Something occurred to me today.

I can understand collecting pristine, unused stamps — keeping them safe, away from light, and only looking at them now and then.

And I can understand collecting postcards which have never been sent, never manhandled or crushed or stained in the mail.

I can even understand keeping collectible action figures in their original, unopened packages. (My Jane Austen and Oscar Wilde action figures are still in theirs, though I have very nearly decided to let them free so they can run about the house and nibble on erasers and whatever else unsupervised action figures do…)

But for some reason, I am quite disturbed by the thought of books remaining untouched and unread so that they keep their value.

To me, an antique book with pages that have never been cut, and must never be cut (to keep the value high), is like a bottle of fine wine which is kept so long it spoils. It just seems wrong.

I’m not certain if there’s a logic behind this feeling of mine, or only my emotional attachment to reading. After all, why not have an unblemished first-edition on the shelf, and read a cheaper, battered copy?

And am I being hypocritical? After all, I have on occasion read a library copy of a book I own, to keep mine in tip-top shape. (Or, as tip-top shape as my books are ever in. I do try, but I’ve moved too many times to keep the dust jackets perfect.)

So…what do you think? Do you approve of can’t-be-read collectible books? Do you ever read cheaper/newer/library copies to keep your treasured books in good shape?

All answers welcome!!!

Cara
Cara King, who thinks people should feel free to read a first-edition copy of MY LADY GAMESTER anytime they wish

CONGRATULATIONS

to

Sara Lindsey

who has won a copy of Nicola Cornick’s THE LAST RAKE IN LONDON

and

Gillian Layne

who has won a copy of Nicola Cornick’s UNMASKED.

Please email riskies@yahoo.com to claim your prizes.

The Riskies

(The Riskies welcome HQn/Harlequin Historicals author Nicola Cornick for the first time to the blog! Be sure and comment for the chance to win a copy either of Unmasked or The Last Rake in London. Yes, it’s a two book giveaway this week…)

Riskies: Welcome to the blog, Nicola! Tell us about Unmasked (I love the Russian heroine…)

Nicola: Thank you so much for inviting me to visit Risky Regencies today! I’m so excited to be here.

Unmasked is a story about friendship and liberty as well as being (I hope!) a very tender and passionate love story. The heroine, Marina Osborne, was born a Russian serf in the house of a British diplomat, the Earl of Rashleigh, in St. Petersburg. He educated her as an experiment and brought her up to be an English lady, but when he died and his son inherited, the new earl forced Mari to make an unholy agreement–she had to become his mistress to buy her family’s freedom from serfdom.

When the story begins, Rashleigh has just been murdered and Mari is the prime suspect. She has come to England and re-invented herself as a respectable widow living in the Yorkshire countryside, but there are so many secrets in her past that it seems impossible she can escape them. The earl’s cousin, Major Nick Falconer, is sent to try to uncover the truth about the murder. Nick is a soldier, as honorable as his cousin was evil. As he starts to discover the truth about Mari he is hugely attracted to her and desperate to help her heal, and she is equally desperate to keep her secrets while at the same time she wants to trust Nick–and is falling in love with him.

It’s a very tender and moving courtship, and I hope readers find it moving, too. I should add, though, that I have leavened the story with some of the humor I always like to put in my books. For example, Nick suspects Mari of being the leader of the Glory Girls highway-women. But then he sees her fall off a horse because she is such a poor rider, and he realizes his assumptions about her might be quite wrong!

Riskies: LOL! Where did you get the initial idea for this story? Was there anything interesting or unusual you came across in the research?

Nicola: The year 2007 was the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery in the British Isles, and it was that that gave me the idea for the book. I knew that I wanted to write a story about slavery and freedom, and how being a slave would affect a person’s feelings about themselves and their identity.

The research into the slave trade was fascinating and horrifying. Even though the trade was abolished in 1807, existing slaves were not freed until there was further legislation in 1833. Nor did abolition stop the trade. Some captains who still traded in slaves would throw them overboard to avoid fines if they were in danger of being caught by the Navy.

Riskies: And we always have to ask–what is “risky” about this book?

Nicola: There are a couple things about the book I think are risky. First, it features a group of highway-women, and I know that not all readers like heroes or heroines who break the law. I hope that with the Glory Girls I have demonstrated why they feel so passionately about injustice and inequality, and feel moved to break the law in order to right some of the wrongs in society.

Second, the book has a very strong theme of slavery and abuse, and I know that with such a powerful and emotive subject there is always the possibility of upsetting readers who might have strong views on the subject themselves. So I hope I have dealt with this very sensitively in the story.

Riskies: How did you get started writing? What draws you to the Regency as a setting?

Nicola: I started writing when I was at college, and I used to read chapters of my books to my friends over late night cups of coffee as an antidote to our studies! One of my friends swears she is still in love with the hero of my very first book, True Colors, because he made such an impression on her at the age of 18!

I’ve always loved the Regency period. I find it a fascinating period of history with a glittering world of privilege at one end of the social spectrum and a desperate fight for survival on the other. It feels like a complicated and dangerous society in which to live, and it’s great to be able to set a book against those contrasts.

Like so many other readers, I was introduced to the Regency period via the works of Georgette Heyer. My grandmother recommended her books to me, and I was so entranced I read my way through all of them. From there, I moved on to UK Regency authors such as Sheila Walsh and Alice Chetwynd Ley, whose books I adore. I read every Regency-set book I could get my hands on until I ran out! Then I discovered that US authors also wrote Regency historicals, and I was a very happy reader.

Riskies: Does living in the UK have a large influence on your work?

Nicola: Living in the UK is very useful in the sense that the history is all around me, and that is very inspiring. I like to visit historic towns such as Bath, soak up the atmosphere and the architecture, and visit the museums. Stately homes are also a huge source of inspiration to me–I work as a guide at Ashdown House, which is one of the most beautiful houses in the country. The stories associated with those places are a wonderful source of ideas.

On the other hand, so much of writing is about creativity and imagination, and I don’t think one has to be based in a particular place for the imagination to spark. Some of the best historical romances I’ve ever read have been written by US-based authors and Australian authors who have the excitement and energy and creativity in their writing to make the period really live.

Riskies: You have another book on the shelves recently–The Last Rake in London! I see it has an unusual setting. Tell us about this story!

Nicola: Thank you for asking about TLRIL, and giving me the opportunity to mention my lovely hero, Jack Kestrel. He does seem to be a bit of a hit with readers!

Harlequin Mills & Boon asked me to write an Edwardian-set book as part of their centenary celebration this year. This was quite a challenge for me, as I hadn’t studied that part of history since I was at school. But when I did my research I realized what an interesting era the Edwardian period was, and I wondered why there aren’t more books set in that time. I loved the fact that we were entering the modern period, and there were elements of the period still recognizable today, such as the London Underground, and that there were cars on the streets and the King using the telephone to call up and his friends and tell them he was coming to visit! The potential it gave for the story was enormous. My heroine, Sally Bowes, is the owner of an exclusive London nightclub, and Jack, the last rake of the title, is a self-made businessman, as well as the descendant of the Duke of Kestrel.

Riskies: I also read that one of your favorite historical heroines is Anne Boleyn! She’s also a great favorite of mine (Amanda’s). What draws you to her story? Are there any other historical women you admire?

Nicola: It’s great to meet another admirer of Anne Boleyn! I think she is a fascinating character. I love strong heroines, so what draws me to her is probably that she was such a strong woman at a time when women’s roles and positions were even more constricted than in the Regency. She was brave, she was clever, and she was evidently enormously charismatic. I have a very powerful sense of justice and hate the fact that she was brought down on the basis of false evidence. She would be one of my dream dinner party guests–I would love to meet her!

When I was studying for my MA in Public History we discussed the fact that women are absent in so much of recorded history, not because they did nothing but because, as Anne Elliot says in Persuasion, history was largely written by men! So it is great to find female role models to admire.

Another of my heroines is Elizabeth of Bohemia, the Winter Queen. We tell her story at Ashdown House. After she and her family were exiled from Bohemia in 1620 and her husband died, she brought up her 10 children alone and acted as a focal point for those loyal to the restoration of her son’s ancestral lands. She was another strong and charismatic woman.

Riskies: And what is next for you?

Nicola: I’m currently working on the second book of a trilogy that is linked to Unmasked and features some of the same characters. The first book in the series, Confessions of a Duchess, will be out next summer from HQN Books. I’m also finishing a short story for Harlequin’s new “Undone” e-book series, which will be on sale in November. And I have a first-person Regency coming out in the spring form Harlequin Historicals. It’s based on the classic story Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson, and was lots of fun to write!

Happy Saturday, everyone! I’m very excited, because after a few weeks of work the New Look of my website is ready to go. Check it out here! (It’s still a WIP, so any comments/suggestions are most welcome)

And so, last week was the finale of The Bachelorette. I admit I don’t usually watch a whole series of Bachelor/Bachelorette. I go on enough boring dates in real life to not want to sit through it on TV! (Plus it’s Monday, Gossip Girl is on!) Yet there is something about the finale that pulls me in. The cheesy, faux-romantic sets! The tears and angst! The copious picking up and twirling around! Despite the Bachelorette DeAnna’s slightly surprising choice of the “shredding” snowboarder Jesse over predictable Jason, it was kinda sweet and enjoyable.

But I’m always struck by the difference in tone between the Bachelor and Bachelorette, aka the difference between what happens when the men have to chase the woman vs. when the women chase the man. The Bachelor tends to end with awkward hugs and vows of ‘getting to know each other better.’ The Bachelorette seems to end in declarations of soulmate-dom, of True Love Forever. (I sometimes get the sense that the Bachelor, after being wildly pursued by 20 beautiful, and often tipsy, 24-year-olds, feels that he is far hotter than he actually is, and thus why should he settle down with just one? Whereas the Bachelorette is a rare prize to be fought over).

And speaking of women chasing men and vice versa, on this date in 1543 Henry VIII married his sixth and last wife Catherine Parr. Poor Catherine–no final roses or fantasy dates in the Bahamas for her! She had already been married twice to much-older men, and Henry was gouty, crazy, and immensely fat, and in need of a devoted nurse (having dispatched 5 wives already). Catherine, despite being in love and nearly betrothed to the handsome, dashing, but in the end wildly idiotic Thomas Seymour, had no choice. She married the king at Hampton Court, in a quiet ceremony with 20 witnesses.

But she was not just a devoted nurse of elderly husbands. She was deeply interested in the reformed Protestant faith, and her scholarly achievements were impressive (her 1545 book Prayers and Meditations, was the first work ever published by an English queen under her own name. Another book, The Lamentation of a Sinner, was published after Henry’s death). She was also a devoted stepmother, both to the children of her second husband and to Henry’s 3 children, Mary, Elizabeth, and Edward, personally supervising their education.

It was her interest in the Protestant faith and encouragement of study within her household that nearly led her to the block in 1546. The conservative faction at Court had never been happy about her marriage, and the fact that she and her ladies were known to have banned books, the possession of which was grounds for arrest and execution on charges of heresy. The warrant was accidentally dropped, and seen by someone loyal to Catherine, giving her time to go to the king and claim that she only discussed and argued issues of religion with him so she could take his mind off his troubles. Playing to Henry’s ego was always a good thing, and she was spared from being the third queen executed.

After the king’s death in 1547, she married Seymour (a bad decision), and in 1548 died in childbirth at the age of 37. She was buried at her home at Sudeley Castle, with another of her young proteges, Lady Jane Grey, as chief mourner.

So, did you watch Bachelorette? What did you think of the ending, or of the Bachelor franchise in general? Any favorite wives of Henry VIII? (Catherine Parr is actually tied with Katherine of Aragon as my second-fave, behind number one Anne Boleyn!)

One can study history, and read memoirs and letters, and devour historical novels by the bushel…and yet I find there are still some aspects of how people really lived and thought which it is hard for a modern person to really thoroughly understand.

Oh, one can have an intellectual understanding — but I mean a gut understanding, a real “feeling” for the way people lived, and thought — an ability to mentally step into their shoes, and see through their eyes.

A few areas that I think are particularly difficult for a modern person to truly grasp:

1) Just how different the attitude toward STUFF was. Nowadays, we have far too much stuff — we’re inundated by it, our homes overflow with it, we complain our kids have way too much junk… We have Jane Austen action figures and joke mugs just for the heck of it, our kids get cheap toys in cereal boxes and at the doctor, charities and realtors send us free notepads and coins and calendars and bumper stickers and postcards…

So how can we truly grasp a world where stuff actually cost money? Where things were used and reused and reused again? Where the Artful Dodger could hang for stealing a handkerchief, because handkerchiefs were actually worth something?

2) And how can a modern person raised in a democratic, multi-ethnic society ever entirely comprehend the mindset of a person who never (or rarely) met anyone who wasn’t a supporter of monarchy, whose whole society believed that men were smarter than women, that aristocrats had superior blood and brains to commoners, that people’s abilities were determined by their race and national origin?

3) And how do we, living in a world with good contraception, where women can support themselves (and their children, if need be) by working as a lawyer or doctor or police officer or computer programmer — a world that has heard from Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan and Oprah and Jennifer Crusie and The Joy of Sex — how do we get into the mindset of people who thought a woman’s chastity, modesty and “virtue” were her crown jewels, and who thought a woman’s duty was to obey her husband in the same way her husband obeyed the king?

Anyway, these are three areas that occur to me right off. Which of these seem hardest to you? Or what other things do you think are particularly hard to grasp?

All answers welcome!

Cara
Cara King, whose brain isn’t hampered at all by its common blood