Amy, I read nonfiction, or in fiction I revisit old friends, like Simenon or Stout or Hammett.

You like hardboiled and like Simon...you should read Pelecanos, too. And I think he's a liberal that likes Greek carrots. Sorry... Hard Revolution just rocked my socks. Swoon. One day, I need to thank him, too, if I get a chance because after the election I was tempted to throw out Model Citizen as a project because it struck me as insufficiently socially conscious. The political thread in those mysteries kept me from doing that.

I go through phases in what I read. Last year I was so busy racing through the Aubrey-Maturin series I hardly touched a romance, or really any other fiction. This year I've been reading mostly what I write. Historical romance. And it's been good, because I've been discovering there are more good authors out there than I thought. The one thing I'm not letting myself do is go anywhere near the Sharpe series (book or film) or Georgette Heyer's The Spanish Bride. I figure that since I couldn't resist writing about the Rifles, I need to stay away from the well-known fictional versions just to be sure I'm making them my own rather than commiting fanfic or plagiarism.

(I do make an exception for still images from the Sharpe series. Research purposes, you know. To remind myself what the uniforms look like on real people. Yeah, that's what I'm doing. Research. All research.)

Susan, I have a deep fondness for Heyer, which I know you don't share - but I love her acknowledgements at the front of her amazing novel about Waterloo, An Infamous Army. It's basically an acknowledgement of stealing from Thackeray. Not sure if she meant it to be funny, but I found myself nodding and laughing.

I need to read An Infamous Army one of these days, but AFAIK it hasn't yet been reprinted in the Heyer reprint bonanza of the last few years.

And it's not that I don't like Heyer, it's just that I don't think she's the be-all and end-all of everything Regency--her work reflected her own times as much as the ones she was writing about, IMO. If I'm going to worship at an author's altar, I'll stick with Austen, whom I adore beyond all reason.

her work reflected her own times as much as the ones she was writing about, IMO

Doesn't this usually happen? You're a product of your times, plus she may have been making compromises to make her work accessible to and interesting for her contemporary readers.

I love Austen, but from a distance; it's a similar reaction to the one I have for Emily Dickenson. But Persuasion kills me. I just adore it.

I don't know that Heyer is the be-all and end-all, but she's certainly the gold standard, and I think she earned it. Unbelievably meticulous researcher; I would kill for her library. Something like 40,000 books and original manuscripts from the period.

One nice thing about An Infamous Army is that it unites two families from two of her other books, the Alastairs and the Worths. And the blow by blow of Waterloo, leading up to it and the days following, had me in the kind of suspended state of "ogodogod" that Thackeray never managed to pull up in me.

Doesn't this usually happen? You're a product of your times, plus she may have been making compromises to make her work accessible to and interesting for her contemporary readers.

Yep. That's my take.

One nice thing about An Infamous Army is that it unites two families from two of her other books, the Alastairs and the Worths.

I'm sure I've read that one, but it's been so many years, now, I don't really remember it. I've enjoyed the glut of reprints, because it gave me an opportunity to reread some of my favorites. Now I think I'm going to have to search this one out, again. Maybe I can find it in the library.

Doesn't this usually happen? You're a product of your times, plus she may have been making compromises to make her work accessible to and interesting for her contemporary readers.

Well, of course. I know that. But you don't know how many people I've seen go on like Heyer's books are perfectly researched, reflected the era as it was, yadda yadda yadda, and seem to think you can write a good Regency romance without doing any proper research of your own--just read Heyer and you're ready to go!

Sorry. Don't wanna. I'd rather do my own research. And while it's inevitable that my work is colored by my times and by the fact that I'm an American, I don't feel my work would benefit by adding yet another distancing filter to the mix, and to me that's what relying on Heyer's version of the Regency era would mean.