Wednesday Wanderings - May 17th

Wandering #1 ...

Sweet Contemporary Romance 
& Opportunity to Win a $50 Gift Card

As you can tell from the banner, I'm part of a promotion of sweet, contemporary romances. And to make it even sweeter, there's an opportunity to win a $50 gift card. Click the box below to sign up.

And good luck!

Wandering #2 ...

London - Day 2

Windsor Castle was our first stop.

I love what they've done with the moat. This is part of the moat garden.

They had a fire in 1992 that did a lot of damage to the north towers.

It's easy to forget that they needed these mammoth walls for protection.

Our next stop was the lovely village of Bath. Anyone who's read Austen or Regency romances will know the Pump Room was a social gathering place. It's a restaurant today.

It rather boggles the mind that this part of the city wasn't that much different in Jane Austen's day.

 We visited the Roman Baths. Also something that played quite a role in Austen's day and in Regency romances. The Romans really built them over hot springs.
It's pretty cool the place is still standing.

Just don't really get in there. Or drink the waters like they did in Austen's day. *gag*

Our last stop was Stonehenge. They're huge.
It's humbling to be an American with a relatively short history
and to visit places where things are so old.

Wandering #3 ...

We finally saw Guardians of the Galaxy. I enjoyed it, but not as much as I wanted to. One of my biggest complaints about the second Pirates movie was that they tried too hard to up the action from the epicly awesome fight scenes of the first movie. They ended up looking forced.

That's what I felt about some of the humor in G2. Some of it they hit dead on (for me--I recognize that people have different tastes in humor, and I heard plenty of people in the theater laughing when I wasn't). But, to me, some of it seemed forced.

Plus ... (spoiler alert--you need to highlight it to see my following comment):

Seriously?! Peter's father was a man-ho and caused his mother's death? UGH

I think the story's strength was its heart. I loved so many parts of that which I won't spoil here.

Anyway, have you seen it?

What did you think?

Did you stay for all the extra scenes?

I LOVED Peter and the teen Groot and what it foreshadows. 

The Hook

I've got one completed (relatively) WIP, and I keep finding the completion to be rather illusive, as I've mentioned in the past. What I'm struggling with right now is where to begin the story, as my critique group is counseling me that I've not started the story in the right place.

As a result, I've been paying particular attention to the beginnings of some of the books I've read recently and thinking about books I've read in the past. I remember when I first read Stephen King's Salem's Lot. My husband and I were both active duty Army stationed in Germany. He had CQ duty and had to stay awake all night on assignment, so a friend loaned him this book. The way he described it to me was something like 'it started out kinda slow but then grabbed me by the throat and dragged me the rest of the way through.' (That book scared the crap out of me, by the way. I tried to read it and had to give it back. I'd just had a baby and decided I couldn't be a responsible adult if I was afraid to walk down the hallway when I was home alone at night with the baby. And then I decided I wanted to read it after all and couldn't get hold of it until we returned to the States--months later.).

But it begs the question. Is our need to provide the 'throat grabbing' right in the very first paragraphs of a book a reflection of changing tastes in our society? Have the high action films (and books) that thrill viewers (and readers) addicted us to the adreline rush, so we're no longer satisfied with a story that takes time to develop the characters and the plotline?

It makes me wonder how some of the classics would do in the modern publishing world? Can't you just see Jane Austen or Herman Melville or even Milton querying for an agent?

Book Review - 'Courting Miss Lancaster' by Sarah M. Eden

I enjoy books that are set in the Regency period of England in the early 1900th century. I love the Horatio Hornblower series by C.S. Forester and the Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell.

I'm also a sucker for a good love story.

On an aside, isn't it curious that if a book has a love story but the writer is a woman, it's a romance? Yet if a book has a love story but is written by a man, it's drama or adventure? The Bourne series by Robert Ludlum is absolutely a love story (much more, I know, but at the core it's a love story).

Regency romances (see this article) are actually a romance subgenre and include styles reminiscent of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer. I have Austen's complete works and am slowly accumulating Heyer's (either in paper or audio format). There's something fun about reading one of these books, and there are times when they're just what I need.

I was reading a post at the beginning of the year here where Shanda posed the question of which book she should read next. Courting Miss Lancaster was on the list of options, and several people commented on how much they enjoyed the story. Of course I checked to see if my library had it. It was on hold, but I only had to wait a few days before it was available.

The story is set in 1806 and involves the Little Season (coming out) of a Miss Athena Lancaster, who has this fortunate opportunity because her sister Persephone married a very rich and titled gentleman, Duke Adam Kielder. The Lancasters are well bred but not wealthy, so Adam takes the younger siblings under his wing and even bestows a substantial dowry on each of his sisters-in-law (though it will be some years before the two youngest girls are old enough to go through the marriage mart).

Now Adam is a serious grump (and one of my favorite characters in the book) and hates to go to all the ridiculous dances and parties involved. He has a good friend Harry Windover who is also well bred but poor. Harry loves to socialize and attend parties, so Adam decides to enlist his help by being responsible for escorting Athena to these events so she can meet eligible, prospective husbands.

Harry only agrees because he is in love with Athena and, while his own poverty rules him out as a suitor, he can at least make sure Athena finds a man worthy of her.

There's a lot of humor in this story, and the love story is very sweet. I enjoyed how Eden slowly helps us to know and understand the various characters. In the George Heyer and Jane Austen books, we see how hard it was to be a poor woman, but in Courting Miss Lancaster we're shown that it was hard on the men, too, who were of a certain station yet with very limited options.

The reading is less stilted than Heyer or Austen, so it goes very quickly. I ordered my own copy of it, and I'm reading it aloud to my husband.

I recommend this book and look forward to getting my hands on Seeking Persephone, since it's been accepted for publication.