We have a winner!
Kat, you have won the download of Deceptive Behavior. Please contact us at riskies AT yahoo.com for your prize
We have a winner!
Kat, you have won the download of Deceptive Behavior. Please contact us at riskies AT yahoo.com for your prize
Some of you (okay, most of you) likely indulged in the deliciousness of Masterpiece Theater’s airing of Downton Abbey.
In it, Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham, eyeballs the new heir–the sadly middle-class Matthew Crawley–and asks, with perfect seriousness, “What is a weekend?”
Oh, wow. Can you imagine not looking forward to Friday afternoon, and not having dread on Sunday evening? Not even thinking about a difference between, say, Wednesday and Saturday?
For all of us, I’d say, that is an impossible dream. So with that in mind, let’s tell Violet what a weekend is, and what we plan to do with it. I’ll start:
I am having a few friends over to watch North and South. Again. There will be swooning over Richard Armitage, some snacks, and perhaps more swooning over Nicholas, the rougher bit in N&S.
I will be catching up on True Blood; I’m two episodes behind.
Reading–currently engrossed in Stacia Kane’s City of Ghosts, hope to dive into one of the many Mary Baloghs I’ve got on the TBR pile.
Walking–now that I’m working, I sit a whole damn lot, and I hate it. I hope to get to the gym, too.
I will not be drinking ratafia, bossing the servants around, or bemoaning my lack of an Almack’s invite.
What are you doing?
Our guest today is Kate Dolan who writes traditional Regency romances for Blush (formerly Cerridwen) Cotillion as well as a variety of other totally unrelated books and articles. Her third Regency, Deceptive Behavior, comes out today in ebook format. And she shares her home with both dogs and a rabbit. That’s her version, so I’ll add that she’s a brilliant and productive writer, a very well-informed historian, and a good friend and critique partner. The thing I love about Kate’s books is that she includes some very risky topics and that makes her a natural here.
So naturally she’s chosen a very non-PC topic. And, oh yes, she’s offering a free download of Deceptive Behavior or one of her print backlist to one lucky person.
For the third book in my “Love and Lunacy” series, I wanted a hero who was a bit different. The challenge was to devise characteristics that would make him seem odd and even unmanly to those in Regency society, but still masculine and appealing to modern readers. He needed to be athletic, but without engaging in the traditional exercise of gentleman, such as hunting and fencing.
I made him a fast runner, but Regency gentlemen did not compete in track meets, so I needed a reason for him to run – and chasing after the heroine didn’t count.
Then I remembered a sport introduced to my husband by one of his colleagues: beagling.
Definitely doesn’t sound very masculine, does it? The sport is very similar to fox hunting, but the quarry is a hare and it is usually chased on foot. So by making my hero a beagler, I gave him an opportunity to become a good runner.
Modern hunts tend to proceed rather slowly with the field walking along behind the beagles, but sources indicate that it used to be a running sport. The Trinity Foot Beagles, a history of a Cambridge club written in 1912, is full of cartoons of men running and the theme song of the group includes a verse that says “It’s the deuce of a run, And I’m pretty well done…It’s lucky by gad, For I think every lad, Has pretty well used up his breath.”
Beagling is now outlawed in the U.K. as a blood sport, but it still has aficionados in the U.S. While clubs such as the Roscommon Hounds proclaim that it “is a dark day if anything is ever killed” during a chase, that too was obviously not true in the past. The lines I deleted from the quote from the Trinity Foot Beagles song talk about the quarry being near its death, and later lines describe the hounds “breaking up” the “pussy,” which was apparently the term of affection for the rabbit that was chased and ripped to shreds.
While “pussy’s death knell” might have a place in some romance stories, it really didn’t fit a traditional Regency, so I was fortunate that in my story I never had to depict an actual outing. My hero did chase a rabbit for a few hundred yards, but then the rabbit stopped so there wasn’t much challenge after that. (Rabbits in my yard do this all the time. They run away frantically and then just stop in the middle of the yard, somehow thinking my dogs and I can no longer see them.)
The Trinity Beagles history describes a “most rotten joyless day” of chasing a hare through turnip patches in the November drizzle, losing the quarry twice and finally giving up after at least 45 minutes of running. “And yet,” the author notes philosophically, “where there is no disappointment, there is no sport. Good days are those which exceed expectation, or they would not be good; and the red letters of the good days would not stand out in bold relief were there not the deep black shadows of the rotten, joyless ones.”
This is of course true for more than just beagling, or any other sport—it applies to everything.
So I wish you many red letter days, but remember that there is an important purpose served by the “rotten, joyless days” as well.
Please weigh in on the advantages or disadvantages of having characters who engage in pursuits now no longer socially acceptable (and we don’t mean with each other), and how do you think this is best handled when writing about such a bloodthirsty age? Or, tell us your favorite dog or rabbit stories. We’ll pick a winner tomorrow!
Last week, I went to a follow-up appointment with the surgeon, and one of the things I had to do was fill out a post-op questionnaire all about how I’m doing since I came home. One of the questions asked if the patient was suffering feelings of depression, and I realized something very important–I’ve actually been feeling very happy, eager to go out and have fun even. I guess a near-brush with disaster will do that, or maybe it’s a compensation for missing out on RWA, lol. But it led me to do something I always said I would never, ever do–sing karaoke. It was a friend’s birthday party Saturday, and well, one thing led to another, and next thing I knew I was singing “California Gurls.” Keep in mind that I have a terrible singing voice and am very sensitive about it, but when it was all over I realized it was actually kinda fun. Liberating.
So now I am on a “Make The Most Of Life” campaign. Every week I am going to try something new, just to help me remember life should be an adventure. I will post what I find to do (as long as it’s PG-rated…)
And when I was looking for topics for today’s post I found out that July 12 is an anniversary for one of my very favorite Bold Women in history–Dolley Madison, First Lady of the US from 1809 to 1817, who died on that day in 1849 after a long and very eventful life. She seemed appropriate to talk about today. I first “met” Dolley when we got an assignment to do a report on a figure in American history in the 5th grade. I found a book about her in the school library and loved her immediately! She was all the things I wished I could be.
In 1797, James retired from the House of Representatives and took Dolley and her son to live at his home at Montpelier in Virginia, where they planned to live a quiet, private life. Fate intervened when Thomas Jefferson asked James to be his Secretary of State in 1801 and the family moved to the brand-new capital Washington DC. James became the 4th president in 1809, and Dolley really came into her own. She was a great First Lady, known for being very fashionable and giving fabulous parties. She redecorated the White House to reflect its stature, and was also very intelligent, shrewd, and charming, renowned for her ability to bring quarreling factions together and smooth quarrels at a very hotheaded time. (Too bad we don’t have her around now…)
Her most famous moment came during the War of 1812, as the British Army converged on DC and the populace fled. Alone at the White House, Dolley packed up vital papers and insisted on making sure the famous Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington was saved before she left for safety herself. As she later wrote to her sister, “Our kind friend Mr. Carroll has come to hasten my departure, and in a very bad humor with me, because I insist on waiting until the large picture of General Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall. The process was found too tedious for these perilous moments; I have ordered the frame to be broken and the canvas taken out….. It is done, and the precious portrait placed in the hands of two gentlemen from New York for safe keeping. On handing the canvas to the gentlemen in question, Messrs. Barker and Depeyster, Mr. Sioussat cautioned them against rolling it up, saying that it would destroy the portrait. He was moved to this because Mr. Barker started to roll it up for greater convenience for carrying.”
And another account of her perilous journey, “The friends with Mrs. Madison hurried her away (her carriage being previously ready), and she, with many other families, retreated with the fleeing army. In Georgetown they perceived some men before them carrying off the picture of General Washington (the large one by Stewart), which with the plate was all that was saved out of the President’s house. Mrs. Madison lost all her own property. Mrs. Madison slept that night in the encampment, a guard being placed round her tent; the next day she crossed into Virginia, where she remained until Sunday, when she returned to meet her husband.”
She was a beloved figure for the rest of her husband’s presidency, and indeed for the rest of her life. James died in 1836 after 42 years of marriage, and even though Dolley was plagued by worries over her n’er-do-well son for the rest of her life, she lived in DC and entertained and enjoyed life until her own death in 1849.
Winner of a download of Kathryn the Kitten by Lavinia Kent, first in the Real Duchesses of London series is…