Although not all of our contemporary romances feature doctors, we do have two infectious disease doctors as the leads in Sick of You and Cruising for You. At the time, neither of us had ever worked in medicine (but in yet another case of our lives imitating our art, Diana does now work in the … Read more
In the 18th century, a ball or assembly would typically begin with a formal minuet. In 1773-1774 in Virginia, diarist Philip Fithian said their balls went in this order: “first minuets one round; second Giggs [sic]; third Reels; and last of all country-Dances.” The first dance, the minuet, originated in the French court. It’s a … Read more
In Freedom’s Ring, Temperance Hayes loves games of strategy—whether they’re board games or games of the heart. Check out all the games we refer to! Dissected maps Temperance doesn’t use this one, but her sisters are playing with a dissected map in one scene. This is not an early biology lesson, but an early puzzle! … Read more
In Freedom’s Ring, Temperance Hayes loves games of strategy—whether they’re board games or games of the heart. Check out all the strategy games we refer to! Fox and geese Fox and geese is played on a + shaped board. One fox and 13 or more geese pieces are placed on vertices of the lines on … Read more
In A Gentleman’s Daughter, Cassandra and Helen wear riding habits for travel. That was inspired by this 1770s riding habit at the Victoria and Albert Museum. ©Victoria and Albert Museum. Used with permission I also liked the idea of having them wear a fashionable Brunswick traveling ensemble, but I thought that might be harder to … Read more
Like most of us, we thought that 18th century clothes were silly and impractical as we started working on our stories in this time period. And then we saw this video that totally changed our perspective. Let’s just say we’re shopping for stays now.
Obviously this style of music and Early Modern English predate the setting of Sisters of the Revolution, but while we were writing the first two books, these medieval style covers of popular songs were posted on YouTube. This one in particular was appropriate for A Gentleman’s Daughter! Not sure what part made us think this? … Read more
We enjoyed this video as part of our research. Here’s how an upper class (“better sort”) woman would have gotten dressed!
Not only is this video informative, it’s spot-on perfect and hilarious. I’m pretty sure it influenced the character of Lord David. Like, a lot. I know we never say this, but seriously: read the comments!
Confession time: I guess on some level, I thought that 18th century artists were just . . . bad at painting hair. It always looks so frizzy and fuzzy! Turns out that’s actually how it looked after pomatum, powder and frizzing, the style and hair care of the time. After studying fashion from the 1770s, … Read more