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It's autumn - rose gold light, pumpkin spice lattes, cuddly sweaters (well, maybe not yet in the San Francisco Bay Area, where we're having some of our warmest weather of the year). And Halloween is just around the corner. It was always one of my favorite holidays growing up, not for the candy but for the magic of masquerading as someone else (inevitably a favorite historical or fictional character) for the day. Thinking about Halloween made me think about masquerade balls. I've always loved them in books. Costumes allow characters to highlight their personalities or to masquerade as someone quite different. And masks allow for all manner of intrigue, romantic or otherwise. My mind tens to run to suspense when it comes to intrigue. My idea for my book The Mask of Night began with the image of a masked man floating, stabbed to death, in a fountain, and my masked heroine reaching into the water to examine the body. Masked balls were a frequent form of entertainment at the Co...

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...

Nothing is fair in love and war… Europe’s elite have gathered at the glittering Congress of Vienna—princes, ambassadors, the Russian tsar—all negotiating the fate of the Continent by day and pursuing pleasure by night. Until Princess Tatiana, the most beautiful and talked about woman in Vienna, is found murdered during an ill-timed rendezvous with three of her most powerful conquests… Suzanne Rannoch has tried to ignore rumors that her new husband, Malcolm, has also been tempted by Tatiana. As a protégé of France’s Prince Talleyrand and attaché for Britain’s Lord Castlereagh, Malcolm sets out to investigate the murder and must enlist Suzanne’s special skills and knowledge if he is to succeed. As a complex dance between husband and wife in the search for the truth ensues, no one’s secrets are safe, and the future of Europe may hang in the balance… ” Shimmers like the finest salons in Vienna…a perfect blend of history, mystery, romance, and suspense." - Deborah Crom...

As I've blogged about before my attitude toward writing love scenes has evolved in the twenty some years I've been writing. When I first began co-writing Regency romances with my mom, under the name Anthea Malcolm, my friends teased me that our books started very chaste and slowly got more explicit. In our first book, The Widow’s Gambit, the characters barely embraced. In the second, The Courting of Philippa , there were more detailed kisses. In the third, Frivolous Pretence , which focused on an estranged married couple, there was an actual sex scene, though it faded to black. Our fifth book, A Touch of Scandal , had ex-lovers who resumed an illicit affair. Sex scenes were part of the story. I told my mom she had to write them. Our sixth book, An Improper Proposal , was a marriage of convenience story. My mom said, “You have to write one of the sex scenes this time.” I wrote my first draft of the scene on a day when my mom was out shopping. And (this is true, thought it sound...

In the midst of finishing a draft, starting on revisions, and holiday decorating and shopping (so much left to do!) I found time to curl up with Lauren's The Mischief of the Mistletoe . It was an absolute delight. I tried to use it as writing motivation by telling myself I could read a section if I wrote so many words, but I ended up reading way more than I was supposed to. One of the many things I loved about it was sharing the holidays with favorite characters at a Christmas house party hosted by the Dowager Duchess of Dovedale. I've always liked stories set during the holidays. There's something fun and fascinating about seeing how celebrations are both familiar and different with different characters, in different historical eras. A familiar frame, filled in in myriad ways. I confess, though I love most Dickens, A Christmas Carol has never been a favorite of mine. But growing up, I was fascinated by the glimpses into holidays in another era with the Christmas scene...

My wonderful, innovative web designers and friends, Greg and jim, had the idea a couple of years back of filming an interview of me talking about the background to my books, which they then edited into clips that I could post on my website. The interview we filmed for Vienna Waltz , my April 2011 release, deals a great deal with the historical background. So it occurred to me that these clips might also be of interest to History Hoydens readers. Here's one where I talk about the Palm Palace, where two real historical women, Wilhelmine, Duchess of Sagan, and Princess Catherine Bagration, both had lodgings during the Congress of Vienna. In Vienna Waltz , my fictional Princess Tatiana Kirsanova (who was called Tatiana Volkonsky at the time we filmed the interview) also lodges in the Palm Palace. Like Wilhelmine and Catherine, Tatiana is also involved with both Tsar Alexander and Prince Metternich. I couldn't, unfortunately, figure out how to embed the video in Blogger the way I do...

Happy New Year! As I recently reported on my own website , I'm very happy to be seeing 2010 in with a new two-book contract with Kensington Books. That’s my wonderful new editor Audrey LaFehr in the picture to the left, with me and my fabulous agent Nancy Yost on my November trip to New York at a Merola Opera Program party. I’m in the midst of writing the first book on the contract, which has the working title The Dark Waltz . (People who follow my status updates on Twitter and Facebook have been seeing updates about the progress of this book for some time.) The Dark Waltz is set in 1814 at the Congress of Vienna. I think I first heard of the Congress of Vienna in Georgette Heyer books (I know there are mentions of Sophy and her father being there in The Grand Sophy ). I remember being fascinated by a lecture about it my freshman year at Stanford. I've referenced the Congress as part of the back story in several books, and I’ve wanted to set a book at it for ages. It offers s...