Maggi Andersen's Blog, page 76

Anne Brear's THE GENTLE WIND'S CARESS Coming in June

Video for Murder in Devon

Follow my Blog Tour for The Reluctant Marquess - prizes to be won!

March 12: Sugarbeat's Books
March 12: STOP #2 Reviews By Molly
March 13: As The Pages Turn
March 14: Reading Romances
March 15: From Me to You ... Video, Photography, & Book Reviews
March 16: Everyday Is An Adventure
March 19: Cocktails and Books
March 20: Queen of all She Reads
March 21:
March 22:
March 23: Kacey's Kreations

The Ideal Georgian Woman

Advice to a LadySeek to be good, but aim not to be great,A woman's noblest station is retreat,Her fairest virtues fly from public sight,Domestic worth, that shuns too strong a light.
Lord Lyttelton
The feminine ideal of Georgian womanhood may best be defined as a combination of moral perfection and intellectual deficiency. She was required to be above all things a 'womanly woman' meek, timid, trustful, clinging, yielding, unselfish, helpless and dependent, and robust in neither body nor mind. She was also expected to be a thoroughly practical domestic sort of person, not educated except in how to run a domestic establishment with good sense of judgment. Her tombstone might say she was born a woman and died a housekeeper. She was also a model wife and mother. The only career open to her was marriage, and she would have considered a loveless marriage infinitely more respectable than the pursuit of a profession. If a suitor presented himself it was her duty to love him, or at any rate marry him. Because masculine idealists of the time felt 'The soul of the true woman finds its supreme satisfaction in self-sacrifice' the woman who rejected this must renounce all claims to womanliness.
The kitchen and the nursery were her sole spheres of action. She must treat her men-folk with respectful admiration and accept their judgments in a spirit of childlike faith and obey them with unquestioning submission.  



The education and training of the ideal woman was completely subordinated to the tastes and demands of men. In the words of Jean Jacques, "Woman was created to give way to man, and to suffer his injustice …. To please us, to be useful to us, to make us love and esteem them, to educate us when young and take care of us when grown up, to admire and console us, to render our lives easy and agreeable."
Jane Austen made mention of the prejudice with sweet-tempered sarcasm in a passage in Northanger Abbey. "... in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their natural charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well-informed themselves to desire anything more in a woman than-ignorance."  Top: Shellwork vase 1779-81 
Below: A shell-encrusted surround to a window in the Shell Gallery at A La Ronde, Devon made by the spinster cousins Jane and Mary Parminter, 1790c/The doctrine that it was unfeminine for a 'female' to pursue any exact study, led in the course of time to the curious notion that it was unfeminine for her to do anything well. Unable to execute anything with professional skill, during the reigns of the third and fourth Georges, they were forced to they deliberately invented a kind of 'mock art'. Modeling in clay was unfeminine but modeling in wax or bread a feminine occupation. Filigree and mosaic work was copied in coloured paper, medals were made of cardboard and bold-leaf, Dresden china of rice paper, cottages of paste-board, flowers of lambswool, coral of blackthorn twigs painted vermilion and 'Grecian Tintos' were painted –or plastered-with black lead mixed with pomatum, the lights being scratched out with a penknife. This medium was considered particularly adapted for sea and moonlight pieces. In my novel, The Reluctant Marquess, which is to be released in March, Lord Robert expects as a Georgian member of the aristocracy that his wife will make the necessary adjustments to fit in with his way of life. He is shocked to find that his country-bred wife, Charity, the daughter of an academic, has a mind of her own. Her small rebellion against the strictures of society is sculpting in wood, which she learned from her grandfather. Thrown into a marriage of convenience, Charity wishes to be more than just decorative adjunct to her husband. Determined to live on her own terms, she fights for true intimacy with the handsome, moody and complex man she married. 
Many wives to their credit were extremely efficient, running properties and businesses alongside their husbands. Some ran large estates on their own after their husband's died.
AMAZON BUY LINK:
References:Side-Lights On The Georgian Period by George PastonBehind Closed Doors At Home in Georgian England by Amanda VickeryAUTHOR WEBSITE

Blending my two passions into a series: The Spies of Mayfair

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. ~E.L. Doctorow
I loved reading adventure stories I found in the tiny bookshop beside the Pacific Ocean in Australia where we lived when I was a child. As a teenager, my library provided romance and thrilling spy novels. My reading and writing interests were divided between elegant historical romance, especially Georgette Heyer and Victoria Holt, and a fascination with murder mysteries and spy thrillers. I'm combining the two in my coming series, The Spies of Mayfair. Book one  A Baron in Her Bed comes to Knox Robinson in September.  I'm in the throes of writing Book Two. Working Title: Taming a Gentleman Spy.

NEW COVER for MURDER IN DEVON

I'm delighted with my new cover for Murder in Devon. It is released on the 25th February. Here's the blurb:

An ex-patriot American reporter living in England, Casey Rowan wakes to find one best friend murdered and another seriously injured. Casey is determined to find the killer, despite running afoul of the detective in charge of the case—a blue-eyed Scot named Rod Carlisle, who considers her a prime suspect. As Casey gets closer to the truth, losing her heart to the sexy cop isn't the only thing she risks. Now her life is danger, too. 
Rod has no patience with civilians who interfere in police matters, even hot little numbers like Casey. Though he tries to keep things professional between, Casey's beauty and spunk are hard to resist. Rod warns her that what she's doing is dangerous, but she refuses to listen. Can he find the killer before Casey becomes the next victim?

The Rule of Three. Because I'm writing another mystery ...

I've been reminding myself of the need for structure in a mystery. The three act structure works well for the screen as well as books. The first third would be the set up:  Introducing the characters in their setting. The conflict and the hook which keeps the reader turning the pages.The second act, or middle - and the largest part of the story is when the complications and crises arise. First establishing the problem, the protagonist attempts to solve it, facing dangerous situations. He/she fails to resolve it. Their second attempt reveals more complications. The third attempt brings them lower as the tension rises to an unbearable level with no obvious way through. Another body might make an appearance here.The Third act solves sub-plots. In the big scene, the protagonist eliminates theories, figures things out and confronts the villain. The crises are resolved and the villain meets his/her end. Wrap it up with a description of what lies ahead for the protagonist and what he has learned from the experience.Adding a romance to the mystery - as I plan to do adds more sub-plots and conflicts . The opening line of a romantic suspense has to draw the reader immediately into the story.For example: Why did the house feel so cold? Casey leaned her elbows back onto the narrow bed as the memory of the past few weeks ran through her mind, tightening her stomach. She'd hoped to escape the trauma of a broken relationship by returning to England, but the break-up seemed to have taken a piece of her she wasn't sure she'd get back.
My mystery/romantic suspense novel MURDER IN DEVON is released by Black Opal Books on 28th February. Here's an excerpt:
 Blurb: Casey Rowan, a women's magazine editor, finds herself racing against the clock to solve a murder investigation after her friend is murdered and his wife's life hangs by a thread.



The drum of her heels on the parquet floor echoed through the hall. Something seemed very wrong. Don had been very successful in his chosen profession, but it wouldn't have made him the millions of pounds required to buy this kind of luxury. Their previous house had been humble by comparison. At what point did they start wanting so much more?She pushed open the door to the main bedroom with her fist and stopped. The room had been ransacked, cupboard doors hung open and drawers overturned, their contents spread across the floor. She backed up against the wall, her eyes darting across the room. When did this happen?The scene sent her heart pounding so hard her ribs began to hurt. She ran for the front door; sliding on the Persian carpet, she grabbed the doorway to stop herself from falling. Stumbling into the back bedroom, she fell to a crouch and stared at the glass scattered across the floor. The window had been smashed from the outside.She stayed crouched and tried to listen above the noisy pounding of her heart. Either all the noise she'd made sent someone scurrying for cover, or they'd left before she arrived. The house was so silent she could hear the heating system kick on and the distant chug of a boat on the river.Her heart slowed to its normal rhythm. Inside the house, nothing moved except her, and she retraced her steps to the study.Don's computer discs lay scattered over the desk. The computer was still on. She grabbed a pencil and used its rubber tip to scroll through his files. He had a backlog of information stored there. When she was just about to give up, a file simply headed Farrowham appeared in the computer's recently opened documents. The name was familiar but the file was encoded.The front door opened, and she jumped to her feet, her eyes sliding wildly across the room for somewhere to hide. She'd only taken a few steps before, DCI Carlisle appeared at the study door, with two other police officers standing behind him. "Ms. Rowan," he said, his words curt. "I thought I made myself perfectly clear. Do I have to put you behind bars to stop you from interfering in this investigation?""I just got here." Casey felt her face grow hot. "The place has been ransacked. A window broken. Why would I do that? I have a key!""And how did you come by a key?""I borrowed them."Carlisle's expression didn't change. "And the alarm sequence?""Tessa wrote it in my diary when she asked me to house-sit for her." She fumbled in her bag and rifled through the pages. "See for yourself."He looked at the page she thrust at him but he didn't seem satisfied."You're threatening this case, Ms. Rowan. We have a right to know why you're here.""Looking for anything unusual. I know Don. If something's out of place, I'd know it. I can help." She searched his face. He wasn't buying it.He walked over to the computer. "That's debatable. So far, you've done nothing but mess up a potential crime scene. What have you touched?""I checked the computer files. I used the end of a pencil."Furious, he motioned to the other two police officers. They left the room, and she listened to them move about the house. "We're going to need to take a trip to the station. You don't seem to realize you're a suspect in a murder enquiry, and now I find you at a crime scene. The Devon police took your fingerprints, didn't they?"She nodded. "I didn't know it was a crime scene. And I was careful. You won't find my fingerprints here. When did this happen?"His brows rose slightly. "Friday morning.""Friday! You might have mentioned it when we spoke earlier."Carlisle looked tired. He rubbed his hand over the beginnings of a four o'clock shadow, and a muscle worked in his cheek. His tie was loosened at the neck, the top button undone. "I guess I just didn't realize I was supposed to keep you informed. Maybe a night in the cells will cool you down.""On what charge?" She went to brush past him, but he placed his hand against the wall, blocking her exit."Oh, I can come up with a great deal on you, Ms. Rowan. Tampering with a crime scene, for one."They studied each other. She drew breath, unsettled by his proximity, so close she caught the scent of leather and soap.A heavy frown lodged between Carlisle's eyebrows, his blue eyes frosty. "I'm still waiting for you to tell me what you're doing here."Author Website: http://www.maggiandersenauthor.com

Beginning the New Year at a run!

My lovable seven year old grandson has gone home and I'm left to vacuum up crumbs in a quiet house, so naturally my mind returns to writing.  I have synopses and blurbs to write - which I hate. The final edit for Murder in Devon, which comes out on 28th Feb, and a final read through of A Baron in Her Bed which is released in September. I've been asked for suggestions for the cover of my Regency and browsed through those on Amazon. I prefer a  pretty cover, although there's always an element of danger in my novels. And there's always a grand house. Some that I like.
[image error] [image error] [image error] Promotion is due to start for The Reluctant Marquess released on March 8th I've organized a blog tour the details of which will be forthcoming.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Anyone catch the Sydney fireworks? They just keep getting better. How was New Years celebrated in your town?

Excerpt: Middle-Reader -Teen adventure novella DOG HEAD CODE

DOG HEAD CODE

http://www.amazon.com/Dog-Head-Code-ebook/dp/B004GB0JIC/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_6
Blurb:
After inheriting an old book containing a map from his Great Uncle Jake, Joe Jones travels to Dog Head Island, keen to find buried treasure. But in this isolated, inhospitable place, nothing is as it seems. Nothing, but the snakes that inhabited it. And Jake has a strong aversion to snakes! 
Excerpt:
Joe's Inheritance
A green blob wobbled from the end of Mr. Grant‟s nose. He waved his hands
about as he explained the results of his scientific experiment, and the blob fell
to join the puddle of algae soup on his desk.
This experiment failed to grab me. I looked around at the sterile gray walls,
microscopes, Bunsen burners and test tubes of the science lab. It all seemed like
a giant waste of time. I‟d never need this stuff to make a living.
The tension built in the room. Feet shuffled and pens tapped out a rock beat
on the desks. It was two minutes to bell time during the last period on Friday,
and all but a few of the class planned to go to a rock concert that evening to see
Take No Prisoners. They were the hottest band around.
A paper plane circled and landed on top of my book. It slid off onto Fatty
Graham‟s desk. He snapped it up with a look of glee and crumpled it, throwing
it under the desk in front. I slid down in my seat and herded it towards me with
my shoe. Leaning down, I batted it with my ruler and picked it up.
Fatty Graham sniggered. Nobody liked him much, not because he was fat,
but because he threw his weight around. And no one was convinced it had been
an accident when he sat on Tabitha Hewitt‟s pet lizard.
I smoothed out the note in my lap: Bus stop 7-30. 2 nite. Be there. Unsigned.
Mr. Grant‟s voice droned on and I scanned the room. I immediately dismissed a
group of girls who stuck together like Superglue. At this moment, they were
ogling the teacher, whom they thought was hot. "Looks a bit like that actor,
Brad Grant," I‟d heard one say in the canteen.
Colin Bowls sat alone in a corner. Everyone called him "Bowels" behind his
back. What can I say? The guy had some pretty unattractive habits. In front of
Bowels sat Sam Chen, head down writing furiously. Beside him, Ben turned
with a grin and I gave him the thumbs up.
My gaze came to rest on Annie Larson, her hair swinging over her book
as she copied Mr. Grant‟s notes from the blackboard. Annie hadn't been at
Northumber High for long, but long enough for her to have made some friends.
For some reason she wasn't having it.
Small and neat with shiny red hair, Annie had this cute habit of pushing it
back behind her ears. We lived close, in the same part of town. I often rode past
her as she cycled home on her bike and we‟d just say hi or wave. I would've liked
to stop and talk, but I sensed that for some reason it wouldn't be welcome.
At last, the final bell rang and the class moved in a noisy mass towards the
door. The fire alarm wouldn't have cleared the room any faster. Within minutes,
the teacher and I were alone. I pulled the book from my backpack and cleared
my throat.
"Can I have a minute, Mr. Grant?"
"Of course, Joe." He looked surprised and pleased. "Questions about the
experiment?"
"Er, no." I laid the heavy, leather-bound book on his desk. "This is a book my
Great-Uncle Jake left me in his will. It‟s written in a weird language. I wondered
if you could tell me what it is."
Mr. Grant polished his glasses again with a handkerchief stained green from
an experiment, which had smelt like rotten eggs. A nasty memory that still
floated in the air. He shoved it back in his pocket without a glance. "What‟s
this?" He turned the pages with care. "Extraordinary. Some sort of
hieroglyphics. Not an ancient language of note."
"Are you sure, sir?" I asked, my heart sinking. I‟d been hoping for a mystery
from the past.
"It‟s not Arabic or Hebrew, nor Aramaic or Ancient Greek, and not Latin. It‟s
not Etruscan or Middle Persian. In fact, it‟s nothing I've ever come across." He
looked at me over the top of his glasses and smiled. "Of course, there are other
famous writing systems from the past that are yet to be solved. This is made up
of a lot of strange symbols–possibly some kind of cipher."
"What‟s a cipher, sir?"
"Well, it's just a form of secret writing really. Codes and ciphers have been
around since ancient times. They were of vital importance in the American civil
war and the two world wars. Governments used machines to decode them."
"Oh, you mean like the decoder machine James Bond stole in From Russia
with Love? I have the video game at home."
"Ah, yes. Taken from the movie and the book by Ian Fleming. But I digress,
any group who needed to keep their messages secret used some kind of code.
Have you heard of the Enigma code?"
"Mom watched a movie about it. It was in World War II. They cracked it,
didn't they?"
"Not until quite recently."
I took this in with a jolt of disappointment, and Mr. Grant turned again to
the book. My pulse quickened when he found the last page. "Look at this," he
said. "It appears to be the map of an island. See?" His finger traced the outlines
of the coast and the island. "It‟s much like a pirate‟s map, showing where the
treasure‟s buried. "X" marks the spot, or in this case, two of them."
My voice came out in a squeak. "Uncle Jake lived on Dog Head Island."
"Dog Head Island? Curious name. Where is it?"
"I've never been there. It‟s off the west coast about one thousand miles from
here."
Mr. Grant closed the book. He studied the cover with its faint engravings and
inlaid red and blue-green gemstones. "They‟d have to be glass, I guess." He
shook his head and handed the book back to me. "I wish I could help you, Joe.
I find it astonishing, but as to what it is, I‟m afraid I have no idea."
* * * *
Fatty Graham bailed me up on my way out the door. "What‟s that you got,
Jones?" He reached for the book. Fatty was strong, but slow on his feet.
"Nothing you‟d be interested in." I danced around him, ducking and
weaving, just out of reach of his sausage-like, groping fingers.
"Charlton? Hurry up. We‟re late for your orthodontist appointment."
I breathed a sigh of relief to see Fatty‟s mother at the gate with her hands on
her hips.
"I‟ll get you, Jones," Fatty called. He lumbered off across the playground.
Annie walked in while I unchained my bike in the bike shed. I decided to
throw caution to the winds. "Annie! You riding home? I‟ll ride part of the way
with you." To my relief, she smiled and nodded.
We set off, needing all our breath to get to the top of Chromer Hill, then
coasted down, coming to a screeching halt at the bottom, laughing and gasping.
Annie‟s big brown eyes shone. "What was that strange book I saw you put in
your bag?"
My face grew hot. I hauled the book from my backpack then dropped it, just
missing a muddy puddle. Bending to pick it up, my face flamed like a beacon. I
dusted the book off and handed it to her. While she looked through it, I
explained how I came by it.
Annie stroked the gemstones with awe. "It‟s amazing," she said in a hushed
voice. She handed it back to me. I replaced it in my bag.
Piles of dead leaves had gathered in the gutters beneath the trees. We took
off again and I rode through the drifts, scattering them about with Annie right
behind me.
"Uncle Jake lived to be one hundred and ten." I told her when we‟d pulled to
a stop at the corner.
"Wow! Did he live on the island until he died?"
I felt ashamed not to know. "I‟ll have to ask my mom."
Annie looked at her watch, an urgent note creeping into her voice. "I must
get home."
"Would it matter if you‟re a few minutes late?"
"I have to do my chores before my step-dad gets home."
I swallowed. "Do you think you could give me your phone number? I‟ll ring
you if I find out anything more," I tucked my gum into my cheek and smiled,
but she looked away down the street. "You know, about the book?" I added
hurriedly.
She hesitated. "I suppose that‟d be all right. Give me yours too."
"See you Monday, then," I called, placing her phone number in the secret
compartment of my wallet, as if it was a hundred-dollar note. Annie waved and
took off, cycling fast. I watched until she disappeared around the corner then
headed for the local newsagents.
When I arrived home, I grabbed a slab of carrot cake and pulled the book
from my bag. Taking a large bite of cake, I held my new magnifying glass up to
its cover, coughing and spluttering when the engraving of a large snake
emerged, its mouth open baring its fangs, its red stone eyes glittering. The
snake curled around the central milky blue-green stone, as if protecting it.
Feathered patterning had been engraved into the leather, thicker around the
snake's tail, making it difficult to decipher the snake from the background.
A creeping sensation crawled up my spine and the hairs stood to attention on
the back of my neck. I‟d once believed a snake bit me when I was a little kid. It
had turned out to be a lizard, but I've never lost my fear of snakes.[image error]