Richard Cerqueira returns to tell us more about being a Romance cover model. Below is the picture that is our contest prize! On the right is Comanche Temptation, Richard’s first and favorite cover.

1.Can you walk us through a photo shoot for a romance cover? How much direction are you given? How much is up to you to invent?

Sure, I get a call from the booking agent asking about my availability and the length of my hair. Sounds funny but the hair length is often a deciding factor whether you are right for the hero or not. Once that’s determined I am given an idea as to what kind of shoot it will be, that is will I be an aristocrat in a tuxedo, or a cowboy out on the range, or some Tarzan like figure saving the damsel in distress. One reason we are made privy to this information is that we often use some of our own clothes for a book cover shoot. In the instances that we need to be bare-chested or even more scantily clad we get to know if we need to be tan, and maybe watch the salt consumption the day before to be nice and lean for the camera.

So, come the day of the shoot, the female model and I get into our costumes if so required, and we are shown some pictures and/or sketches made by the artist or art director to give us an idea of what they will be looking for. At the shoot, there may be as little as two people (photographer and a model) or there may as many as eight people (two models, photographer, photographer’s assistant, art director, book author, and the artist). We shoot typically in front of a plain photographic paper backdrop; it’s up to the artist to add in the scenery. The photographer then sets up the lighting using a light meter and sets up a fan in the instances where they need wind tousled hair. Once that is all set up we assume our positions, the photographer then tells us to adjust ourselves to make the best use of the light and a test shot is taken. Before the advent of digital photography, this test shot was done with a Polaroid, now a digital camera can have the shot for all to see instantaneously on a large computer monitor and it can also be seen by an artist or art director across the globe in real time. That test shot will let everyone know if the lighting is right, once that is in check we go at it.

Again, since I started modeling things have changed for the better thanks to digital photography. In the past we took at least three rolls of film to make sure we got the shot, now we might take five pictures and get what they are looking for. It is up to us, the models, to play with the decided pose to capture the shot. The photographer, artist and/or art director will often guide us if they are looking for something special. Sometimes they end up doing something that is nothing like what was originally conceptualized and it turns out being the winning shot; at times, the models come up with the pose. Working with models that are more experienced makes the shoot go much quicker. Typically a book cover photo session takes no more than an hour, but there have been times that it has taken as long as two. It might not seem like much time, but in order to get those hot photos you often have to put yourself in to some unnatural positions and hold them there for long periods of time; I have often left a shoot feeling pretty worn out.

2. What do you think constitutes a good romance cover? What standard are you aiming for when you step in front of the camera?

The models chosen should accurately depict the books heroes. I have done more than one cover where I am not so sure that I was the right man for the job, I did it anyway, and the clients were happy, so that’s all that matters. I think that in the case of a couple they have to look good together, they have to make a good and convincing couple. Then there is the lighting, in art, lighting is everything, a book cover’s image is no different. When I do a cover I try to convey as much passion as I can, the covers usually need a hero who is both strong but human, it’s up to me as a model to pass that along to the photograph. The less the photographer has to direct me the better job I am doing; it’s what I strive for.

3. Tell us what is next for you. Do you have anything exciting coming up for yourself?

Actually, I do have something very exciting coming up, my brother and I participated in a reality show called Bullrun that will start to air on Spike TV March 13th @ 10 pm EST. The show is based on super exclusive road-rally across the USA. We are up against eleven other teams and are all competing for a $200,000 cash prize. The contestants were required to rally across America as well as compete in challenges that tested our cars, skills, and wits; think The Amazing Race meets The Cannonball Run. We shot for 3 weeks and covered over 4000 miles through nine states.

It was an unforgettable experience and I can’t wait until it airs! Its like nothing that has ever been done before, we had a crew of over 200 people and enough equipment rigs to fill a town! Spike TV has already begun running promos and the advertising campaign blitz will be soon to follow. The Spike TV website has information, pictures, and videos of us and the other contestants. www.spiketv.com. I have also made a Myspace page with some info about me, nothing very elaborate but it has some home pictures of me and some stuff from the upcoming show. www.myspace.com/xjguy

Thanks for you and your reader’s interest in me.
Richard

Bullrun premieres on Spike TV March 13 at 10 pm

Prize winner will be announced tomorrow. The prize may take some time to be delivered. Richard broke his thumb in a skiing mishap and can’t sign his name!–He’s been doing our interview with a broken thumb!
Thanks, Richard!!

I promised to share some of my Marie Antoinette and/or Henry VIII research, and, since I finally got around to organizing my sloppy notes, here is the first!

Music is one of my favorite things (when I was a kid, I told everyone I was going to be an opera singer when I grew up–until I discovered I have a terrible singing voice!). So, I always love reading about composers and court music, of which both the 1780s and the 1520s had a plethora. Marie Antoinette and Henry VIII were both musical in their own ways (the portrait is MA at the spinet), and both enjoyed the finest instructors and performers. More about England later–this week we’re in France, in the middle of the last showdown between Marie Antoinette and Madame du Barry.

The man caught in the middle was Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787), one of the most important opera composers of the day. Born in Bavaria, his first position was in a Milan orchestra, where he received lessons from Giovanni Battista Sammartini. His first opera, Artaserse, premiered on December 26, 1741 to some success, and he traveled to London, Saxony, and Copenhagen before settling in Vienna in 1753. He became Kapellmeister to Empress Maria Theresa, and instructor to her children, including Archduchess Antoine (who seems to have been more enthusiastic than really talented!).

Gluck advocated the reform of opera, wanting to eliminate all that was “undramatic.” He insisted on focusing on human drama and passions, making the words and music of equal importance, doing away with folderol like mannered ballets. His best-known opera, Orfeo ed Euridice, had its first performance on October 5, 1762, with the famous castrato Guadagni in the title role.

In the 1770s, Gluck’s Viennese career was slipping a bit, so he was happy to accept an invitation from his former pupil to come to France. In 1774, he signed a contract to perform six works at the Paris Opera. The first, Iphigenie en Aulide, was to premier in April, and it sparked a war. Gluck knew his new style wouldn’t catch on right away with the French, stating “There will be considerable opposition because it will run counter to national prejudices against which reason is no defense.” But somehow the music got mixed up with Court factions! Louis XV’s mistress, Madame du Barry (who detested Dauphine Marie Antoinette and her snooty Viennese ways!) and her supporters brought in the more conventional Italian composer Piccinni. It was the Gluckists vs. the Piccinnists!

It didn’t much help that Gluck refused to coddle tempermental French stars. To Sophie Arnould, the Iphigenie, who wanted more fancy arias for herself, he snapped, “”To sing great arias, you have to know how to sing.”

But in the end the Gluckists triumphed. The premier on April 19, 1774 was packed–even du Barry couldn’t stay away. Mari Antoinette came with her husband, the comte and comtesse de Provence (her brother and sister-in-law), the duchesses de Chartres and de Bourbon, and the princesse de Lamballe. The opera started at 5:30 p.m. and ran even longer than the usual five and a half hours because of the copious applause. Even Rousseau left the theater in tears.

The run of Iphigenie didn’t last long. At the end of April, Louis XV fell ill with smallpox and died. Gluck’s patron was now Queen, and she saw to it he spent several years traveling between Vienna and Paris. He sponsored many patrons in his turn, including Salieri.

I once saw a performance of Orfeo, blessedly NOT five hours long (more like three), and really enjoyed it. Great singing, but sadly no Gluckist/Piccinnist throwdown in the audience. What’s some of your favorite music? Which side in the G/P battle would you have been on?

“Oh! Miss Woodhouse, the comfort of being sometimes alone!”

I sometimes think that one of the greatest and most subtle difference between our time and the Regency period is that now we take privacy and the right to time alone for granted. Then, it wasn’t so clear cut. Very few people lived alone, and “living alone” then might well mean a household with a servant or two. If you were an unmarried woman, you’d live with your family. I ran into an interesting fact somewhere that a household of three or more unrelated women was considered a brothel under the law in London (oh, how I wish I could give a source and a time period for this–I believe it was Georgian).

Living alone for a woman would be particularly difficult since she’d need someone to lace her into her stays. I’ve seen mid nineteenth-century front-lacing stays of linen for a working-class woman, and I’m sure they existed in our period. Yet, if you were a lady, you’d have back-lacing stays because that’s what ladies wore–and a maid, or sister or other female relative had to lace you into them every morning and out every night. And even at night you wouldn’t be alone–chances are a sister would share the bed.

Even if poets could wander lonely as a cloud, it wasn’t encouraged for women. Your activities would be tied into those of your family and you would be busy, busy, busy–there was a prevailing belief that women were weak and inconsistent creatures who would get into trouble morally if left to their own devices. Finding time “for yourself” was an alien concept; even Jane Austen had to snatch time to write, pretending she was producing something of little consequence.

How do you think you’d cope?

In Georgette Heyer’s FREDERICA, the heroine’s little brother calls the hero, the Marquis of Alverstoke, a “second-best nobleman.” Of course, the “best” is a duke. Maybe that’s why I found 121 romance titles at Barnes & Noble with “Duke” somewhere in the title.

For me, “duke” (or “millionaire” for that matter) in the title doesn’t affect my buying decision either way. Beautiful estates and gardens and horses are fun to imagine, but I don’t necessarily prefer a hero with vast wealth and power over one who’s in dire straits or one that is somewhere in between. I do want to know how his situation affects him and how he deals with it.

A duke was kind of like a CEO of a large company. He had political and economic clout, influence over people’s lives and the state of his country. If the hero’s a duke, his power and the responsibilities that go along with it ought to be important elements in his story. Otherwise it seems that his rank is just a shortcut for creating a “perfect” hero (who sounds like a bore to me). If he is a duke, I want to know how that affects him besides the obvious attraction he has for golddiggers.

Anyway, here are a few from my Dukes Done Right list:

Possibly my favorite fictional duke is the Duke of Salford in Georgette Heyer’s SYLVESTER. He is so busy being the perfect duke he has trouble being a human being. Of course, Phoebe, the heroine, helps him in that area.

Rafe, Duke of Candover in Mary Jo Putney’s PETALS IN THE STORM. I am usually skeptical of spy-dukes. In this case it works because he is busy being an impeccable duke when the spy thing is thrust upon him. His rank also plays into part of the conflict with the heroine.

Christian, Duke of Jervaulx in Laura Kinsale’s FLOWERS FROM THE STORM. In this case, Maddy, the heroine, is a Quaker. Christian’s rank creates a daunting chasm between her simple and unworldly view of life and his approach to dealing with his vast holdings and responsibilities. It raises the stakes when his relatives try to declare him insane.

So what do you think about romances featuring dukes?

Do you love them? Who are some of your favorite fictional dukes?

Or do you think there are too many dukes already? Do you think Romanceland could use more marquesses, earls, etc…, or even (gasp!) a few mere misters?

Elena, who likes variety in her fantasy men 🙂
www.elenagreene.com

Oh, this is a week of ANTICIPATION for me!

First, I am eagerly awaiting the Risky Regencies very first COVER MODEL Interview!! Coming March 11 and 12

When my The Wagering Widow came out Feb 2006, the publicist for Richard Cerqueira, romance novel cover model, contacted me to let me know Richard’s hand was on the cover–and a much better image on the inside! I did some promotion for Richard at the Romantic Times Convention last year and he almost-almost-joined me for a booksigning on Long Island at Side Street Books in Patchogue (alas, he was out of town that day).

Now he has agreed to be interviewed here at Risky Regencies! He’s going to tell us all about the nitty gritty of doing a romance shoot and he’s also got some exciting news to share about his life….

Richard also will kindly offer us a prize: an autographed photo of him at a Romance Cover Shoot. Wait until you see it!!

But before next Sunday….. the days will finally be counted down and the wait over.

Gerard Butler’s new move 300 will be released this Friday, March 9 and I will have seen it!

The movie is the cinematic recreation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel, 300, telling of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. A small force of 300 Spartans led by King Leonidas (Butler) hold back an invasion of the huge Persian army for three days. The brave 300 fight to the death, ultimately losing the battle, but because of them, the Persian army sustained astronomical losses, Greece was never conquered, and Western Civilization was preserved!

The movie, as you can imagine, will be very violent, but the innovative cinematography promises to present the images in a unique form. Like in the movie Sin City, Zack Snyder filmed the actors against a blue screen, computer generating the setting details afterward. To learn more about 300 and to view some amazing movie trailers, go to the 300 internet site

What, besides it being Diane’s latest obsession, connects the movie 300 to the Regency Period?
That is your question of the day, my friends!!!

Ha ha! You think I’m done but there is more anticipation in my beating little heart.

EHarlequin is going to post their Readers Choice Awards on March 14. My A Reputable Rake is up for Favorite Historical and Mistletoe Kisses is up for Favorite Anthology.

Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to go to eHarlequin and vote for your favorites. You will have to sign in or register, but that is an easy matter (just look for the little sign-in icon in the upper right corner). Vote HERE.

I’m not done yet.

By now you know that my Innocence and Impropriety is in bookstores this month. (I’ve only told you a million times!) Now I am anxiously awaiting its Reviews.

So far the reviews have been positive. Check out the ones on Amazon.com and Romance Reviews Today.

But more are due any day now…..

I’ll be Blogging about Innocence and Impropriety and the writing life on Romance Vagabonds on Wednesday, March 7. They call themselves “just a ragtag bunch of writers…” Just my kind of folks, I say!!!

And that is ALL I have to look forward to…….except doing taxes, but that is a whole other kind of anticipation!

Question Number 2 of the day: What are you looking forward to?

Cheers!
Diane