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Well, it's been a wild ride this fall! I've been juggling so many projects and deadlines that I feel like one of those circus performers who keeps a dozen plates spinning in the air. But would I trade it all to end up back in day-job hell? Hell, no!
So, what have I been doing with myself? Putting the finishing touches on my January 2008 release from Avon "A" -- CHOOSING SOPHIE, a contemporary story about Olivia ("Venus") deMarley, a former burlesque dancer who stands to inherit her late father's scrappy (and colorful) minor league baseball team, the Bronx Cheers, if she and Sophie, the twenty-year-old daughter she gave up for adoption right after her birth, can reunite .
Doffing my baseball cap to don another hat, this time a tricorn, I've also spent this fall getting my next work of historical fiction ready for publication in February, 2008.
ALL FOR LOVE: The Scandalous Life and Times of Royal Mistress Mary Robinson is my fourth title under the pen name Amanda Elyot. Amanda writes historical fiction. Leslie writes the contemporary stories. They're both me. It's an open secret.
Mary Robinson was a fascinating woman who kept company with some of the greatest luminaries of the Georgian era: the actor David Garrick, the playwright and theatre manager Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the firebrand politician Charles James Fox, and the glittering Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, the crusading feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, and the opium-addicted romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. As a teenager, Mary was London's most celebrated actress. In 1780, she caught the eye of the Prince of Wales and became his first lover. I won't give away too much of the plot, but as the years went on, she became a poetess, novelist, and feminist herself and carried on a passionate 15-year affair with the dashing war hero Banastre Tarleton.
I've also been scrambling to meet the revision deadline for my first work of historical nonfiction. ROYAL AFFAIRS: A Lusty Romp Through the Extramarital Affairs that Shocked the British Monarchy will be released by NAL next June, just in time for your summer vacation. Sexy and sizzling and full of real-life dangerous liaisons, it's the perfect beach read, or the perfect companion to pass the time with during the airline flight to your destination of choice. Just don't leave it in the seat pocket in front of you!
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8 comments:
Your books are so well written, intelligent and entertaining. I look forward to reading each of these.
May your writing career soar.
Cathy
Thanks, Cathy -- you're my new best friend! :)
I'll have to read "All for Love" and "Royal Affairs". They look great. I just finished "Sex with Kings" by Eleanor Herman which is a great book about royal mistresses. I like the genre.
Sex With Kings is an excellent book, Georgie Lee. Did you read Eleanor Herman's other book, Sex with the Queen?
ROYAL AFFAIRS is structured very differently from those books, though. Rather than examine subject by subject, the way Ms. Herman does, I give, in chronological order, the story of the love affair between the royal mistress (or lover) and the monarch, and you can choose to read them out of order in little bites or read the whole book from start to finish. When you do the latter, you really see how the royal affairs themselves shaped the history of England and what a huge impact on government and religion they had.
Hi Leslie,
The blog is great and I liked all the links. It really wetted my appetite for your book about Mary Robinson. I'm familiar with the period and some of those names but wasn't aware of Mary. Now I can't wait to find out more.
SueB
Hi, Sue!
Mary Robinson isn't a household name, surprisingly. And yet she was connected with so many of the household names of her era. Also, because she wrote in more genres than any other woman of her day (poetry, novels, drama, operetta, political essays), it's surprising that her works aren't taught in colleges and universities with any regularity. However, last month I met an English professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who teaches her writing.
I haven't read Sex with the Queen but I will have to get it. I look forward to Royal Affairs. Thanks!
I'll keep everyone posted on ROYAL AFFAIRS stuff on that blog as well. And if you belong to a book group that might be interested in choosing any of my titles, we can set up an interactive chat regarding the book on one of the blogs just for the group.
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