curdling scream) (have I already mentioned that I wrote this thing longhand and that I still need to type most of it up?), and I’ve reached that happy stage where I’m convinced that writing the book was a BIG FAT mistake to begin with and that my poor editor will forever hate me for forcing her to read the manuscript (or she will just drop dead from the sheer awfulness of it). So to cheer myself up, I’m experimenting with digital art and developing character portraits. This, I’ve found, is not only a lot of fun, but it also helps me to better visualize my characters.

Thus, I’m always thrilled to pieces when I manage to render a particularly nice portrait of Lia, my heroine. One, in which her skin doesn’t look like plastic, in which her shoulder doesn’t look completely dislocated, and in which she isn’t hovering above the (anachronistic) chaise longue. But sometimes, an image turns out just perfect, which means you can drool over your heroine’s pretty dress. (Anachronistic as well, but who cares? A female character in Spartacus could have totally worn this! she says with her tongue firmly planted in her cheek)

Lia, by Sandra Schwab
But as to the guys? Oh dear, the guys! They all end up with gray skin that would suit a zombie extremely well. Or with red skin that looks like a bad case of sun burn As I write neither zombies nor lobsters, the skin issue is a bit unfortunate.

And in couple pics? If you’re really lucky, both of your figures end up looking … er … odd. As in this one. Guy looks like a lobster, gal looks plastic-ish. Duh. (Also, what’s up with their right hands? The hands seem to have merged and her middle finger now grows out of his middle finger. Gah!) (But hey, at least her hair and her dress are pretty!)

a draft for a new cover of Bewitched by Sandra Schwab
Still, I hope that I’ll eventually be able to use these images as promo images and perhaps even for my covers.

As soon as I’ve figured out how to solve the skin issue (and all the other stuff)!  🙂

"Tea Party," a picture by Sandra Schwab
The end of the old year must have addled my brains, for I completely forgot to write a post last Wednesday – sorry about that!!!

I hope you all had a good start into 2015! I for one, started the year doing research on food.

I love good food (cheesecake!!!), so perhaps it’s no surprise that dinners, luncheons, & teas feature frequently in my books. Researching 19th-century food is such a joy: not only are there oodles of books available on the subject (like Kristen Olsen’s Cooking with Jane Austen), but you can also easily access primary material – in other words, cookbooks! One of my favorite cookbooks from the Georian era is Frederick Nutt’s The Complete Confectioner; or, The Whole Art of Confectionary Made Easy: Also Receipts for Home-Made Wines, Cordials, French and Italian Liqueurs, &c. It was originally published in the late 18th century, and new editions appeared throughout the Regency era. The 1819 edition is available online from Google Books.

Nutt’s Complete Confectioner is just perfect when you’re looking for something to satisfy your hero’s (or heroine’s) sweet tooth: the book starts with biscuits (including chocolate biscuits, orange biscuits, and French maccaroons), continues with cakes, wafers, drops (perhaps your hero likes munching bergamot drops? Seville orange drops?), and also includes recipes for jellies, creams, ice creams and water ices (well, okay, you’d probably want to skip No. 153, “Parmasan Cheese Ice Cream”). And then, of course, there are the recipes for alcoholic beverages (elder wine, cowslip wine, orange wine, cinnamon liqueur, coffee liqueur, etc.)

Recipe for Parmesan Cheese Ice CreamFor the Victorian period, there is the ever-wonderful Mrs. Beaton, whose cake recipes often include breath-taking amounts of eggs (16 for the Rich Bride Cake!) and who also gives you advice on the duties of servants – perfect! Moreover, Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management includes suggestions for seasonal dinner menus. And while there are a few dishes I really wouldn’t want to see on the table in front of me (boiled calf’s head with tongue and brains, anybody?), I’d be more than happy with the roast ribs of beef, the grilled mushrooms, with the Charlotte Russe and the rhubarb tart (yum!).

But, alas, at the moment I’m not doing research on 19th-century food. I am doing research on Roman food.

Oh dear, Roman food.

*hides behind her couch and whimpers*

First of all, there is the infamous garum, the stuff the Romans apparently poured over almost anything – like ketchup. Only, well, garum wasn’t made from tomatoes, but from fish.

Rotten fish.

In his De re coquinaria (On the Art of Cooking), Apicius included a particularly nice recipe for garum: take gills, fish intestines, fish blood, salt, vinegar, parsley and wine, throw everything into a vessel, and leave it out in the sun for three months. Afterwards, stain and bottle (= fill into an amphora).

And as if rotten fish sauce wasn’t bad enough, there is also the stuff that the Romans ate at posh dinner parties.

Think sow’s udders stuffed with giant African snails.

Or fried dormice rolled in honey and poppy seeds.

But hey, if you don’t like something, you can always pour garum over it!

[Note to self: Should you ever write another historical set in Roman antiquity, DON’T GIVE ANY OF YOUR MAIN CHARACTERS POSH FRIENDS!!!!! No extravagant Roman dinner parties EVER again!!!!]

 

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