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Monthly Archives: July 2012

Amanda is taking Tuesday off for a little pre-4th of July picnic prep, but Michelle Willingham is filling in with a post about Scotland and her exciting new release, Tempted By The Highland Warrior!!  Comment for a chance to win a copy.  See you next week…

Visiting Scotland for Research
When I was contracted to write a Highlander series, I knew I had to visit Scotland. In my mind, I envisioned tartan-clad heroes riding across the hills, with their claymores drawn. I pictured William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, and of course, the eternal Highlander as we drove on those narrow, winding roads.

It’s a stunning land, full of wild beauty. But during our days there, it rained every single day. At the time, I was a little frustrated. I had wanted to hike through the mountains of Glencoe, seeing the mountains in all their glory. Instead, I saw fog and clouds, blocking our view. Our windshield wipers got a great workout, and every time we stopped the car to take a picture, both of us were fighting off the rain.

But when the rain stopped and the mists rose, the landscape left behind was breathtaking. It was a haunting place where I could feel the stories. We visited the infamous Loch Ness (and yes, I did look for the Loch Ness Monster like everyone else), but what drew my eye was Urquhart Castle. Although there were fortifications there as early as 460 AD, the first castle was likely built in the 13th century. It was there during the time of William Wallace and it provided the perfect research location on what a castle might look like during the era I was researching.
As you approach the main gate, there was once a portcullis to counteract the effects of a battering ram. Two guard towers were on either side, and a small deck made of timber allowed the defenders to pour hot oil on the invaders or attack from above.
Inside, although the floors have all rotted away, you can see the upper floor was divided into several rooms, one of which was used as a banquet all to serve honored guests. Music and feasting were part of the tradition of Urquhart Castle, which were held by the Comyn, Durward, Gordon, and Grant families. Boats could travel along Loch Ness, bringing news to the castle inhabitants or bringing items to trade.
The castle was captured by Edward I of England in 1296 and was transferred through different families until it was almost destroyed in 1609 by Williamite forces who were holding the castle against the Jacobites. By destroying it themselves, they ensured that it wouldn’t fall into enemy hands (a strange move, but one that worked). It remained a ruin and is now owned by the state.
When I was writing my MacKinloch Clan series, Urquhart Castle provided a wonderful inspiration for the settings of the different books. My newest release, Tempted by the Highland Warrior features a mute Highlander who grew up as a prisoner-of-war. He’s in love with Lady Marguerite de Montpierre, the daughter of the Duc D’Avignois. It’s a Romeo and Juliet story of two lovers who are worlds apart and try desperately to be together.
Today I’m giving away a signed copy of the book (or Kindle if you prefer) to one lucky commenter. Just tell me— what’s the weather like in your part of the world?
Learn more about Michelle Willingham’s books by visiting her website at: http://www.michellewillingham.comor interact with her on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/michellewillinghamfans) or Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/michellewilling)

I am engaged in domestic matters, with a kitchen remodel, and I have some valuable advice for you all:

1. Do not wait 15 years to clean your vinyl blind.
2. If you do, do not clean them outside when there’s a heat index of 105.
3. If you want to have a truly depressing aesthetic experience, shop for light fixtures and dining chair pads.

On a more cheerful note, since it’s so hot here–and I was one of the lucky ones, I got my power back after only 36 hours, and while it was off had a long trip to Ikea and went to a performance of Mahler 3, as well as enjoyable clothing-optional-with-a-book moments at home–let’s all scream for ice cream and cooling summer drinks. This is an amended post recycled from a few years ago about the joys (for the rich) of Regency summer living:

Ice cream certainly wasn’t invented in the Regency, but it was very popular among those who could afford it–visit historicfood.com to check out recipes for this gorgeous collection of ice creams and water ices: in the back, royal cream ice, chocolate cream ice, burnt filbert cream ice and parmesan cream ice; in front, bergamot water ice and punch water ice. I’m guessing that the parmesan cream ice (and some of the others, too) must have been served as a savory accompaniment, to be expected when each remove would include items that nowadays we’d consider being strictly dessert.

Were ice cream cones used in the Regency? According to this illustration from 1807, and article at historicfood.com, they were.

The great houses made sure they would have plenty of ice by constructing an ice house–this is the interior of a brick-built Georgian ice house at Parlington Hall, Yorkshire, which measures a mighty 16 ft. in diameter and around 20 ft. deep.

Ice would be cut from local lakes or imported from countries such as Norway, and insulated with straw. The actual igloo-like design of the ice house, and its position in a shady spot on the grounds would aid in keeping the ice cool.

As for cool drinks, spruce beer was always a favorite. Made from spruce buds, its flavor could cover a whole range from citrus to pine–or possibly not.  A reviewer I found the first time around bravely tested a modern brand and came to this conclusion:

If ever offered a bottle, save yourself the trouble and drink some paint thinner. It will taste the same, but you can wash your brushes with the remaining thinner you don’t drink. Spruce Beer would probably melt the bristles off. But it’s not all bad …there is a sweet buffer that does keep you from projectile vomiting.

Lemon barley water was a favorite, too, first manufactured by Robinson and Belville in 1823 in powder form, to be mixed with water to cure kidney complaints and fevers. It also aids in lactation, should you have the need, and Robinson’s lemon barley water is still the official drink of Wimbledon for players (although presumably not for that reason). Here’s a modern recipe from cuisine.com.

As for lemonade itself, here is a recipe from the seventeenth century from coquinaria.nl, and an experiment using Mrs. Beetons’ at vintagecookbooktrials.

I also looked around for some ginger beer recipes–ginger was readily available as it was a subsidiary crop in the sugar-producing islands and found this one at allrecipes.com which claims to date back to the Tudor era. One thing I love about it is that although the preparation time is relatively quick, the recipe is ready in 14 days and 30 minutes. Don’t forget those crucial 30 minutes!

What are your favorite summer drinks or ice cream flavors and do you make any yourself? I love historical food sites almost as much as ice cream and lemonade. Do you have any to recommend?

I’ve just returned from a busy but fun vacation that ended with two lovely days with my dear friend and fellow Regency author Gail Eastwood. We spend the first of those days touring just a few of the famous homes in or near Newport, Rhode Island.
We began with the Breakers, the home of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, commissioned in 1893 and the most imposing of all the Newport mansions. Here Gail and I are posing on the terrace overlooking the water. And here’s a picture of the Great Hall by CC-BY-SA-3.0/Matt H. Wade at Wikipedia. 
 
I found the tour very interesting, but I have to admit the style of the Breakers did not appeal to me. Although I like ornamentation, I prefer designs that allow some resting places for the eye. At the Breakers the goal seems to have been to give every available surface some sort of special treatment.  It just seemed like Too Much. But the Gilded Age was the era that coined the phrase “conspicuous consumption”.
Comparing the Breakers with homes I’d toured in England, my impression is that the goal of houses like the Breakers was more the display of wealth than taste. In my favorite English homes, I like to think the designs were inspired not only by a desire to demonstrate good taste but a genuine love of beauty as well. 
Gail told me I’d probably find many of the other Newport mansions gaudy, so she suggested we visit Rosecliffnext. According to the online guide, “Commissioned by Nevada silver heiress Theresa Fair Oelrichs in 1899, architect Stanford White modeled Rosecliff after the Grand Trianon, the garden retreat of French kings at Versailles.” We agreed that the more restrained style was more elegant but also very romantic.
Our modern sensibilities still don’t easily embrace the idea of a family living in a home vastly greater than their needs, with an army of servants to keep it up.  It does make more sense if one considers the scope of their entertaining. In fiction, the house party stories like Gail’s recent reissue, An Unlikely Hero, need this sort of grand setting.
I don’t have problems with fictional heroes and heroines living this lifestyle as long as they treated those who lived and worked on the estate kindly. To have them question this arrangement would feel anachronistic without the right setup, perhaps an unusual upbringing that would have been considered revolutionary (probably not in a good way).  
Nevertheless, I’m glad that famous houses in England and elsewhere are now opened up as museums. I’m glad they’re also used as public spaces for concerts, weddings and other functions.  It seems right to me that those without the means to live in such over-the-top settings can still enjoy them now and then.
Our final stop was Green Animals. The house is relatively modest, decorated in Victorian style but cozy rather than overdone. The real star of this property is the garden populated with topiary animals. We were lucky to make it there for the last hour and tour the garden, bathed in late afternoon sunshine, though we heard rumbles of thunder from the north.
Learn more about the Newport mansions and other estates at www.newportmansions.org.
Have you ever toured the Newport mansions or anything similar? What did you think?

So we’ve just returned from a vacation to the South–Charleston, South Carolina, to be specific.

While there, we went to a few beach restaurants–casual atmosphere, cheap beer, delicious crabs–and there were a lot of  twentysomethings as well. That was interesting, since in my daily life I don’t see the age of the people about whom I’m writing. And I don’t see Southern people ever, so there were two different things about the people I got to observe.

Man, twentysomethings are very different from me. Something to keep in mind as I write their romances.

It’s easy to think that because you’ve experienced things–yes, I was twentysomething once–that you know all about it. But then seeing people interact in ways you just wouldn’t imagine reminds you (or me, at least) that no, I don’t know it all. So maybe my characters will behave in ways that I wouldn’t expect, even as their authors, because of their different perspective.

Which is a long way of saying I am very excited to return to writing. Hope everyone had a great holiday, if you’re American or Canadian, and otherwise had a lovely week.

Megan

Posted in Writing | Tagged | 4 Replies

Happy Tuesday, everyone!  I hope you all had a great holiday last week.  I ate too much junk food and drank too many weirdly concocted cocktails, but I think I have recovered now…

At the moment I am 1) working on a new Regency-set romance for Harlequin.  It’s been a while since I dipped into the Regency world, and this is a new sort of story for me (a marriage-in-trouble plot) so I am enjoying it! and 2) I am researching and plotting the first in my new Elizabethan-set mystery series for NAL! (I have a new pen name too–Amanda Carmack).  The catalyst for the story is the death of Lady Jane Grey.  Even though my story starts in 1557, on the eve of Elizabeth becoming queen, I’ve had to research Jane’s tragedy as well.  And I found out that today, July 10, in 1553, she began her short-lived reign.

Jane was born in 1536 or ’37, the eldest of 3 daughters of Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, and his wife Lady Frances Brandon (the daughter of Henry VIII”s sister Mary, dowager Queen of France, and her husband Henry Brandon).  Jane was very well-educated, speaking Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, as well as modern languages like Italian and French.  She was a devout and committed Protestant, corresponding with European theologians like Bullinger.  She would prefer to hide away with her books rather than join in her party-loving family’s ways, and often complained about her strict upbringing (like in this letter to Roger Ascham):


“For when I am in the presence either of father or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand or go, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing anything else, I must do it as it were in such weight, measure and number, even so perfectly as God made the world; or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea presently sometimes with pinches, nips and bobs and other ways (which I will not name for the honour I bear them) … that I think myself in hell.”

But her quiet life wouldn’t last.  On May 21, 1553 she was married against her will to Lord Guildford Dudley, son of the Duke of Northumberland (King Edward’s chief advisor).  Her sister Katherine was also married to Lord Herbert, heir to the Earl of Pembroke, and Guildford’s sister Katherine to Henry Hastings, heir to Earl of Huntingdon.  It was a lavish ceremony, and widely perceived to be a consolidation of power since things were about to change.

In the Third Act of Succession, passed by Henry VIII and Parliament in 1544, Henry restored his “illegitimate” daughters Mary and Elizabeth to the succession, after his young son Edward.  But in 1553 Edward knew he was dying.  He was a devout Protestant like Jane, and his ardently Catholic sister Mary was his heir.  He drafted his will to leave the throne to the descendants of his aunt Mary (ie Frances and her daughters), and it was signed by 102 nobles.  Edward intended to have this declaration passed when Parliament met again in September, but he died July 6.  His death was kept a secret until Jane was told she was queen on July 9 (legend has it she wept and refused), and was taken to the Tower with her husband and officially proclaimed queen to the bewildered public on July 10.

But her claim was weak from the start.  (Legal experts of the time said a king could not contravene an Act of Parliament without passing a new one.  Plus it was pretty clear Henry’s daughter should have precedence over his great-niece).  Northumberland also made a key miscalculation when he didn’t move fast enough to capture Mary.  After years of living quietly (except for bitter quarrels with her brother over religion), she surprised everyone by escaping and putting up a stiff fight.  She was helped by the fact that the public saw her as the rightful heir, and the tide quickly turned against Queen Jane.  Mary was proclaimed queen on July 19 among much rejoicing, she entered London on August 3, and Northumberland was executed on August 22.

Mary at first was merciful to her cousin, and even released Jane’s father.  It was thought that eventually Jane would be released as well, and left to live a quiet country life with her books.  Until the Wyatt rebellion, which used Jane as a figurehead and which her father foolishly supported.  Jane was executed on February 12, 1554, a deeply sad day which sets in motion the plot of my own book…

Jane became a romantic legend after this, a Protestant martyr and “sweet young thing” (though many of her letters show that she was a pretty normal, though very precocious, sulky adolescent).  For more info on her short, complicated life, I really liked Eric Ives’s Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery (2009) and Leanda de Lisle’s The Sisters Who Would Be Queen: The Tragedy of Mary, Katherine, and Lady Jane Grey (2008).  Jane’s sisters had equally sad lives, trapped by their situations of birth into unhappiness.

Are you interested in Jane’s sad life?  Who are some of your heroines this summer??

Posted in Research | Tagged | 2 Replies
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