Housing Mushrooms

Highlighting Historical Romance with Jude Knight, who brings us an extra this week. In my latest novel, I imagined a Regency house flipper. My hero is a retired exploring officer, the Napoleonic Wars equivalent of a special forces operative, and he makes his living buying run down manors from overstretched aristocrats, and doing them up […]

Spills and Fire Starters

Highlighting Historical Romance with Sherry Ewing and struggles with authentic Regency fire starters. While editing my next Regency era release, One Moment In Time, my editor caught me using the modern day word—match. Nowhere in my twenty-first century mind did it occur to me that I had written about how we may start a fire […]

One Little Candle

This morning dawned bright and crisp here in the urban wilds of eastern Pennsylvania. Yesterday’s sharp wind and clouds are gone, leaving sunshine. If there was frost, it dissipated before I got up, but it is cold out there. The bright sun gives me energy. I never mind the cold in winter, but I begin […]

A Legend Retold

Highlighting Historical Romance with Alanna Lucas on Ancient Rome When the Marquess Returns is a Regency adaptation of the legend of Romulus and Remus. I’ve always had a fascination with Rome—it’s one of my favorite cities—and I was quite familiar with the tale of how twins, who were set upon the Tiber River and discovered […]

Trashed! Coffee please!

He who talks more is sooner exhausted. Lao Tzu   That must explain why I am completely trashed this Monday afternoon—much talking and dancing and costume changes and friend making and parties—many parties at the Historical Romance Retreat at the Mission Inn last week. I learned that there are right hand quills and left and […]

Family ~ the Third Week

Continuing my analysis of the families of the characters in my books, we come to the Haydens. This is a very different bunch than the others I’ve written about. They are wealthier, more powerful, better connected, and—dare I admit it—less happy. If have read any of my books you’ll have met the Marquess of Glenaire—later […]

Horses for Hire: Travel Over Land in the 19th Century

Highlighting Historical Romance today presents the brilliant Jude Knight’s research into nineteenth-century travel over land. Land travel in Regency England required negotiating rough roads and weather on foot, or on an animal or a vehicle pulled by an animal. Anyone with the money could purchase a seat on a stage coach, or even the mail […]

English Coastal Defenses: Martello Towers

Highlighting Historical Romance with Jude Knight today. Jude shares her research into Martello towers once used for the coastal defense of England. I saw them on a show about turning old historical buildings into homes for modern families and was impelled to go find out more. Once I did, I had to have a Martello […]