I received this email from Michelle Buonfiglio of Romance by the Blog and I felt the request was perfect for our intelligent and enthusiastic Risky Regencies readers (that means ALL of you!)

Here it is:

Monday, April 16th at www.RomanceByTheBlog.blogspot.com.

My pal Bill Gleason is a Princeton prof, and this Monday his “American Best Sellers” class will be spending the day at Romance: By the Blog to learn about the romance genre from the women and men who read and write it. The students, who in class are examining popular works of American literature in their historical contexts, have created a list of general questions they’d like to start with. From there? Who knows what sorts of mischief we can lead them into?

Won’t you please visit and take part in this fun, groundbreaking experiment to excite bright young minds about our important, vibrant genre?

Some of the questions/topics students wish to discuss:

1. Do you feel romance novels objectify men/women? If so, does this bother you?
2. If seduction is more than a whirlwind of passion, to what extent do aesthetic elements operate in its nature and in the texts themselves? Also, are there other traces of formal elements at play in these novels that might give them greater literary status than the typical mass-produced, formulaic fiction?
3. Do you consider the novels a form of pornography?
4. What’s the appeal of the novels to men?
5. Since they’ve studied “Gone With the Wind,” they’ll also be talking about why it’s “not” a romance.

I look forward to your joining us. Please let me know if you’ve got any questions. And please do invite any friends — especially readers — you feel can add to a lively and positive discussion.

All Best,

Michelle

Michelle Buonfiglio
Romance: B(u)y the Book™
mbuonfiglio@RBtheBook.com

www.RomanceBuyTheBook.com — Only the Good Stuff: Weekly Feature Reviews, AuthorView Interviews, More!

I’m going over there now to say my piece and I hope you will, too.
Here at Risky Regencies we can discuss what we think of whatever is going on there!!

As Michelle would say, Ciao, Bellas
Diane

Oh Oh! Innocence and Impropriety was reviewed in the Chicago Tribune yesterday! (along with several other romances, but it was there! ) Take a peek HERE! (you have to go to the second page to see the actual review. Scroll down. It’s there!)

From MS Encarta:
“Hydra (mythology), in Greek mythology, nine-headed monster that dwelled in a marsh near Lerna, Greece. A menace to all of Árgos, it had fatally poisonous breath and when one head was severed, grew two in its place; its central head was immortal. Hercules, sent to kill the serpent as the second of his 12 labors, succeeded in slaying it by burning off the eight mortal heads and burying the ninth, immortal head under a huge rock. The term hydra is commonly applied to any complex situation or problem that continually poses compounded difficulties.”

This is a pretty good description of how I’m feeling right now about researching my current mess-in-progress.

First, I actually do quite a bit of research ahead of time. This story has a balloonist hero so I read several books on the history of ballooning before I even started.

However, my plots are never that clear at the beginning so all sorts of questions crop up in the course of the writing. For instance, I hadn’t realized at the start that this hero was also an ex-soldier. Another area of research…sigh…but also a good excuse for viewing more Sharpe movies. 🙂

But I try not to get side-tracked by research (easy to do with Sharpe!) so usually I just put in notes to myself for what to look up later. This week, since my kids are off school and it’s hard to get into scene-writing, I have started to look at all those notes and tackle some of them.

And I’m really starting to feel overwhelmed! In the course of the drafting I’ve learned that this hero is not only an soldier but he’s also an army brat. Now I have to figure out not only where he’s been and what he’s done but also where and how his father might have served. Then there are a host of things about the heroine, her background and her family that keep cropping up. I need to study up on all sorts of diverse subjects from the Clapham sect to the mating habits of British birds. Yikes!

It makes me start wondering why I keep getting myself into these messes. When these ideas come to me, are they the true whisperings of my muse or just some sort of literary death wish???

Some authors blithely write bestsellers without checking basic facts and their readers don’t mind a bit. Oh well, I can’t do that (though I make no claims to perfection in my research). The real reason I do it is because I can’t write with confidence otherwise. When I’ve exhausted the resources of the local university library, when I’ve pulsed the helpful members of The Beau Monde without getting a definitive reply, then and only then do I feel safe in just “making it up.”

So, my fellow writers, have you ever had a manuscript turn into this sort of monster? Have you found any ways to tame it? When do you fling up your hands and just make it up?

Dear readers, do all these historical details really add to your pleasure in a story? Please tell me they do!

Elena 🙂
www.elenagreene.com

The Winner of The Naked Earl
is……..

Keira!!

Congratulations, Keira.

Email us with your address at
dgastonmail@aol.com

Cheers!
The Riskies

Siddons by Reynolds

http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/criticism/hazlittw_charsp/charsp_titlepage.html

THE WINTER’S TALE is one of the best-acting of our author’s plays. We remember seeing it with great pleasure many years ago. It was on the night that King took leave of the stage, when he and Mrs. Jordan played together in the after-piece of the Wedding-day. Nothing could go off with more eclat, with more spirit, and grandeur of effect. Mrs. Siddons played Hermione, and in the last scene acted the painted statue to the life–with true monumental dignity and noble passion; Mr. Kemble, in Leontes, worked himself up into a very fine classical phrensy; and Bannister, as Autolycus, roared as loud for pity as a sturdy beggar could do who felt none of the pain he counterfeited, and was sound of wind and limb. We shall never see these parts so acted again; or if we did, it would be in vain. Actors grow old, or no longer surprise us by their novelty. But true poetry, like nature, is always young; and we still read the courtship of Florizel and Perdita, as we welcome the return of spring, with the same feelings as ever.