Word Wenches

WWR—What We've Read in November

Anne here, and this month we have a bumper crop of recommended reads for you, from YA to timeslip, to Christmas treats, romance, literary fiction, crime and more.

We'll start with Christina: This month I’ve read and enjoyed a couple of books recommended by fellow Wenches. First and foremost, The Christmas Escape by Sarah Morgan which was exactly as wonderful as I had hoped. The fact that it is set in snowy Lapland in the north of Sweden was just the icing on the cake! I now long to go there to take sleigh rides through the forests and see the aurora borealis in all its glory.

Then there was Boyfriend by Sarina Bowen, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I was very happy to find that it was the first in a series penned by different authors, all connected through the fictional US college Moo U in Vermont. The second book in the series, Blindsided by Victoria Denault, was just brilliant! As well as keeping up with hockey practice and his studies, hockey star Tate Adler is trying to save his family’s farm by doing an illicit side job. Their neighbours the Todds have their own problems. They are sworn enemies so when fellow student Maggie Todd finds out what Tate is doing, she doesn’t hesitate to blackmail him. But whenever they meet, sparks fly and their chemistry is off the charts. Can they risk a relationship or will the feud remain forever? This love story was just explosive and I loved every minute of it. I’m now reading my way through the rest of the series.

A friend also recommended a brilliant YA series by L.J. Shen, starting with Pretty Reckless. It’s raw and angsty with a lot of misunderstandings, but I’m thoroughly enjoying these stories too. Penn Scully is from the wrong end of town with a drug addict mother and a deadbeat step-father, while Daria Followhill is a rich and spoiled princess. He believes she took away the only thing he ever loved and is out for revenge. When Penn’s mother dies, Daria’s parents decide to take him in as a foster son and he can set his plans in motion. As for Daria, she’s tired of always coming second in her mother’s eyes and wants to lash out at everyone and everything. But things don’t go to plan for either of them …

Next comes Pat, who says: If you’re in a literary mood, Anne Tyler is always a good bet.

In REDHEAD BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD, Micah Mortimer, is a 40-something computer tech. He’s the youngest of a large, messy family, and in consequence, he’s a tad obsessive about keeping his personal life contained, so contained that he has a bad habit of shutting doors on the world. The story follows Micah through a series of events that opens his eyes to what he’s been missing all his life. There’s no violence, no sex, just a lovely journey of discovery told by a fabulously talented writer. It’s wonderful to settle in for the evening in safe hands—I didn’t skim a single page!  

Heirs and Spares

Nicola here, talking slightly tongue-in-cheek about a certain trope in fiction, that of birth order. The concept of the “heir and the spare” is something that has been discussed quite a lot lately and it’s a theme that those of us who read historical romance are very familiar with. The noble family is desperate to have an heir (usually male, since women can’t inherit the majority of British titles) and that person will be expected to carry on the traditions of the family, inherit the title and any entailed fortune that goes with it. They will be in line to take the responsibility for the crumbling stately pile and if it really is crumbling, find an heiress whose inheritance fortunately comes from trade or some other source, to prop it up. It feels like a heavy weight for the heir to carry. The emphasis here is on responsibility and continuity. However, there’s a snag. What if something happens to the heir? Then you will need a spare – two boys at least – to ensure the continuation of the family line. So, to be on the safe side, most families try not to stop at one.

We Wish You a Merry Christmas!

Nicola here, wishing you a very Happy Christmas to those who celebrate the festival and happy holidays to everyone celebrating their traditions. Today is the first day of Word Wenches’ annual tradition of short daily blogs over the Twelve Days of Christmas.

This year for the first time in as long as I can remember, and possibly the first time ever, I’m spending Christmas in a hotel. Every year for the past forever we’ve either been at home, hosting family and friends, or visiting them as their guests. This year, though, my mother-in-law went into a care home near my sister-in-law’s home in the North of England so we are staying nearby in order to see everyone over the festive season. I’m writing this before we go and I’m wondering what it will be like. The hotel promises all manner of wonderful treats: delicious food including the full Christmas dinner, festive afternoon tea, carols and other live music and the chance to work off all the food in the gym and pool. It sounds great. But even at Christmas I find I still think about writing – will it be the sort of hotel that would be a good setting for a murder mystery? What will our fellow guests be like? Will there be rows – or romances? (I’ll be taking note!) Will it snow??? All will no doubt be revealed as our Christmas trip progresses! Wherever you are in the world and however you celebrate, the Wenches wish everyone peace and joy in the year ahead.

How are you spending the holiday season? Will you be at home, or away? Are there any special holiday traditions you enjoy with family and friends? 

AAW: Word for 2023

Choose a Word for 2023:

by Mary Jo

Since 2022 is drawing to a close (already?!), it's time to think ahead about what we'd like in 2023. I've done this before here and in another group, but I think it's an interesting and mindful exercise to choose a word that can be a keyword or inspiration or talisman for the year ahead.

Do you want to EXPERIMENT and try something new? Learn to RELAX and let go of as much stress as you can? How about learning to FOCUS better? (That's a word I've claimed in the past!) Do you want to CLARIFY relationships or other elements in your life? Worth thinking about!

And the Wenches have been thinking about this!  Pat Rice is first:

I fear I very much live in the moment. Thinking or planning for a year doesn’t happen. Worse yet, I’m not inclined to meditation, inspiration, or reflecting on the past or future, possibly because I don’t believe I have much control over the events that most shape our lives. So I am hopeless at questions like these.

At best, I can plan for the events I want, and hope that eventually, the Fates will offer me opportunity. Does that constitute a keyword—opportunity? Once upon a time, I practiced writing, taught myself craft, wrote thousands of pages, and eventually, after years of sending out books, a new publisher decided to start a historical romance line and bought my book. I am not entirely certain opportunity encompasses all that.

 So I’ll simply choose the word ENJOY. While I’m wishing and hoping and plotting, I mean to enjoy the moment I’m in. If an opportunity to go out to lunch with friends interferes with my deadline, I’ll forget the deadline and enjoy the lunch because the chance might not come again.

Nicola on the Grand Tour!

Nicola here. Back in the 18^th century it was considered part of a gentleman’s education to take the “Grand Tour,” a trip through Europe with Italy as the main destination. The young, upper-class man of means and rank would set out, accompanied by a long-suffering tutor or family member, on this educational rite of passage and would return home supposedly with a greater understanding of classical culture and often with some works of art tucked under their arm.  The phrase “bear-leader” that you come across in Georgette Heyer originated with the poor tutor/chaperon/guardian who had to try to keep the youth out of trouble and instill some knowledge in him!

With the advent of mass tourism in the nineteenth century, these itineraries were opened up to the rest of us; women, families and those without a title (!) who would take a guide book along rather than a tutor. So, when we (my husband and I, to quote the late Queen) planned a holiday to Italy to see the Roman ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum, we decided to take in at least a few other elements of the Grand Tour on our way - a journey through the Alps, some shopping in Milan and a stopover in Paris!

Making Plans . . .

Hi all, Anne here.

We Word Wenches are currently making plans for the blog in 2023, so let us know what you enjoy about the blog.

And if you have any suggestions, ideas, or thoughts about what you'd like more of in the blog, less of, new features, please make them.

I can't guarantee we'll follow them, but we will certainly seriously consider them.

Thank you.

 

November What We're Reading!

by Mary Jo

Christina kicks off:

Snowed in for Christmas by Sarah Morgan.

Ms Morgan has done it again – I didn’t think she could improve on last year’s Christmas story, but this is her best one yet and I absolutely loved it! It was one of those books where you can’t wait to finish to see how it ends, but at the same time you are devastated to have to leave this fictional world. There is plenty of family drama, lots of delicious romance and some wonderful characters, all set against the backdrop of a gorgeous country house in the wilds of Scotland.

I think my favourite character was the grandmother, Nanna Jean, whose outspoken comments had me laughing out loud. I hope I can be like her when I’m old! One of the heroines, Lucy, has no family left and is dreading Christmas, but when she ends up spending it with the Miller family everything changes. She’s an outsider but they make her feel welcome and included, and it was incredibly heart-warming.

And although the family may seem perfect to her, they are far from it, with tensions and undercurrents rife. Daughters of the house, Alice and Clemmie, have their own problems and heartache, and I felt for them as they fought for what they wanted. Being snowed in proves to be a blessing, as they are all given the chance to work through their problems rather than run away from them. I was rooting for all of them every step of the way and couldn’t have put this book down if my life depended on it! Highly recommended.

 

Atmosphere and Memory

Nicola here, pulling up a Wench classic blog from a few years ago as I’m travelling at the moment, far from my laptop!

Today I’m musing about the atmosphere of particular places. I’m taking us back a long way in English history, beyond the Regency, beyond those ubiquitous Tudors, to a time before the Norman Conquest when England was split into the Anglo Saxon seven kingdoms. The village where I live has a recorded history that goes back to this distant time – there are actual documents from the era relating to events that happened in this very place over a thousand years ago and I find that mind-blowing. As I walk along the footpaths and over the hills I frequently imagine how it might have looked in that time and try to see all the way back through the mists of history to think myself back there.  I can be pretty successful at this; when it’s quiet and I’m standing on the Ravens’ Fort and all I can hear are the birds singing and I feel the breeze on my face I can persuade myself, for a split second anyway, that I have travelled in time. Then an aeroplane flies over and I think perhaps not after all.

Certain places have a very strong sense of atmosphere. I’ve been to battlefields such as Flodden and Culloden where the whole landscape feels as though it is steeped in the bloodshed and suffering of the men who died there. I’ve visited historic houses that feel imbued with the personalities of the people who lived there, and I’ve wandered happily through gardens that feel peaceful or visited buildings that have a joyous atmosphere. How much of this is down to the emotional memory of the place and how much is down to my imagination, I cannot say. As writers and readers of historical fiction I think we all step into that other world. One of my books looks at “stone tape theory” which was an idea popular in the 19^th century and later in the 1970s that places retain emotional memories in their very fabric. This is one theory said to account for ghostly sightings. It’s an intriguing idea around which to build a timeslip novel.

A History of Stripes

Nicola here. A couple of weeks ago I visited the Whitchurch Silk Mill. Built in 1813, on land owned by Winchester Cathedral, it was built by the Hayter family and then developed by William Maddick. Through the 19^th and early 20^th century it produced silk, providing work for the local populace and going through some hard times and some good like many small businesses. From 1911 the mill wove silk for Burberry, producing 22 different colours of silk lining for their famous raincoats. In the 1980s after falling into disrepair it was restored as a working museum using traditional machinery and methods.

Visiting the museum was completely fascinating. Weaving silk is a very complicated business but it was so much easier to understand when you could follow the different steps in the process and even have a go on the silk looms yourself. It was also a real insight to see what working conditions were like in the Victorian age – some of the child workers started at nine years old!

The Whitchurch mill has always specialised in stripes and there was a very interesting exhibition on show about striped designs and their history. Stripes in
nature have long been an inspiration for designers. Stripes can be used as both camouflage and as warning. Both prey – zebras, for example – and predators such as tigers, have stripes that allow them to blend in. Snakes, various insects and even badgers have them to scare the predators away.

Interview on The Winter Garden!

"Remember, remember, the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot …”

Christina here and tomorrow is Guy Fawkes’ Day here in the UK so what better time to interview Wench Nicola about her new book THE WINTER GARDEN? It was published last week and is based on the infamous Gunpowder Plot that Mr Fawkes was involved with in 1605. He was part of a group of Catholics who had decided to kill the King by blowing up Parliament, but they were betrayed and ultimately their plot failed. I was lucky enough to read an ARC of this story and it is absolutely fabulous! I seriously couldn’t put it down – if you’d like to read my review you can find it here, but I’d recommend you read it for yourself!

Here’s a short summary:-

1605: Anne Catesby fears for her family. Her son, the charismatic Robert, is secretly plotting to kill the king, placing his family in grave danger. Anne must make a terrible choice: betray her only child or risk her family’s future.

Present Day: When her dreams of becoming a musician are shattered, Lucy Brown takes refuge in her family’s ancestral home in Oxfordshire, once home to Robert Catesby, the gunpowder plotter. There she starts to have strange visions of a woman in Tudor dress, a woman whose story runs parallel to and then converges with her own. Lucy is determined to find out more about this apparition and in doing so uncovers a chain of secrets that have been hidden for centuries…

The Daring Lady Di

Nicola here. A couple of weeks ago I gave a talk and a tour at Lydiard House on the subject of Lady Diana Beauclerk, an 18^th century aristocrat who was very unusual in her time for working as a professional artist. Born Lady Diana Spencer in 1734, the daughter of the 3^rd Duke of Marlborough, she was for a while Lady St John, mistress of Lydiard House and wife to Frederick, 2^nd Viscount Bolingbroke. Lady Diana’s life story is extraordinary both personally and professionally but the bit I wanted to focus on was her undoubted talents as a painter and the way in which these had been downplayed because she was a woman and a scandalous one at that. It was a particular pleasure to be giving the talk at Lydiard House, where we could follow in her footsteps in the house and garden and see the influence that her life there had on her art. In the “Diana Room” at Lydiard we also have the largest collection of her work in the UK.

Lady Diana Spencer was the eldest daughter of the 3^rd Duke of Marlborough. She was born in 1734 and spent some of her childhood at Blenheim Palace. There was a great deal of fine art there to inspire her; one of her earliest childhood drawings was a pastel of a baby based on a Rubens painting that hung there and chubby Rubenesque cherubs remained a motif of her drawing all of her life. This was how she initially learned to draw and paint, through seeing artistic images and creating her own versions of them.

Ask A Wench About Chocolate!

Nicola here, with this month's Ask A Wench. It’s US National Choose your Chocolate Day (but that doesn’t mean that the rest of us can’t join in, right?) So here on the Wenches, we decided to chat about our relationship with chocolate. Is it a love story or a break up story? How long have we known chocolate for and how has our relationship with chocolate developed? 

Christina: I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know what chocolate was – it’s my main vice, the one thing I don’t think I could give up! As a child, I remember eating something called ‘Guldnougat’, which was basically a chocolate bar that was a mixture of milk chocolate and hazelnut paste (this is usually called Gianduja in the UK). It was incredibly messy to eat as it tended to melt when clutched in a small warm hand, but I adored it. Swedish chocolate on the whole is delicious, especially anything made by the most famous brand Marabou. Personally, I prefer the types without anything added other than nuts, but they have just about every flavour under the sun.

Lost and Found

Nicola here. I was woken in the night by the sound of a downpour of rain, which was very welcome as the UK has been enduring a summer of drought. One of the consequences of this is that river and lake levels have fallen dramatically over the past few months and fields and gardens have dried out. This has led to ancient buildings and structures being revealed that have been lost for centuries, giving us a glimpse into the past that we wouldn’t usually have. It's not the way you would choose to discover more about history but it is an opportunity to learn more about what lies beneath our feet - or in some cases, rivers and reservoirs.

At Lydiard Park where I am a trustee of the Friends charity, we arranged for some drone photography to see if we could see any detail of the seventeenth century gardens that we knew had been swept away when the grounds were landscaped by Capability Brown in the Georgian era. (Photo credit Phil Jefferies and copyright Friends of Lydiard Park). The results were even more exciting than we had imagined! We knew from early maps that the previous Elizabethan-style manor house had had extensive gardens leading down to a canal and lake. From the air these were clearly visible in a grid pattern that would originally have contained a gravel forecourt, formal flowerbeds, topiary, paths and terraces. It’s been a fascinating insight. A similar thing happened at Chatsworth where the drought revealed the outline of the Great Parterre which was designed in 1699.

Scarecrows!

Nicola here. A couple of weeks ago I went to Herefordshire to visit a castle that is only open once a year. It’s a well-known site whose history is tied up with the English Civil War in the seventeenth century. It was also the home of very distant ancestors of mine which was why I was so keen to see it. However, there was a problem. The castle, Brampton Bryan, is open as part of a special village celebration called “Scarecrow Sunday” and I have a thing about scarecrows. I don’t like them. I find them creepy. When I was a child, I was terrified of the TV programme Worzel Gummidge even though it’s been voted one of the UK’s favourite children’s TV series of all time.

Phobias have, of course, existed long before modern studies by psychiatrists and psychologists defined the condition. The term phobia was first coined by
the Greeks. Social anxiety as a “phobia” was first described by Hippocrates as “shyness” in the early 4^th century BC. I wouldn’t go so far to say that I have a phobia about scarecrows although it’s almost that bad. I have the same reaction to clowns, puppets and mimes. (Dolls and puppets have their own phobias and metamfiezomaiophobia is the fear of mimes and people in disguise generally.) A terror of scarecrows – or of people dressed as scarecrows - is called formidophobia. Apparently formido derives from the Latin for “fear” or “scare.” And, of course, scarecrows are meant to be scary, but only to birds and not people. Meanwhile, a fear of clowns is called coulrophobia. Unsurprisingly, research shows that the portrayal of killer clowns in horror films has contributed directly towards an increase in people with an intense fear or phobia of clowns. Well, duh.

(You can imagine that the combination of clown/jack in the box/scarecrow was almost too much for me but in the photo I'm attempting to tackle several phobias in one go!)

Ask A Wench — Bird Watching.

Anne here, and today the wenches are talking about birds. A few weeks ago, when we were chatting on line, as we often do, we started to share bird stories, and it transpired that we were all very fond of birds. So the question we each answer today is this: What are some of your favorite birds, and where do you get to see them?

Nicola: As a child I loved the English garden birds such as the robin, which I read about in my books and saw when I visited my grandparents. We lived in the city and had a tiny garden but my grandparents lived in the countryside and were surrounded by nature. My grandfather was a keen gardener who knew all the different birds we’d find when we were outside and would point out to me the blackbirds, blue tits and sparrows. It wasn’t until I travelled abroad as an adult that I realised that birds with similar names could be quite different in other countries! I loved seeing an American Robin, for example, and was surprised how different it looked from a European one – except for the orange chest!

My dh is a keen birdwatcher and far more interested and knowledgeable than I, and when we moved to our village in Oxfordshire, we became involved with Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in species protection. It was an exciting time; we had one of the rarest birds in the UK, the Montagu’s Harrier, nesting locally. This beautiful bird of prey is very common in some other countries but not in England. For a number of years, we monitored the breeding pairs and the nests and learned so much about them. Sadly, the harriers are long gone from our area now but instead we have red kites which are also stunning birds. I love the kites, which are a successful re-introduction into the UK. In the Middle Ages they were common and would fly over towns and cities looking for scraps of food to eat. With their forked tails they were known as “devil birds.” They died out but now they are back and I enjoy seeing them up on the hills and flying over the village.

Celebrating Friendships!

Nicola here. Today I’m celebrating the power of friendship as yesterday was International Friendship Day. The value of friendship has been recognised since people first walked the earth – and it’s pretty strong between some animals too and between humans and animals. Greek philosopher Herodotus wrote “Of all possessions, a friend is the most precious.” More recently, the lyrics of the song is the Toy Story movie say “We stick together and can see it through, ‘Cause you've got a friend in me.”

What is friendship, really? A dictionary definition calls it “a state of mutual trust and support” but it’s so much more complicated than that sounds. Some of us are lucky enough to have friends we have known since childhood, others from school or college. I’m part of a group of college friends who first came together almost 40 years ago and we still meet up twice a year as a group. It's lovely to have such enduring relationships with people I know so well and feel I can pick up with so easily. Then there are the other friends we make at different stages of our lives. You don’t even have to see each other that much, though when you do, it’s special. The Wenches are an amazing group of friends scattered across three continents; we don’t get the chance to see each other much but we’re so supportive of each other through the thick and thin of writing and life. In fact, being an author is a wonderful way to meet friends across the world, through readers’ and writers’ groups.

Ironing It Out!

Nicola here and today I am tackling the ironing, literally in fact as a bout of Covid followed by a trip away has meant that I am a bit behind on all my chores. I know there are people who enjoy ironing, who even find it therapeutic, but I am not one of them. I don’t like it at all. But I do like the result – nicely pressed clothes and smooth bed linen, so that presents me with a bit of a dilemma.

Smoothing clothes to get rid of creases and make them look – and feel – nicer is apparently an ancient pastime. Before the Chinese used metal to press cloth over a thousand years ago, people had been using heated rocks to flatten animal hides for millennia. Materials such as stone, wood and glass had been used as well, but the first “iron” appeared in the Middle Ages. There were a number of issues associated with early irons such as not being able to regulate their heat on an open fire, getting soot and dirt on the clothes and the iron cooling down rapidly and needing to be frequently re-heated. This does remind me a little of my steam iron which has a habit of spitting chalky water on my clothes unexpectedly when I am trying to press them.

How Many Books Is Too Many Books?

Nicola here, and today I'm asking the provocative question "how many books is too many books"? And as a follow up to that: "What system do you use to categorise your bookshelves?" You see, I need help and advice. The time has finally come to sort out my “library.” This is rather a grand term for a muddled collection of books on shelves, in boxes and in stacks on the floor all over the house with only a notional system of what is where. For years I’ve been saying I need some sort of cataloguing system, yet each time I sit down with my books to try to categorise them, I either get distracted into reading something I had forgotten was there or I am so overwhelmed by the hugeness of the task that I retreat and close the door on the mess. There are obvious downsides to this, most annoyingly the fact that I can’t find half the books I know are there and when I need them for research – or to re-read a favourite novel – I’ll spend ages huffing around looking for them. Also, I have been known on more than one occasion to buy multiple copies of things just because I didn’t realise/remember they were already in my collection. So a neatly-ordered bookshelf is crucial.

June What We're Reading!

Mary Jo here…

…with the Wenches' ever popular "What we're reading" blog.  Dig out your credit cards, we're going for a joy ride!

I've always known that Jennifer Ashley is a very talented, prolific author who writes historical romances, paranormals, and historical mysteries, but I hadn't found her Leonidas the Gladiator series, written under her Ashley Gardner pseudonym.  So far there are only two novels and a novella, but more are coming.  The first book is Blood of a Gladiator.

Leonidas is the premier gladiator in Rome, a rock star fighter who is recognized in the streets, but he has reached the point where he can't face any more killing.  That is the moment when he receives his freedom from slavery and can finally quit being a gladiator and make his own life--if he can figure out how.

He has no financial resources, but an unknown benefactor gives him a modest apartment and a slave of his own: Cassia, who is a scribe.  Illiterate Leonidas doesn't know what to do with  a slave who does doesn't cook or do housework, but she can help him find jobs and is very good at negotiating contracts and making sure they get paid. 

Initially Cassia is afraid of him, but he's a good guy and doesn't ravish her and gradually they develop a bond of trust.  And have to deal with unexpected murders.  Ashley Gardner creates a wonderful sense of place and what it would be like to live in Rome during the reign of Nero.  But the best part is the characters and their slowing developing relationship. 

 

The Butterfly Effect

Nicola here, talking about insects (as you do!). I’ve got to admit that I’m not a big fan of insects, especially if they sting or bite, or even if they don’t. I quite like a ladybird (ladybug) and I make an exception for butterflies and moths, and obviously I appreciate honey (thank you, bees.) But I’m not naturally drawn to beetles or other insects. (I also dislike spiders, but in the course of writing this blog piece I’ve discovered they aren’t insects but arachnids.)

Last week, however, we were away for the few days on the trail of one of the most beautiful and scarce insects in Britain. Fortunately it is a butterfly, the swallowtail. Whilst there are 550 species of the swallowtail family in the world, we only get one in Britain and then only in one relatively small area, the Norfolk Broads in the east of the country. So off we went to find them. (The photos are all by my husband who is a massive butterfly fan as well as a great photographer).

Initially we had planned to hire a small boat and cruise the Broads in search of these elusive but beautiful creatures. However I have a love hate relationship with boats and fell in on my last visit to the Broads as did our dog, who could swim better than me so got out more easily. We compromised on a houseboat, which was a lovely experience. Waking up on the river listening to the call of the birds and watching the moon on the water at night was very relaxing and peaceful.

Ask A Wench: our noble ancestors!

Jean Hasbrouck House

Pat here:

The wenches thank Jane Irish Nelson for this fabulous question: Have you traced your family history? If so, what interesting stories have you discovered? And have you ever incorporated those stories into your books? Jane, you’ve won a copy of one of my books!

Wenches, being the history nuts we are, have delved into the lives and stories of our ancestors where we can and have some fabulous tales to tell…

Except me. I may have mentioned previously that both my parents were orphaned, my mother at birth and my father when he was young. I never had biological grandparents and have no family stories to tell. But after doing the DNA search on one of the genealogy sites and consulting with a cousin, I’ve traced bits and pieces. My father’s ancestors were deeply rooted in the Hudson

Huguenot cemetery

Valley of New York, well back to the original settlers. (There was a good deal of intermarriage in these early families. The same names pop up frequently on the tree.)  One of them has even written a small book with all the research he has done, although I seem to have lost the link. I have pages of research notes from family members, and all I can say is that I’m pretty sure that side of the family came from a lot of vain storytellers with too much time on their hands. <G> If I follow their irregular notes, I am descended from half of European nobility.

Jubilee Jubilation

Nicola here, in the UK, where we are marking Queen Elizabeth II’’s 70th anniversary on the throne with Platinum Jubilee celebrations. The series of events being held to celebrate this milestone reminded me of 1977 when I was twelve years old and was living in Leeds in Yorkshire. We had a street party and in the park down the road from us there was a big concert which you could hear from our garden - which was great as my parents wouldn’t allow me to go as I was too young!

Jubilees don’t come around that often. They mark a major milestone in the reign of a monarch and only start after 25 years on the throne with the Silver Jubilee. They are named in the same way that anniversaries are: silver, golden, diamond and platinum but there’s no pearl or sapphire jubilee and none of the smaller anniversaries in between. However, they may be infrequent but they have a long history. The origins of jubilee celebrations go back to Ancient Egypt when a pharoah would take part in various ceremonies to demonstrate his or her fitness to rule. The word “jubilee” derives from the Hebrew word ‘Jobel’ which refers to the ram’s horn with which these ceremonies were proclaimed. Jubilees are, as the name suggests, times of jubilation.

What We Read in May

Anne here, and it's that time again, where we share the books we've read and enjoyed in the last month. Brace your credit cards . . . 

We start with Christina:
My favourite read this month was Sue Moorcroft’s latest novel Summer at the French Café.  This story is an absolute delight and exactly what I needed right now to sweep me away from real life! It’s a wonderful tale of learning to trust, the importance of being open and honest with everyone, and the healing power of love. The reader can’t help but empathise with the hard-working heroine Kat from the start. She’s independent and capable, but with a positive outlook on life, and she never complains even when things go decidedly pear-shaped. A child of divorced parents, she has lots of emotional baggage, but for the most part, she manages to ignore it. Then the hero Noah arrives on the scene and he seems almost too good to be true. He has his own problems to contend with, but instead of charging in like a bull in a china shop, he stops to consider the best way of solving them. I fell head over heels in love with him – how can you not love a man as determined as he is to do the right thing for his very sensitive 8-year old daughter, while at the same time being the perfect boyfriend? Kat has to decide whether she dares to take a chance and believe that he is every bit as great as he seems, and I was rooting for this couple all the way. This is definitely the perfect summer story!  (If the links above don't work for you, try this one.)

I also very much enjoyed Under One Roof, a novella by Ali Hazelwood which she calls “STEMist”. The heroine Mara is an environmental engineer and extremely brilliant at what she does, but she’s fighting against sexism and prejudice in her workplace. She’s just been left a half share in a house by her former mentor, but she hadn’t reckoned with having to share it with the woman’s nephew Liam. At first glance he is everything she hates – a corporate lawyer working for a company that has no regard for the environment whatsoever. They try to co-exist as house owners, but drive each other nuts. But everything is not as it seems, and slowly but surely they begin to find common ground. I absolutely loved the chemistry between these two and watching the romance develop. This is only the first novella in a series of three and I can’t wait for the other two!

Pat Rice tells us about: SEVEN DAYS OF US by Francesca Hornak.

The basic story here is that Olivia Birch has been treating some kind of plague in Africa and when she comes home for Christmas, she has to quarantine for a week. So her family quarantines with her in their stately old, crumbling manor in Norfolk. Olivia is the no-nonsense doctor out to save the world. Andrew, her father, was a journalist who once thought he could save the world. Now he’s a food critic. Emma, his wife, gave up her dreams to be a mother and has buried herself in tradition. Phoebe is the younger sister with no purpose other than getting married. Into this suffocating atmosphere drops Jesse, an American son fathered by Andrew while he was in a war zone. He had been given up for adoption and is now searching for his birth parents. Nuclear explosion ensues.

Make no mistake about it, this is a deliberately literary novel, so you won’t get your fun and games happy ending, but the writing is positively compelling. The reader is dragged into their mixed-up lives and really needs to know how all these good, but confused, people fix themselves or each other. We root them on as they grope about in their darkness. I can promise that they find a new kind of light at the end of their week of togetherness, so it’s well worth diving into for your escapism addiction.

New Experiences

Nicola here, back home after a couple of weeks in Scotland and reflecting that it’s never too late to have new experiences. This was the first time that we had taken Guide Dog puppy Baden on a holiday with us, which meant that our itinerary needed to allow plenty of opportunities for him to do some training as well as for us all to have a good time. So this was a new experience for all of us.

The first thing that was new for Baden was long distance travel. Guide dogs need to be adaptable to new situations and be good at travelling on different modes of transport. Baden is used to the train and the bus but when he goes in the car, he normally travels in the special dog compartment in the back. Not this time! The dog compartment was full of two weeks’ luggage and Baden was on the back seat in his dog harness. He rather liked his “throne” and the view it gave him out of the windows, and he took the 9-hour journey to the east coast of Scotland in his stride.

Confessions of a Country House Tour Guide

Nicola here. Now that we are into May, I’ve restarted my volunteering at Ashdown House, the 17^th century hunting lodge in Oxfordshire where I work for the National Trust. It’s a great pleasure to be back, not least because we have only been open intermittently during the last two years of the pandemic and I really missed being in one of my favourite places.

I love visiting historic houses myself and when I go, I’m always curious to see the tour guides and volunteers in action. So often, things seem to run so smoothly yet when you’re behind the scenes you know it isn’t always the case at all. As with organising anything, there’s mad paddling going on below the surface!

I’ve worked at Ashdown for 20 years now. For years I drove past the stunning little 17^th century white stone house that sat looking mysterious in the middle of a wood. I wondered a lot about its history but I always seemed too busy to visit. It was seldom open to the public and then only by guided tour. However when I gave up my job to become a full time author I was looking for something to do that would get me out of the house and meeting real people. Since history was my obsession, volunteering with the National Trust seemed like a good option.

The Order of the Bath Tub

Nicola here and today I’m wallowing in the bath. Or I would be if it weren’t such an un-eco-friendly thing to do these days. Before I sat down to write this blog, I checked out whether showering really uses less water than bathing and of course it all depends on how deep the bath or how long the shower. A bath filled about a third of the way up (which takes the water level over your belly button when you lie down) requires around 75 litres. An ordinary electrically heated shower puts out four litres per minute. So a 19-minute shower uses slightly more water than a bath. If you have a power shower, flow rates could be doubled and you’d need just 10 minutes.

In terms of health benefits there is also positive news on either side. Showers are better for getting you clean and not stripping all the natural moisture from your skin. Baths are more therapeutic to help you relax and of course you can add things to them to soak in. Which is where this all started before I digressed, because what I wanted to blog about today is things we put in the bath!

Tudor and Georgian Treasures in Bath

Nicola here. It’s always a pleasure to visit the Holburne Museum in Bath (it’s always a pleasure to visit Bath!) and last week Baden and I hopped on the train to go and see the exhibition on The Tudors: Passion, Power and Politics, which has had rave reviews and I’ve been desperate to see from the first. 

It’s quite a thing to come face to face with some of the most famous names in Tudor history, particularly as the exhibition room is smaller than most galleries and therefore more intimate. It wasn’t busy either, which meant I could stand for as long as I liked in front of the paintings simply lapping up all the details.

The Age of the Euphemism

Nicola here. I'm in my writing cave dealing with revisions to my latest manuscript, so today I have dusted down a Wench classic post from 7 years ago which provoked an interesting and fun discussion at the time and I hope will do the same now its been updated and expanded. The topic is "euphemisms" and the first line of this blog piece is of course a euphemism in itself. What I really mean is that I planned a new blog topic but ran out of time to write it. Euphemisms are "a mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing." And we use them all the time: "Downsizing" for job cuts, "certified pre-owned" for a used item (or "pre-loved" for clothes), "friends with benefits," "creative with the truth," ladies' powder room" to quote just a few. There are endless ways of softening something that sounds too direct and the word euphemism itself originates from the Ancient Greek meaning "good speaking."

There are many euphemisms for things that are considered too personal to express directly. This is where this blog post receives it's X rating as we plunge into topics that have been and may still be culturally taboo for some people. In both my mother's and grandmother's generation there were certain words that were simply not appropriate to use. My dearly-loved godmother, for example, completely confused me when she referred to her "sit upon." I thought she meant a piece of furniture rather than her bottom! But euphemisms enable people to speak about things they find uncomfortable. They are comfort words that help us broach difficult topics. It's worth bearing in mind though, that you can stumble into cultural quicksands with euphemisms very easily. The "fanny pack" is one example, and did you know that in Scotland a "peenie" is an apron so "get your peenie out" could be misconstrued? And whilst on that subject, the question "which way do you dress?" from a tailor to a client during a trouser fitting is a euphemism designed to save both from embarrassment but which could easily cause confusion.

Comfort Food!

by Mary Jo

In complicated times, we need our comfort foods!  What foods and drinks do you reach for when you need soothing?

Nicola is first:

I’ve been a comfort eater ever since I was a teen and over the last couple of years my eating did rather spiral out of control as a result of all the stresses in the world, macro-sized ones and personal challenges. One bag of crisps became an entire family sized bag I had to myself and the same went for chocolate. When I realised that I needed an entirely new set of clothes to accommodate me and my eating habit, I realised I had to stop.

So I signed up for a programme to help me change my mindset towards food. It wasn’t a diet because it didn’t need willpower, which was good because I don’t have any when it comes to eating. Instead it sort of reset my attitude towards food. So the brilliant thing about it is that I can still eat all the lovely comfort foods I enjoy – cheese and onion crisps, chocolate mini-eggs, hot buttered toast – but as treats rather than in huge quantities. And I’ve discovered the comfort of eating stuff that’s actually good for me: luxury jacket potatoes, lovely rich casseroles in winter.

But when it comes to the ultimate in comfort food then I seek out baklava. For those who haven’t yet discovered it, baklava is a layered filo pastry dessert filled with chopped nuts (my favourite being pistachios), sweetened with honey and spiced with cinnamon and cardamom. When it’s warm the filo pastry is all soft and gooey with the honey mixture, and the spices are subtle and delicious. You can cut it into square pieces to eat as sweet treats – as large or small as you like. It’s scrumptious and there’s a wonderful recipe for it here:

 

Victorian Opulence at Osborne House!

Nicola here. A couple of weeks ago I spent a few days on the Isle of Wight in a cottage that is situated on the Osborne House estate. Although I knew that Queen Victoria had built Osborne as a summer holiday home (more on that later!) I knew very little about it or its history so it was a fascinating trip. When I say that we stayed in a cottage, it was actually the gatehouse to the estate, known as Sovereign’s Gate, which was the entrance through which Queen Victoria and her family would have approached the house back in the day. Now transformed into a holiday home over three levels, it’s a fabulous place to stay. These days the Sovereign’s Gate is locked but Angus was happy to pose for a photo to show it off! Inside the gatehouse has many of its original 19th century features, including these fabulous windows with movable sashes on a pulley system.

As the house and grounds were closed, we had the place largely to ourselves. This was an enormous privilege enabling us to explore
the acres of gardens, park and beach (as long as we told the security detail that we were going out - it was rather like having bodyguards!). It also meant that I got a personalised tour of Osborne House itself, which was brilliant. I was allowed to use the  “ministers’ door”; there were five different entrances at Osborne, one reserved for the monarch only, the second for the royal family, the third for ministers, the fourth for titled visitors and members of the court and the one round the back for the servants and tradesmen!

Writing Short!

By Mary Jo

More than you ever wanted to know about writing short fiction!

I became hooked on books as soon as I learned how to read, so it's no surprise that when I got a computer, learned word processing, and decided to see if I could write, what I dived into was a book: a full length Regency romance, The Diabolical Baron.

Clearly my natural instinct was to write long.  My Signet Regencies were supposed to be 75,000 words, but two of my first four drafted at about 125,000 words.  Ooops!  Nonetheless, when I was invited to write a Christmas novella for the second Signet holiday anthology, I couldn't resist saying yes, so I had to learn to write a lot shorter.