Hmm. Just wrote two pages with James reacting to seeing Lucy just before the ball that's one of my set pieces. It's either the hottest thing I've ever written, or it's even more purple than the crowd at the Homecoming Game at Husky Stadium. I wonder how long it'll take me to objectively judge.

connie, the idea is that Tamsin, Penny's insanely wealthy new SIL, wants a "reproduction" Tudor manor house, using as many (or as close) to the original materials the Tudor architects would have used as possible.

It's not on the site of an original structure; Penny's brother Stephen owns this patch of land on the Isle of Dogs. It's actually on the site of a small dock where Henry VIII would have docked his pleasure boats when he came across from Placentia, his palace at Greenwich just arcross the river, for a day's hunting with his dogs.

Susan, purple prose is our friend.

Susan, purple prose is our friend.

Well, there is a fine line between the romantic and/or sexy and the overwrought and overblown. I don't want to write anything that'll amuse more than arouse, and tempt my readers to do dramatic readings of the love scenes to the amusement of their friends, as I t cough have been known to do myself (see LA F2F).

Know the feeling, Susan. Damn, Deb, this whole project is like another education...I'm awaiting books on private investigation as I type this. Hope this education pays off better than the last one.

erika, at least this one will be fun.

Less math.(There will be some because I was dumb and gave the clients More Money Than God.Need to learn how to sort out financials that don't involve NSFs, for once. Hope it's practice. Detective rule one: Follow The Money.) A little science. But I don't have to take statistics again, which was right up there on my list of frustrating experiences.

Another question for the group: I know it would be plausible to have a Victorian gentleman be resistent to or even revolted by the idea of gently bred, "nice" women having strong sexual urges, but would it also work for a slightly earlier era, supposing the Regency gentleman in question were very straitlaced and a bit of a misogynist?

Perhaps, Susan, if he didn't think there were any such thing as a "nice" woman.

Well, that would cause problems with some of his earlier characterization--it's Sebastian, who I think was still named Julius back when you read it. He needs to have been kind to Lucy as a child, and to come across as an angel of light when courting Anna, neither of which would make much sense if he thinks there's no such thing as a nice woman.

I don't know if Regency men were starting to fall for the idea of "woman as celestial being and above that sort of thing" or not. Regency is Napoleonic, right? The fashion in France was for women to waft about in gauzy white low-cut gowns--which is what Napoleon liked to see Josephine wear, and the other court women were no fools about folowing the trends--but I don't know if there was an attendant belief that ladies of fashion were innocent and serene. In France, at least, it was the feeling that marriages were for business (maintaining/mingling family property and providing heirs), and that love and passion were found elsewhere.

The only thing I know about English Regency society is that the Prince Regent despised his wife, sued his wife for divorce but didn't succeed, and that his daughter, Princess Charlotte, was well liked and died in childbirth to the mourning of the nation.