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Whatever your family traditions, the Hoydens would like to wish you a happy holiday season. We'll be back in the new year with more history and more books!

In November, I visited New York and had the great treat of staying with Lauren and sharing a wonderful evening of drinks and writer talk with Lauren and Leslie. That's the three of us to the left right at the appropriately named Bookmarks in the Library Hotel. Leslie wrote a great post about our evening on her blog . While discussing research methods, Richard III's marriage, and the vagaries of a writer's schedule, we sipped literary-themed cocktails (Leslie had the Dickens, which I think was brandy based, and Lauren and I both had the Hemingway, which had vodka, elderflower liqueur, and a float of sparkling wine). I’m fortunate to have a lot of great friends, but there are some things that only fellow writers understand, particularly fellow writers who write in a similar area. Like all the Hoydens, Leslie, Lauren and I write historically set books. Even more specifically, Lauren and I both write books about espionage during the Napoleonic Wars. A few minutes after I walked

I was discussing this over the weekend with a costumer friend, so I thought it might be fun to talk about here on the blog. For most of the Georgian era pregnancy itself doesn’t seem to be something that was celebrated or treated as something to be memorialized. The safe delivery of a child certainly was, and it is that, not the pregnancy, that tends to show up in letters and diaries. In contrast to the myth of pregnant women being “confined” alone and unseen, most reports show that they were out in public attending (and even hosting) events right up until the end. There are few examples of clothes that were devoted specifically to maternity. There are several possibilities as to why this might be (and the truth is probably some combination of them al l). Firstly, most images show that women simply wore their normal clothes, with editions such as aprons, shawls, and special waistcoats to cover the growing belly (the apron was so common a symbol of pregnancy that little girls playing dr

Have you ever taken a train through the High Sierras? Through mile-long tunnels and along tracks that cling to mountainsides overlooking deep canyons? The most spectacular and dangerous routes were hacked out solid rock by hand by small (110 lb), tough, energetic Chinese laborers who hauled off the earth and rock in tiny loads and, as winter approached, worked 3-shift, 24-hour days and slept in tent cities at night. Back in 1865 what were seen as those strange little men with their dishpan straw hats, pigtails, and floppy blue pajamas proved themselves the equal of burly Irish immigrants also hired to work on the railroads. At first, the railroad bosses judged the Chinese too frail and unmechanical for such work. [Had they known history, of course, they might have recognized the tremendous grit and cleverness of the Chinese, exhibited in the building of the Great Wall (also hacked by hand out of mountainsides) and the invention of clocks, gunpowder, paper, ceramic glaze, etc.] The l

A few weeks ago, I was on a panel at the Massachusetts Bar Association with three other lawyers turned author. When asked if my legal training had any impact on my writing, I blithely declared that the two had nothing to do with one another, other than both taking up space in my life at the same point in time. Law? Nineteenth century spies? Couldn't be more different. In retrospect, that isn’t entirely true. It isn’t just that I took terribly useful vocational classes at law school like Ancient Athenian Trials, on the theory that you never know when you might want to write a crime thriller set in Ancient Athens (apparently, there are still embarrassing pictures of me in Ancient Greek garb defending Eratosthenes floating around out there somewhere. Thank you, Harvard Law School Gazette). Law has all sorts of bearings on the world I write about and the characters I create, whether they realize it or not. The chance decision of a legislator or a judge can change the entire cour

I wrote yesterday at the Riskies about the opportunity to view Dickens' original manuscript of A Christmas Carol online and that got me thinking about ownership of items; and also Kathryn's post yesterday in which she stated: I am glad that Ms. Austen left no DNA behind. Don't count on it. It seems that all the time possessions, papers and other artefacts come out of the woodwork as collections are sold or treasures unearthed in attics. How long before someone finds Jane Austen's hairbrush? But today I'm cheering on the Bronte Parsonage Museum , because it's the day when Christies of NY is holding an auction of items from the William E. Self Library which includes a first edition of Wuthering Heights , owned by her sister Charlotte and with Charlotte's pencil notes for a second edition. The Museum naturally feels that the book, and the other Bronte items should be in the museum. I agree--I think it would be a tragedy if these items disappeared into the h

The kind of history news I love--straight from the CNN headlines: "Galileo's Missing Fingers Found in Jar" and..."What Really Killed Jane Austen?" Apparently, three fingers were cut from Galileo's hand on March 1737 and a tooth removed from his lower jaw, when his body was moved in Florence (removing body parts as relics from the sanctified dead was a common practice at the time). The jar with two of the fingers and the tooth went missing in 1905, and only recently resurfaced when somebody brought them to a museum in Florence. The actual cause of Galileo's death remains to be determined...but at least now with fingers and a tooth, there is enough DNA to spare for testing--which could shed some light on the blindness that afflict Galileo late in his life and during his final illness. To read the whole article check out: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/11/23/galileo.fingers/index.html Today CNN posted: What Really Killed Jane Austen? http://www.cnn.co

Royal history -- and the Romance genre -- are filled with star-crossed love affairs between a pair of social unequals. The Romance formula tends to follow the Duke and the Babysitter trope where the man is the lofty brahmin while his lady love is the Cinderella figure, daring to love above her station. However, romance novels inevitably deliver the happily-ever-after, although the road to the altar may be a rocky one. Sans happy ending, the story of the real-life romance between Princess Margaret and Group Captain Peter Townsend rocked the headlines of the mid 1950s. Younger sister to Britain’s current Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Margaret Rose was born in 1930 to the Duke and Duchess of York. The girls’ father would ascend the throne as George VI on the December 10, 1936 abdication of his older brother Edward VIII—to marry his lover, the twice divorced American Wallis Simpson. But within twenty years another star-crossed Windsor romance would make headlines. Group Captain Peter Townse

After a restful Thanksgiving Day, I spent today wandering through Barns and Noble and picked up the December issue of RT Book Reviews. One of the feature stories was written by my friend and fellow medieval writer Karin Tabke (check out page 24: Medievals---Are They In or Out?). Karin raises some interesting questions about medieval romance. This genre does not outsell the Regency time period according to Borders book buyer Sue Grimshaw, but editors at big houses (Harlequin for one) state that medievals are always in demand. They always have a place on those pie charts they show us about the stats regarding what in romance is selling (contemporaries are in the far lead). I've been told many times "you'll never hit a list writing a medieval" and while I'd love to be a best-selling author someday, I'll always write medievals--- because I love them. I grew up reading Woodiwiss, Gellis, Beverly, Hunter, Deveraux, Garwood, Henley, and so many others---I can't i

It's Thanksgiving week for those of us here in U.S. , but my characters wouldn't have celebrated Thanksgiving. But there are lots of other things they might have been celebrating in November, many of which I think might be new to American readers. I have a fantastic book The English Year: A Month-by-Month Guide to The Nation's Customs and Festivals from May Day to Mischief Night that is a goldmine of ideas for things my characters might do . . . November 1 All Saints' Day November 2 All Souls' Day Little distinction seems to have been made between the two days (which were also sometimes called Hallowmas; look familiar?). The celebrations included going "souling": wandering door to door for gifts of soul cakes or money and mugs of hot cider. The children even had a traditional song: A soul-cake, a soul-cake Have mercy on all Christian souls for a soul-cake. The giving of the cakes was supposed to help the giver's soul, while the consumption was suppo

Don’t laugh, but I’ve been reading Frank Yerby! To be specific, An Odor of Sanctity . Published in 1965(!) it’s another oldie and I selected it for a very particular reason. The story is set in 9th Century Spain, when society was a rich mixture of Muslims, Arabized Christians known as Mozarabs, and Jews, and I have long loved this era and this place. When I was in high school, Frank Yerby was “the” racy author we were forbidden to read. I remember that the Watsonville librarian kept Yerby’s books on the top shelf behind her desk, and one could check them out only with a written note from a parent. That didn’t stop our salacious fascination with the Yerby novels; chief among them were The Foxes of Harrow . Such works titillated our guilty pleasure well into the ‘60s, at which time I grew up and went off to college and read Shakespeare. If life moves in cycles (circles?), my fiction reading through the years has arced back to where I started, with Frank Yerby. However, I’m older now and

My original intent in this post was to write about the thrilling week I've just spent discovering what for me might be the best book ever on writing and being a writer: About Writing: Seven Essays,Four Letters, and Five Interviews , by the noted science fiction and literary writer, critic, and teacher, Samuel R. Delany. But it seems I'm going to be taking a leisurely, personal, even sentimental route to get to it. Because as a romance writer who's recently celebrated my fortieth wedding anniversary, I figure I'm entitled to say it by way of a little love story. And as a romance writer who's also a literary theory groupie, I'm gonna begin that story with some thoughts about the romance genre, my best understanding of which comes from my mother, a fiercely energetic reader of mostly midlist literary fiction and mysteries. A stalwart fan of my writing, Mom wasn't thrilled when I was about to be published in romance. (While as for my erotic, Molly Weatherfield

I never noticed that this portrait does show one shoulder slightly higher than the other ... but I believe it's the wrong shoulder! I don't know about you, but my introduction to Richard III and the Wars of the Roses, perpetuated for decades by the feuding dynasties of Lancaster and York, was through William Shakespeare. I was in high school at the time, and it would be years before I learned that the man rarely let the truth get in the way of a good story. Now that historical research is part of my bailiwick, I'm having great fun re-reading Shakespeare's history plays and separating the factual details from the fanciful ones. As I've been delving into Richard's life for my third work of historical nonfiction, currently titled ROYAL PAINS: A Rogues' Gallery of Brats, Bastards, and Bad Seeds , I thought it would be fun to revisit Shakespeare's text after having a "eureka!" moment during my research into Richard's actual, factual, life. Rich

What a surprise---I checked out The Wall Street Journal Yesterday to see the headline in the style section: Can the Snood Save Christmas? Really????? The SNOOD? Now as a medieval writer, the snood conjures something entirely different from what was shown in the style section. I was more than surprised to see the tube-like scarf I used to wear on the ski slopes take a new form into this massive, blanket-like head-scarf…a hot fashion item, according the Journal, that designers are determined to foist upon us during the economic down-turn, because it represents an apparel item that is new, that we don’t already have. Naturally, the History Hoyden in me drove me to do to a little research about snoods: From the all web-encompasing summary source, Wikepedia: A snood is a type of headgear, historically worn by women over their long hair. In the most common form it resembles a close-fitting hood worn over the back of the head. The band covers the forehead or crown of the head, goes behind th

The great discussion following my recent blog on The Scarlet Pimpernel inspired me blog about another series of books that have had a huge influence on me as a writer and on my Charles & Mélanie books in particular. Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey series, particularly the books featuring Peter and Harriet Vane. My mom introduced me to British “Golden Age” (twenties and thirties) mysteries when I was a teenager. They became some of my favorite books. In particular, those with an ongoing love story/marriage that unfolded across various books–Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion and Amanda Fitton, Ngaio Marsh’s Roderick Alleyn and Agatha Troy, and above all Dorothy Sayers’s Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. Typically for me, I read the books completey out of order. I started with Have His Carcase , the second of the four full books featuring Harriet which Sayers wrote (there have since been two continuations written by Jill Paton Walsh). I knew they ended up together, but I so wanted

I’m starting work on a series of articles for my Regency Writer’s Group (RWA’s Beau Monde chapter) and I’ve been reviewing my archives and pictures for inspiration. One of the cooler items of clothing that I’ve rarely (if ever) seen featured in a book are pattens. They were usually comprised of a wooden platform sitting atop two metal rings, with a leather sandal or mule for the shod foot to rest in (think about trying to balance on this while walking across wet cobbles!). But simple platforms and “geta-type” clogs existed, too (not surprising considering the era’s obsession with all things Asian). The whole point of the patten is to help keep the feet dry, and/or to keep the shoes clean. An important and hard to achieve goal when ladies’ shoes were barely more solid than a modern ballet slipper and the streets were a morass of dirt, mud, animal droppings, human excrement, and water (it rains a LOT in England). So here are a series of pattens dating from the 1730s (green silk), the 179