Word Wenches

Pub crawling, or sort of....

Hi, here's Jo, late for her day. No real excuse except forgetting what day of the week is what.

Things are still going well for A Lady's Secret. It'll be #10 on the NYT this Sunday, and it's also on the Publishers Weekly list for the third week. We threw a party last weekend chez Beverley, and someone sent a balloon, as exhibited by the Cabbage Patch Kids and other toys. (Also duly admiring the list in the paper, and Billy dazzled by reflected glory!)*G*

I've been having fun researching Doncaster for my next book. The main action starts in Sheffield, but before I knew it, they were off to Doncaster about which I know nothing other than that It's a racing town. (Growing up in England in a family that listens to the radio a lot, the young mind accumulates strange things. There's the daily weather report for the fishing trade, talking about places like Dogger Bank, and there's the regular reports from horse racing, including places like Thirsk (which was one setting in Secrets of the Night) and Doncaster.)

Doncaster was actually the setting for the first modern horse race, in England at least -- the Doncaster Cup, and then later for the much more famous St Leger.
All about the St Leger That was started by Major General St Legerwhose career is typical of the period of the Malloren novels, and the Marquess of Rockingham, who both surely knew Rothgar and the Countess of Arradale.

There's one of Rockingham's horses of the time.

Below, we have Rockingham in his peerage robes. Does it bother you or turn you on to think of Rothgar in a similar get up for a state event? Even the baddest-boy peer hero had to wear such outfits. I sometimes amuse myself with that image.*G* There are more period portraits here. Check out, too, the portrait of the Montague sisters, and the explanation of the bared shoulder. Portraits are so fascinating.

My wandering research trail thus led me to Rotherham, particularly connected to St. Leger the person, and a nice site with historical links. History of Rotheram which included a couple of enclosure acts in the early 1760s and some details of weekly wages in a variety of industries at the time.The wages page.

I wasn't so much interested in the lace making in Bedford or even the potteries in Rotheram, but the plating and cutlery in Sheffield was nice, even though the detailsl will probably not make it into Christian's book. How does Major Lord Grandiston end up in Sheffield and Doncaster? Thereby hangs a tale, to be called The Secret Wedding, but unavailable until next year, even to me, as I'm only about half way through.

Men earned 14s 6d, women 4s, and girls 3s The only reason I can see off the top of my head for there being no boys' wages there is that they were all apprentices, who wouldn't be paid in a regular manner. Such figures give context to the expenditures of the more highly born, but only to an extent, as there was a huge divide. A traveler might spend at least half of that man's weekly wage to stay one night at an inn if he has a carriage and horses.

But come to think of it, the price of a good hotel room today -- say $200? -- could be half  the weekly income of someone on the poverty line. Those 14/6 men, however, were prosperous skilled workers.

If you don't know, s is a shilling, and there were 20 to a pound. d is a penny (from the  Roman dinari, they say) and there were 12 to a shilling. And there were halfpennies and  farthings back then, too. (Farthing was a quarter of a penny.) Arithmetical problems about the price of apples were lots of fun when I was a child.

The same page also shows the price of mutton as a reference for the value of the wages, and it seems to have been about 2s a stone, I assume for the undressed carcass. (A stone is 14 lbs). Never know when it comes in useful!

In addition, I wanted to find out about the inns and pubs in Doncaster. First I found a good website about the modern state of affairs. Which now will not let me access it. I'll post the link later. That led me to fire off a query to the Doncaster Local Studies Library about which inns existed in 1764, which came through brilliantly, and then with maps from the period!

But, but, looking at the list I see this:

Black Bull - opened 1760, rebuilt 1920. Nice, as that's one I had down to mention.

AND: The Black Swan - opened 1730, no record of landlord in 1764, 1st landlord
mentioned John Webster in 1775

Those of you who've read A Lady's Secret will know that an inn called The Black Swan has some minor significance, even though that one is far away in the south.

It's the sort of detail that makes the writer's heart take a turn, for both good and bad reasons. It could be a gift, or a major disturbance in the storyline. If this was Ithorne's boo, I couldn't ignore an inn called The Black Swan if it was anywhere in his range. With Christian, I think I can. It would be a distraction. So it's a nice turn of the heart -- a little nod to alternate reality.

And it sent me looking for Black Swan Inns anywhere in the UK that were open in 1764.
I found this one. Can you find more?

Thank you, internet!

Jo

Your palazzo or mine?

From Loretta:      

In response to readers who encouraged me to discuss the settings and other background material of Your Scandalous Ways, today we're taking a house tour.

“Ah, Venice,” James said as he took in the view--such as it was--in front of and behind him.  The buildings and gondolas were merely darker shapes in the grey haze.  “A fine place, indeed, but for the damp.”

       I don’t know about the rest of you but I didn’t, really, know all that much about Venice before I embarked on Your Scandalous Ways.  Casino Royale inspired my British agent hero.  "Hmm,” I said to myself.  “What would 007 be like in the early 19th century?”  The film inspired my setting, too.  Those climactic scenes in Venice awakened my curiousity.
      I did not realize, for one thing, that Venice was built on a bunch of islands in a marshy lagoon.
       Originally, it was where people from the mainland fled when the barbarians attacked in the 5th and 6th centuries A.D.  It was a safe haven because the lagoon was very dangerous and tricky to navigate.  After a while, they quit going back to the mainland and started building.  How they built is the miracle of Venice.

       “All this, on top of water,” Sedgewick said, shaking his head as he looked about him.  “What sort of people is it, I wonder, goes and builds a city on stilts on a swampy lot of islands?”
       “Italians,” said James.  “There’s a reason they once ruled the world, and a reason Venice once ruled the seas.  You must at least give credit for a marvel of engineering.”

       Here's a view of the Grand Canal and some of the case (houses) or palazzi (palaces). You’ll find “ca” and “palazzo” used interchangeably.  Until the fall of the Republic (i.e., when Venice surrendered to Napoleon in 1797), only the Ducal Palace (that building to the right in the painting above this one) could be a palazzo.  All other houses, no matter how grand, were simply houses, case.  Afterward, the restriction went away.  And so the same house might be a “ca” in one book and a "palazzo" in another.
       These magnificent structures were indeed built on stilts packed close together.  From my Eyewitness Travel Guide to Venice & the Veneto:  “Pinewood piles were driven...25 feet...into the ground....They rested on the solid caranto (compressed clay) layer at the bottom of the lagoon.”  On top of these were laid layers of brick and stone.  The foundations were of Istrian marble, which resists damp.  This book has some wonderful cutaway illustrations that are well worth a thousand words.  But one need only look at the buildings and consider how much labor was involved--not to mention ingenuity--to appreciate the accomplishment.

     They followed Zeggio up a staircase to the piano nobile, and found themselves in a vast central hall.  This portego, as the Venetians called it, ran from one end of the house to the other.
      It was clearly designed for show.  The line of magnificent chandeliers down the center of the ceiling and rows of immense candelabra standing on tables along the wall--all dripping the famously magnificent glass work of Murano--would, when fully lit, have made a dazzling display of the gilt, the plaster ornamenting the walls, the sculpture, the paintings.

Here for your delectation are lots of pictures of Venetian palazzi.
       Getting pictures of the exteriors was easy.  Finding interiors was another matter--and for Your Scandalous Ways, it does matter, since many of the scenes are...um..intimate. Happily one of the Wench readers suggested Venetian Palazzi (ISBN 3-8228-7050-1--that's the English edition), which offers the proverbial visual feast. Copyright prevents my sharing those images with you, but there is some material online.
       Here's one of the many internet sites I perused in the course of my research.  This "Ceremonial Stair" in the Ca' Rezzonico is a fine example of the magnificent interiors.  This site provides a floor plan of the Ca’ Rezzonico, too.
       Virtually all Venetian palazzi have the same basic layout.  A great hall runs from the side of the house facing the canal to the side facing land, usually overlooking a courtyard.  The hall on the ground floor is the andron.  The one on the main public floor or piano nobile, is called the portego.  Rooms extend from either side of these central halls.  Some buildings have interior staircases and some have exterior ones.  Sometimes the building was extended to surround the courtyard.  Side rooms open into other side rooms.  But if you keep in mind that big central hall running from the front to the back of the house, and doors leading into rooms on both sides, you’ve got the general picture.
       This shows the floor plan of the Ca’ Mocenigo, where Lord Byron lived, and the picture is of the poet at his leisure in his humble abode.      
       You can picture my hero James Cordier in a room like this, though he’s more likely to be gazing out of a window at Francesca’s palazzo across the canal than lounging on a sofa.

That brings us to the end of today's tour.  Did you learn stuff?  Was it fun?  Want more?  About places in the book?  About other stuff--gondolas, Byron, characters, writing it, researching it...?  Ask, and some of ye shall receive.

And the Wiener is ... Elizabeth Kerri Mahon!

Drum roll, please!  We have a wiener:  Elizabeth Kerri Mahon, you have won an Advanced Readers Copy of The King's Favorite by Susan Holloway Scott!  Please contact Susan/Miranda or Sherrie Holmes with your mailing address and we'll get that in the mail to you.  Congratulations, Elizabeth!

Don't run away, now, folks!  Check out the next post, below.  It's chock full of announcements!

Wenches Rock!

Where to start?  Lots of good news on the Wench front.

Pat - Mystic Guardian
Pat's book cover is a finalist in the Cover Cafe annual book cover contest. The covers aren't up yet, but they plan to have the contest up and running by early May, so you should be able to view the finalists then. 

Jo - A Lady's Secret
Jo's book has moved up on the New York Times bestseller list and is now #10! Way to go, Jo! You better lay in a big supply of champagne. 

Loretta - Your Scandalous Ways
Loretta's book received a great review over at Publishers Weekly.  Well done, Loretta!

Mary Jo and Pat - Pioneers of Romance
Both Mary Jo and Pat attended the Romantic Times convention in Pittsburgh April 16-20 and each came away with a lovely award ("a big chunk of glass" according to Mary Jo!)  for being pioneers of romance.

Sneak Previews
Be sure to stop by on Sundays when we post announcements!  And just to give you a sneak preview, in May Jo will be interviewing a wines and spirits expert, which we'll announce in more detail next month.  In addition, Susan/Miranda will be doing a two-part interview of Loretta the end of May in connection with the release of Your Scandalous Ways. In June we're bringing back costume historian Kalen Hughes to talk about Georgian dress.

Book Reminder
Wenches have books coming out in the next few months.  In May, Mary Jo's A Distant Magic will be reprinted.  In June, two Wenches have books out:  Edith - His Dark and Dangerous Ways, and Loretta - Your Scandalous Ways. In July, two more Wenches have books out:  Pat - Mystic Rider, and Susan Holloway Scott - The King's Favorite.

So, we have some busy months coming up, and we don't want you to miss the fun.  Drop in early and often!

What's So Funny?

By Susan/Miranda

When Wench Pat recently asked the eternal question of “What Do We Really Want?”, one of the popular replies was a call for more humor.  I can understand this.  Who doesn’t want to laugh?  Yet a truly funny book is truly hard to find, and historical-funny is even more rare.

And boy, is it ever hard to write!

The hero’s best friend is killed at Waterloo, and it’s terribly tragic and sad, and everyone knows to feel that way.  The long-suffering couple finally weds, and readers share their joy.  Those are easy.  But humor is infinitely more subjective.  A scene that strikes one reader as uproariously funny seems irritatingly foolish to another.  Readers boards are filled with examples of this.  Either you get the joke, or you don’t, or maybe the joke wasn’t really there in the first place, anyway.

Historical humor is even more challenging, because much of what was rip-snorting good fun in the past –– ridiculing the handicapped, huge fake penises, anything with priests and nuns –– doesn’t exactly fly in polite company now.

Wit and wordplay hold up better on the printed page than broad slapstick, but even then there are plenty of pitfalls amongst the pratfalls.  Much humor is topical, or at least of its moment, and when the moment is past, so is the humor.  Anyone who’s labored through Shakespeare’s comedies understands this, though, to be fair, an Elizabethan audience would be left scratching their heads over an episode of Seinfeld.

Writing a funny historical character was my biggest challenge in The King’s Favorite, a historical novel set in Restoration London.  By all contemporary reports, Nell Gwyn (my real-life heroine) was uproariously funny, a class-clown personality that couldn’t resist making people laugh.  Born in a brothel, she had no education beyond “street smarts”, yet through the gift of quick wit, rose from selling oranges in the theatre to become a leading lady and, eventually, a royal mistress. As an actress, she was hugely popular playing “low” comedy: she was always cast as the sly servant with the best one-liners, the comedienne who knew how to get the most out of the earthy, physical humor of the time. 

The King adored her, in large part because she’d dare to do and say things to him in the guise of a joke that no one else at court could risk, not without a quick trip to the Tower.  Humor can be subversive that way, and Nell knew the power her wit gave her.  To many men, a funny woman is a dangerous woman.  She’s unpredictable, she has opinions, and she’s often quick to deflate male pride and vanities.  But other men find a funny woman a sexy woman, and Nell’s house was always filled with her many male side-kicks, including the Earl of Rochester and the Duke of Buckingham, who were both always ready to participate in her elaborate pranks and skits.

To Nell’s good fortune, Charles was also secure enough himself to relish a witty mistress. (Remember, this is the first English monarch to realize that women on the stage were not a sign of moral civilization's end, and finally permit actresses to play the roles written for women.) Though the official post of court jester was gone by 1670, Nell held it unofficially, and whenever things were grim and gloomy about the palace, the king would always turn to her to cheer him.  Even after he moved on to other mistresses, Nelly remained his friend and jester until his death.  Her audience from the theatre never forgot her, either.  Long after she "retired" from the stage to the palace, she was still cheered wherever she went, and when she died, her mourners filled not only the church, but the streets as well.

But how to write a funny heroine? One of Nell’s most famous roles was Mirida in a play called All Mistaken, or The Mad Couple, by James Howard. The humor comes from her suitor Pinguister’s enormous girth, and his inability to do much of anything with Mirida because of his obesity.  If the actor rolling around the stage in the “fat suit” as he tries to catch Mirida wasn’t enough, there’s also the scene where Pinguister is given an enema and a laxative, then locked in a vault with other hapless suitors, and with predictable results.  Oh, the hilarity! Oh, the [adolescent-boys-lavatory] wit!  Oh, how am I supposed to write THAT into a scene!

Of course, not all Restoration wit is like this –- much of it was, and remains, laugh-out-loud clever word-play –– but an awful lot hasn’t aged very well.  Or, as Wench Loretta noted when we were discussing this blog, “They drank a lot back then, didn’t they?”  Fortunately, there are a great many other examples of Nell's one-liners and general jesting that hold up better over time, and that I was able to incorporate into her character.  Virtuous heroines, sentimental heroines, noble, true-hearted heroines –– they're easy.  But a funny heroine's a real rarity, and I know how lucky I am to have found Nell Gwyn.

But what do you think of humor in historical fiction?  Do you enjoy funny characters or situations, or do you find the risk not worth the punchlines?  What’s your favorite historical with humor?

The jury’s still out on whether or not I was able to capture the fun and wit of Nell Gwyn until The King’s Favorite is released in July –– except for one of you lucky folk out there.  I’ll give away an Advanced Reader’s Copy of The King’s Favorite to a reader who posts to this blog before Saturday night.

Idea Torrents

    I’m writing this before I head out to the Romantic Times convention--- a week ahead of the posting date, because I won’t be home until the night before I’m supposed to blog.  I won’t be at RT all that time.  Part of it will be spent brainstorming with a couple of the other wenches, which leads to the subject of this post— brainstorming.

There are as many reasons to brainstorm as there are fish in the sea.  Officially, brainstorming started as a business method of breaking out of established patterns of thought to develop a new way of thinking. Obviously, as creative writers, we hardly need to be encouraged to think creatively!  Our problem might be on the flip side—we have excessive numbers of ideas floating in our separate universes, and we need to narrow them down into a new and original structures.

According to business guidelines, brainstorming is what is called a “lateral thinking process.”  To a business mind, that might mean thinking of a can of Campbell’s soup as square and blue instead of cylindrical and red and white.  Shocking stuff!  And then the stormers are supposed to create something useful out of this wild idea.  I doubt any of them thought of painting a soup can on canvas and selling it for millions, ala Andy Warhol. Really, I think all  businesses ought to have creative people on staff to shake it up a little. And governments could use us to imagine future scenarios, the “what ifs” that never seem to occur to them as they march off to war or hurricanes.

But I digress. As writers, we use our sessions to access each other’s wide variety of experience and knowledge.  Most of us have written well over twenty-five novels apiece, so we’ve spilled a lot of our own knowledge into print already.  We could let that back list form a foundation for dozens of more similar novels, but we’re writers. We like a challenge. We like trying new things. We like stretching our wings and soaring into uncharted territory.

So we dig into books and locate gems of material that fascinate us, but then we need to produce entire stories to fit these historical treasures.  Or we may have characters in our heads who insist on time traveling or building churches or other impossible feats about which we know nothing.  As these idea germs start to form into nebulous clouds of creation (just imagine the scenario accompanying this photo!), it’s extremely convenient to let the cloud coagulate over more than one brain. (Did you know that rain is produced by germs in cloud particles? Ponder that for a while!)

After we toss excited “what ifs” around for a while, each outdoing the other (with much screaming laughter and moans of torment), we’ll have three books worth of characters and some degree of plot. At that point, we’re forced to filter the stream of ideas through our various backgrounds and interests, each adding a new twist or turn that one mind alone couldn’t produce, creating—we hope—something useful. It’s up to the “owner” of the original nugget that seeded the clouds to sort through the glittering gems remaining to find the ones that make the necklace work. Which may be why we end up beading before the session ends. <G> 

Okay, I stretched that metaphor to a painful end. Anyone else use brainstorming—at work or elsewhere?  What are your methods?

Google, Landscape, et al.

I love Google Earth.  I’m sure some of you are familiar with it, since the service has been around for several years, but I only recently downloaded the small bit of software necessary to run it.  Given how hugely graphic Google Earth is, I think you need broadband to make it work.  But it’s one of those things that makes broadband worth paying for!  You can zoom into the globe, turn the world with your trackball, and click on dots that give photographs of particular places.  Very, very addictive.

I suspect that most people, when they first sign on to Google Earth, go directly to looking at their own homes.  Not me.  I looked at the map of a globe and swung over to Northern England, zeroing in of the Cumbrian coast site of the book I recently finished, and the beginning of the book I’m working on now.

Zoooooooom!  Closer and closer, till I could look at the buildings in a small town near where I’d placed my fictional village of Hartley.  Then inland, following a route that might be taken by the kidnappers of my heroine.  Hills and sheep, oh, my!  (Well, to some extent my imagination was kicking in, but that’s part of the fun.)

I have lots of maps, old and new, some of them contour maps that show elevations.  I’ve also had the advantage of visiting most parts of Great Britain, from Land’s End in Cornwall to the coast of East Anglia and the wild islands of the Outer Hebrides.  (I visited a collapsed old village of stone cottages—“black houses”—on Harris and Lewis many years ago, and thought that the ruins would make a great site for a romantic suspense chase.  Years later, I acted on that memory with a scene in Shattered Rainbows.)

Certainly visiting a place in the flesh is the best way to get a sense of it, but that isn’t always possible.  (I still haven’t made it to Uzbekistan or India or China or Indonesia, places where I’ve set stories.)  A good writer learns to fake it, through reading or asking questions.  It’s not unusual on my Novelists, Inc. loop to have someone ask for help with a setting.  (“Is West Texas really that flat?  What’s an upscale neighborhood in Charlotte?”) 

Landscape is an important aspect of setting, both for itself and for how it affects the characters.  Jayne Ann Krentz’s sun-baked Arizona books have a very different underlying feel from her green, moist Pacific Northwest settings.  Barbara Samuel’s wonderful Western settings make me want to book a ticket for Colorado right now.  (Indeed, I ate at a restaurant that was the inspiration for the heroine’s workplace in Madame Mirabou’s School of Love.  The food was great, and it was a Colorado/mountain state experience, different from eating by the sea in Santorini or in a funky Greenwich village basement restaurant in  New York City. 

Of course, landscape facts can also be treacherous, especially when writing historical novels.  It isn’t just the spread of cities and highways, but the presence of plant and animal species we take for granted might not always be accurate.  I remember when an American author of Regency historicals got criticized for putting bullfrogs in England.  Sorry, that’s an American sort of amphibian. 

When I researched my one and only medieval, I found that rabbits weren’t native to Britain.  Hares, their larger, longer earred cousins were, but your basic bunny was introduced by the Normans because rabbits were good huntin’ and good eatin.’  (’m guessing, knowing what rabbits are famous for, that introducing them wasn’t too difficult.  Just a matter of bringing over a few pairs and letting nature take her course. <g>

Trees and plants also get around.  The Chelsea Physic Garden ( http://www.chelseaphysicgarden.co.uk/ ) in London was founded in 1673 by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries to study plants, including specimens collected abroad.  To this day, they research the nature and properties of plants from around the world. 

The copper beech, one of the most lovely and distinctive trees in the English countryside, with dark reddish/bronze leaves, wasn’t introduced until the 18th century.  (I think that's when.)  Many of the garden flowers we take for granted were brought for other lands.  For example, chrysanthemums were introduced from China in 1790.  And woe betide the sloppy writer who gives medieval characters a plate of that fine North American vegetable, the potato. 

One of the skills that most seasoned historical writers develop is to question the dates and origins of everything: plants, animals, words.  In a quote credited to various people (but probably belonging to Josh Billings), “It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble.  It’s the things we know that just ain’t so.” It’s the questions we don’t think to ask that get writers into trouble!

As as a reader, how much attention to you pay to landscape?  How do you feel about settings? Are there some you love?  Some you hate?  Tell me what appeals and what doesn’t!

Mary Jo

Starred Reviews for Jo and Loretta

Library Journal has awarded a coveted starred review to Jo for A LADY'S SECRET and to Loretta for YOUR SCANDALOUS WAYS. 

Read the full reviews here.

They had some very nice things to say about A LADY'S SECRET. They said This cleverly plotted story  rewards readers with a captivating blend of thrilling adventure, steamy sensuality, and gratifying emotion ... and went on to praise it as another flawless Georgian gem.

They didn't stint on enthusiasm for Loretta's YOUR SCANDALOUS WAYS, either, saying Chase does an exceptional job of turning a ruined woman into a believable heroine of surpassing quality and strength, making her sympathetic and giving her a worthy hero. They also said Loretta was an exceptionally gifted historical romance writer.

Trust a librarian to know.

Congratulations, Jo and Loretta!

All New! *N.O.L.V. edition

Edith here!

I woke up this morning and felt like a Munchkin after the farmhouse had landed!

I opened the door to discover that the Earth is all new and suddenly in Technicolor.  Spring has finally sprung here on Long Island, and it smooched everything in sight.

The Magnolia tree is magnificent.

The grass (where the birds didn't eat all the seed) is greener.  The fishies in the little pond made it through the winter and are lazing in the sunshine, like tiny golden whales. 

The bamboo is shooting up everywhere.

All the little brown birds are building nests on my gutters and eaves, until my split-level begins to look like a witch's cottage. 

Miss Daisy lies on her back in the sunshine, all four legs to the sky, showing her speckledy pink belly to the sun.  The day is filled with light and birdsong.

You get it.  Spring Fever -- I has it.  The victim is struck by a certain delicious lassitude.  Nothing seems worth doing if it requires too much effort. 

Why work?  See how effortlessly Nature is producing marvels for us?

Why do we start a new year in the winter, anyway? 

This is when it all begins.

And so, what else new with me?

I now have TWO grandbaby boys!

Adam and Jeanne delivered Sebastian Q Felber on March 26th!!  Yes!  (More pics and more about that "Q" here)

Susie and Ed are nurturing Hugo Norbert Holland, who now walks and giggles, plays jokes, and even has his very own vlog on Babble.com!

And yes!  I finally finished the revisions on the Manuscript that Kept Being Interrupted by Life, the Universe and Everything. Plus my Susie refreshed my website anew, with a brand new contest just for you!  Do go see -- and enter, do!

So what do I do now?  Susan/Sarah (see her recentest blog) said much the same about times between creative efforts.  But I'm a victim of the Spring.  I feel about as creative as a crocus.  I don't want to work at all.

I've my new book, HIS DARK & DANGEROUS WAYS coming out May 27th.  But I can't linger in the book aisles too long...

There's a proposal to write.

There's research to do.

Friends to visit.

And a whole lot of lazing to do in the sunlight beside the little fishpond, like a medium-sized pink whale.

What I need from you, dear readers, is for you to tell me how you greet the Spring.

Please do not tell me abut Spring Cleaning.  Or anything that requires large muscle activity.  (I don't think I have those anymore anyway...did I ever?)  That includes Sports and Games, unless, of course, we're talking about good seats at the Stadium.

Just let me know how you would idle away these few fine days.

One brilliant idea that springs forth in the comments here will be picked at random to get an autographed book by moi -- winner to be announced on my next Wenchly blog!

So please, stop and smell the tulips, and say away.

*N.O.L.V. = Caution: This blog contains Nothing Of Literary Value. :)

UPDATE 4.20: The "Q" link was wrong -- but fixed now!

R&R: Refill and Recovery

Susan Sarah here ... Jane asked a great question a few weeks ago about how authors fill the creative well after the exhaustive process of finishing a book to deadline (or, um, a little past deadline....). Since I’m building today's wee blog from her question, she gets an autographed book! I’ll send Jane a copy of a Susan King or Sarah Gabriel book with thanks for the inspiration.

I recently finished a manuscript and sent that to my editor, and I have another manuscript in progress with due dates pending ... but that leap from one book straight into another can seem like a pretty wide gap. The creative well needs some refill and recovery first. After submitting a book, there may be only a short time before the work has to start in earnest again – if the editor is as fast and efficient as my Avon editor, that manuscript might come flying back through the door a week or two later with suggestions for revisions or at least a few tweaks. If the editorial process takes more time, the clock starts ticking on the next book in the queue, and all too soon it’s time to do some research or resume actual writing if work has already begun.

But first, a little rest and relaxation, some refilling of the well and author recovery is essential. Writing one book after another can be challenging when deadlines are tight – and flat-out exhausting mentally, emotionally and physically. Without R&R between books, burnout looms. I know -- I’m one of those who can burn the candle at both ends and in the middle, too.

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends --
It gives a lovely light.
                                             ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

There are certain things that always seem to spark the creative urge again, so that I can start thinking and writing at a good pace -- and not only that, but feel creative and inspired again. If all goes well (barring complications) – and if resuming work almost immediately is a good idea to stay on track with the deadlines – these methods usually help my overworked creative brain to rest, and help refill the inner well and stir that story soup to simmering once again....

  The first thing I have to do is clean house. This Phase I is not only imperative after a book has gone in, but therapeutic too. Either I thrive on Chaos in order to Create – or I’m so busy burning candles at both ends at deadline time that I ignore everything but the very basics of household management...the first explanation sounds better, but the latter is probably more true. Anyway, suffice to say there’s a good bit of housework to be done and laundry to be folded once the book goes in ... it’s vastly therapeutic. And when I can see the floor of my office and the top of my desk again, it’s time for Phase II (the photo is of my cousin's daughter a couple of years ago, busy creating a little chaos herself).

This second stage in the recovery process is reading – a glorious glut of reading. It involves sitting around doing seemingly nothing ... but we all know what important work reading is, especially for writers. I’m catching up on what I’ve wanted to read, what I absolutely need to read, what I’ve promised to read. This can last for a few days or weeks, depending on the available time. And it goes hand in hand with Phase III ... which, for me, is catching up on movies and TV. So it's fun and enjoyable, but it’s also therapeutic ... watching movies is visual and auditory, and doesn’t have much to do with the written word. A different part of the brain is engaged, the eyes are not tracking words-words-words for the brain to translate into thoughts and images. And at the same time, films and TV shows fill that story well with character, plot, and other story elements, and as I'm absorbing story structure, I often find ideas starting to percolate. And then it’s on to Phase IV ....

If I can get away from home, I’ll do that next – a vacation isn’t always convenient or affordable, depending on the rest of the family's schedule, but for Phase IV, I’ll try to escape for a few days and rest up a bit. For me, it's an optional phase, as I really enjoy being home without a book to write – that’s a little vacation in itself – and after that break, on to the next stage ....

Phase V is when the urge to be creative in a three-dimensional way comes over me. Writing is two-dimensional and involves so much interior thought -- now I crave doing something on a big scale that's fast and totally different than writing stories, dealing with words. Something with a clear beginning, middle and end where the end is quickly in sight (unlike writing a book....) – a project that needs only a few hours, a day, or a bit longer. This could be gardening, depending on the time of year, or it might be knitting or crochet, or a little painting or drawing. Sometimes I'll just move furniture around in a few rooms (I love a total room swap, though it drives my family nuts)-- I'll redecorate ... and sooner or later, me being me, I'm gonna end up painting a room, wallpapering, or refinishing a piece of furniture. There’s something about that process that really helps balance the whole creative writing process for me. I’m climbing up and down on ladders listening to music, the windows are open, the fans are going, the rest of the family is banished from the vicinity (unless I suddenly need a tall person to do something, which happens pretty often). And at some point, the next story is going to start bubbling up as the paint is being rolled on the walls  .... and then it’s time for Phase VI ....

Now the stories and characters are starting to simmer and pop in my head again, and I go out and get fresh notebooks, pens, folders, and whatever lovely, addictive stationery items appeal ... because I’m ready to start writing again.

There’s endless variation in the phases, and the time frame might be days, weeks, even months if I’m on a good elastic schedule (this rarely happens). And I don’t always get to each phase, though my creative brain seems to like this pattern of recoup and refill. 

This time, it’s been barely two weeks -- et voila! the manuscript arrived today for some minor revisions and tweaking. I haven’t hit all the recovery stages but did enough to feel ready to start again ... and after the manuscript gets a tweaking, the next book is waiting for some attention ....

I’m sure you all have various ways to rest and recuperate after intense creative work – what works best for you?

Susan Sarah

P.S. The manuscript about to be tweaked is the next Sarah Gabriel: THE HIGHLAND GROOM, the tale of a Lowland lady and a Highland whisky smuggler, an Avon release for January 2009....

Worst Job Ever

From Loretta:

I’m just back from a writers' conference, which reminded me, once again, that I have one of the best jobs in the world.  My personal favorite best job ever of my whole experience was being an English major in college, which is at least partly because of the Lack of Responsibility Factor.  But being a writer definitely qualifies as a Best Job. 

I have had worse jobs, believe me.

As some of you already know, once upon a time, many, many eons ago, I was a meter maid.  People screamed at me, made fun of me, and some even threatened me with bodily injury.  The downtown characters--the drunks and extremely demented people--raved at me or demanded money or insisted I arrest figments of their imaginations.  We had to wear polyester--and this was the old style polyester that did not breathe at all--and we courted heatstroke in the summer and frostbite in winter.  Downtown Worcester, wherein lay our “beats,” is small but very hilly.  In the beginning especially, I ended the day with aching legs and feet so sore I wept .  I wore the ugliest possible shoes for the comfort factor.  No matter.  I still got blisters.  I got sunburned and windburned and broke out in mysterious rashes.  When people fought their tickets, I had to go to court, which terrified me.  And I had to communicate with police officers almost daily.  I was in one of my college dropout phases at the time (these went on for about a decade), and in those days college youth tended to view the police with extreme mistrust.  Trusted or not, they were a species of which I had no experience, let alone understanding.  For me, it was like talking to Extra Terrestrials, all of them heavily armed and some of whom thought meter maids a far lower and more repellent life form than the drunks & crazy people.

This, however, was not the worst job I ever had, not by a long stretch.  I actually kind of liked it a good part of the time because our bosses and the office staff  were really nice and the other meter maids were fun to hang with.  Bonus:  Within a few months, I was in amazing shape.  With very strong legs.

The worst job I ever had looked really glamorous.  I was hired to sell groovy clothes and shoes in a boutique.  I loved fashion magazines, so this seemed to be the ideal job for moi, at the time, a college dropout (again).  But as those who’ve watched the reality shows know, what goes on behind the scenes is not always pretty.  I got blisters from having to wear fashionable platform shoes for 8-10 hours a day on a concrete floor thinly covered with carpeting.  We had to climb up and down ladders while carrying stacks of jeans for the shelves.  We used seam rippers to take out the manufacturer’s tags from the clothes and then we hand-stitched in the store’s tags. 

But hey, I worked in a jewelry store over the course of several years, and learned the art of writing codes & numbers on price tags barely visible to the naked eye (the kind that went on expensive jewelry of the type my heroine in Your Scandalous Ways would wear).  That was tedious, too, but I didn’t mind.  It appealed to the fussbudget (now called OCD) in me.  I don’t mind detail work.  It’s retail that gets to me.

The problem, in short, was Dealing with the Public for 6 days a week, 8-12 hours a day.  I’m not an extrovert.  In fact, others would find it a considerable challenge to be less extroverted.  My Personality Type came out INTJ--at 93% Introverted.  Let’s add in the facts that I was still more or less college age (read Immature) and had an Attitude.  So I didn’t deal really well with people who needed size 12 and insisted something was wrong with the clothes I was selling because size 8 didn’t fit or the ones who tried on ninety-eleven sweaters only to leave with nothing, telling me the clothes were too expensive or the ones who flung silk blouses on the floor for the menials (us) to pick up, etc., etc.  Then there were the shoplifters.  And the drunks & crazy people who wandered in, thinking we were--what?  The bus station?

Plus, I really didn’t have confidence in my ability to put the right shirt together with the right tie, so I always had a small panic attack when I had to wait on a male person, even though they were less likely than female persons to infuriate me.  Too, we had to keep the place shipshape, folding clothes, endlessly folding & even ironing.  We had to keep the glass display cases sparkly clean and dress up the dummies.  Then there was the behind-the-scenes backbiting and stabbing and alliance-shifting.  All of which happens everywhere, but for some reason it felt more like Purgatory there.  Looking back, with the advantage of age and wisdom, I think it was simply a matter of a horribly wrong personality fit. 

It was useful in terms of giving me a degree of understanding of what it was like to be a servant in early 19th C London. 

But it was MY WORST JOB, ever. 

Meanwhile, there  are those, I know, who’d run screaming from my present job:  Sitting alone all day in front of a computer listening for voices in your head?  There are people who couldn’t, wouldn’t do it.  They are not tempted, even though it means not having to wear pantyhose and being able to work in one's pajamas.

My best job could be your worst job and vice versa.

So RevMelinda gets a Loretta Chase book because she asked the question, “What was the worst job you ever had?”

Everyone else:  Let’s see who suffered most.  What was your worst job ever?

Italians Love the Wenches!

Yes, it's true!  In recent months a very special lady who runs the Immergiti in un Mondo Rosa blog has been featuring several of the Wenches in her romance-friendly site.

The posts are in Italian and English, so you won't have any trouble reading the interviews.  Thank you, Rosaria Kimbler, for featuring the Wenches on your blog!

You can read the interviews here:

Mary Jo Putney, Loretta Chase, and Jo Beverley

And the Wiener is ...

Jill Astley! Congratulations, Jill.  We've already been in touch with Jill, and she can expect her book shortly.  For the rest of you, it's easy to win books here at the Word Wenches.  Just leave a comment, or sign up for our newsletter (see the sidebar on the right), or suggest a blog topic.  We give away books every month, and love it when one of our posts touches off a barrage of conversation.  So join in the fun.  Leave a comment.  Sign up for the newsletter.  Suggest a blog topic for future discussion!

Fizzing and blithering!

Jo here, most of a day late. But I have an excuse.

If hearing that A Lady's Secret is #14 on the NYT Bestseller list isn't an excuse for a writer to get a little ditzy, I'm not sure what is! :) :) :)

(Okay, so Billie's waving oven gloves. Whatever works. That's me on the right when I was very young, but old enough to drink. :) )

This is a really big deal for writers because... okay, let me try to explain about bestseller lists. As readers, you probably don't care very much. (Do you? Let me know how aware you are, what you think, if the lists printed in newspapers and magazines affects your book buying.)

But here's about The Lists.

There are many lists, and some are only on the internet. It's the ones that get printed in the paper that are the Really Big Deal. This probably goes back to the time when they were the only ones most people saw -- ie back in the pre-web days. (Do you realize how little time that actually is? I don't know when the World Wide Web came into existence, but it moved into everyday life only about a decade ago. And look at it now.)

So, for example, every Thursday the USA Today prints the hop 50 books in the paper. On the web, it lists the top 150. This is all books for all ages, fiction and non fiction, except for text books. Of course they can't actually count every book sold, but they get reports for many, many places. But it's that top 50 that really counts.

The USA Today list is a newcomer -- 8 years? Anyone know? -- and it shook up the NYT one, which had been the Bible. Because the NYT used a select number of stores, and coming out of the pre-internet, pre-computerization of bookstore inventory days, there was a bit of guesswork involved, and even a tendency for some bookstores to list the books they thought should be bestsellers, not the ones people were actually buying.

The New York Times Mass Market list  (This is the current one, not the one I'll be on.)

When the USA Today list came out, however, some discrepancies were obvious leading to some adjustments, and also leading to a lot more genre and a lot more romance appearing there.

The USA Today List  (I am on this one, but at #73, so not in print. The different lists are not always in sync because there are still differences in how they count the numbers and when.)

Including my books. I've been on the extended NYT list a few times, which is why my publisher can put "New York Times Bestselling Author" on my books. But this is my first solo flight in the printed top of the list.

(Solo because I was on as part of an anthology led by Kathleen Woodiwiss. Somehow, I think she had a lot more to do with that than I did. :) )

So there -- a big achievement for me, for A Lady's Secret, for Robin, Petra, and Coquette -- who is proving a huge hit. Perhaps my leap in sales is because of all the Papillon dog devotees!

Oh, and it's #12 on the Publisher's Weekly Mass Market fiction list, too. Which is a big deal in the biz.

Because of my distractedness, I don't even have time to put in interesting pictures here, so I'm just grabbing some I like. That's my garden path now.

Celebrate with me. What's your tipple of choice? (I'll be hosting a friend of mine soon here who's an expert on classy tipples. Watch for that.) And tell me what you think about bestseller lists.

Oh, and if you've read ALS and want to talk about it while being able to include spoirer-, I've turned my blog over to that for now.

Jo Talk

If you don't have a google account, it's okay. Just put a name in the box where it says "name/URL."

Cheers! ::hic!:: (and don't forget to buy Lovers and Ladies, too!)

Jo :)

Break out the champagne!

Fabulous news!  Ordinarily Jo would have posted today, but she's being buried in chocolate, flowers, and champagne because A Lady's Secret has made the New York Times list!

Yes, the "nun on the run and rake on the make"' book is #14 on the Times list.  Jo has been a star for years, including 5 RWA RITA awards (which puts her in the RWA Hall of Fame) and other awards too numerous to mention. 

She has also been on the Times extended list many times.  But this is the first time on the official printed list.  And even though the mass market bestseller list was recently expanded to 20, Jo's #14 would have made the book a bestseller even in the old, 15 titles only, days.  We are sooooooooo proud of her!

The book is a Georgian, part of Jo's extended Malloren series.  She has talked here about some about her research--traveling in France, nunneries in Italy, and Papillon dogs, little balls of fluff that were popular with court ladies.  <G>

A Lady's Secret is every bit up to Jo's high standard, and deserves that bestseller list status.  (Yes, there are other bestseller lists and Jo has been on most of them.  But publishing is based in New York and the Times is the hometown newspaper of publishing, so it has particular resonance.)

So break out the champagne, toss the rose petals, and have some delicious, low calorie cyber-chocolate on us!!!

Mary Jo

PS: If you'd like to read the first chapter of A Lady's Secret, here's the link:

http://members.shaw.ca/jobev/alsexc.html 

Bagnigge, Explained

By Susan/Miranda

Since it's the second of "my" days, I decided to share a response from a question I'd posed in an earlier blog.  All the WordWenches blogs remain available on-line, and they can be accessed either in order, or by individual Wench (just click on a name at the end of an entry, and you'll get them all.)  Readers also continue to post replies, sometimes days or even months after the blog first appeared. 

Last fall, I wrote a blog called "Whither Bagnigge?"  I'd recently written a scene (included in the blog) for The King's Favorite, which was set in a rural  town called Bagnigge Wells, located on a branch of the Thames.  As is sadly often the case, the rural resort of 1670 where Charles II went swimming with Nell Gwyn was soon after absorbed by London's sprawling growth, with even the river covered over and forgotten.  I'd found plenty of references to the place in the past, but it was so long gone that it no longer appeared on any modern (or even 19th century) maps.  I asked readers two questions: if they knew exactly where Bagnigge Wells might have been, and also, exactly how it would have been pronounced.

And now, some months later, I've heard from an English gentleman named Robert Mitchell who answered both questions, plus added a family photograph as well.  His reply: "If you search for "gwynne place" on wikimedia commons [here's the link] you will find a photograph that I have posted that might interest you. Bagnigge is pronounced "Bagg-nidge". The girl on the steps is probably my mum, though we'll never know for sure."  Mr. Mitchell's great-grandfather was the landlord of the Bagnigge Wells public house, from whose window the photograph was taken in the early 1920s.

Thank you so much for sharing, Mr. Mitchell!  And ain't the great wide world of the internet grand? *G*

The Fabric of Life

by Susan/Miranda

Three things to know about me (at least in relation to this blog):
1) I like words.
2) I like history.
3) I like textiles.

Textiles (you know, cloth) like Rodney Dangerfield, never getting no respect.  The more literary the fiction, the fewer words will be squandered on describing who wears what. Characters are dressed, or not dressed, and that’s about it.  Conversely, the most sniggering parodies of “lady writers” will inevitably include a detailed list of the heroine’s closet, complete with designers’ names.  (“She tossed her Blackberry into her Prada bag, along with her Marc Jacob sunglasses, Coach wallet, Cross pen, and Hermes scarf.”)

Historical fiction often gets the double whammy.  Too many adjectives will be used to describe too much clothing, but using modern words and woeful history.  I’ve already written here about the sad, inaccurate state of “historical” men’s shirts (a chorus, please, Kalen!), especially the ones make of silk that button down the front.  But the ladies seldom fare much better.  Think of all the Regency misses who wear high-waisted white cotton dress with puffed sleeves, which makes for boring writing and history.

There’s so much more that can be said about how a character dresses.  It’s how she presents herself to the world. (It’s how he does, too, but to save blog verbiage, I’ll stick to the ladies for now.)  It determines how she moves, even if she moves.  Dress can show a character’s rank, income, job, marital status, religious beliefs, and sensuality.  It can be a symbol of honor, or a brand of poverty, and it can reflect whether she’s a neatnik or a slob.  It can show political beliefs, or stunning insensitivity, whether she dresses to attract men, or rebuff them. 

It’s obvious that a lady in a jewel-studded brocade gown will move far differently than her maid in linsey-woolsey.  But even an 18th century farmer’s wife would have tucked up her skirts and secured them through the slits for her pockets to keep her best glazed-wool petticoat clear of the mud in her yard while doing chores, and nearly every woman of every rank would cover her “good” clothes with an apron while doing any slightly messy task.

An 18th century Englishman’s shirt would have been made of linen, with virtually no exceptions.  But was the gentleman supporting Irish manufactures with Irish linen?  Did he care for style over politics, and buy Holland linen smuggled into London past trade embargos against the Netherlands?  Or was he of the  lower class or  “middling sort”, who still relied on linen that was processed and sewn at home?  One tidy adjective can say so much.

Careless writers will always put the common folk in cotton, reflecting the modern price (and often contempt) of this fiber.  But in 1800, before the cotton gin, cotton could be costly, reflecting either its complicated manufacture or its import from India.  Complicating things further for historians, “cotton” was also used to describe a process that raised a fuzzy nap on woolen cloth (“cottoning”), so often cotton isn’t cotton at all, but wool.

A late 18th-century woman looking over bolts or pieces of fabric in a shop would definitely have understood the differences.  She would know that ballasor, imported from India, was a cotton muslin suitable for her husband’s hankerchiefs, while  balzarine was a light-weight brocade for day gowns, a blend of worsted wool and cotton woven into fanciful patterns on a jacquard loom.  She would have requested beaverteen (a coarse, heavy, cotton twill with a thick pile) for her sons’ winter jackets.  She might have bought several lengths of Canterbury (an old-fashioned cotton brocade with a silk warp, named after the city where it was first woven) for a gown for her widowed mother-in-law.  She would have chosen jaconet (a thin woven cotton, between cambric and muslin) for infants’ clothes and caps, and perhaps a quantity of striped siamoise (a light but sturdy cloth, woven of linen and cotton) for summer slip coverings and bed hangings.  All cotton, yes, but all as different as can be, and while the fine distinctions between the fabrics may be lost to us, the words themselves are evocative of a different time.

Consider the textiles of the more recent past.  Dotted Swiss and cotton velveteen are forever the itchy, unyielding fabrics of Sunday dresses from my childhood.  Kettle cloth and wide-wale corduroy were what we all sewed into shift dresses and jumpers in Home Economics classes back in the 60s, when Home Ec was still Home Ec and not Family & Consumer Sciences.  The first of the slinky synthetic knits were appearing then, too, in Orlon, and in Banlon, that creepiest of all fabrics for men’s shirts. Say Quiana and Ultrasuede and polyester-double-knit, and it’s instantly the 70s.  Today it’s matte jersey and ramie and Tencel and Polarfleece, and Lycra laced through everything.  And just consider all the subtle variations today in cotton denim: sand-blasted, stone-washed, and double-dip-dyed, from snow to chambray to midnight.

So please, my fellow writers. I know that one writer's (and reader's) perfect telling historical detail can be another's "infodump" (and is there any more inelegant, disparaging scrap of jargon than that?)  I’m not asking for the entire inventory of the dry goods store or milliners’ shop.  Just don’t call everything cotton!

I can’t leave historical textiles alone without mentioning the two best sources out there, for readers, writers, and collectors.  First is Textiles in America 1650-1870, by Florence M. Montgomery. Written by a curator of textiles at Winterthur thirty years ago, this has recently been reissued (though with a horrible cover).  While the title implies an American bias, most of the quotes from primary sources are English.  There’s an excellent glossary of textiles, and the photographs are most useful.  But textiles are a tactile pleasure as much as a visual and historical one, and for that the series of publications from costume historians Sally Queen Associates are unrivaled.  While smaller in scope, the spiral-bound pages of these books are illustrated with 3x3 swatches of actual fabric. (Think Pat the Bunny for historians.)  Available books in the series include the 18th century, Regency era, and Victorian.  The next time you read about nankeen, you’ll KNOW what it feels like.

Any other fabric-lovers out there that have to touch everything? Do heroes in silk shirts bug you, too, or do you think I'm being hopelessly picky?  And did anyone else struggle through sewing classes in high school, or do you still find pleasure in turning a length of cloth into something to wear?

What Do We Really Want?

Pat here, just back from a writer’s conference in New York City. I’m still trying to finish half a dozen contemporary proposals. And I haven’t even begun to dream of researching the next historical. So, obviously, I’m still not in a good place to talk about exciting research projects, unless you consider Googling trendy designer clothes exciting. Looking at the price tags is certainly diverting. 

And because of the discussions at the conference between authors, agents, and editors, I’m thinking about the business before I dive into any more research.  While the Regency historical market is selling like hotcakes, there seems to be a general restlessness, an eagerness for something different—only no one can exactly pinpoint what they want. So “different” could take any number of directions, from settings, to time periods, to deeper history, or heck, alien space culture for all I know.  Personally, I’m into the latter. I want to relate the brilliant mathematics of ancient Egypt and Celts and pre-Mayan cultures to aliens from outer space, but then, I’m insane and far more willing to dream up ideas than actually write them. My imagination wiggles in joy when offered a wide drawing board.

So I thought I’d do an informal survey and ask for opinions.  What kind of historical would you like to see break into the next big “thing”?  Victorians? Westerns? Egyptians? Would you like to see more sex? More focus on the characters and their relationship? More history? And maybe—sorry about this—you might give some indication of what age group you’re in, as in “I glommed Woodiwiss’s entire backlist in high school” or “I read Woodiwiss when the FLAME AND THE FLOWER first hit the shelves.”  It would be interesting to know if we have a disconnect based on generation.

Feel free to roam as far and wide as you like, from wanting more humor to more vampires—as long as we stick to historicals.  Give examples, if that helps.  I know we’ll never see a new form of Gellis’s Roselynde Chronicles again, we don’t want history to repeat itself, but if you want to live in that kind of detailed world, however gritty, it’s a good comparison point.

But in hopes of generating an active discussion, I’m willing to give away one of my newly arrived ARCs for MYSTIC RIDER—which I’ll remind you is a paranormal historical with a fair amount of sex (not that I want to influence anyone, just saying!)—to a winner Sherrie will draw out of the hat after midnight, Pacific Coast Time, on April 8th. Or I suppose, technically, the first minute of April 9th, but who’s counting?

A Reading Holiday

Susan Sarah here -- a bit on the weary and bleary side, having just finished another manuscript and sent it in, with the last section written at top speed, day and night, which is unfortunately the best writing mode for me. I could attempt a more civilized pace, but eventually, every book, I have to kick the writing engines into overdrive. I'm hardwired to be a Hare, and make that wild and crazy dash for the finish line, after way too long ruminatin' under a tree... This time I really tried to be a Tortoise, organized and in control 'n stuff like that, but I plodded along in a clunky way, not very inspired. Once I let my Inner Rabbit free, that story popped and came together quite nicely. And very fast ... so I'm tired and ready for some rest.

Before I pick up where I left off on the other current work-in-progress (set aside so the bunny could make her mad dash to a tight deadline) ... I'm taking a reading holiday!

I have a real craving, a need-to-read, and I'm putting all else on hold -- housework (lots of that, I've just finished a book, gimme a break, have I done much clutter control? <scoff>), shopping, email, TV (OK maybe not Dancing With The Stars or American Idol, on which I'm *shamelessly* hooked)... Instead, I'm scanning the bookshelves upstairs and down and poring through my stacks of To-Be-Reads looking for just the right read. And if the books here in the house don't appeal at the moment, the craving will drive me out to the bookstores and libraries (even on cold and rainy nights, like tonight) to keep looking for that elusive, satisfying read ....

So there it is. I'm all set to plunge into a substantial reading frenzy, and I need your help. There's a zillion books in my house, and a pretty fair number of TBR's, and yet -- I'm not sure WHAT I want to read. I want something new. I want something unexpected. So I hope you'll help me out, and tell me --

What are you reading now that you love, love, love; what thrills you, surprises you, puts you in awe of story, characters, writing?  Is there a book whose characters are still with you, camping out in your heart?

What are you reading that seems fresh and exciting to you? Maybe it's a genre you haven't tried before, or a new author, or a new twist in a familiar genre....

Or maybe it's an oldie but a goodie -- a favorite comfort read you always turn to when you're ready to sink in to a relaxing read, a book that still thrills you.

What book have you read lately that sucked you in and didn't let go until you finished it? And would you put that on your keeper shelf and recommend it to everyone who would listen?

I'm looking for recommendations!!  Book lists! Tell me the title and author of that wonderful book -- I'm eager to learn about a new author or story from you all. And we'll ALL get some GREAT suggestions.

Susan Sarah

On Becoming a Regency Woman, Part II

by Mary Jo

Since Wench Edith is busy with a delightful bit of family business, I'm going to take this opportunity to continue Monday's discussion on what it would be like to transfer ourselves to the past by taking advantage of Elaine McCarthy's excellent question: What would we like about living in Regency times?

For instance, in the 'not-so-great' column was the fact that a large number of us might not have reached our present ages because we would have been pushing up daisies in a churchyard.  As Talpianna said, and I've also heard, there has been more progress in medical science since 1900 than in all previous human history, and that sounds true.

As an addendum to that fact, probably the greatest human health advances have been because of publish health improvements, most coming in the late 19th century: clean water, cleaner air (there's need to work on that one!), mass vaccinations, et al. 

Vaccinations are controversial these days, largely because we've not seen the kind of mass plagues that used to take out huge numbers of people.  Remember the novel MRS. MIKE, in which a city girl meets a handsome Canadian mountie in the far north, falls in love and marries him?  There's a lot about the book that I don't remember, but I remember vividly the woman who told the heroine that a child reminded her of a daughter of her "first family."  Turns out she meant that kids were so vulnerable to disease that it wasn't unusual to lose all of one's kids to diphtheria, smallpox, typhoid, or something equally awful.  And then have a 'second family'--and possibly lose all those kids, too.  Chilling!  (Particularly if you remember the ending of the book.)

But at the same time--wouldn't it be fantastic not to think of food as our enemy?  To be able to eat pies and cakes and roast beef without wondering if they might kill us?  'Twould be bliss indeed!

And in a related topic--how nice not to worry about weight all the time.  With a world full of Barbies to make us feel porky, and far too much fattening food at every turn, wouldn't it be great to live in a society where a little padding was seen as a sign of health and prosperity?  And where as a matter of course, one did enough walking to stay healthy and appreciate nature? 

I think that simple things brought more pleasure.  These days, we swim in wonderful music whenever we wish.  People with iPods have so much music plugged directly into their heads that they can ignore reality altogether. Think of the joy of getting together with your neighbors and enjoying the skills of the pianist, the fiddler, the harpist!  Think of the pleasure of singing songs together with your family and friends.  Imagine the excitement of the local fair when it's the only such entertainment available to you.

And then there's courtship.  As Kalen pointed out, in the TV show Regency House party, the hostess was vastly deficient in her duties in not arranging more for the young ladies to do, especially co-ed activities.  What fun to have men competing for our favors!  (Okay, I'm suspending some disbelief to think there would be hordes of men competing for my attention, but maybe one or two. <g>)

How nice to have a man send flowers the morning after a ball instead of the dreary hooking up young people do today!  There's no question that women today have vastly improved opportunities and freedoms.  But how lovely it would be to be able to tell a man NO!, I don't want to go to bed with you!, and not have to explain why.  One of the harsher aspects of our modern day is that sexual freedom in practice means that a woman may have to defend her choice to keep her body to herself. 

I don't doubt that Regency women were very busy, but I think they might not have been as harried as we are today, with so many choices, so many responsibilities, and the chronic belief that we're being the eight-ball, that we're missing something, that we've made the wrong choices and ruined our lives.

Fewer choices mean less stress.  (Ask anyone who has just had to pick the right health care options from an insurer!)  More time to do as one wishes means less stress.  How lovely to live in a day when one didn't have to be Superwoman--it was enough simply to be A Regency Woman. 

A free book for you, Elaine!  Now the rest of you tell me what you think you'd like about living in Regency times--

Mary Jo