#COOKING WITH CLORIS--AUTHOR REGAN WALKER ON HOGMANAY, CLOOTIE DUMPLINGS, CRANACHAN & OTHER SCOTTISH HOLIDAY TRADITIONS

Hogmanay in Stonehaven

Regan Walker is an award-winning, bestselling author of Regency, Georgian and Medieval romances. Each of her novels includes real history and real historical figures as characters. And, of course, adventure and love, sometimes on the high seas! Learn more about her and her books at her website.

Scottish Christmas Traditions

It may surprise you to know that Christmas was not celebrated as a festival in Scotland for about four hundred years. This dates back to the Protestant Reformation when the Scottish Kirk proclaimed Christmas a Catholic feast. While the actual prohibition, passed by Scotland’s Parliament in 1640, didn’t last long, the Church of Scotland, which is Presbyterian, discouraged Yule celebrations beginning as early as 1583. This continued into the 1950s. Many Scots celebrated only the Winter Solstice at the New Year, which came to be known as Hogmanay. Today, it’s celebrated with much fanfare and balls of fire. (See photo above.)

It is believed that many of the traditional Hogmanay celebrations were originally brought to Scotland by the invading Vikings in the early 8th and 9th centuries. These Norsemen, or men from an even more northerly latitude than Scotland, paid particular attention to the arrival of the Winter Solstice, the shortest day, and fully intended to celebrate its passing.

In the late 18th century, Georgian hostesses entertained in grand style. For those who celebrated Christmas, possibly in secret as my characters do, greenery of holly, hawthorn and Scots pine (gathered from the woods) would decorate the house. And there would be a giant Yule log to burn in the fireplace.

Instead of the usual two large courses of food at dinner, wealthy families in Scotland offered guests several smaller courses including soup, fish, game, roast meat, pudding and dessert. Food was richer with more complicated recipes and there was a greater emphasis on cream and sugar in desserts.

In the late 18th century and into the Regency, it became sort of a fad for high-born Englishmen and women, particularly in the literary establishment, to travel to Scotland and write travel books. There are dozens of such examples including Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland by Dorothy Wordsworth (sister of the more famous brother). However, none is better known than the 1773 trip undertaken by friends Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. 

Johnson published his travel book A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland in 1775, and Boswell waited until 1785 with his Tour to the Hebrides of the same trip. From Boswell’s description of breakfast in 1773: 

“They set down dried haddocks, broiled, along with our tea.”

“… as good chocolate as I ever tasted, tea, bread and butter, marmalade and jelly… very good scones, or cakes of flour baked with butter. There was a plate of butter and curds mixed, which they call “gruitheam” (Gaelic)... and cheese… it often smells very strong.”  [Note: gruitheam is a mix of curds and butter]

They also ate “barley bread and cheese” as well as “… milk, cheese, eggs, bread and butter.”

And for other meals, he wrote:

“…all of the people have little boats and catch fish. There is plenty of potatoes here. There are blackcock in extraordinary abundance, moor-fowl, plovers, wild pigeons.

“There is a great deal of fish: rock cod, haddocks, etc., and fresh water trout...a place where one may live in plenty, and even in luxury.”

The Scottish kitchen would turn out an abundance of soups and broths including Cock-a-Leekie (chicken and leek soup), Scotch Broth (barley enriched soup) and Cullen Skink (a stew/soup from Cullen on the shores of the Moray Firth usually made with Finnan Haddock and brose, a simple soup with kale, with a handful of oatmeal).

For the Hogmanay feast, there would be Haggis with tatties, steak pie, Cock-a-Leekie soup and, if you were on the sea, salmon. Haggis, which I have tried, never appealed. It starts with the large stomach bag of a sheep, into which goes the pluck (including heart, lungs and liver) beef suet, pin-head oatmeal, onions, black pepper and salt. I’ll stick with salmon, kale and soup.

Clootie Dumpling

For dessert, you might have a clootie dumpling. The clootie dumpling is a traditional Scottish pudding closely associated with Christmas and Hogmanay. It’s like an English Christmas pudding only not as rich. Although flour, suet, dried fruit and spices always feature, the precise ingredients vary from region to region and family to family. The cloth, however, is constant – a reminder of the days before ovens, when family meals were boiled in a pot.

There would be Scottish shortbread, of course, as legendary as oatcakes. But no celebration would be complete in my mind without Cranachan, a dessert that incorporates some of Scotland’s most famous ingredients: raspberries, oats and whisky. You can see the recipe on my website.

Cranachan

What to drink? While distillation of whisky had been going on for a long time by the Regency era, most of the distilleries were illicit. The invention of the column still by Scotsman Robert Stein in 1828 revolutionized whisky making in Scotland. Then in 1831, Aeneas Coffey invented the Coffey or Patent Still, which enabled a continuous process of distillation leading to the production of grain whisky, a less intense spirit than the malt whisky produced in the copper pot stills.

In the early days, Scotch whisky was mostly considered the equivalent of moonshine—a drink enjoyed by unrefined Highlanders, aged in sheep bladders and filtered through tartan. Men like those in A Secret Scottish Christmas would be drinking the finest European wines, along with sherry, port, brandy and cognac.

And, of course, on New Year’s they would sing Auld Lang Syne. A version of the song existed decades before Robert Burns wrote it down. It’s said an old man dictated the words to him. Before Burns wrote it down, the ancient song had been passed on by word of mouth. The melody we know today that accompanies the lyrics didn’t appear until after Burns’ death in 1796.

The phrase “Auld Lang Syne” means “old long ago”, which can be translated as “days gone by” or “back in the day”. Thomas Keith, a Burns scholar, says the song symbolizes reunion, not parting, as some mistakenly believe. The song looks back over happy days from the past, a separation and then coming back together.

Once Upon a Christmas Past

An Historical Romance Holiday Collection

A Secret Scottish Christmas by Regan Walker 

Spies, Scots, and Shipmasters celebrate a very secret Christmas in Scotland as identical twins, Robbie and Nash Powell, spies for the Crown, compete for the love of the daughter of an Aberdeen shipbuilder.

A Highlander for Christmas by Paula Quinn 

As the bard of the MacGregor clan, Finlay Grant is a natural-born charmer. He can easily win the heart of any lass . . . but somehow, the right words to express his love for stunning Leslie Harrison have eluded him. Yet as Christmastide approaches, Finn knows he must find a way to propose to the raven-haired beauty who has stolen his heart.

A Knight’s Redemption by Catherine Kean 

Six Christmases ago, after refusing his kiss, Lady Mary Westbrook was locked in the dungeon by Lord Holden Kendall, a squire at Branton Keep. When an attempted child abduction days before Christmas brings Holden back to the castle, Mary must confront again what happened between them. Now a grown warrior, Holden resolves to not only make matters right with Mary but finally win her kiss. Yet, as peril ensues, Mary must risk far more than a chance at true love.

Christmas in Camelot by Brenda Jernigan 

Sir Nicholas the Dragon’s orders are clear. He is to fend off the enemy besieging Noelle’s castle and bring the lady safely back to Camelot for her wedding to Sir Gavin. But spending time with the proud beauty awakens an irresistible hunger in Nicholas. Now, as desire does battle with duty, Nicholas has only two choices — to surrender the woman he loves to another man or fight to the end to make her his own.

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HISTORICAL ROMANCE AUTHOR BEVERLEY OAKLEY DISCUSSES GEORGIAN ERA FASHION

The author in her historically accurate costume

Beverley Oakley is both an historical costume maker and the author of Regency, Georgian and Victorian-set romance laced with mystery and intrigue. Today she joins us to discuss fashion in the Georgian era. Learn more about Beverley and her books at her website.

How Did a Lady of the Georgian Era Prepare For a Day Out?

“Serendipity” – meaning the discovery of something interesting or fortunate by chance – is one of my favourite words as it pretty much encapsulates my life.

It was serendipitous that I discovered my husband around a campfire in Botswana twenty-five years ago. Not just because he turned out to be an excellent husband, but because of his encouragement and the exciting life he’s given me. Without that, I’d not have lived and worked in twelve countries and published twenty-five historical romances.

It was serendipitous, also, when I stumbled upon a pair of russet silk curtains for only $1.99 in a Melbourne op-shop (or charity shop). With ten metres of beautiful fabric in a colour fashionable during the Georgian period, it fired up my dormant enthusiasm for costuming, serendipitously sparking a whole new platform from which to publicise my historical novels.

Historical Costume Talks

Many years ago, I’d studied costume design at the London School of Fashion. I’d always been fascinated by the Georgian era and the beautiful quality fabric gave me license to embark upon an ambitious project at very little cost.

I immediately sought out the Janet Arnold pattern book I’d been given for my eighteenth birthday on the even of my departure to the UK.

At first the project of making a 1780s polonaise was just for the fun of it. I envisioned my latest novel’s beautiful heroine, Celeste, wearing it as she secretly slips through the trees at Vauxhall Gardens for an assignation with the dissolute – but redeemable – rake, Lord Peregrine, in Wicked Wager.

However, I soon realised I couldn’t wear the gown unless I had the proper underpinnings. I needed 1780s stays (the precursor of the corset), to create the barrel-shaped torso and to push up the breasts, referred to at the time as ‘rising moons’. I also needed panniers and a ‘bum-roll’ to push the skirt out at the sides and back to create the right silhouette.  As I researched the layers required by the lady of fashion, I gained a better understanding of the mind-set of the day.

Here’s how the Georgian lady would go about dressing.

The author made these 1780's
stays and the chemise using
historically accurate patterns
and cutting instructions and
apologizes for the daringness
of the cut.

First she’d put on her chemise (which was cut with no wastage from good quality, hardwearing linen). The chemise, or shift, was worn against the skin and would be frequently laundered in an age when bathing was infrequent and the garment would absorb the body’s natural oils.

From an authentic pattern of 1780 I made half boned stays or a ‘pair of bodies’ as they were sometimes referred to. Working women often wore leather stays until they disintegrated but there are some beautiful extant luxury examples.

Panniers and Corset

By the time I’d finished the panniers, I’d hit upon the idea of staging a costume display accompanied by a talk. Calling it ‘History through Costume – From Georgian splendour to Regency Simplicity’, I shopped it around and was delighted by how many libraries and community groups booked me for an hour-long talk with questions on the social and political events of the period 1750-1820. This was the impetus for finishing the costume and selecting the information I’d relate.

Finding the right shoes was a mission. I’d planned to make a pair until another op-shop hunt yielded a pair of gems. As an aside, ladies would put on their shoes and stockings before being laced into their stays. Believe me, it’s incredibly difficult to bend down and put them on afterwards – just as it is driving for an hour on the freeway with lots of twists and bends when you’re confined by a 1780s polonaise, which allows little shoulder movement. (I had to strip down to my chemise in order to drive home after my first talk, having made the mistake of going in costume since I wasn’t’ sure I’d find someone at the library who could lace me up.)

The Bum Roll

Panniers and the ‘bum-roll’ achieved the fashionable silhouette. Ladies’ drawers made their appearance in 1806 but only ‘fast’ women wore them.

Russet Petticoat with Both Front and Back Ties

While to us a petticoat is an undergarment, during the Georgian period the petticoat referred to the actual skirt. The fabric was pleated onto ties that went first around the front and was tied at the back, and then around the back (tying at the front.) It was quite versatile as it allowed for expanding girths so could be used by different family members or during pregnancy. A pair of separately constructed pockets would have been tied around the waist first, enabling the wearer to place her hands through the side slits of the voluminous skirts, into the large pockets. The slim, high-waisted silhouette of Regency fashion put an end to pockets and heralded the introduction of the reticule or ‘ridicule’ as it was also known.

Finally, the gown would complete the ensemble. (The cosmetics, adornments and high hairstyles of the times – ranging in height from 1 to 1-1/2 times the length of the face – are a topic for another time; though I will mention that while trying to authenticate the powdered look during one race against time to get to a show, I found myself about to spray a can of white enamel paint over my elaborate hairstyle instead of coloured hair spray).

So, there’s a glimpse into the dressing routine of a Georgian lady. I’m always finding new facts to include in my talks, which some schools are now interested in, and which have been aired on radio.

Oh yes, and if you don’t know how the lady of 200 years ago answered the call of nature during long and riveting church sermons, and you can’t get to one of my shows, the answer is that she might well have discreetly used a bourdeloue, an elegant vessel made of porcelain or pewter and shaped like a gravy boat which her maid would have emptied into the garden or church yard.

My latest novel, Wicked Wager, is set in 1780 when the polonaise was the height of fashion. Wicked Wager was previously published by Harlequin Escape under the name Beverley Eikli and has since been revised. The ebook is on sale for .99 cents through the end of April.

Wicked Wager

Can innocence survive the machinations of a malevolent society beauty and a charismatic rake?

Two weeks before her nuptials to her cold, harsh cousin, virtuous Celeste Rosington finds herself in the arms of notorious libertine, Lord Peregrine.

The unexpected encounter is, at first, shocking, but as his charm weaves its magic, becomes a welcome distraction from her troubles. Isn’t she already the subject of whispers due to her involvement in the mysterious disappearance of a wealthy plantation magnate - a role, orchestrated by her demanding husband-to-be?

A role in which Celeste failed spectacularly.

Nevertheless, Celeste has no intention of sacrificing all of her scruples for a man she knows is only toying with her. One kiss from handsome, charismatic Viscount Peregrine will surely be enough to give her the strength to fulfil her marital obligations?

But what if one kiss is not enough?

With her reputation in the balance, Celeste soon finds herself navigating the treacherous waters of envy, intrigue and deadly secrets, unaware she’s a pawn in a wicked wager between a ruthless society beauty and delicious, dissolute Lord Peregrine.

Could Peregrine really be a party to such perfidious plans? Will his reckless charm be the final undoing of a young woman once respected for her virtue and piety?

Or will Peregrine discover that true love is more powerful than greed and ambition in time to save Celeste from the terrible fate that otherwise awaits her?

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ROMANCE ON THE HIGH SEAS WITH GUEST AUTHOR REGAN WALKER

18th Century French Frigate in Combat

Regan Walker is an award-winning, #1 Amazon bestselling author of Georgian, Regency and Medieval romances. She writes historically authentic novels in which readers experience history, adventure and love. Learn more about Regan and her books at her website and blog.

Ship Travel in Romance Novels

Do you love to read historical romances where there is travel by ship? Perhaps with an exciting storm? Or the wind in your face as you cling to the railing? Just think of all those romantic sunsets with a darkly handsome ship’s captain. And you the only woman among all those men. Sigh.

Well, I love the sea and the ships that sail upon it. I also love a good seafaring romance. Throw in a handsome captain, a pirate or a privateer, and a worthy mission and I’m there. But travel by ship in a romance must be done carefully. The author has to make the reader experience the ship moving beneath her feet, see those gorgeous sunsets while clinging to the rail and feel the salt spray when she’s standing on deck.

One of my readers said this about Wind Raven, my first seafaring romance, a Regency: “... had me feeling the spray of the ocean in my face, my hair and clothing plastered to my body, the chill of my blood when you know, just know that you’re time is up and you’re done for.”

I was immensely pleased. Since then, I’ve written two more, To Tame the Wind and my newest, Echo in the Wind, books 1 and 2 in the Donet trilogy of Georgian romances.

Pirates & Privateers, an online magazine for fans of all things to do with swashbuckling at sea, said this in their review of To Tame the Wind: “... a captivating tale of love and intrigue...  Walker deftly weaves historical fact into the tale, and her depiction of privateers and privateering is well done. Daring sea battles, roguish lurkers, ill-treated prisoners of war, and deceitful dandies add dashes of spice to this historical romance, making it one readers will savor long after they turn the last page.”

Again, I was pleased. But what did it take to accomplish this? To give the reader a real feel for life and love at sea?

First, I dove into pictures of ships (cross sections even) and ship terminology of the period, pouring over my 4-inch thick Sailor’s Word Book and other resources until late at night. I studied diagrams of schooners, brigs and sail configurations until I was seeing them in my dreams. But I soon realized just having the vocabulary and the sail configurations was not enough.

I wanted to be able to describe a storm at sea as huge waves crashed onto the deck and to hear the sounds of guns blazing as they spit forth smoke laced with crimson flames in a raging battle. I needed to hear the sails luffing, feel the wind on my face as the ship’s bow cut through the waves. I needed to experience the rolling deck.

In other words, I had to sail on an actual ship of the period, which I did.

Above is the Californian, a reproduction of a topsail schooner that, fortunately for me, is berthed in San Diego where I live. (The painting is by artist William Lowe and is used with his permission.) It’s the type of schooner Capt. Jean Nicholas Powell sails in Wind Raven, and his father, Captain Simon Powell sails in To Tame the Wind.

On my day of sailing on the Californian, I met the ship’s gunner. She and I became fast friends and have remained so till this day. She is very knowledgeable about 18^th and 19^th century ships and something of an amateur historian, too. She became my consultant for all my ship scenes.

And, just so you know, there are no floors, doors, stairs, walls or ceilings on a ship. Instead, there are decks, cabin doors, ladders, companionways, bulkheads and overheads. Strictly speaking, ships have fixed guns not cannons, the latter being made to rotate up and down. And no ships prior to the late 19^th century had crow’s nests; they had “tops” (some with railings going back to antiquity). In the case of schooners, they had crosstrees. They did not have round windows called “portholes”. The portholes in the 18^th and early 19^th century were openings in the hull for guns, not glassed windows.

And, did I mention I had to study charts of nautical miles between ports and travel time by sea? Well, you get the picture. And I hope you like the result.

So that brings me to my new book, Echo in the Wind, and the dashing French captain, Jean Donet. A former pirate he is now a smuggler in his spare time. Which is where he met my rebellious English heroine, Lady Joanna West.

Echo in the Wind

England and France 1784

Cast out by his noble father for marrying the woman he loved, Jean Donet took to the sea, becoming a smuggler, delivering French brandy and tea to the south coast of England. When his young wife died, he nearly lost his sanity. In time, he became a pirate and then a privateer, vowing to never again risk his heart.

As Donet’s wealth grew, so grew his fame as a daring ship’s captain, the terror of the English Channel in the American War. When his father and older brother die in a carriage accident in France, Jean becomes the comte de Saintonge, a title he never wanted.

Lady Joanna West cares little for London Society, which considers her its darling. Marriage in the ton is either dull or disastrous. She wants no part of it. To help the poor in Sussex, she joins in their smuggling. Now she is the master of the beach, risking her reputation and her life. One night off the coast of Bognor, Joanna encounters the menacing captain of a smuggling ship, never realizing he is the mysterious comte de Saintonge.

Can Donet resist the English vixen who entices him as no other woman? Will Lady Joanna risk all for an uncertain chance at love in the arms of the dashing Jean Donet?

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FAVORITES, FAILURES & FRUSTRATIONS--GUEST AUTHOR BEVERLEY OAKLEY/BEVERLEY EIKLI

Beverley Oakley writes sensual historical romance laced with

intrigue, mystery and adventure set in Georgian and Regency England.

She also writes Colonial Africa-set romantic suspense featuring fearless aviators, and psychological romantic suspense as Beverley Eikli. Learn more about Beverley and her books at her website.

Success and Failure: When They’re the Same Thing and When They’re Not

Like so many little girls growing up in British Commonwealth countries in the early 1970s, I longed to be one of the intrepid children in Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven series. By the time I was seven, I wanted to be writing those adventure stories.

At seventeen, I realized my childhood ambition to complete a novel and in a fever of anticipation, posted off my 600-page sweeping historical saga to Zebra Books, who published many of my favourite romance authors at the time. The crushing rejection came two months later. Apparently, “Drowning [my] heroine on the last page [was] not in line with the expectation of romance readers”.

So I followed the School Careers Counselor’s advice and became a journalist.

For the next few years I wrote for magazines and newspapers. I was fulfilled in my work. My first novel wasn’t a failure for not achieving publication, but a success because I’d completed it.

When I met my true love—a Norwegian pilot—in Botswana, we explored the world doing back-to-back airborne survey contracts as the only husband/wife team in the business at that time, and I put my fiction-writing desires on the backburner. Childhood dreams weren’t so important when life was rich and full of other excitements.

After seven years of this itinerant, thrilling life, we started a family. And the definition of who I was changed—certainly in my eyes.

I adored our daughter but I found it hard to farewell my husband for two-month overseas stints and any prospect of excitement beyond changing nappies when I was the one staying behind in a new city.

For so much of our married lives we’d shared our adventures, but as a new mother, I felt lonely and lacking connections and direction. Maybe, I thought, it was time to get serious about that dream of becoming a published romance author. That would be how I’d define success, for me.

We were now based in Perth, Western Australia, and, just before the birth of our first child, I’d joined Romance Writers of Australia and entered the first three chapters of a romance in their Single Title competition.

The excitement I felt to see the self-addressed envelope that I knew contained my competition feedback sheets sticking out of the letter-box on the bustling inner-city pavement in front of our townhouse after a walk with my husband one day was a déjà vu moment. Suddenly I was seventeen again, experiencing the same churning excitement as when I was ripping open Zebra’s response. I’m a little ashamed to admit that I acted with no more maturity than I had when I was seventeen.

After a quick scan of the contents I started sobbing on my husband’s shoulder in the middle of the street. My ranking was second-to-last.

Despite the results, the feedback was immensely helpful. I rewrote my entry, submitted it to the same competition the following year, won, and received a request for the full from Avon acquiring editor, Erika Tsang. Although my rushed attempts to complete the book resulted in another rejection, I regarded the experience, overall, as a success. A year had passed since the woeful results had come in from my first competition attempt, I was enjoying motherhood, my husband was back home for a long stint, and my resubmitted entry had not only come first but had attracted a request for the full manuscript.

Three weeks before I was due to give birth to our second child my husband broke his back. He’d spent the previous five months flying in Antarctica while I looked after our toddler in a large house by the sea in Adelaide, South Australia’s capital. Once a week we would make phone contact on a crackling line so we both felt huge anticipation at the prospect of being reunited.

Our reunion was short-lived. A couple of weeks after his return, while renovating the house, he fell off a ladder and sheared off all his vertebrae on a pallet of slates.

With a newborn, a four-year-old and a husband in excruciating pain, I took the first job I could find while my husband recovered. Although he hadn’t severed his spinal cord, he was plagued with recurrences of the Golden Staff infection and a level of pain that barbiturates could not keep in check.

They were dark days with a great deal of upheaval. I was proud of my husband who never complained. Pain was his constant companion and the effort it cost him to push on was always apparent. He got work in Japan where we lived for a year before we moved to a country town north of Melbourne, and seven years later we’re still here.

A few weeks ago, I picked up my diary and read an entry from 2008. Our daughters at that time were aged two and six and I was frustrated by my inability to find work that fitted around my caring duties while living so far from the city. I’d been overseas for so long I’d lost contact with former friends and work colleagues. I was also deeply worried that what I perceived to be my husband’s unhappiness was my fault. I’d finished the entry, despairingly: “I just want him to be proud of me!”

It was the desperation of my words from this long-forgotten time that prompted me to write this blog about how we regard success and failure. At various stages of our lives, the same goals can seem more or less important. Often it’s everything else happening in our lives that can cause us to regard a particular event in either a positive or negative light. I regarded my unsuccessful publishing efforts when I was seventeen and when I was thirty-seven in a positive light because I was fulfilled in other ways. But a few years later, my vision was narrower without meaningful work, and I’d honed in on that elusive publishing contract as the only way to define success.

We can’t help what we feel, only what we do about it. Perhaps articulating my lack of self-worth, and questioning on paper how I might set it right, made me forge a more productive path.

I don’t know. I just remember that it was around this time I adopted a

laser focus toward my quest for publication – very unlike me – and made up a spreadsheet with the names of three editors and two agents I would query. Thereafter, each time I got a rejection on my first three chapters, synopsis and pitch letter, I’d refine and improve each, then send it to another agent or editor. The idea was that as long as I had five submissions on the go, I’d always have hope.

It paid off.

My first publishing contract arrived in the post a year later.

Since then, I’ve published fifteen historical romances under two names and, as of the past two months, am earning an income that’s enabled me to give up my day job. We’re in our twenty-second year of marriage and as happy as we were when we were adventuring around the world together, young and carefree. My husband adores his job flying long-haul, mostly from Melbourne to Los Angeles – though a bad motorbike accident has kept him out of the skies for fifteen months – and we have two happy, thriving children.

Would I have focused so hard on my goal of publication during those dark days ten years ago if I had felt the same overall carefree happiness I’d felt most of my life? Probably not.

I’m just glad my publishing dreams weren’t handed to me on a platter when I was a seventeen-year-old. Trying to surpass such a high benchmark for success achieved at such a young age might have set me up for a lifetime of disappointment and altered the way I differentiate between success and failure.

Instead, those twenty-six years between submitting my first novel and getting my first publishing contract were full of ample compensations when I didn’t quite reach the bar. They made me appreciate life more and define success through effort as much as results.

The Mysterious Governess

Two beautiful sisters – one illegitimate, the other nobly born – compete for love amidst the scandal and intrigue of a Regency London Season.

Lissa Hazlett lives life in the shadows. The beautiful, illegitimate daughter of Viscount Partington earns her living as an overworked governess while her vain and spoiled half sister, Araminta, enjoys London’s social whirl as its most feted debutante.

When Lissa’s rare talent as a portraitist brings her unexpectedly into the bosom of society – and into the midst of a scandal involving Araminta and suspected English traitor Lord Debenham – she finds an unlikely ally: charming and besotted Ralph Tunley, Lord Debenham’s underpaid, enterprising secretary. Ralph can’t afford to leave the employ of the villainous viscount much less keep a wife but he can help Lissa cleverly navigate a perilous web of lies that will ensure everyone gets what they deserve.

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#CRAFTS WITH ANASTASIA--FAIR-ISLE KNITTING WITH GUEST AUTHOR BEVERLEY OAKLEY

The author wearing one of her Fair-Isle sweaters in Greenland

In 2009, Beverley Oakley published her first novel after marrying the handsome Norwegian bush pilot she met in Botswana. Since then she's written more than thirteen sizzling historical romances, mostly set in England during the Georgian, Regency and Victoria eras and more psychological historicals with less sizzle as Beverley Eikli. Learn more about her and her books at her website. 

Knitting up a Plot

There’s something mesmerizing and cathartic about the click of the needles and a strand of yarn running rhythmically over my left forefinger while I watch television or read a book.

I never took to the traditional English style of knitting when I learned it at school in Australia, but after my Norwegian mother-in-law taught me Continental knitting during the year I spent living with my in-laws, I was hooked.

My husband and I had met when I was running a safari lodge in Botswana’s Okavango Delt and he was a bush pilot, flying in the tourists and supplies. After a whirlwind courtship, he took me to live in Norway with his family while we waited to begin an airborne geophysical survey contract in Namibia.

The job was continually delayed but for the next ten months, instead of twiddling my thumbs, I put them to good use, learning to knit the country’s seemingly complicated traditional Norwegian Fair-Isle sweaters under the expert guidance of my mother-in-law Elsa, my many sisters-in-law, and even my teenage nieces. Get-togethers in Norway, I discovered, were always done over coffee and with the mandatory piece of knitting in one’s lap.

Norwegian Fair-Isle sweaters look complicated to make, yet they’re not. There are never more than two colours in a row and the right, patterned side is always facing you, as the sweater is knitted on the round and then cut up to then sew in the arms, which are also knitted on the round. If it’s a cardigan, it’ll be cut down the middle with the bands knitted on afterwards.  

At the end of more than ten months in Norway, my husband started his one-year survey flying contract in Namibia, and I joined him, operating the computer equipment in the back of the aircraft. As I was often the only woman on crew during this and subsequent three-month contracts in Greenland, Namibia, and Sweden, I found a great friend in my knitting.

Flying at 250 feet above ground on survey lines that crisscrossed the terrain at regular intervals of 50 feet gave me a wonderful bird’s eye view. I was thrilled by rare sights, like a trio of bat-eared foxes crowding onto the top of an anthill to check us out, or small village children scurrying from their thatched huts to do the same. Meanwhile I’d be monitoring the flight data, and all the while I’d have a growing sweater on my lap. I was known by my fellow crewmembers as the ‘knitting operator’.

Weaving yarn and weaving stories go hand in hand and in those days, before my first novel was published, I would construct elaborate plots in the aircraft, which, if working on a contract when my husband was flying in a different country, I’d write up when I got back to my accommodation.

They were fun days, seeing new countries, partying in nightclubs on the Arctic Circle, cracking my head on the roof struts in heavy turbulence over Greenland’s ice cap or getting locked up in French Guiana and having to spend the night, alone, guarded by a 6’4” French Guianese soldier brandishing an AK-47. That was a scary experience and worth a story on its own.

However I was fortunate to have my knitting with me. If you’ve got a ball of wool, a pair of knitting needles and a good plot brewing, you’ll never be lonely.

The Mysterious Governess, Daughters of Sin, Book 3

Two beautiful sisters – one illegitimate, the other nobly born – compete for love amidst the scandal and intrigue of a Regency London Season.

Lissa Hazlett lives life in the shadows. The beautiful, illegitimate daughter of Viscount Partington earns her living as an overworked governess while her vain and spoiled half sister Araminta enjoys London’s social whirl as its most feted debutante.

When Lissa’s rare talent as a portraitist brings her unexpectedly into the bosom of society—and into the midst of a scandal involving Araminta and suspected English traitor Lord Debenham—she finds an unlikely ally: charming and besotted Ralph tunley, Lord Debenham’s underpaid, enterprising secretary. Ralph can’t afford to leave the employ of the villainous viscount much less keep a wife but he can help Lissa cleverly navigate a perilous web of lies that will ensure everyone gets what they deserve.

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