cacakerbamakhlukpolitik

My daughter Mélanie and I just got back from a lovely few days in New York, including fun visits with my editor and agent. There we are to the left at the Nancy Yost Literary offices. As often happens, I'm in multiple stages on multiple projects. I’m revising The Paris Affair which will be out in April 2013, I just got copy edits for His Spanish Bride , the novella about Malcolm and Suzanne’s wedding which will be out in e-format in late November, and I’m starting to plot the next Malcolm and Suzanne book, which is one of my favorite parts of the writing process. And of course, inevitably plotting involves research. I usually interweave the research and plotting. Often the plot idea comes from research. But then I need to start thinking about the plot to figure out what direction my research needs to take. And as I do more research, that further drive the plot. Even though I've written in the Regency/Napoleonic era for over twenty years (hard for me to believe!) it se...

I’ve been doing research for my third Malcolm & Suzanne Rannoch book, which is set in Paris after Waterloo (the second book takes place before and during the battle). The setting offers me the chance to revisit many of the real historical characters I wrote about in Vienna Waltz (there I am to the left celebrating Vienna Waltz's release with my editor Audrey LaFehr and my agent Nancy Yost). The characters I'm revisiting in the new book include the fascinating Wilhelmine, Duchess of Sagan, and her younger sister Dorothée de Talleyrand-Périgord. Both sisters were in Paris in that tumultuous summer, and both were involved in tangled love affairs. Wilhelmine, after a brief affair with Caroline Lamb’s brother Frederick, had become involved with Lord Stewart, the hot-tempered half-brother of British foreign secretary Lord Castlereagh, while Alfred von Windischgrätz (her lover in Vienna Waltz ) was still pursuing her. And of course, Prince Metternich was in Paris as we...