Outside, rain pounded against the roof of the carriage, not the gentle tippety tap of an English drizzle, but the full-out deluge of an Oriental monsoon. They had sailed up the Hooghly into Calcutta that morning after five endless months on a creaking, pitching vessel, replacing water beneath them with water all around them, rain crashing against the esplanade, grinding the carefully planted English flowers that lined the sides into the muck, all but obscuring the conveyance that had been sent for them by the Governor General himself, with its attendant clutter of soaked and chattering servants, proffering umbrellas, squabbling over luggage, pulling and propelling them into a very large, very heavy carriage.

If she had thought about it at all, Penelope would have expected Calcutta to be sunny.
But then, she hadn’t given it much thought, not any of it. It had all happened too quickly for thought, ruined in January, married in February, on a boat to the tropics by March. The future had seemed unimportant compared to the exigencies of the present. Penelope had been too busy brazening it out to wonder about little things like where they were to go and how they were to live. India was away and that was enough.
– from The Betrayal of the Blood Lily

My latest book, The Betrayal of the Blood Lily, takes place in India in 1804. When my heroine comments that India is “away”, she doesn’t know the half of it. In preparing to write a book set in India during the Napoleonic Wars, I was sending my heroine not only six months away from England by boat, but into a set of cultural, social, and political situations about which she had no clue (and, as you can tell from the brief excerpt above, hadn’t bothered to inquire into).

Someone asked me recently whether I thought unusual (i.e. non-London) settings were making a come-back in historical romance novels. One of the great advantages of an unusual setting is getting to learn about a whole new world. In researching The Betrayal of the Blood Lily, I found mad rulers, French chefs turned military generals, poetry-writing courtesans, and an elite guard of female warriors (no, seriously). The drawback of unusual settings is the flip side of the same coin. In reading about London, we have a whole lexicon already at our disposal. We know what Almack’s is; no one needs to explain. In less familiar settings, key characters, places, and customs have to be identified in a clear enough way to convey the proper image to the reader’s head without slowing down the narrative. It’s a tough balancing act. In writing this book, it helped that I was telling my story through the eyes of an Englishwoman newly arrived in India. All the details were as new to Penelope as they were to me and, presumably, to the reader.

Right now, I’m working on a book set in Paris in 1804, in which I’m encountering some of the same challenges. Many of the landmarks of modern Paris didn’t exist yet—including many of the major thoroughfares. It’s an interesting exercise trying to recreate the older Paris, with its colorful cast of Napoleonic characters, over our preconceptions of the present one.

And after that—well, I’ve decided I rather like writing about less traveled places. Latin America, Egypt, Portugal, New York…fortunately, the Napoleonic Wars touched just about everywhere.

Where would you like to see more books set?

One commenter will be chosen at random to receive a copy of The Betrayal of the Blood Lily.

I hate packing for trips. It isn’t just the trying to figure out what the weather will be ten days in advance and whether that just-in-case dress (you can fill in the just-in-case to suit your mood) is really worth toting back and forth, although there is all that. No. What really drives me crazy is figuring out which novels to bring.

Sometimes, I like to use long plane rides to force myself to read books I’ve bought but haven’t gotten around to yet. (Don’t you find that the longer a book sits in your living room, the less likely you are to read it?). Other times, I go for theme reading. When I went to Greece a few years ago, I brought Mary Stewart’s Moonspinners and My Brother Michael. M.M. Kaye’s Trade Wind came to Oman with me, while Alexandra Ripley’s New Orleans Legacy followed me to, well, New Orleans. I’ve read Captain Blood in the Caribbean and Mary, Queen of Scots in Edinburgh.

Right now, I’m packing for Paris. Last time I was there, I brought well-worn copies of Diane Haeger’s Courtesan (Diane de Poitier), Judith Merkle Riley’s Oracle Glass (set in Paris during the reign of Louis XIV) and Jennifer Blake’s Royal Passion (the 1848 revolution). My copy of Desiree is hardcover, too heavy to tote along on the plane. I’ve just re-read Nancy Mitford’s two Paris-set books, The Blessing and Don’t Tell Alfred. With so many of my favorites out of commission, I’m at a bit of a loss.

So here’s my question: what to read? Do you have any favorite Paris-set novels?

At a cocktail party the other night, someone asked me about my writing “process”. I put the word in quotation marks because it seems far too organized to apply to anything I actually do. My process? Eat peanut butter from the jar, pace in circles, scribble illegible notes on sheets of loose-leaf paper. The lack of legibility isn’t really a problem, because it’s not as though I’m really going to consult them later, other than to make hollow laughing noises over how the plot changed on me in the interim. Those pesky characters—it’s as if they think the book is about them. Or something like that.

Put all these dysfunctional aspects together, along with trips to Starbucks and writing at my dining room table rather than my desk so that my internet cord won’t reach to my modem, and I suppose you might get something one would term a process, tortured and bizarre as it is. I certainly get a book at the end of it, although I’m not quite sure what that proves, other than that, as a friend of mine succinctly described the last month of my life, in which four hundred pages were produced in under a month, “peanut putter + coffee x unreasonable deadline =super-human productivity!”

Many famous writers had processes even more bizarre than my peanut butter jar dependency. Thomas Wolfe wrote Look Homeward Angel while balancing his manuscript on top of a refrigerator. (Note: this would not work for me. I am a little person. My fridge is taller than I am. Plus, it would impede opening the fridge for purposes of peanut butter extraction.) Lytton Strachey, the eminent Bloomsburian who wrote about even more eminent Victorians, reputedly preferred to dictate prose from his bath. Bubble bath? One can only wonder. Gertrude Stein was at her best in the driver’s seat of a parked car. One notable historian is rumored to write in the buff. (Having known many historians, I deemed it wiser not to do too much investigative research on that one—historians are many wonderful things, but one generally prefers them clothed, ideally in tweed).

When I broached the question of process to a college roommate who was visiting me at the time, she opined that people fall into roughly two categories. (She’s a scientist, so she likes to categorize). According to her, you have (1) the slow and steady people, who peg away at a measured pace, and (2) the adrenaline people, who produce scads of work in short order and then turn into barely sentient slugs for weeks at a time. She’s the former; I’m the latter. I’ve tried from time to time to cut down on my peanut butter consumption and spread out my workload, but my natural rhythm for work is two months of intensive whining followed by a month of intensive productivity followed by another month of intensive sleeping. (The exact timing varies, but that’s the general idea.) I tend to work in fits and starts. It’s not exactly restful, but it is productive, in its own weird way.

As my college roommate put it, she’s a tortoise and I’m a hare.

From what I remember of that particular fable, I believe the tortoise got the best of it. And I’d bet he ate less peanut butter.

Are you a tortoise or a hare? Or some other sort of beast entirely?

The other day, I was at the gym, bopping along on the elliptical machine to the 80’s pop channel (I used to try to make myself watch news and other responsible things, but making oneself work out is hard enough without adding gratuitous layers of extraneous virtue—virtue can be very tiring) when “I Ran” by Flock of Seagulls came on.

Does anyone else remember this song? The lyrics—at least the pertinent ones—are:
“I never thought I’d meet a girl like you/… With auburn hair and tawny eyes/ The kind of eyes that hypnotize me through/…And I ran, I ran so far away/ I just ran, I ran all night and day/ I couldn’t get away.”

This had an electric effect on me, not because of the profundity of the poetry, but because my next book, The Betrayal of the Blood Lily, features an auburn-haired tawny eyed heroine with a mesmeric effect on men. She’s also run pretty far away. Lady Frederick Staines, nee Miss Penelope Deveraux, has just been exiled to India to give the folks back in London time to get over her scandalous and precipitous marriage.

Penelope isn’t a happy camper; uncomfortable in her own skin, she makes life pretty difficult for the folks around her. Life is never dull when she’s around, but it’s never comfortable either. She’s both fascinating and dangerous. The hero of the book—who, for the record, is not her husband—likens her to a tiger, beautiful but deadly. Bound by the conventions of a society that chafe against her own natural instincts and inclinations, Penelope is locked in a perpetual battle with herself.

I nearly fell off the ellipticals when “I Ran” came on because the lyrics were so spot on for Penelope.

This got me thinking about theme songs for my characters in general. “Accidentally in Love”, from the “Shrek 2” soundtrack belongs to Miles Dorrington, the hero of my second book, The Masque of the Black Tulip, both because I listened to that soundtrack over and over again while I was writing it, but also because Miles, well, found himself accidentally in love. The song also has a native exuberance that’s very much in keeping with Miles’ own enthusiastic, larger-than-life personality. He’s so exuberant that even the hair on his head keeps flopping around.

Are there songs that make you think of specific books or characters?

Since this got me feeling nostalgic about Miles and The Masque of the Black Tulip, one commenter, chosen at random, will receive a signed paperback of Black Tulip.

Every professional group has its own rite of passage in the form of a conference. There appears to be a rule that they all have to end in “A”. Back in my academic days, it was the AHA (that’s the American Historical Association for the uninitiated); in my lawyer incarnation, it was the ABA; and now, as the ides of July approach, I have reached the heights of conference-dom in the form of that bliss and bane of romance writers, the RWA.

I’ve never been to a national RWA conference, but I’ve read about them– primarily in mystery novels. Both Kasey Michael’s Maggie By the Book and Elizabeth Peter’s Die For Love, long-time favorite reads of mine, feature thinly veiled versions of the romance mega-conference. I assume that the reality involves more books but fewer dead bodies. At least, I hope so. Given the hectic schedule of workshops, signings and panels, I don’t think there’s much time for crime, unless it was wedged somewhere in the schedule between meals and book signings.

For those of you who have been to RWA National before, do you have any advice for a newbie?

For those of you in the DC area, I and about five hundred of my peers will be signing books from 5:30 to 7:30 on July 15th at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel Exhibit Hall (which does rather make me feel like something out of a Victorian curio cabinet, but there you go). It should be utter mayhem and absolutely fabulous. Click here for details.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

This weekend, I had the extreme pleasure of attending my first ever Historical Novel Society conference. There were books, books everywhere and all sorts of intriguing panels, on topics ranging from theoretical musings on the nature of that murky border line between historical fiction and historical romance (a topic of particular interest to me) to more practical inquiries, such as how to conduct one’s research on a budget. I got to hang out with wonderful writers and readers, discuss 16th century Scottish politics with one of the only other three people in the world who actually cares about James V, and had the ultimate ego trip of being told, “You look just like your author photo!” Pause. Lowered voice. “Not everyone does, you know.”

But the main thrill of the weekend (aside from the costume competition and, yes, the Late Night Sex Scene Reading) was getting to meet authors whom I had hitherto known only as names on my bookshelf.

(The picture is of me and fellow authors Michele Moran, and Christine Trent. Note the very, very large pile of books behind us. The people at the airport checkpoints thought I was some sort of deranged book smuggler, since my bag on the way back contained three changes of clothes and thirty-two books. As a side note, books are heavy. Thirty-two books are very heavy. Note to self: buy bag with wheels before next HNS conference.)

There is something thrilling about a name on your bookshelf turning into a real live person. It’s like witnessing a text and ink version of Galatea, paper turned to flesh. I admit it, I’m a book groupie. One of the other authors at the conference confided to me that she had never worked up much of a froth about rock stars or actors (with the possible exception of Sean Bean, but that was another conversation), but that she turned into a drooling teenager at the prospect of meeting a favorite author. Join the club, sister. Some of the authors at the conference, like Kathy Lynn Emerson and Diana Gabaldon, had been favorites since I was in my teens; others were new discoveries, like Susan Holloway Scott, Michele Moran, and Laurel Corona. All were incredibly nice about inane comments along the lines of, “Oh my God! It’s you! I have your books!”

I had never realized before how much the word “groupie” looks like “guppie”. There’s a reason for that. A lot of flapping mouth motions; not much of sense coming out. At least, in my case.

If you could meet any author, which one would it be and why?

Earlier today, I posted on History Hoydens about the uses of fiction for the practice of history. Since I have not one, but two soap boxes at my disposal today, I’d like to use this post to examine the flip side of that argument—what does fiction, and particularly romance fiction, get out of history?

What is it about the historical romance? We hear over and over that the historical romance is dead (cue Monty Python jokes here), but the shelves are still stocked with row after row of Regency ladies popping out of their improbably low-cut gowns, while men who seem to have lost all their shirt buttons in a freak haberdashery accident loom behind them, linen billowing in the wind. If these covers were anything to go by, most of the population of England (all of whom were dukes) went about half-naked three quarters of the time. You would never know it was the little ice age.

Why is it that we’re so drawn to these kilted Highlanders, these supercilious (and underdressed) dukes, these marauding Norman knights? What is it that the historical setting adds to the narrative? A love story is a love story. Why tart it up in cape and knee breeches?

The prim and proper lapsed academic in me very quickly replies that it’s all because we’re learning something. (It’s like eating candy enhanced with vitamin C—so tasty and good for you, too!). Every time the author plops a historical character into the narrative or references a specific event, we can chalk one up for historical literacy. Beau Brummell would have been a blip in the history books but for the battery of Regency novels through which he has quizzed his way, passing judgment on cravats near and far.

But let’s face it. We don’t buy the candy because it has vitamin C added. We buy the candy because it tastes good. There is something viscerally satisfying about vacationing in another century. Knee breeches trump jeans any day.

Perhaps it’s a variant of rose colored glasses. A few hundred years removed, we can ignore the dust, the dirt, the diseases (what’s a little bubonic plague among friends?), the lack of contact lenses, and use the past as a corrective for our modern discontents, focusing in on a time when an enterprising hero could turn both a sword and a phrase and had never heard of such a thing as a channel changer. These heroes pursue Causes (even if they are, as 1066 and All That likes to put it, Wrong but Wromatic) that involve Honour and Loyalty and big floppy hats with feathers in them. By importing our love stories to a historical setting, we get to ignore the workaday world and focus on a grand canvas where all entrances are accomplished dramatically on horseback and no one ever has to deal with cooking dinner.

Although I believe all that is true as far as it goes, there has to be more to it than that. One of my pet theories is that, in a world where courtship rituals have all but vanished, it’s very comforting to journey into a time where the rules seem clearer—at least in the context of the fictional historical worlds we have built for ourselves, genre by genre. If reading is escapism, then historical fiction provides double that escape; not only do we get away from ourselves, we get away from our world as well. A Norman invasion makes a very nice distraction from the plunging stock market. No matter how low the Dow may drop, at least it won’t ravish your castle—er, plunder your castle. You know what I mean.

If you’re a historical fiction reader, what is it that draws you to the genre? Do you find that some time periods grab your imagination more than others?