Word Wenches

WWR — What We Read in October

Anne here, bringing you this month's "What We're reading" in which the various wenches share their reading picks for the last month and everyone else joins in in the comments stream. Warning, it can be quite expensive. I've already bought three of this month's books.

We start with Pat Rice, who recommends Charming by Elliott James— an urban fantasy. Pat says: "I can’t remember who told me about this book, but thank you! It’s fantasy on a level with Patricia Briggs. The characterization is amazing.

The hero is an outcast from an ancient group of Knights Templar who are under a geas to protect the veil between humans and the supernatural. Because the hero’s mother was bitten by a werewolf, he has unnatural tendencies and is despised and hunted by his father’s knights. His conflicts are manifold but his sarcasm is hilarious.

Like Briggs, this is not a bloodfest nor erotica, but a strong contemporary fantasy with a fascinating stage of characters on a vampire hunt. The action scenes are beautifully choreographed and hard to skim, even though I usually skim violence the same way I do sex scenes. If you can handle another vampire hunter, check this one out."

Bobbing for Apples -- Pomona's Best

One Halloween festivity that may lie in some folks’ near future is ‘Bobbing for Apples’.  

The best part of this particular Halloween activity is it’s done at parties for small children and folks don’t show up at my door carrying a tub and a bucket of water and expecting me to supply the apples. That is to say, bobbing is something I can watch from a respectful distance but I don’t have to do anything. “Good,” says I.

The apple/Halloween connection dates to the Roman conquest of England. That’s the four centuries after 43 CE for anyone who doesn’t have the date right on the tip of their tongue.

The Romans pursued a pragmatic policy of folding local religious celebrations into the Roman ones, the better to civilize all these barbarians they now had to deal with. With the admirable intention of Romanizing a holiday, they turned their sights on the Celtic festival of Samhain which fell at the autumn equinox.

Samhain was a fine, robust old festival held when the days were about to get shorter and shorter and colder and colder and just generally life would be somewhat more miserable. This was the turn of the Celtic calendar, the beginning of the new year, a time when it was felt the dead were particularly liable to return to haunt the living. Dealing with this annual visitation called for lighting huge sacred bonfires and making sacrifice of items from the harvest and the odd animal they thought the gods might fancy. Folks dressed in costumes of animal heads and skins, did what they could to chase away any bad luck that came through the gates of the netherworld along with the spirits, and did a little foretelling of the future.

Pomona, with apple

The Romans looked at Samhain and were immediately reminded of the Festival of Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The connection seems tenuous. We don’t know much about Pomona’s festival, but I rather doubt it involved animal skins and bonfires. Be that as it may, Pomona was particularly associated with apples. It’s not a great stretch to imagine some of the prognostication that was already part of Samhain began to involve apples. They were lying about available at this time of the year, after all.

In any case, that's an argument the divinational virtues of apples may date from as long ago as the Romans. Certainly, we have a variety of apple fortune telling going on in the last few centuries. Who knows how old it is?

One of my favorites superstitions is apple oriented. Young girls, peeling apples, would try to take the skin off in one long, unbroken strip. They’d toss that strip over their shoulder and use hope and imagination to make out a shape or a letter in the way it fell. That would indicate the name of their future husband.

I pare this pippin round and round again,
My shepherd's name to flourish on the plain.
I fling th' unbroken paring o'ver my head,
Upon the grass a perfect L. is read. 

               John Gay, 1714

 

When I was a kid I’d always try to get the apple peel off in one go. It’s some kinda basic human instinct.

Bobbing for apples -- in the north of England called ‘Ducking’ or ‘Dukking’ for apples is centuries old. It comes in both a water format and an ‘apple suspended on a string’ format. That grab-an-apple-in-your-teeth game has been around at least 600 years. The apples-in-cold-wet-water is at least three hundred. Both practices may be much older.

One old divination carried out when bobbing for apples in a basin of water is the young ladies carved a letter on a particular apple. When the young man bobbed for apples she’d see who got ‘hers’.

I imagine the men peeked but that’s just me being cynical.

I feel like apple bobbing is less popular in 2015 than it was even fifty years ago. This might be the general dwindling of folk customs. It might be a greater emphasis on costumes and candy over other traditional activities. And it might be that apples are less of a special treat now than they were a hundred years ago. Even a very fine, sweet eating apple may seem a feeble reward for dunking yer head.

I’m sad when old customs die. Not, you understand, that I’d want to do this myself.

Do you have family ‘harvest time’ traditions? Decorating the house for Halloween? Going out to pick apples? Oktoberfest? Tell me what moves you at this season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.

 

One commenter will win a copy of one of my books — your choice — including Last Chance Christmas Ball. (US residents only. Sorry.)  

 

 

 

The Magic of the Ladew Topiary Gardens

by Mary Jo

Chinese Proverb: "If you want to be happy for a week, take a wife, if you want to be happy for a month kill your pig, but if you would be happy all your life, plant a garden."

I think that undervalues the wife and perhaps overvalues the pig <G>, but there is no question that gardens create happiness.  Which is how the Ladew Topiary Gardens came into being in Monkton, Maryland, about half an hour north of Baltimore.

Harvey S. Ladew, creator of the gardens, was born in 1887 to a New York family rich enough to allow him to indulge his passions: fox hunting and topiary, which is the art of shaping live shrubs into ornamental shapes.  Unlike carving wood or stone, though, shrubs keep on growing so maintaining a topiary is a constant effort, even more than most gardens.  (See the fellow pruning on the right.)

Harvey Ladew studied art, served in the US Army in WWI, and spent many happy winters fox hunting in the UK. But though he lived to nearly 90, knew many famous people, and lived a full, rich life, his lasting legacy is his topiary garden.  

Since we had an out of town visitor a week ago, we took her to Ladew and were able to enjoy the garden in its autumn glory.  There is a very European feel, not surprising given how much time Ladew spent in Europe.  He wanted two alleys to create long views, and they cross at the Great Bowl, where concerts are held by Ladew's oval swimming pool.  

There are fifteen garden "rooms" with themes such as the Rose Garden, the Keyhole Garden, and the Water Lily Garden.  There is also a café that was built in Harvey Ladew's old horse stables.  (The farm he bought to create his garden just happens to be right next to the local hunt club.  Yes, Maryland has them.)

Most of the pictures here were taken by me, except for the grand overview above, which was taken from the website.  I've visited Ladew a number of times over the years, including for such delights as the concert by a Scottish bagpipe band.  

Because topiary fascinates me, I borrowed from Ladew in my gardening book, The Wild Child. My heroine, Lady Meriel Grahame, is considered mad because of traumatic childhood experiences.  She doesn't talk and she spends her life creating gardens at the family estate she inherited. (Until the hero comes along, of course!)

Her gardens included topiary sculptures I'd seen at Ladew, including the famous fox hunting scene below.  (Like most Americans, I'm on the side of the fox and he seems to be gleefully escaping in the lower picture.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Strolling through the gardens is delightful on a pleasant day.  There are small sculptures and benches where visitors can sit and commune with nature.  And this being a garden, the surroundings are constantly changing as old blossoms fade and new ones bloom.

 

 

 

Have you seen topiary gardens?  Even tried to create topiary yourself yourself?  Do you enjoy looking at topiary sculptures?  I'll give a copy of The Wild Child to someone who leaves a comment here about gardens you've loved in general, or about topiary in particular!

Mary Jo

 

 

 

 

High Tech—Regency Style

Cara/Andrea here, I’ve recently been doing some research into scientific history, and among the many fascinating facts I’ve discovered is one that may surprise many Regency aficionados. We all know the era was a time of fancy balls, elegant soirees and country house parties . . . but did you know that it also saw the invention of the first computer!

Christina Courtenay - The Jade Lioness

Nicola here! Today we are welcoming award-winning author Christina Courtenay back to the Word Wench blog to talk about her new book, The Jade Lioness, and the fascinating history behind it. Christina writes romantic historical fiction with exotic and unusual settings and the Jade Lioness is no exception. Set in 17th century Japan, it has been described as "lyrical and fascinating." Here Christina talks haikus and the Japanese festival of Tsukimi or "moon viewing."

"I'm sure we've all paused to stare at the moon of an evening, especially when it's full and perhaps with a benign smiling face visible on its surface (or so we imagine).  It is awe-inspiring and beautiful, and it has been important to human beings as a way of measuring time for millennia.  It makes you feel small and insignificant, filling you with wonder at the unfathomable mysteries of the universe.  This was especially true recently when we had the so called ‘blood moon’, a rare total lunar eclipse, which made everyone excited.  It was an extraordinary sight and one well worth missing some sleep for!

World Building, Historical Style

  Pat here: As readers, we probably started talking of world building in fantasy, where the monsters had to have their own society, their own faults and strengths, and the setting had to make them real.

But now, as series become more popular in other genres, we’re all engaging in some lengthy world building. When I first started writing about the Magical Malcolms about ten years ago, I was simply creating a world of characters with special psychic abilities. Yes, the era was Georgian, but the setting wasn’t as important as how the characters felt about being weird in a normal world.

About the same time, Jayne Ann Krentz started mixing her Arcane Society paranormal romances into her historical world. JR Ward turned vampires into contemporary romance, and suddenly, any kind of series was hot and could branch off in any direction as long as the reader could buy into the richly-created worlds they built.

I’ll admit, I love the world building, but it’s not easy when limited by history—or a related series.

Why We Write What We Write

Susan here, and today the Wenches answer a question we asked ourselves. We're all historical fiction writers, with plenty of variation -- Regency, Georgian, Victorian, Tudor, medieval, romance, mainstream, fantasy, paranormal, mystery -- more than one of us has dabbled in writing contemporary settings too.  

So we got to talking, as we do, and the question came up --

Why do we write historicals? Some of us write contemporary too. Why or why not, and what's the difference?

Patricia Rice

I write anything that strikes my interest. I started in historical romance because those were the books I knew and loved, and because history fascinates me. I’d spent years researching English history simply to better understand the English literature I was reading. And since I lived in an area with a wealth of history, writing about that area gave me permission to waste more time digging through old books and visiting historical sites. I adored—and still adore—being able to combine work and play.

But there are some stories that simply don’t fit easily into a historical perspective. I wanted to address current issues, current situations, and to do that, I started scribbling on my contemporary romantic mysteries. Again, I got to explore Santa Lucia and California and other wonderful areas to research my stories. Writing about mental health or the environment or computer hacking just doesn’t fit into historicals!

And then, of course, there are the paranormals…  but I digress. It happens—a lot.

Cara Elliott/Andrea Pickens:

The great children’s author/illustrator Maurice Sendak was once asked why he wrote what he did. His answer (I am taking artistic license and paraphrasing) was, “I would love to write the Great American Novel, but when I sit down to tell the story in my head, it comes out as a pig talking to a dog who has just swallowed a mop.” I feel a little like Sendak—my stories just seem to take shape as historicals. I’ve always loved the history, and find it fascinating to explore a time period in the past and learn about all its nuances. I think one of the things I find appealing about historicals is that even when you have collected a lot of research facts, you have to use your imagination to piece them all together. (I tend to have a very vivid imagination.) 

I haven’t yet written a contemporary. (Well, actually I have, a long time ago, but it’s one of those “Back-Of-The-Desk-Drawer” manuscripts that will remain buried under stray chewing gum warppers and paper clips.) Which doesn’t mean I won’t. In fact, I’m currently noodling on an idea that involves a contemporary setting. It’s early yet, and I’m still not sure whether the Muse and I are on the same page. But it’s fun to try something new, even if it ends up in the desk 

Mary Jo Putney:

Why do I write historicals?  Because I read them, of course!  I read a lot of other things as well, including non-fiction history, but I was addicted to Georgette Heyer and chomped through all the modern Regencies at the library when I discovered them.  So when I bought my first computer and decided to see if I could write a book, what came out was a Regency. 

 The Muse has wandered into contemporary and fantasy over the years, but I always come back to historicals.  I love the way stories can be over the top and characters larger than life, and history provides such nice conflicts.  In other words, historicals are fun!

 

Mary Balogh, on covers

Hi, Jo here welcoming bestselling author, Mary Balogh, back to the Word Wenches. I've been delighting in Mary's new covers, and so I'm happy that she wants to talk about the subject. Of course, we're looking forward to your views and comments, and one lucky commenter will win a copy of Mary's book, Only a Kiss. If you already own that one, then you can choose another title.

Mary's recent complete series is the Survivor's Club, about a group of men and women who shared a difficult time during the Peninsula War. The first book is The Proposal, and its cover history illustrates what Mary is going to address.

 

 

 

Over to Mary.

Until recently I would have said that I never choose a book by its cover. After all, the cover is the one thing over which the author probably had very little input or control. Covers are designed within publishing houses according to the current theory of what will sell. In the historical romance genre, for example, if it seems that men with bare, waxed, over-developed chests and the generic white shirt or headless women or women with billowing skirts are what readers are looking for, then chances are that is the sort of cover writers will be landed with whether they want them or not-or whether the picture is historically accurate or not. At present the billowing skirt seems to be in vogue even though the book itself is very likely to be Regency and Regency fashions, in my opinion, are more gorgeous and romantic and sexy than the fashions of any other era.

I do my reading on a Kindle and make most of my book choices by browsing on Amazon. Like most other readers, I choose largely by author and within certain genres. In those cases covers do not have any bearing upon my choice. I will buy the book regardless. But I am always searching for new authors and I like to dabble in new genres just to see if there is anything to take my fancy and broaden my reading horizons. And I have made the discovery that yes, indeed, I am very much affected by covers. I will not buy a book solely upon the appeal of the cover, but that is what makes me stop to take a closer look. There are no doubt countless books I would enjoy enormously and countless new authors whose backlists I would devour voraciously if I could but find them. But it is the cover that draws me-or repels me.

NAKED: A Novel of Lady Godiva by Eliza Redgold

by Mary Jo

One of the pleasures of large book signings is that an author usually ends up sitting next to strangers.  Over the course of two or three hours, much fun and talk occurs.  This happened to me at the Romance Writers of Australia conference when alphabetical order placed me next to Eliza Redgold, a delightful author and academic who looks like one of our romance heroines.  <G>  In July, St. Martin's Press released her new novel, Naked: A Novel of Lady Godiva.  

The cover is stunning and the book kept me enthralled for much of the long flight home from Down Under, so I invited Eliza to visit the Word Wenches. Happily, she said yes.

MJP: To begin with, who is Eliza Redgold?

ER: Eliza Redgold is based upon the old, Gaelic meaning of my given name, Dr. Elizabeth Reid Boyd.  English folklore has it that if you help a fairy, you will be rewarded with red gold. I was born in Irvine, Scotland on Marymass Day and currently live in Australia.

MJP: Naturally, as soon as I read that, I had to go online to find out what Marymass Day is!  The holiday commemorates a visit Mary Queen of Scots made to Irvine, and there is a parade complete with the Queen and the four Marys who were famously her attendants.  Eliza, from what I found online, the festival is in August but the date isn't fixed?

A cat-skin waistcoat?

Anne here, responding to a question sent to us by Mary F, who wins a book in exchange for her question. Mary asked: "Was a catskin waistcoat really made out of cats' skins?

Yes, Mary they were, gruesome as it seems to us in modern western society. In the poorer and more thrifty societies of the past, they used everything — even those animals we don't consider for meat or fur or leather. 

I was unable to find a photo of a historical cat-skin waistcoat, but here, for instance is a photo of cat-skin jackets on sale in a foreign marketplace. Recognizably cat, aren't they? You can even buy them on line from China and other places. You can also buy dog-skin garments on line.

In modern western society, the wearing of fur is very much out of vogue and we are quite limited in the kind of leather we consider "normal" — mostly it's cow-skin, or sheep-skin or perhaps deer-skin — coming from the animals whose meat we most commonly eat.

What's a Library?

Cara/Andrea here, I recently attended a lecture on the role of a library in today’s world. The first slide was a big graphic that said, “Myth #1: Library = Books” The speaker—having gotten everyone’s attention—went on to explain how in our fast-changing (as in blink of an eye) society, how we preserve knowledge, and how we use the material that we save, is radically changing as well.

Welcome to Belsay Hall!

Nicola here. For the last two weeks I’ve been on a trip to the North East of England, taking in plenty of castles and historic houses along the way. I visited Cragside, the home of pioneering Victorian engineer William Armstrong, and the first house in England to be lit by hydro-electric power. The most special visit I made though, was to Belsay Hall, which we Word Wenches chose as the inspiration for Holbourne Abbey, the house that is the setting for our new anthology, The Last Chance Christmas Ball. It was very exciting to visit Belsay on behalf of all the Wenches, to wander through its rooms and imagine our characters celebrating the Christmas season in the ballroom and watching the snow falling beyond the drawing room windows. I could almost hear their voices and the faint drift of music!

Christmas is a significant date in the history of Belsay Hall for on Christmas Day 1817 Sir Charles Monck,
the owner, moved with his family the short distance from his “old” castle to the newly-completed mansion house. The timing of the move symbolised a new beginning for the family; the transfer of the seat of the Belsay estate from the ancient residence to a modern one built in classical style, a gem of regency architecture.

One visitor to Belsay at the end of the 19^th century recalled her impressions of the Christmas season at the house:

“There was snow everywhere… Belsay came as an incredible surprise – the snowy, cold landscape without, and the generous warmth within; arrival at that magnificently unique four-square house with its leaping fires, standing so boldly forth in its surround of sparkling snow. To feel the warm welcome, to mount the stairs, candlestick in hand, and see the flickering shadows of the light on all the pillars… the blazing fire in one’s bedroom, was glory.”

It almost makes me wish we had been able to see the house in winter rather than on a glorious sunny autumn day!

Old stuff

Jo here. My husband and I took a short break over into Dorset to visit  the coastal visit of Charmouth on the Jurassic Coast. This stretch of coastal cliffs  shed rocks under the influence of the sea, revealing fossils from the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, so we thought we'd go fossil hunting. We didn't find a great deal, but it's always pleasant to wander about at the sea edge.

We realized we were almost half way to Stonehenge, so we decided to leave early on the third day and go there. The delights of living in a small country with a lot of interesting old stuff.

For one reason or another, we'd never been, which was a shame as people used to be able to wander about the stones at will. However, we were curious about the new set up there and it was only about 90 minutes further. There's a new visitor center over a mile from the stones, and shuttle buses running continuously to take visitors there.

In my opinion, the trouble with really famous places is a) that there are always a lot of other people there, but b) that we see and know so much about them that we don't get the impact that others did in the past. However, the organization is now very smooth, and the stones are impressive, no matter how you look at it. Of course, people are fascinated by how prehistoric people moved such stones from far away and arranged them in a purposeful design. I'm more interested in why, especially with a place like Stonehenge, where people went to great effort to create structures over millennia. The stones are only the last of many effortful layers.