So, I’ve been a bit crazed the last few days with a Looming Deadline (3 weeks away, ack!) plus a weekend full of holidays and parties (Mother’s Day, graduations, etc) and I had no idea what to write about today. So I did a search to find out what sorts of fun things happened on this day in history. I discovered that Italian ballerina Fanny Cerrito was born on this day in 1817 (she was a prima ballerina at La Scala and one of the pioneers of dancing en pointe. She also lived a very long life, until 1909, and was able to see the Ballet Russes perform). I also found a factoid that said the waltz was introduced in England on this day in 1812. I could find no confirmation of this, which seems a bit suspect. How could they know what day that happened?? And it seems like it would have been a bit earlier, though I’m not sure. Still, it’s fun.

I’ve been thinking about dancing a lot lately. I started a new part-time job, teaching a ballet class for 5-year-olds on Saturdays. Right now I’m helping them get ready for their recital in June (it’s an “Alice in Wonderland” theme, and this class is going to play the pack of cards in little white tutus printed with card faces. SO Cute!), but then I’ll teach a smaller class for the summer, for students who are “more serious” and don’t want to lose a couple months of lessons. So far so good. The first day I thought those 5-year-olds were going to kick my butt–I have never seen so much energy in one room before, all bundled up in adorable black leotards, pink slippers, and hairbows. They’re extremely enthusiastic in their plie-ing and jete-ing and can do a mean fifth position. But we’ve come to an understanding now, and I’m having lots of fun with my tiny Pavlovas. We may have to have a Regency “waltzing party”!

And I pulled a few books off the shelf to try and find more about the history of the waltz. (Gerald Jonas, Dancing; Richard Stephenson, The Complete Book of Ballroom Dancing; and Boyd Hilton, A Mad Bad and Dangerous People: England 1783-1846 were very helpful). It seems Montaigne wrote in 1580 of a dance he saw in Augsburg where the dancers held each other so closely their faces touched, and in the same period a man named Kunz Haas wrote “Now they are dancing the godless Weller or Spinner, whatever they call it”–seemingly a vigorous peasant dance.

By the late 17th century, ladies at the royal Court in Vienna were spun around the room to the tune of a 2-beat measure, which grew into the 3/4 time of the so-called Nach Tanz (“after dance”) and moved with a gliding step. Meanwhile the peasants enjoyed dancing something called a Walzer, which came to notice around 1750. Another country dance, the Landler (which can be seen in The Sound of Music!) spread from the countryside of Austria and Bavaria and into the towns and cities. The hopping motion of the Landler developed into a graceful sliding step, with a gliding rotation replacing the stamping rotation of the folk dance. It was said that while the nobility at Court still mostly danced their staid minuets, many of them were sneaking off to dance at their servants’ parties! (18th century Dirty Dancing??)

In the 1770s, a visitor to Vienna named Don Curzio wrote, “The people were dancing mad! The ladies of Vienna are particularly celebrated for their grace and movements of waltzing of which they never tire.” Deeply shocking when first introduced (the couples faced each other! And touched more than just a hand!), the waltz was all the fashion in Vienna by the 1780s and spread across Europe. In England, it was still considered “riotous and indecent” in 1825! (It’s a good thing they never went to a tango party!). Young ladies did not waltz without express permission. The scandalous Caro Lamb was especially fond of having “waltzing parties” in her drawing room, which should tell us something. But the waltz is now the precursor to many of the ballroom dances we know today (like quickstep, foxtrot, etc). Of course, the waltz of the early 19th century looked quite different from what we see on Dancing With the Stars (as you can see from the YouTube video below, which I so much enjoyed watching!)

What are your favorite dances (or dancers)?? Any good dance recital stories? (It seems when I was about 3 and in my very first performance, I brought the ballet to a screeching halt by sitting down onstage in my tutu to examine some confetti. I have no memory of this and deny it). What are you up to this Tuesday?

Hello everyone! First a bit of good news–Countess of Scandal is finally available in ebook. Check it out here!

A couple months ago, my day job was the victim of budget cuts, and since then I’ve been living the life of the Stay At Home Author. How is that, you ask? Well, terribly glam of course. I wear evening gowns all day and lounge around on my Victorian chaise eating raspberry truffles from Belgium while my secretaries jot down my story ideas. Not. (Except the truffle part. Except usually they’re Fun Size Kit Kats). It’s not bad, though. I get to slob around in my pajamas until long after lunch.

So let’s take a look at a typical day in the life of an author! Say, it’s Thursday:

1) Wake up because dogs are yelling to be fed. Was having a lovely dream of walking on a Greek beach with Javier Bardem, but now that’s gone. Stumble around making tea and putting Kibbles in bowls. Eat a yogurt and a Kit Kat while reading email, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon rankings, Go Fug Yourself, and Cake Wrecks, plus doing some Very Important Research at ShirtlessActors.com. (Please note–this is sadly not a real place, as far as I know. But I do often Google “Richard Armitage shirtless” or “James McAvoy shirtless” to see if something new pops up…)

2) An hour is gone??? How did that happen? Must get the day’s page quota done. I’m working on Laurel McKee’s third book Lady of Seduction (June 2011!) and have about 80 pages or so left to go, plus fill-ins and revisions, with only (gulp!) less than a month to do it. Write one page, wonder if I should check my email to see if something Terribly Important has come up in the last 20 minutes. There hasn’t. Back to the book.

3) Lunchtime! A healthy chicken and greens pita–and a Kit Kat. Or two. Email, shower, dogs walked, real clothes put on (or at least yoga pants and a tee shirt). Should I wrote some more–or watch General Hospital?

4) Laundry and research on next book (an Elizabethan theater story with a sexy Renaissance actor/playwright/spy hero. Must Google “Henry Cavill shirtless” for inspiration). Fiddle around with YA idea. Eat a Kit Kat.

5) Now, should I go to yoga class or watch Oprah? Sadly realize if I really want to fit into my RWA conference clothes in July I must go to yoga, even if Nate is doing a kitchen remodel today…

6) My triangle pose is pitifully sloppy. Stop at China King for takeaway dinner on the way home from yoga. Keeping those RWA dresses in mind get steamed shrimp and snow peas instead of lemon chicken and egg roll. Followed by Kit Kats. Can’t understand why dress won’t fasten all the way up the back. Those are “Fun Size” Kit Kats! They’re tiny!

7) Feed dogs their dinner, think about writing more, watch Vampire Diaries instead (I do like “intense, tortured Stefan” a lot!). Call mother back. Make plans with friends for weekend. Read part of a novel. Eat a Kit Kat. Day Over.

See, I told you! Wild glamour all the time. What is your typical day like? What’s your favorite “fun size” candy bar?

And now a very important question for everyone. I desperately need a title for the Elizabethan theater story (it seems Shakespeare in Love is already taken, and the story isn’t about Shakespeare anyway!). Any ideas???

And the winner of To Deceive a Duke is…Barbara E! Please send your snail mail address to us at Riskies AT yahoo.com Congrats!

Clio Chase is hoping for a quiet season in Sicily with her family. There she can forget all about the enigmatic Duke of Averton and the strange effect he has on her. That is until he unexpectedly arrives, shattering her peace and warning her of trouble…

The unsettling attraction is still strong between them, despite the secrets they hide. But as the unknown threat grows, they are thrown together in the most intimate of ways. Clio knows there is only so long she can resist her mysterious duke!

“Amanda McCabe has crafted a spell-binding, sensuous read grounded in Greek mythology. Filled with muses, romance, intrigue, and mystery, this thrill-of-the-hunt Regency historical evokes visions of Aphrodite and Apollo amongst the ton setting. Like any great read, I was sad for it to end!” –The Season on To Catch a Rogue (read full review here!)

Last month I launched the “Muses of Mayfair” trilogy with book one, To Catch a Rogue. Now it’s almost May, and I’m very excited to talk about book two, To Deceive a Duke! (Book three, To Kiss a Count, is out in June). One commenter today will win a signed copy of Duke…

In Rogue we met the second-eldest Chase Muse, Clio, and saw her clash with the mysterious Duke of Averton. In Duke they meet again, and those sparks fly between them once more–only this time they have an even harder time keeping them contained! They have to learn to work together to save a rare and precious hoard of ancient temple altar silver–but can they do it while also keeping their hands off each other? I think not…

After meeting this passionate pair in Rogue, I was very eager to see what was really going on between them. As I made my way through their story they often surprised me–and I’m supposed to be their creator, the director of their story! Ha. They usually paid me no heed and went off on their own rollercoaster ride.

It was the middle of winter when I started writing this book, and I was sick of cold, gray skies. I needed some sun ASAP, even if it was just vicariously! So I sent Clio, the duke, Sir Walter Chase, and his fourth daughter Terpsichore (Cory) off to bright Sicily for an archaeological dig. It was so much fun to read travel and history books (and sometimes historical travel books!) about the island, and imagine being somewhere warm and filled with olive and lemon trees, flowers, beautiful architecture, and historic sites. The ancient city Clio and her family are excavating is based on a real place, Enna, which was colonized by the Greeks in the 6th century BC and became a sort of vacation resort for them. Destroyed during the Second Punic Wars with its inhabitants killed or enslaved, it was buried in a mudslide in the 12th century which preserved an ancient agora, theater, and gorgeous holiday villas under almond and olive orchards. The medieval castle Clio and Averton explore together is based on a real site, as if Clio’s farmhouse where the silver is buried and the silver itself. This altar set is based on the famous “Morgantina silver” now in the Met (a great article about it can be found here, and more info about the history of the Enna province here).

As we learned in Rogue, Clio is way passionate about what she believes in and is willing to go to great lengths to protect it–but so is the duke. What will happen if they again find themselves at cross purposes? (And I wish I knew where I could get Clio’s blue dress on the cover. It’s certainly impractical for excavation work but it’s so gorgeous!)

I have lots more info on my website, including some great sources for the history of the era in the History Behind The Book section. And if you don’t win today, you can enter the contest on my website or visit Kwana’s Blog before the end of of today to enter the contest there! (Giveaways galore!)

Where would you have a dream vacation? What are some objects you’ve seen in museums that have captured your imagination? And I have the potential to write more “Muses” books in the future–any ideas for possible settings for them? (I’d love to send Cory, who is an artist, to illustrate some sites in Egypt…). And on a completely unrelated note, how terrific was Small Island on “Masterpiece” last week??? I loved it.

Happy Tuesday, everyone! If you have some online time on your hands today, come and visit me at the eHarlequin forums. I’ll be talking about the “Muses” all week this week (book 2 of the trilogy, To Deceive a Duke, will be on the shelves in May, and next Tuesday I’ll be here talking about it and giving a copy away!). And I found out that, due to a snafu, the ebook of Countess of Scandal will finally be out on April 30. Yay!

Now, last week I blogged about Handel’s Messiah and its big premier in Dublin. This week marks another anniversary for Handel–the date he was interred at Westminster Abbey in 1759. I have one great enjoyment in life that strangely enough I have found non-history geeks and non-history readers think is a bit odd. I enjoy wandering around old cemeteries. I like reading the epitaphs and imagining how the people lived, I like deciphering antique symbols, and I even like visiting the resting places of historic figures I admire. I guess I think that by some kind of osmosis I can communicate with them (though that has never happened, and would scare the bezeesus out of me if it did)! There is no better cemetery for a history buff than Westminster Abbey. It’s full of the great, near-great, famous, and people who just somehow had the pull to get themselves big tombs there when they died but no one knows them now. There are royals galore, scientists, artists of all sorts, politicans, all sorts.

On the Splendors of the Regency tour Diane and I went on a few years ago, we got to go to the Abbey (not as part of the tour, just as something to keep us busy when we first got there). Despite a torrential rainstorm as we tried to leave and my jet-lagged daze, it was an amazing experience just to wander around and find people I “knew” as well as look at the sites I remembered from royal wedding and coronation videos. I stood on top of the marker where Cromwell once was (before Charles II dug him up and hanged him), and cried at the elaborate tomb of Elizabeth I. Here are just a few of the luminaries you can see there:

Samuel Johnson, d. 1784 (who happens to be right next to Ben Jonson, d. 1637, and actor David Garrick, d. 1779)

Henry Purcell (d. 1695) and his wife Francisca

Poets’ Corner, where you can find everyone from Chaucer to Olivier, and memorials to many who are buried elsewhere like Shakespeare and Eliot (it’s quite crowded there)

Explorer David Livingstone (d. 1873)

Henry VII and his queen Elizabeth of York (in, appropriately, the Henry VII Chapel)

Also in the Henry VII Chapel, his granddaughter Elizabeth I (and Mary I, too, but only Elizabeth gets an effigy)

Eleanor of Castile, d. 1290 (I just think this effigy is so beautiful)

Edward the Confessor, d. 1066

Charles Darwin, d. 1882

Anne of Cleves, the only wife of Henry VIII to be buried at Westminster (d. 1557)

Frances Brandon Grey, Duchess of Suffolk, mother of the unfortunate Jane Grey (her youngest daughter Mary is buried with her)

Playwright Aphra Behn (d. 1689). Proof that wit can never be defense against mortality.

Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII

She is right next to her great-granddaughter Mary, Queen of Scots, who has one of the biggest tombs in the place (put up by her son when he became James I)

And Elizabeth, Duchess of Northumberland, a famous hostess of her day who died in 1776–I think it’s so gorgeous!

This is just the tiniest tip of the iceberg to the sites found in the Abbey. Have you been there? What are some of your favorites? And if you share my historical hobby, what are some great historical cemeteries you’ve visited?