It’s Friday, the Friday before Mother’s Day, which means I can look forward to a weekend where I don’t have to do quite as much as usual.

Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms out there. Sleep late for me.

And, unlike in many of the weeks prior to this one, I actually wrote. So yay!

[SPOILER ALERT–I tried to work the font so you wouldn’t be spoiled, but it’s so not working, so be warned]

Now onto some reading commentary; I started reading Eileen Dreyer’s Never A Gentleman because of a review HeroesandHeartbreakers.com (the site I work for) posted. And, OMG, she breaks one of the most cardinal rules in romance novels:

Her hero has sex with another woman after marrying the heroine.

And Dreyer makes it work. I am loving this book, and it breaks some other rules, too; the heroine is nearly six feet tall, plain, with a limp. Of course, being a romance novel, you think she’s going to get transformed into some statuesque beauty with the clever application of clothing, cosmetics, make a haircut; yes, she is made more attractive by some better clothing, but she is still plain–which the hero acknowledges after falling in love with her. And he is still very much attracted to her because of her mind, her wit, her honor.

I personally love it when authors stand conventions on their head. I know the spoiler above is a total deal-breaker for most readers, but in this context, for me, it worked.

What are other deal-breakers? Who’s the author who breaks convention the most?

Happy Friday!*

I know it’s not very sporting of me, but I had no interest in Royal Wedding shenanigans (not maligning those who did!–just not for me), so I won’t be discussing it here today.

In fact, I haven’t seen any of it except for in my Twitter stream, since I am on a train heading to the New England RWA Conference, where I’m meeting up with my friend and fellow author, Myretta Robens.

It’s cool doing this traveling, and I’m thinking about the hours our heroines spent in carriages on the road heading to country estates, Scottish castles, or remote cottages where their old governesses live. That’s a lot of time to spend inside with not much to do; in this day and age, where free time is at a premium, it feels like a veritable treat not to have anything else one can do, but back then, for an active person, it must’ve been maddening!

Of course, there were always books to read, but as we also know from our heroines, there weren’t a lot of fun books. Maybe their stodgy uncles would have forced some uplifting sermon-y thing on them, or they could have snagged a copy of Ovid’s poetry or something if they were being daring.

But books in massive TBR piles? Not happening for our ladies. No wonder they had time to moon about the hero! But for me now, I’m working on the train (this isn’t work, I am doing other work), and I do have no fewer than four books with me for a long weekend trip. About enough, right?

What would you do with long hours of travel time? What else do you suppose our heroines did while traveling?

Megan

*I know this isn’t the right type of carriage I’m discussing; YOU try to find good images while on a train and slowish Wifi.

There’s nothing that can pull you out of a good historical like an anachronism.

Of course, that can be taken too far; which among us has not rolled our eyes (if not literally, then mentally) when some member of the Historical Police has said that something could not POSSIBLY be because it didn’t exist until a year later.

To which I always say, “It’s fiction. Deal with it.”

(That doesn’t excuse just missing or poor research, such as when a Duke is called My Lord instead of Your Grace, or if a divorce is regarded as blithely in a Regency romance as it is today.)

But there are circumstances, certainly, where things existed prior to being documented. For example, language. Many of us Regency authors own Captain Francis Grose’s 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (I have two copies, myself), and it’s fun to skim through and realize many words were in existence then that you wouldn’t have thought.

And just this week comes news that the Oxford English Dictionary has added new words to its definitive tome: he words “OMG,” “LOL” and “FYI,” as well as ♥, as in “I ♥ NYC.”

The last one is just nuts! It’s the first time a symbol has been defined as a word. But certainly it has been around for much longer than its acknowledgment within the OED, and one can surmise that certain words and phrases were around a lot longer in Regency times than documentation allows for.

What words jar you from a story? What words surprised you by being extant at the time? What word do you think the OED should add next–or never allow within its pages?

Megan

Hoo, boy, it’s Friday again! And I’ve been trying, valiantly, to find time to write, but the day-job, the other day-job, the Son, the Works-All-The-Time Spouse–well, it’s been hard to find time to match socks, much less get creative.

I don’t know how writers with full-time jobs–I’m looking at you, Carolyn and Janet–do it.

Over at my first day-job, HeroesandHeartbreakers.com, we’ve been talking about book-to-movie adaptations, and discussing which are the Worst Ones Ever.

Eventually, of course, we’ll ask which films are the Best Adaptations? So, as Regency fans, I’ll be more specific: Which historical period films are the best adaptations of Regency (or Georgian, or Victorian–can’t be that specific, or all we’ll talk about is Austen)-era novels?

Off the top of my head, I’d say:

North And South
Clarissa (with a totally foxy, but evil, Sean Bean)
Wives And Daughters
Pride & Prejudice (what–like that wouldn’t be here?)
Persuasion (ditto–but not the Rupert Penry-Jones spittle one. Ugh!)

So what would you choose?

Megan

Last week I finally finished reading the eight books I was sent to judge for the RITA contest.

After that marathon, I said on Twitter, “I finished reading all EIGHT of my RITA books; now reading books by male authors only for awhile. Preferably where people die.” To which a snarky Twitter friend replied, “Oh, so you’re going to try reading like every literary critic in the world for a while.”

Ha! But then I thought about it, and realized that because of my reading tastes, I read primarily female authors. And then, when I strolled back through my reading history, I realized that while I haven’t eschewed male authors–Raymond Chandler, Neal Stephenson, Bernard Cornwell and P.G. Wodehouse are among my favorites–I have always peppered my reading with female authors. Even when I wasn’t reading romance.

Now, is this cool? Maybe. But I wish it were just something that could be, without looking to gender, or race, or any other marker of self to gauge a person’s output. I’ve always espoused the Kantian a priori method of critique, wherein you try to know as little about the item you are ingesting so as not to prejudice yourself.

(Sometimes it’s been a problem when I discover the author’s prejudices after I’ve inhaled the work–C.S. Lewis‘s Narnia series was distorted for me when I realized his deep religious beliefs formed the ideas. Knowing Jim Thompson was a drunk did help explain a lot, though).

I do wish it were less of a ‘thing’ for who is what and what they stand for. My own writing is definitely skewed because of my identity as a white Northeast-raised female living in the late 20th century, but I would hope you wouldn’t have to know that to appreciate my work. In fact, if you did have to know that, I’m doing something wrong.

The books I read, by the way, are HIGHLY recommended: Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth and The Black Prism by Brent Weeks (Carolyn first recommended him to me).

Anyway. Which is to say, who’s the last male author you read?

Megan