I probably have more trouble deciding what to name my characters than most Georgians did naming their babies. Just yesterday I was working on the second draft of my work-in-progress and wasted a good ten minutes figuring out a name for a maid-of-all-work. Becky. Earth-shattering or what?????

Although I use lots of placeholders like (valet) or (aunt) in my first drafts, my heroes and heroines won’t cooperate until I’ve named them correctly. I used to be thoroughly enamored of lovely and unusual heroines’ names such as Georgette Heyer used (Venetia, Ancilla, Anthea) and wanted to do the same for the heroine of my first Regency, LORD LANGDON’S KISS. I decided her scholarly father would choose an obscure Greek name for her and came up with Melinna. Then a critique partner said it sounded African American. Ack! That spoiled it but it was a good thing as the name really didn’t suit her. I renamed her Nell and the story just opened up after that.

Many of the Georgians also limited themselves to a small group of fairly traditional names. I’ve searched in vain for the original article but I know I’ve read that some very high percentage of men during the Regency had one of 5-6 royal names including George and Charles. Jane Austen had 5 guys named Charles in PERSUASION alone. Jo Beverley has an article on Regency names on her website. I totally agree when she says that to use an unusual name, one must consider why the parents would have chosen it.

I try to find something that evokes the character, something that is historically plausible and not too much of cliche. I avoid names for heroes that evoke “devil” and “demon”: Damon, Devlin, that sort of thing, also names including elements of “hawk” and “wolf”. I wouldn’t fling a book with such names but they don’t feel right in my own books. I no longer strive for very original names either. I’d rather use a common name and strive for originality in the characterization.

It does bother me when I see historical romance heroines with names that are gender neutral or historically masculine. While the heroine’s name in WHITNEY, MY LOVE by Judith McNaught, isn’t what has prevented me from reading it, it niggles. It seems like Courtney and Chelsea are not far behind.

Going sort of off-Regency, I’ve heard one parent say she named her daughter Courtney because she didn’t want to limit her chances with an obviously feminine name. I have my doubts about that strategy, since once girls are given a certain name, people start avoiding using it for boys and it assumes a feminine connotation.

I suspect many readers of historical romance would be confused to read about a hero named Courtenay (the older spelling) or Evelyn. Georgette Heyer used both of these for male characters in her books but I doubt editors would permit such a thing now. I’m also not sure I’d ever name a character Fanny. It’s historically accurate and quite pretty but I just don’t know if readers can get over its various slang usages.

For surnames, I often go to a map of England and look for minor place-names that sound good. Sometimes I’ll mash the beginning of one with the end of another (things like -wood, -hurst, -ton, etc…) until it feels right.

So for my fellow writers, how do you come up with names?

As readers, what are some of your favorite character names? What sorts would you like to see more of? Are there any you find off-putting?

And what do you think of modern day naming trends?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

I promised my editor I would have my revisions to The Vanishing Viscountess to her today and I really slacked off over the weekend. So no time to give you one of my brilliant, exquisitely planned and executed blogs (Who’s laughing?????). I am, therefore going to give you a stream of consciousness blog–don’t look for any unifying theme!

Did you know we authors love to know readers enjoyed our books? Now is your chance to tell us!

EHarlequin is in the nomination stage for its 2006 Readers Choice Awards. Click Here to nominate your favorites. I’m honored to say that my A Reputable Rake by Diane Gaston is mentioned under Favorite Historical and under Sexiest Hero on a Cover. Eventually there will be voting, I think, so keep watching.

All About Romance is also tabulating Reader Favorites and this time you can vote! Reputable Rake is there too, under Best Buried Treasure. Titles are starting to be eliminated and I’d LOVE for Reputable Rake to make it to the final round. So please vote for Reputable Rake for Best Buried Treasure and vote for your other favorites, too. There are plenty of Regencies to choose from and I think you can still add additional choices.
Start here to see who’s been nominated and eliminated so far.
http://www.likesbooks.com/interim2006.html#secondinterim
Go here to vote:
http://www.likesbooks.com/ballotannualpoll.html

Do you know of any other sites doing Reader Favorites?

Speaking of EHarlequin, my friend Melissa James has an online read there now, called The Homecoming. It isn’t Regency but it is a fun read. Melissa writes for the new Harlequin Romance line, the merge of the Silhouette Romance and Harlequin Romance lines. You’ll find Melissa’s story HERE

Speaking of The Vanishing Viscountess, the book of my revisions. It is scheduled for release in early 2008. I believe I have lamented before about this being a “road story.” The coolest thing, though. My son who is studying Geography and Mapping in college is going to do an online map of the places in this book! I’m not exactly sure how he’ll do it, but I’ll have it on my website eventually!

In my husband’s channel surfing he came upon a Japanese film with this premise: “A noblewoman agrees to sleep with a cassanova if he succeeds in seducing a chaste widow.” Wow, I thought. What a great premise. Then I realized it was the premise for Dangerous Liaisons. A day or so later, more channel surfing and he discovers the movie, Valmont also based on the same book as Dangerous Liaisons and released only one year later. It is pre-French Revolution, not Regency, but Valmont stars a young and almost impossibly handsome Colin Firth. Naturally I had to watch it. How’s that for synergy?

Have any of you seen Valmont?

Speaking of impossibly handsome men, it is only 44 more days until the release of the movie 300!

Cheers!
Diane

The very bad weather here last week, and even into this weekend, has kept me indoors, working on the WIP (rough draft almost done!), doing some research reading, and snarking about the gowns on the Golden Globes. Yesterday, desperate boredom even drove me to do some cleaning. I cleared out my office area, sending old magazines to the recycle bin, and dusting and vacuuming. My mother would be proud.

But it wasn’t all Cinderella-style drudgery! As I dusted my keeper shelves, I came across some old favorites. Some of them very old–the first romances I ever read, in fact. It made me wonder–what turns a person into a romance novel addict?

Hi, my name is Amanda and I’m a romance addict. Here is my confession.

It started out small, you know. A few Nancy Drew books here and there. I loved her great clothes and nifty roadster. Her boyfriend Ned seemed pretty useless, yet an essential accessory for any girl detective. A Laura Ingalls Wilder or two, just to be sociable. It was so sweet when Almanzo drove through the blizzard to rescue her from the crazy family she boarded with. Anne of Green Gables and that adorable Gilbert. Then things got a little harder–Sunfire YA historical romances.

I don’t know if you remember those Sunfire books. They always had a girl’s name as the title–Nicole (girl on the Titanic), Sabrina (girl in the American Revolution), Kathleen (Irish immigrant girl), etc. The covers depicted the eponymous heroine, usually in a poufy dress and very period-inappropriate hairdo (especially Elizabeth the Puritan girl and her perm), and the two men who vie for her affection. For some reason, there were always two, one a “suitable” boy approved by her parents, and one who offers her adventure and freedom. Which do you think she chooses in the end? But romance was not the only thing on the Sunfire girl’s mind. She was also a Patriot spy, a frontier schoolmarm, or a nurse (against the wishes of her rich Gilded Age parents).

I loved those books, couldn’t get enough of them. I read them when I was supposed to be doing homework, even traded them with my friends, thus involving them in my addiction and becoming a pusher. (Sadly, I lost most of my Sunfire collection in a move, but through the wonders of Ebay and some lucky library booksale finds, I’m rebuilding). Then things escalated. My grandmother became my unwitting supplier.

When we went to visit her one summer, she had a big box full of romances. Barbara Cartland mostly, plus a few Heyers, some Regencies by authors like Marion Chesney and Joan Smith. It was like a whole new world opened up. The Sunfires all had American settings, but these books were English. Regency. (A few of the Cartlands were purportedly Victorian or Elizabethan, but I couldn’t see any difference). I was totally hooked. I checked out non-fiction histories of the era from the library, and never looked back.

Now, this addiction did have a few side effects. When I started dating, I had quite unrealistic expectations. My first boyfriend, a sweet, 16 year old band geek, just couldn’t compete with those square-jawed, sardonic dukes with their high-perch phateons and perfectly tied cravats. But that’s another story…

I flipped through some of these old friends as I was cleaning. The Sunfire girls were as spunky as I remembered; the Cartland heroines just as asthmatic. It’s uncanny how much they resemble Madeline Bassett from the Jeeves and Wooster stories. I may have moved on to “harder” stuff, Laura Kinsale, Judith Ivory, Loretta Chase, and the like, but I’ll always have great fondness for these, my gateway drugs.

What were your favorite early romances? Do you remember what your “first” was? Did you ever read Sunfires? And whose gowns did you love and hate at the Golden Globes? (My favorites–Kate Winslet, Rachel Weisz, America Ferrera).

First off, apologies for flaking on last week . . . I know ALL of you were at home, beating your chests, screaming ‘Where is that Frampton Friday post?!? I will die without it.’ And in other news, it was awfully frigid in Hell last Friday, too.

Second, this week I wanted to talk about voice. For me, voice is what makes or breaks a book. And a blog. The reason I started thinking about this was a post Abby Godwin made on her blog about blogs. There are a bunch of bloggers, and authors, I read just because of their voice.

The best example of this is ESPN’s The Sports Guy. Yeah, I like some sports–basketball, mostly, ’cause I’m fond of tall, thin men, but I could really care less about most sports. But when writes about sports–and the latest Rocky movie–I care. It’s because his voice is so powerful.

You know how some people say ‘such-and-such an author could write a grocery list, and I’d read it’? Count me among those folks.

Even if the plot is weak, or ludicrous, if the voice is there, I’ll be there, too. The best situation is when the author’s voice AND plot are strong, but if there’s a choice, I’ll stick with the author who’s got the former. And voice is such a nebulous thing; is it the author’s personality coming through the work? Their distinct choice of language? Their sense of humor (or not)? It’s all of these things, plus something more–something that makes the author (or blogger) unique.

So who’s got the strongest author’s voice you’ve ever encountered? How about bloggers? (my favorite blogs are in a sidebar on my Writer’s Diary, go over and click around if you want. You don’t have to, though. I’m just too lazy to write them all down here. So they’re there.)

In romance, I’d say authors Carla Kelly, Anne Stuart, J.R. Ward, debut author Meljean Brook, Jennifer Crusie, and Mary Balogh.

In Blogland, I’d mention (okay, so I’m not as lazy as I look) Cindy, Suisan, Ilene and of course the Smart Bitches. There are many more (and I did not include any authors’ blogs), these are just some of the strongest voices whom I’ll read, even if they’re talking about vegan desserts.

How important is an author’s voice to you? Are you willing to overlook plot and other problems if you like the voice? Who’s got the strongest voice? What blogs do you like to read, even if the subject is not your favorite?

Thanks for reading!

Megan
www.meganframpton.com
P.S.: The painting is by John Singer Sargent, one of my favorites. Just because.

One of the advantages–I guess it’s an advantage–of having a twenty-something move back into the house (upon graduating from college, hooray! This is not a picture of her–the cakes wouldn’t last a minute in our house) is that you get to see a lot of tv you wouldn’t generally. And, yes, I’m talking about the American Idol auditions, which we have been following with horrified fascination. What makes those people think they can sing? What makes them so eager to expose themselves to humiliation and ridicule?

And what on earth does this have to do with the Regency? (And, incidentally, why is Marie Antoinette’s maid wearing a late Victorian uniform?)

Well, I started to think about the Regency period as one of ostentatious display and a certain lack of shyness in self-revelation–Harriet Smith’s Memoirs, for instance; Lady Caroline Lamb–yes, I could see her auditioning and berating Simon Cowell for being sarcastic, and leaving in floods of tears. What, he didn’t like me? Me?

It was a period represented both by the vulgar exuberance of Prinny (seen at right being laced in for the day) and the uh, jewel in his crown, the Brighton Pavilion, as well as all that elegance and self-restraint and gorgeous classical design.

Beneath his severe, beautifully tailored coat, your hero might well be sporting a lavishly embroidered waistcoat–and he’d make sure everyone would catch a tantalizing glimpse.

That’s what I love about the period, the contradictions and the sense of change–it might all be about the tailoring and the classical line, but it was equally about decoration for decoration’s sake. My theory is that this all ties into the developing sense of domestic privacy that began in the eighteenth century.

Houses were now designed so that family members could sequester themselves into private rooms–no longer was the typical house plan one where you had to go through everyone else’s room to get to the lord’s chamber, the seat of power in the house, where his bed was displayed as the best piece of furniture. Bedcurtains had always been to provide warmth and now they also provided that new luxury, privacy; chances are your servant would have his own sleeping quarters, and not a trundle bed in your bedchamber (a fairly new word in the English language).

I’d be interested to hear your take on the growth of privacy and ostentation vs. restraint, and also how you think your favorite Regency character, fictional or real, would do in his or her American Idol audition!

Janet