What is Your Dream Home?

by Christine Wells

It's no secret in the lair that the Wells house is undergoing a major renovation at the moment. We have moved out while this is going on but I often drive to or past the site and feel both exhilarated and slightly nauseous at the mammoth task ahead.

I spent hours this morning choosing tapware, sinks, toilets and baths. I felt that I was quite decisive (for a Libran!) It's amazing how quickly you can make up your mind when your builder gives you a bare weekend to do it. The fun part of choosing wall colours and tiles is yet to come and I daresay I'll spend a lot more time on those things because that's what interests me more than plumbing.

But it got me to thinking about dream homes and in particular, fictional homes.

I grew up on a diet of European fairytales and traditional English books like The Children of Cherry Tree Farm, so the homes I imagined for myself were usually situated at the edge of a wood, surrounded by fields of wildflowers. There'd be a great stone hearth in the living room and patchwork quilts on the beds. (That's when I wasn't imagining myself in a Hobbit house or a gingerbread cottage or Green Gables--not that I actually knew what gables were).

Of course, discovering Regency romance took me away from fairytale cottages to enormous Palladian mansions and landscaping by Capability Brown. Chinese silk wall hangings would cover my bedroom wall and of course I would have a separate chamber for my extensive designer wardrobe.

But the reality of living in subtropical Australia (not to mention one's budget!) does tend to limit options somewhat. In fact, I love my 1920s Queenslander home with its gables (yep, I know what they are now!) and big deck and polished wood floors and tongue-and-groove walls. I miss living there and it's only been a couple of months. I'm going to be terribly homesick before the work on it is finished!

But the gorgeous photos Christie posted of her finished renovation give me hope. In the meantime, I can still dream of Pemberley...

What fictional (or real) house would you love to live in? What luxury feature do you think is essential in a dream home?

The Place in the Story, the Story in the Place

by Nancy

Sorry, everyone, about the delay. We had a little glitch this morning, but we're up and running now.

Every story takes place somewhere, and the "where" often influences the story. What would Wuthering Heights be without the windswept loneliness of the moors? Or LOTR, without the contrasts of the soft. green beauty of the Shire, the elven elegance of Lothlorien, and the arid hostility of Mordor? Or the Darkhunters, without the moody atmosphere of New Orleans?

Not as effective, I think. In each instance, the setting plays a role in the story. It reinforces mood and, at least in the case of Sauron's Mordor and Galadriel's Lothlorien, says something about those who inhabit it. (Notice how I resisted the urge to stick in a picture of Viggo Mortenson as Aragorn. But I thought about it.)

Historicals don't always take place in castles, of course. The post-medievals tend to involve manor houses and London townhouses. But each place says something about the people who inhabit it. And each era has its own conflicts and problems that can shape a story.

When I first started reading historical romance, there was much more variety in settings. The Caribbean was big. Pirates, y'know? Sabrina Jeffries' The Pirate Lord is a wonderful example. The first pirate romance I read was Shirley Busbee's The Spanish Rose, which is still on my keeper shelf. At the other end of the alphabet sits Kathleen Woodiwiss' Shanna, whose fabulous Ruark did a turn as a pirate. Claudia Dain's debut novel was a superb pirate book, Tell Me Lies.

Now that Pirates of the Caribbean has been so big, I wonder if pirates will enjoy a big resurgence. So far, that doesn't seem to be happening.

Elizabethan England used to pop up from time to time. So did Revolutionary America. Then Regency England exploded and shoved lots of other choices to the side. Medievals are still hanging in, but they're more or less a niche market. Victorian seems to have blossomed but only if they're set in England.

I once heard an editor say every period has its fans, but profitability depends on having most of the books in a line set in the most popular periods. Much as I wish it were otherwise, this makes a certain amount of sense. Science fiction, fantasy, and mystery novels tend to be less restricted in setting, but in romance, we want a comfort book, and maybe part of that is a desire for the familiar, which means periods readers already know.

My 2006 finalist and its sequel were set in the English Restoration (so named because Charles II's 1660 return from exile after Oliver Cromwell died "restored" the English monarchy). I once heard an author (not me, honestly and truly) ask an editor about that period in a Q&A. The editor wrinkled her nose. "Restoraaaation," she said, sort of in the same tone you might use if you said, "I smell rotten fish in the kitchen." After a moment, she said, "I don't think that period really keys into reader fantasies."

If you look at the wardrobe, you can understand why. I mean, seriously, can you see this guy buckling a swash? As Jayne Anne Krentz said in her wonderful book Dangerous Men, Adventurous Women, readers want to identify with the heroine and fall in love with the hero. Foppish heroes who dress kind of like we readers envision heroines don't really have that appeal. I love the period because it's so rich in conflict and tension and deprivation and decadence, but it's not big with most readers. There are a few authors out there dipping into it, but most of them tend not to stay there.

And just so we all know, my heroes avoided contemporary fashion, which they thought was impractical. One was a naval officer who wouldn't wear anything that made climbing the rigging more dangerous than it already was, and the other was an earl and ex-soldier who had no patience with frills and furbelows (I love that phrase, but I had to look up the latter word. A furbelow is a showy frill or pleating).

As I became more educated about the market, I put that period aside and moved to the medieval era instead. For pure flash and dash, I don't think any dynasty in the history of any country can beat England's Plantagenets, though the post-Conquest Normans offer a lot of conflict, as do the Dark Ages. The advantage of being a history geek is having a great many periods one loves.

Contemporaries also make great use of setting. Urban paranormals play off the shiny glass and steel and the gritty slums of cities. Small towns bring in the sense of community and the sometimes unfortunate awareness of everyone else's business.

What settings do you love, and why? What's your favorite book set in a historical time period or your favorite contemporary where setting plays a part? If you could read a book set anywhere and anywhen, from the dawn of time to the far future, what would you pick?

Location, Location, Location!

by Christine Wells

Recently, I had the rather surreal experience of looking for a house to live in while also searching for a location in which to set my next historical romance. You will understand that I felt rather embittered by the contrast between the mansions my fictitious heroines get to swan around in and the type of house to which my budget stretches.

One might call it "Palace Envy".*G*

Where I live, many houses are made of wood in the traditional style we call the Queenslander. These houses were built with a view to minimizing the subtropical heat. They're set up on stilts so that air can flow through in a kind of natural cooling system. Quite different from English houses that are designed to hold the heat in, as well as accommodate a large number of people, including servants.

However, despite the obvious differences, the process of finding a house for me and for my heroine is quite similar. While looking for abodes for my family to abide in while our house is renovated, I had a list of criteria to shop for:

Location (not built on a train line or next to an electricity substation, close to my son's school, etc)

Number of bedrooms (extra points if room for a study for yours truly)

Decent bathrooms and kitchen, room for children and Monty the dog to play (fenced, of course).

Likewise, when searching for a suitably palatial setting for my books, I have loose criteria such as period, place, surroundings, layout, where on the scale of grandeur this house has to fit given the status and wealth of its occupants, and how it might accommodate scenes that are already dancing through my head or inspire new ones.

Now, a fictional place doesn't have to be based on a real one, of course and if I can't find a suitable house, I make it up. I also modify the interior layout but I do like to start with what is typical in that type of house.

In the eras from which my Regency houses date, they tended to use local materials--local stone, such as the gorgeous honey coloured Ham Hill stone they used to build Montacute House in Somerset (top, left).

I set SWEETEST LITTLE SIN partly at the villain's estate and I had great fun researching that one. I wanted Radleigh to be a parvenu, a social climber who had appeared in London after supposedly making his fortune abroad.

I found an excellent house in Sezincote, an Indian phantasmagoria that inspired the Brighton Pavillion. It boasts a wonderful copper minaret and spear-like poles that give the illusion of an exotic tent. The drive is guarded by bronze elephants and there are all kinds of interesting grottos and gardens dotted around the estate that continue the Indian theme, a mixture of Hindu and Islamic motifs that echo the attempt of Mogul ruler Akbar to integrate the two cultures.

I think it's rather gorgeous, but of course the nobility at the time would have turned up their noses, just as they did when Prinny built his summer palace at the seaside. To quote one wit in SWEETEST LITTLE SIN, "It was as if an Indian palace had mated with an English manor and spawned a particularly hideous child."
Was that unfair? I'll leave it for you to judge.

Just a note--the Hindu pavillion with all the erotic carvings came from my other research and my imagination--not from Sezincote. But perhaps you'll have fun spotting the settings that do.

So here's my question to you, gentle readers! What house or setting from a romance novel would you love to have for your own and why? One reader will win a signed copy of SWEETEST LITTLE SIN when it comes out in May.

I Love Paris... But Why?

posted by Aunty Cindy

Have you ever visited a place, and quite inexplicably you just loved it? I don't mean like Disney World, or the Indy 500, or even the county fair. Of course you LOVE those, but that's why you went there. I'm talking about an affinity for a place, usually a city, that's like a strong sense of connection.

A feeling of belonging.

A bond.

I've heard this phenomena referred to as "genetic memory." Something in ye olde DNA is sparked somehow. Now much as I like this theory, I can't quite buy it. At least not in my case, but I'll explain why in a moment.

The first time I ever got this feeling was in my late teens, and it was my very first visit to San Francisco. Chalk it up to youthful enthusiasm, but The City By The Bay remains one of my favorite places in the world. The only other American city I've felt so strongly attracted to was New York City. And I have yet to connect like this with any place in Asia. But Europe is that WHOLE NOTHER STORY...

The first time I went to Italy, I had about a dozen people tell me how much I was going to love Florence! In short, I didn't. However, the minute I walked out of the Termini train station in Rome...Badda Bing, Badda BOOM! Love at first sight! And every time I've set foot in Rome since, I've had the SAME FEELING! So much for that genetic memory theory, because as far as I know, I don't have one drop of Italian blood in me. And no other place in Italy has affected me that strongly.

So far, the only other city that has stirred this unconditional love-fest in me is Paris. This is doubly strange because not only am I not even a miniscule bit French, but I was prepared to NOT like the place. Let's face it, Parisiennes are not known for their friendly hospitality, and that first visit for me was a month after Princess Diana died there. My head was not in a 'good place' about The City of Light, but it didn't matter. Paris instantly stole my heart!

Now I'm about to see if that love is true. This time next week, your old Aunty will be jetting off to see London and Paris for a few days. I'll let you know if I still LOVE PARIS!

Have you ever felt that instant attraction to a city or place? Please TELL us all about it! Also, since Aunty hasn't been to London in over 20 years, pretend you are stowing away in my luggage. What do you recommend we not miss in good old London town?

I learned it all in a book...

by Tawny Weber

One of the things I love about reading is that I can go anywhere - or anytime. What a quick trip back in time, grab a book. Want to visit the romantic waterways of Venice? Grab a book. Other planets, the future, a wild nightclub? Yup -a book. I've 'visited' dozens of countries from the comfort of my reading chair and (I'm almost ashamed to admit this) learned more about history than I did in school, just by reading romances.

It all comes down to setting, doesn’t it? Setting is such a powerful part of the story, sometimes a major player, sometimes a soft, watercolor background that barely registers on the reader's awareness. Some are edgy - in Double Dare I opened with a nightclub, flashing lights, a meat-market setting and it set the tone for the rest of the story. Others are subtle - in Does She Dare? the story is set in a quaint, cobblestone paved small town, and again, it sets a tone. You'd think they'd be vastly different stories, yet both are hot, sexy and have very strong heroines... but both settings reflect the heroine's self-image.


For me, setting is always tied to and reflects my characters. Other authors use setting differently. They might use it to challenge the characters, or even let it be a character itself. In my case, a winter setting limits outdoor lovescenes, for some people winter presents a life or death scenario for the hero and heroine to fight to survive. Don’t’ you love how setting and time carry and frame our stories?




Even better, for me, is when I read a book and learn something new. Whether its societal customs of a Regency or police procedures in a romantic suspense, for me a great read is one that delicately weaves in the factual information, lets me learn without realizing I’m learning (this is probably why I learned so much more by reading romances than in school LOL – there is a lot to be said for the ancient bards and teaching by means of storytelling!!).

What are some of the most fascinating things YOU've learned in reading? What setting or time do you find yourself coming back to over and over again? Is there a reason that time/setting fascinates you?

Anna Campbell Touts the Stately Homes of England

posted by Anna Campbell

My last blog a month ago (although because I’m going away, I only wrote it yesterday – with all these time warps, I’m starting to feel like Doctor Who!) was hijacked by the blog fairies. It was meant to be about how visiting stately homes relates back to my writing but it ended up just being about setting in general with a final twist where I talked about a castle I’d used in CLAIMING THE COURTESAN.

But, blog fairies, away with you today! Hi, diddly, dee, it’s stately homes for me!

There’s something magical about stepping into a house that has been lived in for hundreds of years. In the best old houses, you feel all that family history around you. It’s an odd and wonderful sensation to enter a space where generations of people have walked and broken bread and loved and laughed and cried. I’m a history nut from way back and that vivid connection with people of the past is one of the best feelings I know.

Of course you can get that feeling elsewhere that the past is still alive and present. Battlefields. Churches. Historic towns. But a house is so central to a person’s life. A house is where people reveal their most secret selves. In ages past, people were born and married and had their children and died in their houses. There’s something intimate about being in a domestic space. Somewhere people eat and sleep and interact with their family. Even now, if someone invites you to their home, they’re making a gesture to let you into their lives.

These stately homes were often closely interwoven with the larger world. The aristocrats who built somewhere like Blenheim (not that I find Blenheim an intimate experience—it always strikes me as a public gesture of self-aggrandisement more than somewhere you’d want to live) or Castle Howard or Ham House were at the center of their universes. They were confidants to kings, they were politicians, they guided the church and education and trade. Even if they weren’t involved in administering Britain and its empire, they ran little kingdoms on their estates. So you get a feeling of a whole society from one country house.

Often, the houses are breathtakingly beautiful. Clearly a Marxist would consider the wealth these people had at their disposal obscene. But riches on that scale offers an experience outside most people’s reach. I’d argue many of these aristocrats had taste and education and they used both to make their houses glorious. Go to Syon Park in London, still owned by the Duke of Northumberland, and see the Robert Adam interiors. Go to Ham House in Richmond and marvel at the original fabrics with their exquisite embroidery from the time of Charles II. Or visit the lovely gardens at Penshurst in Kent, especially in spring when the orchards are a riot of color and scent. Aesthetically, these experiences are not to be missed!

For a writer, other experiences are at least as valuable as the luxury and beauty that fill these houses. The feeling of cold uneven flagstones beneath your feet in the kitchens. The smoothness of a polished mahogany banister under your hand as you sweep down a magnificent staircase. Well, all right, I’m in my ratty travel gear so perhaps ‘sweeping’ is too strong a word! There’s the dank smell of a moat through an open casement window, something I discovered when I went to Ightham Mote in Kent which is one of the most romantic places I’ve ever been.

All this sensory detail adds another dimension to writing. It’s something I try to include in my historical romances so my characters are living and breathing people moving through a world full of concrete, realistic detail. In a way, I’m trying to create that link with a vital past that I feel when I’m in my favorite stately homes.

Do you like to visit old houses? Why? Do you have any favorites? Not necessarily in Britain. There are old houses in Australia that give you a wonderful insight into how our ancestors lived. I’m sure there are plenty in America. I’d love to know if I’m the only old house fanatic here!

Anna Campbell Sets the Scene

posted by Anna Campbell

Australia is a very new country, even newer than the United States or Canada. If you’re talking architecture, 100 years is old to us. I live in a 1928 Art Deco block of flats and that is considered heritage.

So what is a girl to do when she’s been in love with the past, the more distant the better, ever since she was a little kid reading fairytales?

A girl is to go to Britain as often as she possibly can! Even though the flight is awful and the exchange rate between the pound and the Aussie dollar is worse. When I need my history fix, I need my history fix! I’ll endure any pains, slog through any cold English rain, chat up any gorgeous Scotsmen (hmm, that’s REALLY suffering) just so I can see something built prior to 1900! I will suffer for my art!

As I write this, I’ve got a couple of days to wait before I board my big red and white Qantas jet and head off for London for a week followed by three weeks of wandering around England and Scotland. Am I excited? Did the Saxons cop a hiding at the Battle of Hastings?

I’m planning to scout locations and do a lot of research. I’m hoping to come up with a string of ideas for new stories. Experiencing the places where my characters live is so inspiring. Of course, I’m writing romance not a dissertation on the Highland Clearances or the position of women in Regency England. As a writer, I try to subscribe to the iceberg theory—at least 90% of what you know is floating underwater out of sight. Knowing the setting so well is for my benefit, really. I have to believe in the authenticity of the people and their world (although I’m sure I make mistakes—it’s almost impossible not to! And it’s always the little things that slip you up!) when I’m telling a story.

In Claiming the Courtesan, I use a lot of historical detail—hopefully with a light hand. But in my mind, it made those people flesh and blood as individuals of their time and setting.

To give you some examples, the Duchess of Kylemore’s cruel eviction of her tenants was based on the deliberate depopulation of the Highlands in the 18th and 19th centuries as the Scottish nobility decided they’d rather live the easy life in London. The easy life was expensive and wool was the boom industry so the landowners threw people off their crofts in preference for running sheep which were cheap and profitable. The castle and village at Inverathie are based loosely on Inveraray, the home of the Dukes of Argyll, in western Scotland. Just as a small detail, when you walk into the main hall, the walls are decorated with weaponry just as they are in my book. Here’s a link if you want to check out the similarities.

http://www.inveraray-castle.com/Pages/content.asp

So now over to you. Have you ever been somewhere and found it inspired a whole new story? How important is setting in your writing? When you read a book, is the sense of place/history important to you? Is there somewhere you absolutely, positively have to visit for your current work in progress? Has a book ever inspired you to want to visit somewhere through the sheer power of the descriptions?

Places of the Heart

I first visited the Scottish Highlands in 1985 in my mid-twenties on what I thought was a whirlwind tour of Britain just before I flew back to Australia. I'd been away about six months and had hit a point where I was sick of unfamiliar things and people and tired of dealing with all the annoyances created by living out of a suitcase for that amount of time. I'd tried to be a housekeeper in London and lasted all of a week. The experience was so awful (incontinent dogs were the least of the problems!) that I decided I'd spend two weeks seeing what I could of the UK by train and then I'd go home (I'd spent the six months travelling in Europe).

I did a day tour on a coach out of Edinburgh which was billed as a taste of the Highlands. It sure was that - as you can imagine, the amount of territory covered in just a day wasn't huge. And it rained! As it regularly rains in Scotland. We went to a couple of rather cheesy woollen mills, I remember, where you could buy stuffed toy Scotty dogs (shades of the incontinent London beast, a Highland terrier!) and silly Loch Ness souvenirs. Nessy in a bright red tartan tamoshanter, anyone? For a lot of the day, the weather was so misty and cold and wet, you couldn't even see outside the bus windows.

Anyway, after a very ordinary lunch and an encounter with some Highland cattle and a lot of Highland mud, the bus went over the hills from Loch Long, past a lookout called Rest and Be Thankful, which given the steepness of the terrain, made perfect sense to me, and down to Oban on the west coast.

And I literally fell in love at first sight.

The water, the islands, the light (the weather had cleared marginally by now), the people, the rising hills in the background. This was literally the most beautiful place I'd ever seen in my life. The wildness and the grandeur of this landscape spoke to me in a way nowhere else ever has.

I've been back several times since, both on that particular trip, which ended up lasting another 18 months, on a shorter trip in 1995 and I had a couple of months wandering the isles and the coast in 2004. And the magic has never failed me. The west coast of Scotland and the Hebrides are literally the places that live in my heart.

What's weird is that this is Argyll where my Campbell ancestors came from, although whether they came from the mainland or the isles is long lost in family history. It makes you wonder about race memory. The area is so beautiful, I think most people are overcome with wonder when they strike it, so perhaps I'm just a victim of magnificent landscape and not a throwback to my Scottish ancestors after all.

I always said I'd never write about this area because I wouldn't do it justice. But then it came time to recount the tale of a certain Scottish duke and his troublesome mistress. Almost against my will, most of the story of CLAIMING THE COURTESAN takes place in an isolated glen north of Oban. It's a fictional place but the descriptions are grounded in the reality of that glorious part of the world.

What are the places of your heart? Have you included them in your writing? How important is setting for you when you're writing?