What is Your Dream Home?

by Christine Wells

It's no secret in the lair that the Wells house is undergoing a major renovation at the moment. We have moved out while this is going on but I often drive to or past the site and feel both exhilarated and slightly nauseous at the mammoth task ahead.

I spent hours this morning choosing tapware, sinks, toilets and baths. I felt that I was quite decisive (for a Libran!) It's amazing how quickly you can make up your mind when your builder gives you a bare weekend to do it. The fun part of choosing wall colours and tiles is yet to come and I daresay I'll spend a lot more time on those things because that's what interests me more than plumbing.

But it got me to thinking about dream homes and in particular, fictional homes.

I grew up on a diet of European fairytales and traditional English books like The Children of Cherry Tree Farm, so the homes I imagined for myself were usually situated at the edge of a wood, surrounded by fields of wildflowers. There'd be a great stone hearth in the living room and patchwork quilts on the beds. (That's when I wasn't imagining myself in a Hobbit house or a gingerbread cottage or Green Gables--not that I actually knew what gables were).

Of course, discovering Regency romance took me away from fairytale cottages to enormous Palladian mansions and landscaping by Capability Brown. Chinese silk wall hangings would cover my bedroom wall and of course I would have a separate chamber for my extensive designer wardrobe.

But the reality of living in subtropical Australia (not to mention one's budget!) does tend to limit options somewhat. In fact, I love my 1920s Queenslander home with its gables (yep, I know what they are now!) and big deck and polished wood floors and tongue-and-groove walls. I miss living there and it's only been a couple of months. I'm going to be terribly homesick before the work on it is finished!

But the gorgeous photos Christie posted of her finished renovation give me hope. In the meantime, I can still dream of Pemberley...

What fictional (or real) house would you love to live in? What luxury feature do you think is essential in a dream home?Source URL: https://plasticsurgerycelebrities.blogspot.com/search/label/Settings
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The Place in the Story, the Story in the Place

by Nancy

Sorry, everyone, about the delay. We had a little glitch this morning, but we're up and running now.

Every story takes place somewhere, and the "where" often influences the story. What would Wuthering Heights be without the windswept loneliness of the moors? Or LOTR, without the contrasts of the soft. green beauty of the Shire, the elven elegance of Lothlorien, and the arid hostility of Mordor? Or the Darkhunters, without the moody atmosphere of New Orleans?

Not as effective, I think. In each instance, the setting plays a role in the story. It reinforces mood and, at least in the case of Sauron's Mordor and Galadriel's Lothlorien, says something about those who inhabit it. (Notice how I resisted the urge to stick in a picture of Viggo Mortenson as Aragorn. But I thought about it.)

Historicals don't always take place in castles, of course. The post-medievals tend to involve manor houses and London townhouses. But each place says something about the people who inhabit it. And each era has its own conflicts and problems that can shape a story.

When I first started reading historical romance, there was much more variety in settings. The Caribbean was big. Pirates, y'know? Sabrina Jeffries' The Pirate Lord is a wonderful example. The first pirate romance I read was Shirley Busbee's The Spanish Rose, which is still on my keeper shelf. At the other end of the alphabet sits Kathleen Woodiwiss' Shanna, whose fabulous Ruark did a turn as a pirate. Claudia Dain's debut novel was a superb pirate book, Tell Me Lies.

Now that Pirates of the Caribbean has been so big, I wonder if pirates will enjoy a big resurgence. So far, that doesn't seem to be happening.

Elizabethan England used to pop up from time to time. So did Revolutionary America. Then Regency England exploded and shoved lots of other choices to the side. Medievals are still hanging in, but they're more or less a niche market. Victorian seems to have blossomed but only if they're set in England.

I once heard an editor say every period has its fans, but profitability depends on having most of the books in a line set in the most popular periods. Much as I wish it were otherwise, this makes a certain amount of sense. Science fiction, fantasy, and mystery novels tend to be less restricted in setting, but in romance, we want a comfort book, and maybe part of that is a desire for the familiar, which means periods readers already know.

My 2006 finalist and its sequel were set in the English Restoration (so named because Charles II's 1660 return from exile after Oliver Cromwell died "restored" the English monarchy). I once heard an author (not me, honestly and truly) ask an editor about that period in a Q&A. The editor wrinkled her nose. "Restoraaaation," she said, sort of in the same tone you might use if you said, "I smell rotten fish in the kitchen." After a moment, she said, "I don't think that period really keys into reader fantasies."

If you look at the wardrobe, you can understand why. I mean, seriously, can you see this guy buckling a swash? As Jayne Anne Krentz said in her wonderful book Dangerous Men, Adventurous Women, readers want to identify with the heroine and fall in love with the hero. Foppish heroes who dress kind of like we readers envision heroines don't really have that appeal. I love the period because it's so rich in conflict and tension and deprivation and decadence, but it's not big with most readers. There are a few authors out there dipping into it, but most of them tend not to stay there.

And just so we all know, my heroes avoided contemporary fashion, which they thought was impractical. One was a naval officer who wouldn't wear anything that made climbing the rigging more dangerous than it already was, and the other was an earl and ex-soldier who had no patience with frills and furbelows (I love that phrase, but I had to look up the latter word. A furbelow is a showy frill or pleating).

As I became more educated about the market, I put that period aside and moved to the medieval era instead. For pure flash and dash, I don't think any dynasty in the history of any country can beat England's Plantagenets, though the post-Conquest Normans offer a lot of conflict, as do the Dark Ages. The advantage of being a history geek is having a great many periods one loves.

Contemporaries also make great use of setting. Urban paranormals play off the shiny glass and steel and the gritty slums of cities. Small towns bring in the sense of community and the sometimes unfortunate awareness of everyone else's business.

What settings do you love, and why? What's your favorite book set in a historical time period or your favorite contemporary where setting plays a part? If you could read a book set anywhere and anywhen, from the dawn of time to the far future, what would you pick?Source URL: https://plasticsurgerycelebrities.blogspot.com/search/label/Settings
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Location, Location, Location!

by Christine Wells

Recently, I had the rather surreal experience of looking for a house to live in while also searching for a location in which to set my next historical romance. You will understand that I felt rather embittered by the contrast between the mansions my fictitious heroines get to swan around in and the type of house to which my budget stretches.

One might call it "Palace Envy".*G*

Where I live, many houses are made of wood in the traditional style we call the Queenslander. These houses were built with a view to minimizing the subtropical heat. They're set up on stilts so that air can flow through in a kind of natural cooling system. Quite different from English houses that are designed to hold the heat in, as well as accommodate a large number of people, including servants.

However, despite the obvious differences, the process of finding a house for me and for my heroine is quite similar. While looking for abodes for my family to abide in while our house is renovated, I had a list of criteria to shop for:

Location (not built on a train line or next to an electricity substation, close to my son's school, etc)

Number of bedrooms (extra points if room for a study for yours truly)

Decent bathrooms and kitchen, room for children and Monty the dog to play (fenced, of course).

Likewise, when searching for a suitably palatial setting for my books, I have loose criteria such as period, place, surroundings, layout, where on the scale of grandeur this house has to fit given the status and wealth of its occupants, and how it might accommodate scenes that are already dancing through my head or inspire new ones.

Now, a fictional place doesn't have to be based on a real one, of course and if I can't find a suitable house, I make it up. I also modify the interior layout but I do like to start with what is typical in that type of house.

In the eras from which my Regency houses date, they tended to use local materials--local stone, such as the gorgeous honey coloured Ham Hill stone they used to build Montacute House in Somerset (top, left).

I set SWEETEST LITTLE SIN partly at the villain's estate and I had great fun researching that one. I wanted Radleigh to be a parvenu, a social climber who had appeared in London after supposedly making his fortune abroad.

I found an excellent house in Sezincote, an Indian phantasmagoria that inspired the Brighton Pavillion. It boasts a wonderful copper minaret and spear-like poles that give the illusion of an exotic tent. The drive is guarded by bronze elephants and there are all kinds of interesting grottos and gardens dotted around the estate that continue the Indian theme, a mixture of Hindu and Islamic motifs that echo the attempt of Mogul ruler Akbar to integrate the two cultures.

I think it's rather gorgeous, but of course the nobility at the time would have turned up their noses, just as they did when Prinny built his summer palace at the seaside. To quote one wit in SWEETEST LITTLE SIN, "It was as if an Indian palace had mated with an English manor and spawned a particularly hideous child."
Was that unfair? I'll leave it for you to judge.

Just a note--the Hindu pavillion with all the erotic carvings came from my other research and my imagination--not from Sezincote. But perhaps you'll have fun spotting the settings that do.

So here's my question to you, gentle readers! What house or setting from a romance novel would you love to have for your own and why? One reader will win a signed copy of SWEETEST LITTLE SIN when it comes out in May.Source URL: https://plasticsurgerycelebrities.blogspot.com/search/label/Settings
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