Word Wenches

Ask A Wench - The Point of Historical Romance Novels

Nicola here, introducing this month’s Ask A Wench feature. Today we’re tackling a big question which crops up a lot in different forms:

“With the world in such turmoil at the moment, what's the point of romance novels—especially historical romance novels about a past that's dead and gone?”

As readers and writers, we get this a lot: We’re accustomed to hearing: “What you read/write is frivolous/fluffy/some other disparaging word beginning with “f”. As the Wenches explain so eloquently below, this is to both miss the point and underestimate the power of romantic fiction. Read on to see exactly why, with the world in such turmoil, romance has so much to offer.

A Happy New Year!

Nicola here. Farewell to 2019 and to the "twenty tens!" As we enter a new decade, the Word Wenches would like to thank you for your continued support for the blog and wish you a very Happy New Year. Together, the Wenches and our blog readers form a community that loves chatting about history, books, writing and life in general. We look forward to many more discussions in the years ahead!

A hundred years ago in 1920, the new era was greeted with excitement in western society. In the wake of the First World War, the "Roaring Twenties" were known for a period of economic prosperity and cultural development. In London the decade was ushered in with a number of very smart black tie events as well as some less formal partying! A hundred years on we are in a very different place but who knows what this new era will bring? As long as there are new books, old favourites and friends to talk to here, we'll be good! Wishing you and your loved ones all good things for the new year and the new decade!

The Colours of Christmas

Nicola here on the third day of Christmas, talking about colours (or even colors!) For me this year, Christmas has been a very colourful occasion. White, red and gold have traditionally been the colours associated with Christmas in my home ever since I was a child and helped my grandmother decorate the tree each year. Red always reminds me of the vivid berries that you can still find in the hedgerows, feeding the birds, in the winter. Gold feels bright and regal and white is for snow, of course! White decorations arethe closest we've been to a white Christmas here in quite a while! Together they all look lovely with the green of the tree.

Before Christmas I went to a light show at my local arboretum. It was magical to stroll through the trees and watch the play of light on the bare branches, bringing out the shadows and patterns in the wood. They had recreated the Northern Lights and they rippled overhead as you walked along an avenue of huge trees. it was the most beautiful sight and quite enchanting. Meanwhile, the church in my parents' village was lit up with purple, which I discovered is the colour of advent.

Finally, my favourite Christmas present was these rather fabulous gloves with their multi-coloured trim! Overall I do feel as though I have had a beautifully-coloured and illuminated Christmas which, when it's a bit dark and cold outside, is wonderfully bright and warming. I hope your Christmas has been full of light as well.

What are your favourite colours of Christmas?

Rebranding AKA New Covers and Titles for Old Books

Nicola here. Today I’m talking about re-branding in the form of book covers and titles.  The reason: My publisher and I decided to give The Woman in the Lake a new cover and a new title for the UK e-book and I thought it might be interesting to explore why this happened. I hope this will appeal to readers who might wonder why books are sometimes rebranded, and to authors who may face the same dilemmas themselves. It’s a look behind the scenes – and a very honest one – into what happened with The Woman in the Lake.

TWITL as I call it, was published simultaneously in the UK and North America in March 2019. It’s my third “timeslip” novel, a term which in itself can cause problems for an author trying to interest an agent or publisher in a book. Some people haven’t heard of timeslip, others ask what the differences are between timeslip and time travel, some people call the books dual or multiple time stories… There can be some identity issues!

What We're Reading for November

Howdy folks. Joanna here.
Hope all those who celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday had a good one.

It's been a good month for reading, it being fall weather and brisk enough that the dog doesn't beg for a walk so much.

 

Andrea brings us a YA and a biography:

It was a strange reading month. I started and didn’t finish a couple of books, which is very rare for me. But they just didn’t catch my fancy. However, having enjoyed the Ron Chernow biography of Alexander Hamilton so much, I snatched up Washington: A Life,  his bio on George Washington, when it recently appeared on BookBub. (It won the Pulitzer Prize some years back) I’m only about a quarter of the way through it, but am really enjoying it.

 

Chernow has a wonderful knack of making his subjects come so alive. Washington’s early life is fascinating, and he comes across as a very different character from the solemn, stately president that the history books present. We see a full range of his humanity—he was a man of passions and pragmatism—and really paints a viid portrait of his many nuances. I’m very much looking forward to glomming through the rest of it in next little while.

I love Leigh Bardugo’s YAs, so I was also eagerly waiting the release of her first adult novel, Ninth House. I glommed through it, but have to confess that it wasn’t an easy read. The plotting and character development were ragged in places, and it was VERY dark and gritty—enough so, that I paused in a few places wondering whether I could continue. It didn’t have the strong band of misfit friends that she created so beautifully in the YAs, so the relationship of protagonists seemed a little disjointed.

 

BUT, as as the blurb says, it’s a tale of power, privilege, dark magic, and murder set among the Ivy League elite . . . and glimmers of Bardugo’s magical writing flickered enough in places, that I stuck with it. And as the backstory of the main character—a deeply damaged freshman young woman who suddenly finds herself trying to keep evil magic from running amuck when her senior mentor disappears—is slowly revealed, the story really begins to come together, and the bonding begins to work.

 

It’s a challenging read, so be forewarned. But I ended up liking in spite of the problems I found. It’s clearly the start of the series, and I’m hooked enough on the characters and the quest that I’ll definitely get the second book. (In the last chapter of this book, she and her friends have discovered that her mentor isn't dead, but has been swallowed by a demon . . . so the last line of this book is hard to resist. “So, who’s ready to go to Hell?”

 

Nicola offers us a fine mix:

I’ve been mixing romance and crime in my reading this month. I started with My Sister the Serial Killer, which was recommended here last month. The title in itself is enough to rouse the curiosity! It’s about Korede, whose gorgeous sister Ayoola is the serial killer of the title. Korede has been covering up for and tidying up after Ayoola for years but she’s about to reach breaking point when her sister takes a shine to the man Korede is in love with… A lot of the reviews describe this book as hilarious.

I didn’t actually find it very funny because it was pretty dark, but I did find it compulsive and the writing was very, very good. I always feel it’s hard to say I enjoyed a book like this because I found it disturbing but it was a very interesting reading experience.

Next up was The Word is Murder by Antony Horowitz. I really enjoyed the last book of his I read, The Magpie Murders, and this was just as good. It’s a modern take on the old-fashioned murder mystery, full of red herrings, misdirection, a fascinating cast of characters and a maverick detective.

Romance was provided by a timeslip novel by Melinda Hammond, called Casting Samson. Linda is an award-winning author of Regency romance (she also writes under the name Sarah Mallory) but I’ve read and enjoyed her timeslip writing before (Moonshadows) so I was really looking forward to Casting Samson.

The two time periods are contemporary and the era of the Crusades and the Knights Templar, which was a fascinating and unusual period of history to read about. The historical and modern days sections were woven together beautifully and there were two very satisfying love stories in the contemporary story. There was also a hilarious scene at a village fete which had me laughing aloud. Anyone who enjoys romances set in English villages should like this – it has a lovely and vivid cast of characters, three very attractive heroes, history and mystery! Casting Samson was previously published by HQ Digital and Melinda will be republishing it very soon – watch this space! In the meantime, here’s the link to Moonshadows.

 

Pat's here with a New York City story:

Elizabeth Gilbert is a fabulous writer who can draw the reader in with her effortless prose alone. The reviews of City of Girls caught  my interest with promises of New York City theater history in the 1940s. The opening chapter was a bit of a literary conceit, but I tolerated that. It gave the author the opportunity to write a chatty monologue, presumably to some woman she’d only met once, explaining how the narrator's relationship with the unknown woman’s father. That sounded promising.

I knew it wasn’t romance and the narrator wouldn’t end up with the father, but I was happy to go along for the ride—until midbook when the narcissistic shallow protagonist had yet to mention said gentleman but talked only of herself.

There were a lot of entertaining characters along the way, and I kept waiting for the story to coalesce into a beginning, middle, and end. Instead, I got lots of enchanting vignettes of 1940s New York that never went anywhere. So I skipped to the end, and the father showed up maybe forty pages from the end. I’ll leave it to you whether he was worth the effort. So if you don’t mind just going along for the ride with no destination in mind, read this for the history and the prose.

Anne returns to a favorite author and brings us someone new. Anne says:

 

I've recommended Juliet Marillier's novels before in this column, and her latest, The Harp of Kings, was a standout read for me this month. Juliet Marillier writes Celtic history with elements of fantasy and magic. In The Harp of Kings eighteen-year-old Liobhan and her brother Brocc are musicians training to join an elite warrior band. When they are recruited for a secret mission to find and retrieve an ancient harp, vital to the coronation of a king—and the stability of a kingdom—they are challenged by both men and magic. A wonderful novel, highly recommended.

 

My other recommendation is Ann Swinfen — The Bookseller's Tale. Recommended to me by a friend, this is a medieval mystery set in the Oxford of 1353. The small university town is still trying to recover from the aftermath of The Great Plague, several years before. When maker of books, bookseller and scrivener, Nicholas Elyot, finds the body of a student known to him, murdered and tossed into the river, he becomes involved in a search for answers, answers that are closely connected to the book trade.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Apart from the story, plot and characters -- all of which were intelligent and engaging -- I learned a lot about this time period and place that I hadn't known. The minute I finished The Bookseller's Tale, I bought the next in the series, The Novice's Tale and gobbled it down. I've since finished the series. Best read in order.

 

 

Mary Jo brings me cats, which is always a delight.

 

Murder at the Cat Show by Marian Babson

I've been in the mood for light reading, and when I saw a cozy mystery by Marian Babson on BookBub, I snapped it up because I read and enjoyed it years ago.  While I remember the general plot, I'd forgotten most of the details, so I enjoyed it all over again.  The story is narrated by Doug Perkins, who runs a small public relations firm with his friend Gerry Tate.  They’re hired to publicize a London cat show.  

Doug has no opinions about cats one way or the other, but he soon gets sucked into discovering celebrity working cat and their doting owners. There's a murder, Doug gets enslaved by a peremptory young Siamese, and much fun is had all around. <G>  Very enjoyable, especially if you like cats. 

A Holiday by Gaslight by Mimi Matthews

This is an enjoyable Victorian Christmas novella, a nice light bite at a busy season. As of this writing, it's 99 cents, though I don't know how long that will last.  Here's the blurb:

Sophie Appersett is quite willing to marry outside of her class to ensure the survival of her family. But the darkly handsome Mr. Edward Sharpe is no run-of-the-mill London merchant. He's grim and silent. A man of little emotion--or perhaps no emotion at all. After two months of courtship, she's ready to put an end to things.

 But severing ties with her taciturn suitor isn't as straightforward as Sophie envisioned. Her parents are outraged. And then there's Charles Darwin, Prince Albert, and that dratted gaslight. What's a girl to do except invite Mr. Sharpe to Appersett House for Christmas and give him one last chance to win her? Only this time there'll be no false formality. This time they'll get to know each other for who they really are!

 

And me, I'll round out the month of November with a paranormal.

I don't read a lot of story collections, but I picked up a couple in November, doing the mind-broadening thing.

One struck me in particular. It's Small Magics by the writing team of Ilona Andrews. This is five or six stories set in the her fictive universe. You got yer magic, yer warrior women,yer  shape shifters, post-Apocalypse world, folks fighting with swords and adventure in general. They give us a couple YA stories and a couple love stories. All of them are lovely.

Can I call the stories warm and funny when they’re full of monsters and bloodshed?

Anyway, I enjoyed this lot and it might be just what you need if you don’t have time to sit down and concentrate for a long stretch.

 

So. what are you reading lately that you think other folks might like hearing about?

 

 

Drawing Writing Inspiration from Family History with Elizabeth St.John

Nicola here. Today I welcome historical author Elizabeth St.John to the Word Wenches. I first met Elizabeth at the Historical Novel Conference in Oxford a few years ago. I confess to stalking her a little (in a completely non-sinister way!) because I knew she had a family connection to Lydiard Park, the glorious 18^th century stately home in Swindon near where I live, and I was desperate to meet her and chat about Lydiard and its history. It’s been a huge pleasure to get to know Elizabeth and discover her writing. Her books are set in the 17^th century, in an intensely turbulent period of English history, and they are intricate, immersive and beautifully-written. I’ve just started reading Written In Their Stars and I am hooked. Elizabeth evokes a rich historical world that draws you in from the very start of the book. Here she is to tell us more about her writing.

Elizabeth, welcome to the Word Wench Blog! Please tell us about your personal connection to the family you are writing about.

The St.John family in The Lydiard Chronicles share a common great-grandmother with me: Margaret Beauchamp, who was also grandmother to Henry VII. The seventeenth century family thought she was a very useful ancestor to increase their standing in society, and didn’t hesitate to use their “royal connection” to further their position. Sir John St.John, the First Baronet, was particularly enthralled, and thus commissioned the Polyptych in 1615, which stands in St. Mary’s Church at Lydiard Park. It’s an extraordinary monument, full of beautiful portraits which inspired my work—plus a gorgeous family tree, complete with Margaret at the top.

What We're Reading - October

Happy almost-Halloween! It’s Nicola here with this month’s Word Wench reading choices. Here in the Northern Hemisphere the nights are drawing in and it’s time to curl up cosily beside the fire with a good book so what could be better than sharing our suggestions here, favourites new and old!

I’ve actually been getting ahead of myself, already reading a Christmas book this month, A Wedding in December by the very talented Sarah Morgan. I love Sarah Morgan’s writing and I enjoyed this book very much indeed. It was deliciously funny as well as sexy and romantic, and Sarah also mixes in some very thought-provoking observations on the subject of family relationships. It’s set in Aspen where Rosie White is having a whirlwind wedding to the gorgeous Dan. Rosie’s elder sister Kate, worried that her impulsive sister is making a huge mistake, is trying to persuade her to cancel the wedding, whilst Rosie’s parents are trying to put on a happy, united front even though they are on the verge of divorce. I loved all the characters but especially Rosie’s parents Maggie and Nick, whose attempts to appear happy and in love were both hilarious and moving. I really love the way that Sarah Morgan goes right to the heart of emotional conflicts we can all identify with, and wraps it all up in a hopeful, heart-warming happy ending that’s just perfect for Christmas.

 

Susan: Most of my October reading time went to little distractions like kids getting married and kids moving, but I did manage to finish some books I had set aside when the madness began. One of them, Christina Lauren's My Favorite Half-Night Stand, puts a fresh spin on a classic yummy romance, exploring online dating, the temptations of an alter ego, and the perils when the guise crumbles and gets in the way of a growing romance. Millie is a young college professor whose closest friends are a group of lovable, nerdy guys who are also college professors. When they have to attend a gala event, they're at a loss for ready dates, so they agree to try online dating to find matches. Millie, emotionally vulnerable, feels safe in this bunch, and very close to her best friend, Reid, who is smart, reserved, and very sexy. They get even closer unexpectedly one night, setting up all sorts of complications. Reid is connecting with online matches, but doesn't realize that Millie is too--with him, under an invented name. As Catherine, Millie can open up emotionally more easily than face-to-face. This is a Roxanne story, a story of reaching past limitations toward emotional maturity and honesty. It's also clever and funny, with endearing, realistic characters, a sexy and heartfelt romance developing, along with the engaging naturalism that Christina Lauren (a writing duo) is so adept at creating. Another thumbs up for CL from me, and I'll go on to read more of their books! This was a print read for me, and I have to say it was a relief on the eyes and for the brain--reading more digitally lately by necessity now, I really feel the difference when I have the chance to sink down into a paperback with all its simple, satisfying presence. 

In audio, I listened to Mary Stewart's The Moonspinners. I've read all of her books a bajillion times by now, but I've never listened to them, and most of them are now available. Listening to one of my most-favorite books ever was a wonderful experience--the lovely nuances of Stewart's language and the subtleties of character and plot are highlighted in new ways. This one is beautifully narrated by Daphne Kouma, who is a superb narrator--and fluent in Greek, adding a fresh new dimension to the story. I loved it! 

Andrea: I‘ve had a really different sort of reading month. I've mentioned on several occasions as
I’m not as into reading fantasy/magic as some of the other Wenches. Nonetheless, I’m very open to dipping my toes in the genre when I hear of something intriguing.I had read really good things about Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows, a wildly popular YA fantasy novel. And then, when I read the synopsis of her first adult novel, which sounds really cool, I decided get a taste of her writing with the YA,s as I hadn’t yet gotten my hands on the new book. Wow—am I glad I did! Six of Crows is a classic “caper” trope. A ragtag band of teenage misfits—basically guttersnipes making ends meets as petty criminals in a Game of Thrones type of quasi medieval world (though there are some tanks and powerful armaments created by a type of magical metalworkers) undertakes an impossible mission to break into an impenetrable fortress. If they bring back the requested “item”, they’ll be rich beyond their wildest dreams. 

I found Bardugo’s character building just amazing. The band are a mixed bag of young people, each damaged by a trauma and so vulnerable and wary of friendships. And yet they are alll survivors, with grit resilience and strength. The leader, a brilliant, cagey, and sometimes cruel young punk picks his team for the specific skills he needs to get the job. He couldn’t care less whether they all get along. And so begins a very dangerous journey. The plotting and the twists are fabulous, and the writing is really sharp and compelling. Most of all, the development of the relationships between them is incredibly well done, as are the backstories that Bardugo weaves in about each of the kids. I’m now huge fan. In fact, I immediately went and glommed the second book, Crooked Kingdom, which continues their adventures.

Anne here. October was a very busy month for me, and consequently I haven't read as much as I usually do, but prompted by a discussion on last month's WWR I have been rereading and enjoying some of Anne McCaffrey's Dragons of Pern series. The fantasy world where dragons hatch from eggs and bond psychically with a human, and they work together to save people from a destructive menace called "thread" is a very appealing one. If you haven't read it, and think you'd like to try a bit of fantasy, here's book 1 in the series.

Pat: 

AT YOUR SERVICE, Sandra Antonelli

This is classified as a romantic comedy mystery, I believe, which is why I picked it up—that and the opening pages. It’s also a spy thriller, which would have put me off, but I was too far into it by then. Mae is an Irish butler to Kitt, a man who is obviously into international security of some sort. Mae is also his landlord, which makes for an entertaining relationship right there. When Mae mysteriously inherits a fortune from a husband who’s been dead sixteen years, life becomes interesting—and dangerous.

The dialogue is very dry, which I adore. I love that our heroine is over forty and a mean fighter when necessary. The romance isn’t easy given their situations and characters. While the action is swift and decisive, they do an awful lot of maudlin muddling over their relationship. But the characterization was so very entertaining—much like an old Nick and Nora partnership (Dashiell Hammett’s THIN MAN)—that I forgave them the muddling about.

Mary Jo here.  I've been locked in mortal combat with a recalcitrant book, and as always when in such straits, I'm mostly rereading stories I've enjoyed in the past.  Because  I've read them before, it's easier to put them down and get back to work.

As part of my rereading, I dug out my stash of Dick Francis mystery novels, of which I have many.  He was a retired champion jump jockey and his books were all set in and around the world of British racing.  The mysteries are clever, well written, and told in first person by honorable, likable men with a high pain threshold. <G> 

I just reread one of my favorites, Wild Horses. Young director Thomas Lyons is shooting a movie in Newmarket, the racing capital of Britain, and the story of a decades old crime in the town turns out to have dangerous reverberations in Thomas's production and in his life.  Francis really does his research and the details of how movies are made are convincing and fascinating. Plus, there are horses. <G> 

I've had an interesting experience in rereading two series of connected novellas, many of which were mentioned here when they were first released because I'm not the only Wench who likes these excellent authors. 

The first series was the Penric and Desdemona novellas by Lois McMaster Bujold, set in her world of the five gods. Penric is a very likable cleric who is inhabited by a demon that lived in a dozen different females before it jumped to him.  It's like having a dozen bossy aunts in your head.  <G>  The series is up to seven now: Penric's Demon, Penric and the Shaman, Penric's Fox, Penric's Mission, Mira's Last Dance, The Prisoner of Limnos, and The Orphans of Raspay.  There is a nice romance, but a lot of the fun is the relationship between Penric and Desdemona. 

 The other series is the Innkeeper Chronicles by Ilona Andrews.  The premise is that Earth is a way station for transiting aliens, and Innkeepers are humans who host the aliens, and who have magical power within their inns.  The Innkeepers  job is to keep their guests safe and not let regular humans know of the existence of the inns and the broader universe.  The first three books are told by Dina, a new young innkeeper struggling to get her long dormant inn up and running, which means she'll accept any and all guests--including handsome vampire warriors who get drunk on coffee and run naked through her orchard.  <G>  The fourth book is about Dina's sister Maud. 

The stories are Clean Sweep, One Fell Sweep, Sweep in Peace, and Sweep of the Blade.  All that sweeping refers to the innkeepers' magical and frequently morphing brooms.  There are two strong romances in the course of these books, and a lot of humor. 

 I read all of these short novels as they were originally published, usually about a year apart.  I enjoyed them all, which is why I always read the new releases, but reading the stories consecutively was a whole new level of enjoyment.  These are very good authors, and they keep the sweep of the characters and situations flowing beautifully.  The result is like reading one delicious, lengthy, episodic novel.  Or rather, two of them!  Both of these series are worth trying if you like clever, light-hearted fantasy with romance. 

Joanna: I’ve been reading Rosemary Sutcliff. A blast from the past, as it were. When I was eight or nine I glommed onto every book of hers I could get my hands on. I think she's the author who led me to love historical fiction.

Outcast is the story of Beric. Just every durn bad thing that can happen to somebody in this historical setting happens to him. Shipwreck, expulsion from his Roman-era British village one step ahead of a lynch mob, kidnapping, slavery, sentenced to the galley, shipwreck, drowning-near-as-makes-no-difference … He even has to give his dog away. (The dog ends up fine.)

If I were looking for a tourist brochure to lure me to visit the Classical Roman Empire, this is not so much it. But it’s a cracking fine adventure tale. He’s a brave kid and he deserves his happy ending.

The whole time I was reading I kept asking myself, “What else can possibly happen to him?”

So that’s what we’re reading this month! What are your recommendations, spooky or otherwise?

Ask A Wench—October 2019

Anne here, wishing all our Canadian friends a Happy Thanksgiving, or Joyeux Action de Graces.  (photo Ruth P. Peterkin - Fotolia)

I'm also hosting our monthly "Ask a Wench" feature, and this month the question we're responding to is: "Do you have any particular subjects or themes you often return to in your novels?"

Pat here: I do not set out to write themes, but if a reviewer asks me for the theme of my newest release, after some consideration, I’ll almost always say it’s a search for justice. And yes, I include the fight against prejudice under that heading, because that’s always a huge part of my books. Usually, it’s women seeking fair treatment.

In my Magic series, I give this a fantasy spin by making my women psychic—so rather than being treated badly just for their sex, they’re treated badly because they’re weird, which covers a lot of territory, including being female.

My men are almost always seeking justice for someone or something. I usually have a mystery/action element requiring a villain to be brought to justice, whether that person is a lawyer who defrauds, a contractor who cheats, or a killer to be caught. But in my latest series, there’s an underlying element of economic injustice, because that’s so much on my mind with the news these days. A writer’s mind is a sponge—it’s difficult for us to avoid absorbing the real world!

Nicola here: My timeslip novels tend to be inspired by “lost” figures from history, usually women who were so often a footnote in a male-dominated narrative or whose stories have been told in a particular way. I like shining a different light on them. A good example is Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, whose story I wrote in House of Shadows.

The Joy of Unexpected Books!

Nicola here, musing on the pleasure of discovering unexpected reads. Last week I visited Tredegar House, which is a fabulous 17^th century mansion in Wales, once the home of the Morgan family. Like so many of these places, the house is magnificent and the family history riveting. There’s also a connection to Ashdown House, which made it even more interesting for me so I wandered around looking at the family portraits and admiring the rooms before heading off to the gift shop and the tearoom!

Most National Trust properties these days have a second hand bookshop and browsing through the history section I came across a non-fiction book about the Norman Conquest. It was a “retired” library book called 1066 The Hidden History of the Bayeux Tapestry. I hadn’t studied the Norman Conquest of England since I was at college and hadn’t read much about it in the intervening time, so this looked intriguing and I’m also a total sucker for books that promise to solve a history mystery or tell me some sort of secret I didn’t know. That night I sat down to read it, not really expecting a thriller-style read, and I was totally hooked. Even though it was non-fiction it read like a page-turner, putting forward a story that challenged the traditional interpretation of the Bayeux Tapestry as a piece of Norman propaganda and suggesting it had a secret hidden message showing the Anglo Saxon side of the story. It was pretty convincing and I loved it.

One episode in the book particularly caught my interest. It was talking about how the tapestry had survived from 1066 until the present day, which is pretty astonishing when you think about it. It had some fairly close escapes, most notably during the French Revolution when some of the people of Bayeux wanted to rip it up to use it to cover their carts! Soon after that, though, it became a propaganda tool again, this time for Napoleon.

What We're Reading

Susanna here, considering it more than a little ironic that I should find myself in charge of this month’s What-We’re-Reading post, since having been caught in the whirl of activity that accompanies seeing one child off to university (in Europe, since my children never do things by halves) whilst fighting the lure of the ever-present Research Rabbit Holes that keep opening up for my current novel, and trying to pack for a Very Rapidly Approaching trip to Scotland, I’ve had no time for reading anything you’d want to hear about.

Fortunately, my fellow Wenches have plenty of suggestions for your bedside reading stacks:

Anne here.

I had the very great pleasure of a pre-read of Mary Jo Putney's Once a Spy for an interview on the wenches on September 25th. I read it and thoroughly enjoyed it — Mary Jo is so good at weaving love stories and action together. If you missed the interview, it's here. 

Sharon Shinn is a fantasy author I really enjoy, and I subscribe to her newsletter so when her new "Echo" series came out, I grabbed them as soon as they were available. Shinn writes very appealing characters, and her world-building is superb-- and fascinating.

In this world, aristocrats have "echoes" — creatures that are exact copies of themselves, that imitate every movement, but who don't speak or apparently think. The echoes appear soon after a baby is born — first you have one baby, then a blink later there are four, though only one is crying. It's a fair bit to swallow, but fun to imagine, and Shinn makes it work.

Echo in Onyx is the first in the series and the story is told from the point of view of Biranna, a young country girl who comes to the city in search of work, and ends up becoming maid to Lady Marguerite, who is one of the candidates for a royal marriage. I devoured it and went on to do the same for the following books in the series.

Andrea here.

I had been hearing such good things about Bringing Down the Duke, by Evie Dunmore, that I moved it to the top of my TBR pile. And oh, am I glad I did— I just loved it! Dunmore that a very familiar trope—the stiff, reserved gentleman who’s vowed never fall victim to love finding his heart won’t listen to his head—and gives it freshness and depth. At first blush, the characters appear familiar too. There’s the brilliant but destitute heroine, who is forced to work as an unpaid governess for her odious dumb-as-dirt cousin when her country vicar father dies. Desperate to escape, Annabelle finds an ad offering a scholarship to Oxford—the catch is, she has to spend some time working for a group of women agitating for women’s voting rights by approaching important men in government (the year is 1879) and lobbying them to consider the issue. She unwittingly picks the infamous Duke of Montgomery—again, the stereotypical cold, aloof, imperious aristocrat—as her target, and, well, things immediately get VERY interesting! The dialogue is wonderfully witty and clever. But it’s the depth and complexity of the characters that made the book so special for me. Their vulnerabilities, and conflicts are revealed beautifully, and the book becomes much more than a funny romp of manners as they slowly help each other overcome their fears and discover the redemptive power of love. I highly recommend it!

On a totally different note, I've also have been reading the biography of Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow (the book on which the musical is based.) I knew Hamilton was a very influential thinker, but I hadn't realized just what an extraordinary person he was, and how many facets of shaping country he was involved in. It’s beautifully written, and the story of his life is quite remarkable. You get a wonderful look at colonial America, and the other fmaous personages of the day. (Hamilton was a protege of George Washington, and despite their butting of heads at times, they remained friends lifelong friends.) It’s history at its best—combining a picture of the era as well as a portrait of an absolutely amazing individual. Again, highly recommended!

Nicola here.

I’ve been waiting with bated breath to get hold of the new Robert Harris thriller, The Second Sleep. He is one of my auto-buy authors and never more so than when he is writing a historical novel. I admire his skill at creating tension and page turning quality allied with some really elegant prose. So as soon as I got the book I plunged in. It’s hard to describe the plot without giving away a massive spoiler from the very start so I’ll just say that in the year 1468 a young priest, Christopher Fairfax, is sent to an isolated village in Devon to oversee the burial of the parish priest. Once there he untangles a series of mysteries that lead him to question everything he has learned about the past, which in turn has a profound effect on his life and his future. Everything is not as it seems in this “medieval” world… 

I liked Christopher very much and there were some interesting other characters and some good twists in the story. The sense of atmosphere is very strong. It’s fair to say this is a book I thought about for a long time afterwards. With its themes of memory and history and religion it was very powerful and I found it quite dark and disturbing. In the end, though, for me it couldn’t quite live up to some of Robert Harris’ other books and I was a bit disappointed. If anyone else has read it I would love to know what they think!

My non-fiction read this month was Lovell Our Dogge: The Life of Viscount Lovell, closest friend of Richard III and failed regicide by Michele Schindler. I’d say this is a must for anyone who is interested in Richard III and the events around his life and the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower. It’s a very well-written book that reads like a novel and I was completely engaged. It’s astonishing that there hasn’t been a biography of Francis Lovell before when he was so closely involved in such a significant period of history. Francis does, of course, have a walk on part in a number of historical novels set in this period, such as the Sunne in Splendour, but it was fascinating to read the real story of this historical figure.

Last but not at all least, after all the recommendations here, I picked up a copy of The Work of Art by Mimi Matthews and enjoyed it very much indeed! It’s a really beautiful love story and I enjoyed the depth and richness of the characters and their relationship. Wonderful and satisfying!

Mary Jo here, and in a fantasy + romance mode.

Firstly, I want to enthusiastically endorse Anne's recommendation of Sharon Shinn's new Echo trilogy. Shinn is an amazing world builder and her stories always have good romances, and these books are no exception. I read all three on my recent vacation, and wish there were more!

My own recommendation this month is for Sorcery and Cecilia, by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevemer, friends and fantasy writers in Minnesota. Think Georgette Heyer Regency with magic.

Set in 1817, this is an epistolary novel as cousins and best friends Cecilia and Kate exchange letters after they're separated when Kate is packed off to London for her Season and Cecy is left home and bored in the country. Each author writes one of the main characters. (I think Wrede is Cecilia and Stevemer is Kate, though I won't swear to it.) Magic is part of their world, including a Royal College of Magicians.

The book is light and funny as the young ladies meet young gentleman, worry about their wardrobes, and find themselves involved with magic and annoyingly bossy men who are nonetheless appealing. <G> There are mysteries to be solved, social events to be attended, and budding romance. Great fun.

I first read this book years ago and enjoyed it thoroughly, and recently I found that the authors had written two more books in the series. The second book is called The Grand Tour, and it starts with the double wedding of Cecilia and Kate and their men. Their husbands are best friends and both former officers of Wellington's in the Peninsular Wars. They take off on a joint honeymoon and get drawn into uncovering a perilous plot that threatens the peace of Europe. As one does. <G>

A good part of the fun of this book is that even though both couples are madly in love with their mates, they are learning how to be married. (Since Cecy and Kate are traveling together, they aren't exchanging letters; Cecy's contributions are part of her later deposition with the Royal College of Magicians, and Kate is writing in her day book. The effect is the same as in the first book).

The third book is The Mislaid Magician and is set ten years later. Cecy and her husband are up north looking for a missing German surveyor/magician while Kate and Thomas ride herd on all their magically inclined children. In this book, the husbands also exchange letters.

All three books are bundled together in a box set. My favorite is the first, but they're all good fun, and the authors are pretty darned good at their Regency details!

Pat here.

I am beyond tired of publishers limiting genre fiction to certain parameters that have worn thin. I love romance and cozy mysteries, but right now, I can’t find a single original story. So when PopCo by Scarlett Thomas popped up after I bought a new iPad, and I couldn’t remember reading it, I gave it a go. If you read the opening, you’ll understand my level of desperation that I kept slogging through that morass.

Because it contains a lot of interesting Information (I researched codes and ciphers for Devilish Montague, remember) about logic, math, and code problems, I took my time with it. Probably the first quarter of the book is getting to know the thoughts of the protagonist, who is a very human confusion of hopes, doubts, and fears.

Essentially, the protag works for a major toy company designing new toys. At the last minute, she’s included in a month-long retreat where other people from the company—oddly, not all toy designers—are immersed in how to market toys, particularly to teenage girls. Our heroine has an extremely odd background of family code-breakers and mathematicians and treasure hunters, so creating toys is just one more fun fantasy for which she’s paid very well.

Except as the retreat continues, she comes to realize they are creating brainwashing techniques in the name of profit. And then all the odd things happening in her life, in the company, with all her new-found friends, start snowballing until she finally realizes what she wants out of life. It’s a very odd book with all the puzzles explained by the end and with a happy-in-its-own-way ending. Read it just for the sheer pleasure of reading.

There you have it — our round-up of Wenchly reads and recommendations. Now, what are you reading this month?

Return to Downton Abbey

Nicola here! Today, in honour of the recent release of the Downton Abbey film, I’m reposting a blog from a few years ago when I took Guide Dog Puppy Rochester on a visit to Highclere Castle. I haven’t seen the film yet but I’m looking forward to it. So here, to celebrate, is my updated post from 2012:

"Last week I had the pleasure of a visit to Highclere Castle in Hampshire, which is the location where much of the hit TV series Downton Abbey is filmed. I was pretty excited about this trip as not only do I enjoy the TV programme very much I also love visiting historic houses so this was combining two of my favourite things.

With Downton Abbey the house is far more than just a setting; it feels like a character in itself. As we drove towards it the house was immediately recognisable. It’s enormous (fifty bedrooms!) and grand in a way that only a Victorian mansion can be (it was built in 1838). It’s not the first building on the site. There was a medieval hall at Highclere, a manor house and a classical Georgian mansion before the transformation that created the current castle. It is said that the grand central tower of the house cost a fortune and Lord Caernarvon’s land agent warned his employer that the plans were “pregnant with the most alarming danger to your Lordship’s pocket.” Despite this, the 3^rd Earl was determined on a grand plan and when the house was finished it dominated its surroundings in the most dramatic way.

Before we went on our tour of the house we strolled across the parkland and admired the cedar trees that were part of the landscaped grounds created in the 18^th century. We had Rochester the Guide Dog Puppy with us and as he is a Yellow Labrador we thought we would do our own version of the Downton Abbey opening credits, filmed on my mobile phone with my husband standing in for Lord Grantham. Alas Rochester was not as majestic as Lord Grantham’s Labrador Isis, who had her own storyline in the second series, but he did love wandering through the park. Although NBC was also filming that day at Highclere I think I can claim that Rochester was the star of our particular show. He was made very welcome by staff and visitors alike and the sight of this small guide dog puppy descending Highclere’s fabulously grand central staircase as though he was to the manor born was very funny. On his way out he even met Lord Caernarvon, who commended him for being a very good dog!

The interior of the house was also instantly recognisable from the TV programme. I loved the dining room, where so many of those splendid dinners in Downton Abbey take place, and the magnificent oak staircase that ascends from the Saloon up to the Gallery and the Gallery Bedrooms. It is around this landing that some of the bedrooms are situated that are used in the filming. We saw “Lady Grantham’s room”, “Lady Edith’s room” and “Lady Sybil’s room” and also the room given to the cad and bounder Kamal Pamuk in the first series. This is decorated with bright red flock wallpaper and is known as the Stanhope Room. It was refurbished in 1895 for the visit of the then Prince of Wales. It was also great to meet some of the room stewards who had their own anecdotes to tell of the Downton Abbey cast and the filming. Mrs Patmore the cook, Mr Carson the butler and the Thomas the footman were their favourites!

Highclere wears its Downton Abbey connections lightly with only a few signboards in the rooms to tell visitors of a specific link to the TV series. This leaves plenty of room for the “real” history of the house. I loved the Library, which resembled a gentleman’s club and was furnished with Georgian and Regency desks and tables. My favourite room though was the lovely south facing drawing room, which felt warm and intimate because it was comparatively small. I could quite imagine the ladies withdrawing there for tea and a chat!

The Castle became a centre of political life during the late Victorian era and in the 20^th century it saw different uses during the two World Wars. During the First World War it was a hospital for wounded officers. In this the storyline in the TV series mirrored the real history of the house. 

My favourite part of the visit was discovering about the life of a servant at Highclere during the Edwardian era. Once again, Downton Abbey mirrored reality perfectly. Guests at Highclere ranged from Royalty to politicians, Egyptologists to aviators. Behind the green baize door (there really was one, and a stone flight of steps leading down to the servants’ hall) the butler reigned supreme with Lord Caernarvon’s valet and the housekeeper also at the top of the pecking order. The butler ran the castle, looked after the wine cellar and waited on the family at dinner. He was also expected to announce visitors, take calling cards, escort departing visitors from the premises, organise the post and oversee the secure closing of the house each night. The valet managed the Earl's personal accounts as well as his wardrobe and travelled with him. The Highclere footmen had navy coloured livery and buttons sporting the family crest. They were all required to be clean-shaven and the more handsome and presentable the better it reflected on the family! 

After lunch in a marquee on the lawn – with Rochester being offered a drink of water out of special Highclere china! – we took a tour of the gardens. The Monks’ Garden has surviving Georgian walls and arches and is a beautiful and tranquil place to walk. The grounds are dotted with "follies;" decorative ruins in classical style designed to enhance the view.

We finished the day climbing Beacon Hill to the grave of the 5^th Earl of Caernarvon, the Egyptologist who with Howard Carter, discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun. Highclere Castle was framed in the distance, the perfect view to end a wonderful day."

An update on Rochester - He qualified as a guide dog and went to work in London. He retired from active service this year!

You may have read that Lord and Lady Caernarvon are offering visitor the chance to stay at the castle via AirB&B and there is a private tour of the house and grounds and special afternoon tea thrown in as well. I imagine they will be inundated with applications!

Did you enjoy the Downton Abbey series and have you seen the film yet or isn’t it your cup of (Earl Grey) tea? How would you like to stay at Highclere?

 

Travel Tips and Pitfalls to Avoid

Pat here: As writers, the wenches travel. We travel for research. We travel for conferences. We travel for fun. So we thought we'd exchange a few of our favorite travel tips and see what happened--and apparently, it's all about the luggage! (Personally, I've always craved Terry Pratchett's suitcase with legs!)

Mary Jo:

 I could write a whole column about this myself!  But I'll stick to saying that it's best to never have more luggage than you can control with your own two hands.  I've seen inexperienced travelers juggling half a dozen different bags of different sizes, which is a recipe for disaster.

Stranded!

Nicola here, talking about the unexpected delights of being stranded in a remote community. It’s a familiar and popular trope in books, whether it’s being marooned in the snow with a handsome hero or, in crime novels, stuck in an eerie house with a bunch of suspects, but I’ve always wondered what it would really be like to be stranded somewhere. When I was a small child, we went on a family trip to the Lake District at Christmas time and did get stuck in the snow. We all ended up rattling around in an empty hotel – they opened it up specially for us – and it felt like a great adventure to me but then I didn’t have to work out the logistics of how we were going to get home! I suspect that Wench readers in countries with more extreme weather than the UK are used to that sort of thing!

Last month, on our holiday in Alaska, we got stranded again. Our trip was heavily dependent on
the Alaska Marine Highway, the ferry system that takes you all the way along the coast. We started out in Juneau on the MV Columbia and travelled up to Skagway, Sitka and various other intriguing ports along the coast. It was fabulous – along with admiring the stunning scenery we met and chatted to some very interesting people; locals who used the ferry system for their work, holiday-makers like us, a big family on their way to a wedding, lots of other very interesting people doing very interesting things. We disembarked on Wrangell Island to stay for 5 days with the plan of hopping back on another ferry after that to take us down to Prince Rupert in BC.

However, we’d been only a day in Wrangell when we heard that the ferries were on strike. There was no way we were going to be able to get the ferry out of Wrangell, which, of course, had implications for all of the rest of our trip. We weren’t the only ones by any means. There were stories of towns along the coast where they were putting stranded travellers up in school and church halls because there wasn’t enough accommodation for everyone. Alaska Airways put on a special flight to help a stranded school party get home. We hoped that the wedding guests we’d met along the way had all made it in time for the ceremony even if they couldn’t get home afterwards! For all these villages and towns along the coast, especially those with no road access, the ferry is literally a lifeline, and necessary for food supplies to be delivered and businesses to run and all sorts of other communications.

We were very lucky. We were staying in a lovely float house on the harbour and the owner very kindly told us we could stay as long as we needed. Our neighbours, living on the other boats, generously shared their freshly-caught prawns with us so there was no danger of us starving! The shops and museum in Wrangell provided plenty of things to do and we got to know people far better than we would have done if we’d just been passing through. Meanwhile we tried to find some options that would enable us to stick to our itinerary as best we could. The scheduled flights were all fully booked as there was only one a day and they went in the wrong direction; we realised it would take us four more flights to get back to where we were supposed to be! We couldn’t drive since we were on an island… There weren’t any other boats going south to Prince Rupert. Then one of our new friends came up with a suggestion: The local air charter company could squeeze us in to their schedule as a favour if we were prepared to be flexible in terms of when we could go.

As the ferry company had very kindly refunded us our costs, chartering a light aircraft was possible but then we hit the next problem. The weather was awful and a small plane couldn’t fly in it. We’d have to wait, which didn’t help my “nervous flyer” stress! Finally a clear day arrived. We chartered our very own aeroplane complete with standard-issue hero-style pilot to take us to Prince Rupert. Once I’d got over my nerves I almost enjoyed it. The views were amazing and there was a lot less queuing than on a scheduled flight but for lots of reasons I can’t see it becoming a regular thing!

I guess the lessons we learned from a real-life stranded situation was how friendly, helpful and kind people were and also how interesting it was to have time to get to know a place better than we might have done on a shorter visit. These days, with improved communication links it’s a lot more unlikely people are going to be castaway on an island for years, or stranded in a remote wilderness for months at a time although it is still possible.

In the past it was often poor weather that would maroon our ancestors somewhere isolated. Fog as well as snow was a particular hazard. As early as the 13^th century, the government records show concerns over air pollution in London from the burning of sea coal and by the mid 17^th century the combination of natural mist and fog in the Thames Valley plus the industrial smoke had given rise to the term “London Particular.” In the Regency the term “pea soup” was coined to describe “a fog as thick and as yellow as the pea-soup of the eating house.” In December 1813 the Prince Regent set out from Hatfield House to visit the Marquis of Salisbury but the fog was too thick for him to proceed. One of his outriders fell in a ditch and he was obliged to turn back. Meanwhile, the Maidenhead coach overturned in the fog and various other carriages drove off the road, ending up down alleyways and in gardens. Coachmen ended up leading their horses.

I used the pea soup fog idea to inspire a short story set in Bath, and the idea of being stranded by snow in another Regency short story. It’s definitely a trope that I enjoy reading and writing!

Have you ever been stranded anywhere, and if so how did you cope? Is it a theme you enjoy reading about in a book?

Travels with my History Books

Nicola here, enjoying being back at home after an epic trip to Alaska and Canada. When I travel I do like to read up on the history of the places I'm visiting and to seek out historical sites - museums, old houses, monuments, battlefields, as well as experiencing as much as I can of a place as it is now. So today I'm sharing a bit of a whistle stop travelogue and I hope you enjoy it!

We arrived in Juneau Alaska twenty two hours after setting off from home and gratefully settled into our beautiful bed and breakfast place. Suitably restored by a long sleep, we went out to explore the city. I guess the first thing that impressed us was the location; it was a gorgeous day and the mountains and the water looked simply stunning. What a beautiful setting the city has as well as a rich history. I thought St Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church, built in 1894, was very striking. It has strong connections to both the native Tinglit and the European settlers, so this was my first history stop. Another quirky bit of Juneau history that I loved was the story of Patsy Ann, a bull terrier who came to the town in 1929. Although she was deaf she could tell when the steamships were coming in and would trot down to the docks to meet them, earning her the title of "Official Greeter of Juneau, Alaska!"

From Juneau we travelled up to Skagway on the ferry. Skagway still had something of the rough and ready feel of a frontier town which felt very authentic to the story of the Klondike Gold Rush. The first boatload of prospecters landed there in summer 1897 and by the autumn the town had developed from a row of tents to a place with well-laid-out streets, a number of frame buildings, stores, saloons, gambling houses, dance houses and a population of about 20,000. There were rich stories of lawlessness and profligate behaviour and equally compelling tales of the hardship many prospectors went through on the trail to the gold fields. Some of the old building remain and really conjure the raffish air of the old town. Something I hadn't appreciated though, was that the gold rush was over so quickly; by 1900 it had ended and Skagway was in danger of becoming a ghost town, although the coming of the railroad fortunately gave it a new purpose. We took some photographs in black and white to be in keeping with the historical atmosphere!

Our next stop, via the Alaska Marine Highway, was the city of Wrangell where we were staying for 5 days in the most gorgeous little float house in the harbour. As well as giving us the chance to visit the Anan Bear observatory, this stop also took us to the Le Conte Glacier, and the town of Petersburg. We'd never seen bears and the chance to watch them in the wild was amazing. Later in our trip we had the unexpected experience of meeting a bear when we were out on a walk on our own, and fortunately we remembered our bear training! We were behind a barrier when we took this photo, by the way, in case anyone thinks we stopped on the path to take a picture!

Petersburg was a very interesting place, like so many other settlements it had been a Tinglit fishing camp for hundreds of years before the European settlers arrived, in this case Norwegians who established a sawmill and cannery. Petersburg is known as "Little Norway" and the Scandinavian influence there is still strong. There's a great little museum, the Clausen Memorial Museum, that has traditional costumes on display and there is also a wonderful tradition of "rosemaling" in the town, which is decorative art that originated in Norway in the 18th century. It's so beautiful! There are painted panels on shops and houses and it's very evocative.

Alaska was wonderful and we'd love to return to travel further north and see more of the state. On this occasion though, we were heading south, down to British Columbia. In Vancouver I zoomed in on the Roedde House Museum, which is beautifully restored heritage house in the city's West End. Gustav Roedde settled in Vancouver in 1888 and he became the city's first bookbinder. There was a real appetite for culture and information in the growing city and within 5 years, Gustav had been successful enough to commission the architect Francis Rattenbury to build him a very stylish house! This has been restored and preserved to reflect late Victorian family life and it reflects the age in perfect detail. It feels as though you are stepping back in time when you walk through the front door and as always it's the little details of day to day life that are so fascinating - the children's toys and the family photographs drew me into their lives and even the charred wood over the doorway told the story of Christmas 1913 when the Christmas tree with real candles on it caught fire! Luckily the Vancouver fire department was just round the corner and the fire fighters arrived quickly and saved the house.

On to Toronto, then, via The Canadian, and a four day rail trip across Canada which was awesome. My final historical visit of the holiday was to the Fort York Historic Site, Canada's largest collection of original War of 1812 buildings and the 1813 battle site. I'd used the 1812-1814 war as background in one of my early Regency novels and it was so interesting to remind myself of the history and learn more about it. Fort York has a palpable sense of atmosphere which I think you find at a lot of battle sites. It was quite haunting. Even now, sandwiched between the railway and the freeway, it feels as though you're stepping back in time. I particularly loved the re-enactment of raising the flag and the demonstrations of military music, drill, musketry and artillery, all performed by students in uniforms of the Canadian Regiment of Fencible Infantry, the soldiers who garrisoned the fort at the end of the War of 1812.

There were so many brilliant aspects to our holiday, both historical and other, that it left us wanting to return to see more of both the US and Canada. Most notable of all were the wonderful people we met along the way, so friendly and generous and helpful to these travellers! it really was a trip of a lifetime and I hope you have enjoyed a peek into some of the historical highlights!

 

Giving Old Books A Makeover

Nicola here and today I’m talking about reprints of my old books that come out all around the world. Although I now write timeslip books – and some of those are being published in different countries – my Regency historical romances are still regularly reprinted and reissued. It makes me very happy that books, some of which were originally written 20 years ago, are still in print somewhere in the world and hopefully reaching new Regency readers!

When I first started writing, back in 1998, I was published only in the UK. The books were shorter, sweet romances, sometimes with no sex and if there was a hint of it, the bedroom door closed quite quickly! After a few years, by great good luck, my books were selected (along with a certain brilliant author called Anne Gracie!) to be published in the US. I vividly remember the day the first one came out; not only did it feature a cover model called Mike Dale, which seemed to cause some interest, it was published in the week that I gave up my office job to become a full-time author. It also gained some pretty scathing reviews that almost sent me scuttling back to the day job, convinced my writing was no good, so the timing wasn’t great but I stuck with it.

My Tudor House is Falling Down!

Nicola here and today I'm sharing a visit I did recently to an amazing country house. Just to the side of a busy main road in Cheshire, surrounded by houses and traffic, lies a throwback to another time. It’s called Little Moreton Hall and whilst it’s not a stately home it certainly isn’t that small either. Built 500 years ago, it’s a time traveller from the Tudor era to the present. It was built to impress; a half-timbered house with decorative timber, plasterwork, painting and glazing that is totally dazzling.

I hadn’t been to Little Moreton Hall since I was a child and it’s a tribute to what an amazing place it is that I remember it so well. It was wonderful to revisit it. My first thought when I saw it, though, was to wonder how on earth it had managed to stand for so long. It looks like a house that is crumpling under its own weight. It bends, sags and buckles and the floors and walls are nowhere near straight. It is extraordinary.

What we're watching!

Mary Jo

We Wenches are creatures of The Book, but we also enjoy stories in other formats.  Here's a selection of what we've been watching and enjoying on TV/streaming/movies lately. 

From Nicola:

I’ve been glomming on Killing Eve, which is a British spy thriller TV series where a female intelligence officer tracks down a female psychopathic assassin. It’s based on the Villanelle books by Luke Jennings which I haven’t read so I’m not sure how close the show mirrors the books, whether the book or the TV series is better, or whether it matters! The series has won multiple awards and been highly praised, not least because all the major characters are women and it’s written by women. It certainly has a different sort of take on the spy genre. It’s quirky and comical at times and the dialogue is funny and sharp. The obsession that both Eve and Villanelle develop for each other is fascinating to watch

I also went to the cinema to see Apollo 11 on the big screen as it’s that sort of film! I thought it was an amazing piece of documentary film making and was completely riveted by it. The way it’s put together with never-before-seen footage and audio is very immediate and the rocket launch quite nerve-wracking! It left me speechless and overwhelmed – stirring stuff.

As a follow up I watched a new documentary series about the solar system, The Planets, with Professor Brian Cox which was also fascinating.  Since they couldn’t go on location to Jupiter and Mars they filmed a lot of it in places like Jordan and Iceland, which I’ve visited, so that was even more fun!

 

The Language of Romance

Nicola here. Today I’m talking about the sort of words that people use to describe romance and romantic fiction. In four days, I step down as Chair of the UK Romantic Novelists Association. It’s been an interesting couple of years, sometimes challenging, always busy, but incredibly rewarding to be a part of an organisation that is so involved with the business of romantic fiction. I love the RNA and I love the fact that organisations like it exist to support, celebrate and promote the romance genre. Together with readers, bloggers, writers and all fans of the genre we make up a very loyal band. We’re lucky; we have discovered the joy that reading romantic fiction can bring.

One of the issues of which I have become hyper-aware over the last couple of years is that of the
language that is used by critics to describe romantic fiction. I’ve always been aware of romantic fiction’s literary reputation – at the very start of my writing career a friend told me how she covered my books in brown paper bags because they were a guilty pleasure. (At least she was eco-friendly about it!)   This is hardly a new phenomenon. My grandmother used to hide her genre fiction at the back of her wardrobe. The RNA itself was formed 60 years ago next year to try to tackle the prejudice that there was in the press towards romantic fiction.

What We're Reading!

Hey there, Pat here, bringing you the Word Wenches comments on what we’ve been reading this month. I’ve been hunkered down trying to fine tune my new release while reading up on the next book set in Victorian Edinburgh--my main reading this month. I really don’t think you want to hear about the archives of the University of Scotland, although they are fascinating!

But I discovered I’d missed a Terry Pratchett book and grabbed a copy of RAISING STEAM when it crossed my radar. This is one of the later volumes written with his wife, so the puns aren’t there except in some of the names. What was really interesting about this read is that I started it in e-book format and was feeling a bit let-down and disappointed by it. We have all my favorite characters (except the witches!) and Disc World has just discovered steam engines, which is throwing everything into a tizzy. But I just wasn’t getting into it. Because we have a library of Pratchett books, we ordered a print copy to fill the missing gap. So I opened the book to where I was in the e-reader and tried reading on the page and lo and behold, the experience was utterly different.

Henry VIII - Cause for Celebration?

Nicola here. Today is the 510th anniversary of the coronation of Henry VIII. Despite my very mixed feelings about Henry and his Dad, it feels like the sort of occasion I can’t ignore, particularly as my next timeslip is set in the Tudor period, albeit later in the reign of Henry’s younger daughter, Elizabeth. A decade ago, when it was the quincentenary of Henry's coronation, there were a number of celebrations to mark the occasion. But is Henry someone who we want to celebrate?

Henry VIII bestrides English history like a colossus both in terms of physical size and reputation. Not many kings or queens can compete with his fame. Was this solely down to the fact that he had six wives and beheaded two of them? A number of other British monarchs have had more than one spouse but none of them make the headlines (sorry, bad pun) like Henry still does. As someone who enjoys exploring the myths and legends about historical characters as much as I enjoy the “real” history, I thought I’d take a look at “Why is Henry VIII still so big” (in the sense of popular culture.) I call it “the afterlife” of Henry VIII.

The Bestest Time Evah

 

Pat's cool vacation

Vacations, vacations, wonderful vacations.
It's summer time (up here in the northern hemisphere) and folks are travelling.

So I asked the Word Wenches, What do you remember as a really great vacation?

 

Pat remembers one totally-for-fun expedition.

From Pat:

Our vacations are often working vacations, or combining two purposes like family and travel, and after a while, they all tend to blend together a bit. So perhaps I’m most nostalgic about a trip IT Guy and I made alone, just for the fun of it, shortly after he retired. We finally had the freedom to leave at any time of the year we liked—no job, no kids with school, no social or business obligations.

We were a bit uncertain about our newly limited budget, so we didn’t want to do any big splurges, but we had one place we’d dreamed of for decades—the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta.

Yes, we’d traveled that direction once before, while writing California Girl  about a Route 66 trip. At the time, we could only admire the gorgeous balloons floating across the sky as we drove through. They were magical and all too brief. So this time, we made the trip just for the festival. I wasn’t writing a book about it. No research was involved, just pure enjoyment. We went with a tour so we didn’t have to worry about finding the best rooms or parking or any other hassle.

And it truly was the most magical trip I can remember. We saw the balloon glow and the dawn patrol and watched the race from our room when we left the grounds. We sat back and embraced the beauty of the countryside and the mystical blue skies.

And I even sneaked in a visit to a special tea room to meet with an author friend of mine and catch up. All in all, a very memorable trip!

Andrea is one of several Wenches who get their wilderness on.

Andrea: There are so many vacations filled with special memories—from the sublime to the absurd—so it’s impossible to pick a favorite. Spending time with family and friends, exploring history, just chilling out . . . each has its own unique and wonderful vibe.

 But that said, a backpacking trip with my two brothers to Wind River range in

Andrea, intrepid mountain hiker

Wyoming not long after I had graduated from college and started working in New York stands out as one of the ones on the “keeper” shelf.

As happens when the rhythm of going off to school and college begins, it had been a long time since the three of us had been together in the same place for more than a day or two at holidays. My younger brother had recently moved to Wyoming to work for a mining company. He loves the outdoors—as do I and my older brother. So when Big Brother suggested we pack our knapsacks and do a fishing trip with Little Brother up in the alpine lakes, I was all in.

 

Hiking through THIS country

 So off we went, hiking in 16 miles up to Island Lake, a remote spot at 11,000 ft (the last few miles are a real huff and puff when you’re carrying 60 lb on your back!) Oh, but was it worth it. We were camped on the water’s edge, surrounded by a semi-circle of peaks called Cirque of Towers. In the late afternoon sunset, the towering majesty of the stone alight in pink and gold was breathtakingly beautiful. We also hiked  one day up to the top of highest peak in the continental U.S. at 13,000 ft. Again, unbelievable views.

 But the truly special moments were sitting around the campfire each night, really having a chance to connect and talk the journeys we had been on so far. We were up there for a week—one rarely takes that sort of quiet time with people who matter in our lives, and that sense of renewing bonds and shared experiences still resonates with me.

I did mention fishing, right? So I have to add an anecdote. Both brothers are serious fishermen, and take pride in their flyfishing skills. Off they went each afternoon, after casting pitying looks at moi, their novice sister. One day, they laughingly left me an old rod with a hook baited with a worm, and told me to have fun, ha, ha, ha. So of course I throw the line in after they left . . . and promptly reeled in a 24” lake trout! I wish there had been cellphone cameras back then. The looks on their faces when they saw my monster were priceless. (Need I say, their fish were mere minnows in comparison!) I still tease them about that to this day!

 

Nicola's favourite holidays are very Scottish:

 

Scotland. A house by the beach

Nicola: It’s wet and windy here in the UK at the moment so there’s no better time to revisit one of my favourite holidays which was also wet and windy! Yes, it was last year on the very northernmost coast of Scotland. I’ve been on many amazing trips, some even to hot places (!) but in the end I just keep going back up north!

The first great thing about it was that we were staying in a cottage that was literally on a beach. Now I live as far from the sea as it is possible to get in the UK so going to the seaside is always a huge treat for me – and Angus as well of course. To fall asleep to the sound of the waves and to get up, open the door and be out in the dunes was totally amazing for us.

... both of them dressed for the weather

The area is rich in history, from the Viking settlement at SmooCaves along the coast to the ancient graveyard just across the sands with its tiny ruined church and many legends. Next to us was the Castle of Durinas, built in the 18^th century on the site of a medieval palace. The castle, like our little cottage, was available to rent for holidays and fortunately it was vacant that week. I played the “I’m a historical author and I’d love to look round” card, which I don’t do very often but I simply had to see inside… I got the full tour with local guide Duncan and his adorable dog. Together we explored the ancient passageways and they told me stories of ghosts and pirates which, of course, will one day make their way into a book. If you’d like to go and stay there, the link is here!

The final icing on the cake, as it were, was that just down the road was a craft village where I spent plenty of time browsing the workshops, and on the site there was also one of the best cafes in the north of Scotland that served hot chocolate that could make even the coldest, rainiest day less driech!

Panda in a suitcase.
Have cat, will travel

Mary Jo brings us her great vacation and a cat picture.
Any vacation is better with a cat picture so I'll show that first.

Oh, Jo, how can you be so cruel as to ask about a favorite vacation?  I've loved them all, and you can see that both The Panda and I are always ready for a new adventure.

arched niches in the walls

I haven't blogged about my trip to Greece before since it was pre-Wenches, but it was a great chick trip with me, my sister, and our former sister-in-law, whom we like so much that we kept her.  <G>  We spent several days in Athens in the Plaka, the historic area of the city, and had an amazing view of the Parthenon from our

Santorini

windows.  Then on to Santorini, the Greek island I've most wanted to see, and it was amazing. 

I could drown you in pictures, but I'll go with just this iconic one that shows the rugged volcanic bones of the island and part of the caldera, which is the circular sea left when the volcano blew the island into component parts. There is also the dazzling white and blue colors that say "Greece," and also make up the Greek flag.  Sigh. I want to go back.

 

Once upon a time, Anne took her first expeditions a writer.

Cats of Rhodos

Anne here. 

I can never pick any "favorite", whether it's a book or a vacation or a piece of music.  Looking back it feels as though much of my childhood consisted of holidays — we camped in tents when I was small — in fact, my mother left Dad and my three older siblings in the tent when she went off to give birth to me in hospital. They were camping at the beach near my grandparents' home. Travelling was something my family did constantly. As a child I travelled all over the UK, Ireland and parts of Europe with a caravan, and once I grew up, I went off with friends and tramped the bush and hitch-hiked around Tasmania and New Zealand. Whenever I could I headed off on holiday.

 

But Jo, when she passed this question to the wenches, added "..

Anne's foot in Connemara
(see it, bottom left)

. special points if a vacation inspired your writing." 

And that decided me, because there was one year when I went off travelling around the world on my own, for the better part of a year. We have this wonderful thing in Australia called Long Service Leave, and after you've worked for an employer for 10 years, you are entitled to time off on full pay.

So I took my long service leave, and added leave without pay to it, and went off with my backpack to explore the world.  

 

Penllyn in Wales

I was a bit nervous at first, but it turned out travelling solo, you meet all sorts of wonderful people that you probably wouldn't if you were with someone else. It also gave me time to think and ponder — a luxury that had been in short supply in my working life. And stories began to spin in my mind. Then, when I was in countries where I didn't speak the language, and didn't feel comfortable going out in the evening for anything other than dinner, I started to write in the evening. I sat on beaches in Brittany and wrote, I sat on Greek islands and wrote, I sat in grubby stations and wrote. The ideas came thick and fast and I loved it.

 

I came home at the end of that year with several A4 notebooks full of stories and ideas, and the firm intention of becoming a writer. And that, dear readers, is how a vacation inspired me to become a writer.

 

 

And back to Joanna again.

I have always admired the adventurous Australians one meets, hiking about in the far corners of the globe.

I hadn't realized they were taking writerly notes.

 

As for me:
I have lived a lifetime of vacations. So much travel, all of it wonderful and interesting. I am so lucky.

Picking one vacation more or less at random . . .
In the summers when I was young, my father used to take us to Maine to go fishing.

 

I am not the first of us to talk about fishing.

 

Yer typical Maine lake, but without a boat

Now, for me, fishing consists of sitting in a boat with a line dunked in the middle of a lake, admiring the scenery and thinking deep thoughts. Every once in a while you actually catch something, which is gratifying and leaves you with a lifelong disdain for any fish that isn't in the pan pretty much as soon as you dock on dry ground.

Catching fish makes you feel very clever.

I knew an actual Maine Guide and asked him how one survived when lost for long periods of time in the wilderness

and he said to forget about chasing down deer or hitting a rabbit over the head with a rock.

Carry fishhooks and eat fish.

But I digress.

A Maine stream of the type I do not catch fish in

There are other types of fishing that involve going out on the sea and being sick the whole time. Or you can hike through the bushes and trip over rocks and eventually get to a stream where you do this thing with throwing your hook upstream to entice fish but mostly it gets tangled in a tree.
Not my fish shtick, as it were.

 

The Carnegie library in Calais Maine because one cannot fish all the time

The lakes remain with me. Vivid hours with my father and a sister or two, listening to the woods, feeling the wind. Silence and bird calls everywhere around.
It just doesn't get any better than that.

 

 

And you? What's your great vacation? Where did you go and what do you remember? 

Anniversary Winners

Here are the winners of the Wench 13th Anniversary #giveaway.

 

Each wench will contact her winner individually to obtain a posting address.

 

Thanks so much to everyone who left good wishes and participated in the discussion and the competition. Thanks also to all those who've followed us in the past. We hope you'll all continue with us on into the future. 

 

Wenchly readers are the BEST!

 

Andrea's winner:  Vicki W.

Mary Jo's winners: Molly M. and Ghazal M.

Pat's winner: Pat--Annette N.

Susan's winner: Nancy M.

Jo's winner: Kareni

Nicola's winner:  Lucia 

Susanna's winner:  Margot

Anne's winners: Theo and Shelley

 

(The flowers are mostly Australian native flowers, arranged by Swallows Nest Farm in Tasmania. Photo used with permission)

Roses Around The Door

Nicola here. Today I’m looking at roses, literally out of my study window and also as a historical symbol. It’s that time of the year in the UK when the rose is in full bloom. It’s a sign of summer and the sight of roses growing around a cottage door (or window) is one of the quintessential images of an English country village.

The rose is also a symbol of a lot of other things: A red rose is for romance, of course, whilst innocence or purity is symbolized by the white rose, friendship with yellow roses and passion with orange.  I’m currently writing a book set in the 15^th century during the period known now as “The Wars of the Roses” although this term wasn’t coined until the 19^th century. The red and white roses were of course said to be the rival emblems of the aristocratic houses of York and Lancaster. In Shakespeare's play Henry VI rival nobles plucked them from bushes in the Temple Gardens, as depicted in this painting by Henry Payne. The different roses are the perfect embodiment of the antagonism each side had for the other, with the thorns and the red for the blood spilled in the conflict.

From Paris with Love!

Nicola here, fresh back from Paris and the amazing Festival du Roman Feminin, Festival of Women’s Fiction. The festival is an annual event for readers and authors, and when I was invited I was thrilled; the combination of books and Paris was, of course, irresistible! I’m so glad I went. It was an opportunity to meet new-to-me authors as well as old friends, and also to have time to chat properly with readers in a relaxed way (chatting in Franglais and with the help of some awesome interpreters!)

Thursday morning found me at St Pancras Station in London all ready to board the Eurostar to Paris. It was a fast, smooth and
comfortable trip, delivering me to the Gard Du Nord whilst I was still wondering at how quick and easy it all was! The taxi ride through Paris to the hotel reminded me of how mad French traffic can be but also gave the opportunity for a whistle-stop sight-seeing tour of the city from Sacré Coeur to the Louvre, with the river Seine shining in the sun. (The photo is from the same bridge of the river at night and it's from Wikipedia.)

It's our Wenchiversary!

By Mary Jo and the rest of the Wenchly Crew

Has it really been thirteen years since we cautiously launched the Word Wenches blog? Indeed yes, and so much has changed in the world, in publishing, and in us. We've lost beloved Wench sisters Edith Layton and Jo Beverley, entered into new genres and new forms of publishing, and we've expanded to having Wenches from Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US so we can truly say that the sun never sets on the Wench Empire!

Here is the very first Word Wench blog post, also written by me. (I thought I was better at not volunteering!) Here is also a link for the first month of blogs, as we felt our way into this new enterprise and learned how to use the blog site's tools.

And we're still here, musing three times a week on books, history, travel, and other intriguing topics. Blogging is work even if we each only write one about every two weeks. When on deadline, there can be a mad scramble to swap dates, whip off something very quickly, or republish an older post. But we've kept blogging all these years because, basically, we like doing this.

We like connecting with our readers. We like being able to do quick, low stakes riffs on things that catch our attention. We LOVE telling readers about our new books, or new authors we've discovered.

For our first anniversary, we did a three part series on Getting Naked With the Wenches, and very popular it was! Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

 

Ask A Wench - Men in Boots, and other favorite historical clothing!

Nicola here, introducing this month’s Ask A Wench feature. Recently on my Facebook page I’ve started to post an item called Saturday Swagger, sharing some of the gorgeous historical portraits I’ve seen and love. One of them was this 17th century miniature of Sir Edward Herbert reclining in a come-hither pose. When she saw it, fellow author and Word Wench friend Sophie Weston of the Liberta Blog  commented: “The Boots! The Boots!” Happily, this set us all thinking about those aspects of historical costume that we particularly enjoy, and the result is this blog piece in which we ask: “What is your favourite item of historical clothing, to wear, to make or simply to appreciate?” So here are the Wenches' thoughts on this topic of sartorial splendour and we would love to hear yours!

What We're Reading: April Edition

by Mary Jo

We Word Wenches love doing these posts because we always find new authors to try! 

Starting off with Pat Rice:

One Plus One by  JoJo Moyes  I love the way romance has expanded into women’s fiction, and One Plus One by JoJo Moyes is a masterful example of how it’s done. It’s clear from the very first that we have a conflicted hero and heroine. Ed is owner of a software company about to go mega-huge. Jess is his housekeeper—and he doesn’t even know she exists because she cleans his vacation home, and he never takes vacations.

But this is not the usual meet cute or billionaire-sweeps-heroine-off-her-feet. They both come with so much baggage that it takes most of the book to unload it, with bits exploding along the way—in suitably dramatic fashion. She comes with a math genius daughter and a goth teenager who isn’t even hers, plus a giant slobbery dog. He has a dying father, a screaming sister, a girlfriend he tried to get rid of by handing off insider stock info, and an ex-wife who helps herself to his bank account whenever she likes.

 

In Praise of Special Libraries

When I’m travelling within the UK I tend to look for somewhere historical en-route to break my journey, whether it’s a castle or stately home or ruin or some other interesting place. If there is a tea room and gift shop that’s a bonus. So when I was driving from the east coast of Scotland back to Glasgow a couple of weeks ago I got out the map to help me decide where to stop. The whole area is absolutely packed with castles so it was more a case of trying to whittle it down than find somewhere. Then I spotted an intriguing dot on the map at Innerpeffray, near Crieff in Perthshire. “Historic Library” it said. Well, that was enough to lure me in.

It was a bit of a bleak day when we reached Innerpeffray. The wind was whistling across the fields and the little collection of buildings we approached felt
as though they were all alone in the middle of nowhere. It seemed a curious location for a historic library but that just added to the interest. We scurried inside out of the wind and were met with the warmest welcome in Scotland. What can I say – a personal tour of the oldest free public lending library in Scotland is like my idea of heaven and Innerpeffray is a very special place indeed.

Of Beaches and Castles

Nicola here and today I’m talking about beaches – and history. You may already have noticed that the Wenches love a good trip to the sea, whether it’s a Caribbean island or the Antarctic or the Northern shores of Scotland. There’s something about the water and a stretch of golden sand that is refreshing and inspiring, even if you’re wearing several layers of thermals to appreciate it, as I was last week!

My beach odyssey started in Bamburgh in Northumberland, on the North East coast of England. It’s a favourite spot of mine and the setting for a story I’ll be writing a little way down the line. The whole area is chock full of history from pre-Roman times through the centuries, plus it has castles by the score and at Bamburgh there is the big mama of them all.

What We're Reading in March

 ... and what a medley it is.

Joanna here, with some lovely book suggestions from all of us.

I’m rereading one of Lois MlcMaster Bujold’s books. The Curse of Chalion. I picked it up at the library because the librarian had it out on the Recommended Shelf and I was reminded of it. 

When we reread books we sometimes come at them a little differently or, at least, I do. This time, when I approached Bujold’s broken, exhausted, emotionally and psychically destroyed protagonist I was better able to see the honorable man beneath. It’s a new way for me to look at heroism and I’m hoping to learn from it.

This is not a Romance, but it’s a satisfying portrayal of a complex protagonist and — yes — a bit of a love story.

 

Andrea writes:

I’m a big fan of Charles Finch’s historical mysteries—I find his Charles Lenox series, set in early Victorian England, an absolute delight. So it’s always a treat when a new one comes out.

Now, Finch has done something really interesting with the series. In the first book, A Beautiful Blue Death, which came out 12 years ago, we meet Lenox as an established amateur detective. He’s a cultured, erudite, clever younger son, so his slightly “black sheep” profession is tolerated by family and friends (it helps that he’s such a lovely, sensitive fellow) And throughout the next nine books, we see him develop, take on new challenges, dabble in politics, get married, have a child . . . all while unraveling some very intriguing mysteries.

Then lo and behold, like the clever mystery writer he is, Finch suddenly surprised his readers with a unexpected plot twist. In his previous book, The Woman in the Water, the 11th in the series, he started writing a “prequel to the series—we meed Charles as a green cub, just down from Oxford, trying to decide what he wants to do in life. He loves solving conundrums, but everyone thinks he’s a fool to consider it as a possible career. Nonetheless, he keeps reading the papers about crime, and finds he has an idea he thinks may help solve one. The police, of course, dismiss him as fop and