Vanessa here,

As we anxiously await the new year, we thought we’d repost the top two posts for 2014. This is one on beauty is the runner up for most read post here at RegencyReflections.com.

Originally posted 2014-12-29 08:00:00.

Vanessa here,

I have the pleasure of welcoming one of our own, Camy Tang, to my southern porch. Camy, you are here on a very good day the humidity has dissipated, and I think I feel a breeze. So let’s get into this wonderful new book, Prelude for a Lord.

Tell me about the heroine, Alethea Sutherton. Some have told me she’s awkward and scandalous. Now that is an accomplishment.

Lady Alethea has felt alone and unloved for most of her life except for two people, her half-sister and her neighbor, Lady Arkright. After her sister is forced to move away and Lady Arkright dies, Alethea feels adrift. Her music is her solace, but because musical circles and instruction is limited in England, she is determined to find a way to move to Italy, where she can play and learn the violin without censure.

Wanting to travel doesn’t sound too scandalous. Can you tell me more of why she feels censured?

In Regency England, however, the violin is considered an inappropriate instrument for a lady.

Really? Mental note: Get my daughter back to the pianoforte, no violin. Oh, go on Camy and tell me more. I’ll get you another cup of Kombucha tea, unless that is also too scandalous.

It wasn’t until I started researching violin players in the Georgian and Regency era that I discovered that most Englishmen considered women playing the violin as incredibly unladylike because it raised the arms above her head and exposed her armpits. Can you believe that??? That’s why the pianoforte and the floor harp were considered ladylike instruments, because a woman’s arms never rose too high up. There was a child prodigy violinist who played in England a few years after the Regency era who was absolutely brilliant, but she ran into criticisms that her choice of instrument was scandalous.

So, given that the violin was scandalous, of course I had to write about a woman who played it. 🙂

Ok, it’s hero time. Tell me about Lord Dommick. Is he tall, dark and handsome?

Lord Dommick is incredibly loyal and loving to his mother and sister. He is also brilliant as a musician, but like most people during that time period, his views of women musicians are limited to pianoforte and harp players and singers. He considers Lady Alethea scandalous, which is what he needs to avoid after his ex-fiance destroyed his reputation after he returned emotionally scarred from war. He needs to repair his reputation in order to assure his sister’s comeout in London in the spring.

His love for his sister drives his concern for his reputation, but it also blinds him to how he is trying to solve everything on his own. His faith is just a byword and doesn’t impact his daily life until he has nothing left to depend upon.

But is he handsome? Can get a cute and brooding?

Yes, and he is brooding.

Okay, brooding can go a long way. Camy Tang books are known for high-kick bottom action, what drew you to the Regency.

I have been reading Regency romances since I was 13 years old, and I’ve read hundreds if not thousands of them since. I got them mostly from garage sales or thrift stores or eBay auctions. Nowadays, I buy them on ebook. 🙂 I even read some Regency research books just for fun (!!!) but never seriously considered writing one until my editor at Zondervan (and a fellow Regency romance lover) dared me to write one.

 

I actually got this idea about a recluse musician many years ago, but never thought about writing it until I was coming up with the plot for Prelude for a Lord. I had a scene in my head where the hero plays with the heroine for the first time, and it’s magical. They both discover things about the other during that rehearsal time. My story pretty much started from that one scene and then the other characters and the mysterious violin appeared.

No wonder your love of the Regency has led to the development of Camille Elliot. If you ever see me writing chocolate jingles, just buy the bars and say nothing. It will be our secret. Seriously, I think it’s wonderful for a passion to come to life, to be birthed from things that touch our hearts. I know you impart pieces of your journey into your characters. How did your Christian Walk affect Lady Althea and Lord Dommick?

My characters almost always have a spiritual arc that is born from my own spiritual struggles. In Protection for Hire, my romantic suspense, I wrote about my own experiences when I had first become a Christian in college and was struggling with how to move forward in newness in Christ after all the terrible things I’d done in my life. In Prelude for a Lord, the heroine feels incredibly alone because of the things in her past that have shaped her, which mirrors how I felt for many years before I became a Christian. Even now, I struggle to remember the truth that God loves me incredibly deeply and He has never left me alone.

That is a great message everyone needs to read and feel. I am realizing many miss this. Hopefully, books like Prelude to a Lord will help. Is Prelude to a Lord a series? You know Sonata to a Sultan, Treble with an Earl, well you get my question.

Yes, I hope to write 3 other books about Dommick’s friends. 🙂 I’m not sure yet if the other books in the series will be contracted by Zondervan, but if not, I’ll definitely self-publish them. If the series is contracted by Zondervan, I’ll also write another Regency series to self-publish in between the times my Zondervan books come out so that there isn’t so much time between releases. As a reader myself, I know I hate it when an author’s books are spaced too far apart!

Well Camy (Camille Elliot), thanks for stopping by and braving my pot of Kombucha. Camy will be have giveaways and other exciting things for the release of this book, but you have to tune into her newsletter for details. Go to her websites:

http://www.camytang.com/

http://www.camilleelliot.com/

Camy writes Christian romantic suspense as Camy Tang and Regency romance under her pen name, Camille Elliot. She grew up in Hawaii but now lives in northern California with her engineer husband and rambunctious dog. She graduated from Stanford University in psychology with a focus on biology, and for nine years she worked as a biologist researcher. Then God guided her path in a completely different direction and now she’s writing full time, using her original psychology degree as she creates the characters in her novels. In her free time, she’s a staff worker for her church youth group and leads one of her church’s Sunday worship teams. She also loves to knit, spin wool into yarn, and is training to (very slowly) run a marathon.

Originally posted 2014-08-14 09:00:00.

Vanessa here,

Vegans, Vegetarians, and PETA look away from this post.

As we get ready to celebrate the 4th of July, our nation’s Independence Day, we should take the time to thank a service man or veteran for their duty, for choosing to protect America so we might enjoy freedom and wonderfully barbequed hamburgers and hot dogs.

The English during our period of the Regency were not particularly joyous of America’s Independence. They still brooded over their loss in our Revolutionary War and impressed our men into service to fight their other wars, but I digress.

Yet, we can still trace our love of fire roasted meats to them.

Fire roasting was (and is) common around the world and a forerunner to our barbecue cooking method. From cooking meat in a hot pit in the ground to using wooden frames to hold the meat, people of all cultures and all nations figured out fire-cooked meat was yummy. The English were quite serious  and well regarded for their meat cooking.

Pehr Kalm, a traveler to England on his way to America (1748) noted:
“Roast meat, Stek, is the Englishman’s delice and principal dish. It is not however always roasted, Stekt, to the same hardness as with us in Sweden. The English roasts, stekarne, are particularly remarkable for two things.

1. All English meat, whether it is of Ox, Calf, Sheep, or Swine, has a fatness and a delicious taste,either because of the excellent pasture, betet, which consist of such nourishing and sweet-scented kinds of hay as there are in this country, where the cultivation of meadows has been brought to such high perfection, or some way of fattening the cattle known to the butchers alone, or, for some other reason.
2. The Englishmen understand almost better than any other people the art of properly roasting a joint, konsten, at val steka en stek, which also is not to be wondered at ; because the art of cooking as practised by most Englishmen does not extend much beyond roast beef and plum pudding, stek.”

We can thank John Walker, an English chemist who in 1826 invented the friction match. He took a stick of wood and dipped it in a paste formed from potassium chlorate and sulfur to make a match that lit when struck on an abrasive surface. As you light up the coals tomorrow, think John Walker, unless you own one of those fancy auto-lighting-gas grills or a lighter.

One thing I am glad did not become the norm is the Turnspit Dog. Look at the picture below and see the dog on the circular track pinned to the wall. No, your eyes are working properly. The doggie is hung up like kitchen pots or a ladle, just another kitchen utensil aiding the cooking of foods in an English kitchen.

Can you imagine? “Cook, is the meat done?”

“No milord, Lassie has another mile to go.”

Turnspit dogs were short animals trained to run on a treadmill like cage so that spit meat cooked evenly. These kitchen helpers were small, low-bodied creatures with short front legs. They often had grey and white fur or reddish brown.

The dogs, commonly called Kitchen dogs, Turnspit dogs or Vernepator Cur were very sturdy and capable of turning the spit wheel for hours. Now that is some serious cooking if you have to train pets to help. Lucky for us and the greater good, this practice died off by the late 1850’s.

So light up those grills tomorrow, be thankful of our independence, and give a special patty to your pet pouch. Happy Fourth of July.

Source: Kalm’s Account of His Visit to England, 1758 http://www.archive.org/stream/cu31924028059693/cu31924028059693_djvu.txt

Originally posted 2014-07-03 10:00:00.

Vanessa here,

When reading Regencies, I love getting into the environment, learning about the land, flowers, etc. I even love being immersed in the weather.

Weather Vanessa? Really?

Now some might look at weather as just a scenery element, purring at the way the moonlight beams in the hero’s eyes or the soft bounce of sun reflecting in the heroine’s hair. Yet, weather can be a force to reckon, a third character changing the course of events.

Haven’t you read about the snows of the yuletide keeping the family in the country as opposed to rushing back to London or the occasional rainstorm trapping the hero and heroine. You may have even read about 1816, the year with no summer.

Yet, England like most places, experienced much more. For an upcoming novella project, I began looking for windstorms that savaged my Regency World.

After much research, I came across two events: March 4, 1818 and April 26, 1818. The gale of March 4 raged all over England but it also knocked over several buildings in London. The tornado of April 26 focused on the southern coast.

The Gale of March 4

The gale raged on the 4^th, 7^th and the 8^th. The gale was more likely an offshoot of a coastal hurricane, but its reach was massive. Moreover, the respite in between the 4^th and the 7^th fooled people into thinking the worst was over.

Here are some quotes on the event:

“Storm across southern Britain caused considerable damage around Nottingham, uprooting trees, blowing slates off roofs etc. At Leicester and Mansfield … the storm was very violent, and attended with similar effects to those experienced in this town”.

A Douglas paper of March 5th, that year, says : — “We have not for many years witnessed so tremendous a storm as last night struck terror into every bosom and, carried havoc and devastation in its train.”

“It had been thundering ; and lightning and blowing strong for several days previously, and consequently the harbour at Douglas was crowded with shipping of all sizes. On Wednesday, the 4th, the wind stood at sou’-west, but at night it suddenly veered to sou’-east, and then blew a hurricane. Scarcely a vessel in the port escaped.”

“Neither cable nor post resisted the storm the very posts in the quay were dragged cut.”

“A brig, Samuel, of Whitehaven, entered the harbour, and, driven by the gale, crashed into the other vessels. Then ensued crashing and smashing and fearful confusion — masts and bowsprits snapped, bows and sterns stove in, bulwarks smashed. Two boats were actually sunk; no lives lost, but many persons were injured. The quays were crowded with people, and everyone who had a lantern brought it to the quayside.”

Hurricane of 1824

The Devon and Dorset coasts endured a savaging hurricane November 22 through the 23^rd. Floodwaters were over 2 meters (6.5 feet).

In Hertfordshire, a tornado (offshoot from the hurricane) was described as “a white whirling cone uprooted many trees and unroofed houses.”

A naval officer at Sidmouth at the time said, “The wind was stronger than the West Indian hurricanes. The noise of the wind was like incessant Thunder, but there was something in it still more aweful and supernatural. It seemed to rage so perfectly without control – so wild and free that nothing I ever heard before could be at all compared to it.”

Others reported, “The noise of the wind was remarkable and that it howled or roared in the great gusts. Chimneys were blown down and stone church buildings were damaged. Roofs of shops were carried away. The unusual force of the rain and hail broke a huge number of windows.”

“At 6 am on Tuesday 23rd, the time of the overwash at Chiswell, a heavy stack of chimneys was blown down, killing the Reverend H.J. Richman and his wife.”

Some other accounts of damage are:

• 19 boats destroyed
• 200,000 tons of stone moved by the storm
• Ships washed onto farmland
• Over 80 houses smashed
• Coastal town after town flooded
• Over 50 people died

After this research, I think 1818 should be nicknamed, “The Year With Wind.”

References:

http://www.phenomena.org.uk/page29/page46/page46.html

http://www.southampton.ac.uk/~imw/jpg-Chesil/5CH-1824-Hurricane-map.jpg

http://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/fulltext/mxa1901/ch09.htm

Other Weather Related Posts:

The Regency Weather Forecaster

The Year Without a Summer

Home for the (Summer) Holidays

The Final Frost Fair: What Do You Do When the Thames Freezes Over?

The First Signs of Autumn

Originally posted 2014-06-09 09:00:00.