Announcing 'Regency Fancies'

I have to use today's blog for advertising because I am very excited about a totally new venture that I have undertaken with my artist Shakoriel. We have developed a CafePress store offering Shakoriel's wonderful Regency costume art on a variety of products.

We have three different designs of Regency ladies on products at present--they are all from the Regency Colouring Book and lend themselves very well to product decoration. We have T-shirts, totebags, notecards and journals available as well as one or two novelties. Eventually the Regency Colouring Book will be available through CafePress also.

As we have worked on the Regency Colouring Book, Shakoriel has produced some beautiful artwork. I realized that it was a shame to own this fabulous art and not make it more widely available. We decided that CafePress would give us a venue for product design and hopefully we have chosen products you will enjoy. If you would like to see Shakoriel's art on some specific item, please let us know, and we will see if we can accommodate you.

Please visit our store at http://www.cafepress.com/regencyfancies and let us know what you think!

Til next time,
Lesley-Anne

Searching for the Regency...

I really enjoy the Internet. It opens up communities and worlds to me, places I'll never see and things I'll never be able to do.

I am a very visual and art-oriented person, so wherever I go on the Internet, I tend to look for, and at, pictures. That's why my own website is very graphic-oriented. The visual gives you a taste--a sample--a flavour of a place, an event, or a thing.

Wherever I go on the Internet the first thing I do, if I'm at a site with an internal search engine, is put 'Regency' into a search. I've done it at http://www.etsy.com/ and found some wonderful costume makers and some Jane Austen-themed trinkets. I've done it at http://www.cafepress.com/ and found some great Regency-themed totes and decorative items.

If I want to look at pictures just to absorb historical atmosphere, I go to http://pro.corbis.com/ and enter 'Regency' in the search. Adding a year to the search makes it even better. The same thing happens at http://www.maryevans.com/ a wonderful picture library. Images are copyrighted at both of these sites, and can only be used by purchasing rights, but for browsing they are wonderful. The great English auction house http://www.sothebys.com/ is a great place to look at actual Regency furnishings, jewelry and art.

When I go to museum websites, I put 'Regency' into the search box. At http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/ , http://www.vam.ac.uk/(Victoria and Albert Museum), and http://www.britishmuseum.org/research.aspx this brings me more pictures and information than I have time to view.

And then of course, if you tire of looking at pictures, and you want in-depth information you can go to http://www.abebooks.com/, enter 'English Regency' in a keyword search and find 5730 books that you can read about the Regency era--fiction and non-fiction.

So, do you have an overriding interest that you always enter in search boxes? Or am I alone in this singular pursuit? :)

Til next time,
Lesley-Anne

Have you heard of Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin?

I only just heard of him myself! He is a creation of author C. S. Harris and you can investigate him and his creator more thoroughly at http://csharris.net/

The viscount is the damaged, enigmatic hero of a series of very dark Regency-set mysteries, and I'm in love with him already. I just finished reading "What Angels Fear" and it was excellent. The Regency world that Sebastian inhabits is very different from the Regency world my characters live in. But it did exist, and Ms. Harris has given it an authentic feel. If you like a dark mystery (warning: lots of violence and dirt), you will find this series intriguing. I don't usually read anything like these books, but I found this bleak underbelly of the Regency fascinating. I think it is important for me, to give my work credence and authenticity, to be very aware that this other side of London and its society existed.

On another note entirely, some very good writer friends of mine have just started their blog. They are going to cover all kinds of topics of interest to writers, and I may show up there occasionally as a guest blogger. Check them out at Prairie Chicks Write Romance http://www.prairiechickswriteromance.blogspot.com/

As well, you might want to check out my website and enter the new contest. I just posted it a day ago--there will be a draw on February 28, 2009 for a CD-ROM copy of my latest book "The Education of Portia". Go to http://www.lesleyannemcleod.com/contest.html to view the details.
And the details about my March release "Emilina's Conquest" are posted on my home page!

Happy New Year! I hope your holidays were wonderful and you are all prepared for the bright and shiny new year. My New Year's resolution--to blog more often. Come back and see if I keep my resolution :)

Lesley-Anne