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Category: Writing

Posts in which we talk about the writing craft and process

Do errors or modern phrases bump you out of a historical story you were enjoying? Or as an author, do you find that despite your best efforts those kinds of errors creep in when you’re not paying attention? Well, if so, here’s good news: Writing Regency England has released! It is the culmination of two years of meticulous hard effort honing and focusing, choosing what to include (the topic could be an encyclopedia unto itself, of course!), writing, re-writing, fact-checking, digging for illustrations–all the work.

Picture of the book, Writing Regency England, shown at an angle so the front cover and the spine are both visible. Co-author Jayne Davis and I both love our genre, and we hope this book may serve everyone with any interest in the Regency time and world. We both believe if you’re going to go to the trouble to set a story in a historical time period, creating an authentic sense of that time and world strengthens the story and the experience the reader will gain from reading it. Mistakes can lead to bad reviews, disappointed readers, and an overall bad rep for the genre! WRE is our effort to help fellow authors avoid that fate!

Available in print only, the book offers sixteen chapters of wisdom and information about the Regency time period focused on the “most commonly seen” errors that authors make. Designed as a guide, not a list of complaints, the book covers a wide range, from developing an ear for period appropriate language, avoiding modernisms and Americanisms, to simple facts about the landscapes, flora and fauna of England (no chipmunks! no skunks!), the correct use of titles for characters in the nobility (and who is or isn’t a peer), wisdom about naming your characters plus much more. If you write Regency-set fiction or even just enjoy reading about the period, this is a new resource with a unique slant that you might find invaluable.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/191379010X

Reviewers are giving it 5 stars and saying:

“The authors of Writing Regency England: A Resource for Authors have nailed all the things I grit my teeth over when reading Regency fiction: language that is inappropriate to the period, foods that were not eaten, incorrect use of titles, ignorance of mores and early 19th century life in general. This book covers everything: setting, flora and fauna, building styles, transportation, Great Britain’s old, confusing monetary units (shillings, pence, etc.), professions, the army and navy, and much, much more. I’ve done research for my own books since 2016 and am amazed at the scope of Writing Regency England. I wish I’d had a copy then.”

“If you’ve ever wondered whether what you were reading was accurate or not, then this is the book to tell you. …whether you’re an author or a reader, this book is highly recommended.”

“Thank you to Jayne Davis and Gail Eastwood for putting their heads together to write ‘Writing Regency England’. I do not know how much time I spend going down rabbit holes when I research the period, especially when I am looking for something specific. This book is a great resource for both writers and readers of the period who care about historical accuracy.”

“I’m impressed with the quality of the information and how easy it is to read the book. I’d recommend it highly to historical literature fans, readers and authors alike.”

Every author’s approach to authenticity is as unique as their writing style and voice, but there seemed to be a need for Writing Regency England. Others who write in the same period could certainly have done this book, but Jayne and I were the ones who were crazy enough to tackle it!

Do you think accuracy matters in historical fiction? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

A few things have happened in the last month or so to put diversity in historical romance at the forefront of my mind. All of them came to a head when I was reading tweets discussing the recent post on SmarthBitches. So I went over and read it. It’s basically the same argument/discussion that I’ve seen kicking around Romancelandia since the oughts when I first joined. I’ve seen it called a chicken and egg syndrome: readers can’t buy what isn’t for sale, but I’m here to tell you, readers don’t seem to buy it when it is for sale. And while we may all bemoan this, that doesn’t change it.

Historical romance is very white, straight, cis, and upper-class. It’s also kind of like playing jenga. It’s really hard to remove one of those and not have the whole thing come crashing down. Why? Let’s take a look (hopefully without making judgments about readers or authors, which I’ve seen quite enough of lately).

Dukes sell. They just do, like it or not. A few authors have managed to make names for themselves by moving into the gentry (Carla Kelley and Rose Lerner spring to mind) and some authors are pulling off love stories among the lower classes (like Erica Monroe), but from what I’ve seen during my writing career, when you leave the ton behind, you lose a lot of the readers who want that extra soupçon of fantasy.

Books set outside of Georgian/Victorian England and Scotland are harder to sell. I honestly don’t know why this is, but even Ireland and France are hard, let alone Ancient Rome or Shogunate Japan. A lot of us thought (hoped!) that indie publishing would unleash a tidal wave of settings that would brush away Regency England’s chokehold on the genre. Didn’t happen. And every time a new historical TV show is a hit, I see a flurry of hope that the setting will crossover into publishing. But it never seems to. Thankfully, there are authors writing other settings (like Beverly Jenkins, Jeannie Lin, and Sandra Schwab), but those are labors of love. Readers vote with their wallets, and the majority of them vote for Georgian/Victorian England and Scotland (preferably with dukes).

Because the most popular setting is among the 18th and 19th century British ton, the most popular characters are by default Caucasian. There are ways to work in characters of other races/ethnicities (England certainly had free blacks, a Jewish population, Anglo-Indians, Indians, and Chinese), but outside of an Anglo-Indian character, it’s hard to get a non-Caucasian character into the ton. For example, the movie Belle radically changed her actual history to make her wealthy and accepted in a way that she wasn’t in real life. Why? My best guess was that her real life story wasn’t romantic enough. The best examples I can find for how she might have been viewed in her own time are in the works of Austen (Sanditon) and Thackeray (Vanity Fair), which both have wealthy prospective brides who are mixed race as Dido was. Austen treats it as a non-issue. Thackeray does not. Both of which fit with the changing ideas of race and class as depicted in the book White Mughals (which I highly recommend).

Straight and cis. Yep. See above. There are certainly ways to tell gay and trans stories in a historical setting. There are real world examples (Lord Hervey, the Chevalier d’Eon, possibly the Ladies of Llangollen, maybe Dr James Berry), and I’m glad to see these stories being told (e.g. KJ Charles and Cat Sebastian), but we’ve not yet reached a place where these books aren’t niche when it comes to readers (I’ve seen discussions about why some readers avoid these and it’s much the same as why they avoid roms about working class people: the nagging worry about security breaks the fantasy for them; so while a contemp LGBTQ rom works for them, a historical one doesn’t because the HEA never feels “safe”).

So, what does this all add up to? It adds up to authors wanting to make a living (which I’ve been told is an inadequate excuse; a statement with which I strongly disagree) and publishing being a risk-adverse business. When it takes months (or years, depending on the author) to write a book, purposefully writing one that isn’t “to market” is a risky choice, especially if this is how you support yourself. And it comes down to readers.

How does this play out in real life?

When I pitched my first series, c. 2004, I pitched a black hero for book three. I was told by agents and editors that it was a no-go. The profit and loss on it was too risky, especially since those sales numbers would haunt us forever and would probably kill my career (which is funny, since losing a slot at a certain Big Box store killed that pen name long before this book would ever have come out). I did squeeze in a half-Turkish hero (my lowest selling book to date) and I got roundly told that bi-racial characters were “cheating” (as someone who IS bi-racial, this still pisses me off to no end).

[As an aside, I’ve also seen authors’ attempts to diversify their series dismissed as “tokenism”. So I’m damned if I don’t include any diverse protagonist in my series, and damned if I do, but not to the (arbitrary) extent that pleases whomever is deciding these things. Please note, there was a long discussion of this at a recent conference and several authors flat out said they’d rather be dismissed with the faceless majority than paint a target on their back so they could be singled out for tokenism or fake-diversity. I sincerely doubt this is the goal those pushing for diversity wanted, but it’s the one they got.]

Back to me: When I brushed myself off and began pitching again, I always pitched that guy’s book. Agents and editors were suddenly talking about wanting unusual, stand-out books (c. 2008). Books with a different angle. Books with a hook. Books they could promote as DIFFERENT. You know what they meant? They meant maybe not a duke, but still duke-adjacent. Oh, they loved the younger sons angle, but could I throw in a secret society to make it all hang together? I wish I were joking.

Sneak Peak: cropped image of my fencing master’s cover image

Ok, so this time I put that black character IN the series. I was hoping I’d get fan mail asking for his book that I could show my editor. I never did. Not a single email or tweet. What did I get? Requests for very minor (white) walk-on characters. *sigh* When I submitted by my black fencing champion as the hero for one of the books, I got told they’d let me do an e-only novella for him. Not even a novella set with other authors who were also writing Georgian (which they had!). None of that came to fruition anyway, and I left NY, so his book is still sitting there on the back burner (though I have cover shot, so I’ve got that tucked away waiting). This is a story I really want to write, but to date no one has wanted to publish it and I’m honestly not sure readers will pick it up unless I’m very, very lucky. And yes, I have a plan to hopefully help my luck, but if I had to pay my bills with writing monies, I can’t say that this book would ever be written. I know that every hour I put into that book is an hour I might not get paid for; or at least not at the rate that I would get paid if I was writing a duke. But I’m lucky. I have a day job that pays my way and a stubborn streak that wants to write what it wants to write. So, eventually my fencing master will get his book and I’ll get to see if readers love him or if only I do.

So that’s my take. YMMV.

 

 

 

 

I recently found out that the blog I’d posted this on (Popular Romance Project) has been wiped from the internet, causing a dead link on my website. So I’m reposting it here to preserve it.

One of the topics that comes up a lot among historical writers is what research books are essential. If you ask your top ten favorite authors, you’d probably end up with a pretty impressive research library (and I’d LOVE to see other authors tell us about their Must Have Books in the comments). Here are mine. I think these books are must reads for anyone wanting to create an authentic Georgian/Regency world, and I’m going to talk a little bit about why.

The Rise of the Egalitarian Family: Aristocratic Kinship and Domestic Relations in Eighteenth-Century England by Randolph Trumbach (1978; ISBN 0127012508; OOP, used ~$40).

When writing a love story, you need to understand the mores of the times. One of the many, many useful things that Trumbach does in this book is discuss the evolution of the love match as a social ideal in the Georgian period. It’s all bound up with the Enlightenment and the Hardwicke Marriage Act and the slow descent of the nobility’s dependence on land for their fortunes. By the Regency period, Trumbach maintains that the love match had ousted the arranged marriage entirely and was well on its way to trumping matches based on social advantage and monetary considerations. So if you want to have that tension between generations, this book is a great resource for understanding where everyone might be coming from in their viewpoint of what would be ideal.

This book is also the main source for basic information that we use in every book, such as the time periods for mourning, marriage settlements, consanguinity. And it features tons of information about basic domestic issues such as the role of wives in the family and the raising of children. Really, it’s just an all-round great book for getting a solid understanding of what was going on inside people’s everyday lives.

The Regency Companion by Sharon Laudermilk and Teresa Hamlin (1989; ISBN 0824022491; OOP, used ~$200, use interlibrary loan).

This is just an all-round brilliant book. It contains a wealth of information about everything from the Season and courtship among the ton to basics about how people lived such as the clubs men frequented, the theatres, roles of servants, etc. I just don’t know any other book that provides the information this one contains. It’s essentially foundational.

20,000 Years of Fashion by Francois Boucher (1973; ISBN 0810900564: OOP, used ~$12).

I simply don’t know a better survey book for fashion. While I’m obsessed with clothing, I don’t think everyone else needs to be, nor do I think it’s a wise place to spend your time considering, “With a small bit of effort, he undid her gown and it fell to the floor” suffices to get you where you need to be. But I do think every writer needs to know enough not to make any glaring errors, and Boucher’s summaries and careful selection of images are perfect for providing that little bit of knowledge you need (and since it covers pretty much all of European history, you don’t need to buy a new book if you decide you’d rather write Victorian settings, or Medievals.

The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England 1500-1800 by Lawrence Stone (1983; ISBN 0061319791: OOP, used ~$1).

Stone not only delves into the basic makeup of the English family (and he mostly talks about the upper class, “Barons and up” as he labels them), but he has great charts that provide vital information regarding the average ages at which people in this class married, how many times they were married, under what circumstances they were likely–and unlikely–to remarry, etc. This book provides a sort of grounding for the history of your characters’ families and a general understanding of how the most basic building block of society evolved and functioned. I would also suggest his Road To Divorce to anyone who wants to write about characters with broken marriages.

The British Aristocracy by Mark Bence-Jones (1979; ISBN 0094617805; OOP, used ~$10).

I love this book! It’s extremely insightful about how the aristocracy think of themselves, what matters to them, and what the origins of those feelings are. Bence-Jones is an insider who lays it all out for us. I found the section on “The Concept of the Gentleman” extremely enlightening and also highly recommend it for the chapter on “The Aristocratic Character.”

The Art of cookery Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse (1774; free on Google Books)

Though you might throw food in with the unimportant minutia, I think that’s a mistake. The devil of historic world building really is in the details, and nothing throws a well-informed reader like potatoes in a Medieval setting or iced tea in a Regency (or indeed in any book set in England, including a contemporary!). And this isn’t something you have to spend years studying to get a handle on. Glasse’s historic cookbook is free on Google Books and contains hundreds of period recipes. Plus, it adds depth to get little things like this right, and it’s fun to have you characters eat Maids of Honor rather than just lemon cheesecakes (and it’s good to know that period “cheesecake” is pretty much a modern cheese Danish too).

Peerage Law in England by Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer (1907; free on Google Books)

This is a basic guide to how peerages are inherited, disputed, and granted, with many examples laid out so you can really understand it. This knowledge is ESSENTIAL if you want to deal with tricky inheritances. Yes, it’s a very dry book, but you really can’t hope to just muddle your way though these issues. Basic questions that this book answers come up on my historical writers’ loop all the time (the most common one is usually about a peer losing his title if it’s proven that he’s illegitimate, which simply can’t happen; all challenges have to be made BEFORE the title is granted, during the review of the claim).

Join me!

Who doesn’t love a twisted inheritance plot? They’re fun, high stakes, high angst, great external plots, and just plain delightful. But they’re also legal quagmires and can be hard to get right if you don’t want to spend your free time parsing obscure legal books and case law (and it’s seriously no fun when reviews point out that your plot isn’t just implausible, it’s legally impossible!). Lucky for you, this is literally what I do for a living at the day job (read, explain, and implement obscure rules, regulations, and laws).

I gave an in-person workshop on this topic several years ago (and boy was it hard to cram it all into a 45 min talk), and now I’m going to be offering it as an online workshop through the Beau Monde. This is the absolute best format for this kind of workshop. We’re going to take a whole month to luxuriate in the topic. We’re going to go deep into case law. We’re going to talk about real cases. And I’ll be able to answer all your questions and give you the legal citations from the Peerage Law Handbook to back up your wacky inheritance plot. We’ll make sure that if you’re ever challenged about your plot being unrealistic or fantastical, you can point to a real case and legal precedent.

What will we cover?

Well, everything I can think of to talk about and show you real examples of from the Peerage Law Handbook.

  • The creation of a peerage (and why that matters)
  • What the heck is in fee simple
  • Procedures on claims
  • How (and when!) to dispute a claim
  • What does it mean when the “blood has been enobled”
  • Who can dispute a claim
  • Why women can inherit some titles, but not others
  • What are co-heirs
  • How two brothers can both inherit a title
  • How/why does a title go into abeyance, and how does it come out
  • Can the King really take back your title and lands
  • Why are there two Earls of Mar
  • Does it matter if the peerage is English, Scottish, Irish
  • When can titles be broken apart and inherited by different people
  • Can an illegitimate child inherit a title
  • And so much more!

Registration is open now. Class begins May 1st. Join me! I promise it will worth your time and money. You don’t have to be an author, either. I’m happy to have readers who want to know more about the topic join us, too.

I got the rights back to my “RIPE” series and my wonderful cover artist (and real life BFF) is currently working on new covers for them. I can’t wait to show you what she comes up with!!! One of the opportunities this opens up for me is to release a mirror version of RIPE FOR SEDUCTION with more of Phillip and Margo. One thing I’m definitely going to do is add their reunion scene back into the book.

When I started RIPE FOR SEDUCTION, I wasn’t aware that the Devere siblings were going to be of the “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” variety, but oh, what fun they were to write once I figured it out! Roland Devere, our hero, is a joker who never takes anything too seriously. He’s the embodiment of the English gentleman’s credo “never turn down a bet.” And I had just the bet for him. One based on a real offer made by an eighteenth century rake to a furious widow who quite neatly turned the tables on him. It’s a story I’ve been wanting to write for years. And it made me think of the wonderful ROUND IRELAND WITH A FRIDGE (by Tony Hawk, not the skateboarder). If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend tracking down a copy.

As I began writing the story of Roland and Lady Olivia Carlow (the victim of a bigamous marriage in RIPE FOR SCANDAL), there was undeniable chemistry between Olivia’s father Philip (a sunny man of intellect) and Roland’s very (very!) naughty widowed sister Margo. Margo was an utter surprise to me. She took one look at Philip and decided, “That. Yes, I’ll have that.” And so she did.

Here’s the scene I was forced to trim. I’m really looking forward to restoring it to its proper place in the book. What do you think? Should I release a duology with more from Margo and Phillip? Let me know in the comments.


Philip & Margo’s Reconciliation

Philip found the door Devere had directed him to easily enough. With every step he was half afraid one of her servants would appear to say the comtesse had commanded them to send him away.
He pushed the door open. Margo lay in her bath. The long tub was draped in linen to protect her from splinters, but she wasn’t wearing a bathing shift as a Frenchwoman would have done.
She opened her eyes at the sound of his boots on the floor. Philip shut the door behind him and stood waiting to see what would happen. From across the room he heard the thump of Maldon’s tail and then the hound’s low-pitched whine of greeting.
“It seems a long way to come for an ancient, one-eyed dog,” Margo said.
Philip nodded as he tossed his hat aside and shrugged off his surtout. He draped the loose overcoat over the back of the chair that he dragged to the side of the tub. He dangled his fingers in the water. “It’s a very special dog, though.”
Margo made no attempt to cover herself. She put out one hand, water spiraling down her arm and over her breast.
“Hand me the sponge.”
Philip did as he was bid, then watched with great appreciation as she wet the large sponge and sluiced it over her limbs. One dark curl slipped from the wrap that held her hair up. It spread itself over her breast, the tip curling around her nipple, like the hair of an undine.
“Apparently Paxton will not be returning with the promised towels. Could you bring me my dressing gown? I hate a tepid bath.”
Philip crossed the room to fetch the dressing gown that was spread across the foot of the bed. Maldon padded over demanding to be greeted, and Philip gave the hound a scratch.
Margo stood up as he approached with her dressing gown and his jaw dropped. He’d never really seen her naked. Not like this. Just furtively in dark rooms as they tumbled into beds, and even it wasn’t like this. She looked like the statue of Venus he’d seen in Florence as a boy making the grand tour: rounded perfection, with long legs and two dimples where her hips met her back.



The earl helped her out of the tub and held the robe while Margo slipped her arms into it. In truth, her bath wasn’t yet cold, but she couldn’t stand to have the conversation she feared they were about to have naked. She wanted enough on to be able to storm out if the situation called for it.
Arlington looked as though he’d swallowed his tongue. Good. Margo tugged the small linen towel from her head and let her hair fall. She used it to dry her face and hands.
The earl simply stood and watched. She didn’t want to talk, or explain. She wanted to drag him to the bed. What would he do if she tried? Margo tossed the towel aside, stepped into the earl so they were chest to chest, and kissed him.
His hand knotted in her robe, pinning her to him. Margo felt a surge of wickedness lick though her. He kissed her roughly, hungrily, but when she attempted to steer him toward the bed, he stiffened and stopped her.
“Stop trying to distract me,” he said.
Margo draped her arms about his neck and leaned back just enough to see his face. His mouth was serious, but his eyes were smiling. “As you wish, my lord.”
Her dressing gown hung open. He twitched it shut. “I didn’t come all the way to Paris to bed you.”
Margo wrinkled her nose at him. His cock was hard against her belly. Whatever his intention, bedding her was most certainly on his mind.
“Or not just to bed you,” he added. His hands slid around her waist, fingers fluttering over her hips.
“No,” Margo said, “You also came for your dog.”
“Damn the dog.”
She raised one brow. “I wasn’t going to give him back anyway.”
“Consider him a wedding present,” the earl said.
Margo shook her head. “Think of the scandal.”
“Which you’ll love.” He cupped her cheek with one hand, his thumb sliding over her lips.
“And your daughter?”
“Who do you think sent me?” he said before kissing her.

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