Rose Lerner

The Severed Hand of Franklin

1. I’m guest-blogging over at The Season today! I talk about costume drama monster movies I’d like to see (like vampire Crusaders or Lieutenant Hornblower and the Kraken). The person to suggest my favorite costume drama monster movie concept in the comments gets a signed book!

2. I wrote a feature for the Dorchester website. My heroine Penelope from In for a Penny has a habit of making lists (um, you can probably tell from this post that I based that on myself), and three of her lists are up here: one from when she was eleven, entitled “Reasons Why Lucy Hopper is the worst girl in the world,” one set after the end of the book called “Possible Christmas gifts for Nev,” and a list of baby names with annotations from Nev!

I had a lot of fun making them–the font for Penelope is designed to look like Jane Austen’s handwriting, it’s really cool and you can get it here, and the font for Nev is supposed to look like Byron’s handwriting and you can get it here. I sort of love that, because man would Jane Austen and Byron have a TERRIBLE marriage.

3. Yesterday was my official release date! Yay! BUT I have yet to see the books on shelves anywhere. I’ve been checking the B&N websites “find in stores” feature obsessively and it isn’t in stock anywhere yet! I’m assuming this is why it’s listed as a March release, but I want to see my book on the shelf! If anyone sees it, let me know okay? And if you send me a picture, I’ll send you a signed book! (Open to first three people only. I mean not that I expect more than that but you know, it’s important to set boundaries.)

Madame, I never eat Muscatel grapes

[cw: racism]

My blog tour continues today! I’m talking about my deep-seated ambivalence about Georgette Heyer, Jane Austen, and trying to be taken seriously over at the Book Smugglers. (Note: I DO mean “ambivalence.” I love Georgette Heyer and Jane Austen a LOT.) There are also hilarious pictures of My Family’s Poor Fashion Choices Through Time. Go over and read it! (And check out the Smugglers’ awesome blog!) I’m giving away a signed book in the comments.

Smuggler Ana also posted my very first review! And she was very kind to me. Is it tacky to link to reviews? It just seems weird not to when I’m linking to my guest post.

In other news, my friend Alice just linked me to this article about a new Alexandre Dumas biopic. They’ve cast Gerard Depardieu to play Dumas and are darkening his skin and putting him in a curly wig for the role. Because if you didn’t know, Alexandre Dumas was part black. Here’s a picture of him:

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hurrah for love! Here are two poems by Emily Dickinson about love. I know from experience that Valentine’s Day can be a bummer if you’re not with someone, so the first one is about break-ups:

341.

After great pain, a formal feeling comes–
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs–
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round–
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought–
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone–

This is the Hour of Lead–
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow–
First–Chill–then Stupor–then the letting go–

And here’s a more cheerful one, small and simple and surprisingly sexy.

55.

By Chivalries as tiny,
A Blossom, or a Book,
The seeds of smiles are planted–
Which blossom in the dark.

And now for something completely different: apparently In for a Penny is shipping from Amazon already! Several people e-mailed or called me yesterday to tell me their copies had arrived!

EEEE!

And now a comic: Kate Beaton’s Susan B. Anthony for kids.

What’s a poem that you think really captures something (happy or painful or anything else) about the experience of being in love?

Breaking news!

I know two posts in one day is a bit much (my eventual goal is one a week) but something important has happened! My wonderful editor Leah Hultenschmidt sent me a copy of my book so I could see it while waiting for my author copies!!!!!

Yes, I really did have to use that many exclamation points. And now, pictures! In my excitement I am vaguely reminiscent of a lemur, but hey, I like lemurs.

Book! (Note my awesome lobster sheets.)

The copyright page!

About the Author! That’s me!

Life is good.

I don't do anything so mean, I don't even sell apples!

My blog tour starts today! You can read my post about classism in Regency England over at History Hoydens. Here’s the opening:

When I started writing In for a Penny, about a rich brewer’s daughter who marries an impoverished earl, I realized I was going to have to do some research to figure out how people in the Regency thought about class. I had general ideas, obviously, but if I was going to write about my heroine from the point of view of my antagonist, the snobby poacher-hating Tory Sir Jasper, or write about my heroine meeting the hero’s newly-middle-class tenant farmers, I needed to understand more.

I quickly discovered that there were endless gradations, just as there are today:

1. A biography of Hannah More tells this story: the Duchess of Gloucester “desired one of her ladies to stop an orange-woman and ask her if she ever sold ballads. ‘No indeed,’ said the woman, ‘I don’t do anything so mean, I don’t even sell apples!'”

And I’m giving away a signed copy of my book in the comments, too. Check it out!

Contest and other news!

Hi all! In honor of my first book (which will hit shelves in just over three weeks!) I’m running a contest at my site! I’ll be giving away five signed copies of In for a Penny, and one lucky winner will get my Regency Starter Pack—10 of my favorite books! This is an awesome prize, if I do say so myself, so get over there and enter!

I’ve also got a preliminary schedule for my blog tour and signings up on my site index—more dates coming soon! But mark your calendars, my first signing will be at Third Place Books (in Lake Forest Park, WA) on April 2nd at 6:30PM! It’s going to be awesome and you should all come.

And so this post doesn’t consist entirely of shameless self-promotion, here’s a really interesting post about female sexuality in romance from Dear Author (which is a couple weeks old now, so maybe you’ve all read it already, but if you haven’t, do it now):

So going back to the question of whether these views mirror some biological or psychological or historical imperative, even if all that were true, I don’t think it’s the critical issue. For me, the critical issue is that as a society we continue to value a woman’s sexual status and we give value to women (or take it away) based on this status.

Also, my critique partner Susan Wilbanks is doing a really cool series on how to use British titles and courtesy titles, using examples from the Peter Wimsey books and the Duke of Wellington’s family: “Of Wimseys and Wellesleys“! Since title errors pull me out of a story faster than a speeding bullet, I’m pretty excited about this. Especially since I use the Wimsey family to remember lots of the rules myself (Gaudy Night is one of my top romances EVER).

EVERYTHING'S COMING UP ROSES!

“Rose Lerner’s LILY AMONG THORNS, in which a young woman innkeeper who has worked hard to bury her past finds herself facing the man who long ago helped her escape her life as a prostitute and is now turning to her for her help; she believes the biggest threat to her independence are the sparks that fly between them until disaster threatens and she finds they must work together to fight for their freedom and their lives, to Leah Hultenschmidt at Dorchester, for publication in January 2011, by Kevan Lyon at Marsal Lyon Literary Agency (World).”

This was in Publisher’s Marketplace yesterday! Yes! I sold another book!

Pretty much all the details I have so far are in that announcement–I just got the call from Kevan on Tuesday and I think I might have burst her eardrum screaming into the phone–but I’ll keep you posted!

::chair-dances::

Oh, say, can you see by the dawnzer lee light?

I recently learned a new word: mondegreens. A “mondegreen” is, as defined by Wikipedia, “the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase, typically a standardized phrase such as a line in a poem or a lyric in a song, due to near homophony, in a way that yields a new meaning to the phrase.”

The term was coined by Sylvia Wright, who said, “When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy’s Reliques, and one of my favorite poems began, as I remember:

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl Amurray,
And Lady Mondegreen.“

The actual fourth line is “And laid him on the green.” As Wright explained the need for a new term, “The point about what I shall hereafter call mondegreens, since no one else has thought up a word for them, is that they are better than the original.”

So the thing you have to understand about me is that I am absolutely terrible at understanding song lyrics. I have a LOT of trouble picking out words, even though words are often the most important part of a song to me because I’m a writer and not very musical. I frequently have to look up lyrics of a song I love, or it irks me EVERY TIME I hear the song. “STOP MUMBLING!” I shout at the radio. So I frequently have the experience of discovering that I was totally, 100% wrong about what a singer was saying.

I don’t know why it is that what I make up for myself is so often more satisfying to me that the real lyric. Is it just because I’m used to it, having listened to the song that way so many times? Or is it because, making it up myself, I naturally made it up in a way I liked, a way that resonated with me?

The most recent example is from Bob Dylan’s love song, “Sad-eyed Lady of the Lowlands.” I love that song. I love it a lot. I love it so much that I love a whole OTHER Bob Dylan love song, “Sarah,” just because it has the line, “Staying up for days in the Chelsea Hotel/Writing ‘Sad-eyed Lady of the Lowlands’ for you.” (This despite having no romantic feelings about Bob Dylan AT ALL, as he seems like kind of a jerk.) But I have always, always, ever since I first heard the song when I was 16, thought that the second line was, “And your eyes like smoke and your breasts like rhymes.”

Turns out it’s actually prayers like rhymes. Which, there’s nothing wrong with that as a line. It’s a nice line, even. But I loved my own interpretation. I thought it was the most romantic, sexy simile ever. (For a writer, I guess words are the most erotic thing someone can compare you to.)

And now I’ve heard it the right way and I’ll never be able to unhear it. And I’m kind of disproportionately saddened by that.

When’s the last time you’ve been disappointed by finding out the actual lyrics to a song?

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

In for a Penny is listed on Amazon!!!! I had been checking it obsessively for a while to no avail and had finally given up, figuring it wouldn’t be up until a couple of months before publication. Then last week my friend Paul Pollack (who, by the way, just published a lovely number theory textbook, “Not Always Buried Deep“) IMed to say “Hey, your book’s on Amazon!” There may have been chair-dancing.

Look! It’s my book! Available for pre-order!

I have arrived.

My trip to the UK!

It’s been almost a month since I got back from the UK, and it’s taken me this long to organize and upload all my pictures. But my trip was AMAZING. We started out in Newcastle, where we spent most of our time on our friend’s couch giggling and watching TV–“Black Books” is my new favorite thing!–but also managed to take in a castle and gardens, some art museums, and lovely architecture. One of my favorite things about the UK is how old stuff lives right alongside new stuff: in Newcastle I saw Tudor wattle-and-daub buildings jostling Georgian Neoclassical stone, Victorian townhouses, and modern glass-and-steel.

Then we took a train, bus, and ferry up to Orkney. I was horribly seasick on the ferry, which I didn’t expect because I’ve never had a problem with boats before. You know those scenes when characters are crossing the Channel and someone’s seasick and they’re lying there shaking and moaning, “I’m dying, I know it”? I always thought those were an exaggeration but no, it is exactly like that.

Orkney is, hands down, the most beautiful place I’ve ever been, and its history is fascinating too. I was lucky enough to be staying with a friend who works for Historic Scotland so she had all kinds of great information and recommended a couple books as well. I’ll be setting a book there sooner rather than later, I think. I was also pathetically amazed by the sight of cows and sheep grazing right at the edge of the sea. As an American, I’m just not used to the lack of beaches!

Then we drove down to Edinburgh and spent a few days there before flying home. My friend took us on the scenic route through the Highlands, and wow. I get what the big deal is now. (There were sheep on the highway, too, in case you were wondering.)

We also discovered that the most popular brand of oatmeal in Scotland has this picture on the box. I think it’s the shotput that makes it.

I’ve uploaded all my best pictures to flickr. You can see them here. To whet your appetite, here are some of my favorites (I apologize for the sides being cut off, I can’t figure out how to make it not do that):

The Poison Gardens at Alnwick. Our guide was a truly macabre elderly woman in a sweater set, who kept making pronouncements like, “Two berries from this plant will kill a small child in ten hours. If you grind the berries into powder and sprinkle them on the ground, you will become invisible.”

I told you Orkney was beautiful:

These are naturally occuring steps in the rocks by the sea. What a great place for a kissing scene!

This chapel was built out by Italian POWs during World War II so that they would have a place to hold Catholic services. They used two Nissen huts, some plaster, and leftover concrete from the causeways they were building. Here’s the Wikipedia article–it’s a fascinating story and the chapel is beautiful.

And now for something completely different! This stuff was everywhere in Edinburgh.