Category: Regency

#5 Buy Hyacinth

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January 15, 2021

5:09 pm

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Carolina Prescott, Regency

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❝If winter comes, can spring be far behind?❞

Purple hyacinth
Buy hyacinth to feed your soul.

Shelley’s words, along with the forced bulbs currently popping up in the grocery stores, have reminded me that, even in this year of uncertainty, spring will come again. And so, as the evergreens, Christmas cacti, and amaryllises (I swear, I looked it up) fade, they are replaced with crocus, tulips, tiny daffodils, and, my favorite, hyacinths.

I have never been able to find any perfume, lotion, or other scent-laden item that offers the true fragrance of a hyacinth. Those I have tried were too cloying or too sweet or just too much. The hyacinth fragrance (I think the pink ones smell the best) is light, but not too timid. You notice it when you walk into a room, but it’s not so overbearing that you want to walk out again. Continue reading “#5 Buy Hyacinth” →

#3: Colors of the Day

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June 11, 2020

11:50 pm

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Regency, Research Gems

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Like many readers of romance, I love fashion. I enjoy a good runway show—no matter when or where it is—and have been known to spend hours leafing through pages of fashion dos and don’ts or scrolling through hundreds of of red-carpet favorites and flops.

When I write historical romance, I always include a bit of fashion for my like-minded readers. Of course, I want the wardrobes of characters to be historically accurate (with only a little writer’s license from time to time), but I also want them to be fabulous. Or not. Continue reading “#3: Colors of the Day” →

#2: Puzzling

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June 4, 2020

7:08 am

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Authors, Regency, Research Gems, Writing Tips

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For the past several months I’ve been up to my eyes in research—okay, maybe only up to my neck. The point is that I’ve been doing a lot of research. And I love it.

One of the most fun things about writing fiction is that you get to make things happen any way you want. But sometimes it’s overwhelming to have the sky as the limit, which is why I enjoy writing historical romance.

Regency valentine rebus
A regency valentine to Anna.

With historicals, I’m still in control (as much as any writer ever is) of the characters and the plot, but the setting and the world my characters inhabit are constrained by history. So, for example, while my regency romance can have a heroine who talks back to a duke, she won’t be texting her comments to her adversary and she won’t be meeting him at Starbucks wearing a vinyl mini-skirt. The historical aspects of the setting provide the boundaries and guidelines that—at least for me—make the writing easier. Continue reading “#2: Puzzling” →