November 27, 2010 – 6:23 pm
Adding a link to a book review I published last summer in the online Journal of Popular Romance Studies. The book’s called A Vindication of Love: Reclaiming Romance for the Twenty-First Century. The author’s Cristina Nehring. Needless to say, Nehring never once mentions the popular romance genre or its not-too-shabbily sized readership. But there are [...]
October 2, 2009 – 10:12 am
Just a quick reminder that it ends tomorrow. So do celebrate by contemplating all the treasures someone, somewhere, sometime wanted to keep you from reading. I’m having my say about it today over at History Hoydens — do come by or comment here. And a quick question: do you know of any romance novel that [...]
September 12, 2009 – 7:21 am
That’s what my latest post at History Hoydens is about. The whole title being Sex and (the historical) Sensibility: Sickness, Seaside, Seduction. Plus a lot of interesting comments… Do you think Jane Austen wrote romances, novels or both? Let me know. A very Pam-ish post, I think, replete with fact, fetishism, and all the other [...]
August 21, 2009 – 2:05 pm
Actually, I am today — blogging away at History Hoydens about the research I’m doing, about the clothing Regency fashion prescribed for sailing and what people most likely actually wore. And (most important for a writer) how to describe all that. With nods (of course) to Jane Austen, Shelley and his circle, and fashionistas everywhere. [...]
Tomorrow, Friday the 10th, I’ll have a post at History Hoydens that I particularly enjoyed writing. It’s called “Umberto Eco, Barbara Cartland, and Me: Saying I Love You in Historical Romance.” And it’s about how, as a romance reader, it’s exclusively historicals for me (well, almost exclusively — sometime I’ll write about the exception cases). [...]
Yes that’s me, in shades and a distressingly unflattering hat (not mine), in a boat (not the leaky one I still have to tell you about) on Lake Chacahua in Mexico. But the pic of the hotel we stayed at on the shore is accurate and worth your attention. It’s called La Almendra — you [...]
September 19, 2008 – 11:51 am
I subscribe to Wordsmith.org, a site that emails me a new word a day. Unlike other such sites I’ve seen, this one really does teach about new words and meanings, but the truth is that most days I simply cast my eyes over the words and definitions and go on to more pressing matters. But [...]
I admire authors who turn from one project to the next with ease and grace, but sad experience has taught me that I’m not one of them. In fact, the best evocation of how I feel when I finish a book might be found here, on YouTube. Jangly, neurotic, utterly confused about how I got [...]
One of the greatest pleasures of reading (the one that hooks you, I think, when you’re too young and vulnerable to fight back) is discovering thoughts and ideas — in print! on the page! — that you were sure nobody but you ever thought. Things that weren’t quite right to think, but there they are… [...]
