Risky Regencies

Critiquing my younger self

Updated on November 8, 2013 by Elena Greene

Just as Janet has released A Certain Latitude, I’m starting to rework my first book, Lord Langdon’s Kiss, on the opposite end of the heat spectrum, though.

Lord Langdon’s Kiss is my only totally “sweet” traditional full-length Regency. (Even though I’m not comfortable with the idea that “sweet” and “hot” are opposite ends of a spectrum–you can have emotional warmth and sensuality at the same time–I use the terms because everyone understands them.) I haven’t reissued it yet because I suspected it needed some rework to meet the standard of my subsequent books.

When I first talked about the idea of a Do Over, Carolyn suggested it might turn into a completely different story. Now that I’m getting into it, I don’t really see that happening. I like the characters pretty much as they are (with some tweaking I’ll describe further down) and I’d have to really change them in order to send the story in a different trajectory, like making it sexier. I’ll keep the same title, because it’s going to be very much the same traditional Regency, but better. I hope.

It’s not a story I would write now. Instead, I’m pretending to be the older, wiser critique partner of my younger self and giving her advice on how to improve the story she imagined.

As I’m reviewing the manuscript, I can see that my suspicions were right. The hero is a blockhead. That was intentional, and still is, but I need to better set up the reasons why he’s a blockhead at the start, and he needs to get a clue sooner. The initial conflict goes on for too long.

The other thing is the introspection. I love introspection, but in my later books I think it’s much more in balance with everything else. In Lord Langdon’s Kiss it really goes on and on! A lot of the older Regencies have that, but it doesn’t suit modern tastes and I actually think the story will benefit from tightening.

Has anyone else ever dusted off and reworked an old project? (It doesn’t have to be a book.) Do you smile or cringe at what your younger self produced? Have you been happy with the results?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

Book Release Day! Contest!

Updated on November 7, 2013 by Janet Mullany

In all the delightful chaos of my life (but not as delightful as Ms. Jewel’s–all those dongles! It sounds rude) I have naturally dithered about promoting my new book A Certain Latitude which is now available on Kindle. Huzzah! And here’s the blurb:

1800—Allan Pendale, lawyer and the youngest son of the Earl of Frensham, is bound by ship for the West Indies, to impart the news to his estranged father that his mother has died. But he also has another mission—to find out the truth of his origins.

Miss Clarissa Onslowe is also on board, traveling to take up the role of governess to the daughter of the wealthy planter Mr. Lemarchand. There is nothing to keep her in England. An indiscretion five years before led to her reputation being ruined; her abolitionist family has disowned her and no gentleman would marry her now. But now she seeks redemption with her family by revealing the truth about the miserable lives of the slaves who work on the sugar plantations.

Clarissa’s previous encounter with love has left her aroused and restless, and Allan is a man for whom lust is a daily pastime; thrown together belowdecks during the long sea voyage, they embark on a sensual odyssey where no desire is left untested. But if they thought their exploration and ecstasy could not be bettered, then there are more pleasures to be taken and boundaries to be broken at their island destination—where “March” Lemarchand, sugar king and master of seduction, awaits them both…

You can read an excerpt here.

Now if all this sounds familiar, there was another book, six years ago (that’s about six centuries in the age of digital publishing and mass market fiction) called Forbidden Shores, by one Jane Lockwood, a name the publisher insisted I adopt to protect those who didn’t know my natural tendency to produce ~~total filth~~ finely crafted erotica. I got the rights back, rewrote, got a new cover, woohoo, we’re in business. (My first selfpubbing experience. It was educational.)

It’s delightful to be able to reinvent oneself and get the chance to spruce up a book that never quite worked. I just hope it works now. But hear for yourself. If you’re in the Greater Washington DC area, I’m reading at our new Lady Jane Salon this Saturday in Rockville along with Eliza Knight and Meredith Bond. Check it out. And enter the contest–I’m giving away five copies of A Certain Latitude.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Posted in Giveaways, Risky Book Talk | 22 Replies

Penny For the Guy

Updated on November 5, 2013 by Amanda McCabe/Laurel McKee

Happy Guy Fawkes Day, everyone! We don’t really celebrate Bonfire Night here in the US (though we really, really should! Just because it’s fun to go around chanting “Remember, remember the 5th of November…” if nothing else.) I think I can probably find some leftover 4th of July sparklers tonight, though, and raise a glass to the Guy.

Guy Fawkes, of course, commemorates a failed Catholic uprising in 1605, where Fawkes, a small-time country gentryman, and 12 co-conspirators decided to blow up Parliament by storing gunpowder in tunnels under the palace and sending James I, his court and counselors sky-high. It fizzled (ha!), and people lit celebratory bonfires around the city. The day became an official holiday, often the focus of anti-Catholic bigotry and fervor, but now I guess it’s mostly an excuse to drink and light bonfires. Sounds fun, though!

According to the History Timeline site:

After the plot was revealed, Londoners began lighting celebratory bonfires, and in January 1606 an act of Parliament designated November 5 as a day of thanksgiving. Guy Fawkes Day festivities soon spread as far as the American colonies, where they became known as Pope Day. In keeping with the anti-Catholic sentiment of the time, British subjects on both sides of the Atlantic would burn an effigy of the pope. That tradition completely died out in the United States by the 19th century, whereas in Britain Guy Fawkes Day became a time to get together with friends and family, set off fireworks, light bonfires, attend parades and burn effigies of Fawkes. Children traditionally wheeled around their effigies demanding a “penny for the Guy” (a similar custom to Halloween trick-or-treating) and imploring crowds to “remember, remember the fifth of November.”

Guy Fawkes himself, meanwhile, has undergone something of a makeover. Once known as a notorious traitor, he is now portrayed in some circles as a revolutionary hero, largely due to the influence of the 1980s graphic novel “V for Vendetta” and the 2005 movie of the same name, which depicted a protagonist who wore a Guy Fawkes mask while battling a future fascist government in Britain. Guy Fawkes masks even cropped up at Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City and elsewhere. “Every generation reinvents Guy Fawkes to suit their needs,” explained historian William B. Robison of Southeastern Louisiana University. “But Fawkes was just one of the flunkies. It really should be Robert Catesby Day.

Since it’s raining here today, thus not helpful for lighting fires, I guess I will settle in to working on the WIP and re-watching last night’s episode of Sleepy Hollow! It’s good to be back at the Riskies and getting back onto a semi-normal routine…

What are you doing for Bonfire Night???

Posted in Risky Regencies | 1 Reply

Book Wish List

Updated on November 4, 2013 by Diane Gaston

Carolyn’s blog about Amazon’s Matchbook program led me to poke around at Amazon and to ultimately look at my Amazon Book Wish List. On Amazon you can make as many wish lists as you like, an easy way to record a “gift registry” for yourself or family members. I use the wish list function to keep track of books that interested me, but that I was not certain I wanted to buy immediately. Or, more accurately, books I was afraid I’d forget.

Here are a few of them.

My newest addition to the list was recommended to me by Kristine Hughes (The Writer’s Guide to Everyday Life in Regency and Victorian England from 1811 – 1901 and Number One London blog)–The Profligate Son: Or, A True Story of Family Conflict, Fashionable Vice, and Financial Ruin in Regency Britain. by Nicola Phillips.
Booklist says:

“The dangers of a profligate son is a persistent theme in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature, and it was also a very real fear among the upper echelon of British families…an absorbing case study…Phillips eloquently fills out the bare bones of the known facts of the story.”

How can any of us resist that story?

Next on my wish list are two books with the same title but different authors–Wellington: The Iron Duke, first by Phillip J. Haythornwaite; second by Richard Holmes. I’m hoping to go on Kristine and Vicky Hinshaw’s Wellington tour next year and it has been years since I read a Wellington biography.

There are several books on my list that I own in hardback or paperback, but that I’d love to have on my Kindle for convenience. I can’t quite justify spending the money to buy books I already own, but I’m hoping someone in the family will see them and buy them for me as a gift. One of my favorites is Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket, again by Richard Holmes. This book gives so much information about the British army in the Napoleonic War, it is a treasure. Other books I already own are: Wellington’s Rifles by Mark Urban, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-the Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England by Daniel Pool, Every Man Will Do His Duty: An Anthology of Firsthand Accounts from the Age of Nelson 1793-1815 by John B. Hattendorf and Dean King.

Two more books on the list: The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss. This book won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography and sounds fascinating. As does A Scandalous Life: The Biography of Jane Digby by Mary S. Lovell. In 1828 Jane Digby left her aristocratic husband and young son for an Austrian diplomat. A sensational divorce resulted and Digby left England for the continent, marrying two more times, but leaving those husbands and more children, as well, until she ultimately found happiness marrying a sheik twenty years younger than she. If her story were fiction, it would be too far-fetched.

Do you own any of these books? Are they on your wish list? What books are on your wish list?

Posted in Reading, Regency, Research | Tagged books, Jane Digby, Wellington | 4 Replies

Nice pic from NJRW

Updated on November 3, 2013 by Elena Greene

Last week on Twitter I found out that Kim, blogger at Aloha on My Mind and one of the delightful people who stopped by our table, had posted this pic of Diane and me at the NJRW booksigning. Kim kindly gave permission to share here.