A release from the squeaky clean side

Today Janet Mullany's Regency chicklit, The Rules of Gentility, has been released, and it's almost squeaky clean. Other than the bit about the china breakage, the Fanny Hill parody, and some other scenes, but you'll have to read those to discover them yourself.

She's celebrating with a ridiculously easy contest on her site janetmullany.com where you can enter to win a $25 Amazon gift certificate, and various blog appearances throughout the month (check out the schedule here).

You can also enter the contest at Pam Rosenthal's site, where two lucky winners will receive a signed copy of The Rules.

Even better, Janet will be on World Talk Radio on Thursday August 2, 4pm PST/6pm EST as Cynthia Brian's guest on Be The Star You Are--you can listen live via your computer here and call in toll-free at STUDIO A: 1-866-613-1612 in the US/Canada and 001-858-268-3068 around the world.

And buy the book!

You Got Bottom?

I am doing research for the book I am working on and came across this wonderful book called The Age Of Scandal. It is about the late 18th Century characters of the day. Grin.


There is an interesting chapter on MEN and their test of Bottom.

What is Bottom you may ask??

No I’m not talking about testing the luscious curve or a man’s glorious bum. Though that does bring interesting images to mind. Evil Grin.

Bottom… is courage… guts…keeping your cool in stressful situations…having money to pay your way or solidity. The metaphor came from Ships.

There are some very interesting stories about things men did to prove their bottom. I laughed out loud several times reading this chapter.

Interesting enough, all that know me will not be surprised, I grinned when I read that being Flogged or Birched was also considered to show a mans Bottom(giggle… both his inner Bottom and his real one!) There is one story in it that talk about Nathaniel Eaton in 1674 A drunken Master of Harvard College in America awarded his pupils thirty stripes at a time and had beaten his usher for two hours with a walnut-tree plant big enough to have killed a horse.

Eyes widen, OUCH!

The Governor-General of India , who went to school in 1811 said bitterly: “ I was flogged once every day of my life at school except one, and then I was flogged twice.” All of this was consider appropriate to instill and prove Bottom so that they could be a MAN.

Betting was huge in proving you had bottom…such as you put your money on your word… or now days we would say where you mouth is. If you believed one thing and someone else believed the opposite putting money on your belief showed Bottom. “A bet is the most authoritative solution of any argument” said G.O. Trevelyan. They would not even spend so much as 20 minutes confronting a man who would not put money on his own faith. Betting became a mania Men would bet on anything… not only to back their opinions but also to prove bravado. They betted on things from the life expectancy of their fathers to jumping out windows into carriages passing by.

Gaming such as Hazard and loo were games of chance. It was considered Spartan to take ones fortune in ones hands and to risk it on the turn of pitch and toss. When Men lost they played like men of honor… no one ever said a word about there loss.

Fox hunting was also a way to prove Bottom in the way of Courage. If you have ever done this or attended a fox hunt/steeple chase you know why!!!! They are dangerous. Galloping hooves and high fences where you can not see the other side are a recipe for trampling.

And this is one of the silliest I think, and I like my Drink! Drinking in the form of endurance proved bottom. Two friends of locked themselves in a room with a hogshead of claret and contrived to finish it together with unspecified amounts of cherry and brandy in a week! Another said. “Drinking Claret is the liquor for boys; Port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.” I laughed… I of course love my Vodka Martini a little dirty with extra olives… but I have three at most! I can’t even imagine the hang over. Lol. Eek I think you would feel sick for days.

So All this got me to thinking… in today’s society Men do things to prove themselves some in very similar ways. Remember college and all the drinking! Woman too do things to show they have Bottom.

So my question is in what ways have you in your life shown you have Bottom??

Hugs and Kisses,
Lacy.

Less than perfection

A long while ago, when I was on holiday in Brighton, England, I was burrowing through a box of old books and prints and found a dirty crumpled up sheet wedged in the bottom of the stack. When I unfolded the thick piece of paper, I realized I held an Ackermann's fashion plate in my hands. I was still at college and didn't have much spare cash, but when I asked the lady who was working at the bookstore how much the print would cost, she gave it a cursory glance, wrinkled up her nose, and said 5p.I was totally happy to pay her that for my less than perfect prize!

I felt that despite her crumpled appearance, I still held a piece of history in my hands. If you look carefully at this print, you can see a myriad of flaws beyond the grime. Her neck is incredibly long, her shoulders narrow and her arms too big for her delicate frame, but I still love it. Her tiny feet aren't even on the floor so she appears to be leaping off the page. She kind of resembles my family gene pool.

I tried to wipe most of the dirt off her, (trying very hard not to think too much about what it was) but some of it must have been there for a long time. I wondered whether some young lady with fat arms and heavy thighs had held onto the print because it made her realize that not everyone had to be thin to be beautiful, or, even worse, had she been ripped out and discarded because she wasn't perfect enough? Or even worser, (remember I'm a writer I have a very vivid imagination) maybe her lover was shot in a duel while he held this very piece of paper close to his heart? (that might explain the reddish brown gunk on the left)

Why do I keep this less than perfect piece of the past? Because she was the first Ackermann's print I'd ever been able to touch and afford And because now she reminds me of my writing process. I thought up a thousand stories just staring at her. My first drafts are often ungainly, badly sketched and definitely out of proportion-but beneath the flaws, and with a lot of work, something usable and magical can emerge.

I'm wondering is anyone else has pictures or quotes that inspire them to keep writing or simply living their lives?

It was a pleasure to meet all the Crumpets in Dallas. Pam and Jane's workshop was delightful, although, as the moderator, I felt a bit mean having to tell everyone to hurry up. Personally I could've sat there and listened to them all morning.

New website and contest

www.janelockwood.com

Come visit, read an excerpt from Forbidden Shores, and join my mailing list to enter the contest (prize is a signed copy of the book!).

Look at me

Pam Rosenthal and I gave our presentation at National, Writing the Hot Historical (aka Pam & Janet Evening), and as is the way with such things, we started making exciting discoveries hours before we were to speak. It started with a bit of cross-pollination from my workshop on servants that I gave to the Beau Monde a couple of days before and one of the illustrations I had of a lady's maid, painted by James Morland.

Seems this portrait, and this particular subgenre, of female servants at work, was very popular in the long eighteenth century, reproduced in the form of engravings; and this particular picture proved so popular that Morland did another version, this time of the servant ironing. There's also another one that I couldn't hunt down online of a woman wringing out wet laundry, straight out of the window.

I used it in my servant presentation, of course, to show how very well-dressed lady's maids typically were--they were given their mistress's cast-off clothes in addition to wages. But what struck me also about these paintings were their voyeuristic aspect (and also the fact that the subject's bosom is smack-dab in the center of the painting, which I'm sure added to their popularity). Lady's maids washed their mistress's linen--stockings and shifts that were next to their skin, so Ms. Washing is caught in an intimate situation; not only that, but she's looking into your eyes, as though daring you to guess which intimate garment she's handling. Ms. Ironing, however, has her eyes modestly lowered as she irons (stockings? help me out here!)--but she's inviting the viewer to watch as blatantly as Ms. Washing.

One of the puzzling and difficult things about writing sexy historicals is trying to reconcile what we find sexy now with what we think--or guess--people found sexy then. Why the allure of women doing things with their hands?--it's not just handling stockings; there's another subgenre, or sub subgenre, of erotic art featuring kitchen maids (bosoms exposed) plucking game (babes with large dead birds).

My explanation is that these were private moments when a viewer was not expected. When the woman, engaged in her fairly monotonous work, would let her mind drift off, and then feel that prickle at the back of the neck you get when someone is watching. And because what she's doing is completely innocent (isn't it?) she might pretend not to notice. She'd continue her pleasant reverie, the slow, careful movements of her hands, with the additional pleasure of performing unaware. She might even let the watcher know, somehow, that she's aware of his presence; or, she might choose, brazenly, to look into his eyes, and dare him to think that anything out of the ordinary is happening at all.

Your thoughts?

Better late than never.

Sorry for the delay in drawing the winner of an early copy of Unmasqued...got a bit caught up in the Harry Potter thing this weekend, but now that I've finished it and caught up on sleep, things are back to normal.

So, I drew the winner from my newsletter subscribers, and I'm happy to announce that
Lynda Coker
has won an early copy of the book!

I'll be in touch with you for mailing instructions, or you can email me at colette at colettegale dot com.

In the mean time, who read Harry Potter this weekend? And what did you think? (No spoilers, please.)

Floating down from Dallas

I clapped long, hard, and literally until my hands stung when I saw Pam's picture and gorgeous book cover up on the big screen at the RITAs last Saturday night. (The RITAs are the Romance Writers of America awards for excellence in romance fiction--think the Oscars of romance). Unfortunately someone else took home the statue but it was so thrilling to see a fellow crumpet up there!

I do have an exciting announcement of my own to make. SIN, my Regency set erotic romance about the daughters of an erotica artist, won the National Readers' Choice Award for erotic romance!

I was stunned. I believe I made a brief acceptance speech in Klingon. Then I tried to order a glass of wine only to discover I'd left my wallet upstairs. It was also all rather poignant as I'd just turned in the last book in that trilogy, Hot Silk, on July 3. Writing the short epilogue for Hot Silk, in which all members of the family gather for a wedding, left me teary eyed.

Another surprise for me at the RWA conference--I had copies of Blood Rose to sign! Blood Rose isn't officially "out" until July 25 (though I've heard of store sightings already). It was great to reel in passing readers with the promise they'd get a book NO ONE else could.

Plus, I really enjoyed meeting my fellow crumpet strumpets for Elevenses. Thanks so much, Celia, for bringing the Tim Tams. I've never tried the before, but on the first bite, I completely understood how addictive they are!

Since Blood Rose is popping up on the shelves, I'm posting an except!
And if you haven't checked out Colette Gale's contest--read the email below this one!

Excerpt from Blood Rose by Sharon Page

Her mouth dried as she saw his abdomen—the solid planes of muscle, more soft golden hair, the enticing indent of his navel. Her gaze dropped to his small clothes, riding on his lean hips…

It was as though she had stepped into one of her scandalous dreams.

"Do you know what happens to housebreakers, Miss Lark? Sometimes they get transported." His voice was silky. "And, like me, sometimes they serve a sentence in prison—and learn about all the perversions of mankind." His eyes narrowed, hard and cold in the soft light. "You should be thankful that I found you. I don’t know what Sommersby would have done if he had."

Serena knew she couldn’t show fear. "And what will you do?" she asked.

He reached down and picked up the journal she’d been reading. She caught her breath—waiting to see his reaction. He threw it back to the table and grinned. Astonished, she felt her jaw drop. How could he smile at such monstrous thoughts?

"Meaningless scribble to me," he said.

"You—you mean you can’t read?"

"I was born in a whorehouse, love, where women serviced rough men for pennies."

"But Lord Sommersby—the previous Lord Sommersby did not teach you? I thought he had taken you in as an apprentice."

He shrugged. "From your look of shock, I take it that to a governess a lack of education is sinful indeed." Mr. Swift’s deep voice lingered on sinful and her quim dampened in response.
"I could teach you to read," she offered. Perhaps it was a way to convince Mr. Swift not to have her arrested, to convince him to help her, but mostly she wanted to help him.

He had desired her in that brothel. He desired her now. She could read the heat, the male promise, in his beautiful green eyes, and it set her heart racing even faster.

"Why would you want to do that, love?" He paced to the table and leaned on it. Beneath his shirtsleeves, his muscles bunched, and she licked her lip nervously. Mr. Swift looked utterly unconcerned about being half-naked. But why should it startle her so? Vampires were often naked.

"You don’t know much about me, do you?" he asked, his voice husky, with a gentleness that wrapped around her heart.

"No, Mr. Swift," she answered with equal softness. "I do not." She read vulnerability, poignancy in his emerald eyes.

"I would like to know about you, Miss Lark. You fascinate me. Why does your past matter so much to you? You can’t bring your parents back, sweetheart."

"I know." She blinked away tears—tears at having to lie. "But my past has made me who I am—and I don’t know anything about it."

"What do you really want, Miss Lark? Vengeance on the vampire who took your parents? Perhaps that vampire is already dead. Is that the most satisfying thing you can imagine, Miss Lark?"

(Excerpt from Blood Rose, © Sharon Page)