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I just returned from a few days in Paris, and I'm way behind in my research and writing schedule (yeah, yeah, I know, cue the violins), so this post will be primarily visual. Because I researched the lives of Napoleon and Josephine for NOTORIOUS ROYAL MARRIAGES, I took advantage of the fact that our hotel room wasn't yet ready on our arrival, so my husband and I took the metro and then a bus out to Malmaison. The origin of the name "bad house" is unknown, but a house on the location dates to the twelfth century. On April 21, 1799, Josephine Bonaparte bought Malmaison, having been charged by her husband (who was off attempting to conquer Egypt) to find a nice country retreat. It became their favorite spot to unwind as the imperial couple; and Napoleon gave it to Josephine as part of their divorce arrangement in 1810. Although we arrived on a somewhat gray day, and the facade is a dove gray as well, there was something very sad about the bad house. It's a museum of ...

Here is the letter I mentioned yesterday. One woman's account of the Good Friday earthquake and tsunami and its impact on Kodiak. Dear Annie, Thank you for your lovely heart-warming letters. We shall keep them always as proof that we are loved. I'm sure you probably know more about what happened than we do. For two weeks we knew almost nothing except of our own small section of town. I am going to tell you what we saw and did. We live about three blocks from the center of town and two blocks from the creek that runs near a main street, under others and into the bay. This creek area a hundred years ago was a fresh water lake and is near sea level. We live up just a little on a steep mountain. Near six-thirty (D-Day) we sat down to one of our usual dull meals. After three bites all dullness ended for several days. The quake hit with a jolt and a rumbling noise like a heavy "cat" pulling hard in the distance. We each got under a door but it continued. I stood where I cou...

Last time I posted about my experience in Kodiak, Alaska. It was a heavy dose of mememe but it was fun to recall and share the fist great adventure of my life. This time I want to tell you something about the history that has shaped Kodiak. Keep in mind that what I am writing about is Kodiak's history, not all of Alaska. This state is so big that it is in two time zones and has such a small population that it has one area code. Kodiak is an island about the size of the sate of Connecticut with a population of 13,000, half of which lives in or near the town of Kodiak on the northeast end of the island. As you can see from the photo at right, Kodiak has an extremely irregular coastline with giant fjord like inlets, mountains and various islands as the most significant part of its makeup. There are only 100 miles of paved and gravel road leading from Kodiak. Air travel is the most efficient way to visit the outlying villages. Since you all have other things to do with your day I am g...

In her recent post Pam talked about writing a seduction scene. Which got me to thinking about writing love scenes. Or to be more accurate, sex scenes, as there are certainly love scenes that don’t involve sex, except as subtext. Sex scenes are perhaps a particular challenge for the historical novelist because, as Pam said, of the need to carry "with it the feeling of its historically understood world, quite as fully as any other scene in the novel." Which includes everything from the mores of the time to contraception or the lack of it to details of clothing as it is removed (with which last issue Kalen is a wonderful resource). 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. (There was also a descriptio...

The saloon, evolving from the pub or tavern, is simply a neighborhood bar. It moved west with the pioneers and gradually earned its reputation as a den of iniquity with card tables full of gunslingers, dancing girls, and barrels of whiskey. Life in those old days was difficult, and the saloonkeeper provided a place to “let loose” or just socialize. In some towns of the Old West there were more saloons than churches. And in some tent cities sprouting up around gold or silver mining camps, there were more saloons than wooden buildings. Saloons were the place a cowboy or a rancher or a miner (but never a lady) could drink, gamble, and maybe even get a girl. Some were just shacks (or even tents); some were fancy. The Silver Dollar Saloon in Leadville, Colorado, had a mahogany bar, tile floor, and a real cash register. Abilene saloons featured glass doors, paintings of Renaissance-like nudes, mirrors reflecting rows of whiskey and brandy bottles, polished brass spittoons, and often a ...

The Hoydens would like to give a warm welcome to Leanna Renee Hieber, who is visiting us on the thirteenth and last day of her Haunted London Blog Tour. One of the founders (foundresses?) of Lady Jane's Salon, Leanna has combined her interest in ghost stories, London, and the Victorian era to create a ghostly Gothic tale of ancient prophecy and gas-lit intrigues. Here's the blurb from the back of Leanna's book (and the incredibly gorgeous cover): "What fortune awaited sweet, timid Percy Parker at Athens Academy? Considering how few of Queen Victoria’s Londoners knew of it, the great Romanesque fortress was dreadfully imposing, and little could Percy guess what lay inside. She had never met the powerful and mysterious Professor Alexi Rychman, knew nothing of the growing shadow, the Ripper and other supernatural terrors against which his coterie stood guard. She knew simply that she was different, haunted, with her snow-white hair, pearlescent skin and uncanny gifts. B...

In my last post , I wrote about needing to know about Regency boating attire. And how the good advice I got from generous colleagues in the romance writing biz helped me develop the boating scene I was writing. Which scene happily led to The Seduction Scene by the Sea. Mutual seduction, let me add, a good time being had by all including the author. Because I'm not the kind of romance writer who's given to protest that she writes the hot stuff purely in the Service of Plot and Character Development and at great personal cost to herself. Erotic writing, as I always stress in the Writing the Hot Historical workshops Janet Mullany and give from time to time, ought to be its own reward. While also, of course, carrying with it the feeling of its historically understood world, quite as fully as any other scene in the novel. My own shorthand for thinking this way is that while you probably need to get some of characters' clothes off (in this case, the boating costume I worked so ...

A lock of Josephine's hair; snipped on the day of her death, May 29, 1814. On September 7, the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia shut its doors on a magnificent exhibit on Napoleon. It took me two trips to see the entire exhibition, because it was massive, containing an exhaustive and comprehensive collection of items belonging to Napoleon, his two wives, his numerous siblings, and those, like Talleyrand, with whom he had contentious relationships to say the least. The exhibition is divided into segments covering the rise to power of a Corsican upstart named Napoleone Buonaparte; his roles in the rapidly changing post-revolutionary governments; his marriages to the soigné Creole widow, Josephine de Beauharnais, and to the naive Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria; his numerous siblings (you'll want to take a nap on Jerome Bonaparte's sumptuous bed with it's apricot brocade curtains and bolster); his military career and accomplishments; his coronation as Emper...

My current work in progress is a Regency, and I have another book I’ve just started that’s set during the Victorian era. The heroines are fun to write here…I find everything is a little bit lighter than my medieval romances. Along the way, I studied up on ballroom etiquette and followed a surfing thread about the secret code of fans, shawls and parasols. All of these fashionable accessories were used to send signals, and communicate messages to suitors—the twirl of parasol just so, the touching of a fan to one’s cheek and the drape of a shawl. This from a costume website: “During Victorian times Godey's Ladies book was seen to encourage girls to keep their shawls in motion as the act of letting a shawl slide down your shoulders and then be pulled back up could be used to draw the attention of a likely suitor. Girls were known to practice in front of mirrors to learn these maneuvers.” Cool. I’ve seen the shawl used in romances like this…but I never knew it was practiced! On the fan:...

Betrayal has such a black-and-white sound, doesn’t it? But like most things, it isn’t anything of the sort. Betrayal of a country, an ideal, a lover, a spouse, a friend. It’s often impossible to be loyal to all. Which loyalty comes first? Raoul says this to Mélanie in their scene in the library late in Secrets of a Lady/Daughter of the Game . I found myself mulling over these words while driving home from a trip to the grocery store (I do a lot of my best writing thinking in the car). So many of my books deal with betrayal in one form or another. It’s at the heart of four of my mom’s and my Anthea Malcolm Regencies ( Frivolous Pretence, A Touch of Scandal, An Improper Proposal, A Sensible Match ) and of all four of my linked historical romances, starting with Dark Angel which I wrote with my mom as Anna Grant and continuing with Shadows of the Heart, S hores of Desire, and Rightfully His . It’s the core issue of the Charles & Mélanie series. I can’t imagine writing a book about ...