cacakerbamakhlukpolitik

I’ve been on an “oldie” reading kick of late, spurred in part by my Ladies Lit book club’s selection of Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage as our October book. Published in 1912 and set in southern Utah in 1871, the novel is an eye-opener on a number of levels. Zane Grey is credited with launching “the western” as a literary genre. The East (which at that time extended up to Missouri) was fascinated by things western, and especially so in the years following publication of Riders. Grey brought to life the hard-bitten characters of the Old West, the gunman, the cowboy, the strong but ruffly female. Reading the work now may be a study in stereotypes and cliches about character, but Grey had a tale to tell and he told it the only way he knew how. Riders addresses the issue of the Mormons in Utah, the prejudice they endured because of their practice of polygamy and the prejudice they inflicted on the non-Mormon “Gentiles.” “That year, 1871, had marked a change which had been

Please forgive me if this post isn’t quite as coherent as it should be. I just stumbled off a plane a few hours ago, after spending a week in Paris, wearing holes in my shoes looking for buildings that weren’t there. Just to make it more ridiculous, I already knew they weren’t there. Some of them succumbed to age, some to fire, others to the grand schemes of Baron Haussmann. (Hmph. Boulevards. Who needed them?) But it was instructive to see where they might have been, to situate them on my mental map and try to imagine what they might have looked like when they were still in situ. The first building that wasn’t there was the old Prefecture, which formerly lived on a cul de sac called the Rue de Jerusalem on the Ile de la Cite, not far from the Quai des Orfevres. Elizabeth Sparrow, in her book, Secret Service: British Agents in France, 1792-1815, describes it as a “sinister place” with “vaulted ceilings and walls [] supported by great timber stays… subdivided with mezzanine flo

The Jane Austen/Warren Hastings connection Lauren posted about recently got me thinking about another kind of Austen connection: Not, this time, of reach beyond the circumscribed geography of her life, but rather of the density of connection within her books, as three or four families in a country village (to use Austen's own words) become a palpable community that resonates with shared (if sometimes contested and often unspoken) experience. When I began writing romance, one rule I encountered was not to create too many minor characters. Which is a reasonable enough stricture for a beginning writer, and most particularly one bound by the Iron Law of Thou Must Foreground the Romance Plot. But as I continue, I find myself so taken with the idea of a world built upon the interlaced lives of its characters (major and minor), that I'm increasingly willing to stub my writerly toes on the boundaries of the genre (especially when I'm fortunate enough to have readers like Tumper

Thoreau's grave In 1855, a cemetery was configured on Bedford Street in Concord, Massachusetts, to conform to the aesthetics of the popular Transcendentalism movement, of which some of the area's favorite sons, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Bronson Alcott (father of Louisa May) were followers. Transcendentalism typically rejects the emphasis placed on organized religion in order to attain an ideal state of spirituality, instead relying on one's personal intuition to achieve a spiritual state The landscape of Sleepy Hollow cemetery was intended to mimic a natural garden, completely devoid of the typical formality associated with such repositories for the departed where coffins lie in serried ranks beneath the soil. one of the oaks to which Emerson referred in his speech below. He was absolutely right. On September 29, 1855, Emerson delivered the consecration speech, stating that a cemetery could not "jealously guard a few atoms under immense marbles, selfishly and im

We all know this painting, used on zillions of book covers, and I love it. Technically it may not be the greatest painting in the world but it has a delightful quirkiness and great detail of faces, expressions, clothes. It's Rolinda Sharples' painting of 1817 (probably) of the Cloak-Room at the Clifton Assembly Rooms. Rolinda Sharples (1793-1838) is a bit of a mystery. Go here , and you'll find her celebrated as an American woman painter. Everywhere else, including the Bristol Art Museum which houses this painting, you'll find she's a Bristol girl. She's a contemporary of the female offspring of the celebrated Peale family of artists, Anna Claypoole Peale, (1791-1878), Margaretta (1795-1882) and Sarah Miriam (1800-1885). I'll talk about them another time. The Sharples family were, like the Peales, a multi-generational family of artists. Rolinda was the daughter of James and Ellen, both artists. She was born either in New York in 1794 or in Bristol or Bath i

I just got my cover for AWAKENING HIS LADY , my upcoming release (December 1, 2009) with Harlequin Historical UNDONE eBooks. The story is set in 13th century England--another medieval! This line has a high level of sensuality and the stories are emotionally intense---all that conflict and heat packed into a shorter word count (10-15,000 words). I have to admit, as a writer, the short steamy historicals are challenge (but so fun to do---you have to grab your muse and keep her/him right there with you). I love the cover of AHL ---there's enough of the heroine's gown to say "historical" and the stone wall in the background subtly says "castle." The handsome hero and the lovely heroine look exactly like the characters in the book. Yeah, Harlequin cover artists! I love historical covers in general. Booksellers tell me that beautiful dresses (think of Susan Wigg's new historical releases. FABULOUS cover gowns) and headless historical men sell well---the hero c

I've always listened to music as I write, usually music that relates in some way to the book I'm writing. But lately, I've been watching movies while I write. Yes, I know, it sounds odd. But I find that having a movie playing in the background frees up my mind so I don't obsess so much and can get the words down more freely. Of course this only works if I've thought the scene I'm writing through in advance. And as with music, I watch movies that relate to the book I'm writing, which helps me escape into the world of the book. Lately, I've found myself watching various versions of The Scarlet Pimpernel a great deal, which is the inspiration for this post. Like Pride and Prejudice , The Scarlet Pimpernel has been a favorite of mine since I was a child, and like Pride and Prejudice I first encountered the story when my parents took me to a revival of a movie version–in this case, the Leslie Howard/Merle Oberon movie from the thirties. From the movie I we

Alcoholic beverages in Early America? Who’d a thunk it? It’s true. In New England, beer was the first alcoholic drink to gain favor, and the colonists learned to brew it from Indian corn. Beer was considered a good family drink: a handful of hops, a pail of water, and half a pint of molasses makes good beer. A little fresh-gathered spruce or sweet fern adds a nice flavor. Boil 2-3 hours and strain. Let it stand til lukewarm and pour into a clean barrel. For ginger beer , add 1 cup ginger and 1 cup yeast. Having acquired a taste for the pleasant effects of such beverages, Early Americans began to experiment, and thus were developed cordials, shrubs, brandies, and “bounces.” Often the brews had interesting names: Elephant’s Milk , for example. “Take of 2 ounces of benjamin (balsam); 1 pint spirit of wine; 2.5 pints boiling water. Mix. When cold, strain, and add l.5 lb sugar.” [From Mackenzie’s 5000 Receipts , 1829] Here’s a recipe for Cherry Bounce . Mix 6 lb ripe morella

A friend of mine has a theory that there are really only fifty people in the world, all the rest being nothing more than cardboard cutouts provided for verisimilitude. This, he claims, explains why everyone you meet already seems to know someone else you know. Forget six degrees of separation; it’s more like three. This holds true for the historical landscape as well, in bizarre and unexpected ways. I just researched two books that were as different as different could be. One, The Betrayal of the Blood Lily (coming out January 12th, 2010! Yes, my publisher has programmed me to say that) is set in India during the Mahratta conflicts of late 1804. The other, still untitled, is set in Bath in late 1803 and involves none other than everyone’s favorite proto-romance novelist, Miss Jane Austen. Aside from being in roughly the same time period, they are, quite literally, a world apart. Or not. One of the most controversial figures in the history of Anglo-Indian affairs is a man called

What's the last banned book you've read? Because one of the pleasures of Banned Books Week (instituted by the American Library Association in 1982) is the fantastic booklists you get to contemplate -- of titles that someone somewhere sometime felt moved to hide from you -- happy reading memories and still unread wonders just waiting to jazz up a to-be-read pile that may have gotten too one-note or work-oriented. Like the one I'm going to cut and paste below of 42 books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course's Top 100 Novels of the Twentieth Century -- all of which have been banned or challenged by someone somewhere: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee The Color Purple by Alice Walker Ulysses by James Joyce Beloved by Toni Morrison The Lord of the Flies by William Golding 1984 by George Orwell Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov Of Mice and Men by John