cacakerbamakhlukpolitik

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 ...

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...

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...

This Friday, 15 June, is the 197th anniversary of the Duchess of Richmond's ball at which the Duke of Wellington learned that Napoleon was attacking not from the west as Wellington had expected but on the Allied Army's eastern flank, trying to separate them from their Prussian allies. Pouring over a map of Belgium in the Duke of Richmond's study, Wellington is said to have declared, "Napoleon has humbugged me." A number of officers joined their regiments straight from the ball and fought the next day at Quatre Bras in their ball dress. Monday, 18 June, is the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo itself. Both the ball and the battle figure prominently in my latest release, Imperial Scandal . My hero, Malcolm Rannoch, is a diplomat and intelligence agent, but Wellington presses him into servicein the battle delivering messages. I knew early on in the plotting process that I wanted to have Malcolm delivering messages during the battle, and I was...