Let Have a Coze

September 2012

A break from the hot weather and a two inch rain do wonders for the soul in a drought stricken land. The two reviews for Honour’s Debt on Goodreads.com that I saw when I visited my account there are equally wonderful. I have been in a long drought when it comes to reviews for Debt. My thanks to the two people who took the time to post a review. It’s a joy to hear that someone enjoyed a story. I’ve gotten many compliments on Debt but reviews are special. Now if only I could find a way to encourage the people who have purchased Debt on Smashwords  Amazon  Barnes and Noble to post reviews. I’m told they help sales which have been admittedly slow after a flurry of purchases when Debt was released.

I plan to launch the second book in the series, Honour’s Choice in October. I’m excited about this book’s potential. Here’s a preview of the cover. The story is about a woman (Sarah) who has great skill treating illnesses with herbs, finding a man (Hadleigh) who has been viciously tortured. You may remember that Baron de la Croix’s friend is still missing at the end of Debt--but not for long. The same artist who painted the cover for Honour’s Debt did this painting for Choice and it is one of my favorites.

August proved to be one of those non-writing months, or very little writing. The weather took its toll on everything. One of the things we did to recharged was going camping at the head waters of the Rio Grand River in Colorado. The mountains that lay to the south of the canyon have been hit hard by the pine beetle blight--there doesn’t seem to be a live pine on the mountainsides! But the blight hasn’t made it completely down and into the campground. We have been going to Thirty Mile Camp for over thirty five years. This year our youngest daughter (she was two the first time we went) and her family joined us. It is a joy to see how much the grandkids love camping--especially the campfire and s’mores! We went river rafting this year. A very tame ride as its been very dry in the area. Our eight year old granddaughter proved adventurous. The guide told her she could walk upstream and then go out to large rock and jump in and float down to him and he’d snag her. The water was fiercely cold and she stood by the rock a long time before she leapt in. She told me later she was really afraid but decided to do it anyway. An intrepid soul!

Book purchases have been few but I did snag a new general history of the peninsular war--David Chandler’s The Campaign’s of Napoleon. This book was brought to my attention by my marine nephew and godson. I discovered in May while we were visiting his family that I could actually have a great discussion on the Peninsular was with someone and their eyes didn’t cross! It’s not generally a topic anyone I know finds of interest so it was a joy to visit with Marcus and use some of what I’ve learned. Information about battles and campaigns goes the same way as facility with languages--use or lose it. Early in August Marcus called me one afternoon about an assignment he had dealing with the Peninsular War. He’s currently taking a class which studies battles through history. We had a great discussion about parts of that war and literary devices. A rare and true joy to find this particular connection! JV

August 2012

August and it’s hot as Hades! The triple digit temps with temps in excess of 108 predicted for the next week. They just keep piling up and the rain deficit right along with it. The heat saps energy, be it physical, creative or electrical. I have gotten precious little writing done the past month although I have completed the Honour’s Compromise’s finak edit by adding two new scenes. That puts me a little ahead of schedule. I’ll release Honour’s Choice --Hadleigh Tarrant’s story in September or October. If you’ve read Honour’s Debt you know that at the end of that book Hadleigh is in the hands of his French torturers. These very unpleasant fellows have little regard for life or limb unless it is theirs. Hadleigh is in for a tough time.

My HOT news is that my Avalon bookThe Promise Roseis now for sale in digital format at Regencyreads!  Amazon purchased Avalon this summer.  I’ve requested the ebook rights back for The Betrothal.

I have gotten all of the categories of the Joan Vincent Collection updated and uploaded to the website.  Imagine my chagrin when I found I had books from as far back as 2009 not posted as well as some for the intervening years.  My sister and I are closing in on two thousand volumes in the collection.  With the 200th anniversaries of the various events and battles of the Napoleonic Wars either just past or just coming up many books are being reprinted which gives access to more diaries and memories of the period.  There are also new studies being published although determining if it is a new book or not can be tricky.  Some books are being released with new titles and you have to be very careful not to end up with duplicates.  I’m still pondering if Divall’s INSIDE THE REGIMENT  The Officer’s and Men of the 30th Regiment during the Revolutionary (read French) and Napoleonic Wars is the same book as her REDCOATS AGAINST NAPOLEON: The 30th Regiment During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.  You can’t tell that by ISBN’s as any book that has even the most minor editing has to have a new ISBN on reissue.  We have the first book and right now are not inclined to purchase a second which can only cover the same ground.  Unfortunately we’re not always so wise.  We have Bayonets, Bugles & Bonnets - Experiences of Hard Soldiering With the 71st Foot - the Highland Light Infantry: Through Many Battles of the Napoleonic Wars During the Peninsular & Waterloo Campaigns which was published in 2006 and later bought the same book published in  1828 under the title Experiences of Hard Soldiering with the 71st Foot - The Highland Light Infantry.

On another note, one of my other hobbies is quilt making. I’ve just finished a quilt based on Catkin Around the World with fabric designed by Julie Paschkis. I’ve added to it top and bottom to get the length I wanted and had to substitute one fabric from the original. When I saw the small cat blocks I knew it would be perfect for my niece Rachel. Her mother agreed and Rachel will get the finished product later this month for her birthday. It was a lot of fun to make! I’ve also finished the top for a Kansas/sunflower theme quilt for a twin bed in my craft room. That room has more sunflower themed items than I can count including a sunflower border I stenciled at the top of the walls several years ago. The quilt was originally supposed to be an appliquéd quilt but I have neither the time nor the patience. It turned out great. Now I have to decide if I’m hand quilting it or having it machine quilted. There always seem to be decisions to make.

Here’s hoping you are in a much cooler area and without drought. Settle in a chair with a good book, preferably one of mine, and enjoy the AC. JV

July 2012

I’m not sure where June went--anyone else feel that way about time flying by?  The week the grandkids were here was very hectic and speedy.  We introduced them to the first three Star Wars movies--in reality movies 4, 5, and 6.  There is something about the first that the others didn’t quite catch but the kids loved them all.  After we watched the movies we took in the Star Wars Exhibit that is in town.  It was wonderful with many many hands-on activities for the kids.  My husband and granddaughter had a grand time getting the robotic legs to move as if walking forward and backing.  My grandson loved playing on the “Build a space colony” computer.  The displays were terrific.  We spent over three hours there! 

Star Wars is a bit afield from the Regency but the characters had the same sense of adventure and mayhem many of my regency characters do.  Luke Skywalker is a lot like Jamey Vincouer whose book, Honour’s Compromise, is the third in my series.  I’m doing a final edit of it now.  Darth Vadar on the other hand could go hand to hand with my master French spy Donatien.  In fact, since Donatien is a prime swordsman, it would be a most interesting lightsaber battle.

Frivolity aside, my sister and I have been busy adding to the Joan Vincent Collection.  Vera has purchased  Vincentio Saviolo’s Of Honour and Honourable Quarrels A Gentleman’s Guide to Duelling, Gareth Glover’s four volume Waterloo Archives and his Wellington’s Voice  The Candid Letters of Lieutenant Colonel John Freemantle, Coldstream Guards 1808-1821, Allan Mallison’s Light Dragoons The Making of a Regiment, James Davey’s Broadsides  Caricature and the Navy 1756-1815, Philip Haythornthwaite’s Redcoats  The British Soldiers of the Napoleonic War, Ian fletcher’s Robert Craufurd:  Wellington’s Wayward Martinet, Andrew Field’s Waterloo:  The French Perspective, Cavali Mercer’s Journal of the Waterloo Campaign, and last but not least Carole Divall’s Napoleonic Lives  Researching the British Soldiers of the Napoleonic Wars.  I’ve just finished reading this book and found it a terrific source. I’ll post a review soon.

Prompted by reading Divall’s book I purchased several journals/diaries/letters:  A Dorset Rifleman: the Recollections of Benjamin Harris, Recollections of the Eventful Life of a Soldier : By a Sergeant in the Ninety-Fourth Scots Brigade, Sergeant Nicol: The Experiences of a Gordon Highlander During the Napoleonic Wars in Egypt, the Peninsula and France, and The Letters of Private Wheeler: 1809-1828, Ensign Bell in the Peninsular War - The Experiences of a Young British Soldier of the 34th Regiment 'The Cumberland Gentlemen' in the Napoleonic Wars.  I am still on the hunt for a couple of others and vastly regretting that two were never published.  I’ve also gotten Napoleon's Troublesome Americans: Franco-American Relations, 1804-1815, a two volume All Things Austen: An Encyclopedia Of Austen's World, and a couple of fascinating medical resources: Wellington's Doctors: The British Army Medical Services in the Napoleonic Wars and Advancing with the Army: Medicine, the Professions and Social Mobility in the British Isles 1790-1850.  Enough light reading to keep me out of trouble for some time.

For pleasure reading this summer I’ve gulped down CS Harris’ St. Cyr books and am starting on Julia Spencer-Fleming’s  Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Novels.  Here’s hoping you are beating the heat--if you are a fellow sufferer- and enjoying many good books.  JV

June 2012

I am tardy posting this month. My apologies. My husband and I were traveling to the east coast and back during the month of May visiting various family members. We also spent three days touring Washington DC and learned it takes longer to go twnetyfive miles there than it does to go one hundred twentyfive here! In DC we made use of Context Walks by taking their tour of the Mall. An art historiam explained the monuments as we strolled and added a lot of detail that made it far more interesting than it would have been with us walking it alone. It was inspiring to see the flag that inspired The Star Spangled Banner and delightful to visit the National Botanical Gardens which have plants for all states and territories.

Shortly after we arrived back home I learned Amazon had purchased Avalon Books--the publisher of The Promise Rose and The Betrothal. That inspired me to look at my contracts for those books. I discovered that I have the ebook rights to The Promise Rose. Regency Reads will soon be releasing it as an ebook. I'll post here and on its page as soon as I know when. The Betrothal had a digital rights clause so I will have to wait until I learn what Amazon will decided to do with it.

This weekend our grandchildren, eight and ten, come to visit for a week. That will keep me out of trouble and highly entertained. We also look forward to their summer visits and stuff as much activity as we can into that week. They can look forward to helping dig daffodils, a minor league ball game, Wet and Wild Friday at the local zoo, a trip to the movie theater, bowling, and various other activities.

Here's hoping that your summer has gotten off to an excellent start! JV

May 2012

A picture may be worth a thousand words but I often find a photo doesn’t do justice to its topic.  Such is the photo of the rose bed that is just outside my dining room window.  It is also just off the back porch where we often eat supper.  I was sitting out there this evening thinking what a glorious sight it was with all the roses (there are four quadrants which each have seven tea roses) in full bloom.  One quadrant has red roses, another lavender-hued roses, the third pink and/or white roses and the last orange and yellow roses.  The first two winters (twenty years ago) that we planted the roses most of them froze out.  The third year, shuddering from the expense of replacing them, I told the roses that if they died again something else would grace my English-style rose bed.  We’ve only had to replace a few since them.  Because this winter was merely cool with no lasting hard cold spell the roses did not freeze back.  They are as tall now as they would usually be in July.  And they are all covered with blooms!  In the photo you can only see hints of their beauty so I’ve added two closer shots.

The American tea rose is very different from the early 19th Century rose like the one Quentin Bellaport sees at Bellum and the one that was put on top of Maddie Vincouer’s wedding cake in Honour’s Debt.  The photo to the left is much closer to that rose.  Those of you who have read the book will know what Quentin uses the petals from this rose for at the end of the book.  Was that a good scene?  Let me know what you think of it and of Honour’s Debt in general.

I took an online historical surgery class this past month and learned of some new medical resources.  I’ve purchased Wellington's Doctors: The British Army Medical Services in the Napoleonic Wars by, Dr. Martin Howard, and Advancing with the Army: Medicine, the Professions and Social Mobility in the British Isles 1790-1850 by Ackroyd, Marcus, Laurence Brockliss, Michael Moss, Kate Retford, John Stevenson.  On a different topic but also very useful is Peerage law in England ; a practical treatise for lawyers and laymen, with an appendix of peerage charters and letters patent by Francis Beaufort Palmer.

Honour's Debt is now available as a paperback on this website.

If you’d like to be notified when the next book in the series is released please send me an email at jvregency@gmail.com and I’ll put you on the notification list. JV

April 2012

Here in Kansas spring has come unusually early. All of our fruit trees were in full bloom in March. We usually aren’t frost free until mid April so we’ll have to wait and see if we lose all the fruit and nuts like last year from a late frost. The daffodils have been long gone and my tulips (to the right) which were to bloom in early May also won’t be around much longer. It makes one fear the coming summer but for now it is spring and gorgeously green outside my office window. Last weekend I sewed a dress for my granddaughter from fabric full of flowers and butterflies, perfect for Easter.

Honour’s Debt which was released in March as an ebook., It is on its way to being available in print also. I should shortly receive the proof copy--I can hardly stand the wait! I’ll put a notice up once Honour’s Debt is available in print. In case you haven’t noticed there is a sound file with the pronunciations of all the major characters on Debt’s page as well as the list of characters. If you have any comments on Honour’s Debt please EMAIL me. I have been working on Honour’s Choice, the next book in the series which is Hadleigh Tarrant’s story. It’s cover is almost finished but a release date has not been set. If you are interested in having Honour’s Choice released sooner rather than later please EMAIL me.

The paintings for the covers of Honour’s Compromise (Lt. Jamey Vincouer’s story) and Honour’s Redemption (Captain Lucian Merristorm’s story) arrived this week. I have added them to the website by their respective books. This month I hope to return to and continue work on Honour’s Heart--a tentative title. I perfer Cyphers of the Heart but wish to keep Honour in the title. Maybe Cyphers of Honour’s Heart?

Several new research books have joined the Joan Vincent Collection. A Staff Officer in the Peninsula: an Officer of the British Staff Corps Cavalry During the Peninsula Campaign of the Napoleonic Wars by Buckham is a delightful collection of letters. I wish there were more details of the actual duties of the staff officer but I am thrilled by the descriptions of Portugal and Spain and the notations of villages and distances. I needed the information in both for Honour’s Heart. Advancing with the Army: Medicine, the Professions and Social Mobility in the British Isles 1790-1850 by Ackroyd with other authors, is a scholarly work and the reading of it would be ponderous if it weren’t so chock full of information. Wellington's Light Cavalry (Men-at-Arms) and Wellington's Heavy Cavalry (Men-at-Arms) and small but have some wonderful drawings. I can hardly wait for the arrival of Panorama of Paris: Selections from Le Tableau De Paris by Louis-Sebastien Mercier and Jeremy D. Popkin as I also need its information for Honour’s Heart.

Happy Spring to everyone! JV

March 2012

This is a very exciting month as I plunge into
"Indie" publishing. HONOUR'S DEBT is formatted and ready to be uploaded on Smashwords after I receive the final copy of the cover graphic. Smashwords is a site that lets authors convert unpublished books into several different ebook formats and then offers the book for sale as well as distributing to other ebook outlets. If I have done the formatting correctlyHONOUR'S DEBT will soon be available on Barnes & Noble and Aplle's Ibook store as well as other venues. Exciting but nervewracking! I will put a marquee on my homepage when this is accomplished! To learn more about the HONOUR SERIES just click on its link in the navigation bar on the right.

At the same time I have been working on getting a limited number of massmarket paperbacks of Honour's Debt printed. This has been a challenge equal to the formatting I had to do for Smashwords but it is moving forward. When the printed book is available for purchase, I will place a link to do so on DEBT's page on this website.

I have also joined Goodreads. It has been an adventure exploring the site and getting acquainted with how it works. You can find my books there as well as my reading list and book ratings --Joan Vincent page. I am an avoracious reader and need to find time to rate more of the books I've read. With 0 friends or fans as I type this I need your help so that I'll soon have many. I hope to see you on Goodreads.

Wishing you all a Happy St. Pat's Day! We'll be getting our potatoes planted by that day. It's been unseasonably warm here and garden fever has struck my husband. We had such an unseasonably dry and hot summer last year that the garden can only improve this year. Best to all--hope to see you on GoodReads.  JV Here is a link to a guest blog did on Debt

 

February 2012

February and romance are thought synonymous.  But what is romantic?  Flowers and candy are traditionally thought of as such.  While I agree with the flowers, especially when given for no special reason, I’ve struggled with weight too long to look at a box of chocolates and think romance.  Yum, definitely, but with a sigh.

Something romance usually involves is kissing.  I became curious about that after reading about Kissing Friday which I’ll talk more about in March.  So I did a little googling.  Here is some information from one of the websites I visited.

From Third Age: “But what exactly is involved in these liplocks? Philematology, or the science of kissing, examines kissing from a biological perspective and studies, among other things, pheromones and the chemicals released in the brain while kissing.
According to osculologists -- scientists who make their careers studying kissing -- there's an enormous amount of neurotransmitters, evolutionary biology, and instant assessments of potential life-mates. "It can be highly positive or highly negative," says Helen Fisher, a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University. "Often the first kiss kills a relationship,"

Nothing really new there or something we didn’t know except perhaps that there is actually a science—philematology-- and people who study it – osculologists ( a word, by the way I can’t find in dictionaries!)  But Inspiralled had some facts I didn’t know:

kissing trivia

• The average person will spend an estimated 20,160 minutes kissing in their lifetime.
• 50% of all people kiss have their first kiss before they are age 14.
• Our brains have special neurons that help us find each others lips in the dark
• There are many strange laws regarding kissing that are still on the books. In Indiana, it is illegal for a man with a moustache to "habitually kiss human beings". And in Hartford, CT, it is illegal for a man to kiss his wife on a Sunday.

kissing quotes

• "Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves."  ~Albert Einstein
• "Always kiss your children goodnight, even if they're already asleep."  ~H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
• "A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous."  ~Ingrid Bergman
• "A kiss without a hug is like a flower without the fragrance."  ~Proverb
• "Soul meets soul on lovers' lips."  ~Percy Bysshe Shelley

The last quote from Shelley (who hails from the regency --b. August 4, 1792  d.July 8, 1822) caught my eye.  He was one of the major English Romantic poets and friend of Byron.  I wondered which poem it came from and after a deal of searching came upon this web site,  Online-Literature   I found the quote in Prometheus Unbound.  I’m quoting beginning with line 445 because I was taken by it in a romantic sort of way.

The EARTH:
I spin beneath my pyramid of night,                                _445
Which points into the heavens dreaming delight,
Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep,
As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing,
Under the shadow of his beauty lying,
Which round his reast a watch of light and warmth doth keep.

THE MOON:
As in the soft and sweet eclipse,                               _450
When soul meets soul on lovers' lips, High hearts are calm, and brightest eyes are dull;
So when thy shadow falls on me,
Then am I mute and still, by thee
Covered; of thy love, Orb most beautiful,
Full, oh, too full!

For other Shelley poems visit Poem Hunter

Happy Valentine’s Day!—read a historical romance to set the mood, preferably one of mine. JV

January 2012

Happy New Year! At least it is happy now.

If you've stopped by at the New Yeat you would have found nothing well, new. Right after Christmas my laptop was infected by a trojan virus. I had been a virus virgin up to then and still find it hard to believe how easily it slipped past my virus protection program. The laptop was in the shop for ten days --a lot of computers had the same problem and only today made it home. That will teach me to replace my backup desktop which died in October! I was very thankful to pick up my laptop today and rejoin the modern age. I can't imagine Wellington writing reams of orders by hand(or his secretary). And it did take page after page of instructions to get a seige train on the road to Cuidad Rodrigo or Badajoz. And they didn't just do it once.

Last year I recounted the campaign in Portugal and Spain in 1811 month by month. This year I'm not going to be so technical--unless you request such information. Send questions or suggestions to jvincent@joanvincent.net

In December my sister purchased L"Histoire de Napoleon par la Peinture by Jean Tulard. It is an astounding collection on paintings depicting Napoleon, his marshals, his battles, etc from 1796 to St. Helene. I could wish it wasn't in French but that will force me to brush up my language skills. It's well worth the effort.

May 2012 bring you health and good fortune. JV

 

 

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