At a Regency ball, the ballroom might be crowded with elegantly dressed ladies and gentlemen, hundreds of flickering candles, and the sounds of music and conversation. But what happened when a lady became overheated, felt faint, or simply needed a moment away from the festivities? She could retreat to the ladies' retiring room—a private space where women could rest, refresh themselves, and receive assistance with everything from loose curls to torn gowns. These rooms were more than convenient places for a heroine to escape an uncomfortable conversation. They were an important part of Regency social life. What Was a Regency Ladies' Retiring Room? At a Regency ball, the main rooms were often packed with people, blazing with candlelight, and filled with the sounds of music, laughter, and conversation. Women in elaborate gowns, tight stays (the corsets of the day), and layers of petticoats could quickly become overheated or short of breath. The ladies’ retiring room was alw...

Historical research behind the stealthy fashion of my lady spies What would you do if you were a woman in 1811 and needed to carry a weapon, but had no pockets and couldn’t very well strap a dagger to your thigh? That was the challenge I faced while writing my Christian Regency Romantic Suspense series, Lady Wynwood’s Spies , where my heroines don’t just attend balls and sip tea—they also sneak around carriages, spy on dangerous men, and fight off attackers when necessary. In Volume 7: Spinster and Volume 8: Traitor , two of my heroines—Lena and Phoebe—retrieve hidden knives from secret slits in their gowns. The sheaths are sewn directly onto their corsets. Naturally, you won’t find that kind of accessory in the pages of Ackermann’s Repository of Arts or La Belle Assemblée , the fashion magazines of the day. But I wanted my heroines to be both era-accurate and armed. So I dug into fashion history to find a creative (and plausible) solution. The Idea Behind the Hidden Knife Shea...

I happened to read a review of Lady Wynwood’s Spies, volume 1: Archer , and the reader mentioned being confused because characters switched between using first names and last names. I didn’t comment on the review (it’s my policy never to do so), but I thought it might be useful for my readers for me to mention why I have some characters referring to certain others by their first names or last names or titles. When I was researching British titles, many published historical authors recommended this article , which is one of a series of very informative articles on how the British refer to those with titles. The article writer mentions that especially in the Georgian/Regency/Victorian time period in England, people did not refer to each other by their first names unless they were childhood friends or close family, and even close family would often refer to a peer by his title name (or a nickname of his title name) rather than his first name (i.e., “Hart” for Lord Hartley). It struc...

Captain’s Log, Stardate 04.13.2010 I had never even heard of one until yesterday, then when I Googled it I saw one for Santa Clara California residents that seems pretty neat. I tried to find one for San Jose but no luck, so I emailed the San Jose Police Department to ask about one. (I wonder why the SJPD website didn’t have a link to the Citizen’s Police Academy? I saw some news pages saying that San Jose did have one, so why isn’t it on the website?) It’s kind of scary emailing a police department. And I felt a little silly saying I’m a novelist, but hopefully there aren’t SO many engineers in San Jose that the SJPD understands that us weird artistic types live here, too. So now I’m waiting for them to email me back. I hope the timing is right so that I could take it this summer or something like that. I think that taking it would help me write my romantic suspense novels better. Usually crime involves the police, right? And often cops or ex-cops are good heroes in romantic...

Captain's Log, Stardate 08.25.2009 On with my travel odyssey from July! While in Denver, Danica took me and Cheryl Wyatt to an alpaca farm! They were SO cute! I took a LOT of pictures, so rather than freaking out all my readers on dial-up, I posted the pics (with captions) on my Scrapbook blog: 2009 Denver - Alpaca farm