Ancient Ireland and a contest

First of all, I'd like to invite you to a celebration party for the publisher of my most recent book. Stop by http://www.cherylyeko.com/ and enter the Soul Mate Publishing anniversary contest to win print books, ebooks and the grand prize, a Kindle Paperwhite.

I haven't posted anything lately, because I've been busy working on a new book. I first started it over fifteen years ago, but despite having already imagined the characters and written the beginning, it's taken a while for the story to come together.

It's a fantasy romance, set in ancient Ireland, in an area much like the scene above, near Killarney in County Clare. Of course, in the book, if you travel beyond the marsh, you enter the Mistlands, the realm of the Seancine, the magical race that once controlled Ireland. My heroine, Cera, is one of the Seancine and the hero, Darach, is one of the warrior people, who arrived later.

The warrior people are despised by the Seancine for their violence, ruthlessness and disregard for the natural world, which is the source of the Seancine's powers. Despite the differences between their races, when Darach rescues Cera from one of his clansman, they form an instant connection. But there are many things keeping them apart. Not merely the chasm between their worlds, but also the prejudices of the people close to them and a conflict with a neighboring tribe that results in Darach fighting the other tribe's champion in a battle to the death.

But love can be stronger than intolerance and bigotry, and prevail against all sorts of dark forces. Especially if there is some magic involved.

I'm a long way from the end, but I'm really enjoying creating the enchanted realm of The Magic in the Mist and watching Cera and Darach's story unfold.

With St. Patrick's Day just around the corner, I'll leave you with my husband's favorite Irish toast (which is really Latin, but oh, well):  Sine Metu, Fear Nothing.
      

Love Jane Austen books?

This list is for you!

I wrote a post for my publisher's blog: http://smpauthors.wordpress.com/ about the recent fascination with Jane Austen's books and mentioned a bibliography of Austuen-related fiction books I compiled as part of my library job.  Here's the list for anyone interested:

AUSTINUTOPIA

(Jane Austen related books)

HISTORICAL FICTION

Pemberley or, Pride and Prejudice Continued by Emma Tennant   1993

An unequal marriage            by Emma Tennant   1994

Presumption : an entertainment by Julia Barrett   1995

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE CONTINUED (three books by Sharon Lathan):

Mr. & Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy: Two Shall Become One  2009

Loving Mr. Darcy : journeys beyond Pemberley  2009

My dearest Mr. Darcy : an amazing journey into love everlasting  2010

Pemberley by the Sea : a modern love story, Pride and Prejudice style by Abigail Reynolds 2008

Lydia Bennet’s Story: the Continuing Adventures of Mrs. Darcy’s Sister by Jane Odiwe  2008

Mr. Darcy takes a wife : Pride and prejudice continues by Linda Berdoll   2004

Darcy & Elizabeth : nights and days at Pemberley  by Linda Berdoll    2006

The other Mr. Darcy by Monica Fairview    2009

The Darcy cousins by Monica Fairview   2010

Mr. Darcy, vampire by Amanda Grange   2009

Mr. Darcy’s Daughters by Elizabeth Aston    2003

The exploits & adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy by Elizabeth Aston   2005

The true Darcy spirit  by Elizabeth Aston   2006

The second Mrs. Darcy by Elizabeth Aston    2007

The Darcy connection by Elizabeth Aston    2008

Me and Mr. Darcy by Alexandra Potter   2007

 

An assembly such as this : a novel of Fitzwilliam Darcy, gentleman by Pamela Aidan   2006

Fitzwilliam Darcy, gentleman, Duty and desire by Pamela Aidan    2006

These three remain : a novel of Fitzwilliam Darcy, gentleman by Pamela Aidan   2007

The Darcys & the Bingleys : Pride and prejudice continues : a tale of two gentlemen's marriages to two most devoted sisters by Marsha Altman   2008

Lydia Bennet's story : the continuing adventures of Mrs. Darcy's youngest sister : a sequel to Jane Austen's Pride and prejudice by Jane Odiwe   2008

The bad Miss Bennet : a Pride and Prejudice novel by Jean Burnett   2012

The independence of Miss Mary Bennet by Colleen McCullough   2008

Darcy’s Story by Janet Aylmer   2006

Sense and Sensibility by Joanne Trollope   2013

Longbourn by Jo Baker    2013 

HISTORICAL MYSTERY

Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James   2012

MR. & MRS DARCY MYSTERIES by Carrie Bebris:

Pride and prescience, or, A truth universally acknowledged   2004

Suspense and sensibility, or, First impressions, revisited 2005

North by Northanger, or, The shades of Pemberley     2006

The Matters at Mansfield, or, the Crawford Affair    2008

The Intrigue at Highbury, or, Emma’s Match   2010

The deception at Lyme, or, The peril of persuasion  2011

JANE AUSTEN MYSTERIES by Stephanie Barron:

Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor

And ten other titles

CONTEMPORARY MYSTERY

Murder at Longbourn by Tracy Kiely   2009

Murder on the Bride’s Side by Tracy Kiely   2010

Murder Most Persuasive by Tracy Kiely   2011

Murder Most Austen by Tracy Kiely    2012

CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE

Definitely not Mr. Darcy  by Karen Doornebos    2011

Fitzwilliam Darcy, Rock Star by Heather Lynn Rigaud   2011

Jane Austen in Boca by Paula Marantz Cohen   2002

Pride, prejudice and Jasmin Field by Melissa Nathan    2001

Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict  by Laurie Viera Rigler   2007

Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler   2009

PARANORMAL ROMANCE

Vampire Darcy's desire: a Pride and Prejudice adaptation by Regina Jeffers   2009

HORROR/SMASH-UP

Pride and prejudice and zombies : the classic regency romance--now with ultraviolent zombie mayhem by Seth Grahame-Smith  2009

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies : dawn of the dreadfuls  by Steve Hockensmith   2010

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Ben Winters   2009

And for those of you who just can’t get enough!

OTHER REGENCY ERA NOVELS

CLASSIC ROMANCE (Shelved in Fiction)

Cotillion by Georgette Heyer

And twenty-six other titles

Mistress of Willowvale by Patricia Veryan

And eleven other titles

The Heiress of Winterwood by Sarah A. Ladd

A Little Folly by Judd Morgan

An Accomplished Woman by Judd Morgan

Lady of Milkweed Manor by Julie Klassen

And four other titles

Daughter of the Game by Tracy Grant

Vienna Waltz by Tracy Grant

Imperial Scandal by Tracy Grant

Edenbrook: a proper romance by Julie Donaldson

Blackmoore: a proper romance by Julie Donaldson

The Twelfth Enchantment by David Liss

THE PINK CARNATION SERIES by Lauren Willig

The Mask of the Black Tulip

And seven other titles

All The Tea in China, a Rollicking Regency by Jane Orcutt

REGENCY MYSTERIES (shelved in Mystery)

LADY EMILY MYSTERIES by Tasha Alexander

And Only to Deceive

And six other titles

LADY JULIA GREY MYSTERIES by Deanna Raybourn

Silent in the Grave

And four other titles

LADY FAN MYSTERIES by Elizabeth Bailey

The Gilded Shroud

Deadly Portent

MATHEW HAWKWOOD CRIME THRILLERS by James McGee

Hawkwood

Resurrectionist

Rapscallion

SEBASTIAN ST. CYR MYSTERIES by C.S. Harris

What Angels Fear

And seven other titles

 
I just ordered another Jane Austen spin-off, so this is just the beginning!

Happy Winter Solstice!

 

On the last day of our trip to Ireland in 2004, on the summer solstice, we stayed at a B & B in the Boyne valley, north of Dublin. It just so happened that you could see the Newgrange passage tomb, one of the oldest man-made structures in the world (There's a temple in Malta and a farmstead in Scotland that might be older, but only by a couple of hundred years.) from the window of the B & B. The Newgrange passage grave was built in approximately 3200 b.c., and one of its most striking features (besides its size and complex construction) is that at dawn of the winter solstice, and a couple days before and after, a narrow beam of light penetrates the tomb and extends into the interior chamber until the whole room gradually becomes dramatically illuminated. This event lasts for 17 minutes, beginning around 9 a.m.

We were leaving Ireland the next day and didn't have time to tour the tomb, but I'd love to see it someday. Visiting on the winter solstice would be especially cool, although I doubt I could get my family to travel there so close to Christmas.

It's amazing to think of people marking this day over 5000 years ago. I'm sure they went to all this effort to build this huge structure and position is so accurately because the solstice was special to them. In the darkest time of the year, they celebrated the sun's return and took comfort from the awareness that from that point on, the days would get longer. As someone who has always struggled with low energy and a gloomy mood this time of year (I can't tell you how many times in my life I've been sick in December.) I find the solstice an especially meaningful and magical time. From this day on in the wheel of seasons, the light will rise and everything will get better!

Answer to The Romance Reviews Splash Party Question

The correct answer to the question about Saint Sin for The Romance Reviews Splash Party is that when Michael found Ariella in his bedchamber she was looking for:  A diamond.

Hope you win!

Leopards, Bears and Ravens... Oh, my!

Most people are familiar with the Tower of London as a prison, where people who were alleged to have committed some crime against the king or queen were detained. But when the first structure was built on the site by William the Conqueror in late 1066, its main purpose was as a fortress. Having just taken over England, William wanted to be sure he could defend London from the Saxons, who were seeking to oust him from their country.

It was originally a motte and bailey castle, which is a defensive tower or keep built on a large earthen mound, the motte, and surrounded by a bailey, a flat raised area where buildings to maintain the troops were constructed. The whole complex was surrounded by defensive walls and a ditch. The first keep William built on the site was of wood. He later replaced it with a stone keep in 1078, which was called the White Tower, which ultimately gave the entire castle its name.

I mention William’s plans for the fortress in my book The Conqueror, when my hero and heroine visit London. The hero, Jobert de Brevrienne, is a knight in William’s army, while my heroine, Edeva, is the daughter of the Saxon eorle whose lands have been given to Jobert by William. The struggle between the Norman French invaders and Saxon natives forms the background for the book.

Over the years, William’s royal descendants continued to make improvements to the Tower of London. Some of the most elaborate additions were made by Henry III in the early 13^th century. From 1216 to 1227 he spent nearly £10,000 on the Tower. Henry’s goal was to make the Tower a luxurious residence for the royal family. But his expensive construction plans angered the English nobility and led to a revolt of the barons. They eventually forced Henry to formally confirm most of the articles of the Magna Carta, which limited the monarchy’s power and became the basis of English government.

When I was researching the era of Henry III for my book The Leopard, I discovered that the Tower had another use that is seldom mentioned in history. Frederick III, the Holy Roman Emperor, gave Henry three leopards, in honor of the three beasts displayed on the royal banner, and these animals were kept at the Tower.  Henry later added a white bear, presumably a polar bear, which was occasionally allowed to fish in the Thames (What a sight that must have been!) and an elephant, for which a separate building was constructed.

The menagerie did not end with Henry’s reign. Animals were housed at the Tower for the next 600 years. Some of the species included in the menagerie were monkeys, ostriches, lions, tigers, wolves, a boa constrictor, grizzly bear, zebras and baboons.

In many cases, the caretakers of these animals had no idea what to feed them or how to maintain them and many of the poor creatures did not survive very long. The conditions they lived in would appall us today, and they undoubtedly distressed compassionate individuals even back then. Indeed, in The Leopard, my hero, acclaimed knight Richard Reivers (known as the Black Leopard), takes the heroine, Astra, to visit the menagerie, and tender-hearted Astra is very distressed by the cramped, unpleasant living conditions the leopards must endure. Her reaction to the animals’ distress makes Richard realize how different she is from all the other women he has known, and he begins to fall in love with tender-hearted, idealistic Astra.

Starting in the late middle ages until the 1800’s, the Tower housed some of the most famous prisoners in English history, including Anne Boleyn, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Elizabeth I, who was held in the Tower for eight weeks by her sister Mary during Mary’s brief reign. (She died before she could execute Elizabeth, or English history might be very different.) Today the Tower is a popular tourist site, and the Crown Jewels are still on display there, as they have been since 1669. In another note on the Tower’s connection to animals, even today six ravens are kept at the Tower at all times, due to the legend that if they are absent, the kingdom will fall.

Postscript:  This post originally appeared on the History Undressed blog: http://www.historyundressed.com/ which offers interesting and fun insights into history and romance. Someone commented on my post that they hadn't thought about the animals being mistreated, and I realized I'd left out some of the more distressing information I discovered in my research. They found proof that the lions kept in the tower were baited with dogs as they discovered both lion and dog skulls in the same level of debris excavated. Also, at one time, the entrance fee to the menagerie was that you had to bring a dog or cat to feed the animals! People clearly didn't have the same sense of animals as sentient creatures back then as we do now. Another reason that for all I enjoy being immersed in the past in books, I'm glad to return to our (mostly) more civilized era.

Redheads and Inspiration for Heroes

As a writer, one of the most common questions I get asked, is:  Where do you get your ideas? For me, it begins with the characters. They usually come to me even before the plot idea does. Sometimes they show up in my mind. Other times I encounter them in real life.

I’ve worked a public library for over twenty years and one of the perks of my job is people-watching. I see people from all walks of life, all ages and socio-economic backgrounds. In the old days, before we got self-check machines, I also checked out all their materials while they stood at the check-out counter. During that process I got to observe people fairly closely and every once in a while, I’d wait on someone who gave me an idea for a hero or heroine.

One of the most vivid experiences was with a young man (late teens or early 20’s) who came in with his mother or father and often younger siblings. They were kind of a “white trash” family. Not well-dressed and pretty sloppy. None of them were attractive except this young guy, who had dark red hair, striking green eyes and strong masculine features. He also had this swagger and edge to him, possibly because he was irritated with having to go to the library with his family!

This was a good fifteen years ago, so the young man might resemble his parents by now, who were overweight, weathered and had bad teeth. But in that snapshot of time, he struck me as a great hero, and he became Jobert de Brevrienne, the Norman French knight in The Conqueror.

I know. Red hair. It’s great for a heroine, but not so popular for heroes. I’m married to a “ginger”, so I obviously have a fondness for them. And I think they can be as hot as any dark-haired or fair-haired man. They just have to have strong, masculine features, an athletic build and their red hair needs to be fairly long. (I love long hair on men. That’s why I write historicals. Alas, my husband hasn’t worn his long in years.)

But when I was searching for cover images for Jobert, I discovered that there are very few red-haired models featured in stock art. I was either going to have to settle for someone not so hot, or change my requirements. I finally found an image of a man with dark blond hair that had a bit of a reddish tint. The model has great shoulders and is shown wielding a sword, so while his hair isn’t as red as Jobert’s, he did fit the image of a conquering knight. I had my fabulous cover artist build a cover around his image and I’m pretty happy with it.

I’m not the only romance writer with a red-haired hero. One of the main draws of Diane Gabaldon’s Outlander series is the hero, Jamie Frazer, who has reddish hair. There’s a TV series being made from the books and while they had to dye the actor’s (Sam Heughan’s) hair, he certainly fits the part of a hot hero in other respects!

 

          

Regency Slang or a Dashed Plummy Way of Speaking

I originally wrote this post for my publisher's blog:  http://smpauthors.wordpress.com But I thought I'd share it here as well.

 

The creative use of slang in a book can instantly transport you to another place and time and make the characters seem real. The richness of the slang of the Regency era is one of the reasons I decided to write romances in this time period, like my latest book, Saint Sin.  Not only do you have the slang of the upper classes, but also a completely different informal language spoken by the lower classes, especially those individuals on the fringes of society.

The slang used by lords and ladies was often euphemistic and sought to make things sound better than they were. Instead of drunk, they would say foxed, disguised or lurched. A loose woman was a fashionable impure or a Cyprian, who might work in a house of Venus. Gossip was the rattle, the hum, the on-dit or tittle-tattle.

But there was plenty of color in the terms used by the swells (as the lower classes called the upper classes). People didn’t get depressed, they got blue-deviled. If they did something foolish, they made of cake of themselves, or they might be called henwitted, addle-pated or baconbrained.  

The gentlemen’s pastimes of gambling and driving especially seemed to inspire vivid expressions. A good driver was known as a tulip of the goers, a crack whip or a dab hand with the ribbons.  A poor one was called cowhanded. A good team of horses might be described as a bang-up pair, fast trotters, sweet-goers or prime cattle.  

The era’s passion for gambling resulted in many colorful gaming terms. To cheat was to gull or gammon.  If you had plenty of money, called the ready or blunt, people would say you had deep pockets or were a high flyer.  When you owed too many gambling vows, you were done up, dished up or deep in dun territory.  Those most likely to lose to the sharps were green boys who lacked town bronze, like my heroine’s brother in Saint Sin.

Women of this era didn’t have much power or independence. All their status was derived from the males in their lives. As a result, many of the terms for females were condescending.  A young woman might be referred to as a chit, an article, a bit of muslin or even baggage (as in, she’s a cunning baggage). If she was tall, she was a long meg or, serious and well-educated, a bluestocking. A false woman was a jade or jilt. A stupid one, a milk and water miss or wet goose.  If no one offered for a young woman after a Season or two, she was said to be on the shelf.  If she was boisterous or wild, she was called a hoyden or a hell cat.

The upper classes used a lot of slang, but it was nothing compared to the lower classes, who spoke in cant, a complex vernacular that was virtually indecipherable to those unfamiliar with it. If someone told you to dub your mummer, they meant you should shut your mouth. A jigger was a door. A mauley, a hand. A man was a cove or moulder, and a woman, a mort, molisher or a titter. A coach was a rattler or a rumble tumble. If something was good, it was prime twig, plummy or bang up to the mark. To go out to the nines was to be well-dressed.

Since it was very much a street language, a lot of cant related to criminal activity. To tout was to keep watch for the traps, rollers, pigs or quinters (police runners). A cracksman was a housebreaker. A knuckler, a pickpocket. High toby was highway robbery on horseback. A bob was a shilling; a bull, a crown.

In some cases, the terms used by the upper and lower classes were the same, but mostly, the only thing they had in common was a delightfully expressive style of speaking. To make my stories accessible to readers, I had to be sparing with my use of slang, and only sprinkle a few words in here and there. My main characters in Saint Sin speak mostly like we do, with only a bit of Regency slang thrown in. But the delightfully descriptive way people of this era spoke greatly enhanced my pleasure in writing about this world.