The Beau Monde and Hearts Through History chapters of the RWA are hosting their first annual Historical Romance Writers Conference today, which I am attending. Though the schedule was constructed very late, I am looking forward to the workshops offered.

My day is packed:

7:45 – 9:00AM Breakfast & Registration & Annual Meeting
Golden Gate A2-A3

9:00 – 9:40 Keynote Speaker: Jocelyn Kelley (aka Jo Ann Ferguson):
“The Quest for the Holy Sale”
Golden Gate A2-A3

9:45 – 10:40 Sell that Historical
with Kensington editor Hilary Sares & Michelle Buonfiglio from Romance: B(u)y the Book
Where the genre is and where it’s going! If anyone knows, it’s these two women. So if you’re looking to sell or interested in what is selling, this is the workshop for you.
Sierra H

10:45 – 11:10 Break

11:15 – 12:10 Georgian and Regency Clothing
with Kalen Hughes
Join author Kalen Hughes for a live demonstration of clothing of the 18th and early 19th centuries (if we’re very lucky she’ll even have a male model in full regimentals!).
Sierra F

12:25 – 1:30 Lunch with Jenna Petersen!

1:15 – 2:15 A Gentleman’s Tipple: Georgian, Regency and Victorian Beverages
with Kalen Hughes
What’s the difference between Whiskey and whisky? Sherry and sack? What does Raspberry Shrub taste like? Join author Kalen Hughes and find out (must be pre-registered).
Sierra H

2:15 – 2:25 Break

2:30 – 3:25 Making Your Historical Characters Come Alive
with Megan Frampton, Amanda McCabe & Andrea Pickens
Just because you’re writing in a distant time period doesn’t mean your characters should be distant to your readers. Make your characters come alive through dialogue, attitudes, description and actions, while still remaining true to the period.
Sierra I

3:30 – 4:30 Tea and Silent Auction
Golden Gate A2-A3

5:30-7:30 p.m. RWA Literacy Autographing
(Open to the Public)
Yerba Buena Ballroom

8:45 – 11PM Soiree with Dancemaster
Golden Gate B2-B3

I started off looking for a photo of a Regency kitchen and ended up finding two jolly good quizzes for your Monday Morning entertainment, not to mention this lovely picture of The Romantic Hero paperdoll.

Are you a Vulgarian?

It matters not whether you are a pillar of society or the scum of the earth: everyone likes to speak the language of the gutter. It’s big, and it’s clever. In Regency times, vulgarity was employed and enjoyed by people from all walks of life – just as it is now. Assess your standing as a vulgarian by answering these questions on the vulgar tongue of the early nineteenth century.

Q: She may have been a modest young lady, but on Sunday afternoon she could be seen on the village green spanking her tits. A likely scenario?

My score: 6/15, Oh Dear, you poor cub! You might have to roughen your edges a tad if you’re to make it through a raucous evening without blushing.

Are You a Regency Catch?

In Jane Austen’s World, who would you have been? Our quiz places you in the Regency era at the height of the age of romance. Would you have been a Mr. Darcy or a dissolute rake, a Miss Elizabeth Bennet or a shameless jade? Find out by playing the quiz…

My result: Good day Maria Bertram! You lack a moral centre! Personally, I blame the parents. The love of a good man might just save you, but I fear we’ve come to this turnpike too late. Like Mansfield Park’s frankly wayward Miss Maria Bertram, you may sacrifice your reputation for sex and ultimately be more at home on continental soil.

Sweeeeet.

Learning the Craft:

TITLE: Empowering Characters’ Emotions
DATE: March 2008 (Registration Deadline Feb 27th)
INSTRUCTOR: Margie Lawson
COST: Cost of each workshop is $15.00 US for KOD members, $30.00 US for non-KOD members. (RWA membership NOT required)

Margie Lawson, a counseling psychologist, developed innovative psychologically-anchored editing systems and techniques that will teach you how to write a page-turner. Margie has taught a dozen on-line courses and presented full-day Master Classes in over thirty cities across the U.S and Canada. Margie will cover the following topics and more: The EDITS System, Emotional authenticity, Basic, complex, empowered, and super empowered passages, The Full Range of Body Language, Backloading, Writing fresh, Projecting Emotion for a Non-POV character.

Margie’s resume includes college professor, clinical trainer, sex therapist, Director of an Impotence Clinic, hypnotherapist, and keynote speaker. She presents 1) Empowering Characters’ Emotions, 2) Deep Editing: The EDITS System, Rhetorical Devices, and More, and 3) Defeat Self-Defeating Behaviors in one and two day master classes.

TITLE: First Drafts, Outlining Your Novel
DATE: March 1 – 15, 2008 (Registration Deadline Feb 25th)
INSTRUCTOR: T.L. Gray
COST: $15 for CRW and Heart of Carolina Romance Writers members, $20 for all others.

Outlines aren’t just for plotters! Pansters can also benefit from this workshop full of tools and tips to quickly organize, set goals, and outline your novel. It can also help revise an outline on a novel already in progress and aid in spotting and eliminating potential problems in a stalled project. Detailed worksheets can be tailored to your specific needs and will help keep you on track and away from writer’s block. You’ll save time and become much more productive.

Award-winning author T. L. Gray writes single title contemporary and romantic suspense for Cerridwen Press, the mainstream arm of Ellora’s Cave. She also teaches writing courses for Jefferson County Public Schools Adult Education program. She’s given workshops at RWA National and online classes for various RWA chapters. Currently, she’s working on a series for Cerridwen featuring Delta Force Heroes. Watch for her next romantic suspense, SAINT, in 2008. You can visit her at www.TL-Gray.com.

TITLE: Regency Miscellany: The Fascinating world of England in the early 19th century (1798-1822)
DATE: March 3 – April 4, 2008 (Registration Deadline March 2nd)
INSTRUCTOR: Nancy Mayer
COST: $15 Outreach Member/Others $25

Though some of the basics of the period, England in the early 19th century (1789-1822), will be covered, new material will also be presented as well as a new perspective on some older material. The workshop will also include the use of Google books. Questions are welcome as are suggestions as to what subjects would be of most interest.

Nancy Mayer has been studying the Regency world for more than a decade and always finding more and more interesting facets to be uncovered. Nancy was invited to give a talk on Regency Marriage at the BeauMonde Convention in 2005 and expanded the talk into a workshop on getting into and out of Marriage Across the ages which was presented by HHRW chapter. She has given other workshops for both BeauMonde and HHRW including Regency 101, WHO’s who and what’s what of Regency England, Errors to Avoid in writing a Regency, Food in the Regency. Nancy owns many books on the Regency period as well as some published in the years from 1800-1824. She also owns a dance book and several newspapers.

Title: The Perils of Pursuing a Prince
Author: Julia London
Series: Desperate Debutantes series, book #2
Publication Info: Simon & Schuster, April 2007
Genre: Regency Romance
Rating: <3 <3 <3 <3

Let me start off by saying that I love the Disney movie Beauty and the Beast, so the fact that this book followed the fairy tale’s plot almost exactly didn’t bother me. I picked up Ms. London after reading a short story by her in the School for Heiresses anthology. (Sabrina Jeffries, Liz Carlyle and Renee Bernard also wrote stories for it, which are all lovely!) The book is well written. I appreciated that both the hero and heroine were flawed (ie human). I can’t stand when one is perfect! It was also nice to have a hero who wasn’t unbearably gorgeous (Duh, he’s the Beast!). He was real, vulnerable, complicated, and much more alluring for being so. I could definitely fall in love with him. The heroine was naive but strong. I sympathized with her struggles being far away from home and surrounded by lies and seduction. She was believably conflicted. The only thing I would have liked to see was a baby epilogue, cuz I’m a sucker for those. Since the book is the second of a trilogy, though, Ms. London is probably saving the baby news for the next book. (I hope! Corpus bones, how I <3 babies!!!)

Belle is Greer Fairchild, an orphaned gently-bred 22-year-old who travels to Wales to find her inheritance when her guardian dies and she and her cousin are threatened with being married off without their consent. Since she has no money the journey takes months longer than it should have and along the way she meets up with the unctuous Gaston, aka Percy, who proposes marriage in an effort to manipulate her out of her money. The Beast is Rhodrick Glendower, Earl of Radnor, also known as the Prince of Powys, who is 38. (A 22-year-old and a 38-year-old? Kinda squicky, but let’s just pretend we didn’t notice.) Low self-esteem at being huge and scarred and a broken heart over the death of his wife and child have made him a grumpy recluse. When she arrives in the company of notorious black-guard Percy, the Beast demands that Greer prove her identity before he hands over her inheritance. He imprisons her in a tower; She runs away into the forest and gets lost; Rhodrick sees a storm coming, goes after her, and saves her life; She falls in love with his library; He demands that she eat dinner with him or starve. The servants burst into song and dance – oh wait, wrong story. Meanwhile Greer tries to remember things about her long-deceased mother who is haunting her dreams. Rhodrick and Greer struggle with their mutual mistrust while trying to restrain their mutual attraction. They overcome quite a few misunderstandings, secrets, and family histories that get in the way.

They fall in love. They get married. They live happily ever after. Aaaaaaaaah, wuv, true wuv.

Title: Seducing the Spy
Author: Celeste Bradley
Series: The Royal Four Series, Book #4
Publication Info: St. Martin’s Press, August 2006
Genre: Regency Romance
Rating: <3 <3 <3

Five years ago Lady Alicia Lawrence falls from grace and is abandoned by family and friends in a scandal, earning her the reputation of a liar and the moniker “Lady Al-three-cia”. She overhears a plot to kidnap the Prince Regent and seeks out Lord Stanton Wyndham. As a member of the secret Royal Four spies who run the country, Wyndham is honor-bound to investigate, even though his magic power of lie-detection doesn’t work on Alicia. She poses as his mistress to go to a scandalous orgy house party in the country where the kidnapping is supposed to take place so that she can identify the man whom she overheard plotting. Wyndham suspects her claims are just a ploy to regain entrance into society after five years of poverty. Even after Alicia saves the day and the hero’s life, proving her truthfulness, he still doesn’t reform. But of course, at the very end they get married and live Happily Ever After, as all good Romance Novel protagonists should.

Let me start off by saying that the heroine, Alicia, is my absolute favorite character in recent memory. I adore her. She is everything I wish I could be: smart, funny, sexy, and confident. Ms. Bradley’s writing is fabulous. The dialog is sharp. I was fully prepared to give the book five hearts, an almost unheard of score, but for the hero. He is an Ass. The bright, spunky, freedom-loving heroine deserves so much better. I liked him at first, but he never grovels at the heroine’s feet begging forgiveness for his crappy behavior.

What I desire in a work of fiction is for the protagonist to be challenged and ultimately reborn as a new, better, stronger character because of his journey through the book. He must take the Hero’s Journey as Joseph Campbell so succinctly puts it. In a Romance Novel the transformative power that acts on, challenges, and remakes the hero and heroine is love. Both should realize and embrace new Truths during the book. This transformative process of love is expressed beautifully in Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet (1923):

“For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth…. All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart. But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing floor, Into a seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.”

In my humble opinion, Wyndham needs to be thrashed more by the transformative process of love and exhibit a greater reformation afterwards. Instead, he writes a simple letter to the Heroine admitting his love, and she easily forgives him. He needs to GROVEL. Still, the book earns three hearts for the fabulous heroine and the great writing style. I look forward to feasting on Ms. Bradley’s other books!

Title: Lord Perfect
Author: Loretta Chase
Publication Info: Penguin Group, March 2006
Genre: Regency Romance
Rating: <3 <3 <3 <3

Short, spirited and well-written, Lord Perfect is a must read for any Regency Romance Lover. Indeed, it has been recommended by many readers over at Smart Bitches as a funny, super-absorbing, HEA-packed love story. I found the story, my first by Ms. Chase, to be delightful and I fully intend to read the rest of her repertoire in the coming months.

Benedict Carsington, Viscount Rathbourne, is known to the Ton as Lord Perfect for his impeccable self-conduct and for elevating the haughty aristocrat to an art form. Always the responsible one, he has taken over watch of his young nephew Peregrine. Bathsheba Wingate is a social outcast despite her blueblood and general responsibleness, simply for being related to the crooked branch of the DeLucey family. Her daughter Olivia inherited her relatives’ high spirited and iniquitous methods, and she hatches an Idea to run away to find the legendary family treasure, with Peregrine in tow. Hilarity ensues. Benedict and Bathsheba are forced together to find the missing children, despite their need to stay away from each other to fight the flames of passion that threaten to erupt.

Beneath his icy exterior, Benedict turns out to be a dashing hero and an excellent dad for Oliva. Bathsheba makes the typical romance heroine’s attempt to set Benedict free so that he doesn’t ruin his life by falling madly in love with her. He. in turn, makes the typical hero response of ignoring her well-meaning rebuttals and embracing the wuv, true wuv. The character that I love most in this book is Olivia. She’s charming, clever, and devious. My heart was all a-flutter at the deliciousness of the HEA. I recommend this book to all!

Title: Angel Rogue
Author: Mary Jo Putney
Series: Fallen Angels Series
Publication Info: Penguin Group, reissue November 2006
Genre: Regency Romance
Rating: <3 <3 <3

A delightful Regency adventure! I strongly recommend this book to Regency Romance Lovers, though I have two reservations that lead me to give it a rating of three hearts instead of four. Still, I have to like a book a lot to blog about it at all. This is my first book by Ms. Putney, and of course not the first in the Fallen Angels Series, so sue me. Reading it out of order was fine.

Lord Robert Andreville, known to his friends as Robin, is a charming, cheerful, magic-trick weilding, steal-your-heart hero whose happy-go-lucky air hides a wellspring of guilt and torment over his spy past. Maxima Collins, known to her friends as Maxie, is the daughter of the errant second son of an English Viscount and a Mohawk mother. She travels to England with her father to meet her unwelcoming English country cousins, and her father dies unexpectedly during a trip to London. Overhearing a conversation that suggests her father’s death wasn’t natural, she decides to run away, dressed as a boy, and walk to london. She literally trips over Robin as he is sleeping in the woods on his brother’s estate, and he appoints himself guardian in her quest. During their trek they outwit highway robbers, escape hired thugs, and get into brilliantly endearing capers. Maxima’s aunt and Robin’s brother search the countryside for the pair and end up falling in love in a very sweet secondary romance.

Things I love about the book: Robin. Ooo yum! Daring, honorable, funny, darling man! And the adventure crossing the country is great. The secondary romance in nice too.

Things that could have been better: Maxie uses stereotypical “listen to the wind” Native American magic to heal Robin’s soul. Cliche alert! The story lines are wrapped up blindingly fast and tight at the end of the book. They should have been more gently and naturally brought to conclusion.

I intend to read many more books by Ms. Putney, especially the rest of the Fallen Angels books so that I can get more Robin-goodness.

From the top of the snowy Alps, via cable-car over majestic craggy peaks, all I could think about was how I should be back at my hotel room writing. There are only 17 days, 19 hours, and 14 minutes left in National Novel Writing Month, and I only have 6 thousand words of the 50 thousand word goal. Corpus Bones! I’m forced to continually tell myself, “Write! Don’t Edit!”, but it’s hard. I want to read back over what I’ve written and change and format and add and subtract and improve and OMG! Onward, Ciara, onward! To edit is to retreat! Fortunately there are few distractions in the hotel room once I’ve returned from seeing the charms of Switzerland and my hubby has fallen asleep.

NaNoWriMo also has developed a Facebook application that displays a participant’s word count marker. Yes, I have installed it on my Facebook page. Perhaps then when you see me procrastinating on Facebook, or by BLOGGING, y’all can yell at me to get back to writing my story. Ha! I wanted to put this picture on the left on my blog somewhere, but can’t figure out how to add it to the sidebar. This layout is simply one of the many pick-and-choose options offered by WordPress, so I can’t make many changes.

Today’s oh-so-fun resources for writing Regency Romance novels pertain to writing dialog.

Regency Speak:

“How to Speak 19th Century” by Eric Fergusson – a short list of odd lexicon used in the 1830 book Private Yankee Doodle, some of which is used today with the same meaning and some of which is completely different.

The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Captain Grose et al, courtesy of Project Gutenburg. A much, much longer list of Regency-era slang, most of which would not be used by any sort of proper lady, but could make a quite colorful addition to your dialog. I plan on adopting a few into my everyday 21st century speech. Watch out!

Example:
BLOWEN: A mistress or whore of a gentleman of the scamp.
Regency speak: “The blowen kidded the swell into a snoozing ken, and shook him of his dummee and thimble”
Translation: The girl inveigled the gentleman into a brothel and robbed him of his pocket book and watch.

“The English Language and Literature Research Guide” from Yale University. Not a specific list of words, but of famous works of the Romantic Age authors and poets. Read the works of leading literary figures of the day (ie Jane Austen) and take notes on their language and lexicon. Obviously this is a more time consuming approach, but you could always skim. Besides, reading the classics is good for you.

“Lord Livingston, I presume?” Learn about the British Peerage system and how to address a Peer, his wife, his sisters, his eldest son, his younger sons, his daughters, his horses… no, really. It’s all rather confusing. But better to look it up than have your readers call you on it!

Saturday, November 3:
Tokens and treasures, yesterday’s pleasures
Cheap imitations of heirlooms of old
Dented and tarnished, scarred and unvarnished
In old Portobello they’re bought and they’re sold

Portebollo Road, Portobello Road
Street where the riches of ages are stowed
Artifacts to glorify our regal abode
Are hidden in the flotsam in Portobello road.
You’ll find what you want in the Portobello Road

From Disney’s Bednobs & Broomstick, which was stuck in my head most of the week. Portobello Road Market is, indeed, just like the song. Knicknacks of all shapes and sizes spill out of stalls lining the street. It was great.

Rachael and I had high tea in a modern tea shop nearby and we visited the Victoria & Albert Museum, a museum of cultural history of sorts that was founded with the proceeds of the Great Exhibition of 1850 (which would be an interesting subject for an historic romance novel!). I was really hoping to see costume history at the V & A, but they only displayed a small portion of their costume collection. Online they have an extensive collection of fashion history photographs and some fascinating feature articles such as Corsets and Crinoline.

Incidentally, while at Rachael’s I read Twice the Temptation by Suzanne Enoch that has two stories, one historic and one contemporary, both centering around a cursed heirloom necklace. In the second story the heroine is responsible for a touring jewelry exhibition by the V & A, which made seeing the V & A all the cooler, but unfortunately the V & A jewelry exhibit was closed for renovation while we were there. I liked the historic story better than the contemporary one anyway.

Sunday, November 4:
We took the train to Cambridge, which is lovely, where I saw my friend Tracy. The college house system sounds just like Hogwarts and the town looks like Hogsmead. I even took my photo next to platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross Station on the way there! We had high tea again (yum) and advised Tracy on what romance novel she should read for her first foray into the genre. She wanted something light as a break from her Bioengineering PhD studies. oof!

Monday, November 5:
I walked through Hyde Park. Yay! Now I can imagine it in every Regency Romance where the hero and heroine ride down Rotten Row, or walk through the gardens, or fall into the Serpentine (Kate in the Viscount Who Loved Me!). I saw a rider in traditional riding costume (wearing Hessians?) and I remembered that the top thing I wanted to do in London was go for a horse ride in Hyde Park. Phooey to remember on my last day. I couldn’t find the stables, but I did find the phone numbers for two stables that hire horses for riding in the park. Next time for sure! I followed the rider down Rotten Row for a bit, simply because I was so excited to actually see someone riding in Hyde Park, until he started cantering, at which time I was left in the dust.

Later I took the Tube to Covent Garden, saw Covent Garden Market, walked to the British Museum, strolled down Drury Lane, and toured the Royal Theater Drury Lane – all popular Regency Romance locations.

I admit, sadly, that I didn’t write much on my trip, but I got a lot of research done for my book! I read a lot at Rachael’s, partly because I got sick and partly because I couldn’t resist digging into Rachael’s collection of romance novels. I discovered two new yummy authors I really like: Kasey Michaels and Eloisa James. And I had fun. I would love to go back someday. You could stay years in London and not see everything!

After Stockholm’s quaint 17th century buildings painted in rose, yellow, peach, and red, London is relatively grey and colorless. I admit, I am disappointed. Compared to Stockholm, London isn’t very picturesque. However, it has one or two other things to recommend it, namely tons of historic sites, cultural icons, and romance novel settings. It is warmer than Sweden too, and it hasn’t rained yet this week! Ickiness alert: the pollution here is bad, and although you can’t see it with the nekid eye, you find it clearly in the black gunk that accumulates in your nose every day. Ew.

As you may remember, this is my very first trip to London. Did I immediately head for the Tower? Buckingham Palace? Big Ben? No, no and no. It is highly doubtful that my characters stood in line for a Beefeater tour. The best way to understand a character is to see the city as they saw it; to walk the winding streets and darkened alleys; to sit in green parks and watch the people scurry past; to study the built environment as it would have appeared during the 19th century. What would they have seen? Heard? Smelled? Where would they have lived? Shopped? Played? Cities are living, breathing, adapting organisms that have a profound impact on our personality, actions, and lifestyle. Understand the city, and you understand the soul of its people, be they historical, fictional, or present day.

As Churchill so succinctly put it, “We shape our buildings; thereafter our buildings shape us.”

Tuesday, October 30

On Tuesday I took the London Walks tour of Historic Greenwich, mostly because it started out with a boat ride down the Themes, which was lovely. The boat guide pointed out famous pubs and locations used by Charles Dickens in his novel Oliver Twist, such as where the criminal mastermind Fagin lived and died. Greenwich itself was slightly dull, perhaps because the guide didn’t share much in the way of interesting history lessons, but I did set my watch by the official ball that falls at 1 pm. (Pictured left: the Queen’s house with its view to the Themes framed by buildings of the Navel hospital.)

I ran back to the City for a much more interesting afternoon walk of “Old London, the Medieval to Georgian City“, which could be renamed “Churches of Christopher Wren and the Great Fire of 1666″. Our tour guide Hilary was fabulous. Old London is pretty much the financial capital of the world, so don’t expect a lot of old architecture aside from the churches.

In the evening we took the “Hidden Pubs of Old London Town” tour in which we saw the home of Dr. Johnson (author of the first dictionary), the location of Sweeney Todd’s barbershop (He shaved the faces of gentlemen/Who never thereafter were heard of again./He trod a path that few have trod,/Did Sweeny Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street -Sondheim), and Twinnings (tea merchants since 1706).

Wednesday, October 31

Halloween. In the morning I took a tour of “Shakespeare’s and Dicken’s London – The Old City” by the marvelous actor Shaughan who regaled us with monologues from both writers’ works and a song. In the afternoon I toured Old Hampstead Village where the middle class escaped the noxious fumes of the city and saw the Admiralty House that P. L. Travers wrote into Mary Poppins (pictured left). Who knew it was real? The Admiral apparently built his home the the exact dimensions of his ships’ deck and really did set off canons from the roof. Hampstead was an attractive brick village, but the guide was sparing on the historic details of the place. I really could care less where the Spice Girls or Riddley Pearson live.

Thursday, November 1

First day of NaNoWriMo and I write a grand total of zero words, because of course I came down with a cold. I managed to go out for the morning for a lovely and very informative tour of Mayfair, neighborhood of everyone who is anyone in a Regency romance novel (and Beau Brummell, Regency fashion leader). It was very different from what I’ve been imagining all this time! It is still a swanky place to live – the most expensive digs in the world, populated mostly by Americans and Middle Easterners. Many of the buildings are empty, bought only as property investments, adding a layer of blight and neglect. Apparently it is also a high class red light district – and always has been. In the late 1700′s the most infamous light-skirt, Kitty something, charged what would in today’s dollars be 300,000 pounds for her services. I think I need to right that into my book. Ha! Our guide, Richard, was awesome, very informative, and very open to questions.

I walked around Bond Street and saw Boodle’s, Brook’s, and the building where Almack’s used to be in Pall Mall in the afternoon, then came home and slept. Friday I slept. Being sick sucks.