Word Wenches

Literary Pilgrimages

Anne here, pondering the idea of literary pilgrimages.  I've just flown a thousand miles north, to Brisbane, to attend a multi-author book signing, but though it's a book event, it's not a literary pilgrimage.
The kind of pilgrimage I mean is one to a place where either a beloved author wrote, or wrote about. I'm more in favor of the place written about, than the place where someone wrote. This post was what got me thinking about it.

One day I'd love to do a series of trips based on some of Mary Stewart's books. I've been to Corfu, where Mary Stewart and also Gerald Durrell were very much in my mind, but I'd love to recreate the journey her character Charity made in Madam Will You Talk, which starts in Avignon in Provence. I've been to Avignon (but did not dance on the bridge) but what I'd like to do is take a car, as her heroine did, or better still hire a driver to take me to all the places she visited. While rereading the book. Or possibly listening to an audio version while I gazed at the scenery. 

Naturally I would need to go to a wonderful restaurant to recreate the meal she had when Richard Byron finally caught up with her and ordered dinner.

Beyond Buenos Aires

by Mary Jo

I've already blogged about our cruise to Antarctica , but as I mentioned there, we visited other interesting places as well. (The picture above is from sailing into Ushuaia, in Tierra del Fuego.)

A few highlights:

Buenos Aires

It was pleasant sunny summer in Argentina and Buenos Aires was beautiful--a city of trees and sweeping boulevards. One of the largest cities in Latin America and a major port, it's cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic and has been called the Paris of Latin America.

Here is the view from the window of the hotel where we stayed for two nights. We tried the tasting menu in the hotel's excellent restaurant and one course was octopus. I approached it warily, and for the first time I experienced octopus as something that wasn't like chewing on a piece of rubber tire. <G>

Irish Favorites

Sláinte! Susan here, writing this on St. Patrick's Day (or just after St. Paddy's Day, if it's the 18th where you are) - and wearin' the green and some Connemara marble for good luck. Being at least half Irish, according to DNA and family, I love this holiday. Most of the Wenches have a dab to a dominance of Irish genes, too, so Éirinn go Brách from all of us. In honor of Ireland and the good St. Patrick, we've chosen some of our favorite Irish things - places, books, and more - to share with you. And we hope you'll share your Irish favorites with us! 

The Four Seasons

What’s your favorite season, and what are some of the special things that you love about it?

As March is here, and bringing with it the first change in season of the year, the Wenches decided to use this month’s Ask-A-Wench feature to wax poetic on the above question: 

Anne: In the Southern Hemisphere, specifically in Melbourne, the worst heat of summer is, I hope, behind us and we're gradually slipping into autumn, which is my favorite season. The days are sunny and bright and nicely warm, but not roasting, and the nights are blissfully cool, sometimes with a refreshing nip in the air. Already I have bulbs nosing their little green shoots out of the earth, while the summer flowering plants keep producing.  It's a fruitful time of year and as well as eating lots of lovely fruit, I've made jam from the produce of friends' fruit trees and berry bushes.

March is also the time of year I head a thousand miles north to Queensland, to attend my annual writers retreat. It's not a big event, nothing like a conference, just eight or nine writers meeting for a week, to reflect on our year, to plan our writing, to brainstorm, talk writing and publishing and, of course, to write. We've been doing it now since 2007 -- that's the year I first met Mary Jo, Pat and Jo Beverley, well before I became a wench.

Azure Secrets

As some of you know, I’m currently writing a contemporary romance series based on my historical Malcolm and Ives families. It’s a bit of a challenge connecting them with families from two hundred years ago. There isn’t any way I can use the same family names with any believability. I can throw in an occasional male Ives since men would have kept their names, but the women have to use Malcolm as a given name, which gets a bit ugly. (Remember Susan’s blog about what goes into developing character names?) And of course, over hundreds of years of moving around the world, those connections become slimmer until they slip into invisibility. And in this particular book, my gifted cook is an orphan and has no idea of her family. She just knows she’s weird and foster families don’t appreciate weird.

On the Trail of King Richard III

Nicola here, reflecting on the emotional effect that people and places in history can have on us. I’ve been a Ricardian, a supporter of King Richard III, since I read The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey when I was about 12 years old. The much-maligned English monarch was a shoe-in to be my first adolescent crush; he was brave, loyal and devoted to the North of England, where I grew up.  I joined the Richard III Society and became enormously partisan and completely unable to entertain any other point of view about Richard other than that he was a total hero.

Fast forward six years and this became a little bit difficult. I was at London University, studying medieval history. Partisanship wasn’t really encouraged; independent thinking and the weighing up of the historical evidence was. And so began my long on/off relationship with Richard III and historical truth. Twenty five years later I studied Richard again for my MA dissertation in the context of why we need heroes. Regardless of my views of his guilt or innocence over the murder of the princes in the tower, one of the most infamous episodes in English history, I was certainly still very interested in him!

Transported By Words

Susanna here, just back from the sunny south and the wonderful Tucson Festival of Books, where I had the privilege of sitting on two panels—one called "Keeping History Fresh" (pictured above), with Susan Meissner and Kristina McMorris, moderated by Anne Spieth, and another called "Transported by Words", moderated by Victoria Marie Salajko, in which R.O. Kwon, Shobha Rao, and I talked about the use of setting in fiction.

En Garde!

Andrea here, musing today about swordsmen . . . or rather, three swordsmen in particular. As usual, this happened in a very serendipitous way: I was just checking a quick fact for my WIP. I swear, I only meant to spend a moment or two confirming the exact location of a famous Regency fencing academy. But then, I couldn’t help but get distracted (the road to perdition—or in this case, procrastination—is paved with good intentions!) History is filled with such fascinating characters—and as swashbuckling figures, few can match the Angelo family—Domenico Angelo Malevolti Tremamondo, his son Henry Angelo, and his grandson Henry Angelo the Younger. So let's thrust and parry down the research rabbit hole! (above is Henry the Elder)

It seems Domenico, a dashing Italian fencing master who was considered the finest swordsman in all of Europe, fell in love with the famous actress Margaret Woffington while training in Paris and followed her back to London. I havne' discovered when happened to the that relationship, but Dominco must have found London to his liking for he established Angelo’s School of Arms in Soho during the early 1750s to teach British gentlemen the art of the sword. (He adopted Angelo as his surname to fit in to his adopted country, and from then on, the family was always known as Angelo—that's Domenico at right.)

Nicola Cornick — the Woman in the Lake

Anne here, interviewing Nicola Cornick about her new book, THE WOMAN IN THE LAKE, which came out in the USA last week and comes out in the UK next week. That's the US cover on the right.

The publisher's blurb:
From the bestselling author of House of Shadows and The Phantom Tree  comes a spellbinding tale of jealousy, greed, plotting and revenge—part  history, part mystery—for fans of Kate Morton, Susanna Kearsley and  Barbara Erskine

London, 1765
Lady  Isabella Gerard, a respectable member of Georgian society, orders her  maid to take her new golden gown and destroy it, its shimmering beauty  tainted by the actions of her brutal husband the night before.

Three  months later, Lord Gerard stands at the shoreline of the lake, looking  down at a woman wearing the golden gown. As the body slowly rolls over  to reveal her face, it’s clear this was not his intended victim…

250 Years Later…
When  a gown she stole from a historic home as a child is mysteriously  returned to Fenella Brightwell, it begins to possess her in exactly the  same way that it did as a girl. Soon the fragile new life Fen has  created for herself away from her abusive ex-husband is threatened at  its foundations by the gown’s power over her until she can't tell what  is real and what is imaginary.

As Fen uncovers more about the  gown and Isabella’s story, she begins to see the parallels with her own  life. When each piece of history is revealed, the gown—and its  past—seems to possess her more and more, culminating in a dramatic  revelation set to destroy her sanity.

The Reviews:
Publishers Weekly said: "The tentative romance between Fenella and Hamish effectively balances the sinister mood of the 18th-century story. Romance fans will be most satisfied."  Steph's Fiction said: "If you love historical fiction, then I highly recommend you pick up a copy!" The New York Journal of Books said: "As the story unfolds, the reader understands why, piece by piece. It’s fascinating to look back at life centuries ago, to imagine the people and their circumstance, and this novel fleshes them out with an assured storytelling style."

The Interview:
Anne:  Nicola, congratulations on the release of THE WOMAN IN THE LAKE, your 3rd dual timeline novel. I was intrigued by the contrast in your two covers, the American one focusing on the historical story, the British cover on the more modern story.

Which of the two periods did you enjoy writing the most — and why?

Nicola: Thank you, Anne! I’m really excited that THE WOMAN IN THE LAKE is making its debut at last

American Duchess! An Interview with Karen Harper

by Mary Jo

I'm delighted to welcome Karen Harper to the Word Wenches again! She is a wonderful, and wonderfully prolific, writer of historical novels, mysteries, and so much more, and she is here to tell us about her just released novel, American Duchess, the story of Consuelo Vanderbilt, which has been chosen by Women's Day Magazine as one of the 10 Most Anticipated Books of 2019.

Over to you, Karen!

“Everyone was calling it the wedding of the century. I was calling it the worst day of my life.”

This quote is not from a tabloid article or scandal mag but rather the opening lines of my historical novel AMERICAN DUCHESS, told by Consuelo Vanderbilt, the American Duchess of the Gilded Age. After reading about Consuelo in the fascinating non-fiction book To Marry An English Lord by MacColl and Wallace and visiting Blenheim Palace in England, I knew she would make a fabulous main character. I had earlier toured a massive so-called “cottage” of her family in Newport, Rhode Island.

Consuelo, Duchess of Marlborough, became the poster girl for the shocking practice of ‘Dollar Brides’ or ‘Dollar Princesses.’ These were young women from rich American families who were (forcibly, in her case) wed to titled Englishmen so that they could  replenish dwindling fortunes to save their grand estates. Remember, Cora, Lady Grantham in Downton Abbey was a ‘dollar bride,’ albeit one with a happy marriage.

In 18-year-old Consuelo’s case, her social-climbing mother bargained with the 9th Duke of Marlborough to make her daughter his duchess in exchange for much Vanderbilt money so that he could repair and enhance his heritage of vast Blenheim Palace. It hardly mattered that the bride was in love with someone else and that the duke disliked America and Americans.