Vivian Roycroft
Do you like to wait until a Regency has a few reviews, positive and negative, before adding it to your collection? Here's a relatively new release (March of this year) with a 4.2 star rating on Amazon from 76 reviews. This is The Perfect Lady Worthe, by USA Today bestselling author Rose Gordon. A novella rather than a full-length novel, Lady Worthe seems to be a standalone story, but of course Ms. Gordon has many other books to choose from on her Amazon author's page. Another cover with a gorgeous blue gown! Not a new title (December 2013), this is Forever Betr, by USA Today bestselling author othed, Never the BrideChristi Caldwell. It's the first of her six-book series, Scandalous Seasons. Forever Betrothed has 187 reviews and a 4.4 star rating. This one's a Victorian romance rather than a Regency; I couldn't turn away from that cover, even so. It dates from September of 2014. Ruse & Romance by S.G. Rogers has 25 reviews and a 4.1 star rating on Amazon. And that cover is beautiful, no? I'm proud and humbled by the awesome rating readers have given my clean Regency sailing romance, A Different Sort of Perfect — 4.3 stars and 19 reviews since its release in January 2013! Seeing that on the Amazon page always makes me smile. Thanks, readers! Thanks for stopping by. Cheers and happy reading,
Vivian Roycroft
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FREE REGENCY!!! Author Felicia Rogers is giving away her adventurous, clean Regency romantic comedy, The Ruse, today on Amazon. It's normally $2.99, so this is a good deal. Not sure how long this price will hold, though, so it's best to grab it today. Full disclosure: I edited The Ruse (and enjoyed it). I have no financial incentive here, although I am listed as editor on Amazon, so it's a bit of exposure. Here's the blurb: Luke Andrews, Baron of Stockport, is in trouble. He needs a wealthy bride to secure future funds for his financially shaky estate, but the belle of the London season is a spoiled terror with an arrogant father. They’d try the nerves of a saint and Luke can’t quite bring himself to make an offer he knows he’d regret. Meanwhile, Luke’s half-brother Chadwick never could resist a good game of Faro, or anything else, for that matter. With the baron away, Chadwick will play — gambling the estate’s remaining funds into oblivion. He needs to devise his own scheme to replace the money he’s lost, before his brother returns. In Stockport village, Brigitta Blackburn doesn’t have two sticks to rub together — literally. With the estate in financial distress and rents high, food and wood are scarce. When she sneaks onto the baron’s land to steal some firewood, she’s caught, hauled before the play-acting “baron,” Chadwick, and offered a solution to her plight… and his. But Chadwick’s ruse embroils them all. How can Brigitta accept what she thinks to be true, when she really yearns to follow her heart? (end blurb) Thanks for stopping by. Cheers and happy reading, Vivian Do you like to wait until a Regency has a few reviews, positive and negative, before adding it to your collection? Here's a relatively new release (February of this year) with a 4.2 star rating on Amazon from eight reviews. This is To Release an Earl, by Ilene Withers, who also wrote a prequel, The Blackmailed Beauty, in October of 2013. Both books are 99¢ and were released by Clean Reads, formerly Astraea Press. His Lady Peregrine, released March 17 by bestselling Regency author Ruth J. Hartman, has a 4.4 star rating on Amazon with nineteen reviews. This short story from esKape Press is currently FREE. Ruth Hartman is also the author of A Courtship for Cecelia, 99¢ on Amazon with a 4.7 star rating and 32 reviews. S.G. Rogers writes historical romance as well as enchanting fantasy and fantasy romance. A Gift for Lara, the first in a new Victorian romance series called The Love Letters released December 7, 2014, by Idunn Court Publishing, is 99¢ on Amazon and has a 4.4 star rating and 22 reviews. The second in the series, A Gift for Fiona, is $2.50 on Amazon, with 4.4 stars on ten reviews. Last, my own Regency romance short story, Love, Unmasked, is 99¢ on Amazon with 4.0 stars and fourteen reviews. Actually, all of my Regencies are 99¢, including A Different Sort of Perfect, which has a 4.3 star rating on Amazon and nineteen reviews. Perfect was published by Clean Reads on January 7, 2013, and the price has only recently been lowered to 99¢. Thanks for stopping by! Cheers and happy reading,
Vivian Making jam, jelly, or preserves hasn’t changed much through the centuries. Sure, there are a few things we do now that they didn’t do then, but the process remains the same since probably the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. And it’s not hard to reproduce. Here’s how they did it, and I’ll include the modern shortcuts as we go. Definitions: after cooking, preserves still have bite-sized bits of fruit remaining; jam has mushed-up smaller bits; and jelly is smooth, pure jellied syrup. Jelly making is a different process, since you strain the fruit after cooking but before adding the sugar; if you're interested, the wonderful website PickYourOwn.org has directions and recipes. 1. Pick or buy the fruit. During the Regency, if your heroine lives or works in a manor or large farmhouse, the fruit would come from the gardens or orchard. If she’s in the village, she could find it in the nearby market town on market day, or perhaps she’s got a friend in the manor house’s kitchen. If she’s poor, she might steal blackberries from the manor’s woods. These days, the grocery store or farmer’s market works just fine. You can use fresh or frozen, the latter with or without syrup, if you prefer low sugar jam. Fresh fruit needs to be washed, of course. Stone fruits, such as peaches or plums, need the pits removed, strawberries need to be hulled (removing the woody white or green stuff in the berry’s center and tip), and all of it needs to be chopped to bite-size bits and then crushed. Potato mashers work great. In a pinch, I’ve used a wooden spoon and smushed the fruit against the side of the pan. Be careful not to prepare too much fruit. If you try to make the batch of jam or jelly too large, it won’t jell. For strawberry preserves, I use two pounds of fresh fruit per batch. That’s a conservative estimate, since it’s a bitch when the stuff refuses to cooperate. The instructions say you can use as much as six cups of prepared fruit; I say, why take a chance? It’s better to make two small batches and KNOW it’s going to jell, instead of trying to make one batch with all the fruit you bought and crossing your fingers. (Remember reading and re-reading Little Women back in school? Remember the scene where Meg tried to make jelly in her new, married home, and had a fit because it wouldn’t jell? I’m pretty sure that’s what happened.) For more exact measurements and canning recipes, PickYourOwn.org is a FABULOUS website. 2. Dump the prepared fruit in a heavy pan, like this one. Add a quarter cup of lemon juice. It won’t change the flavor and the acid will help the fruit to jell. During the Regency, lemons would be found in the orangery or greenhouse, and possibly imported from the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and India. After about 1800, Royal Navy sailors drank grog (rum mixed with lemon juice and sugar) during their voyages around the world. If each sailor aboard each ship could have three to four ounces of lemon juice each day, then lemons came from somewhere and were fairly widely available. 3. Meg didn’t have pectin back during the Civil War; nor did my mother have it during the Great Depression, so we know Regency heroines wouldn’t have had any. But we have it today and lemme tell you, it’s a life saver. Pectin is a natural product made from apples, and a few tablespoons added in at this step almost guarantees good results. For the two pounds of fresh strawberries, I add three level tablespoons of pectin to a quarter cup of sugar. (I buy pectin in canisters, but it also comes in little boxes of individual servings.) Stir the sugar and pectin together, then stir the mixture into the fruit and lemon juice. Get the actual amount you need from the pectin container; it will vary according to the amount of fruit and sugar you’re using. It’s better to use too much pectin and be sure of good results than to use too little and hate yourself hours later. If your Regency heroine is part of a manor house or good-sized village, it would be believable for an experienced cook or local wise woman to know about adding crushed apples or citrus fruit to the mixture as it cooks, to help it jell. All fruit contains some pectin, but apples don’t affect the flavor. Without pectin, the alternative is to let the jam or jelly boil for a long time. A very long time. Say several hours. As long as it takes. On your feet, stirring it constantly. I add pectin. 4. Turn on the heat and bring your concoction to a good, hard boil. Keep it stirred. The juice will separate from the fruit, forming a thin syrup with the fruit bits floating in it. It looks and smells yummy. When it reaches the point that you can’t stir the boiling away, then you’re ready to add the rest of the sugar. You need a little bit of plain granulated table sugar to help the mixture jell. The minimum would be the quarter cup mixed into the pectin. During the Regency, the cook would add three or four more cups of table sugar at this point, or a very generous dollop of honey. For modern cooking, you can choose your sweetener: more table sugar, honey, grape juice, or a sugar substitute such as the Truvia baking blend. The fabulous PickYourOwn.org website has information on the amounts of each needed for various types of fruit, or you can mix it to taste. And oh, the joy of tasting! 5. Stir the sweetener in well and bring the jam back to a hard boil. This time, let it cook for a few minutes. If you didn’t use pectin, let it cook until the jelling test in the next step works. The fruit juice syrup will thicken a bit, but not much. Remember to keep it stirred. 6. You can test the jelling with a small spoon and a cup of ice water. I use a measuring cup, filled to the top with ice, with enough water to let it float a bit. Dip up a spoonful of the cooking jam, set the bowl of the spoon in the ice water without letting the water mix with the jam, and let it cool for at least a minute. With a measuring cup and lots of ice, I can set the spoon in that cradle and let it balance there, cooling while I keep stirring. After it cools, hold the spoon vertically. When the jam doesn’t budge, it’s cooked enough. During the Regency, some of the richer houses might have ice remaining by summer and early autumn, when fruit would be harvested. Most wouldn’t. Regency cooks would have to remove the pot from the heat source, let it cool a while, and then try spooning it out and letting it cool to test the jelling. If it didn’t jell, the cook would have to boil it longer. Stirring it until it jelled or until, like Meg, she threw up her hands and screamed. I use pectin. 7. This part is optional. You can let the jam sit and cool for about five to ten minutes, then stir it and ladle it into canning jars. If you don’t, the fruit will float to the top and after opening the jar, you’ll need to stir it before use. Because I’m lazy and mostly make jam for use here at home, I generally skip this step. You can also skim off the foam that’s formed during the cooking. There’s nothing wrong with it; it’s just hardened syrup. But if you’re making presents, it does look better without the foam. 8. It’s a good idea to warm your glass canning jars before filling them with hot jam. When filling, you can use a canning funnel, and I imagine Regency cooks would have had something similar. Or you can use a ladle, as I do. Then lay a clean canning lid on top of the filled jar’s mouth and screw a band on that to hold it down. No need to screw the band down tight; the lid has a ring of wax at the edges, which melts and forms a good seal. During the Regency, the cook would soften the wax, apply it to the jar’s mouth, and seal it with either a stopper or a metal lid and more wax. I think stoppers were more common, but don’t quote me on that. 9. Final step, and while we have the option of skipping this one today, Regency cooks would not. This would be mandatory: it’s the preserving part of preserves, making them last longer without spoiling. Get a big pot (or a real canning bath with wire rack), put your filled, sealed, and partially cooled jars of jam in it, and fill it with water to an inch over the lids. Put it on the stove and bring it to a boil. Let it boil for ten minutes (longer at higher altitudes); this will seal the jars (you’ll hear the sucking sound they make as the seal takes hold) and kill off any remaining bacteria. Then you can turn off the burner and fish your jam jars out of the pot. I use metal tongs, but there’s also a jar grabber specially made for this task. And just like with the canning funnel, I imagine Regency cooks in estates or well-to-do farmhouses would have had a specially made set of tongs. Process your jam this way if you intend to store it on the pantry shelf or give it as gifts. A tightly sealed jar will keep for up to a year. If your preserves are for home use, you can skip this step and store the jars in the freezer. For that matter, you can also store the jam in those little plastic containers that lunch meat comes in; you just have to cool it some first and then freeze it. Remove it from the freezer to the fridge a day before use. Kept refrigerated, it should keep for a month to six weeks. Thanks for stopping by. Cheers and happy reading, Vivian Heard a line in a movie somewhere, a speaking cat (I think), teasing, "Cats rule and dogs drool, cats rule and dogs drool." After following a few Happy #Caturdays, I don't think I'll ever be able to think of that line without scoffing. Can anyone remember what movie that was? I'm drawing a blank. Thanks for stopping by. Cheers and happy reading, Vivian I have unashamedly stolen this from Andrew Malcolm's infamous Twitter feed, @AHMalcolm. Happy Caturday, everybody! Cheers, Vivian May the beauty and joy of Christmas fill your hearts to overflowing. Cheers and blessings to all,
Vivian Hi, everybody, and welcome back. Here's a snippet from my Christmas Regency, Love, Unmasked: # Georgette squirmed, a single indecorous wriggle of unbearable delight. Several blond curls broke free from her careless knot and dangled around her face, one sporting a forlorn hairpin that swung with her movement. “Oooh, yes, Mister Brightenburg, he of the most delicious legs. What he does to a pair of silken hose and breeches—” Appalled, Fidelity dropped a stitch. “Georgette!” Not that it wasn’t true. But saying it aloud was beyond the pale, even here in the privacy of the morning room. Although come to think of it, it would be lovely to just hang it all and squirm along with her. It didn’t help that her traitorous thoughts dwelled on the legs in question. Those lovely curving calves, the whip-cord muscular thighs, and above that… “Indeed!” Jessica flipped upright on the sofa and whirled, grabbing Georgette’s shoulders. “Such men should be required by law to wear nothing else.” Fidelity’s hands jerked and another loop slid off the needle. Those girls can’t get any worse. It’s impossible. “Or nothing at all!” So much for that notion. # How far is Fidelity Scott willing to go to catch the sexiest bad boy in Mayfair? When she catches him, will he prove worth the effort? And will her young cousins be help or hindrance in her scandalous plan? Thanks for stopping by. Cheers and happy reading, Vivian Happy dancing! The first review's in for my Christmas Regency, Love, Unmasked — four stars from Inked in the Bayou Reviews! I particularly like this bit: "The plot could have been straight from any modern romantic comedy -- girl obsessed with hot bad boy, girl gets her chance with guy and finds out he's a total D-bag, girl’s equally hot, sweet best guy friend swoops in for the rescue and they live happily ever after. Even though it's a common theme, I (and judging by the amount of rom-coms produced every year, a LOT of other people) fall for it every time, so it didn't lessen my reading enjoyment any." There's something about waiting for that first review. Checking every hour or so, scaring myself wondering if nobody's going to like it, that little stab of disappointment each time when there's still nothing posted… and then finally the first review arrives and I'm almost afraid to read it. IT'S FOUR STARS! I'M HAPPY!!!!!! Probably TMI, right? Does anybody else have that sort of fit while awaiting that magical first? Thanks for the read, Inked in the Bayou! And thanks to you, the reader, for stopping by. Cheers, Vivian Love, Unmasked is now live almost everywhere. (For some reason, the Apple iTunes Bookstore is taking a loooong time to publish. Anybody got any ideas on that?) Here's the opening: # Fidelity Scott sucked in a shivery breath and froze, knitting needles poised like twin exclamation marks amid her neatly coiled pink yarn. All sensation faded away and around her, the morning room paled to a foggy grey nothingness. The crackling fire warmed her face but lost all color and sound, and the tremor in her hands started in her knitting needles and rippled through to her toes, missing none of her in between. It happened every time, without fail. Her friend Clarissa Pelham had mentioned that name, the one guaranteed to draw Fidelity into dreamy, mindless yearnings no matter the circumstances, and it did so with its usual heady abandon. The raw emotions shivering through her seemed to suck all the bones from her body, leaving her trembling like some loathsome sea creature. Her younger cousin, Jessica Alcock, sprawled back across the sofa, one arm falling over her face in a pretended swoon, the other grabbing for one of the overstuffed pillows propped among the cushions. The lower half of her face, all that could be seen through her amateur theatrics, seemed to melt into a gooey puddle of drool. “Oooh, yes, Mis-ter Bright-en-burg!” she trilled in a vibrato sing-song. A chorus of sighs broke through Fidelity’s name-induced fog and she shook herself awake. Embarrassing, that was. Honestly, if she couldn’t control her reaction when a certain gentleman’s name was mentioned, then she scored no higher on propriety than her two young cousins, which was very very bad indeed. # Fidelity tries to be the adult in the room, which isn't difficult considering how much fun her two cousins insist upon having. Or at least it isn't difficult until someone mentions that name… and then she's sunk. Thanks for stopping by. Cheers, Vivian |
Vivian Roycroft
Vivian Roycroft is a pseudonym for historical fiction and adventure writer J. Gunnar Grey. And if she’s not careful, her pseudonymous pseudonym will have its own pseudonym soon, too. With its own e-reader, a yarn stash, an old Hermès hunt saddle, and a turtle sundae at Culver‘s. Archives
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A Different Sort of Perfect
Works in progress:
Kissing the Toad: In Berkeley Square, book #1
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