Tag Archives: regency

Satisfied Sunday Six

Leave a reply
  1. MY NOVEL THE SISTERHOOD IS OUT THIS WEEK. I do not apologise for being in all capitals, either, because I am ridiculously excited about it. It’s a really good book, actually. I’m so pleased with it (though my beta reader, JL Merrow, and my editor, Amanda Jean, need to take some of the credit).

You can buy it at Bella books or at Amazon – but it does appear only to be available on American sites at the moment. Does this mean I can do further squee when it’s available in the UK?

2. I saw the ARCS (the final copies) of All About The Boy at the beginning of the week, and they’re gorgeous. Goodness, my work looks so good in it. I know that sounds silly, but it does. And talking about editors? Sasha Vorun is bloody marvellous, too.

3. Then yesterday I went on a course about marketing, run by Miles Allen. It was really interesting and useful: it doesn’t matter how well I write, I need people to read what I’m writing. And it’s difficult to know how to reach an audience. This helped. (Plus I accidentally sold a book in the car park afterwards to a man who had been somewhere completely different and did not look like the target market for a lesbian historical novel 🙂 He was also, incidentally, an extremely lovely man.)

4. In non-writing news, Splendid Son got a trophy for ‘most improved player’ in his under 10s football club, so I’m very proud of him.

5. Lovely Partner also was part of a fencing group who came second at a tournament last weekend, so I’m proud of him, too.

6. I have written half of my article about women’s role in the Abolitionist movement in Britain (the abolition of slavery). This is for Jane Austen’s Regency World magazine, and I know a lot about it because slavery accidentally ended up as a fairly major plot in The Sisterhood. (This is entirely due – and this is a true story – to a random comment my mother made when I was ranting about the book when it was a quarter written. Something she said managed to change the entire course of the book. If you know an author and you make a random suggestion, please be aware that they may end up miles deep in research and cursing your name, even as they write the best book they’ve ever managed!)

The Sisterhood

2 Replies

I’m so thrilled to announce that ‘The Sisterhood’, my historical lesbian novel, is out! And I have received my author copies and this is a picture of me looking suitably delighted 🙂

 

WIN_20160615_10_17_53_Pro

“The simple fact was that Charity Bellingham should have been born a boy.”

 

But she wasn’t, and when she meets the beautiful, kind Isobelle Greenaway, she gets the opportunity to learn a lot about herself and London society, not to mention getting involved in the movement for the abolition of slavery and being introduced to ‘The Sisterhood’, a secret society of ladies…

Friday Fiction

Leave a reply

Today I’m offering you an excerpt from Loving My Lady, the Regency novella which came out last week. Hope you enjoy it.

 

I do not think that I knew what love was before that moment. I had loved my father, of course, with the obligation of a righteous daughter; the romantic love the poets write of, though, had never previously touched my life.

She stepped down.

The one and only “she” there would ever be for me. My eyes met hers for a second, and I was first to look away. This was not the elderly lady I remembered from my childhood. Who, then, was she?

“You are most welcome,” I stammered. “Um… Lady Dennyson…”

“Yes?”

“…is expected shortly, I imagine?”

“I beg your pardon?”

She strolled toward me. I would have died for a dress such as the one she wore with so much elegance.

“When do you expect Lady Dennyson?” I asked shyly.

There was a pause, followed by the most beautiful laughter I had ever heard — even though it was at my expense.

“My dear!” she exclaimed. “Cordelia — I may call you that, may I not?”

My voice too unsteady for words at the sound of my name on her lips, I nodded.

“I am Lady Dennyson.”

“But…”

“Surely you did not expect my mother-in-law?” she laughed.

Mother-in-law? Then she was… then my cousin Adam (unknown, therefore unavoidably unmissed) must… must be married — married and dead.

“Lady Dennyson?”

She smiled.

“That is indeed my name.”

Unbidden, unexpectedly, I curtsied — as if I were a maid. Well, perhaps a companion was on such a level.

“My lady.”

One hand pinched my chin, the other slid luxuriously down my arm like velvet.

“You need not call me that. I am Lady Juliet, and you are my Cordelia.”

Satisfied Saturday Six

Leave a reply

      

The SSS celebrates six things that have gone well, or at least okay, in the past week. It is the creation of Terry Egan, who is all things wonderful.

  1. My sister, niece and nephew were down staying locally for a few days at the beginning of the week. It was extremely splendid to see them!
  2. I have got the first draft of my latest article for Jane Austen’s Regency World finished this week – it’s about men who live off other people’s money…
  3. Lovely Partner, who has been feeling unwell ever since we came back from Berlin at the beginning of the month, is finally feeling a bit better, which is good news.
  4. My (lesbian regency) novella, Loving My Lady, is due to be published by eXcessica next month, and the cover design has just been completed! It’s gorgeous – look! (I’m just checking the cover artist’s details and will link to her when possible.)cover2
  5. I’ve  finished the first draft of one of the novellas I’ve been writing over the last month or so. I’m having second thoughts about one of them – I’d envisaged a set of three – but it’s good to have one finished.
  6.  Splendid Son and I went to see a friend of mine with two small boys. We had a great time, and he was ever so good with the little ones!

Satisfied Saturday Six

Leave a reply

The SSS celebrates six things that have gone well, or at least okay, in the past week. It is the creation of Terry Egan, who is all things wonderful.

 

  1. I have been involved with Scope’s “End The Awkward” Valentine’s Campaign which owes thanks to Mills and Boon for their agreement to pastiche their covers, and it has been great fun.
  2. In fact, I wrote a little bit about it on the Huffington Post yesterday 🙂
  3. I also wrote a couple of poems this week, which is the first time for a while. I’m not very good at sticking to one genre.
  4. The first suggestions for covers for my novel The Sisterhood came through this week. OMG, there are brilliant cover artists out there! They are very and extremely talented, and apparently all working for Bella Books. It was very exciting.
  5. Meantime, I have been writing an article on ‘Kept Men’ in the Regency: I now know more than you do about marrying for money if you’re a bloke. And other things, but I haven’t got to that part of the article yet…
  6. Oh, and the ‘probably not wildly publishable but extremely enjoyable’ fiction writing is still going on. I have managed to write a disconcertingly large amount of words in the last month and have discovered that I am vaguely in love with one of my characters, which never usually happens at all. I am quite shocked by myself!

 

(It’s fairly obvious that I haven’t had much of an actual personal life this week, given that this is all about writing related things. This is slightly embarrassing, but you know – sometimes there are weeks like that. On other weeks, I’ve done practically nothing writing-related, so you gain some, you lose some!)

Satisfied Saturday Six

Leave a reply

The SSS celebrates six things that have gone well, or at least okay, in the past week. It is the creation of Terry Egan, who is all things wonderful.

1.  I had a really lovely time with my friends last weekend. It was so lovely to see them.

2. I’ve got the first draft of my article on Black Georgians written. (To put this into context, I don’t mean the country close to Russia, nor the State of America, but the Georgian Period in Britain.) It stems out of a lot of the research I did for The Sisterhood, so it was good to put the newly found knowledge to good use!

3. Splendid Son passed his tenor horn exam (Grade 2), which is really pleasing. He’s been practising hard, so it’s good to know it paid off.

4. I’m still managing to sell knitting, though I’m behind on a commissioned piece at the moment. (Christmas preparation has gone into mass production and I’m somewhat stressed about it all.)

5. Exciting Christmassy parcels and cards are arriving, which is lovely! I feel very popular (and also very guilty for failing at cards this year. I failed at cards last year, too…).

6. I went out in the evening with Lovely Partner on Thursday! This was the first time I’ve been out with him and not Splendid Son from home (we went out together when we were on holiday in Bath for a couple of days) for over a year, I think! We met some of the excellent people he fences with (swords, not gardens) and I managed sociability without making too much of an idiot of myself, I think. (Social gatherings are not my best thing.)

Satisfied Saturday Six

Leave a reply

The SSS celebrates six things that have gone well, or at least okay, in the past week. It is the creation of Terry Egan, who is all things wonderful.

  1. I had a WONDERFUL couple of days in Bath with Lovely Partner – it’s only the second time in ten years that we’ve been away alone together, so we were probably due it 🙂
  2. Also in Bath, I got to meet the most excellent Tim Bullamore, the editor of Jane Austen’s Regency World magazine, for which I’ve been writing semi-regularly for the past 7 years! Probably about time I met him, really!
  3. Rather improbably, on the back of being interviewed by Scope last week about erotica and disability, this week the November edition of Kent Life Magazine came out, with an interview with me in it, as a local writer with an interest in history (did I mention that I’m fascinated by the Regency Period and general Georgian Period? [I have to expand it as The Sisterhood, the current novel, is set before the Regency.] Oh, I did? Sorry – as you were…). You’ll have to take my word for it, I’m afraid (or, y’know, go and buy it) as there’s no online link to it! But still, it exists, honest!
  4. Today, Splendid Son (who is a little bit fed up of being designated ‘Splendid Daughter’ by everyone, based solely on the length of his hair… just saying…) and I used our Charlton Athletic Season Tickets for the second time and went up to London. Um, rather unsuccessfully, since we lost 3:0, but you know – excitement and all. And we saw Guy Luzon in his last game as manager… :-/
  5. My knitting is continuing apace: I knitted a scarf on the way to Bath, and have knitted about half of one today, to and from football (and a bit in half time. I think I come across as a reasonably harmless eccentric). So that’s good. I need to fringe a few next – I tie each fringe piece on by hand, incidentally. Let no one say I don’t take pains with what I make!
  6. Um… um… um… There are plenty of things I could write here about things in Bath – the Roman Baths, the Fashion Museum (LP and I are a hilarious couple of people to go to something about fashion, but it’s at the Assembly Rooms [Regency alert] and they have a lot of Georgian exhibitions), walking by the river, going out for a meal… But I think I shall finish by saying that whilst we were in Bath, Splendid Son had a great couple of days on a school residential trip, so everyone was happy 🙂

Satisfied Saturday Six

Leave a reply

The SSS celebrates six things that have gone well, or at least okay, in the past week. It is the creation of Terry Egan, who is all things wonderful.

^ I forgot to post this heading last week: huge apologies to Terry for that.

  1. It was my lovely son’s 10th birthday on Monday, which was quite the most important thing which happened this week. Double figures and everything – he’s getting very grown up!
  2. I met Rachael Hale, the History Magpie, this week for a chat, which was ever so pleasing! She’s writing a piece about local writers with an interest in history, and I was gabbling on at top speed about Georgian and Regency things. It’ll be amazing if she caught a single word, but it was really great to talk to her.
  3. Ooh, ooh, ooh, Thrace has been republished this week!  It’s a sci fi anthology of 3 novellas, each between 10,000 and 15,000 words and I consider it one of the best things I’ve written (as do the reviewers who have commented on Good Reads about it). Sadly it got very little sales first time around so I’m hoping for better this time. If you’re in to non-gendered aliens with tails (and if you aren’t, why on earth not?!), take a look at it. (More on this in a different post soon, I hope.)
  4. I also managed to type up a whole screed of the new novel, The Sisterhood, and write another couple of thousand words this week. I keep finding more things I need to research, but I am enjoying the story very much! I know I’m not writing for ‘me’ exactly, but it doesn’t half help confidence if I feel happy about what I’m writing.
  5. I went to the bookshops at the two universities local to me (Kent University, at which I studied many moons ago, and Christ Church University, at which I worked for more than a decade until I became too ill this year) and they’ve both agreed to stock Petticoats and Promises, which is splendid news.
  6. We’ve had a couple of days of sunny weather, which is lovely when we’re on the cusp of autumn.

Satisfied Saturday Six

Leave a reply

The SSS celebrates six things that have gone well, or at least okay, in the past week. It is the creation of Terry Egan, who is all things wonderful.

1. I was supposed to post this yesterday for ‘Friday (Non)Fiction’ but I forgot. Oops. Anyway, I have written another piece for the Huffington Post about hair-discrimination (I kid you not). I guess at least my hair colour is a choice, unlike race, gender, disability etc…

2. Talking of yesterday, whilst I wasn’t posting the above link, I was feeling extremely happy. Nope, not for any exciting reason. I was just happy for no reason at all. It was most splendid!

3. I now have two-thirds of my Regency article written, and am enjoying it more and more. I need to pull the strings together and write a conclusion (possibly “if leeches and blood-letting were conventional medicine, I think I might try alternative routes, too!”), and then edit the hell out of it. (Pretty much all writers will tell you that ‘editing the hell out of it’ is a big part of their job.)

4. My ex-work have very kindly offered to let me keep the baby dalek…. sorry, the small mobility scooter… that the Access For Work scheme provided. This makes me almost as mobile as an able-bodied person, so it is extremely exciting!

Also, on a brief digression, I got the baby dalek two years ago from Herne Bay Mobility – an excellent place with an Actual Dalek in their shop! The lovely David there also told me about Sci Fi By The Sea – which by a coincidence I will be attending again tomorrow 🙂

5. I’ve been planning holidays for this summer and next easter/summer (date as yet undecided), which is very much fun.

6. Having been attempting and failing to do anything with dieting over the last month or so, I actually lost some weight this week. I then went out for a lovely meal as it was my father’s birthday, which probably means that I lose all the benefit, but both the weight loss and the meal were very pleasing.

Satisfied Saturday Six

Leave a reply

The SSS celebrates six things that have gone well, or at least okay, in the past week. It is the creation of Terry Egan, who is all things wonderful.

 

1. THE PAPERBACK COPIES OF MY NOVEL CAME! I make no excuse for shouting at you – if you wouldn’t be excited by copies of your first paperback novel, I pity you.

 

2. I talked to a shop about potentially stocking my rugs/throws/comfort blankets. And we’ve agreed that they’ll stock some on a commission-if-sold basis for a month or two. I am counting no chickens, but it’s pleasing to know that I’ve tried.

 

3. I finished my article about mistresses. I can’t think of a title, which is annoying me, but I’m sure the lovely editor will be able to think of one if I can’t. (And I should stop dilly-dallying and send it to him so he can see it exists, incidentally.)

 

4. I’ve read some really good books this week, the best of which was White Feathers, by Susan Lanigan. A book about WW1, it followed a very real heroine and neither shirked the nasty bits nor over-emotionalised them. Brilliant.

 

5. I made a deliberate decision to stop trying to lose weight/improve my diet for the present. I want, and intend, to make changes in the future, but at the moment I’ve been struggling and it’s a relief to have stopped putting that pressure on myself.

 

6. I spent Thursday morning playing Mah Jong (the real game, not the extremely disappointing computer version) with my mother. This is an excellent way to spend time.