Blog Archives

Monday, September 19th, 2011 | Author:

Circlet Press’s Sense and Sensuality is finally available for purchase! Hooray! My story in this anthology is called “A Woman of Uncommon Accomplishment,” and follows the adventures of Mary Bennet after the end of Pride and Prejudice, as she takes her interest in ponderous old books in a supernatural direction.

I wasn’t sure I could – or wanted to – write this story when I started, since I’d never done anything historical before and was a little daunted by the research, but I had a hell of a lot of fun, and totally fell in love with my characters. (To the point where I started a novel that picks up where the short story ends, though I don’t know what I’ll do with it when I finish!) My beta readers loved them, too, and I’m proud to say that Mary and her incubus companion, Nick, won over at least one reader who is definitely not a fan of Regency-era fiction.

You can read an excerpt from “A Woman of Uncommon Accomplishment” on your way to purchasing Sense and Sensuality at Circlet Press, or at All Romance Ebooks. The anthology is also available at Amazon.com.

Category: News  | Tags:  | Comments off
Monday, May 30th, 2011 | Author:

The editor for the Sense and Sensuality anthology, J. Blackmore, emailed all of us a copy of the cover art for the anthology a little while ago, and I just realized I haven’t gotten around to showing it off here.

The cover for Sense and Sensuality

Pretty, isn’t it? The release date is probably going to be in late July – I’m so excited!

Category: News  | Tags:  | Comments off
Tuesday, January 18th, 2011 | Author:

J. Blackmore has announced the author lineup for Circlet Press’s upcoming Sense and Sensuality anthology, so I think it’s safe to go ahead and say… My story made it in!

I’m super-excited to be a part of the anthology, and even more excited to be able to share my story, “A Woman of Uncommon Accomplishment,” with readers. I had a ridiculous amount of fun writing it, even though it was somewhat out of my usual genre range; I’m hoping that people will enjoy reading it at least as much.

“A Woman of Uncommon Accomplishment” picks up not too long after the end of Pride and Prejudice, and follows Mary Bennet as she discovers that magic is real, and sets about learning to use it. There are, of course, complications, the most alarming of which is an accidentally-summoned incubus who calls himself Nick and won’t go away.

I’ll share more as publication approaches!

Category: News  | Tags:  | Comments off
Monday, October 25th, 2010 | Author:

I’ve just completed a rough first draft of my very first attempt at writing historical romance. Hooray! It was an interesting process, filled with all-new kinds of research, and a lot of time staring at the blinking cursor of my word processor wondering what terms a well-bred young lady in the late 18th/early 19th century would use to describe a penis. (Note to self: remember this for the next time someone asks what you do for a living!)

I’ll be doing a quick revision and clean-up this afternoon, and then I’ll be sending the story off to first readers for their feedback. Revise a couple more times, submit to anthology, annnnd done! End of my historical romance career.

Except, apparently not. Whilst writing this story, I had a sudden, intense desire to take the main characters on another adventure. Perhaps a novel-length adventure. With action and intrigue as well as romance and demons. The working title is “Mary Bennet and Nick the Incubus Fight Crime,” which should give you an idea of what I’m thinking, here.

NaNoWriMo Participant BadgeAnd you know what would make this even more fun? If I write it in 30 days! That’s right, dear readers – I’m doing NaNoWriMo. If you are, too, feel free to look me up. My user name is ElizaReeve. We can be buddies!

In the meantime, it’s back to the research mines for me. I’ve got a copy of Harriette Wilson’s memoirs and a highlighter, and I’m not afraid to use them.

Saturday, October 16th, 2010 | Author:

I’m writing an erotic romance short right now that’s set in approximately-Regency England. It has a fantasy slant to it – an incubus, to be precise – but it’s definitely outside my usual range. Which means… All-new research!

“Yaaay,” she typed weakly.

Actually, I love doing research, most of the time. There are a few exceptions. I’ve been working on a space opera for ages, and while I love the characters and the plot and so much of the setting, I loathe doing the chemistry and physics legwork. Ugh, lasers!

But even when there’s math (my ancient foe!) involved, I do love learning new things. Over the years I’ve been writing, I’ve learned about age of sail warfare, blacksmithing, codes and code-breaking, and more ways to grievously wound a hero and have him survive than you can shake a stick at. I’ve also brushed up on my knowledge of founder effects and other biological oddities, improved my Latin, and spent some time working out how a professional researcher would do her work (kind of meta, isn’t it?).

Somehow, I’ve avoided using dictionaries as research aides in any serious way until now, though. But since I’m writing a story that takes place in an actual historical setting (as opposed to a second world fantasy setting, for example), I have to be more careful with my word use than I usually am. The Oxford English Dictionary has come to the rescue more than once, giving me dates of usage for various meanings of various words. But what’s even more fun than that, I’m learning, is looking at dictionaries that are roughly contemporary to the time period I’m writing.

I found one at Project Gutenberg that is fascinating, informative, and hilarious: the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue .

One of the gentleman who contributed apparently went by the name of “Hell-Fire Dick,” which gives an idea right at the outset of what the text will be like. It’s been fun to see some of the language that didn’t make it into many of the novels that form part of our literary canon from that period. And while a fair number of the entries seem a little too over-the-top to have been in common usage (if they were really in usage at all), they’re certainly entertaining. I think my favorite has to be the definition for “Carvel’s Ring”:

The private parts of a woman. Ham Carvel, a jealous old doctor, being in bed with his wife, dreamed that the Devil gave him a ring, which, so long as he had it on his finger, would prevent his being made a cuckold: waking he found he had got his finger the Lord knows where.

Though I was also deeply impressed by the entry for “sh-t sack” (the bowdlerizing is the author’s, not mine):

A dastardly fellow: also a non-conformist. This appellation is said to have originated from the following story:—After the restoration, the laws against the non-conformists were extremely severe. They sometimes met in very obscure places: and there is a tradition that one of their congregations were assembled in a barn, the rendezvous of beggars and other vagrants, where the preacher, for want of a ladder or tub, was suspended in a sack fixed to the beam. His discourse that day being on the last judgment, he particularly attempted to describe the terrors of the wicked at the sounding of the trumpet, on which a trumpeter to a puppet-show, who had taken refuge in that barn, and lay hid under the straw, sounded a charge. The congregation, struck with the utmost consternation, fled in an instant from the place, leaving their affrighted teacher to shift for himself. The effects of his terror are said to have appeared at the bottom of the sack, and to have occasioned that opprobrious appellation by which the non-conformists were vulgarly distinguished.

Isn’t research fun?

Category: Uncategorized  | Tags: ,  | Comments off