Category: blog tour

Did you know Captain Kirk has a medal for Conspicuous Gallantry?

[cw: grief]

Two new blog tour things up today:

1. I was part of my first podcast yesterday! I was a guest on Danielle Monsch’s Romantically Speaking. Here’s her description of our conversation:

So what was discussed? Georgette Heyer vs. Jane Austen, East Coast vs. West Coast, Gerard Butler vs. Christina Hendricks, and Kirk vs. Picard.

I’ll give you a hint as to how that last conversation went:

DANIELLE: Kirk.
ME: Kirk.
DANIELLE: Oh, definitely Kirk.
ME: I love Kirk a LOT. Plus he’s really cute.
DANIELLE: I don’t like William Shatner though.
ME: Oh, of course not! Ugh.

I haven’t actually listened to the final recording yet (I’m going to do that after I post this) but I had a lot of fun talking to Danielle. I’ll tell you a secret, though: after I got off the phone, I thought to myself, “Did I talk too much? Did I monopolize the conversation?” How sad is that when I was being interviewed? Also, if you enjoy rants, this is the podcast for you, because I was unable to resist sharing my issues with “geek chic” TV, 300, and many other things.

Leave a comment if you listen, okay? I’m guessing podcasts don’t get as many comments as blogs simply because a lot of people listen to them away from the computer, and Danielle puts a lot of work into this thing and it’s awesome.

Anyway, you can download that here. I’m going to have a guest post going up on her blog soon too!

2. I have a guest post up at MuseTracks. I don’t know how to talk about it exactly so I’ll just repost the first few paragraphs:

When Marie-Claude asked me to write a post that would help inspire unpublished authors, I knew immediately what I wanted to talk about. And then I put off writing the post for weeks. Because the three years between when I started writing In for a Penny and when I sold it were the three worst years of my writing life, hands down. Possibly the three worst years of my life, period, except I think junior year of high school still has that honor (and yes, I know that’s only one year, but it felt longer).

I started writing In for a Penny in mid-January 2006. By mid-March I’d written a hundred pages. Things were going great, the book was flowing, I felt confident that this would be the one that would sell. My goal was to finish the book by Rosh Hashanah of that year (the holiday falls in early to mid-September), and I thought I could do it.

At the end of March I found out my mom was dying.

It was a tough one to write, which may explain why I’ve already got an addendum (copied from the comments section):

“I want to qualify my initial statement that those were the three worst years of my writing life–that third year of taking a break from trying to write for publication was actually a great year for me, personally and in terms of writing, and I’m proud of a lot of things I wrote then. It was just an awful year for romance novel writing. This is what I get for going back and figuring out the chronology AFTER I wrote the intro, and also for writing emotional posts late at night!”

It’s important to me to clarify that, because I do care a lot about what I wrote that year, and about all the people who read it, and about my friends who are reading this post, and I don’t want them to think that I don’t value those stories or that I was secretly depressed and miserable that whole year. So.

The Severed Hand of Franklin

1. I’m guest-blogging over at The Season today! I talk about costume drama monster movies I’d like to see (like vampire Crusaders or Lieutenant Hornblower and the Kraken). The person to suggest my favorite costume drama monster movie concept in the comments gets a signed book!

2. I wrote a feature for the Dorchester website. My heroine Penelope from In for a Penny has a habit of making lists (um, you can probably tell from this post that I based that on myself), and three of her lists are up here: one from when she was eleven, entitled “Reasons Why Lucy Hopper is the worst girl in the world,” one set after the end of the book called “Possible Christmas gifts for Nev,” and a list of baby names with annotations from Nev!

I had a lot of fun making them–the font for Penelope is designed to look like Jane Austen’s handwriting, it’s really cool and you can get it here, and the font for Nev is supposed to look like Byron’s handwriting and you can get it here. I sort of love that, because man would Jane Austen and Byron have a TERRIBLE marriage.

3. Yesterday was my official release date! Yay! BUT I have yet to see the books on shelves anywhere. I’ve been checking the B&N websites “find in stores” feature obsessively and it isn’t in stock anywhere yet! I’m assuming this is why it’s listed as a March release, but I want to see my book on the shelf! If anyone sees it, let me know okay? And if you send me a picture, I’ll send you a signed book! (Open to first three people only. I mean not that I expect more than that but you know, it’s important to set boundaries.)

Madame, I never eat Muscatel grapes

[cw: racism]

My blog tour continues today! I’m talking about my deep-seated ambivalence about Georgette Heyer, Jane Austen, and trying to be taken seriously over at the Book Smugglers. (Note: I DO mean “ambivalence.” I love Georgette Heyer and Jane Austen a LOT.) There are also hilarious pictures of My Family’s Poor Fashion Choices Through Time. Go over and read it! (And check out the Smugglers’ awesome blog!) I’m giving away a signed book in the comments.

Smuggler Ana also posted my very first review! And she was very kind to me. Is it tacky to link to reviews? It just seems weird not to when I’m linking to my guest post.

In other news, my friend Alice just linked me to this article about a new Alexandre Dumas biopic. They’ve cast Gerard Depardieu to play Dumas and are darkening his skin and putting him in a curly wig for the role. Because if you didn’t know, Alexandre Dumas was part black. Here’s a picture of him:

Continue reading “Madame, I never eat Muscatel grapes”

I don't do anything so mean, I don't even sell apples!

My blog tour starts today! You can read my post about classism in Regency England over at History Hoydens. Here’s the opening:

When I started writing In for a Penny, about a rich brewer’s daughter who marries an impoverished earl, I realized I was going to have to do some research to figure out how people in the Regency thought about class. I had general ideas, obviously, but if I was going to write about my heroine from the point of view of my antagonist, the snobby poacher-hating Tory Sir Jasper, or write about my heroine meeting the hero’s newly-middle-class tenant farmers, I needed to understand more.

I quickly discovered that there were endless gradations, just as there are today:

1. A biography of Hannah More tells this story: the Duchess of Gloucester “desired one of her ladies to stop an orange-woman and ask her if she ever sold ballads. ‘No indeed,’ said the woman, ‘I don’t do anything so mean, I don’t even sell apples!'”

And I’m giving away a signed copy of my book in the comments, too. Check it out!