Historical Romance

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Guest Post ~ Julie Klassen on “A Jane Austen Promenade” ~ Blog Tour and Giveaways for “The Innkeeper of Ivy Hill”

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Dear Gentle Readers: Please join me today as I welcome Julie Klassen with a guest post in celebration of the release of her newest book The Innkeeper of Ivy Hill. Julie tells of visiting Bath this past September for the Jane Austen Festival and the joys of dressing the part – Regency-style – for both she and her husband Brian. Below her guest post is information on her book and how you can enter to win the giveaways.

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A Jane Austen Promenade
by Julie Klassen

This year, for the first time, I attended the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, England. The festival, held every September, draws hundreds of Jane Austen fans (like me) to one of the biggest gatherings of Regency reenactors in the world.

lrbrian_cravatOn Saturday, my husband and I participated in the “Grand Regency Costumed Promenade.” The Bath Jane Austen Festival achieved the Guinness World Record for “The largest gathering of people dressed in Regency costumes” in 2009 at 409. The number rose up to 550 in 2014. Since Bath already holds the record, they did not try to set a new one this year. Instead, we paraded through the streets of this historic city simply to enjoy ourselves, honor Jane Austen, and entertain the hundreds of onlookers who lined the parade route—locals as well as tourists from all over the world. This was fine with me, because I was not terribly interested in setting a world record, but I was determined to dress my husband as Mr. Darcy, and knew this would be my best chance.

Months ahead of time, we contacted an historical costume maker in England who has made similar gentleman’s attire. She sent us fabric swatches and I sent her Brian’s measurements. After some postal delays, we received the outfit. It did not fit Brian well at all at first—likely due to my poor measuring skills. But thankfully a friend-of-a-friend is a skilled seamstress, and she altered the pieces to fit Brian better. I also ordered Brian a top hat, gentlemen’s historically-accurate silk stockings, and pointy-toed shoes, which allowed him to dance at the ball better than he could in tall riding boots. You really can find almost anything online. He also wore his old Bell Ringer gloves. I didn’t bring any “how to tie a cravat” instructions, but thankfully another participant helped Brian tie his.

lrbrianjulieBrian’s cutaway frockcoat is a bit more Georgian in style than true Regency, which worked better with his build, though he had to add suspenders to keep up those high-waisted breeches.

And I want you to notice his long sideburns or “side-whiskers” as they were called, which he grew out to please me and look more the part of an early 19th century gentleman.

I wore my new bonnet and the spencer jacket I blogged about previously (made by Matti’s Millinery), over my gold gown (made by my niece), as well as gloves and reticule. I also brought a silk parasol. The style is not 100% historically accurate, but with rain in the forecast, I decided it was “better safe than sorry.”

And, unfortunately, it rained a LOT during the promenade, and I was very glad indeed to have the waterproof umbrella. The streets and paths we trod were wet and dirty and I saw several ladies with hems “six inches deep in mud,” to quote Pride and Prejudice. But rain or shine, it was an enjoyable time anyway.

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Have you ever participated in a Regency costume party or reenactment?
What did you wear?

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The Giveaways!

Please comment below about your own Regency fashion experiences and you will be entered into the random drawing for two giveaways! The winner will receive a $20 Teavana gift card and a package of four inspirational British romances from four different eras (The Innkeeper of Ivy Hill by Julie Klassen, A Haven on Orchard Lane by Lawana Blackwell, The Lost Heiress by Roseanna M. White, Not by Sight by Kate Breslin). Deadline is December 21st – the winner will be notified on December 22.

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Here’s the blog tour schedule (you can comment on any of the blogs to be entered into the drawing):

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cover-innkeeperAbout The Innkeeper of Ivy Hill:

The lifeblood of the village of Ivy Hill is its coaching inn, The Bell. When the innkeeper dies suddenly, his genteel wife, Jane Bell, becomes the reluctant landlady. Jane has no idea how to manage a business, but with the town’s livelihood at stake and a large loan due, she must quickly find a way to save the inn.

Despite their strained relationship, Jane turns to her resentful mother-in-law, Thora, for help. Formerly mistress of The Bell, Thora is struggling to overcome her losses and find purpose for the future. As she works with Jane, two men from her past vie for her attention, but Thora has promised herself never to marry again. Will one of them convince her to embrace a second chance at love?

As pressure mounts from the bank, Jane employs new methods, and puzzles over the intentions of several men who seem to have a vested interest in the place, including a mysterious newcomer with secret plans of his own. With the help of friends old and new, can Jane restore life to the inn, and to her empty heart as well?

Visit talesfromivyhill.com to find a map of the village, character profiles, a book giveaway, and more!

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My thoughts:

I will say that Julie has done it again! – offering her readers a fully-developed world in a small English village during the Regency period, this time an intriguing tale of Inn-keeping – we have: Coaching inns and Carriages; Women characters in precarious positions trying to manage in a patriarchal world; there is Cookery and housekeeping details (love this!); every character has a secret and there is a mystery to be solved; and of course there is Love – of various sorts and with a fair amount of guessing as to who might be best suited. This is Book I of Julie’s projected series of three books – all with characters introduced here. As Julie says in her interview on the blog From Pemberley to Milton:

The series tells the stories of four women facing life-altering challenges with the help of their quirky neighbors and intriguing newcomers. Each novel will have a romance and drama wrap up in a hopefully satisfying way, while the main character’s story spans all three books. The series celebrates the strong bonds of friendship, because in a small village like Ivy Hill, everyone is connected, like leaves on a vine.

Book II, The Ladies of Ivy Cottage will be released in December 2017, and Book III, The Bride of Ivy Green, December 2018. I am only disappointed that I must wait so long to engage with these endearing characters once more!

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For more on Julie’s trip to England to research her novels, here’s her tour of Lacock Village,
the inspiration for The Innkeeper of Ivy Hill:

**(You might be interested to know that Julie is going to be leading a tour next September (2017) to many of the places that have served as inspiration for her novels. You can view details here: http://concertandstudytours.com/julie-klassen-coast-tour/).

klassen_julie1About Julie:

JULIE KLASSEN loves all things Jane–Jane Eyre and Jane Austen. A graduate of the University of Illinois, Julie worked in publishing for sixteen years and now writes full-time. Her books have been honored with the Christy Award for Historical Romance, the Minnesota Book Award, and the Midwest Book Award, among others. Julie and her husband have two sons and live in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota. For more information, visit www.julieklassen.com and also at these author links:

 |  Facebook  |  Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Goodreads

You can find The Innkeeper of Ivy Hill here: [ISBN  9780764218132]  Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

A hearty thank you to Amy Green of Bethany House Publishers and to Julie Klassen for inviting me to join this Blog Tour. Don’t forget to comment to be entered into the drawing – Good luck one and all and Happy Reading!

c2016 Jane Austen in Vermont
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Julie Klassen’s “The Innkeeper of Ivy Hill” ~ Blog Tour Schedule and Giveaways

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Julie Klassen’s latest book, The Innkeeper of Ivy Hill, has just been released and there are various bloggers offering up reviews, excerpts, interviews and guest posts. I will be posting about the book on December 20th, but wanted you to see and follow the other posts that began on December 5th – please be sure to comment on any of the blogs in order to be entered into the random drawing: the winner will receive a $20 Teavana gift card and a package of four inspirational British romances from four different eras (The Innkeeper of Ivy Hill by Julie Klassen, A Haven on Orchard Lane by Lawana Blackwell, The Lost Heiress by Roseanna M. White, Not by Sight by Kate Breslin). The winner will be notified on December 22.

Here’s the blog tour schedule:

The Prizes:

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Stay tuned for my post on December 20th, where Julie tells of attending the Jane Austen Festival in Bath this past September!

c2016 Jane Austen in Vermont
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The Truth is Out ~ Georgette Heyer & Barbara Cartland

Those who have read anything of Georgette Heyer, her writings, and her life know about the hushed-up squabble with another romance writer during the 1950s – Heyer chose not to sue for plagiarism, but Heyer had her say and the writer was “politely” asked to just stop it.  Now finally the story is out, Barbara Cartland the offender, all the juicy details to be revealed in Jennifer Kloester’s* new work, Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller, to be released this fall by Heinemann.

Here is the story from Bookseller.com:

Heinemann to explore Heyer’s plagiarism fury

29.07.11 | Benedicte Page

A literary plagiarism allegation from the 1950s is set to be given its first detailed airing in a new biography of much-loved novelist Georgette Heyer.

Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller by Jennifer Kloester (Wm Heinemann, hb, £20, October) reveals the outrage felt by the queen of witty regency romances at the obvious similarities between Barbara Cartland’s historical novel Knave of Hearts and her own youthful story These Old Shades (published in 1926), when they were brought to her attention in 1950.

“I think I could have borne it better had Miss Cartland not been so common-minded, so salacious and so illiterate,” Heyer told her agent, Leonard Parker Moore, in no uncertain terms. “I think ill enough of the Shades, but, good God! That 19-year-old work has more style, more of what it takes, than this offal which she has written at the age of 46!”

Heyer was also indignant at Cartland’s “borrowing” of various character names. “Sir Montagu Reversby”, a character in Cartland’s novel Hazard of Hearts, was blatantly pinched, Heyer felt, from Sir Montagu Revesby, a character in her novel Friday’s Child.

But it was Cartland’s historical and linguistic errors that really offended the writer‚ herself a stickler for accuracy. “She displays an abysmal ignorance of her period. Cheek by jowl with some piece of what I should call special knowledge (all of which I can point out in my books), one finds an anachronism so blatant as to show clearly that Miss Cartland knows rather less about the period than the average schoolgirl,” said Heyer, who told her agent she would “rather by far that a common thief broke in and stole all the silver”.

A solicitor’s letter to Cartland followed, and according to Kloester: “There is no record of a response . . . but Georgette later noted that ‚’the horrible copies of my books ceased abruptly’.”

Kloester’s biography has been written with the backing of Heyer’s son and the late Jane Aitken Hodge, whose own biography was entitled The Private World of Georgette Heyer. The book’s editor, Georgina Hawtrey-Woore, said the book contains much new material, including photos and 400 of Heyer’s letters.

 [Thanks to the Teach Me Tonight blog for the information]

*Dr. Jennifer Kloester’s previous book, Georgette Heyer’s Regency World, is an engaging fact-packed compilation of all things Heyer.  She visited the Word Wenches blog last November – you can read her interview here where she talks about this upcoming biography.

For further reading on Georgette Heyer, see my bibliography post here, as well as the link to all the book reviews from Austenprose‘s fabulous Heyer celebration last year.

Copyright @2011 by Deb Barnum, of Jane Austen in Vermont
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Interview with Louise Allen, Part II ~ Regency Romance, Heroes, and Thoughts on Writing

Book Giveaway! ~ See details at the end of this post.

I welcome again Louise Allen for the second part of my interview about her new book Walks Through Regency London ~ [click here for Part I]

JAIV:  Hello again Louise! – now let’s talk about your fiction: I have to make the embarrassing confession that I have not read any of your Regency romances! Your website says you write “Scandalously witty Regency romance” – how are you different from the other writers in this genre?

LA: I write romance, so obviously there is emotional intensity, but I have a well-developed sense of humour and I don’t enjoy writing about people who can’t laugh at themselves and the situation they find themselves in. A hero who isn’t witty isn’t quite a hero for me and my heroines, who all have a bit of me in them somewhere, are more likely to find the light side of any disaster, pick themselves up and carry on. And scandalous? Well, I’m told I write “hot” historicals – which means that I tend to have slightly older, more experienced and/or less conventional heroines who might have convincingly amorous encounters.

JAIV: What book would you suggest a “newbie” start with? [I promise to order a copy right away!]

LA:  Well, I’ve just won a CataRomance Reviewer’s Choice Award for The Lord & the Wayward Lady which is the first of a series of eight books I wrote with five other authors. I also wrote the seventh in the series, The Officer and the Proper Lady which I have to confess is a favourite of mine. Or you might like to start with a trilogy which comes out in the States later this year (August, September, November) – “The Transformation of the Shelley Sisters.” The first one is Practical Widow to Passionate Mistress.

JAIV:  You have several stand-alone titles and several titles in series – which do you prefer to write? Is it hard to let a character go when there is no sequel in the wings?

LA:  I do enjoy being able to stretch myself over a series and I love revisiting characters from earlier books. And yes, I hate letting my characters go! But it does make scheduling problems and there is more flexibility and variety with stand-alone books. My next one will be a singleton and I’m just starting it. Mills & Boon is producing a series set in historical houses owned by the National Trust, linking a fictional romance with real events and people, and I’m lucky enough to have been asked to do one. I’ve chosen Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire. When I’ve completed that I’ll be writing one set entirely in India in the 1790s.

JAIV:  This National Trust series sounds intriguing! Are any of your other characters based on historical figures?

LA:  I will occasionally have real characters “walking on” – the Prince Regent or Wellington for example – but all my heroes and heroines are entirely fictitious. I try very hard to make sure historical events take place as the records show and I’m not making people act out of character.

JAIV:  What is your writing process? – do you plan ahead or as you have said yourself do “the Hero and Heroine take over and sabotage all your efforts at discipline”?

LA:  I’m what is known in the business as a “pantser” – I fly by the seat of my pants into the fog – rather than being a planner. But I need to know my characters very well before I start, then I put them in a situation and I hope I can keep control of them!

JAIV:  Do you have a favorite character? – the Hero? The Heroine?

LA:  I need to be able to identify with the heroine – and hope my readers will too. And I have to be a little bit in love with the hero (luckily my husband is secure about this!). Some heroes though, stay with me – Hal Carlow in The Officer and the Proper Lady and Jack Ryder in The Dangerous Mr Ryder for example.

JAIV:  What makes a great Hero? A great Heroine?

LA:  My heroes have to be men of honour, even if sometimes that is buried rather deeply. They must have courage – physical and moral – and they need an edge of darkness, of danger. And a sense of humour, of course! Great heroines have the reader living the book with them – and I wish there was a recipe for achieving that. I know I’ve succeeded when my editor says (in a good way) “ was in tears over x or y”.

JAIV:  Do you believe in the transformation of the Rake, his redemption? –

LA:  That depends on the rake. There were some genuinely unpleasant and vicious Regency rakes. I believe that a man who has, for good reason, become cynical and cold and destructive can be redeemed by love, but there are things I wouldn’t countenance in one of my heroes.

JAIV:  How do you come up with names? Ravenhurst, Carlow, etc…

LA:  What a good question – I wish I knew the answer! I tell my subconscious to get on with it and end up with lists and jotted notes on every scrap of paper. Then I have to try them out and see what works. Sometimes a character insists on a different name and I have to give in.

JAIV:  If you were giving advice to budding writers, what would it be?

LA:  Write, write, write – you have to learn technique and you have to build your writing “muscles”. Listen to constructive advice from agents, publishers, published writers and think about what they are saying. But never over-polish your work so that you lose you unique “voice”.

JAIV:  Your covers – do you have input or is this out of your hands?

LA:  Out of my hands!

 
 
 

UK cover

 

US cover

 

  

                                                                   JAIV:  You mention that your last work is part of a “continuity series” of eight books written by six different authors. How ever did you all come together in such a task? And how different was the writing process for your two books in this series? – what are the other titles and authors, and should the series be read in order?

LA:  The editors at HMB in Richmond, London, put us together – we didn’t know each other so it was a sharp learning curve. Fortunately we got on very well together, which was a good thing as we had to come up with the over-arching mystery that links the books, all the characters and eight plots ourselves, subject to editorial approval. For me it meant I had to plan far more than I usually do and the process was slower as we were all writing at the same time and constantly checking back and forth to ensure continuity of plot and characterization, especially as we were all using each other’s characters. But it was a wonderful experience and we are still firm friends. The books can be read alone, but if read in order you also get to follow the mystery through to its conclusion. In order they are:

The Lord & the Wayward Lady (Louise Allen)

Paying the Virgin’s Price (Christine Merrill)

The Smuggler & the Society Bride (Julia Justiss)

Claiming the Forbidden Bride (Gayle Wilson)

The Viscount & the Virgin (Annie Burrows)

Unlacing the Innocent Miss (Margaret McPhee)

The Officer & the Proper Lady (Louise Allen)

Taken By the Wicked Rake (Christine Merrill)


JAIV: I am interested in your current “work in progress” – to be set in India – you have recently visited to inspire you and help in your research – I had the good fortune to visit India a few years ago and was so moved by the beauty of the people and the culture – what were your impressions? And what works are your reading for your historical research?

LA:  As I said above, this is now the book after next. I went to India last year and used some of that experience in my “Danger & Desire” trilogy (out in the States next year) but I wanted to do one set there entirely, and rather earlier than I usually write – the late 1700s. I love India, even at its most chaotic, and Rajasthan where we were in January had the most incredible palaces and forts, many of which we stayed in. I’m reading through a pile of quite academic material on the East India Company but I found William Dalrymple’s The White Moghuls very inspiring and for light relief there is always William Hickey – Memoirs of a Georgian Rake.

JAIV:  What is the most essential tool in marketing your work?

LA:  Constant contact with readers is paramount. I keep my website up to date, I tweet and I’ll do talks wherever and whenever I can. Next week I’m speaking at a US base in Norfolk!

JAIV:  And finally a question about the publishing aspect of books vs. Kindle [etc.] – I see that many of your works are available in the ebooks format – have you seen an increase in sales because of this?

LA:  I love books, but I love my Kindle too and I’m really pleased that many of my out of print books are becoming available in e-formats. It is too early to say what impact it is having on sales, but I don’t think there is any option other than to go along that route. Having said that, I can’t see the paper book dying any time soon, thank goodness.

JAIV:  And finally, what do you like to do when not writing??!

LA:  I read voraciously, travel, go antiquing, garden and talk endlessly to other writers.

JAIV:  Anything else you would like to say?

LA:  Thank you very much for having me! And do get in touch if you are coming to London – I’d love to meet members of your Society.

JAIV:  Thank you Louise for sharing your thoughts with us – You have been most generous with your time!  To All: Please look for my review of  Walks Through Regency London in Friday’s post.

Your turn! – if anyone has any questions of Louise, please ask away! – see details for the book giveaway below… You can visit Louise’s website here  and find her on Twitter @LouiseRegency

If you would like to order the Regency Walks book, you can do so directly from her website – I can attest to the book being mailed right away, arriving safe and sound and very quickly!

Book Giveaway:  Please enter the drawing for a copy of Walks Through Regency London, compliments of ‘Jane Austen in Vermont’, by asking Louise a question or commenting on any of the three posts about this book.  Drawing will take place next Wednesday 2 March 2011; comments accepted through 11 p.m. EST March 1st.  [Delivery worldwide.]

[All images from Louise Allen’s website, except the letter-writing sketch which seems to be everywhere…]

Copyright @2011, Deb Barnum, at Jane Austen in Vermont.

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Interview: Part I ~ Walking around Regency London with Louise Allen

NOTE:  Book giveaway! ~ see the end of this post for details!

 Please welcome author Louise Allen today as she answers questions about her new book on Regency London.  Louise is a very successful writer of historical Regency romances, over thirty-five titles to date!  Her interest in all things Regency is fed by constant research into the period, as well as the development of a fine collection of prints and ephemera from the era – all this to help in her writing. In December 2010 she released her first non-fiction work titled Walks Through Regency London [available direct from her at louiseallen [dot] regency [at] tiscali [dot] co [dot] uk

 

JAIV:  Thank you Louise for joining us here in Vermont today! I was so pleased to get your new book on Regency London hot off the press! – I ordered two copies and gave one to another London-obsessed friend and she is most enjoying your book!…we only wish we could both be in London together and exploring Town with your book in hand, rather than this armchair traveler thing! – hopefully, sometime soon…we’re working on it!

JAIV:  So first, tell us something about yourself.

LA:  Thank you very much for inviting me to join you – it is great to be in Vermont, even if only in cyberspace! I live in the East of England with my husband and we are about to move even further east, to a cottage on the North Norfolk coast. I was first published back in 1985 and for years I wrote alongside my full-time job as a property manager, but for the last three years I’ve been writing full-time and I love it.

JAIV:  When did you first discover your love of the Regency period? Why this time and place?

LA:  I think I first became aware of it when reading Georgette Heyer as a teenager. I’ve always been an historian – I studied landscape history, historical geography and archaeology at university – but it took me a while to settle on the “long” Regency as a period to write in. My first book was set during the English Civil War of the 17thc but my editor encouraged me to look at the Regency and I fell in love with it. I think it is because it occupies a transitional place between the agricultural and aristocratic world of the 18thc and the rapid technological change and urbanization of the Victorian era. Boundaries are always interesting and complex and it is also sufficiently different and yet recognizable, which makes it fascinating to write about. And I’m English, so English history felt right.

JAIV:  Did you read Jane Austen as well as Georgette Heyer? – do you re-read them? Which are your favorite titles, if it is possible to choose?

LA:  Yes, to both authors and yes to re-reading. Austen – I love Pride & Prejudice, but I find Sense & Sensibility more interesting. I was at Jane Austen’s house at Chawton last year and it was very moving to walk in her garden and to see her tiny writing table. Heyer favourites? The Grand Sophy and also The Toll Gate, which isn’t everyone’s choice, but I’m tall, so I identify with the heroine!

JAIV: You obviously use London and the London social scene in your fiction, and the need to be accurate has led you to amass a great deal of research through the years – hence your “Walks” book – what first prompted you to pull all this together and publish it?

LA:  My husband and I love walking, and we love London, so it was no hardship to start exploring when I wanted to check details. Then we got hooked and started exploring specific areas – when I looked at my notes and our photos I realized that I had the makings of a book.

JAIV:  You cite the 1807 The Picture of London guidebook as your main source. What other books did you use? – there are so many works on London – which are your favorite and why?

LA:  I use the 1807 guide because it is fun to take it for a walk where it must once have gone with its Regency owner – it is the real thing, much used and slightly battered. We also take the invaluable A-Z of Regency London published by the London Topographical Society. Their historical A-Zs are a brilliant resource. When I checked my shelves just now I found I have 55 reference books on London, so it is a problem to pick out just a few, but I would say The London Encyclopedia (published by Macmillan) is an essential. Peter Ackroyd’s London: The Biography is full of fascinating, unusual and often downright weird information and Dan Cruickshank’s book on the sensual life of London The Secret History of Georgian London is about so much more than sex.

JAIV:  What are your favorite haunts in London, for both Regency times and the present?

LA:  The St James’s area is the best preserved Georgian/Regency quarter. Soho is endlessly fascinating – so many layers of history. The City, although it has been leveled by the great fire and then again by the Blitz still preserves its medieval street patterns and modern office blocks must contort themselves to fit the shape of some ancient workhouse or monastery cloister. You can even see the curved walls of Newgate Prison fossilized in the shape of an ultra modern building. But it is hard to find a part of London that isn’t interesting if you are prepared to be very nosy!

JAIV:  The book is fact-filled and anecdotal, and culled from so much available information – how did you decide what to include and what not to include?

LA:  It was a nightmare! I had enough material for twenty walks, but I tried to chose ones that gave a variety of experiences, which were all about 2 miles long and which could be split up if walkers wanted to have a shorter route or spend more time in a museum.

JAIV:  Did you discover anything surprising in your research and exploration? Something you did not already know?

LA:  It wasn’t so much new facts that I found but places which gave me a real frisson of excitement: the 1820s operating theatre where you can see the marks of the surgeons’ saws on the table; the last galleried coaching inn left in London; the great scales in Berry Bros & Rudd where Byron used to weigh himself; having a drink in Tom Cribb’s own pub and exploring the back alleys behind Almack’s which were once filed with high-class brothels and gambling dens. Perhaps the most unexpected discovery was in a Chinese supermarket in Soho – walk past stacks of dried herbs and fish, bags of rice and look up and realize you are in a very old house indeed – and in the back is still the sweeping 18thc staircase. This is the Turk’s Head coffee-house and Dr Johnson and Joshua Reynolds were just two of the great men who  socialized here.

[Image of Samuel Johnson: Johnsonese.com]

JAIV:  The illustrations in your book are from your own collection. What other ephemera from the era do you look for? When did you start becoming a serious collector? – and did your writing come first or vice versa?

LA:  The writing came first then the more I wanted to know about the period, the more I would look for items from it. I collect fashion prints 1790-1820, prints of London from Ackermann’s Repository, coaching and sporting prints, bills and invoices, playbills and anything else that I can get my hands on. I started buying fashion prints when I stubbed my toe on a box of over thirty, all framed, under the table at an auction. I got them for a song and as the porter staggered out to the car with them he said, ‘Bloody hell, madam, you don’t half buy in bulk!’ He didn’t know how true it was, I’m afraid – I’ve got about 1,000 prints now.

[Charles Street]

JAIV:  Where are your favorite haunts to find items? How do you categorize and store them?

LA:  On-line and live auctions, antique fairs and antique shops are all good places to search, but auctions are the most productive. I store them in archival-quality binders on acid free paper, or have them framed by a specialist framer using acid-free mounts. I arrange the fashion prints by date, the London prints by street and everything else by subject.

JAIV:  You bring the Regency so to life! – better to have this guide while actually walking around London – but even so this journey of readinghas been delightful… Which of your walks is your favorite? – what is your favorite part of London?

LA:  Thank you! I enjoy them all – it depends on my mood. If I am feeling like high society and shopping, Mayfair and St James’s are best. Hyde Park is great for a good walk, Soho is vibrant and slightly edgy and the City surprisingly dark and sinister.

JAIV:  The process of writing fiction and non-fiction is quite different – explain the process for writing this Walks book.

LA:  I was very conscious the whole time that I had to make this crystal-clear for people to follow. It would have more than doubled the cost if I’d included maps, so users needed to be able to do without, or use it in conjunction with an ordinary pocket map. Then, once I had plotted each walk out on a modern map it was a question of picking out the relevant points of interest or short snippets of interesting information and weaving them in with the directions – and then re-walking to check every turning and fact.

JAIV:  Do you have another non-fiction Regency-era book in the works?

LA:  We are tracing the original route of the Great North Road, the main coaching route between Edinburgh and London – but not on foot! This is great fun and needs a lot of detective work and old maps. I see this one as possibly being a Kindle book rather than a print one.

JAIV:  Thank you Louise for joining us today for Part I of this interview! – Louise is happy to answer any of your questions, so please ask away!

Stay tuned: Part II  tomorrow where I continue this interview with Louise on her Regency Romances and her thoughts on writing; followed by Part III, a book review of Walks Through Regency London. 

You can visit Louise’s website here and find her on Twitter @LouiseRegency

If you would like to order the Regency Walks book, you can do so directly from her website – I can attest to the book being mailed right away, arriving safe and sound and very quickly!

Thank you again Louise for joining us today – looking forward to continuing our discussion  tomorrow!

Book Giveaway:  Please enter the drawing for a copy of Walks Through Regency London, compliments of ‘Jane Austen in Vermont’, by asking Louise a question or commenting on any of the three posts about this book.  Drawing will take place next Wednesday 2 March 2011; comments accepted through 11 p.m. EST March 1st.  [Delivery worldwide.]

[All images excepting Dr. J from Louise Allen’s website]

Copyright @2011, Deb Barnum, at Jane Austen in Vermont.