I’ve been so remiss in posting winners!! Here are two to make up for that:
Rachel/Jane Austen you’ve won Grace Elliott’s A Dead Man’s Debt
Amy Kathryn you’ve won Elyse Mady’s Debutante’s Dilemma
Congrats! Please email us your contact information at Riskies AT yahoo.com
A few weeks ago, I finally got around to watching a film I’ve meant to see for ages, Visconti’s Il Gatopardo (The Leopard). It’s an epic from 1963, with Burt Lancaster (dubbed in Italian!) as the patriarch of a great, aristocratic Sicilian family on the cusp of massive changes in the mid-19th century. It was gorgeous, and I couldn’t believe I waited so long to see it!
The last scene was my favorite, a 45-minute ballroom set-piece full of Verdi and swirling gowns, which manages to look fabulously authentic, draw the viewer deep into that world, and still be a meditation on mortality and change, youth and age. It’s so full of emotions that simmer just beneath the sparkling surface. Writing historical romance means writing lots of ballroom scenes, of course, and they’re some of my favorites to work on. So much can happen in a dance, so much that has to be hidden or that bursts out suddenly with vast consequences. It can mean so much in a story. And this scene in The Leopard was very inspiring.
It also made me think of other dance scenes I love in movies, especially with the holiday parties looming! I did a little informal polling on Facebook and Twitter, asking people’s favorite dance scenes. I heard about Rogers and Astaire (I especially love the “dancing in the gazebo while it rains” scene!), Gene Kelly dancing in the rain, Dirty Dancing (also a guilty pleasure of mine, I confess), and lots of Pride and Prejudice. It seems like every Austen adaptation has a dance scene (or two or three), including the most recent Emma, where Emma leaped around and shrieked like she was at a rugby match!
I’m partial to the Netherfield ball in the 2005 P&P, where the room slowly vanishes around Elizabeth and Darcy as they dance and stare smolderingly. I like The Age of Innocence, where the camera rises up from Newland and May to show the swirling characters on the polished floor while Strauss plays. The coronation ball in Young Victoria (I seriously covet her gown), the volta in Shakespeare in Love, the tango in The Mask of Zorro, Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in the empty tennis court in Sabrina, the meet-cute at the Bath assembly rooms in Northanger Abbey. The cell-block tango in Chicago. And who could forget “Other way, Mr. Collins!”??
Now that I think about it, there are lots of dance scenes I love. What are your favorite movie dance scenes? Do you like reading/writing ballroom scenes?
And don’t forget, I’ll be back here this Sunday, along with Nicola Cornick, as we launch our December releases (and give away copies!), and I’ll be at the Word Wenches on the 24th. For more info on various blog appearances, excerpts, and a December contest, be sure and visit my Laurel site…
This is the week we start preparing for our Thanksgiving Day holiday. We generally think of the first Thanksgiving as taking place in Plymouth in 1621, with Pilgrims and Native Americans celebrating out of doors at food-laden tables. This is a very important holiday to us, a commemoration of all the gifts bestowed upon, all the things we are thankful for.
Our Thanksgiving celebrations usually involve a turkey dinner. The wild turkey is actually indigenous to North America, so my question is, did they eat turkey in Regency England?
The answer is YES. The The 16th century English navigator William Strickland introduced turkeys into England. His coat of arms includes a turkey, so it must have been a big deal.
I wondered, if I were a Regency scullery maid (which I’m convinced I must have been in a previous life), what would I see Cook do to prepare a turkey for our lord and lady?
Here’s what The Art of Cookery Made Plain And Easy: Which Far Exceeds Any Thing Of The Kind Yet Published by Hannah Glasse
said:
To Roast a Fowl with Chesnuts.
FIRST take some chesnuts, roast them very carefully, so as not to burn them; take off the skin and peel them; take about a dozen of them cut small, and bruise them in a mortar; parboil the liver of the fowl, bruise it, cut about a quarter of a pound of ham or bacon, and pound it; then mix them all together, with a good deal of parsley chopped small, a little sweet herbs, some mace, pepper, salt, and nutmeg; mix these together and put into your fowl, and roast it. The best way of doing it is to tie the neck, and hang it up by the legs to roast with a string, and baste it with butter. For sauce, take the rest of the chesnuts peeled and skinned; put them into some good gravy, with a little white wine, and thicken it with a piece of butter rolled in flour; then take up your fowl, lay it in the dish, and pour in the sauce. Garnish with lemon.
Hey, my mother-in-law has made chestnut dressing. The dressing in my family is mostly made of bread!
I can’t quite picture the hanging by the feet part.
Here’s one of the traditional Thanksgiving/Christmas dishes that I (who am so-not-a-cook) will make for our Thanksgiving. It is from my husband’s Italian side of the family:
“The Peas”
1 package frozen peas
1 15 oz can of tomato sauce (or a small jar of spaghetti sauce)
1 chopped onion
3 or 4 cloves of garlic
olive oilIn a saucepan, brown the garlic in a little bit of olive oil.
Add the peas, onions, and tomato sauce and stir
Cover and cook on low for about an hour
It is easy. Even I can do it! I’m also making the green bean casserole, but everybody knows how to do that.
For Thanksgiving we’re going to my in-laws in Williamsburg, where Amanda and I stayed when we met with Deb Marlowe to plan The Diamonds of Welbourne Manor. Most of my dh’s side of the family will come and I’m happy because both my son and daughter will be there!
Where are you going for Thanksgiving?
What, if anything, will you be cooking?
Don’t forget to enter Janet’s LOL Regency contest! I sent her my entry.
Come to Diane’s Blog . Today I’m announcing my Thanksgiving winner for the website contest, and on Thursday I have a big exciting Christmas contest to announce!
Risky Regencies welcomes another debut author this weekend, Grace Elliott, who will tell us more about her release A Dead Man’s Debt! One commenter will win a copy…
Hello, Riskies, what a pleasure to be here today to share a little about my debut novel, A Dead Man’s Debt, and the inspiration behind the story. Believe it or not, a painting of the young Emma Hart (who married Lord Hamilton and was Horatio Nelson’s mistress) was the catalyst behind my novel. The painting by George Romney shows an innocent yet lush young woman, scantily clad with a hint of bosom, brazenly staring out of the canvas with an allure that is quite hypnotic. It struck me as sensational for an 18th century work, that the sitter was not prim, proper, straight-backed and starchy. It must have been scandalous at the time. But who would be bold enough to commission such a portrait? (As it happened Emma was ahead of her time and loved to flout convention–but that’s another story!)
What a delicious idea for a story! What if the woman in the painting wanted to shock? What if, years later, this rebellious streak threatened to disgrace her family? What if only the son she despises can save her reputation–but at the price of his secret love? Thus the stage was set for a story of blackmail, sacrifice, and redeeming love. This excerpt from A Dead Man’s Debt shows the young Lady Sophia Cadnum revealing the shocking portrait of her friend:
With a swoosh the drape hissed to the ground. Georgiana’s eyes widened, and she flushed crimson as a hand covered her mouth. “Oh my!” The oil showed Sophia Cadnum stripped of her satins and silks with her natural beauty shining like an exotic flower. In just a gossamer shift, with a rope of pearls wound round a swan-like neck, she reclined in a woodland clearing, happy as a nymph. Ringlets of rich raven hair, unpowdered and unrestrained, tumbling over her shoulder to provide a modesty not offered by the transparent gown. On closer inspection, the male viewer would be enchanted to discover the ghost of a nipple peeping between ringlets. Sophia smiled happily. “Isn’t it wonderful?” Georgiana grew quiet, nervously averting her eyes. “I speak as your dear friend and only with your interests at heart, but is it quite…” she glanced at Sophia then steeled herself. “…appropriate?” Black thunder darkened Sophia’s pretty face. “And by that you mean?” Georgiana took a deep breath. “Well, what with your being a mother now, something less…provocative…might be more correct?” Sophia scowled. “But that’s precisely the point. Producing a son was my duty…and I won’t be made into a dowdy matron because of it. I need to feel alive and have my heart race for joy. Heaven knows already the Duke talks of producing another brat for the nursery.” Comprehension dawning, Georgiana gulped. “Was it so very awful giving birth?” Sophia closed her eyes. “Hateful, from start to finish.” Silence stilled the air. Georgiana cleared her throat. “Has the Duke seen the painting?” “In truth I don’t think he cares enough to have an opinion. As long as I serve my purpose as mother to his heirs, he won’t object.” She stroked her tightly laced stomacher, resting a hand on the barely perceptible dome of her belly. The light went from her eyes as she whispered, “Please God grant me respite from my duty.”
Like ripples on a pond, the consequences of this scandalous portrait are felt years later, when Lady Cadnum’s offspring are all grown up. It is resentment over the children she bore that expresses itself in her son Ranulf’s sullen moods and coolness. But being a Regency romance, the latter is like a red rag to a bull for our heroine, Celeste Armitage, who is determined to break through Ranulf’s reserve and uncover the passionate man beneath.
And all this from one portrait of Emma Hart! Phew—I’m saving my energy for a trip to the National Portrait Gallery in London, heaven only knows what inspiration will strike there…
About the Author: Grace Elliott leads a double life as a veterinarian by day and author of sensual historic romance by night, and firmly believes that intelligent people need to read romance as an antidote to the modern world.
A Dead Man’s Debt is available from most ebook retailers and on Amazon Kindle, and at the publisher’s site. If you’d like to read more excerpts or learn more about what makes Grace Elliott tick, please visit her website
Let me clarify what I mean by writer’s block. I’m not talking about what happens with people who have been members of a writing organization for years and still haven’t completed and submitted a manuscript. That is writer’s block, but not a sort I feel qualified to write about.
Professional writers (regardless of publication status) learn to show up for work on a regular basis. The beauty of it is that writing begets more writing. You draft a crappy scene in the morning, then you go about your day job or errands and seemingly out of the blue, you get ideas for how to fix that scene and go on to the next. You ask why your hero is a loner and the next morning you wake up knowing.
What is going on is a partnership between your conscious and subconscious minds. It’s not always perfect, of course. Sometimes you need 10-20 minutes of warmup before the writing starts to flow. Sometimes you need to take a break to brainstorm a plot snag or murky character motivation. Sometimes you just have a bad day. These are minor blocks; you develop tricks to get through them. And when it’s going well, it feels great. Like an athlete who is in the zone, you are still working and sweating, but the work feels good and productive.
The writer’s block I’m talking happens when you are showing up for work but the ideas slow down or stop coming. At first you may think it’s just a bad day. But it happens again, over a period of weeks or even months. Your characters no longer feel real. They’re more like mannequins you laboriously push through their paces. You lose your gut feel for what works. You don’t know what to keep, change or cut.
What’s happened is like an athletic injury. Unlike a swollen ankle, you can’t see it. But it’s real. Your subconscious mind is on strike.
If you keep going, in a deadline crunch or just out of perseverance, you’re like an athlete compounding an injury. You start to associate writing with pain. You may have trouble finishing a book or starting the next one. It hurts like being at outs with your best friend. You may fall into depression and bad habits.
You could give up or wait it out, but I think it’s better to treat it as a professional athlete would an injury, with rest and therapy. You need to be both kind and tough.
The kind part means getting good sleep, nutrition and exercise if you weren’t already. It could mean massage, meditation, long walks or anything that makes you feel good and clears your mind. You need mental clarity for the tough part.
The tough part is figuring out what caused the block and what to do about it. Some writers say blocks are mysterious but I think one can figure them out. I find journaling (a process I first learned by doing The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron) helpful. I also talk through blocks with trusted writer friends. Some writers go to a therapist. (I think it’d be very important to find a good one.)
Blocks are caused by fear. It could be fear of rejection, decreasing sales, bad reviews, of not being able to do justice to your ideas, of your friends being jealous if your career progresses faster than theirs. If you fear being punished in some way for writing, your subconscious mind “protects” you by not sending any more ideas.
You can’t just dismiss your fears. Bad things do happen to good writers. You may have to teach yourself that you are strong enough to cope. You may have to work on surrounding yourself with supportive people but also learn to support yourself, too. You may want to change your career plan or writing process. Maybe you need to switch genres. Maybe you need to allow more time for each book.
While you’re doing all this, it’s also a good idea to try what Julia Cameron calls an “Artist Date”. Make time for a fun, creative activity that has no career baggage. It could be something you used to enjoy, or always wanted to try but haven’t had time for. Consider it a peace offering to your creative side.
Once you start back into the writing, be patient. Continue to take care of yourself and trust your gut.
So anyway, this is my theory on writer’s block. What do you think? If you’ve had it, what helped? If you haven’t, do you do things to prevent it?
Elena