Hi Everyone

I hoped to get the next Regency letter done and posted today but life overtook me. So I've just popped in to tell you that my new Anne Herries book with Mills & Boon is out on 4th March. It is the follow up story to The Lord's Forced Bride, which has been so popular with readers. I'll try to get something up on my Anne Herries blog this week. If you want to read the Regency letters there try later in the week. You can get in easily through my website - http://www.lindasole.co.uk/

Meanwhile, I am frantically working on lots of new stories for you. In June M&B are bring out Bought For the Harem, which is already out in USA. Captive of the Harem was my best selling book ever with them, especially in Japan, so I'm hoping that will do well. Fingers crossed.

I am now recovering from my fall on the ice but it has been a long haul and taken a lot of determination to get back to my writing. I'll have some letters here next time but they will be up sooner at the Anne Herries blog.

Love to you all, Linda

PS

The experiement with the Witch Child has turned out well with reasonable sales here and in the USA - better than I've had through publishers. Perhaps not worthwhile for a new book but for a reprint that you know wouldn't get done again in print it is all right.

A Georgian romance set in North Yorkshire

Hi, this is Jo Beverley, bestselling historical romance author whose books are rarely seen on shelves here in the UK, even in charity shops. I tell you, that is a weird thing. As if I've shifted over into another dimension.

However, you can buy them on line from all the usual places.

My new book for 2011 is An Unlikely Countess, which is set in North Yorkshire, which is where we were living when I wrote it. That's a picture of old Northallerton up there. A photograph, which is hardly Georgian, but the best I could do to capture the old town.

Inspired by the Oscars*G* I created a video over the weekend, mostly as a way to show some of locations such as that from An Unlikely Countess, or used as inspiration, though giving them context turned it into a bit of a book trailer.


Anyway, it was fun. If all you want to produce a sort of video from still images, I recommend Photo Story. It's an old programme, but it's a free download it from Microsoft, and once you learn its fairly simple ways, it's easy to use.

If you like the video (it's just a few minutes long), I'd be delighted if you passed it on via Facebook, Twitter, and the usual places. Here's the link.

The pub date for An Unlikely Countess is tomorrow, March 1st, but for some reason the UK sellers have a release date in May! I have urgent messages in to New York about this, but if you have any feedback, please let me know. It's available in print and e-book, of course.

I'm promoting it with: "A Prudence who isn't prudent, and a Cate who isn't at all effeminate. Add an impetuous marriage, and we have a most unlikely countess."

It's received lovely reviews -- which you'll see on the video if you give it a try.

Cheers,

Jo

Creative Writing Weekend

I’ve just returned from the Winter Writers and Artists’ Workshop Weekend in Fishguard where I’ve been taking the Novel course, one of five on offer. My work began a couple of weeks ago, when my prospective students’ first chapters and synopses arrived. I read them, noted what they hoped to get out of the course, wrote a brief report for each typescript and decided which workshops would be best.

I arrive at the Fishguard Bay Hotel on Friday afternoon and meet my twelve students for the first time. My job at this point is to introduce myself and make sure that they all know each other – more of a social exercise, really. I’d already had a worried email from a student concerned about being a beginner, so I need to reassure anyone who looks apprehensive.

I also tell them what the course will be covering: plot, first chapter, character, description, dialogue and half a session each on the synopsis and the letter to an agent. It’s an extremely intensive weekend. There are two one hour sessions on Saturday morning, two more in the afternoon and the final two sessions follow on Sunday morning. There’s a half hour tea/coffee and biscuits break at 10.30 am and another half hour break at 3.30 pm for more tea/coffee and biscuits. And we need them!

The lunch break is from 12.30 to 2.30 and I try to snatch a brief walk to recharge my batteries. The location is beautiful, overlooking Fishguard Bay with hills opposite and behind. There are Bronze Age burial cairns up on the moors (very much my thing) and, at this time of year, the birds are in nest-building mood – I can hear a woodpecker drilling in the woods behind the hotel. A half hour walk and some deep breaths of fresh sea air is wonderfully restorative. Then back to the next session.

The concentration is almost palpable and we all work hard. There are a number of five minute exercises to do and read out; there’s plenty of discussion and questions; and I try to make sure that everybody is involved and feels encouraged. Fortunately, my students are all great and there are no members of the ‘awkward squad’ to be reined in.

You can tell if a group is working well together – they are supportive of each other and their comments are positive rather than negative. There’s a real buzz in the air and the conversation continues after the sessions have finished.

The Fishguard Bay Hotel is an excellent venue: the food is good – they do a delicious cooked breakfast, (their poached eggs are cooked to perfection), a two course lunch plus tea/coffee and a two course evening meal. The staff are all friendly and helpful. Anne and Gerry Hobbs, who run the weekend course, are very welcoming and always on hand to make sure it’s all running smoothly.

I have been invited to return next year. I’m looking forward to it.

Elizabeth Hawksley

I've been Manga'd!

I have had Japanese translations of some of my books in the past, but they have all been in ordinary print form so I was surprised, and apprehensive, when four volumes in manga - comic book - versions arrived.

Although my Japanese is nil it was immediately obvious, as soon as I opened them, that these were two books - The Dangerous Mr Ryder and The Marriage Debt - each in a two voume set.

Here is Mr Ryder with the blonde heroine above. (The scene on the orange bedspread is not as sinister as it looks, by the way - Jack Ryder is trying to prevent the infuriated Grand Duchess knifing him in the back!) This is the first of my Those Scandalous Ravenhursts series, so I'm hoping this one does well and they print all 6!

Below is The Marriage Debt with my hero, Nicholas, in Newgate, about to hang as Black Jack Standon, notorious highwayman. I love the way the artist has captured Katherine's fierce determination to save him from the gallows.

I had no idea what to expect inside - would the story be cut, changed - how could I tell? But it was soon very clear that the manga version was incredibly true to the original book: I could follow it easily from the pictures and it all seems to be there.

I'm not sure that I entirely like the heroines with their huge eyes, but the heroes are to die for! Sexy, smouldering men of action who are also accomplished, tender lovers - definitely swoon-making.

Here's an example of the inside at the beginning of The Marriage Debt. I think it is vivid and really carries you through the story. This scene is from the extract below - see what you think. The hero looks just as I imagined him.

What was particularly interesting, from the point of view of image, was that The Marriage Debt is being reprinted this month in the UK in the first volume of The Regency Collection 2011. Regency Pleasures also contains The Model Debutante - I'm not sure what the Manga artist would have made of the nude modelling scenes in that!

The very different cover for that volume is shown at the bottom of the page.

The beginning of The Marriage Debt -

The tall man in the frieze coat sat cross-legged on the hard bench, put his elbows on his knees, his chin on his clasped hands and thought. It required some concentration to ignore the shackles on his legs, the cold that seeped out of the damp walls, the rustles and squeaking in the rotten straw that covered the floor and the constant noise that echoed through the long dark corridors.
A few cells away a man was screaming an incoherent flood of obscenities that seemed to have gone on for hours. More distantly someone was dragging a stick across the bars of one of the great rooms, a monotonous music which fretted at the nerves. A boy was sobbing somewhere close. Footsteps on the flags outside and the clank and jingle of keys heralded the passing of a pair of turnkeys.
Long ago his father had said he was born to be hanged. At the time he had laughed: nothing had seemed more improbable. Now the words spoken in anger had been proven right: in eight days he would step outside Newgate gaol to the gallows platform and the hangman’s noose.
One small mercy was that they had put him in a cell by himself, not thrown him into one of the common yards where pickpockets and murderers, petty thieves and rapists crowded together, sleeping in great filthy chambers as best they might, fighting amongst themselves and preying on the weakest amongst them if they could.
Apparently his notoriety as Black Jack Standon was worth enough in tips to the turnkeys for them to keep him apart where he could be better shown off to the languid gentlemen and over-excited ladies who found an afternoon’s slumming a stimulating entertainment. The sight of an infamous highwayman who had made the Oxford road through Hertfordshire his hunting ground was the climax of the visit to one of London’s most feared prisons.
He had hurled his bowl at the group who had clustered around the narrow barred opening an hour or two ago and smiled grimly at the shrieks and curses when the foul liquid which passed as stew splattered the fine clothes on the other side of the grill. He doubted they’d feed him again today after that. It was no loss, he seemed to have passed beyond hunger after the trial - if such it could be called.

What do you think of the manga version? Attractive or off-putting? I love them, but I like the elegant lady on the Pleasures cover as well.

Louise

Happy News!

I’m delighted to announce that my latest historical romance, Heart of Stone, has reached the shortlist in the Historical Novel Prize category of the Romantic Novelists Association’s Pure Passion Awards 2011. Here are the six of us: I'm on the far right.

I enjoyed writing this book so much. Set in Cornwall in the early 1800s, the story tells how Sarah Govier, ostracised by the town for refusing to give up her illegitimate son, fights to keep the granite quarry left to her by her father. Threatened on all sides, not least from the married father of her son, she is forced to turn for help to reclusive James Crago, an ex-soldier in India brutally scarred while attempting a doomed rescue mission. Producing explosives for the local mines and quarries allows James to keep people at a distance.

This was one of my favourite books. I lived every moment with James and Sarah as mutual suspicion evolved into respect and deepened into love. Long after their story ended they lingered on in my mind.

Last Thursday the shortlisted authors in the four Award categories were invited to a Champagne Breakfast at the RAF Club in London’s Piccadilly. It was a wonderful venue and the noise level was deafening as everyone caught up with friends and exchanged news in an atmosphere of warmth, excitement and pleasure in each other’s achievements. After having our photographs taken we were directed in front of a video camera and allowed one minute to describe how we felt about being shortlisted. The time limit was probably a good thing or we’d be there still!

I’ll be back in London again on Monday March 7^th for the Awards Presentation. No matter what happens on that day, just reaching the shortlist has been an absolute joy. That said, I still intend doing a lot of positive thinking during the next three weeks.

Jane Jackson

Royal Weddings

Sarah Mallory's blog about the Regency and the move into the Victorian age made me think about what might have been. What if Princess Charlotte hadn't died in childbirth in November 1817? If there had been no Victoria and Albert, what would our royal family be like now?

Sophie Page has produced a modern-set book, To Marry A Prince, which shows us a 21st century royal family descended from Charlotte and Leopold. An alternative reality that is certainly different from what we now have. It's out at the end of March, just in time for the forthcoming real royal wedding. But the story refers back to Princess Charlotte's wedding since she is the direct ancestor of Sophie Page's fictional prince.

Princess Charlotte was loved by the people, but she was rebellious and a bit of a hoyden, reputed to sit in such a way that her lace-edged underwear was visible. Regency readers will sympathise: how could she not be a hoyden, with those parents?

Leopold was a younger son of the ruler of a very minor German state. He was so insignificant that, when he came to London in 1814 in the suite of the Russian Emperor, he ended up lodging above a grocer's shop in Marylebone High Street. Not exactly what one would expect of a future royal consort!

Charlotte ignored him in 1814; she was in love with one of the sons of the King of Prussia. But by 1815, she seems to have decided to have Leopold. She wrote then: "...if I end up by marrying Prince L, I marry the best of all those I have seen, and that is some satisfaction." Doesn't sound like deep and abiding love, does it?

For her wedding, in May 1816, she sparkled. Her wedding gown is in the City of London Museum collection. It's not shown on their website, but you can see an image of it here. She was all silver, all glitter: "silver lama [lamé] on net, over a silver tissue slip, embroidered at the bottom with silver lama in shells and flowers. Body and sleeves to correspond, elegantly trimmed with point Brussels lace. The manteau [train] was of silver tissue lined with white satin with a border of embroidery to answer that on the dress and fastened in front with a splendid diamond ornament".

Yet it seems that it was a happy marriage after all, and that she did fall in love with Leopold in the end. But of course it didn't last. Some 18 months after the wedding, Charlotte gave birth to a stillborn son and died shortly afterwards. She was only 21. One correspondent wrote: "The nation would have resigned all the rest of her family to have saved her." But they could not. And the rest of the family, including all those bachelor uncles, were soon scouring Europe to find suitable princesses in order to provide the country with a legitimate heir.

What if Charlotte's son had not been stillborn? What if Charlotte had survived to become queen after the death of George IV? Things would surely have been different without Queen Victoria to produce all those children and marry them into so many European royal houses, like the German and Russian ones.

It's fascinating trying to think about what might have happened. Would there have been a 1914-18 war without Kaiser Wilhelm? Or a Russian Revolution without the problems of haemophilia in the Romanov family? What do you think?

Joanna

Miss Peterson & The Colonel

I'm thrilled to announce that on Valentine's Day my first book with Aurora Regency Historical, Miss Peterson & The Colonel, is to be published. Aurora is the new wing of the well established e-publisher Aspen Mountain Press and has been set up with the intention of filling the space left by the demise of the much loved Zebra and Kensington lines. Every book published by Aurora aims to be historically accurate as well as an exciting and fun read.
My book, Miss Peterson & The Colonel can be bought from the Aurora website or on Amazon, and can be read on a kindle or any other format.
I'm busy editing the second book for them, A Cornish Maid, which is due to come out at the beginning of March. A third will be out in April, Lady Eleanor's Secret.

Here is a short extract from the opening chapter of Miss Peterson & The Colonel. I hope you find the time to read it.
best wishes
Fenella Miller

Lydia grabbed at the strap as the carriage tilted but failed to stop her undignified slide into the well. Her maid landed heavily on top of her. For a moment she lay winded, unable to move.

"I beg your pardon, miss, I couldn't stop myself from falling.”

“It's not your fault, Martha. I think we must have broken an axle. I sincerely hope the horses are unharmed.” With some difficulty she extricated herself and stood up. “At least we are both in one piece. If I balance on the edge of the seat I believe I might manage to open the door.' She attempted the manoeuvre and the coach rocked alarmingly.

“Please don't do that, Miss Peterson. You'll likely have us right over.”

“Why doesn't Jim come to our aid? Do you think he's taken a tumble from the box. As Billy has gone ahead to order our refreshments he cannot assist. I must get out.”

This time her struggles sent the coach crashing right over. Her world turned upside down, her legs and arms became entangled with Martha's and it was several minutes before she was able to get both of them upright. The doors were now the floor and ceiling, the squabs pointing into the air. The sound of her precious horses panicking meant she had no option. If she did not get out and release them from the harness one would likely break a leg.

Martha screamed and pointed down. Lydia saw water seeping in through the door that now acted as the floor. They must have turned over into the ditch that ran alongside the road. “Hold on to something, Martha. I think if I could step on your knee I might reach the door handle somehow.”

Her smart travelling ensemble was ruined, the hem already saturated with muddy

water and her spencer in no better case. Her lovely new bonnet was hanging in disarray around her neck. Her sister had been most insistent she dressed in her best to meet the colonel, as the much longed for visitor was to arrive today as well. She was not going to impress anyone now.

The whinnying and stamping from the team had stopped. Was this a good or bad sign? Before she had time to consider, the door above her head was slammed back and a gentleman appeared in the space. His features were indistinct , but from his voice he was obviously well-to-do.

“Why couldn't you stay still, ladies? You have turned a minor accident into a major disaster. I have released your horses and attended to your coachman, however now that you've managed to tip the carriage over there is nothing I can do to get you out without assistance. You must stay inside.”

The incredibly rude gentleman vanished as suddenly as he'd appeared, leaving Lydia up to her boot tops in freezing water. “Come back here this instant, sir. You cannot abandon us in here.”

He slammed his fist against the carriage and shouted back. “I cannot right the vehicle unaided, and can't pull you out through the door. You will come to no harm, the ditch is shallow, I shall be back as soon as I can.”

Then he was gone, only the sound of hoofbeats echoing in the cold winter air to keep her company. This was no gentleman. He had callously left her and Martha without making a serious attempt to rescue them. He could be gone hours. What about poor Jim possibly unconscious on the side of the road?

She would not remain incarcerated a moment longer.

From the Regency battlefields to your ereader

The Lady Soldier is about to be released on Valentine's Day (14th Feb) as an ebook by Embrace Books and is one of their debut titles. It's a romance but its also full of adventure.

First published in 2005 in hardback by Robert Hale, The Lady Soldier was the first of my novels I ever saw in print. The thrill of holding your first book in your hands never leaves you, and it was the more pleasurable knowing that what had started out as a "fun" project had finally seen publication. I'm a huge fan of adventure fiction and it started as a question "why do the men get all the fun?". The only solution to this seemed to be to place a woman in a man's world and so the idea of Jemima (Jem) Riseley, a woman in disguise in Wellington's army, was born.


I wrote The Lady Solider jointly with Michelle Styles. Both of us were keen writers of historical romance and we had met on an internet board and were both seeking publication. We swapped manuscripts to try and help each other improve. Once you've written a novel manuscript, and then revised it, you send out sample chapters and from those sample chapters publishers then say whether they would like to see the whole thing. We were both thrilled when we had requests from publishers to see whole manuscripts of ours, but then the wait to see whether or not they would make an offer to publish was like watching paint dry. So we started working a project together: the story that became The Lady Soldier. As Michelle lived in the North East of England, and I near London, we used email to send the manuscript-in-progress backwards and forwards. It was great fun. When it was my turn to write I'd be trying to think what twists I could add to surprise Michelle when it was her turn to work on the manuscript next. After six weeks we had a first draft: so it can be pretty quick co-writing a novel. We then had to revise and then it was time to send our baby out into the world. In the meantime good news on our own projects had come back. Michelle had an offer from Mills and Boon and I from DC Thomson. We had some interest in The Lady Soldier but it took about three months before we at last received an offer of publication. We took the pen-name Jennifer Lindsay, but the e-edition of The Lady Soldier restores our own names to a newly designed cover and also some "lost scenes" - additional material that wasn't included in the original edition. Roll on Valentine's Day.

Kate Allan

Jane Austen's own "mashups"

Monica Fairview

I've been re-reading Jane Austen's Juvenilia lately, and once again I'm struck by her grotesque humour and her extreme parodic tendencies. I can't help comparing her strange inclination to distort and parody history to the mash-ups that have sprung up around her work, ranging from Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters to Mansfield Park and Mummies. It is as if the authors who penned these mash-ups were drawing on her Juvenilia. Certainly the mash-ups reflect Jane Austen's early stylistic tendencies.

The History of England -- my personal favourite -- illustrates this irreverant humour very clearly. Of Henry VIII Jane Austen has this to say:

The Crimes & Cruelties of this Prince were too numerous to be mentioned (as this history I trust has fully shown); & nothing can be said in his vindication, but that his abolishing Religious Houses & leaving them to the ruinous depredations of time has been of infinite use to the landscape of England in general, which probably was a principal motive for his doing it, since otherwise why should a Man who was of no Religion himself be at so much trouble to abolish one which had for Ages been established in the Kingdom?

Jane Austen's satirical wit -- including her self-parody -- emerges full scale in these Juvenile works -- untempered by her adult sense of what is acceptable and what was not. I always wonder how her writing would have been different if she had not been writing in the shadow of her two brothers, with all the weight of The Loiterer behind them, with its "moral lectures."

Certainly, Jane Austen as a teen was not in the least inclined to stick to realism. Her works are full of the grotesque and the improbable. Her heroes and heroines are far from ideal -- absolutely nothing is beneath them. They display a wanton cruelty and inclination to violence that is remarkable considering the relative propriety of her later works. In her Juvenilia Jane Austen writes with relish of disfigurement, cruelty, illegitimacy, drunkenness, theft, murder. In "Henry and Eliza" (and really, I have to call it a precursor to the mash-ups that are so popular today) Eliza, who steals from the people that adopted her, elopes, and uses up the fortune of her lover, and has two of her fingers eaten by her hungry children - quite literally -- and then raises an army to kill her benefactress.

It is particularly amusing when reading these strange tales to think of the image the Victorians formed of Jane Austen -- as the (somehow) diminutive old spinster whose mind "recoiled from anything gross". Fortunately for us, however, no one thought to destroy her juvenile writing as her letters were destroyed, so we still have a small glimpse into the less sanitized aspects of her writing.

THE REGENCY

Two hundred years ago this month saw the start of the Regency in England. King George III was seventy two and after many years of illness was declared insane. He was put into the care of his wife, Queen Charlotte, but it was still hoped that he would recover, as he had done several times before. In July 1811 the King suffered a relapse and was locked away; by 1812 he was living in a world of his own, and although the Queen visited him regularly, he did not recognise her.

On 5th February, 1811 the Prince of Wales took the oaths of office as Regent and assumed charge of the government. He was wise enough to declare he would make no changes in the leadership of the government, at least while there was a possibility that his father might recover and one small incident at this time shows there was a reconciliation between the old King and his wayward son.

The King's youngest and possibly favourite daughter, Princess Amelia, had died at the end of 1810. She had been in love for nearly ten years with Charles Fitzroy, one of the King's equerries, a wholly ineligible match for a royal princess. Her passion had been kept secret from her father for nearly ten years, but in 1811 it was disclosed that she had bequeathed her property Fitzroy. He renounced the inheritance and the Prince of Wales divided her jewels between his sisters. This pleased the King when he heard of it. He wrote: 'The Prince of Wales has a heart. I always knew he had. I will never call him anything but George in future.'

It is some small comfort to think that the old King was content to relinquish power to his son, despite their earlier differences. The Whigs who had supported the Prince of Wales in opposition now expected that he would put them in power, but it soon became apparent that he had no intention of doing so. He changed his attitude towards the Peninsular War, and began to support it (although Wellington's successes in Portugal and Spain may well have helpedto sway him). Once the Whigs realised he was not going to put them into power they shifted their allegiance to his estranged wife, Princess Caroline.

These were unsettled times for the country: in the Midlands and north, frightened and angry workers thought that by smashing the new machines they would keep their jobs in the new manufactories. Food prices were rising, and lack of export markets was causing unemployment in the industrial new towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire. In August 1810 alone, five Manchester firms went into liquidation. London and the south might try to ignore the grim realities of the times but on 11th May 1812 it was brought home to them very clearly when John Bellingham, a bankrupt commercial agent, assassinated Spencer Percival in the lobby of the House of Commons. The next day an anonymous letter was delivered to Carlton House, warning that the same fate would befall the Regent if the price of bread was reduced. There were ugly scenes in many towns, especially in the north and the spectre of the French Revolution was never very far away.

The mood of the country was changing: the bawdy, roisterous attitudes of the eighteenth century were giving way to a more cautious, conservative tone. The certainties of the Age of Enlightenment were being questioned and evangelical Christian principles came to the fore. The movement to abolish the slave trade was growing and the calls for electoral reform became louder.

The moral climate was changing, too. Before the French Revolution it was not unusual to find the illegitimate children of nobility being freely recognised by their parents (and in some cases being raised in the same household as their noble half-brothers and sisters), and sexual deviancy was ignored. By the Regency, however, rumours of Byron's relations with his sister and with other men brought such a wave of condemnation that Byron left Britain for good in 1816.

This is not to say that there wasn't romance, chivalry and adventure during the Regency, but it was a time of huge political and social upheaval. It was a time of grinding poverty and a harsh penal system; huge fortunes could be lost in an evening's gambling, while reformers worked tirelessly to improve the lot of their fellow man. Exciting, challenging and perhaps not quite such a frothy and insubstantial time as we sometimes portray it.

Queen Charlotte died at Kew on 17th November 1818 and the old King followed on 29th January 1820. Finally, the Regent became King George IV and Britain moved inexorably on to the Victorian period.

Sarah Mallory/Melinda Hammond

Demon + Magic + Forbidden

Hi, this is Jo Beverley.

Anyone reading my February publications might think I write paranormal romance, what with a magical statue and a great earth demon. In a way it would be true, because I love dabbling in fantasy and sf, but in fact weird stuff is part of history.

In my Regency romance, Forbidden Magic, my heroine owns a family treasure, an ancient statue called a sheelagh-na-gig. These naked female figures that some might think obscene were, and sometimes still are, found in church walls. There's debate about whether they were warnings of the evils of sex and women (very early Christian, alas) or part of goddess-worship.

As with most magic, Meg's sheelagh grants wishes, but with a sting in the tail. The sheelagh provides a magical solution to Meg's poverty -- an earl offering marriage, but the Earl of Saxonhurst definitely brings a sting. In addition, Meg can't bring herself to let him know that she owns and has used such a scandalous object.

You can see a picture of a sheelagh-na-gig here.

Scroll down a ways, past all the crosses. I didn't post the picture because they really do shock some people.

You can read an extract from Forbidden Magic here.

Forbidden Magic will be out soon, in print and e-book. In the UK, you'll probably have to get the print edition on line from Amazon or The Book Depository.

My other offering is e-edition only. It's an early novella from a collection that's long out of print, so I'm delighted to see it available again. If you don't have an e-reader, you could read it on your computer. Not ideal, I know, but a possibility.

This one is Georgian and involves a rake, the vicar's daughter, and a pagan ritual in rural Suffolk. There were, maybe still are, plenty of rural pagan rituals. This one takes a twist on a certain calendar date, and thus the great earth demon Waldborg rises....

I can remember thinking, back in the early '90s, that it was amazing what one could get away with in a novella! You can read the beginning here.

It's available in all e-formats, but the Kindle edition is here at the lovely price of 1.72 pounds. Give it a go.( My inability to easily type the pound sign on my North American keyboard is also historical. In 18th century books they did the same.)

I hope you enjoy these offerings.

I'm in Spain at the moment, so here's a picture from the Alhambra.

How do you feel about paranormal elements in historicals? How do you get your historical romances in the UK? Do you wish you were in Spain? Are you in Spain?

Any and all comments of a few lines or more will be entered in a drawing for a copy of Forbidden Magic. Apologies, but on this blog the winner must have a postal address in the UK.

All best wishes,

Jo

Letters From a Regency Lady

First of all my apologies for not blogging before Christmas. I slipped on the ice and broke a bone in my shoulder. For a while I was too unwell and in too much pain to type. However, I am back now and the letters continue.

The cover is for a Medieval book available from kindle only at the moment.

March 1816

Letter from Lady Horatia to her lover

My dearest, it is with relief that I write to tell you that Robert is at least a little better this morning. We had a long talk yesterday and I think it has helped him to come to terms with his grief. Forgive me if I do not explain but it was told me in confidence.

Robert has asked if you will visit us soon. He wishes to meet you, dearest, and he is very much on our side. I know that my brother would stand by us if we chose to leave England together. Melton knows that I wish for a divorce but as yet he remains unwilling to grant my request. If you are certain that you feel able to leave everything behind and seek a new life together please come to me here soon.

Robert has urged me to do what will bring me happiness in life and I believe that I can never be happy without you. However, I could not leave my brother until he is able to cope for himself. I know you have been patient with me and I beg you to remain so until we can take our happiness at last.

Your own Horatia

March 1816

Letter from Lady Horatia to her husband Lord Melton

Sir, I write to tell you that I have decided I shall not return to your house, either in London or the country. When our son was lost nothing remained to us. I beg you to forgive me, but I know that you do not love me and I hope you will find consolation in your mistress.

Such bluntness is necessary at this time for we must speak plainly to one another. I do not wish to remain your wife. I beg you to reconsider and divorce me, but if you refuse I shall simply go away.

Forgive me if this causes you pain. I cannot think it ought for you have never offered me love. Yet I would have had us part as friends were it possible. Please believe that it was never my intention to hurt you.

Horatia.

Mr. Darcy's Secret - my new book!

I'm thrilled to be able to tell you that in less than a week Mr. Darcy's Secret is out! I would have loved to have included a picture of the lovely cover, but I'm away at the moment, and Blogger won't let me. I can't quite believe this is my third novel inspired by Jane Austen - I wanted to continue the story of Pride and Prejudice, writing about the first year of marriage for Elizabeth and Darcy and also find a happy ending for Darcy's sister Georgiana. I've had a wonderful time doing lovely research which took me to Derbyshire and the Lakes - there are some definite upsides to being a writer!

If you'd like to know more please visit my blog at Jane Austen Sequels.blogspot.com. In the meantime, here's a sneak peek - a conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet:


“Who would have thought it, Mr Bennet,” said his lady talking over the top of him, “that I should live to see two of my daughters so exceptionally advantaged in married life?”

“Quite so, my dear,” replied he, “though I must add that however well placed I believed my daughters might find themselves, I had always planned on exceeding my own five and forty years to witness their felicity. Indeed, possessing the knowledge that your own long surviving line of aged relatives are still thriving as I speak, I must confess that I am a little astonished to think you had supposed to be dead before our daughters attained the matrimonial state.”

“Oh, Mr Bennet, you speak such nonsense. But you will not tease me out of my present happy disposition. And, I must say, I received some comfort from the fact that Miss Bingley and her sister Mrs Hurst were forced by a rightful sense of obligation and due civility to treat our family in the correct manner today. Oh, yes, Mr Bennet, I cannot tell you how much it gratified me to see the smug, self-satisfied expressions they generally display upon their ill-favoured countenances, quite wiped away. I thought Miss Bingley looked likely to choke when I turned to see Elizabeth and Jane walking down the aisle by your side.”

“I did not observe any greater condescension towards our family than that which they usually bestow, Mrs Bennet,” replied her spouse, “though I must admit I did not really pay them any great attention. My own thoughts and looks were only concerned with our dear girls.”

“What a double blow it must have been for Miss Bingley. I expect all the while she was hoping that Mr Darcy might break his promise to Elizabeth and leave her at the altar. And I am sure, whatever she might have said on welcoming Jane to the Bingley family, that the sincerity of her wishes was entirely false. Well, I cannot help feeling our advantage over those Bingley women. And Mr Darcy was as charming and obliging as ever. I think him quite superior to dear Mr Bingley in many ways, even if I hadn’t always liked him.”

“I’m sure Mr Darcy would be delighted to hear it.”

“I daresay he would, for he certainly needed to earn my good opinion after the way he strutted about Hertfordshire with his proud ways. However, I’m not entirely convinced by Lizzy’s partiality, whatever she might protest on his having been misunderstood and winning her round. A man ought to have a tongue in his head, indeed, especially a man of such consequence.”

“I should hate to hear you on the subject of despising a man if this is your approbation, Mrs Bennet. And I loathe to be contradicting you, once more, but I cannot agree with you. I believe Lizzy to be very much in love with Mr Darcy, as much in love, as dear Jane is with her Mr Bingley.”

“Well, I certainly think I might fancy myself in love if I knew I was married to the owner of Pemberley with a house in town and ten thousand a year, at least!”

“I am sure such good fortune helps love along. No doubt, my own prospects animated the feelings you had whilst we were courting.”

Mrs Bennet looked at her husband in exasperation. “Oh, Mr Bennet, it was nothing like the matter. There is no comparison. The wealth of Mr Darcy and Mr Bingley is a hundred times your consequence, as well you know. La! With Jane and Lizzy so well married; ’tis enough to make me distracted!”

Mr Darcy's Secret, Sourcebooks Landmark, February 2011
Copyright Jane Odiwe

Jane Austen's The Watsons

One of my favourite books is John Coates’ completion of Jane Austen’s fragment, The Watsons, published by Methuen in 1958.

I have read a number of completions of The Watsons but, to my mind, nobody has come anywhere near John Coates’ achievement. His book has wit, intelligence, a moral dimension (so important to Jane Austen) and the characters are varied, lively and behave in a manner which is true to the period. It is impossible to tell where Jane Austen’s fragment ends and Coates’ continuation begins.

In a fascinating article at the end of the book, Coates explains how he tackled it. He was convinced that Jane Austen’s ‘leisurely opening’ showed that she intended The Watsons to be a long book. In his version, the original is less than a quarter of the book.

Furthermore, he dared to alter the original where he felt it to be necessary. As a novelist himself, he needed both characters and incidents to be fresh, and not a pale imitation of ones in existing Austen books. He goes on to discuss the plusses and minuses of the original fragment. There are plenty of potentially interesting characters:

‘We have an ailing father, four unmarried daughters, and one married and one unmarried son. We have a bachelor peer in the neighbourhood with a flirtatious bachelor friend, a mother and an unmarried sister. We have a highly eligible clergyman with a widowed sister nearby. In the town of D. we have an almost unlimited quantity of officers from a colonel downwards, a young girl with rich parents and two eligible men, the sons of a banker. In the distance there is a rich elderly doctor, a young man who jilted the eldest of the four sisters, and finally a wealthy aunt who has just made a misfortunate second marriage to an Irishman.’

I think most of us would agree that all this is promising material. However, Coates points out that, as the fragment stands, the characters could easily become ‘too dull, too unpleasant or too like an existing Austen character.’

A good example is Penelope Watson whom he sees as ‘a mixture of the two unpleasant Misses Steele – even to the extent of chasing a doctor. I wanted a foil to my rather correct heroine, and Penelope as she now stands is my creation.’

The heroine, Emma Watson, ‘threatened to turn into another Fanny Price’. He re-names her Emily and gives her enough spirit to keep her distinct from Fanny whilst retaining her gentle but firm character.

The result is a book which succeeds triumphantly on its own merits. I’ve always loved it. It’s a great read; nothing jars, and it is both emotionally and intellectually satisfying. In my view, John Coates has done Jane Austen proud. Amazon gives it 5 stars but can only offer two extremely expensive second hand copies.

I can’t understand why it hasn’t been reprinted.

Elizabeth Hawksley

An excellent start to the Austen year

This year is a very special one for all lovers of Jane Austen as it's the bicentennial of Sense and Sensibility. Little did anyone know in 1811 that the quiet publication of Austen's first novel would start a centuries long, worldwide love affair with her work. This love affair is often attributed to film and TV success, but Austen's novels had already been loved for a century (more or less) before cinema and TV were invented.

Reading her books, it's easy to see why. They're not only extremely well written, with realistic romances and full of social commentary, they're also extremely funny.

One of the funniest is Northanger Abbey. I keep waiting for someone to update it in the manner of Clueless, because the story of a naive teenager being carried away by Gothic novels is as recognisable today as it was in the early nineteenth century.

In the absence of such a gem, we have some Northanger Abbey based fiction coming up this year. One book is my own Henry Tilney's Diary, which is out in May, but before that there is Margaret C Sullivan's brilliant novel, There Must be Murder.



Henry and Catherine Tilney are content with their married life: a comfortable parsonage, their dogs, and one another. The idea of returning to Bath a year after they first met there seems like it can only add to their happiness; but Catherine finds that Bath still carries social dangers that she must learn to navigate. What is the nature of Henry's past relationship with a beautiful young woman? Why is a rakish baronet paying Catherine such particular attention? Is General Tilney going to marry the woman known in Bath as The Merry Widow—and what did she have to do with her husband's death? And will Henry ever be able to keep his Newfoundland out of the river?

Revisit the winter pleasures of Georgian Bath with your favorite characters from Jane Austen's hilarious Northanger Abbey, and prepare for a bit of romance, a bit of mystery, and a very nice story indeed!


My copy is already winging its way to me from Amazon
and I can't wait to read it. Not only is the story tempting, but it's beautifully illustrated by Cassandra Chouinard. If you follow the Amazon link and use the "look inside" facility, you can see some of the illustrations.

All in all, a very good start to the year!

Amanda

Prison of War

I was fascinated by the Time Team programme last year about the excavations at the Norman Cross Napoleonic prisoner of war camp. All that can be seen of that establishment now is a faint outline in aerial photographs and a monument by the side of the A1.

But there was another camp that has survived, although in a very different form - Dartmoor Prison.
In September 1810 Ackermann's Repository printed this double page spread of the new prison (erected at a cost of £200,000)with a lengthy article "to pay a just tribute of applause to the judicious regulations, which ensure kind treatment and humane attention to the unfortunate victims of war." Whether the 6,000 prisoners who could be incarcerated here would have viewed it in quite that light is open to doubt!

"Perhaps a more healthy spot might have been selected", the article concludes, having reviewed the climate of Dartmoor, but otherwise the tone is of considerable admiration. Bedding is aired daily "when the weather allows", the hospital "is kept in the most exact state of cleanliness and order" and "every patient, previous to admission, undergoes a proper ablution in the bath." Whether the other prisoners ever managed to have a bath is not stated.

"The prisoners of war...wear a yellow uniform, occasionally striped with blue. So conspicuous and universal a dress renders their escape impracticable, supposing them at large beyond the prison walls."

The prisoners elected their own representatives to meet with the prison authorities to discuss problems with rations or accommodation and "a well supplied daily market is held in the agent's square where provisons of every kind are sold at a moderate price." It was presumably here that the prisoners would sell the handywork that they produced from bone and other scraps - and which now fetch such high prices as antiques!

The smaller enclosure to the right of the picture is the barracks which held 5-600 hundred men and their officers with Plymouth regiments taking two month turns of duty at the prison. 180 soldiers were on duty inside the prison itself at all times.

The author of the article considers that they have "a severe duty" but this was alieviated for the officers by invitations to Tor Royal, the seat of Thomas Tyrwhitt, Esq. MP for Plymouth who lived a mile and a half from the barracks. There they might expect "an amenity of manners, suavity of disposition, and inhaustible fund of anecdote and a hearty welcome to crown the hospitable board."

At the termination of the war...it is said to be in contemplation to convert this vast building into a receptacle for convicts, whose labours on the moor will prove highly important and beneficial to the nation and an incredible saving in the enormous expense incurred both at home and in transportation."

Backing the Wrong Horse?

In this month's guest spot I'm delighted to welcome Christine Merrill author of the second and final books in the Regency Silk and Scandal continuity. This month Taken by the Wicked Rake concludes the eight-book series and reveals the truth about the mysteries that have threaded through the other seven books. The villain gets his just desserts and Verity Carlow, younger sister of my two heroes, finds her true love.

Christine had to do a considerable amount of research into Romany life and lore for this book, right down to the horses used. But heroes are allowed to be slightly different - aren't they? Over to Christine -

* * *

When we continuistas had to choose a horse for my Gypsy hero, Stephano Beshaley, I remember there was some talk amongst us about the best type. I can’t remember who actually made the decision. Possibly me. I know I was all for it when he got the heroic standard, big, black horse.
I really don’t know much about horses, despite the fact that I live in the country. They walk by the house sometimes. They may be invited into the yard to eat apples. We have boarded other people’s horses, since we have an empty pasture. I have managed to get through the experience without actually learning anything, other than that I like to look out the window at horses. They are pretty from a distance. They are even prettier if they have owners coming daily to feed, water and brush them.

My husband had horses as a teen, and never wants to own another one. He sees them as things that require continual maintenance, and that take a deep breath and blow out their guts when it is time to be ridden, making it impossible to get the saddle properly cinched. And then they laugh when the saddle slips and the rider falls off. And then they run away. And you have to chase them…

Though we started dating in high school, I never got to meet his horses. When I learned they existed, I behaved like a typical teenage girl, and asked if we could go riding.
He said, “No. They don’t like to be ridden.” Apparently, the Merrill horses were only decorative.
It has been thirty years. He bears a grudge. No horses for us.

But I am writing historicals. And all of my heroes should have Andalusians. As stated, I know nothing at all about horses. But my first response, on seeing an Andalusian, was “Oh, God, I want a horse!” They are big and glossy, with flowing hair like an equine Fabio, and extremely proud, arched necks.
I think I can justify them as available and appropriate to the period. They are a centuries old breed from the Iberian Peninsula, and so would be appropriate for any returning war heroes. Regency men had a lot of time on their hands, and a good knowledge of horse flesh. Since Stephano is part English, a world traveler, and definitely of a theatrical nature, I think he would want a showy, good looking, slightly exotic horse.
It would be like having a Ferrari with legs.

But he is also a Gypsy. There would have been a much better horse, considering the fact that I gave Stephano a vardo wagon. I never even considered the more appropriate Gypsy Cob. This is a breed of uncertain bloodlines, but firmly based in the UK, and bred by the Romany. They are piebald or tobiano, with shaggy, feathered legs and are big boned and ideal for pulling wagons. They will graze on what they can find. And apparently, these horses are also sweet tempered, since the Romany sold any horses that weren’t, and bred only the nice ones.
These horses are also called Gypsy vanners. Probably because they pull vans and don’t spook or get tired. If an Andalusian is a Ferrari, a Cob is definitely a station wagon.

There is no alpha hero in the history of romance that would choose a station wagon over a sports car. I rest my case, with apologies to real Gypsy Horses everywhere.

* * *

I found this lovely print by Henry Alken above that is probably the sort of Ferrari horse than Stephano would have liked, although I am sure he would not have had the tail docked.

Louise Allen

The end of a beautiful friendship

The Richard and Rose series is in many ways my flagship series. The first book in the series was the first one I had published, and with rewrites, it’s a bestseller at Samhain today.
it’s the only series I have written that is far better read in order. It’s the only one with the same couple at the centre of each story. It’s the only series I’ve ever written in the first person.

And yet, readers love it. It was different, and in many ways, it still is. I had planned this series for years, knew the first three books in detail before I’d put fingers to keyboard. While I steered my children through the first five years of their lives, I kept myself sane by planning scenes in detail, which were finally realized when I wrote the series. Things just slotted in. I’ve never written so fast, or so slowly. It took years to put those scenes into place, and then they just flew.

I’m just starting to write the last book in the series. It’s the eighth book, and it will be called “Lisbon.” The seventh, “Maiden Lane,” has gone through edits and it’ll be out in March, with a lovely cover. Well I love it, anyway.

Saying goodbye to Richard and Rose is proving more traumatic than I’d ever imagined. I’ve made the plan, and usually I’ll write the book start to finish. When I’ve done it rarely needs much editing, as I edit as I go—something writers are told not to do, but it works for me.

I know where they’ll end up, in fact I’ve been planning this book since I started with “Yorkshire.” I worked out the dates to fit, and while I didn’t know the details until I started to plan it, I did know what I wanted to happen.

Do writers of long-running series featuring the same characters all feel like this? I don’t think so. When Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes, it was with a sense of relief, only to have to bring him back to life by public demand. Christie kept Poirot alive almost as long as she lived.

I just feel sad. Enough to remind myself that this is the end of the first cycle. It brings to a close a number of plot threads that have woven themselves throughout the first series, despite my best efforts to deal with them earlier.

I started this series, thinking that Richard would be a mild-mannered minor aristocrat, someone who ‘belonged’ just enough for aristocrats to trust him with their deep and dirty secrets. In the mid eighteenth century, the police force didn’t exist, and while crimes were usually prosecuted, it was far more haphazard than today, and crimes against property often had to be privately prosecuted. The aristocracy ruled, and they tended to keep their affairs to themselves, unless it was something as shocking as the Ferrars case, when Lord Ferrars cut his valet’s throat. But Ferrars was an odd fish, and had his enemies. Suicides could be hushed up as “accidents,” and murders might be dealt with in house, so to speak. I saw my hero as someone who would be like a consulting detective of the eighteenth century. I still have to write that hero.

Instead, I got Richard Kerre, Viscount Strang, heir to one of the richest earldoms in the country. When I wrote that scene in “Yorkshire,” when the two protagonists encounter each other in a derelict courtyard, I’d seen it. I sometimes “get” scenes like this, and if I don’t write them down, I lose them. But this one was too good to let go. I based the house in the story on Calke Abbey, a derelict stately home that the National Trust decided to preserve in the state they’d found it. It’s a fascinating place, very eerie, where anything could happen. So I made it happen. It formed the backdrop to Richard and Rose’s first explosive meeting.

It seems like no time at all, but now I’m writing the last one. And I’m sad. Although I could always come back and write another cycle in the future.

I do plan some spinoffs. My editor is very interested in seeing a story about Richard’s cousin Freddie. He arrived as a walk-on character, and just ended up staying. Now he’s getting his own story. I’ve just “got” his heroine, so I can start on his story to compensate for saying goodbye to Richard and Rose!

Richard and Rose

Yorkshire – meeting and falling in love.

Devonshire – smugglers and courtship

Venice – honeymoon and card sharps

Harley Street – secrets and married life

Eyton – great country house secrets and childbirth

Hareton Hall – the smugglers return, with a secret from Richard’s past

Maiden Lane – back in London, and some things are resolved.

All the books are available at Samhain Publishing. There are excerpts and links on my website.

 

Lynne Connolly, http://lynneconnolly.com