Saturday Sites: Regency Research

As any blogger knows, posting every day keeps your readers returning to keep up to date.  Blogger's wonderful little statistics charts and graphs serve as a very visible reminder of the visits you're gaining or losing, and the compulsion overtakes one to keep that trend always moving upward.

Unfortunately, to blog every day one have something to write about.  Many bloggers have specific subjects for specific days, such as Monday Mysteries or the Sizzling Kiss.  The only one I have found so far that I've embraced is Flash Fiction Friday which I picked up from my friend, Laura Besley's blog.  (Look for a guest post from her on September 4th).

Saturdays are particularly tricky for me (as I'm sure they are for bloggers and readers alike), but I've finally hit upon a solution:  Saturday Sites.  In this column, I hope to share with you the sites and blogs I have discovered this week, hopefully all with a common thread.  First up:

 Regency Research

English Historical Fiction Authors 

This very useful open Facebook group encourages participation, which the members do with gusto.  Conversations abound, as does the information shared.

Many scholars of the genre participate, so this group proves an excellent resource for  authors focused on any British era.  I have had my questions immediately answers, solutions to my quandaries solved, and friendly advice given.  This group is a treasure trove for historical writers.

They also share information about general writing, sales, dealing with difficulties, etc., and provided excellent support to one another.  The strength and camaraderie of this group recently put a pirating website out of business.

Book Review: Small Deceptions by H. Linn Murphy

Book:  Small Deceptions
Author:  H. Linn Murphy
Pages:  288
Format:  Paperback, Kindle/ebook
Publisher:  Xlibris
Book Source:  Personal Purchase
Category:  Regency Romance
Style:  "A novel after the style of Jane Austin," archaic language poorly interpreted

Synopsis from Author's Blog:

Francesca Kennington merely wants to be left to her studies, despite her mother's best efforts to saddle her with a rich husband. Then she meets a mysterious gentleman, who leads her on a romp through the ballrooms and countryside of Georgian England. Their romance blossoms but secrets cause Francesca's house of cards to tumble. She must find a way to put her life back together, while still following her heart.

My Take:  

Ms. Murphy has created an interesting premise with a great deal of promise: a bookish girl, frustrated with her mother's harping, decides to pretend to bow to her wishes in an effort to get what she wants, i.e., more time to herself and her studies.  Said girl gets caught in her own trap and begins to enjoy herself as a faux society maven.  Romance ensues.

Enter the mother, pleased with her daughter's transformation but insistent she wed a gentleman other than Francesca's choosing.  The two clash.  The truth about the mother's resentment comes to the fore, including the father's absentee parenting and obvious favoritism for Francesca.  The crisis reaches its peak.

Francesca's true love clues in the absent father about the goings-on between his wife and daughter.  The father returns to restore Francesca to grace, address the mother's issues, and establish the true love as his daughter's rightful suitor.

Note to Self: Speaking vs Communicating

A while back I picked up a Regency romance when the author briefly made it a freebie on Amazon.  As I've said previously, I had been attempting to classify My Father's Son and considered Regency Romance a probable genre.  (wrong wrong wrong)  I still haven't finished that book.   More still, I've read no fewer than 23 other books since I downloaded it.

The huge problem with this book (other than totally ignoring several social mores and the egregious consequences of flouting them) is the language.  The writer aims for Austen-esque language and way overshoots the mark.  And, I know it's not just me, because my #3 DIL kept reading passages to me out loud while she perused it on my Android.  (I really did want to know if it was just me being persnickety.)

It's the same problem I've seen in other Regency romances.  People try so hard to sound authentic in their phraseology and vocabulary, dropping topical names and slang and verbage, their words cease to communicate.  They become hurdles for the reader, and, no matter the dexterity of the literary athlete, sooner or later they're going to tire out. I read this book only when I had nothing but my phone in my hands. The plot is interesting, but I just can't take it in large doses before I start tearing out my hair.

Note to Self: Face the Consequences

"The good ended happily and the bad ended unhappily. That is what fiction means." —Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

It happened like this:  my current work in progress, My Father's Son, has a strong backdrop of true history, but I'm not certain if it can be classified as historical fiction.  I haven't taken a real person and true circumstances and humanized them out of the history books as did MM Bennetts in Of Honest Fame, or, created characters to orbit around historical figures as in Georgette Heyer's An Infamous Army.

Rather, I've come up with my own cast of characters caught up in sometimes fictional events (a brigade of black-ops attempting to broker a treaty with French Royalists), but real events in others (the Vienna conference, Napoleon's 100 days, the battle of Waterloo).  They stumble over, evade or work with Fouche, Talleyrand, Metternich, Castlereagh and Wellington.  Does that still qualify as historical fiction?  Or, would it be more accurate to call it historical romance?

And, then there's this whole other genre that I've been hearing more and more about:  Regency romance—"Regency" referring to the era when the Prince of Wales ruled in the stead of Mad King George, his father, from 1811 to 1820.  My series of stories centers in England, begins in 1809 and stretches out from there.  Would it be accurate to classify My Father's Son as a Regency romance?  Danged if I know.

Book Review: Garden Folly by Candice Hern

Book: A Garden Folly
Author: Candice Hern
Pages: 224
Format: Paperback, Kindle/ebook
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, Signet Romance
Book Source: Public Library e-lending System
Category: Regency Romance
Style: easy read, some provocative content

Synopsis from GoodReads:

Two sisters on the edge of poverty have a chance to meet wealthy, titled, unmarried gentlemen when they are unexpectedly invited to a house party at a famous country estate owned by the Duke of Carlisle. Though courted by a wealthy earl, Catherine Forsythe finds herself falling for the handsome estate gardener and faced with the choice of marrying for money and security, or following her heart. more . . . 

My Take:

I am quite ashamed to admit that I was duped, completely and thoroughly, by the innocuous little cover of this book.  The image on the right came up on the library's list of books when I looked up "regency romance" in the search engine.  (Does one call it a card catalog any longer?)  That was probably my first mistake, but whattayagonnado?

Way back in the day (last May) when I actually had to go looking for books to read and review, I hit upon this e-book with the antique illustration cover (the big image at the top is the cover for the paperback), and made the request.  I had to get in line.  It came quickly, but in that time I had accumulated stacks of books to read and so it sat in my Kindle ignored for almost two weeks.  Then, the day before it would disappear from my Kindle forever, I decided to see how far I could get.

Reading A Garden Folly took me four hours, front to back.  The return on my four-hour investment?  A tepid, predictable plot, shallow, mundane characters, improbable situations, absurd presumptions and anything but Regency manners.  The blurb on Amazon classes her with Georgette Heyer.  Umm . . . no.

Tidbits: Francesca's Garden

Here's a bit of The Famous Mrs. Darcy that will never make it into print.  Still, it's worthy of a Tidbit.

[Location:  Longbourn garden---a joyous celebration for Jane & Bingley within; time:  evening after Elizabeth accepts Mr. Darcy's proposal; setup:  Elizabeth's pre-Pride & Prejudice history includes—among other things—a physical assault by a spurned suitor from which she was narrowly rescued from a terrible fate by a mysterious stranger, with his best mate hard on his heels.  The incident was the talk of Meryton.]

Francesca's Garden

by Penny Freeman

              Behind the house at Longbourn, behind the carefully groomed lawns and gardens meticulously planted to reflect its tasteful fashion, marshaled into order for inspection by the neighbors, behind a long and tall stone wall and through a little arched door which guarded the breach, tucked neatly out of sight where it could bring no shame to its betters, a small patch of dirt had been given over to the whims of little girls. To mark the distinction, because it was so marked and so distinct, they called it Francesca’s Garden.
              Had any outsider been allowed to frequent that garden (which rarely happened), initiated to the secrets beyond that curious door, if they were familiar with the Hermitage, a quaint little cottage on the grounds of a local abbey, they would suppose that the Bennets copied their more prosperous kin. They would have been mistaken, for it was entirely the opposite. The Mastersons, especially the gardeners of Oakhaven, knew that such as Francesca’s Garden grew from within. Anything else, no matter the grandeur of the scale, was simply a monkey aping the actions of a man.
              Once, when Elizabeth was just a girl and still unafraid of approaching her mother, she asked her why they called it Francesca’s Garden. Her mother’s eyes turned soft and sad. She attacked the soil beneath her spade until she had dug up enough courage, then leaned back on her haunches and looked to her daughter, her eyes shimmering with tears. When Elizabeth considered her mother’s timeless beauty, she thought of that day in the garden as she knelt in the dirt surrounded by a riot of blooms.
              Her mother told her that her father used to call her as much once, her name in a tongue strange and foreign. They had been young, before the hardships and disappointments of his life had ground all the romance out of him. But that was long ago. Before she broke his heart.