I Can’t Stand the Rain! A Musey Thoughtsy from Marguerite Kaye

I’m happy to welcome Marguerite Kaye back to the blog today. (You know… I had planned to write this magnificent introductory paragraph, but… I got nothin’. Just imagine that I’m super smooth and professional over here, despite the sad reality.) Take it away, Marguerite!

The view at sunrise from Marguerite’s window

I’m lucky enough to live in Argyll, on the west coast of Scotland. The view from my window is of the Firth of Clyde. Directly across the water, the sun rises over the gently rolling hills of Inverclyde. To the south I can see the Ayrshire coast, the Isles of Cumbrae, Arran and Bute. And to the north the Holy Loch, Loch Long, and the Trossachs, the mountains which form the gateway to the Highlands. All without leaving the house.

My view is stunningly beautiful and it’s endlessly inspiring, but for much of he year it’s also rain-drenched. My particular nook of the Cowal Peninsula boasts the second highest annual rainfall in the whole UK – trust me, that’s a LOT of rain. And though I love my home and adore my view, I can’t stand the rain.

It literally seeps into my stories. Today, right in the middle of writing a Regency sheikh set in the searing desert, I still managed to conjure up a storm. Flick through my various books set in Scotland, or featuring Scottish heroes, and you’ll find our damp, driech climate (we’ve got more words for rain than the eskimos have for snow). Between them, the skies and the sea can be up to fifty shades of grey in the space of a morning.

No conversation is complete without a comment on the weather. Here is Fergus, a Highland veteran of Waterloo, describing his home in Argyll to Katerina, a Russian tightrope walker, from The Officer’s Temptation, my contribution to Scandal at the Midsummer Ball, a duet I’ve written with Bronwyn Scott:

‘I’ve never been to Scotland,’ Katerina said. ‘You make it sound so beautiful.’
‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder. It is lovely, though it is also very wet. We have a hundred different ways of describing rain.’
Fergus rolled onto his side, leaning his head on his hand. Automatically, Katerina did the same. ‘Tell me some of them,’ she said.
‘Well, when the sky’s gunmetal grey, and a constant drizzle of soft rain drifts down in a fine mist like this,’ he said, brushing his fingers lightly along her forearm, ‘we say it’s gie driech.’
‘Guy dreeck.’
He laughed. ‘Not bad. And when it’s that heavy rain, the kind that cascades straight down like stair rods and soaks right into your bones,’ he said, drumming his fingers on her arm, ‘we say it’s pelting.’

The incessant rain can affect our mood and make us Scots seem dour, but our rugged landscape also reflects our rugged personalities. We’re stoic, and we’re stubborn. We’re proud, and we’re hardy. Our oppressive weather is also extremely volatile. Four seasons in one day is commonplace, and as a result, we’re eternally optimistic. But because we know perfectly well that most of the time our optimism is unfounded, we’re good at laughing at ourselves – witness our attitude to our soccer team. Our humour is heavily laced with irony.

Kyles of Bute – Ainsley’s view

My Scots heroes are borne of the landscape that surrounds me. Like the rain, Argyll and its isles are scattered through my books, and one of my favourites, Strangers at the Altar, is set near Tighnabruaich (Tie Na Broo Aich), about thirty miles from my home, though only ten as the crow flies. I over-dosed on landscape in this book, invoking all my favourite childhood haunts, unashamedly infusing it with nostalgia. Here is hero Innes describing one of my favourite views to heroine Ainsley:

‘That’s the Kyles of Bute over there, the stretch of water with all the small islands that you sailed yesterday,’ Innes said. ‘And over there, the crescent of sand you can see, that’s Ettrick Bay on Bute, the other side of the island from which we set sail. And that bigger island you can just see in the distance, that’s Arran.’

There are pictures of me as a bairn (child) learning to swim in the shallow waters of Ettrick Bay, and photos of me swimming with my nieces and nephews in the same waters just last year, decades on. My siblings and I swam in Ostell Bay too, as Innes does, though I took the liberty of omitting the flying ants which infested our childhood picnics from my adult romance:

The breeze began to die down as they headed into St Ostell Bay. Directly across, the Isle of Arran lay like a sleeping lion, a bank of low, pinkish cloud that looked more like mist sitting behind it and giving it a mysterious air. In front of them stretched a crescent of beach, the sand turning from golden at the water’s edge, to silver where high dunes covered in rough grass formed the border. Behind, a dark forest made the bay feel completely secluded.

Marguerite’s home town, Dunoon, Argyll

I tried to instill not only my love but my affection for these childhood (and adult) haunts in Strangers at the Altar, which comes closer than any of my books to a homage to Argyll. The landscape, like my hero, is stark and stunning. Its beauty hides a dark nature. And the climate, our fickle climate, is reflected in the sweeping changes of poor, tortured Innes’s moods.

Innes is an engineer. Iain Hunter, the hero of Unwed an Unrepentant is a ship builder. Boats are another part of my landscape and my heritage that has been creeping ever more into my books. Ferries connect me across the peninsula to the mainland. Liners and tankers and yachts sail past my window every day. My maternal grandfather was a ship’s captain. My paternal grandfather built the things. (His claim to fame was that he made the boilers for the QEII. One of my lasting memories is of him taking a hammer to beat his artificial leg into shape!)

Argyll doesn’t feature in my current book, The Widow and the Sheikh, though my botanist heroine is from Cornwall and has a strong connection to the sea, and my sheikh’s dark broodiness is worthy of the lowering clouds which are scudding over the sky as I write. We’ve officially passed on a summer this year in Scotland, with the wettest, coldest July on record, so it’s probably not surprising that my fantasy desert landscape is all sweltering sands and celestial blue skies. I can take the cold. I can suffer the winds and the snow. But I really, really can’t stand the rain.

The Soldier’s Rebel Lover, the second of my Comrades in Arms duet, is out 1^st October in print and digital, UK, US and Canada. The first two books in my Hot Desert Nights quartet, The Widow and the Sheikh, and The (deliberately anachronistic) Sheikh’s Mail Order Bride will be released in March and April 2016. Scandal at the Midsummer Ball, my duet with Bronwyn Scott, will be released in July 2016.
You can read excerpts all my books over on my website: http://www.margueritekaye.com. Or why not just come and chat to me about books and life in general on my Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/margueritekayepage or on Twitter: @margueritekaye

Thank you, Marguerite, for stopping by today (and for sharing the beautiful photos). I’m quite jealous of the view from your window. So for anyone stopping by, let’s chat about climate and its impact on our lives. Marguerite and I represent nearly opposite climates — she’s got all that lovely rain, cold, and changeability, and I’ve got nearly endless cloudless skies, long-ass summers, and 80 degree (F) days throughout winter. Our cultural narratives match our climates. How about yours?

Romance as entertainment, catharsis, and activism – my guest post at Book Bloggers International

Hello friends! I’ve been throwing a lot of words around this week, but I wanted to direct your attention to a guest post I wrote for Book Bloggers International.  I wrote about some of the reasons I’ve been a reader of romance fiction for over twenty years and highlighted some authors and books who are doing a stellar job writing romance novels that incorporate social issues into their narratives and take an activist stance on those issues (sometimes in very subtle ways… sometimes not so subtle.)  Anyway, the question I ask is whether there is a tradeoff in a novel’s entertainment or cathartic value when it embraces activism.  Read the post to find out my answer (should be super obvious) and let me know what you think in the comments or on Twitter.

Also, I stayed within the romance genre, but I think the question could easily be applied to other genres, including literature.  So, even if you don’t read romance fiction, feel free to join in!

Also, check out this video of an armadillo gathering leaves with awesome rhythm. It dances much better than I.

The relevance of erotica to readers – a guest post by K D Grace

You know how sometimes when you finish a book, you think, my God, I just want to crawl into that person’s brain and hang out for a while?  (It’s not just me, right?)  Well, that’s what I thought when I finished The Initiation of Ms. Holly by K D Grace.  So when an email appeared inviting me to participate in a blog tour promoting the book and offering the opportunity to host a guest post by K D, I was all over it like ants on honey.  Bonus: we all get to crawl into her brain for about 800 words.  Read on, friends.

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First of all, I’d like to say how much I appreciate being invited over to Reading with Analysis to talk about one of my very favorite topics, the relevance of erotica to readers.

Writing about sex is writing about human connectedness on a very visceral level. The need to be intimate with another human being is the driving force behind romance, and sex is the tool that gives the writer, as well as the reader, a point of contact and a level of intimacy and understanding with the character that can be achieved in no other way. Sex in story is always a revelatory act. It exposes the character at his or her most vulnerable, and those vulnerabilities are the places where story is born.

Sex in story is the fictional equivalent of finger-printing the characters. How characters approach sex, how they think about sex, what neuroses they bring into the bedroom with them, all of these elements mark the character as unique. And once the character has had sex, for the rest of the story, that character will always be viewed through the filter of his or her sexuality. If I want to expose the very essence of my characters, I write them having sex, and then I know who they are, and so will my readers.

Good stories involve characters being acted upon by events, situations, circumstances beyond their control and the chaos that results. There are few parts of our human nature we struggle more fiercely to control than sexuality. Ultimately, sex makes people uncomfortable, and anything that makes people uncomfortable is a fabulous tool for fiction. Sex can be the driving force behind a story or it can be the catalyst that breaks through and changes everything. It can be the nagging little push, it can be the shining revelation, it can be the dark hidden secret. But what it will always do is shake things up, even if it’s just a little bit. What it will always do is reveal our characters in ways we’ve never seen them before. What it will always do is give us startling glimpses into the psyche of the human animal, into what drives us, what frightens us, what makes us happy, what makes us love, what makes us hate. It will do all of these things because it’s almost impossible for our characters to keep their defences in place when they’re naked, hormone drunk, and fucking.

It’s not just the sex act itself that helps create the loss of control and gives us intimate insights into characters. A whole new world of chaos and voyeuristic excitement for our reader happens when we writers get inside our characters’ heads and see what they think about sex. Do they feel guilty, do they feel driven, do they feel lust, do they feel romantic, do they feel desperation, do they feel joy, do they feel anger? What does their sexual baggage look like, and what acts does it drive them to?

What separates human sexuality from the sexuality of our animal cousins is that we spend so damn much time thinking about sex. So much of human sexuality takes place in the mind, and so much of a good story comes from knowing what’s going on in the heads of the characters. We think about sex, we reflect on sex, we look forward to sex, we speculate about sex. We repent of sex, we rejoice in sex, we scheme and plan to get sex. For the structure of the story, thoughts of sex, a character’s attitudes toward sex, a character’s responses to sex and the consequences created by sex are like ripples on a pond, having far reaching implications and creating endless opportunities for little whirlpools of chaos to erupt, even in a story that has relatively little sex in it.

That we find it necessary to have a separate genre for stories that we deem too sexual says a lot about the neurotic relationship Western culture has with the human body and with sex. No other human drive in literature is separated out as its own genre nor is any other genre so highly policed. But then again, no other human drive defines humanity quite like sexuality does.

We are sexual animals. There’s no getting round that fact. It’s biology. Therefore to write a story without sex is like writing a story in which people never eat, never sleep, never talk, never interact with each other. Sex is a part of who we are, and if we want our characters to be well-rounded, if we want our readers to have truly intimate views of them, then sex will be there, even if it’s only lurking in the background waiting to sneak out, catch a character with her defences down and cause a little chaos.

Excerpt from The Initiation of Ms. Holly:

In one of the more intimate dining rooms the woman guided Rita to a lushly upholstered booth near the back away from the dance floor and the few other diners who occupied the room.

‘Edward will join you shortly.’ With that, the woman turned on you-could-only-afford-to-fuck-me-in-your-dreams stilettos and retreated back through the maze of rooms.

Before she was out of sight, a server approached Rita’s table with two glasses and a bottle of Moët et Chandon on ice. ‘I’m Aurora.’ She sat her burden down on the table.  ‘Edward has instructed me to apologize for his small delay.’ It was only her name and a slight feminine pout that assured Rita Aurora was actually a woman. Her androgynous features were accentuated by white blond hair cropped short. She was dressed in a black suit, waist coat and tie, completely camouflaging the swell of her small breasts. When she spoke, even her voice was deep, and gravelly. ‘There is one other thing Edward asked me to give you.’ From her pocket, the waitress produced a black velvet blindfold. ‘He asks that you wear this. He said you would understand.’

A frisson of anticipation laced with the tiniest hint of fear ran up Rita’s spine and accumulated at the tips of her nipples as the waitress stepped behind her and secured the blindfold. That done, she filled a glass and placed it in Rita’s hand. ‘Enjoy the fizz,’ she said. Then she left.

The scent of oregano and basil and other more subtle seasonings blended with the smell of expensive perfume. Glasses clinked, people laughed, and somewhere in the background the melodic strains of String of Pearls wafted on the air. She had only just tasted the champagne when a warm body scooted into the booth next to her. She recognize Edward’s scent a split second before his hand cupped her cheek and his mouth covered hers, familiar territory, she thought, as her tongue became reacquainted with his.

‘I hope you don’t mind the blindfold,’ he said when he came up for air. He slid warm fingers under the spaghetti straps and caressing her left shoulder. ‘Being in the dark was so much fun last time.’

She ran a hand over his cheek, raking a thumb lightly over a fluttering eyelid. ‘What about you? You’re not wearing a blindfold. That’s hardly fair.’

He chuckled, and she felt his warm breath against her earlobe. ‘I never said I play fair. I was right though. You are exquisite, but I wouldn’t have imagined your hair to be chestnut’ He caressed her tresses, pushing a strand back behind her shoulders to fondle her nape. ‘For some reason I was certain that cascade of silk would be strawberry blonde.’ He ran his other hand up the outside of her thigh, toying with the exposed edge of her garter belt, making her squirm. ‘Guess in some cases, there’s just no substitute for the sense of sight.’

‘But I want to see you too. I want to know what you look like.’

‘You will in good time. That is if you want to play my little game. Of course you could take off the blindfold. I can’t stop you, but admit it, it’s fun not knowing. A bit of an adventure, an initiation almost.’

‘An initiation?’

‘Yeah, you know, at the beginning, when a man and a woman are just getting to know each other, it’s like an initiation, don’t you think?’

‘I never thought of it like that, kind of like a hazing?’

He chuckled. ‘Can be. Could be, if you want it to be.’ He nipped her earlobe, ‘Or maybe like an induction into some secret cult with secret rituals of wild, kinky sex.’

‘Mmm. Sounds good. Where do I sign up?’

Another chuckle. ‘All you have to do is keep the blindfold on until I say you can take it off. Let your other senses do the work.’ His finger slipped beneath the suspender to stroke her thigh, making concentration next to impossible.

‘I’ve always wanted to be a member of a secret sex cult.’ Breathing was becoming more of an effort as his touch became more insistent. ‘Okay then. I’m in. Have your way with me.’

There was a long moment of silence, and for a split second Rita wondered if she had said something wrong, if she been too forward, too quick with her answer. But just when she was about to back track, he leaned in and kissed her softly on the mouth. She could almost hear his heart beating in his words when at last he spoke. ‘Then welcome to your new playground.’ His hand slipped underneath the spaghetti straps to cup her breast and stroke her engorged areola. ‘Expensive dress?’

‘What?’ Intimidation knotted her stomach. ‘Does it matter?’

‘Not really.’ She could hear him filling the champagne flute. ‘I’ll buy you a new one.’ He lifted the glass to her lips. Just as the taste hit her tongue he pulled it away and she felt a cold wet splash over her left breast. She stifled a yelp, but not before his lips clamped down tight on her drenched nipple, and the friction of tongue and teeth on wet silk caused delicious shock waves down her belly and below.

‘You know,’ he said between sucklings, ‘at the command of Louis 15^th, the original champagne glass was said to have been shaped like the breasts of his mistress, Madame Pompadour. I can understand why. Once you’ve suckled champagne from a beautiful breast champagne alone, no matter how expensive, isn’t nearly as nice.’

Another cold splash across both breasts and down her cleavage. She gasped and held him to her as he shoved down the spaghetti straps and freed her into his hungry mouth. ‘What if people are watching?’ she whispered.

‘Don’t worry. I know the owner,’ he whispered. ‘There’s one cup even more perfect than Louis’s design.’

About K D Grace:

K D Grace believes Freud was right. In the end, it really IS all about sex, well sex and love. And nobody’s happier about that than she is, otherwise, what would she write about?

When she’s not writing, K D is veg gardening. When she’s not gardening, she’s walking. She walks her stories, and she’s serious about it. She and her husband have walked Coast to Coast across England, along with several other long-distance routes. For her, inspiration is directly proportionate to how quickly she wears out a pair of walking boots. She also enjoys martial arts, reading, watching the birds and anything that gets her outdoors.

K D has erotica published with SourceBooks, Xcite Books, Harper Collins Mischief Books, Mammoth, Cleis Press, Black Lace, Erotic Review, Ravenous Romance, Sweetmeats Press and others.

K D’s critically acclaimed erotic romance novels include, The Initiation of Ms Holly, The Pet Shop. Her paranormal erotic novel, Body Temperature and Rising, the first book of her Lakeland Heatwave trilogy, was listed as honorable mention on Violet Blue’s Top 12 Sex Books for 2011. Books two and three, Riding the Ether, and Elemental Fire, are now also available. She was nominated for ETO’s Best Erotic Author 2013.

K D Grace also writes hot romance as Grace Marshall. An Executive Decision, Identity Crisis, The Exhibition are all available.

Find K D Here:                                                                  

Websites: http://kdgrace.co.uk/ and http://gracemarshallromance.co.uk/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/KDGraceAuthor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/KD_Grace and http://twitter.com/GM_Romance

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/kdgraceauthor/

Twig Domes and Lovespoons – a guest post by Mary Ann Rivers

I got some exciting news this morning: It is January 21 today!  (I know, I know… it’s well past afternoon now, and how could the date be news?  Well, let me just tell you: I am in the depths of the worst allergy season I’ve ever had — currently battling my third case of sinusitis since October — and there is no such thing as time here in the pit of congestion.  I understand that time is a reality for the rest of the world, but sickness creates its own, alternate reality.)

Anyway… why is January 21 an exciting day?  It’s the release day of Live by Mary Ann Rivers, of course!  (Cue the fireworks.)  To celebrate this release, Mary Ann is providing an extended excerpt of the book (the first three chapters) on Scribd.

LIVE by Mary Ann Rivers – Excerpt by Random House Publishing Group

As if that were not exciting enough, subscribers to Mary Ann’s newsletter will also get a link to an exclusive epilogue to The Story Guy, Mary Ann’s phenomenal novella.  All you have to do is sign up for the newsletter, and Mary Ann will send you the link later on this week.  (In other words, sign up pronto. You can do so on Mary Ann’s website.)

And now I’m turning things over to Mary Ann and retreating back to the pit of congestion.

Wanderlust is is a tricky affliction.

First, it is a disease of agony. It agonizes, it seeps in everywhere and not only makes you ache, it makes you restless, often physically restless, so that you’re driving to the grocery store and looking at every exit along the way wondering how far each one might take you.

You pick up books, you put them down. You rearrange the furniture, hoping it tricks the yearning into satisfaction. I was recently telling a friend, when I was in the worst of it several years ago, I used to watch back to back LONELY PLANETS and then go stare at the ceiling on my bed, overcome with the desire to just see something, do something, be a part of something. I remember there was an episode where the host came down with Malaria, and I found myself thinking — oh, that’s amazing. I’ve never had malaria. 

LIVE is a book about home, but it is also a book about about Destiny — the heroine, and the idea. Her hero, Hefin, is Welsh and has traveled the world but has been held up, for years, in Ohio. Destiny has never been anywhere but her hometown, her own neighborhood. She’s surrounded by people and landmarks she’s known since she was born. 

Hefin plans, finally, on going home. To Wales, which is only his first stop before he will set off in the world again. 

Destiny believes she was always meant to stay and be a part of a landscape as familiar as her own palm. 

Except . . . 

They meet each other.

It’s one of those stories where, if it were an illustration, the picture would show two red hearts on a map, far away from each other, and a lot of uncertainty if there will ever be little dots connecting them, over the wide ocean.

Wanderlust permeates, and I think the restlessness often has to find an outlet. I think that often the outlet is creative output, making something, trying to make some mark, trying to work through all of these ideas about what you see and what you yearn for. 
In LIVE, Des is a fan of the environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy, and the documentary about his work, Rivers and Tides. Goldsworthy uses what’s at hand, in his own environment, to make sculptures and art. He alters what is familiar and makes it unfamiliar, and, yet, the environment always reclaims his domes of twigs and paintings of leaves — returning the landscape to its familiar view. 

She tells Hefin about it here: 

“I don’t do any kind of art. I guess you could kind of count design, but that I only do a little of, and what I do is very functional. But I have a little project, lately.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Do you know Andy Goldsworthy?”

“The natural materials artist?”

“Yes! Wow. No one knows who he is.”

“I’m a wood engineer, remember?”

“Right. Actually, you’re a sunflower engineer. But we’re quibbling. Anyway, I watched his documentary in college, Rivers and Tides and then, for months, I was always trying to make little bits of art when I was at the park—a stack of pebbles, a leaf chain, whatever.”

“Of course. I did similar when I saw it.”

“You know the big, like, hives he makes? The domes? Sometimes from rocks, sometimes from twigs?”

“The giant egg-like structures?”

“Yes! That’s what I’m doing.”

“You’re making a giant egg?”

“Actually, a giant dome. Out of sticks. My landlord, Betty, she used to live in my house with her husband, years ago, and he planted a tulip tree for her when they were young. It’s huge now. But I think it’s sick, or dying, and probably should be taken down, but Betty is sentimental about it. So it stays, but it’s dropping all of these twigs all the time. There are lots of twigs, and sometimes I just need to do something sort of repetitive and soothing to take my mind off things. So I started building one.”

“Ambitious.”

“Yes, I think so.” She was quiet. 

Destiny, here, is still anchored by her neighborhood, her family, but wanderlust has taken her. She’s altering her landscape, altering twigs from a tree that represent a past love, even. Before she’s even read to admit what she wants, her creative output is tell the world what it is she wants.

Likewise, Hefin, who’s an engineer by trade and loved it, but could never find the work that was his sub-specialty in the U.S., returns to woodcarving, the art he learned in Wales, from his father, and is traditional. What he makes is where his mind has already traveled.

Our actions and creativity intersect, often, with what it is we haven’t quite worked out in other ways. It’s part of the affliction agony — a kind of tortured sweetness. 

Perfect for a love story. 

Thank you, Mary Ann, for joining me on the blog today.  Mary Ann has graciously offered to host a giveaway of e-ARC copies of Live to three commenters chosen at random.  To participate in the giveaway (open internationally, I believe), please leave a comment about life, wanderlust, the urge to create, or the awesomeness of the name Hefin (or anything that strikes your fancy, honestly).  I’ll choose three people (with the help of random.org) at some point after 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, January 26.

In case you’re curious about Andy Goldsworthy.

The Regency Separation – Guest post by Lily Dalton

I get really excited about debut authors and their books — so much promise and freshness and hope, you know? — so I was thrilled to invite Lily Dalton, author of the new release Never Desire a Duke, to come on the blog to talk about things.  And yes, I really was that vague.

Cover image, Never Desire a Duke by Lily Dalton

Take it away, Lily!

Hello there! Thank you for having me here on Reading with Analysis to talk about my debut release, Never Desire a Duke. The book opens with a married couple, Vane and Sophia, the Duke and Duchess of Claxton. Although they enjoyed a happy and passionate first year of marriage, they have become hopelessly estranged in the aftermath of a heartbreaking tragedy. Things are so frigid between them that Sophia can’t imagine continuing on as they are, let alone ever allowing the duke to touch her again. So she makes the difficult decision to ask him for a separation.

Why not a divorce, you ask? In the Regency, a man could submit to Parliament for a divorce by proving that his wife had committed adultery. I have no doubt that numerous wives fell on the proverbial sword and accepted the title of adulteress and the associated scandal that came along with it, just to escape marriage to an odious man, but Sophia would never falsely confess to such a thing. Even if she had, the powers that be thoroughly investigated all allegations and circumstances to be certain the couple hadn’t conspired to manufacture facts so that they could obtain a divorce.

As for women in the Regency, it was nearly impossible for them to obtain a divorce. And when I say impossible, I mean impossible. Really, the only cause under which she could obtain one would be to show “extreme cruelty” which was exceedingly difficult to substantiate, or to prove that her husband was involved in “incest”, which meant flagrantly having an affair with her sister. What if he was neglectful or abusive? It wasn’t enough. If he committed adultery a hundred times? They must remain married. If he went wildly insane? He remained her husband. In a ten year period, there were only 3-4 divorces granted to women and only under the worst of circumstances.

However, for a miserable upper class couple, a separation was always within reach. There were very public separations that resulted in great scandals because details were filed with the courts, and everyone got to hear their dirty laundry and the financial demands being made by both sides. More popular, though, were private separations. Private separations could range from an agreement to continue to live under the same roof, while sleeping behind locked doors, to a more drastic drawing up of documents to specify separate residences, custody of the children, the division of property and payment of alimony. What I enjoyed learning was that women, under these circumstances, could inflict all sorts of terrible punishments on their awful husbands. By my research, the key to this was having the support of one’s influential family, and more importantly, a male member of the family to champion her, which my character Sophia’s loving grandfather, Lord Wolverton, would do without question.

Along those lines, I really enjoyed reading instances where the wives, in their legal maneuverings, could truly string their husbands up by the…er…cojones (if you don’t know Spanish, do a quick Google search!) to obtain the beneficial outcome they wanted. The upper classes rarely married for love, but instead for financial benefit, power and connection. In many circumstances, when the woman had brought a large amount of wealth or source of income into the marriage, it served the man well to woo his wife back, to improve his own circumstances. As such, there are many instances of couples separating, only to reconcile, and then perhaps separate again. Likewise, if a woman felt the financial promises made in a private agreement were not being upheld, she might threaten her husband with a formal petition to the courts and the public embarrassment of having his sins aired publicly for all of society to see.

If you’re interested in reading further, I’d enthusiastically suggest Broken Lives: Separation and Divorce in England 1660-1857, and Road to Divorce: England 1530-1987, both written by Lawrence Stone. More specific to the Regency period, I particularly found interesting the years-long saga of George and Emily Westmeath, two ill behaved people who spent decades tormenting each other. Mutual seduction! Scheming! Blackmail! Their relationship had it all.

I hope this post has been interesting to your readers, and again, thank you so much for having me!

Thank you, Lily!  I bet George and Emily Westmeath made more than a few dinner parties spectacularly awkward in their day.  (Is it weird that I kind of want to see those shenanigans, were time travel not an issue?)

Anyway, Never Desire a Duke was released on Sept. 24, 2013 as an e-book and mass-market paperback by Forever,   For more information about the book, click on the cover image above to visit its page on Goodreads.  If you’re curious about this Lily Dalton person, and I think you ought to be, please check her out on Facebook or Twitter (or Goodreads).  Or you could be traditional and check out her website.

Lily Dalton grew up as an Army brat, moving from place to place. Her first stop after relocating was always the local library, where she could hang out with familiar friends: Books! Lily has an English degree from Texas A & M University and after graduation worked as a legal assistant in the fields of accident reconstruction and litigation. She now lives in Houston, Texas, with her family. When she isn’t at work on her next manuscript, she spends her time trying out new recipes, cheering on her favorite Texas football teams and collecting old dishes, vintage linens and other fine “junque” from thrift stores and flea markets.