Welcome to Smugglivus 2009 – Day 11!

Throughout this month, we will have daily guests – authors and bloggers alike – looking back at their favorite reads of 2009, and looking forward to events and upcoming books in 2010.

Today’s Guest: THE Loretta Chase, writer of Historical romance novels. The person responsible for writing Lord of Scoundrels, which is considered to be by many, including Ana, the ultimate romance novel. For a recent interview we did with Loretta, please go here.

Recent Work: Don’t Tempt Me, second in the Fallen Women series. Reviewed here by Ana.

Loretta was kind enough to come out of the Writing Cave for a short time to write her Smugglivus piece about the next book:

LORETTA CHASE SMUGGLIVUS 2009

As usual at this time of year, I’m in the last stages of a book, and short on time or mind for anything else. What I’ve been reading in 2009 isn’t going to thrill anybody, because a lot of it’s pretty boring (even to me) historical material, and my fiction reading tends to be about three years behind everybody else’s. Old news, in so many ways.

New news, then.

The new book. Olivia and Peregrine of LORD PERFECT return. In that story–#3 of my Carsington books–they were twelve and thirteen years old. LAST NIGHT’S SCANDAL brings them back ten years later. Olivia has become a great beauty, and she’s still the Regency version of Lady Maverick. Peregrine, the Earl of Lisle, has been making a name for himself as an Egyptologist, a Regency-era Indiana Jones. In other words, some things haven’t changed; they’ve simply developed. Though they’ve been apart for long stretches, they’ve stayed close through their letters, which Olivia composes by the ream. When Lisle comes back for an important Carsington family event, Olivia upends his well-ordered life again. He ends up on the road with her again, this time with a couple of bawdy old ladies along to complicate matters–and headed for a haunted castle in Scotland. LAST NIGHT’S SCANDAL will be out in August 2010. A reissue of LORD PERFECT is expected as well, though I don’t yet have a date.

The new blog: Late in the summer Susan Holloway Scott & I launched our new blog, Two Nerdy History Girls, wherein we ponder the past and its mysteries, some of which are hilarious–or at least we think so. We post short pieces about people who’ve been dead for hundreds of years and what they wore (or took off and threw on the floor) and who or what they were sleeping with. One day you can learn exactly what I saw from the carriage window and what the carriage taking my heroine to Scotland really looked like. Another day you might encounter drunk noblemen getting naked and making bawdy speeches in Covent Garden balconies. Yet another time you can admire Barbie’s Louboutin shoes or the size of Queen Victoria’s knickers. In short, we love history but we aren’t all that mature.

Thanks very much Loretta, for taking the time to tell us about the book and the blog! Ana can’t wait for Last Night’s Scandal!