Natalie J Damschroder and Tumperkin reminisce about Hallowe'en

The lovely Natalie J Damshroder is joining me today to share our memories - from opposite sides of the Atlantic - of Hallowe'en. But first a word about Natalie's releases, one coming out today and one tomorrow (you busy girl, Natalie!)

Behind the Scenes is a romantic adventure about a security expert who refuses to let her attraction to the movie star under her protection be a distraction…especially when it makes him a direct target. [Buy it here from today]

Under the Moon is a paranormal romance about a modern-day goddess who teams up with her protector—and forbidden soulmate—to track down the leech who’s been stealing power from other goddesses. [Buy it here from 1st November]

So. Memories of Hallowe'en?

Tumperkin: I grew up in Scotland in the late 70s/80s and Hallowe'en was hazardous, mainly due to the fact it was a pumpkin-free zone. We did Jack O'Lanterns in the Old Way - using turnips - very hard turnips. See picture above. They're both less impressive and oddly scarier.... It used to take my dad hours to hollow out one of those babies.

Trick or treating was also unknown. But we had our own (old old) version: 'Guising (short for disguising and pronounced accordingly). Guising wasn't done for treats but for money. Just pennies really. And the costumes in those days were always home-made. A bit rubbish-looking but loads of fun to make.

The best fun, though, was the Hallowe'en party at school: bobbing for apples and eating treacle-covered doughnuts hanging from the ceiling.

It's so different now! Kids' costumes tend to be bought, the supermarkets are filled with pumpkins and it's trick-or-treating all the way...

Natalie: My memories of Halloween are very different from today’s reality. I suppose that’s normal. I mean, things change from generation to generation. But I don’t have to like it.

Trick-or-treating when I was a kid seemed like an all-night affair. We didn’t leave until it was dark. I mean, what’s the point in going door to door in freaky costumes if the sun hasn’t even set? It was usually cold, which meant fights with our parents over wearing warm clothes or coats. We stayed out until we couldn’t take it anymore, or until our bags, pumpkin buckets, or pillowcases were too heavy to carry. Then we had hot cocoa and sorted through our loot.

Nowadays, there are RULES. It has to be between 6 and 8 p.m., which means it’s light when you start, and unless you’re really good, you never fill up completely. You can only go to homes with the porch/yard light on, which is fine, but eliminates any spookiness. No debates about whether or not to go up to someone’s door.

But you know what the worst part is? Here in central Pennsylvania, Halloween is almost never celebrated ON Halloween. Most towns do trick-or-treating on the Thursday before. They’ve even MOVED trick-or-treating to be a DIFFERENT day when Halloween fell on a Thursday! How messed up is that? The stores get rid of most of their candy before that, too. They’ve switched to Christmas a week before Halloween, so all that’s left is one tiny display of junk.

It kind of ruins the holiday for me. All my non-PA friends post about their Halloween plans, and I’m like, “Oh, yeah. That’s today.”

What’s your most enduring memory of Halloween? Do you love or hate the holiday?

Breaking eggs, sadly, happily

It's been a week of many parts.

Frothing and bubbling excitement

The release of The Lady's Secret grows ever nearer! Look it's up on the Carina Press website! And on Amazon (US and UK)! And on Netgalley! It is REAL!

Moments of weird and temporary sadness

Yesterday I finished up at the job I've been doing for 16 years. I start my new job next week and am very excited about it but still - it was kinda sad. I had a little mope last night.

Snarling, rage-filled frustration

I have various things I've had to do that are bewilderingly time-consuming to a relative Luddite like me. Last night I was trying to work out how to embed a widget onto my author website. After ranting for about an hour in front of the laptop (using language familiar to a particularly foul-mouthed sailor) my husband eventually begged me to stop with the promise he will fix it for me.

I luff him.

Making good things happen sometimes means a bit of egg-cracking: leaving something behind, losing whole evenings of your life to social media.
Stuff like that.

John Grant has been seeing me through this week with his particularly lovely brand of lush romanticism tempered with straight-faced whimsy. Oh, John! This song is like a perfect statue. It must always have existed inside the marble. He merely discovered it when he wrote the music and words on paper.

Susanna Fraser kicks off my 'Let's hear it for Regency romance' campaign

I'm delighted to welcome Susanna Fraser to IIR today to kick off my brand new (and hastily named) Let's Hear it for Regency Romance campaign. Regency romance is one of the most popular categories in the romance genre and for very good reason. Let's embrace it without reservation and give it the love it deserves!

Before we get on to Susanna's reasons for loving the Regency, a quick word about Susanna's books:

A Marriage of Inconvenience (buy here): Lucy Jones is a nobody. As an orphan she was reluctantly taken in by her wealthy relatives, the Arringtons, on the condition that she be silent and obedient, always. When her lifelong infatuation with her cousin Sebastian is rewarded by a proposal of marriage, she's happy and grateful, even though the family finds excuses to keep the engagement a secret. James Wright-Gordon has always had the benefits of money and a high station in society, but he is no snob. He's very close to his sister, Anna, who quickly falls for the dashing Sebastian when the families are brought together at a wedding party. Meanwhile, James is struck by Lucy's quiet intelligence, and drawn to her despite their different circumstances in life.Lucy suspects that Sebastian has fallen for Anna, but before she can set him free, a terrible secret is revealed that shakes both families. Will James come to her rescue—or abandon her to poverty?

The Sergeant's Lady (buy here): Highborn Anna Arrington has been "following the drum," obeying the wishes of her cold, controlling cavalry officer husband. When he dies, all she wants is to leave life with Wellington's army in Spain behind her and go home to her family's castle in Scotland. Sergeant Will Atkins ran away from home to join the army in a fit of boyish enthusiasm. He is a natural born soldier, popular with officers and men alike, uncommonly brave and chivalrous, and educated and well-read despite his common birth. As Anna journeys home with a convoy of wounded soldiers, she forms an unlikely friendship with Will. When the convoy is ambushed and their fellow soldiers captured, they become fugitives—together. The attraction between them is strong—but even if they can escape the threat of death at the hands of the French, is love strong enough to bridge the gap between a viscount's daughter and an innkeeper's son?

And now to the Regency and the delights thereof!

Tumperkin: What is it about the Regency setting that interests you?

Susanna: It’s close enough to our time that people’s attitudes, hopes, and dreams feel recognizably modern, but it’s still a low-tech world in many ways—no telegraphs, trains, steamships, or electricity, so people and information can still only travel at the speed of a galloping horse on land and are at the mercy of the wind while at sea. I’m glad I don’t have to live in that world (or one without antibiotics or women’s rights, to name just two), but I enjoy imagining it. [T: me too!]

I’m also fascinated by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, all the violent and dramatic change they wrought. What an eventful quarter-century 1789-1815 must’ve been to live through, you know? It makes me ponder the nature of history—do the times we live in make us, or do we make the times? I sometimes make jokes about wondering what was in the water in the late 1760s, that so many gifted generals were born then. But really, I think what was going on is that Napoleon was the truly unique talent of the era, and that the other great commanders, whether his allies or his enemies, had to up their games just to keep up.

Take Wellington, who happens to be my favourite Regency historical figure [T: We all love the Duke!]. (I like my men cool, capable, and snarky.) He was extremely intelligent, driven, and hard-working, so in a world without Napoleon I’m sure he still would’ve had a successful career in the army and in government. But without the challenge of a Napoleon to make him develop his gifts to their fullest extent and give him such a large stage to display them on, I doubt any of us born 200 years after him would know he’d existed. Such is the line between excellence and fame.

And on a much lighter note, the Regency era has great clothes, for both sexes. [T: oh yeah!] I’d much rather imagine my heroes and heroines in Regency attire than in what their grandparents or grandchildren would’ve worn.

Tumperkin: Why did you pick the Regency setting - what 'work' does it do for you?

Susanna: Both of my books involve heroes and heroines from different social classes, and the fact that class divides were starker and harder to bridge than they are now enhanced my stories’ conflict. Also, my first book, The Sergeant’s Lady, is set mostly in Spain during the Peninsular War, which allowed me to throw together two people who never would’ve met in England and force them to depend upon each other for survival.

Tumperkin: Which Regency character would you most like to meet/ Regency experience would you most like to have?

Susanna: Hm. If by “character” you mean a fictional one, Richard Sharpe. If real historical figures count, the Duke of Wellington. Either way, we’d be at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball just before Waterloo.

Tumperkin: If you could travel back in time, would it be to the Regency or to some other time period?

Susanna: I’d want to visit lots of time periods, but the Regency would definitely be on the list. I’d want to take the ultimate Peninsular War and Waterloo research trip, and then go about a decade earlier and across the Atlantic to accompany the Lewis and Clark expedition. I live in Seattle, and I’d love to see what the Pacific Northwest looked like 200 years ago.

Tumperkin: What is your favourite Regency-set book?

I have many. On the romance side, I love:

A Lily Among Thorns and In For a Penny, both by Rose Lerner
The Rules of Gentility, by Janet Mullany
Mr. Impossible, by Loretta Chase
Forbidden Magic, by Jo Beverley
Shattered Rainbows, by Mary Jo Putney

And in other genres, I’m a fan of:

Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series
Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series
Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series

Thanks Susanna!

And what about you? What do you find interesting about the Regency? Or Regency romances? Who is your favourite Regency figure?

Another thing that annoys me...

What is Scar doing in this picture?

He is SMIRKING.

My mother used to say to me: Stop smirking.

In my mind, smirking is a non-good thing. It is not smiling. It is not grinning. It suggests smugness, perhaps self-satisfaction, perhaps pleasure in another's misfortune.

This is how the free dictionary defines it: To smile in an affected, often offensively self-satisfied manner

So why do I keep reading it in romance novel scenes between H/Hs? Intimate ones? Even loving ones? It throws me off Every Single Time! Argh!

Am I alone? Tell me I am not alone!

The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton by Miranda Neville

The unthinkable happened to me for a while there. I went off historical romance!

I think it was because for the last few months I've been revising and reading (over and over and over) my own historical romance and then picking up my previous (historical romance) WIP and revising that. And really, it was just all too much. I wanted something else to read.

However, last month, I finished my (first) revise of the new-old WIP and for the first time in months, wasn't spending a goodly amount of my time typing the word 'breeches'. I began to eye the new historical romance releases with a glimmer of interest.

Among these was Miranda Neville's new book, The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton. I'd previously read and very much liked The Dangerous Viscount. And I really liked the sound of the premise of Celia: Tarquin Compton, a fussy dandy wakes up half-naked and with amnesia in the Yorkshire moors. The woman who finds him, the eponymous Celia, tells him they are engaged and his name is Terence Fish.

This is untrue of course - in fact, Tarquin thoughtlessly ruined Celia's prospects with a cutting and thoughtless remark during Celia's season. He barely knows who she is. Celia makes up her story partly to punish him and partly to enlist his aid, since she doesn't believe he'll help her if she tells him the truth. There's also a nice little conceit with an erotic book Tarquin had been carrying (a real one that Neville read in the British Library) that tells of the sexual adverntures of one Francis Featherbrain.

And yes, I did enjoy it. It fairly rollicked along, with a hero and heroine who were neither of them perfect but both very likeable (once Tarquin's behaviour was explained). It had a nice little mystery in the form of a missing jewel, lots of fun humour, great love scenes and a nice satisfying ending. I particularly liked Celia's reluctance near the end of the book to marry Tarquin due to the fact that she could never be all fashionable and cool like him and she couldn't see how that wouldn't become a problem at some point. I liked the way she articulated those reservations. I didn't have that irritating me-is-not-good-enuff -for-oo feel about it that drives me WILD about rejected proposals. It was all about whether she would be happy and her very real concern that she wouldn't. She made him choose her and convince her to marry him and that was nice. It felt nicely balanced at the end, power-wise.

So there you a go. A very good, entertaining read that's got my historical mojo back up in working order again.

Thanks to the lovely Janet Webb for the book!

On aspirational settings

I've been prevaricating about writing this post for a while. But it's still niggling me, so it seems it's going to have to be written.

Let me start by quoting a pile of tweets I posted a couple of months ago. These were part of a conversation, mainly with Sunita, but I've struggled to locate her responses to my tweets so you're just getting my somewhat inelegant side of the conversation:

I've been noticing the importance of place in American-set contemps. British-set contemp setting more about accuracy of mindset than place....Feels to me as tho place is something fundamental in US in way it is not here...Also finding the various US settings fascinating: small town America (both conserv & liberal depictions), LA, Texas etc. Is so complex....

One vision I'm finding partic interesting is the liberal small town that welcomes m/m couples partic .... the unspoken promise of HEA-like eternal safety and acceptance - or do I read too much in?...e.g. St Nachos book(Maxfield) that shows hero being accepted early on by local cops/ other worthies ie accepted by institutions... Is it any different from hetero visions of small town perfection - even conservative ideals?.... Also, is the articulation of such a vision to be welcomed regardless of realism (assuming you agree the ideal depicted is *good*) .... a form of actualisation; the depiction of a tolerant liberal society in fiction.

So that is what I want to blog about today, and my what a big question - can you wonder at my reluctance to tackle this? I'm slightly going to skim over it, and just give you some brief comments, but I have pondered this at some length.

Fiction sometimes depicts a world very close reality; other times, something lighter or infinitely darker than reality. I've tended not to be a fan of depictions of utopiae, whether those be contemporary, historical or fantastical utopiae, but there's no doubt many readers have a liking for 'nice' settings and the phenomenon often referred to as the 'small town' romance is one of the most common of these.

I don't profess any expertise on small town romances, having tended to avoid them myself but it seems to me that they generally feature a cast of characters who collectively form part of the romantic couple's HEA - these are the people the H/H will socialise with post-HEA. They will have a network of supportive friends and neighbours. In an m/m small town romance, a key element of this is the general acceptance the H/H find amongst the rest of the population. The reader is implicitly reassured they won't face much homophobia.

In our twitter exchange, Sunita made the very good point that this was unrealistic (Sunita, forgive me for paraphrasing you, my netbook is being very slow!). I responded, as above, that perhaps, nevertheless, this was to be welcomed as a depiction of an idealised society. Something to be aspired to.

Ok, here's the difficult part of the post. I feel like, over the last 6 months of reading a lot of M/M romance, that I've experienced a little bit of actualisation personally. By which I mean this: I always believed in GBLT rights. I believed in gay marriage. I was horrified by homophobia. But reading gay romance brought that home to me in a more emotional way.

It's the difference between knowing something and feeling it. And that's the huge huge power of fiction. That it puts you - a teeny tiny bit - in someone else's shoes. And it can shift something inside you, very powerfully. Maybe barely a shift at all in what you think, but seismic one in how you feel.

I'm still not a huge fan of small town romance books, m/m or hetero, but this got me thinking that maybe they serve a purpose? Maybe they help us to picture, in minature, the sort of society we want to live in? See the shape of it, what it might look like, what it might feel like. Imagining the reality we want. Aspiring to it. Believing in it.

What do you think? Has reading fiction made you feel differently about anything? What do you think about light and dark settings? What fictional place would you most like to live in?