by Mary Jo
I've got an old mule and her name is Sal,
Fifteen years on the Erie Canal!
She's a good old worker and a good old pal,
Fifteen years on the Erie Canal!
We've hauled some barges in our day,
Filled with lumber, coal, and hay,
And every inch of the way I (we) know,
From Albany to Buffalo!
Anne here, announcing the winner of Mary Jo Putney's ONCE A SCOUNDREL.
The winner was Cheryl, but when we notified her by email she said she'd already ordered the book and generously asked us to draw another winner.
So the new winner is Michelle, who has also been notified by email.
Thanks everyone for joining in the fun.
Pat here:
Starting off this month’s What We’re Reading blog with something a little different, The Girl with the Kaleidoscope Eyes by David Handler.
This book is a murder mystery that made me grin, not because of silly hi-jinks but because of the author’s voice—or the protagonist’s voice since it’s in first person. It really needs to be read with tongue firmly in cheek. It’s set in the 1990s, when cell phones are huge clunky things, before the internet and social media. But the entire tone is gritty, cynical noir, as if it were an old time 1940’s film with James Cagney or Humphrey Bogart. The protagonist is a ghost writer for celebrities, one who once had a brilliant literary tome and could never write a second. So he talks cynically of literary and Hollywood agents, of his affairs with Hollywood and literary stars, gives sound advice to teenagers who never asked for it, and is—and I use this phrase in all its nuances—cocksure of himself. And while he’s doing all that talking, he’s solving a closed-door murder case.
For those of you who remember the 1970s, read this just for fun. He strews famous names, music, and film right and left. If you don’t remember the 70’s, read it anyway, and try to imagine seamy Hollywood without Twitter.
Andrea/Cara here, Like my fellow Wenches, I find doing research is an integral part of the creative process for my books. Digging deeper into elements I want to weave into a story and learning little details often spark ideas that embellish the plots. One of the very fun aspects of my summer sojourn to England was the chance to explore up close and personal some of the scientific inventions that I feature in my Wrexford and Sloane Regency-set mystery series.
My current WIP features a voltaic pile (named after Alexander Volta, it was the first electrical battery and could generate a current.) But you’ll hear more about that in the future. I also have Wrexford and his assistant solve a key part of the mystery using a microscope. And as I was fortunate enough to be able to visit the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford during my trip, I was, as they say, in hog—or rather, lens—heaven!
Anne here, interviewing Mary Jo Putney about her new book, ONCE A SCOUNDREL, which is out tomorrow!
ONCE A SCOUNDREL has received some lovely reviews. Booklist gave it a starred review and said: "The intelligently plotted and impeccably researched Once a Scoundrel, third in the Rogues Redeemed series, proves once again why RITA Award–winning Putney’s books are the literary equivalent of catnip to historical romance fans." Booklist has also named Once a Scoundrel to their list of the Top Ten Romances of the Year.
Kirkus called it "An action-packed romance at sea." Publishers Weekly said: "Putney’s third Regency Rogues Redeemed historical (after Once a Rebel) sizzles with passion and adventure."
Anne: Mary Jo, I thoroughly enjoyed Once a Scoundrel. And isn't that a wonderful cover? This whole series have had wonderful covers.
The hero, Gabriel Hawkins Vance, is one of your "rogues redeemed", a disgraced Naval officer, now a seafaring adventurer and sometime blockade runner. He is commissioned to sail to the Barbary Coast to rescue Lady Aurora “Rory” Lawrence, an adventurous young lady bored by staid London society. Aurora and her cousin, Constance, have been captured by pirates and are being held for a huge ransom.
Susanna here.
I thought I'd do something a little different for my turn this week, and share the first chapter of my current work-in-progress with you.
It's a novella that will be part of a book titled THE DEADLY HOURS, with three other novellas contributed by Anna Lee Huber, Christine Trent, and C.S. Harris, to be published next year by Sourcebooks, following a possibly-cursed pocket watch as it wreaks havoc in the lives of its various owners through the centuries.
She is too fond of books and it has turned her brain. --Louisa May Alcott
Susan here, thinking there are So. Many. Books. in the world right now, including in my house—I’ll never find the time to read them all. And yet I keep acquiring them. They look so good and enticing on the shelves, and stacked in toppling piles here and there . . . they even look great in rows and rows in my Kindle . . . There’s a comfort in being surrounded by books, by that wealth of knowledge and thought and imagination, by the color and texture and scent of the pages and covers, by the promise they hold, and the memories that others keep for us. Regardless of whether or not we’ve read the books that surround us, as many of us know--there can never be too many books.
A room without books is like a body without a soul. --Cicero
Yes. What Cicero said.
(The historian in me wants to add that he wasn't talking about books per se, but scrolls or early codices, so his quote might be closer to "A room without scrolls is like a body without a soul," which has a nice little ring to it.)
Some of the zillions of books I’ve read and reshelved could eventually be redirected to other hands and other homes, but mostly I'm not that efficient, and most I will keep. If I haven’t read them yet, and there are plenty of those, I maintain all good intentions to do that. And I’m visual enough that I need to see the Unread where they cluster on shelves or in baskets. A great many have been read or at least browsed and skimmed, so I know what’s there if I need it, particularly so for the research books, which I try to group in ways that I can find them again as needed--Scottish and British history, medieval, costumes, legends, that sort of thing.
by Mary Jo
This is definitely my year for islands! In July, I visited Orkney and Shetland , and now we're back from a shorter, more low key New England cruise. (I took the picture above on Block Island.)
We were traveling on American Cruise Lines, a small ship cruising company that specializes in American waters, from the coast of New England to Southern rivers, the Mississippi, the Pacific Northwest, and Alaska. We've cruised on ACL once before, traveling from Baltimore to Charleston, SC on the IntraCoastal Waterway, and we had a fine time.
Our ship, the American Star, held fewer than a hundred passengers, which was great. The food is also very good, and on the New England cruises, ACL heavily emphasizes lobster. This one is from the New England boiled dinner served on the first night. I'm not particularly fond of lobster--this one belonged to the Mayhem Consultant. Wait staff went around breaking open the lobsters so people could actually eat them. <G>
But this was only the beginning! Over the week, there were lobster soups, lobster rolls, both Maine and Connecticut, lobster mac and cheese, and even lobster bread pudding. By the end of the cruise, even the most devout lobster lovers were sated. <G
Nicola here, introducing this month’s Ask A Wench question which is: "What comfort foods and other strange rituals do the Wenches turn to when under deadline?" This is a subject which elicited many sighs, groans and hollow laughter when it was raised amongst us. We've all been in deadline territory and we have the scars to prove it. How do we handle it? What rituals do we indulge in to tempt the Muse? How much extra chocolate does it take to see us through to the end of the book? These are all questions that we will be tackling. And because deadlines are pretty much universal in working and other aspects of life we know readers will have lots of tips and suggestions to share, so bring on the deadlines!
Joanna here, talking about porcelain,
as in what you make dishes of,
(also electrical insulators, scientific crucibles, and toilets, though these predate our historical characters by a good bit and are thus of less immediate interest than they might otherwise be.)
Porcelain is arguably the luxury product of the Georgian and Regency eras. All those fancy dinner parties ...? Porcelain is what they were eating off of.
Andrea/Cara here, feeling in a pizza state of mind today. (There is a reason for this, but honestly, does one really have to a have a specific reason? I mean, who doesn’t like pizza?) I’ve been spending time in New Haven, Connecticut recently, as I mentor freshmen students as they arrive for their first semester at college. I find it really rewarding to help students navigate such a huge change in life as they begin to decide on courses, extracurricular activities, and just how to adjust to roommates and living away from home. And I love the intellectual energy and excitement of a university town, with all its museums, libraries and cultural offerings. But in the spirit of full disclosure, I also love spending time in New Haven because it has the best pizza anywhere. Bar none.
Anne here, popping up one of our occasional Sunday posts to let you know there's an interesting interview about Georgette Heyer on the USA Today site, with her official biographer Jennifer Kloester.
It contains some little-known snippets of information about Heyer and her writing life. And her dogs. This is not the photo in the article, by the way — in that one she's still a young girl, and she has a much smaller dog.
Click here to be taken to the interview.
Anne here, talking about an item many of us in the UK, Australia and elsewhere take for granted but which, apparently, is rarely used in the USA — the humble egg cup.
This topic was initially sparked when readers wrote to me about a scene in my book The Autumn Bride, where Damaris cooks the first meal for the badly neglected and almost starving old lady, Lady Beatrice Davenham.
“And I’ll make you something tasty to eat,” Damaris said. “What about a soft-boiled egg with soldiers?”
“A soft-boiled egg with soldiers?” the old lady repeated in a whisper. “I haven’t had that since—” She broke off, her mouth wobbling. Her face crumpled and she scrubbed at her brimming eyes. “Blast the dratted dust in here. It’s got into my eyes again.”
The readers asked me, "what are soldiers?"
Soft boiled eggs for children are often served with "soldiers" — toast cut into narrow lengths, that we dip in the egg and eat. In the UK they're often called "dippy eggs" — because you dip the soldiers into the eggs — just like the little girl above, and in this cute video showing two toddlers solemnly eating their "dippy eggs."
Susanna here, with re-faced apologies for her tardiness. It was my son's first day back at school today and in the mad rush of packing lunch and organizing backpacks and readjusting to getting up early, I completely forgot it was my day to post, and am only just now getting round to it.
So I thought I'd do something quick and fun, for a change.
While I was sorting through my files recently, trying to organize things, I came across an old interview in which I was asked, among other things,
If you were having a dinner party, and you could invite six characters (other than yours) to attend, who would you pick?
Here in the UK it’s the first day of the new school year today. I can vividly remember the pleasure of the school summer holidays – six weeks off! – lasting from the end of July to the beginning of September, including my birthday and usually a holiday by the seaside. Summer was such a treat in that respect! Then the days would start to shorten and the nights would turn cooler and even if it felt as though it was still summer we knew that autumn and a return to school was on the way. The shops would all go on about “back to school” uniforms and stationery, and my grandfather in particular would tease me about going back to school knowing how much I wanted the holidays never to end. It wasn’t that I disliked school. I enjoyed it most of the time but there was something special about those summer holidays of childhood. Of course I never really thought about how fortunate I was to have an education until I started to study history and realised that girls in particular hadn’t always had those opportunities.
Word Wenches is a blog featuring seven authors, plotting in the present, writing about the past. . . and improvising the rest. Authors include Mary Jo Putney, Patricia Rice, Anne Gracie, Susan King aka Susan Fraser King, Nicola Cornick, Andrea Penrose, & Christina Courtenay.
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