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Tuesday Musings

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I’ve been drifting around online since I got up this morning, trying to find a good blog topic for this cold Tuesday! Having found nothing (or rather, so many things I couldn’t decide) I thought I would borrow ideas from Megan and Janet and just tell you some of the stuff I’ve been thinking about lately….

1) Writing! Like always. Just finished up an Undone short story set at the court of Mary Queen of Scots and diving back into the full-length Scottish story, plus organizing my “ideas folder.” I’m often distracted by bright, shiny new ideas that try to tempt me away from the WIP, so I jot them down in a special notebook to come back to later (not that they always stop pestering me). I’ve also been sorting some new research books I picked up at a booksale last week! Fun fun. Inspired by Diane, I may also do a little genealogical research…

2) The Oscars! I do love Oscar nomination day, which happens to be–today. (See a full list of the noms here). Out of the ridiculously bloated 10 movie Best Picture field, I’ve seen 5, Black Swan, The King’s Speech, The Kids Are All Right, The Social Network, and the vastly overrated Inception. My personal favorite of those is King’s Speech, but I predict Social Network will win (with Colin Firth and Natalie Portman winning Acting honors). I will probably see True Grit soon, but as much as I love James Franco I think 127 Hours would be too intense for me. The noms for Best Costumes are Alice In Wonderland, I Am Love, The King’s Speech, The Tempest, and True Grit. No arguments there, though I might have liked to see Black Swan there. Those Rodarte tutus were awesome.

3) Like Megan, I’ve been thinking about Vampire Diaries! New episodes finally start again on Thursday and I can’t wait. It feels like I’ve been waiting forever to see what will happen next in the twisty plots (or which Salvatore brother will take his shirt off first)

4) Today is the (probable) anniversary of the marriage of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, a secret shotgun wedding complete with baby bump in 1533. Er–happy anniversary? (For more information on this event, check this post in The Anne Boleyn Files, an awesome blog that you should check out anyway!)

5) It’s also Burns Day! Poet Robert Burns was born on this day in 1759, which is celebrated every year in Scotland (and by people who just like his work!). A local pub here does a special dinner for it every year, which I will be attending tonight. In honor of his poem “To A Haggis” it’s traditional to serve haggis, which I will not be partaking in. (Check here for more info, and a recipe for haggis if you’re feeling brave)

6) Reading, of course! I’m in the middle of Carol Carr’s new historical mystery India Black, about a Victorian madam solving a murder. I love it so far, a great heroine and witty writing. I also have a new biography of Voltaire, and some birthday gift cards from Barnes and Noble burning a hole in my pocket as I try to decide how to spend them. Any recommendations??

Now I’m running out to yoga class so I won’t feel so bad about the shepherd’s pie and whiskey tonight! What are you thinking about today? Any favorite Oscar movies or predictions?

Posted in Risky Regencies | Tagged | 7 Replies

Famous Ancestors, I Fancy

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I’ve been researching horse racing for an Undone story, checking through Google Books, finding
Royal Ascot: its history & its associations by George James Cawthorne and Richard S. Herod. I had to chuckle when I read this:

No one did more to promote the interests of the Turf and to establish horse racing as a national pastime than Tregonwell Frampton, of Moreton, in Dorsetshire. “The Father of the Turf,” as he has been called, was born in 1642, and was keeper of the Royal Running Horses….Mr. Frampton was the cunningest jockey of his day, but his methods were not always above suspicion. In the celebrated match between North and South…Mr. Frampton attempted to deceive his rival by adding 7 lb. to the agreed weight

Who knew Megan’s “ancestor” was a jockey, a sometimes crooked one?

That got me thinking….If I searched Google Books what sort of “ancestors” would I find for the other Riskies?

I decided to search Full View only, between the years 1700 to 1900, but it quickly became apparent that “McCabe” was only going to yield authors named McCabe. I altered the plan to include only Google Books in “my library.” There were no McCabe ancestors in “my library” and no Mullanys either.

Here’s what I found for Greene in A History of the Peninsular War, Volume 5 By Charles Oman and John Alexander Hall:

Gardiner’s, Douglas’s, Lawson’s, and Elige’s [now temporarily under 2nd Captain W. Greene, Elige having been killed at the Salamanca forts] companies were present at Salamanca, as was also the Reserve Artillery, but the last-named was not engaged. Elige was shot through the heart on the second day of the siege of the Salamanca forts. 2nd Captain W. Greene commanded the company at the battle of Salamanca

Leave it to Elena to have a heroic “early relation.”

But what of Carolyn? I found Jewel immediately in Nimrod’s Hunting Tours

There are three bitches in Mr. Villebois’ kennel which must not be passed over—namely, Priestess, Madcap, and Jewel; …Jewel is by Foreman (sire of Lady)out of Jezebel. Jewel is the dam of Juryman and Jovial, two uncommonly fine hounds…Jewel has got a bone in the mouth of her stomach, which she cannot get rid of, and which prevents her hunting; but from her blood and shape she is invaluable in the stud.

Somehow I don’t think that Jewel could possibly be Carolyn’s “ancestor” (and OMIGOSH did you notice one of the dogs in the painting is relieving itself????).

Do you use Google Books? Do you have a favorite? I think mine is Waterloo Days by Charlotte Eaton.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 15 Replies

Creative and rambling minds.

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Today I have nothing to talk about because I’m Getting Creative. Oxymoronic? Well, yes. Everything goes inward and the mind rambles. For instance, in the false starts that began this post, all mercifully deleted, my mind wandered on the following topics: Bill Nighy, Facebook, Goodreads, Voldemort, grammar, Judging the Big Contest That Shall Not Be Named, lunch, houseplants, and back to Bill Nighy.

I really like Bill Nighy.

But this Getting Creative thing: What do I want to do next, what might sell (I’m clueless), what will stop me getting bored. This time around I’m approaching from the opposite direction to my usually haphazard process. I’m planning. I will be messing with file cards and diagrams and pencil scribbles. I might actually get to know characters before I pluck their names out of the air and drop them into a story.

And I have the books to read for the Contest That Shall Not Be Named. I have a clutch of books I’ve never even heard of and even though it’s only a handful it reminds me how many thousands of books are out there and how easy it is for a good book to be overlooked. This is a scary, inexplicable business.

I’m happy to mention, though, that I’ve done some things I decided on at the beginning of the year: I went to the National Gallery in Washington DC to see the exhibit The Pre-Raphaelite Lens which I enjoyed. I started tidying my office. I started thinking about getting ready to tidy the house. I might, even, gasp, sort out my books and decide which ones I really am never going to look at ever again to make more space (and not buy again).

So I pose a challenge to you: track your thoughts and see where they go, as I did at the beginning of this post, and see what you can come up with.

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Obsessions!

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Hey, don’t freak out and think it’s later than you thought (not that that makes sense); Janet is doing her best imitation of a poultry-type without a braincase, so I am posting today, not Friday, as is my usual wont.

And . . . we’re off!

I still haven’t found time to write. The day job is a lot of fun, but requires attention and time, and then there’s all the other stuff.

But the commute. The train commute! Ah, how I love thee.

Last week I read the first of Karen Marie Moning‘s Fever series. The final book in the series, Shadowfever, came out this week, and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about (okay, ‘fess up: Who here just imagined some grouchy lady in an apron waving a rolling pin while she said that? JUST WHAT I LOOK LIKE RIGHT NOW, BY THE WAY).

It was a lot different than what I’d expected. I never actually expected, given the beginning of the book, to like the heroine, but by the end of the book, I admired her and wished I had more of her spunk. I am still doubtful if we’d be friends if we met in real life, but I bet if we had a few cocktails we’d be hanging out in no time.

In fact, I’m surprised by how much I am thinking about the book after finishing it. That speaks well to its ability to survive as a series, not to mention the multitude of people in my Twitter stream who stayed up all night/stalked the UPS guy/called in sick at work to read Shadowfever. I’m just psyched I have more books to look forward to.

I finished the first Tasha Alexander book I was reading last week, And Only To Deceive, which I enjoyed–it has a romantic element to it, but it’s mostly about a Victorian woman discovering her own interests and expressing her own opinion in a time when most women did not.

And now I am currently reading the Regency-set historical Provocative In Pearls by Madeline Hunter. It is delicious, and I am in awe of Hunter’s ability to weave a complex series of conflicts on a very simple premise. I am two-thirds of the way through, and don’t quite see what might happen yet, which is fun.

Thanks in no small part to listening to Amanda McCabe (aka Laurel McKee), I started watching the Vampire Diaries, which has been so much fun. She and I have emailed a few times with me speculating what might happen and her probably biting her tongue not to tell me.

We both agree, however, as to how beautiful the eyes of Ian Somerhalder, who plays Alpha Vamp Damon, are.

Yeah, so, no writing, but lots of reading, and lots of looking nice almost every single day, which is a change from usual, and lots of interacting with pleasant co-workers, which I haven’t had in a long time.

What is engrossing your leisure time lately?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 5 Replies

Can we Reconstruct the Social Past?

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I had an interesting conversation recently regarding present-day misconceptions about the past. In this conversation we floated the idea that historical romance had created its own, essentially false, depiction of life during the Regency. We talked about whether or not these inaccurate ideas were so deeply embedded that an accurate depiction of them could be roundly denounced.

There is a difference between history and historical fiction. In the case of the former, the point, one hopes, in writing about history, is to be accurate. Fiction serves a different role. Fiction, at some level, has to recognize the ways in which, say, a Regency Romance, privileges the needs of modern readers over historical accuracy.

What I constantly find odd, however, is that way in which we sometimes talk about the past as if those people were a different species. There is, I think, a speed at which evolution progresses — over millions of years, punctuated by the odd catastrophe that challenges the very survival of a species, and the speed at which social culture evolves. Millennia vs. a few years.

The human sex drive is an evolutionary survival tactic and our bodies have evolved to make procreation likelier than not. The way human cultures deal with that fact seem to be fairly fluid. I think historical researchers sometimes conflate cultural sexual norms with the human sexual drive.

In the West, we have this notion of sexual repression that comes to us from the Victorian age — women weren’t supposed to like sex, everyone was all uptight and people, particularly women, who appeared to embrace their sexual nature were punished. We could talk all day about the ways in which Western cultures have attempted to control and repress human sexuality. There is plenty of evidence of that.

However, no amount of social repression negates the fact that sex feels good. Our bodies are hard wired for sexual desire and to experience sexual pleasure. Repression is bound to fail. It cannot help but fail. We exist today because it did, in fact, fail.

My point, after all that, is that this trope of the innocent, unsexual female who has no curiosity or drive to engage in sex (and I do mean the act) seems to me to be fundamentally false. Of course there were people who refrained from sex until marriage, but there simply had to be a lot of people who didn’t. The idea that women didn’t have any non-social way to control their fertility also seems suspect to me.

The Heyer-esque innocent, however compelling she is on the written page, with an almost complete denial of female sexual agency sometimes bothers me and is, I think, more a representation of Heyer’s social millieu than the actual Regenecy — In other words, she wrote about a world as her culture norms imagined it ought to have been. Lydia in Pride and Prejudice is an example of that tension.

So, after all these ill-formed thoughts, what do you think about the accuracy of Regency Romance and do you care?

Posted in Regency | Tagged | 5 Replies
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