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Confessions of a Georgette Heyer Addict
I’m not actually certain when I read my first Georgette Heyer. I know it was her anthology of Regency short stories, Pistols for Two, because I vividly remembered both the cover and several of the plot lines decades later, but I must have read it before the age of twelve, because the memories are inseparably connected to a specific armchair that didn’t survive much past that. I also entered a tomboy phase about then that precluded my even entertaining the thought of such drivel as historical romance. But inevitably my tomboy phase ended and I swung to the other side of the pendulum, yearning for romance. In my inexperience, I…
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The Truth about Romance
Romance hasn't always meant what we think it means.
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Finding Connections
I often feel like a great pretender as an American writing about the Regency, but my genealogist husband pointed out my own valid connection.
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Auld Lang Syne
Let's remember the times we were good, and the times that were good to us, and move forward for old times' sake.
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Not Your Average Occupations
"It is amazing to me," said Bingley, "that young ladies can have patience to be so very accomplished as they all are... They all paint tables, cover screens, and net purses."
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My Regency Love Affair
Few eras in history are as romanticized as the Regency era. But what is it about that time in history that so many of us love?
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Publishing’s Marriage Mart
Submitting to agents is much like being thrown on the Marriage Mart.
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Knitting, Netting, Knotting, Needlework
"There was a great deal of needlework to be done, moreover, in which her help was wanted." (from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen)
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Heat, Smoke, and Slavery
Thousands of climbing boys died each year from burns, suffocation, chimney collapse, or cancer, but this didn't bother their masters. There were always more orphans.
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The Home Wood
I had never come across the phrase "Home Wood" in my historical reading before Georgette Heyer, and though I figured I knew what it was, I wanted to be a good writer and do my research before I wantonly used an unfamiliar phrase in my own work.
