Black Friday and Cyber Monday—Regency Style

Julia Justiss highlights shopping! The frenetic pre-Christmas shopping rush used to be typified by US residents leaving their Thanksgiving Thursday dinners to camp out at midnight, the better to score early-bird shopping bargains on Black Friday morning. With the advent of technology, the madness expanded to the on-line shopping bonanza of Cyber Monday. Skipping over […]

Believeable Reasons For a Virgin Hero

Highlighting Monica Burns and her thoughts on her unique trope, the virgin hero. (And don’t forget she offers a FREE book for subscribers) My September 25th reissue, PLEASURE ME, has a virgin hero. When I decided to write Garrick as a virgin, I was faced with a tough question. What reason does a virile, alpha […]

Greenery and Kissing Balls

Highlighting Emma Lane’s thoughts on historical holiday decor. Seasonal Decorations.  My pulse quickens as the holidays approach. It sparks my imagination. In my “real” world I play (work) with flowers and decorations weekly. One of my favorites for Thanksgiving is a ceramic rooster which I fill with dried flowers. My family hooted when they saw […]

Never Too Late at Vauxhall Gardens

Highlighting Susana Ellis’s love of Vauxhall Gardens.   Vauxhall Gardens has become a bit of an obsession with me. I even visited there last September, even though it has become little more than a small grassy area between the Vauxhall Underground station, Kennington Lane, and the busy Vauxhall Bridge. The Orchestra building being long gone, […]

A Hero, A Barrister, An Escape

Highlighting Linda McLaughlin’s hero, Stephen Chaplin, a barrister. I recently visited Stephen Chaplin, Esquire at his offices in London’s Lincoln’s Inn to interview him. LM: Mr. Chaplin, thank you so much for agreeing to meet with me. Can you tell me a bit about yourself? For instance, are you originally from the London area? SC: […]

American Heiresses/ English Dukes

This week Donna MacMeans shares her research with us. One of the things I love about writing is how everything you’ve done, every place you visit, inspires stories. The stories might not be immediate, but they percolate in the brain until they fit with the perfect storyline. That’s the way it worked for me with […]

A Viscount, Irish History, and Plumbing

Alina K. Field joins us this week Thank you for having me as your guest today, Caroline! I love historical romance that draws on the current events of the story world. (Your most recent novel, The Reluctant Bride, does that beautifully!) So when I came up with the idea for a series about the children […]

The Fate of Prisoners

Research about Fortune’s Foe from Michele Stegman Ever since I visited El Castillo, the fort in St. Augustine, Florida, and saw the small space where 20 English captives were held in 1740, I wondered what happened to those men. Apparently, no one made any effort to rescue or help them during that awful war between the […]

Eight Centuries / Eight Love Stories

If you were lucky enough to attend the Bluestocking Belle’s Cover Reveal party on Saturday, you’ve had a preview of our 2017 anthology, Never Too Late.  We present eight timeless love stories across eight centuries, with eight unique takes on a single trope (a compromising situation that isn’t), an older heroine, a wise man, and […]

The Global Tourist in New Zealand

Jude Knight introduces us to Victorian Tourists to New Zealand. The nineteenth century, says the book I’m currently reading, was the European century; the century in which Europe dominated the world. The nineteenth century was a European one also in the sense that other continents took Europe as their yardstick. Europe’s hold over them was […]