“It’s for RESEARCH.”

That’s what I told my husband anyway, as he looked over my shoulder as we sat next to each other on the couch.   I had my computer open, as I always do, and paying very little attention to this latest episode of Doctor Who (I’ve seen it already, but the hubs hasn’t.  He has acquiesced to my demand that he watch the series.  Hey, I watched Lost for him.)

“That’s not research,” he says.  “That’s porn.”

“It is not!” I cry.

“It is.  It’s house porn.”

Yes, dear reader, open on my computer was a Google image search for “19^th century English country manor.”  But these aren’t manors.  These are mansions.  Dream residences.  Castles at a time when they didn’t build castles anymore.  (My theory: too drafty.)  Some background might be in order: We have recently begun day dreaming about a house, and therefore many of our computer searches of late have been floor plans and neighborhoods.  But these manor houses are a bit out of our reach.  (To be fair, I’m pretty sure they are a bit out of the average billionaire’s reach too.) Thus, I wouldn’t day dream about living there.  Of course not.  Except when I do.

“I am writing about a house party, and it is at a very specific kind of house.”  I tell him importantly.  “I was simply using visual aids.”

“You were cheating.”

“It’s not cheating, and it’s not porn.” I reply firmly.  Then, under my breath.  “Everyone does it.”

“Fine,” he says. “What does your house have too look like.  In your book,” he clarifies.

Oh.  Right.  My book.  I told him it was a very specific house, after all.

“Well it has to be ostentatious.”  I reply.  “A bit over the top.”

“You have chosen your category well then.  What about this one?”

The Manor House at Castle Combe

“That one might do,” I muse.  “I like the vines.  It has a bell tower, even – a little one.  But I think it needs to be bigger.  Plus I need some turrets.  I like turrets.

“Riiiiight,” the husband answers.  “For your fictional characters.  You could make it fictionally bigger, you know.”  He scrolls down a bit, and points to another one.  “What about this one.  Turrets abound.”

The Hunting Tower at Chatsworth House

“Turrets abound, yes.  In fact, I think it’s made up entirely of turrets.”  A shoot him a look.  He knows this look.  “And what about bigger? I don’t even think that’s a full-fledged house.”

“What about that one?  It’s perfect – grand, ostentatious, I think those things on the corner count as turrets, and it even looks familiar.  I could see you – er, I mean, your characters – living there.”

Highclere Castle

“Of course it’s familiar.  It’s Highclere Castle.”  Off his blank look, “It’s Downton Abbey.”

Downton Abbey, it has to be said, he watched voluntarily.  I think he has a thing for Mrs. Patmore, the cook.

What about you dear reader?  Have you ever been caught daydreaming – er, I mean researching – about certain houses?  Which ones?  Post pics below!

Greetings from the land of Mount Olympus, the home of thunderous Zeus and jealous Hera, clever Hermes and bright Apollo, bellicose Ares and beautiful Aphrodite, wise Athena and wild Artemis. Greetings from Greece!

What a tumultuous journey we’ve had since I last put pen to paper and wrote to you lovelies. Between stopping off in Bengal to visit the former haunts of the hero of my upcoming novella How To Marry a Highlander, and navigating the Arabian Sea amidst brigands and wiley merchants, and posting cross country or alternately hugging the coasts of the powerful Ottomans until they gave us leave to sojourn at leisure in their lands, our little band of Englishmen and two women are exhausted and in need of a holiday.

We disembarked in Thessaloniki. Hosted by a splendid family of ancient Macedonian lineage—artists and musicians, the lot of them—we dined upon fresh fish, caviar, squid, grape leaves, olives, lemons and delicate pastries to our hearts’ content. But the great capital city was not to be our final destination in these lands of ancient cultures mixed in a delightful mélange. Not at all! Our hosts took us deep inland to the magnificent Metéora.

Saint Nicholas of Anapausus in the Metéora, Greece

Pillars of sandstone, for centuries they have supported monasteries in complete isolation from the chaos and materialism of the world. One word: WOW. Do you know, when the monks wanted to contact the outside world, they would lower one of their own down the side of the cliff in a basket? (Talk about extreme sports!)

After this lovely jaunt, our hostess, a renowned grand dame of the Greek theater, noticed a certain glow to Penny’s eyes and a jaunty lift in Captain Frye’s stride.

Ashamed as I am to admit it: I, the resident romance author on this journey, had missed the crucial moment. Enthralled as I’ve been during these past weeks by the scenery, the history, the pageantry and danger and sheer epic landscapes of sea and earth through which we have passed, I had made myself blind to the tender moment of reconciliation, the blossoming of affinity, and the entwinement of two souls into one.

I did not, however, miss the epic kiss at the feet of the monastery of Saint Nicholas, the kiss that signaled the ultimate union of hearts. (I’m not that distractable.)

They kissed—tangled, locked, bound in all the right ways—until Penny fainted from near-asphyxiation. Captain Frye swept her into his arms and carried her into the shade of the branches of a sycamore maple to the excited singing of warblers and the applause of me, our hostess, and the crew, where he then kissed her some more.

Our hostess insisted upon a wedding. Naturally.

And so here we are, upon an outcropping (a cliff, I might call it, if I weren’t scared to death of cliffs) before a tiny chapel painted in brilliant white with a solitary bell in its tower. A garland of flowers upon her head, Penny circles Captain Frye thrice, but neither say a word in this ancient Orthodox rite. Backed by an azure sky, with the golden sun of Achilles and Hector and Socrates and Aristotle upon their glowing cheeks, this pair looks like just about the happiest bride and groom I’ve ever seen.

Someday I shall have to set a novel here. It’s sublime.

After the celebration, shortly, we will make our way back to the coast and our ship, then again to sea. Our next stop: home! I’ve had a marvelous time on this journey. Still, I’m ready to be back in Lady B’s ballroom with all of you. Quite simply, I miss you.

Until then, I wish you all new dancing slippers and waltzes at least every other set. And, as always, happy romance and adventure!

~ Katharine

In college I spent hours browsing: bookstores, CD stores, clothing, food markets. If there was a place to wander and browse, I was there. As a result, I stumbled on influences I might have never found otherwise. The way things looked grabbed me. From Carole Maso’s The American Woman in the Chinese Hat to Milla Jovovich’s album The Divine Comedy, I picked things up that caught my eye.

The American Woman in the Chinese Hat by Carole Maso

These days, most of my shopping is done online. After a couple years of wildly searching the net for anything of interest, (Apologies to Lady B for all this talk of Modern Things Crazy Authoresses Discuss) I very rarely browse anymore. I have an idea of what I want and any search I do is extremely narrow. Naturally this limits the chance for pushing the boundaries of my experience.

Which is one of the reasons I love driving up north to San Francisco every few months. My husband and I realized on our most recent trip, that we spend a good portion of our time wandering around bookstores and finding books we would never have found if they weren’t in a physically easy to browse situation. And better yet, bookstores such as City Lights in North Beach and Moe’s in Berkeley aren’t limited as much to the big bookstore chain focus on new releases. (Not that there are many big bookstores around anymore anyway.)

This last weekend I walked away with Joseph Kanon’s Istanbul Passage, which only released in 2012 but likely would have never shown up in my Amazon recommends lists. I’m loving it!

How about you? How do you discover new books outside your usual realm?

Greetings from the Indian Ocean!

It’s Saturday, which means it’s writer’s inspiration day. So as I lounge under the canopy that Captain Frye constructed for me and Penny on the quarterdeck and we sail ever westward, stopping at ports to trade pearls here and there for barrels of exotic spices and bricks of tea, I am reminded of the inspirations for my novel In the Arms of a Marquess (which SHAMELESS PROMOTION ALERT is now on sale at Amazon for $2.99 on Kindle). Authors are never supposed to tell you their favorite novels they’ve written (I have no idea why), and I’m actually not sure I have one out of my own. But I do have a very soft spot in my heart for Ben and Tavy’s love story, which was in my heart and head for many, many years before I finally wrote it. So today, since our ship is in the region, I give you three of the inspirations for that book:

Brave Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book) confronting his foe, Nagaina.

The heroine of Marquess, Octavia Pierce, goes by the nickname Tavy. Not a coincidence.

And…

The first epic historical novel I ever read, upon which I imprinted like a duckling chick.

And…

Bollywood star Arjun Rampal, because if noblemen had worn sunglasses and white t-shirts in the early nineteenth-century…

In the novella I’m currently writing on board ship, there also just so happens to be the faintest whiff of the British Empire at sea, which is central to the story in In the Arms of a Marquess. (More news on that novella to come!)

And now for your Penny and Captain Frye update:

There has been progress … of the intimate sort! From a distance I witnessed a starlit stroll on the deck at midnight during which two silhouettes briefly became one, followed by the silhouette in skirts running away. I have no idea why Penny is such a ninny. But they’re back to casting each other longing, slightly confused glances across deck. We shall see… We shall see…

That’s all I can fit on the page this time, lovelies. I wish you well and will see you soon. Until then, happy romance and adventure!

~ Katharine

Do you ever rediscover books you haven’t read for years and take new inspiration from them?

For me, this week, it was the first two books of Iris Johansen’s Wind Dancer trilogy. These are books I adored in my teens. In proper, sweeping epic 80s fashion, the first book takes place in the fractured Italy of 1503, in the waning years of the Borgia papacy; the second during the bloodiest phase of the French Revolution. There are some… interesting… sexual politics involved (we’re talking Old Skool romance here), but what really impressed me about these books after all this time was their daring. These are no drawing room novels. They encompass battlefields, sea journeys, sieges, warring city states, corrupt tribunals, upheavals on a grand scale.

What I love even more? How they interweave with history along the way. “The Wind Dancer” involves a fictional statue in a fictional city state, but Cesare Borgia, who plays a more than cameo role, is real enough, as is the disarray of the beleaguered and fragmented Italian city states– not to mention tongue in cheek references to meeting a Messer Machiavelli. Likewise, the fictional cast of “Storm Winds” is firmly anchored in the real people and events of a revolution rapidly deteriorating into the Terror, with all its factionalism, crosses and double crosses.

These books reminded me of the joy of using fiction as a window onto history, not just one period of history, but a grand sweep of dramatic events. There’s something to be said for books that tackle tumultuous events that fearlessly….

What are your favorite rediscovered books?

“Miss Darby, what on earth are you doing?”

At Lady B’s voice I look up, and accidentally drop the sheaf of papers in my hands. They drop to the floor, joining the other thousands of pages that are in semi-assorted piles about the floor of my writing room at Beautheringstone House.

“Yesterday was the Equinox and the first day of spring. So I’m doing Spring Cleaning.” I feel quite proud of this because when not at Lady B’s, my tendency towards cleaning of any sort is very latent.

“It looks to me as if you are creating spring chaos.”

“Oh no!” As I am ensconced on the floor, I invite Lady B to sit down in my favorite writing chair, the one that is quite plush and velvety and allows one to daydream comfortably for hours. She picks her way across the cluttered floor. “Each of these piles represents an unfinished manuscript. And the only way I can consider them “cleaned” this year is if I finish them. So… one by one I shall make my way through these piles.”

“Are you saying that you will leave these piles on the floor until you finish the story within?” She’s looking around and I follow her gaze. There are probably two-dozen piles of varying heights. Oh…and then the assortment of unorganized papers I accidentally pushed under the bed. Hmm… what is that?

“Stand and deliver!” The carriage jolted to a stop and Livia winced as her head slammed against the padded wall of the carriage and her legs collided with Elizabeth’s.

“Miss Darby!”

“Oh, hmm?”

“Will the maids be able to clean this room or not in the next five years?”

Five years? I think she’s underestimating me. But at the same time, everyday a new pile of ideas does seem to appear in the room…

“And I thought today was the day you would bring your newest hero to visit. A Daniel something or other?”

Oops. That’s right. I was supposed to bring by Daniel Hartmann of Entry-Level Mistress. But I became so engrossed in the idea of “cleaning” that I completely forgot to summon—er—invite him.

“Next time?”

Lady B is giving me an extremely disapproving stare. But as all of us authors have learned in the last nearly two years, one way to distract her is to provide her with new reading material full of yummy heroes and heroines.

I pick up a story at random and hand it her. She arches an eyebrow but begins to peruse the pages. Then she makes a small noise that sounds suspiciously like a snort. She puts the manuscript to the side and suddenly Lady B is down on her knees on the carpet beside me, nosing through all my piles.

“Lady B?”

“Well, I certainly think as your benefactress, I have the right to choose which one you work on next. And to do that, I need to look at ALL of them.”

I glance once more at all the piles around me, wondering what will excite her. A valet hero? A duke in disguise story? A heroine who has been rejecting all her suitors only to discover the perfect man is the one she can’t stand? What do you think Lady B will choose? And what type of Regency do you want to read next?

There could not be a better day for me to have Saturday Inspiration! Just yesterday, I was able to post my newest cover. The one for Diana Highwood’s novella, releasing April 30th.  Hooray!  Beauty and the Blacksmith….

In historical romance a lot of our heroes are dukes and viscounts and earls and occasionally untitled officers and/or gentlemen. Throw in a highwayman or pirate for variety.
But I can’t help it. I have a thing for blacksmiths, and I have long thought they are tragically underrepresented in historical romance. I had the best time writing a blacksmith hero of my own.

Just because it’s Saturday…

Here’s Thorin Oakenshield, working it:

Pound it, Thorin.

Any Game of Thrones fans out there? (MARCH 31 CANNOT COME SOON ENOUGH OMG) How ’bout a little Gendry?

The forge is a steamy place.

This deserves an Emmy for camerawork.

And ladies, I give you the one and only Tony Stark.

That Pepper Potts is a lucky girl.

So….
Am I the only one who digs guys who aren’t afraid to get a little hot and dirty to get the job done? (Well, I know I’m not the only one — because Miss Diana Highwood is into them, too.)

Which trades and professions would you like to see more often in romance?

“It isn’t Saturday, you know, Miss MacLean.”

I know this, of course, because I have about thirty different ways of looking at a calendar, but I know better than to say that to Lady B. “I thought it might be fun to show some of my inspiration for my books today, Lady B. I know it’s an unexpected thing for a Thursday, but who needs a Saturday Salon for a slideshow?”

“A what now?”

“A slide show. It’s a…” I hesitate. “Nevermind. Have a look at this.”

“Oh, my.”

“I know.”

“He’s quite handsome.”

“He is. And he’s the inspiration for Temple.”

“You mean the Killer Duke?”

“Precisely.”

“The fighter.”

“The very same.”

“My goodness, Miss MacLean, you do always bring the scandal to the ballroom.”

“I do what I can, my lady.”

“I’m afraid I can’t have the Killer Duke in the house. Lord B would have a difficult time with it.”

“I assure you, Lady B, Temple wouldn’t dream of coming here.”

Lady B’s gaze narrows. “And why is that? He can’t possibly think he’s too good for us.”

“Oh, no, he doesn’t,” I rush to assure her. “He just knows…well…his place.”

“And that is?”

“The boxing ring of The Fallen Angel.”

Her voice goes quiet and fills with scandal. “The casino.”

“The very same.”

“You’re familiar with it?”

“I am…it’s very…memorable.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, the art for one.”

Lady B looks skeptical. She hadn’t been looking for that answer, clearly. “The art.” She’d been looking for something more scandalous.

Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare

“Absolutely. Take this painting, on the wall of Cross’s office.”

“Good heavens! The Earl could use something slightly less…macabre now that his wife is increasing, don’t you think?”

I smile. “Well, the Countess of Harlow doesn’t exactly mind it.”

“No,” Lady B says, “She’s an odd enough girl that she would like it.”

I’m pointing to another picture. “This one is in a room off the Duke’s chamber.”

Her brow rises. “And why would you know anything about the Duke’s chamber?”

I blush. “Suffice to say, I’ve spent some time in there.”

“With a killer?”

“He’s a very nice killer.”

She does not look like she believes me. “Nice.”

“Well, to me.”

“I hear he likes ladies of a…certain ilk.”

I’m fairly certain I’ve been insulted, because Temple is a halfway decent guy and doesn’t mistreat the prostitutes as the club, but I decide not to get into it with Lady B. “The point is, Lady B…I’m writing, and I need stuff like this to help move me forward. In fact, I keep them all in one dedicated location.”

“Oh, yes. I’ve heard you all speaking of that. Thanks to your Inner Netting. And your Parasols.”

I am used to Lady B discussing the Internet, but the rest…I blink. “Our parasols?”

She waves a hand. “Or your petticoats. Or pincushions. Something like that.”

My brow furrows. And you didn’t think that sounded off?

She cuts me a look. “It’s not as though you authoresses haven’t sounded off before, Miss MacLean.”

It’s a fair point. “I think you mean Pinterest.”

“Oh, and that doesn’t sound off?”

**

Do you guys use Pinterest? I’m obsessed with it. If so, what do you use it for? If not, what social media stuff do you use? (Besides hanging out here, of course!)

Greetings from the Caribbean!

I’m here in the sand and sun in the spanking new Republic of Haiti. I’ve got a glass of rum in my hand and my hat off and the tropical breeze is ruffling the page I write this letter on. I’m trying to get a little sun in my hair as I write, but Penny keeps pushing the hat back on me, the dear girl. But she’s stealing so many surreptitious glances at Captain Frye that her efforts at saving my complexion are kind of half-hearted. (For the record: she’d be sunburned by now if our positions were reversed.)

We’re docked for the sennight at Môle Saint-Nicolas, known in the eighteenth century as the Gibraltar of the Antilles. It’s a really impressive spot: a port on a strait between Cuba and Haiti through which ships must pass in order to sail to Central America. The peninsula is marvelously fortified, and right beyond it is a huge crescent bay in which you could hide an entire fleet (if you had a fleet to hide, which of course Britain did in this era, including the HMS Victory, former command of the hero of the first book in my new Prince Catchers series, I Married the Duke, Luc Westfall, whom you lovelies helped create!)

Dramatically beautiful Môle Saint-Nicolas, Haiti.

Later in the 19^th century, some years after Lady B’s time [it's hard to imagine, I know!], Haiti was a globally strategic location for another reason. Every place else in the Caribbean except Haiti and the Dominican Republic were European colonies. Now, once everybody started using steamships [fools, all of them! didn't they know how wonderful tall ships were?!], vessels passing from North America to trade in Central America needed coal stations for refueling. So the U.S. started looking for spots to do that everywhere on the route, and they chose Môle Saint-Nicolas. The U.S. tried to pressure Haiti into leasing it to them, going so far as to send the great African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglas to negotiate terms.

Frederick Douglas, escapee from slavery and subsequent famous American abolitionist

The Haitians were amenable; they were savvy businessmen like everybody else on the high seas back then. But just to be sure, the U.S. demanded that Haiti promise not to lease any other part of their island to any other country.

Well, the Haitians didn’t like that. Not one little bit. Some years back, the slaves of the French colony Saint-Domingue had risen up in arms, and in the only successful slave revolt in history those revolutionaries created a nation. So, you see, the descendents of those folks weren’t too keen on letting another nation dictate what they could or couldn’t do with even a square foot of their land. It violated their sovereign rights.

So the U.S. sent over a handful of big old warships to sit in the harbor and put a bit of pressure on the Haitians to agree to their terms.

But the Haitian ambassador in Washington had been carefully analyzing the situation. He sent the Foreign Minister on the island a secret message telling him not to worry about the warships, that the Americans were bluffing. The Foreign Minister turned down the U.S. offer, and the warships turned around and disappeared. It came to be known famously as the only time in history that one man’s signature had defeated an entire navy.

Surf’s up!

The U.S. was still desperate for a coal stopover on the way to Central America, though. So it invaded Cuba instead, snatched up Guantanamo Bay, and secured it with a perpetual lease. We’ve had it ever since.

And there you have it, a little inspiring history about my first stop on my journey around the world!

Oh, if you’re wondering how I know this nifty history, I have beside me on my beach blanket two great reads. Paul Clammer is an English adventure-travel guide writer and his brand new Bradt Travel Guide: Haiti is the first travel guide written about this nation in twenty-five years. The other book [commence bragging] is my own handsome and brilliant husband’s Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, which just so happens to have been on the top of the New York Times Book Review’s recommended paperbacks list last Sunday.

Inspired by Haitian history (tho, it’s true, the priest part was all my idea)

Years ago my dh wrote another book on Haiti, specifically about the Revolution, which of course was especially inspiring to me. Who knows, maybe this great nation will find its way into my Prince Catchers series. We shall see!

Okay, wait just a second. Penny is now at the water’s edge lifting her petticoats to dip her feet into the waves. And I think I just spied Captain Frye ogling her ankles.

This is getting interesting . . .

See you all on my next stop. Happy sailing, lovelies!

What little known tidbit of history do you especially love to tell? 

The fighting arm of Jack Dempsey, The Manassa Mauler, who held the World Heavyweight Championship from 1919-1926.

I’m currently working on the third Rules of Scoundrels novel, No Good Duke Goes Unpunished.

The book is Temple’s story — Temple, the broad-shouldered, broken-nosed bare-knuckle boxer who handles security at the casino. Oh, and who is known across London as the Killer Duke. Needless to say, Temple’s like no other hero I’ve ever written — extraordinarily physical and filled with emotion that he can barely hold on to, which makes for a rather unpredictable hero.

As I’ve been writing about a fighter, I’ve been doing a lot of research on fighting in the 1830s and in general. I’ve learned some wild things–some of which will end up in this book and some of which will likely never see the light of day: The way fighters used beeswax to stop their teeth from cutting their cheeks; the way they wrapped their knuckles in long strips of linen in precise, perfect patterns; the fact that true bare-knuckle matches lasted 80-100 rounds and that boxing gloves were actually designed to pack heavier punch and make fights more quick and brutal–not to to protect fighters as you might imagine.

I’ve been reading books and watching movies and thinking about fighting a lot as I craft Temple and his story. Movies like Snatch and Knuckle (the Irish travelers have kept bare-knuckle boxing alive and held most closely to its original origins) have been a huge inspiration, and I must confess I’ve watched this clip from the first Sherlock Holmes movie more than I’d like to admit:

Colum McCann writes in his introduction to At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing:

“Writers love boxing, even if they can’t box. And maybe writers love boxing especially because they can’t box. The language is all cinema and violence….what you have with a fight is what you have with writing, and they each become metaphors for each other: the ring, the page; the punch, the word.”

It’s true, of course.

When I came at Temple’s story, I knew I would have to learn about fighting…I just didn’t know I would learn to love it so much.

–

Is there a sport that really speaks to you, either as a spectator or a player?