Rita Boucher, Interview, Regency Romance, Mary Jo Putney, The Scandalous Schoolmistress, The Poet and the Paragon, Miss Gabriel's Gambit, The Devil's Due Continue reading

Cruising the Chesapeake 2 by Mary Jo I chronicled the first part of our April Chesapeake Bay Revolutionary War themed here. Now for the second exciting installment! Washington, DC: After leaving Yorktown, Virginia, the site of the British surrender to the new United States in the Revolutionary war, we headed north. Next stop: Washington, DC.! As usual, there were several excursions available to passengers. The Mayhem Consultant and I are fond of taking coach tour overviews because they give a broader sense of the area and show both highlights and lesser lights. Also, the guides are generally specialists in local... Continue reading

Anniversary Garden Party & Giveaway, Part 2 Collected by Mary Jo Welcome to the second part of the Word Wench anniversary garden party, and this time, we're giving out books! The Wenches will give books to seven winners chosen at random from among the commenters by Tuesday night. So tell us your thoughts! (Commenters from both days of the anniversary posts are eligible.) As on Friday, each Wench will summon one of our fictional couples from Pat Rice's magical library. Because libraries are all magical, here we can meet people from all places and times. The invitation will invite our... Continue reading

You're invited to the Word Wenches' Anniversary Garden Party! (Part 1) Collected by Mary Jo The Word Wenches blog is 15 years old! This is ancient beyond words in internet terms, yet we're still here because we love talking about our books and our travels and delicious odd bits of history. Most of all, we like the chance to interact with our readers. Our characters have so much to say that this blog will be divided in two with Part 2 posted on Monday the 24th. The invitations are going out now. Will you join us? Patricia Rice's characters arrive:... Continue reading

Cruising the Chesapeake by Mary Jo A vacation! A real vacation! The Mayhem Consultant and I are recently returned from a 10 day cruise of the Chesapeake Bay with a Revolutionary War theme. The cruise was with American Cruise Lines, a small ship cruise company that operates entirely within the US, including having ships built in Maryland and an all-American crew. In these uncertain times, all passengers and crew had to be fully vaccinated and other safety protocols were followed. We all obeyed because a real vacation was so lovely. We'd done other ACL cruises and knew that the food... Continue reading

The Emerald Isle: Another classic travel blog by Mary Jo Ironically, yesterday the Mayhem Consultant and I returned from our first vacation in a year and a half: a cruise of the Chesapeake Bay. But I didn't have the time to write a proper blog, so I'm recycling an older blog about a week we spent in Ireland, because who doesn't want to visit Ireland??? The Mayhem Consultant and I sailed from New York to Southampton on the Queen Mary 2 purely to enjoy the leisure and romance of a transatlantic crossing. But once we reached England, we certainly weren’t... Continue reading

By Mary Jo Today's Ask A Wench was inspired by a question from regular reader Pamela DG, who wanted to know why authors use pseudonyms. I said the answer was complicated and worthy of a blog. For asking the question, Pamela will get a book from me. Writing with a pseudonym, a name not one's own, can occur for any number or reasons. The Wenches explain why: From Nicola I’ve never written under a pseudonym. This was not a conscious decision. I was literally so naïve when I was first published that it did not cross my mind to consider... Continue reading

by Mary Jo I'm still playing catch-up on my writing, so here's another armchair tour from blogs gone by! The picture of me on the left is taken in the courtyard of Melk Abbey, a grand abbey on the Danube. Riverboat Cruising Years ago, I read an article about riverboat cruises in Europe, and the idea immediately appealed to me. As a friend says, rivers were the interstates of the past, and so much of European civilization developed along the waterways. How better to explore than in a boat holding maybe 150 friendly, intelligent passengers and serving lots of really... Continue reading

Seeing the Elephant by Mary Jo Once more I'm crashing toward the end of a story, in this case a Christmas novella scheduled for the A YULETIDE KISS anthology that will be out this October. Sooooo....I'm also once again recycling an older travel blog, this time of our marvelous safari in Botswana. Just rereading it made me want to go there again! So once more: On September 8th, 2016, late in the evening, I pressed "Send" to email the manuscript of Once a Rebel to my editor. And the next morning we flew to Africa. I wrote 7K words that... Continue reading

An interview with Alissa Baxter: By Mary Jo I'm delighted to have as my guest today my friend Alissa Baxter, a South African romance writer who has written a trilogy of sweet Regency romances with heroines who have unconventional interests. The first, The Earl's Lady Geologist, has just been released. Kirkus Reviews called it, "A playful and poignant historical romance that’s certain to please fans of the genre." Bestselling author Mimi Mathews said, “A gentle Regency romance, full of sweetness and intelligence. Alissa Baxter’s writing is period perfect.” An Amazon reviewer said, "At times touching, at others humorous with snappy... Continue reading

by Mary Jo Once again I'm madly busy, having finished going over a copy edit of Once a Laird this evening and in the middle of writing an overdue Christmas novella. So as I look out at snow and ice, I decided to post a 2011 blog of the warm and sunny Caribbean. Most of the world has been deprived of travel this last year, but that's starting to change. Here are some islands to dream on! Caribbean! Just the name evokes heat and mystery and beauty and treasure. There’s a reason why the Disney movie trilogy wasn’t Pirates of... Continue reading

By Mary Jo Book covers are an enduring subject of interest and debate for both authors and readers. Receiving one's first book cover is a moment of high anticipation. Is the cover attractive? Does it accurately represent the type of book it is? Do the models look anything like the characters within the covers? Does the heroine have three arms? (Yes, that happened, and no one noticed until the book came out. <G>) I've had some very good covers in my time, some that were mediocre, a few that made me cringe. One of the great joys of indie publishing... Continue reading

by Mary Jo Here is the monthly round up of books Word Wenches have enjoyed recently. I hope you find some new reads you'd enjoy! Pat Rice here: Rainy Day Sisters by Kate Hewitt is women’s fiction of the philosophical, emotional sort, except a lot more original than most. There’s a couple of up-and-down romances to keep the stakes high, but the real focus is on the development of a relationship between half-sisters who barely know each other. The younger grew up in the US, the older in the UK, and their only common ground really is their fury at... Continue reading

by Mary Jo I'm madly trying to finish this year's book, Once a Laird, so I'm invoking Wenchly Privilege to rerun an older post. Since currently travel isn't happening, I thought it would be fun to go with one of my earlier travel posts, and cruising on the Amazon seems delightfully distant and exotic. So here we go! (The colorful straw frogs to the right were centerpieces on the dining room tables.) These days when we talk about Amazon, we're probably referring to the mega-selling online site, but after visiting the real Amazon, it was easy to understand why Jeff... Continue reading

Turkducken? By Mary Jo For today's Christmastide post, we'll discuss turducken .Yankee that I am, I had never heard of this dish until I moved to Maryland, which is south of the Mason Dixon line, though barely. I vaguely thought it was an old traditional dish from Maryland's Eastern Shore and was popular around the holidays. It consists of a deboned chicken stuffed into a deboned duck stuffed into a mostly deboned turkey. (Wings and legs kept their bones for aesthetic reasons, I presume.) There is also bread or sausage dressing. In other words, it's one heck of a lot... Continue reading

Christmastide: The Cats' Christmas by Mary Jo This is second in the Word Wenches' annual tradition of short posts for Christmastide, the days between Christmas and Twelfth Night on January 6th. I don't usually get presents for my cats since they're royally pampered every day. But this year I decided to get a tall, very stable scratching post. I opened it up, attached the base, and rubbed catnip into the sisal. And furry fun was had! Spook, the solemn white and gray part Siamese cat who has never shown the least inclination to play, had fun with it, delighting in... Continue reading

by Mary Jo Today's topic was inspired by a question from Word Wench reader Kay Spears, who asks: One of my allllll time favorite romances is/was Mary Jo Putney's The Rake and the Reformer aka The Rake. I love Reginald Davenport...he turned out to be quite a hero. My question for all wenches: How do you take a drunk/ licentious/ corrupt/ not-hero-material man and redeem him? And, when you're writing this character, do you recognize him as hero material? Or, does it come as a surprise when readers start wanting him as a hero? MJP: I immediately grabbed this topic... Continue reading

By Mary Jo Thanksgiving has long been my favorite holiday because of the warmth of friends and family gathering together around my table. People fill my kitchen, good naturedly dodging each other, cats lurk in hope of a bit of turkey, and there's a bounty of goodwill. That's not happening this year because of the pandemic. 2020 is a lost year in so many ways. So many events, so many gatherings, so many concerts and vacations, have been cancelled. To the left is my country oak table, bought from a consignment shop. It has about five different leaves that can... Continue reading

Moments of Joy By Mary Jo This has been a difficult year just about everywhere. A highly contagious virus, a lockdown, massive economic disruptions--I'm told that time travelers are being told to skip 2020 as they travel through time! Yet people are adaptable, and even in dark times, we can find moments of happiness, some of which are actually a result of the lockdown. Perhaps something that was once routine is now noteworthy, or we're finding that spending so much time at home is providing unexpected benefits. The Wenches share some such moments. For me, one such event was something... Continue reading

by Mary Jo I'm getting into Deep Writing Mode to try to finish the current book, which is waaaay behind. So instead of writing a new blog, I decided to exercise Wench privilege by pulling out an old blog and buffing it up. This blog dates back to the earliest days of the Word Wenches and was inspired by a regular reader who asked me when I knew I was meant to be a writer and suggested that it was a question worth blogging. I agreed that the question is an intriguing one, but I’ll bet that others have a... Continue reading

by Mary Jo I've promised that audiobooks of my Silk Trilogy were on the way, and now the first, Silk and Shadows, is available with Silk and Secrets and Veils of Silk on the way. Once more the wonderful Siobhan Waring is the narrator, as she has been for all my audio releases for more than a year. I think of Silk and Shadows as my Count of Monte Cristo story. The first sentence of the book is, "He called himself Peregrine, the Wanderer, and he came to London for revenge." Here's the blurb: Like the falcon he named himself... Continue reading

By Mary Jo In a summer where most of us have not been getting out as much as usual, I decided it would be fun to dig out older movies we've enjoyed watching on Saturday nights. In the nature of things, many have had historical setting because, not surprisingly I like historical movies. (Most of what we've seen has been DVDs, which I consider a more reliable technology than streaming, which is fine when it works--until it doesn't.) So the first we watched was The Scarlet Pimpernel, a great romantic adventure story. It's been filmed several times, but the version... Continue reading

by Mary Jo I've just released Carousel of Hearts , the second in my Putney's Classics series. Carousel was published as a sweet Signet Regency and is one of my three early books that really couldn't be revised into historical romance because the tone is light and the sensuality is muted. The story has four main characters and there is much love and much confusion. Here's the blurb: Love is in the air, but where is Cupid aiming his darts? Spirited and beautiful, Antonia Thornton is a baroness in her own right and her companion and best friend is Judith... Continue reading

by Mary Jo I'm happy to welcome Maggie Robinson back to the Word Wenches! Today's blog is not a suggested mental exercise, but the title of her new book, Just Make Believe, third in her delightful Lady Adelaide historical mystery series. I've been hooked since she mentioned the first Lady Adelaide story to me: Nobody's Sweetheart Now. Set in the 1920s, the series features Lady Adelaide, the wealthy widow of a philandering war hero, a handsome Detective Inspector who is a half Indian--and Rupert, ghost of Addie's late husband who is trying to work his way into heaven by doing... Continue reading