Risky Regencies

Caroline Warfield’s Dangerous Secrets

Updated on April 22, 2015 by Janet Mullany

Today we welcome back Caroline Warfield, who’s here to talk about her most recent release Dangerous Secrets and she’s giving away a copy of her first book Dangerous Works (Kindle/US only). The winner will be chosen from those who participate by adding a comment or by other means (see below).

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And now let’s talk to Caroline…

I loved the setting of the book–Rome after the Napoleonic wars. Do you have any stories about your research trip there?

Rome to me meant Cicero and Caesar growing up. I took Latin for four years in high school. I remember winning some sort of medal in a competition. Rome also meant church and on my first trip there I expected churches and ruins. I discovered a complex city with layers of history. (In some cases literally layers such as the excavations below San Clemente that cover 1500 years of history)

It was the Keats/Shelley museum that made me think perhaps I could set a English regency story in an Italian city. I sat by the Spanish Steps and thought, “What if I put an impoverished hero here?” The art of the Grand Tour made it clear that the upper classes went to Rome in droves in the early nineteenth century. I knew I was on to something. One of the challenges of writing to the Regency Period is keeping it fresh. I think Rome helped me do that. Traveling there twice enabled me to envision it.

Any advice on writing children as secondary characters? (I think you did it rather well!)

Thank you! I rather like Isabella, Nora’s niece, myself. I love bright verbal children. I don’t know that I understand the process of creating them on the page, however. I suspect one tool in the writer’s collection has to be a good ear. If you listen carefully to how people talk and act it is easier to breathe life into your characters. That is particularly true with children. If you sit and talk with them you get a feel for how their minds work. I like the scenes where Isabella holds court after the kidnapping. She loves the spotlight.

Did you find writing a book that’s part of a series but also a standalone difficult? How do you keep track of everything?

I don’t think the standalone part is difficult. Each individual has a unique story. The challenge, as you know, is managing the characters across several books. I began with a clear back-story for the characters, but I have not done a good job of tracking them book-to-book. I confess to being a pantser. Planning plot doesn’t come naturally. I’ve had to do some rapid searches through whole manuscripts when a question or two arose. I’m currently indexing them all in preparation for planning a new series. As an added complication, the stories are being published out of chronological order forcing me to be particularly careful. Because they are standalone, I was able to submit some that were finished early even though they were out of order series-wise.

Who would you cast as hero/heroine in the movie version of the book?

I pictured several actors before settling on Ewan McGregor for Jamie. He has the right look and feel for the story. For Nora? That one is tougher. She needs the right combination of vulnerability and spunk. I think I would choose Michelle Williams. She would convey Nora’s longing for a child effectively and still stand up to the forces around her.

What’s the last great book you read?

“Great” is an intimidating word! Lately I’ve been enamored of C.S. Harris’s Regency mysteries. I’m also reading my way through Grace Burrowes’s entire body of work. The sheer volume in a short period of time is stunning, stunning because the quality is so high.

Tell us a bit about your next release.

Dangerous Weakness has been scheduled for a September 2015 release. It takes place in 1818 and tells the story of the Viscount Glenaire. He is the managing brother in Dangerous Works and interfering friend of Dangerous Secrets. He also plays a similar role in a prequel holiday novella I have in process. Cold, aloof, convinced he could fix anything for those he cares about; I knew I needed to do more than muss his hair. This boy needed to get knocked down.

It begins, “If women were as easily managed as the affairs of state—or the recalcitrant Ottoman Empire—Richard Hayden, Marquess of Glenaire, would be a happier man. As it was the creatures made hash of his well-laid plans and bedeviled him on all sides.” The heroine leads him a merry chase that involves London, Constantinople, the Sultan’s Seraglio and some Barbary pirates.

Ooh! And … Carolyn wants to know:

Those of us that love the Regency era read many books set in that world. The author’s greatest challenge is finding ways to tell original stories. What tropes do you like most in a Regency novel? Which do you miss when if they are gone?

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Posted in Guest, History, Reading, Risky Book Talk | Tagged Caroline Warfield | 14 Replies

Writing (and Reading) a Series

Updated on April 19, 2015 by Mary Blayney

First of all a HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to the Riskies’ own Diane Gaston, the recipient of a Washington Romance Writers Award for her body of work. I have not read the citation that accompanied the award but expect she may share it eventually!

And now back to the regular schedule:

Series are my favorite thing to read AND write. They must be the single best way to develop a market for books. I wonder if the idea for series grew out of the way stories were serialized in the nineteenth century (you know, Dickens.) If anybody has an answer ton that question please leave a comment.

I have no doubt that series are a great way to develop a reader base because I love them as both reader and as a writer. Here’s why: because it lets you get to know characters better. And if I like the protagonists in a book there is nothing I want more than to know what happens next to them and in their world.

As a writer I like series for the same reason but from a different perspective. I know what happens to my characters after the story ends. One couple is not as happy as I would wish and in another the wife dies in childbirth and she haunts her husband until he finds someone else to love and also someone who will love their daughter. Nope, not gonna tell you what books they are because no romance reader I know wants to hear that the HEA is not quite perfect.

The Pennistan Series I wrote for Bantam (TRAITOR’S KISS is the first) is still in my mind, years after I have technically finished the series. It’s a series where family members appear in each others books and secondary characters find their own romance.

My favorite scene is the final one in the final book (ONE MORE KISS) when the whole family gathers for Beatrice and Jess’s wedding. As the Duke, his brother says, “having Jess here makes us a family again. Having every one here for his wedding to Beatrice completes us.”

It was my chance to give readers a look at each couples life since marriage. Elena makes the Duke laugh more. Gabriel’s wife Lynette is still uncomfortable at the thought that her brother-in-law is a duke. Mia and David “make bickering seem romantic” and Olivia Garrett would rather be in the kitchen coming up with a recipe for salmon that will appeal to her almost sister-in-law, Beatrice.

And Michael Garrett, Olivia’s husband, has the time to talk to everyone who approaches him, and in the process learns more secrets than anyone else in the room. The fact he is the Vicar of the Church in Pennsford might have something do with why people are so willing to confide in him.

Michael and Oivia are the launch point for a new series I am starting as soon as I come home from vacation. The stories (I’m thinking 40K word novellas) will be set in Pennsford and each story grows from a secret a parishioner shares with Michael. He never betrays a confidence but we, as readers in his point of view, will see the story develop from the perspective of what he knows.

For sure you will hear how the stories progress right here.

So what do you like best about series as a reader and/or a writer?

Posted in Risky Book Talk | Tagged Mary Blayney, One More Kiss, Penniston Series, series, Traitor's Kiss | 12 Replies

Getting ready to visit Napoleon

Updated on April 16, 2015 by susanna

My family and I are continuing to get ready for our four-week European trip, which will include attending some of the bicentennial events for the Battle of Waterloo. We’ll be spending the two weeks in the middle of the trip in France, and Mr Fraser and I have been trying to teach ourselves a little French using Duolingo. I’m not going to become an expert–for that, I’d need to go back in time and start studying several years ago, possibly at the expense of writing any books or otherwise having a life during that time–but I’m hoping to know enough phrases and words to greet people, make simple purchases in stores and markets, etc. The program has me practicing food and color words a lot, to the point where I found myself in the grocery store last night, staring sadly at an assortment of less-than-ripe strawberries. “J’aime les fraises rouges,” I murmured. (I like the red strawberries.) “But these fraises aren’t very rouges.”

While I’m in Paris, I naturally plan to visit Les Invalides, which houses the Musée de l’Armée (army museum) along with Napoleon’s burial site.

When Napoleon died in 1821, he was buried on Saint Helena. He didn’t receive his French state funeral until 1840. (And if you have time for a long read, the Wikipedia article on that event is fascinating.)

While I’m no great admirer of Napoleon’s, I expect I’ll find visiting his sarcophagus moving nonetheless. The world without him would’ve been an unimaginably different place, after all.

I also hope to visit Malmaison, Josephine’s chateau just outside of Paris.

And on a lighter note, while we’re in London I plan to visit Apsley House, the Duke of Wellington’s London home, where I’ll get to see this:

It will never not amuse me that Napoleon commissioned a giant nude statue of himself as Mars the Peacemaker, nor that the statue in question now guards the Duke of Wellington’s staircase. I don’t suppose they’ll let me take a selfie next to it…

Posted in Regency, Research | Tagged Napoleon, Susanna Fraser, travel, Wellington | 8 Replies

Birthdays In History

Updated on April 13, 2015 by Amanda McCabe/Laurel McKee

I am crawling out briefly from a revision/research cave to celebrate the birthday of a woman who may not be particularly well-known in history, but who I’ve always found to be interesting, Hortense de Beauharnais, daughter of Empress Josephine, a woman whose life was made very unhappy by duty to her stepfather, but who managed to carve out a small happiness and role for herself. Who are some of your own favorite lesser-known heroines???

Hortense Eugenie Cecile de Beauharnais Bonaparte, daughter of Empress Josephine, Queen Consort of Holland, mother of Napoleon III, and interesting woman in her own right! She was born on April 10 in 1783.

Hortense was born in Paris, the daughter of the nobleman Alexandre, vicomte de Beauharnais and his wife Josephine, their second living child (she had an older brother, Eugene). Her parents’ marriage was never very happy, and they separated informally soon after her birth. Her father was guillotined on July 23, 1794, a few days before the end of the Terror, and her mother barely escaped with her life. Josephine was released from prison and reunited with her children on August 6, but it was a struggle to maintain the family financially. Two years later Josephine married Napoleon, and Hortense was later sent to be educated at the school of Madame Campan (who had been a lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette) in St-Germain-en-Laye, along with Napoleon’s sister Caroline. Hortense made many friends at school, and became well-known for her pretty blonde looks and her musical skill (she later composed marches for her stepfather’s Army). One of her friends at this school was US President Monroe’s daughter Eliza, who later named her own daughter Hortensia.

In 1802, Hortense married Napoleon’s brother Louis Bonaparte, despite her misgivings, and they went on to have 3 sons despite a very rocky marriage (Napoleon Louis Charles, 1802-1807; Napoleon Louis, 1804-1831; and Charles Louis Napoleon, 1808-1873, who went on to become Emperor of France). In 1806 Louis became King of Holland, and Hortense set up her court at The Hague, taking refuge from her unhappy marriage in social events and friendships (including those with handsome men!). They were deposed in 1810, but Louis remained in Holland for another 3 years, writing poetry in privacy, until forced to return to France in 1813. The couple then lived separate lives.

Hortense fell in love with Colonel Charles Joseph, the comte de Flauhaut, a man renowned for his handsome looks, sophisticated intelligence, and rumored to be the illegitimate son of Talleyrand. In 1811, at a secluded inn in Switzerland, Hortense gave birth to their son, Charles Auguste Louis Joseph (who was later made duc de Morny his half-brother). After the defeat of Napoleon and the Bourbon Restoration in 1814 Hortense received the protection of Tsar Alexander and went on living at her estate, but when her stepfather returned she supported him. On his final defeat at Waterloo, she traveled to Germany and Italy before settling at the Chateau of Arenenberg in Thurgau in 1817. There she worked on her music, had parties with her friends, and fell in love once in a while. She lived there until her death on October 5, 1837 and was buried next to her mother at St-Pierre-St-Paul church near Malmaison.

Information on Hortense’s life can be found in any biography of Josephine or Napoleon III. A couple books I like are:
Nina Epton, Josephine: The Empress and Her Children (1976)
Francois Jarry, Hortense de Beauharnais (1999). This one is in French, which I read very slooooowly, but worth the effort!

Posted in Research | 2 Replies

The Cleveland Museum of Art: Weapons, Historical Selfies and Victorian Prudery

Updated on April 9, 2015 by Elena Greene

Over the Easter weekend, I visited the Cleveland Museum of Art with my youngest daughter and a dear high school friend. Although I grew up in Cleveland, I haven’t been to the museum in years, so it was fun to tour the galleries and have lunch at the Café. Their Tandoor Grill has nice curries, Naan bread and chutneys. Mmmm….

Here are a few items of Regency interest.

The first item is in the Armor Court, an impressive collection of armor and weapons. Most of the collection is earlier than our period of course, but this “double-barrelled flintlock sporting gun” was made in 1809 for Napoleon Bonaparte. It was made by Jean Le Page, member of a family firm who supplied firearms to the French nobility. The description says such “deluxe” weapons were often made for display and as gifts and in this case, Napoleon did give this gun to a Polish count. Read more about Napoleon’s gun and check out the Cleveland in HDR blog for a closeup that shows more detail of the gorgeous workmanship.

I picked up postcards of the next two items. Although photography without flash was permitted, I didn’t want to risk the flash going off accidentally (I am clumsy) and often the pictures in the postcards are better anyway.

Here’s one of my favorite Regency portraits, what my daughter likes to call “historical selfies”. It’s a portrait of Charlotte and Sarah Carteret-Hardy, by Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1801. Sarah was married the same year, Charlotte a few years later. The contrasting personalities of the two remind me of my own daughters—one more dreamy and introspective, the other more lively and outgoing. And of course the clothes are lovely. Here’s the link for more information on the Hardy sisters portrait.

And lastly, I was charmed by a series, “Apollo and the Muses” by the French painter Charles Meynier in 1800. They include Polyhymnia, Muse of Eloquence; Erato, Muse of Lyrical Poetry; Apollo, God of Light, Eloquence, Poetry and the Fine Arts with Urania, Muse of Astronomy; Calliope, Muse of Epic Poetry; and Clio, Muse of History. The one I’m showing here is Erato.

Here’s a fascinating article on the restoration process. Restoring the Erato painting was particularly challenging, since another artist had over-painted Cupid’s body with a “prudish white veil” an estimated 75 years after Meynier completed the painting. Those Victorians! Fortunately, it was possible to remove the veil and restore the painting to its original beauty.