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I just got back from a fun and thought provoking few days at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland (there are my daughter Mélanie and I above at the Member Lounge). Along with well-loved plays such as an enchanting A Midsummer Night's Dream and a complex, touching, brilliant My Fair Lady , we saw a couple of very intriguing world premieres, Liquid Plain and The Tenth Muse . Both were historical, Liquid Plain about African Americans who had escaped slavery in the 1790s, The Tenth Muse about nuns in 18th century Mexico.  Both plays were strong and intriguing and provided a great deal of conversational fodder for my friend and fellow writer Penelope Williamson and me over lattes and cosmopolitans. In particular, The Tenth Muse got me thinking about how we frame historical fiction. The play is inspired by the story of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, famed for her writing and intellectual pursuit. But instead of dramatizing Sor Juana's story directly, playwright Tanya Saracho s...

photo: Raphael Coffey In their work as spies, my characters Malcolm and Suzanne often make quick changes to their appearance to suit a new role. I’m used to writing such scenes for them. I’m less used to thinking about it in terms of myself. Until last Thursday. Our modern life does not, of course, require as many wardrobe changes as that of Regency aristocrats changing two or three times a day for morning rides, afternoon calls, and balls or nights at the theatre. But modern life does entail changes as one moves from role to role. Thursday was the opening night of the Merola Opera Program’s wonderful production of Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia . After spending the afternoon stuffing inserts into programs, I had a quick dinner with my daughter Mélanie and a couple of colleagues and then hurried back to the theatre to meet one of Mel’s wonderful babysitters. While quickly going over details with the babysitter, I pulled a hair of feels from the toy bag and exchanged them for th...

My 18-month-old daughter Mélanie and I have a routine on most days. In the late morning, we go to the local outdoor mall and settle in at the Peet's Coffee & Tea, where the staff are incredibly friendly and welcoming (where I sit now writing this post and sipping a latte while Mel eats fruit salad). When she's ready for the some play time, we talk around the mall, play with the toys at Pottery Barn Kids (where they are also incredibly welcoming), look at the clothes at J. Crew (ditto on welcoming and where Mummy has been known to use our rambles as an excuse to pick up a new pair of ballet flats or a cardigan). And we almost always visit the play park. Mélanie loves other kids and there are almost always kids to play with at the park. One afternoon this week we met a nice family with a very cute 10-month-old. For once Mélanie, who tends to be the one of the younger ones in a group of kids, was the big girl. Like me, the 10-month-old's mom was telling me how she's ...

In a blog interview I did around the release of  The Paris Affair, Heather Webb asked a question that got me to thinking about forensics in historical mysteries. So much of present day mysteries, in books, on television, in movies, involves analyzing forensic evidence. My Malcolm and Suzanne Rannoch have no CSIs, medical examiners, or forensic anthropologists to assist them in gathering and analyzing data. On the other hand, even without 21st century technology sleuths can still forensic evidence. C.S. Harris has a doctor character whose analysis of corpses is often of key help to Sebastian St. Cyr. The Victorian Sherlock Holmes was, as my father liked to say, a classic empiricist, his solutions built from the data he gathers. Both John Watson and Mary Russell frequently record him bemoaning the lack of data. Like other literary investigators  in the 19th century and earlier, Malcolm and Suzanne look at footprints, find stands of hair or threads of fabric caught on cobble...

One of the interesting questions Cara Elliott / Andrea Penrose asked when she interviewed me on Word Wenches about The Paris Affair concerned how I developed Malcolm's & Suzanne's pasts and how I developed them. In addition to the fascination of researching history, I love creating my characters' history. I knew from the start that Malcolm & Suzanne's allegiances would be divided, Malcolm a British diplomat and spy, Suzanne a French agent. Then I began to think about what kind of people would end up their situations. The divide between them seemed to be to strongest if Malcolm came from the heart of the British aristocracy – he doesn’t have a title himself, but his mother’s father is a duke, he’s connected by family or friendship to a good portion of the beau monde, he went to Harrow and Oxford. Whereas with Suzanne, I had to figure out a background that would have made someone an agent in her teens. It made sense that she had been orphaned and left ...

Recently, I did a very fun interview on Word Wenches with the wonderful Cara Elliott/Andrea Penrose about the release of The Paris Affair . Cara asked some wonderful questions, in particular about the themes of loyalty and betrayal that run through my books and why I chose the Napoleonic Wars as a setting for those stories. As often happens, those interview questions caused me to mull over things in my books. I've been thinking about it a lot in and around promoting The Paris Affair , finishing my WIP, and getting ready for the Merola Opera Program's annual Benefit (where I am with Mélanie above). I first gravitated to the Regency/Napoleonic era through my love of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer. But I also love spy stories, both James Bond adventure and the sort of intricate chess games and moral dilemmas John le Carré dramatizes so brilliantly. The Napoleonic Wars offers are a wonderfully rich setting for both types of story. So many different sides, so many different f...

Paris is a city for lovers. When Malcolm and Suzanne Rannoch move to the British embassy in Paris after the Battle of Waterloo, in my recently released The Paris Affair , one would think they might have time to indulge in a romantic interlude. Napoleon is exiled again, and the mystery Malcolm and Suzanne investigated at the time of Waterloo has been resolved. But as those who have followed Malcolm and Suzanne's adventures know, conventional romance is hardly in their line. Their marriage began as one of convenience, with deception on both sides. Their feelings for each other are deep, but are more likely to be expressed through Shakespeare quotes than their own romantic utterances. Their gazes are more apt to meet in understanding over a mutually discovered clue than on a moonlit balcony (unless that balcony contain s a dead body or they have just climbed it to evade pursuit). Besides, the city to which they have removed is hardly a scene of idyllic tranquility. Wat...

The battle of Waterloo may have ended the major fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, but it was far from bringing an end to the simmering tensions of the past quarter century. When Napoleon escaped from the field at Waterloo, Louis XVIII was still in exile in Ghent. Much of the negotiating for France in the immediate aftermath of the battle was done by two men whose careers had been closely intertwined with that of Napoleon Bonaparte and with the Revolution - Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord and Joseph Fouché. Prince Talleyrand, Napoleon's former foreign minister (though he had left office well before Napoleon's exile)  had survived in the first Bourbon restoration to represent France at the Congress of Vienna and had not rejoined Napoleon when Bonaparte escaped from Elba. Fouché, Napoleon's minister of police for much of his rule, had worked with the Allies against Napoleon in 1814 but then rejoined Napoleon after his escape from Elba and served as his minister of police...

Happy Valentine's Day weekend! Whether you enjoy the whirlwind of chocolate and champagne or find the holiday too commercialized, I hope you had/are having a great weekend (it's a three-day weekend in the states). My daughter and I enjoyed wearing red and having the excuse for presents :-). I've running a favorite literary romantic moments contest on my website and one comment reminded me of a particular category of romantic moments that can be especially poignant and powerful. Farewells. Whether it's the end of a love affair or a moment of separation on the road to a happy ending, farewells can bring out confessions of emotions that are suppressed in less tumultuous times. In Imperial Scandal , I loved writing the farewells between the various couples at the Duchess of Richmond's ball before the battle of Waterloo. It was a bit of challenge to write so many different goodbye scenes, but I also found it was a great way to differentiate how each couple's relatio...

For my post this week, I had the treat and privilege of interviewing a good friend and wonderful writer, Andrea Penrose , who writes the Lady Arianna Regency mystery series (Andrea also writes historical romance as Cara Elliott). Arianna is a fabulous and intrepid heroine. Forced by circumstances to seek her fortune and hide her identity, she puts her talents to use and finds employment as a chef (with a particular affinity for chocolate). Arianna is tough and resourceful, with an outsider's take on Regency society. Throw in mystery in her background and her evolving relationship with her fellow investigator (now her husband), Lord Saybrook, and you have my favorite ingredients for a great mystery series. Andrea and I sat down to chat about the series and recently published third book, Recipe for Treason . I know we both love the Regency era and you have found such a fresh take on it. How did you get the idea to make Arianna a chef? Was Arianna's character and her cooking the g...

Happy January!  I love the holidays - I confess I still have a hard time getting to sleep on Christmas Eve and writing this post over a peppermint mocha with my baby on my lap I'm still in holiday mode. But I realized that when I think of January I don't think of post-holiday blues. I think of settling in with cozy fires and cups of tea and getting back to work. Those cool, often rainy January days are perfect for writing. I've been easing back into my WIP this past week and enjoying it, both writing and researching. Looking up some research details today I was thinking about different types of research. Travel - so amazing if often logistically and financially impossible. Websites filled with images, maps, and other fascinating information. History books that give us the benefit of historians' research and expertise. And then there's what is probably my favorite type of research of all. Letters and diaries written by people who lived through the events and visited ...

Where did time go? It seems like it was just Thanksgiving in the U.S. and suddenly the holidays are in full swing. My daughter Mélanie and I spent today at two very fun holiday parties, an (early) Solstice party and a Wassail party, a word which conjures up images of old English Christmases. Though our wassail party did not include a Wassail King and Queen or drinking the health of the trees, and our Wassail punch was not topped with slices of toast, which it was historically. The punch itself was delicious and very potent, with the nutmeg and cinnamon that are part of many historical recipes. Following my daughter - an eager explorer - around the party and slowly sipping my Wassail punch (a small cup went a long way!),  I couldn't help but think about Christmas for my characters. Of course an "old English Christmas" is not a static thing but a melange of customs that changed and grew through the years, with a number of things that seem part of a classic Bri...

Hope everyone celebrating U.S. Thanksgiving had a wonderful holiday weekend. Ours was made extra special by the fact that my daughter Mélanie waked three tiny steps from the hearth to me. She did so naturally, I almost didn't realize what she'd done until my uncle commented on it. She also had a great time playing with one cousin's golf balls, which made great toys, and another cousin's kitten [who beat a prudent retreat to high places]. I've always tended to avoid the chaos of shopping on Black Friday {the day after Thanksgiving that kicks off the U.S. holiday retail season). This year, thanks to a friend who babysat, I spent the afternoon at a matinee of Skyfall. But the day had an extra significance for me. It was the release date for His Spanish Bride , my e-novella about the wedding of Malcolm and Suzanne, the central couple in my series. Because Malcolm and Suzanne's marriage marks the start of their adventures not the culmination, this meant going back i...

I'm writing this from my hotel room in Ashland, Oregon, on an autumn weekend trip to see a wonderful Troilus & Cressida and Romeo & Juliet for a second time. So I'm again returning to a post I originally wrote for my own blog, with a few embellishments. In my WIP, Malcolm and Suzanne have a second child, Jessica. I set the book in October 1817 with Jessica ten months old, so that at one point at least while I was writing it, she would be the same age as my daughter Mélanie. For once I wouldn’t have to try to remember what my friends’ kids were doing at the particular age of the children in my books or ask my friends to remember age-appropriate details only to be told it was all a blur. So this month, the parental wonder of watching of a child’s growth and development has had an added focus for me. I’ve written scenes with Suzanne nursing while I’ve nursed myself. I’ve sat in the play park and taken notes on my iPad or my phone about how Mel pulls herself up o...

 photo: Raphael Coffey Photography I've been going through the copy-edited manuscript of my next book, The Paris Affair . My last chance to tweak the prose before publication and all inevitably the time I find myself double checking a bunch of research minutia, adding in things like description of gowns, verifying word usage, etc... . It coincided this week with unexpected car trouble, the power going out, and a morning visit to a nursery school my daughter may some day attend. All of which is a round about way of explaining why instead of writing a new post, I'm recycling one I wrote for my own blog, with a few embellishments and updates. This post is a favorite of mine because it combines two topics dear to my heart - being a mom and (at the risk of sounding frivolous) fashion. I confess I love clothes. I love putting together outfits each morning, choosing accessories – it’s like a chance to create a costume and decide who to be that day. My friends will testify that I hav...

When I first heard the name of Joan's baby on Mad Men this past season, I thought, "Kevin sounds sort of modern for the sixties." Then I realized Mad Men was now taking place in the year I was born (1966), and I went to school with a number of Kevins, so it was in fact a very appropriate name. I just don't associate it with the sixties because the people I think of when I think of the sixties were adults then and born decades before. Which made me think about naming characters in historical fiction and how we need to consider the cultural influences not of the time in which are our books are set but of when our characters were born. Characters in their thirties or twenties in the Regency would have been named in the 1780s or 90s. When they were born, their parents might have been reading Henry Fielding, Fanny Burney, or Alexander Pope not Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, or Lord Byron. Those in their twenties and thirties in the early Victorian era on the other han...

I just returned from a lovely few days at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival with my daughter Mélanie (there we are at the Member Lounge, though Mel is still a little young to actually go the plays). Along with some wonderful Shakespeare my friends and I saw a great new play OSF commissioned, All the Way , by Robert Shenkkan, about Lyndon Johnson and the Civil Rights Act. Very much in the style of a Shakespeare history play, it's set on a broad canvas, with a wide cast of characters - politicians from both parties, Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders, J. Edgar Hoover. I came home to Lauren's wonderful blog about Regencyland and the difficulties of "winkling out those elusive distinctions" of a specific year within a larger time period. As Lauren said, "Letters and diaries are even more revealing, the unmediated product of the moment." All the Way uses the actual words of the characters in many cases. It's set from November 1963 - November ...

It's difficult to write about the battle of Waterloo without touching on the noted historical figures involved. Napoleon and Wellington. Lord Uxbridge, Marshal Ney, and other noted military commanders. And one other, who if he could not be called a noted commander, did hold a command in the battle - William, Prince of Orange, later William II of the Netherlands. The Prince of Orange was born in the Hague on 11 December, 1792, eldest son of William I of the Netherlands and Wilhelmine of Prussia. When he was two, allied British-Hanoverian troops left the Netherlands and French troops swept in to join the anti-Orangist forces. The royal family fled to England. William went on to study at Oxford and in 1811, at 18, became an aide-de-camp to Wellington in the Peninsular War. He became one of the close knit "family" of Wellington's aides, kick-named "Slender Billy." In 1813, Billy returned to the Netherlands when his father regained the throne. In 1814 he was brie...

As historical novelists, the Hoydens all spend a good portion of our writing time delving into the past and finding creative ways to bring it to life. I did that on my most recent project, but in a different way from my usual historical research. The project, His Spanish Bride , is a novella about how my characters, Suzanne and Malcolm Rannoch/Mélanie and Charles Fraser, became betrothed and married. At this point, I know Malcolm and Suzanne/Charles and Mel very well. One of the joys of writing about them is that their dialogue and interactions come very easily while at the same time I feel I'm always finding new aspects of them and their relationship to explore. Several of the books I've written about the Rannochs/Frasers have been out of chronological order, and I've always found it quite easy to pick up with them at different points in time. But in all the stories they've been married and the parents of at least one child. There are secrets between them, yet in man...

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...