Vicky Dreiling – Featured Beau Monde Author

Photo of author Vicky DreilingVicky Dreiling

Vicky Dreiling, our featured Beau Monde Author, is a confirmed historical romance junkie and Anglophile.

Frequent business trips to the UK allowed her to indulge her passion for all things Regency England. Bath, Stonehenge, and Spencer House are among her favorite places. She is, however, truly sorry for accidentally setting off a security alarm in Windsor Castle. That unfortunate incident led her British colleagues to nickname her “Trouble.”

When she’s not writing, Vicky enjoys reading, films, concerts, and most of all, long lunches with friends. She holds degrees in English literature and marketing. A native Texan, she shares her home with her daughter and a spoiled mini-lop rabbit that lives in a slightly gnawed cardboard cottage.

Find Vicky here – Website

Added News – Vicky will sign HOW TO SEDUCE A SCOUNDREL and HOW TO MARRY A DUKE at the “Readers for Life” Literacy Autographing on Tuesday, June 28, from 5:30–7:30 p.m at the New York Marriott Marquis in Times Square.

Ann Lethbridge – Featured Beau Monde Author

Ann Lethbridge

Our Featured Beau Monde Author is the chapter’s current President and tireless worker, Ann Lethbridge.

She regularly attends, assists, and signs books at both chapter and national romance writing conferences in Canada and the USA. She also attended the inaugrual Australian Romance Readers Convention in 2009.

Romance Writers of America, the Beau Monde chapter, plus the other chapters she is involved with, are appreciative of Ann’s knowledge, expertise, and her willingness to share her valuable time to help other authors.

An army brat born in England, Ann lived all over the UK in her youth. She grew up loving history, but majored in business, with history on the side.

Now living in Canada, she has a husband and two lovely daughters and a Maltese Terrier called Teaser, who likes to sit on a chair beside the computer while she works.

She loves the Georgian era, and within that, the period known as the long Regency. She also adores happy endings.

You will find her print books in bookstores in the month of issue, as well as on line where you will also find her e-books.

The Gamekeeper’s Lady, HH, April 2011
More than a Mistress, HH, May 2011

Website
Regency Ramble Blog
Facebook
@annlethbridge: @annlethbridge

Donna Hatch – Featured Beau Monde Author

Donna Hatch

Donna’s passion for writing began at age 8 when she wrote her first short story. During her sophomore year in high school, she wrote her first full-length novel, which was recently published.

Her writing has won or been nominated as a finalist in many writing awards including the Whitney, SARA Merritt, and Golden Quill. In between caring for six children, (7 counting her husband), her day job, and her many volunteer positions, she manages to carve out time to indulge in her writing obsession.

A native of Arizona, she writes Regency Romance and Fantasy. And yes, all of her heroes are patterned after her husband of over 21 years, who continues to prove that there really is a happily ever after.

Books – The Guise of a Gentleman; Book 2 of the Rogue Hearts Series

Queen in Exile, a fantasy

Blog 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/donnahatch

Diane Gaston – Featured Beau Monde Author

Diane Gaston.

Diane’s dream came true in 2003 with an unexpected phone call from England.                      The Harlequin Mills & Boon editor who judged her Regency Historical manuscript in the Golden Heart wanted to buy it—and it also won!

Diane’s Regencies have gone on to win RWA’s most prestigious RITA award, the National Readers Choice Award, The Orange Rose (now Bookseller’s Best), the Golden Quill and Holt Medallion.

She continues to write for Harlequin Historical. A member of Beau Monde for at least a decade, Diane enjoys being among like-minded people who love the Regency as much as she does.

She blogs at Risky Regencies on Mondays, Diane’s Blog on Thursdays, and eHarlequin the third Wednesday of the month. You can also find her on Facebook and on Twitter as DianeGaston.

 

Shopping in Regency London by Elaine Golden

Staying in Mayfair, the area of London featured in yesterday’s post, one of our tireless Beau Monde workers, Elaine Golden, talks about Shopping in Regency London.

The modern day shopping mall has its origins in Regency London. In a time when all clothing and accessories were custom made by hand, proprietors set up shops close to their customers –which for the Beau Monde of Regency London, meant as close to Mayfair as possible.

Bond Street

As the trendy new Mayfair neighborhood was developed in the 18th century, the eastern border became the location for the choicest of shops –and the legend of Bond Street as a shopping mecca was born. It quickly became not only a popular place to shop, but also a place to stroll –to see and be seen about town.

However, as popular as Bond Street and its shops were, it wasn’t without its downsides. It wasn’t uncommon for the street to become so packed with pedestrians, that people were forced to walk in the street, as depicted by this c1796 caricature “High-Change in Bond Street –or—the Politesse of du Grande Monde”. So much for high manners, if the local papers scorned the lack of courtesy, where women were forced to walk in the streets!

Then, there’s the weather. In a place known for rain, fog and cold winters, it wasn’t always prudent or convenient to go to Bond Street, or at least to linger there. Between the wet and the mud, I’m sure many a retail sale was lost because shoppers just couldn’t browse without getting wet and cold.

Burlington Arcade

So, when Lord George Cavendish, fed up with people dumping oyster shells in a passage bordering his town home, decided to put the area to good use and commissioned the Burlington Arcade, it was an immediate success when it opened in 1819, situated as it was on the corner of Bond and Piccadilly.

The first stroke of genius in the design was to cover the entire pedestrian boulevard with a glazed roof to protect customers as they visited the shops there. It also spoke to the Regency sense of uniformity of design and housed 2 rows of neat shops –a total of 72 enclosed shops of milliners, shoemakers, jewelers –just about anything the Regency shopper could imagine in a single, convenient location. Beadles, originally staffed from Cavendish’s old regiment of Hussars, were stationed at the Arcade to watch over the customers and to keep vagrants and thieves at bay.
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Posted with permission of the author.

Susan Gee Heino – Featured Beau Monde Author

Susan Gee Heino

Susan began her writing career as a Theatre student, where she discovered writing plays for others to perform was much easier than memorizing lines and showing up to rehearsal every day. After several years working in forsaken little theatres, she settled into her current role as preacher’s wife and child herder.

To preserve her sanity, she took her love of Historical Romance and turned her focus back onto writing. In 2008, she won Romance Writers of America’s prestigious Golden Heart ® Award in the Regency Historical category.

MISTRESS BY MISTAKE was released in 2009 by Berkley Publishing. DAMSEL IN DISGUISE, came out in 2010 and TEMPTRESS IN TRAINING will hit shelves in July of 2011. She is currently working on the fourth book in this series.

Regina Scott- Featured Beau Monde Author

Regina Scott is our Beau Monde Author under the spotlight today. She’s been a member of the Beau Monde since 1996 and served as published author liaison, conference chair, and in 2011 president-elect. Later in 2011, she will step up to become our new President.

Regina started writing novels in the third grade. Thankfully for literature as we know it, she didn’t actually sell her first novel until she had learned a bit more about writing. Since her first book was published in 1998, her stories have traveled the globe, with translations in many languages including Dutch, German, Italian, and Portuguese.

She’s written for both adults and teens, with fourteen novels and four novellas to her credit, all set in the Regency period. She and her husband of over 20 years reside in southeast Washington State.

Regina is a decent fencer and owns a historical costume collection that takes up over a third of her large closet.

Blog: www.nineteenteen.blogspot.com