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here

A Summer for Love Blog Hop: Summer in Scotland (with Giveaway!!!)

Ahh, summertime! It's the perfect time for strawberry ice cream, for peach bowle, for spending lazy days outside, and for going on vacation.

In the summer of 1839 this meant for a lot of people to go to Scotland because a young Scottish lord, the Earl of Eglinton, was hosting a medieval tournament on his estate in Ayrshire. He and a group of his friends donned medieval armor in order to joust like knights of old. The event drew several ten thousands of people to the Scottish countryside - and caused unspeakable traffic jams in the area around Eglinton Park. And because everybody was to come in costume, the coaches all over the country were piled high with boxes, parcels, and packages of all sizes.

In Edinburgh, a reporter for Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, ready to embark upon his journey, was utterly astonished by the amount of luggage - and he was not the only one:

Arriving at the office in Prince's Street a little before the hour at which [the coach] should have started, we were astonished at the immense pile of luggage which we saw heaped on the street in order to be packed upon the carriage. When Mr. Croal, the coach-proprietor, came up, he was so much appalled by the sight, that, apologising for the delay which he must inevitably  occasion, he informed us that he must send back the coach to the yard, and get out a stronger one, that might be more certainly able to bear such a load without risk of breaking down.

When this more potent vehicle arrived, any impatience that might have been excited in us by the delay, was subdued by the interest which we could not help taking in the ingenuity which the coachman and his assistants displayed in packing and piling the various articles in and upon it; till I, and my companion, and two officers of our acquaintance, who had all of us placed ourselves comfortably on the hinder seats, could no longer see those in front, even when we stood up to try to do so. We felt some comfort in thinking that  the superior construction of coaches, now-a-days, admits of this being done with more safety than was formerly the case.

Besides all the ordinary kinds of trunks, portmanteaus, band-boxes, and carpet-bags, which are usually attendant upon a coach full of passengers inside and outside, there were innumerable white deal boxes of all manner of shapes and sizes. Most of them were ingeniously suspended like sausages on strings all around the carriage; and, to crown all, on the very top perched a wicker cage, containing a great, long-legged, large-bodied, awkward-looking pair of Chittagong fowls, belonging to an Indian who had a seat in the interior. The cock not only seemed to know that he was going to the Tournament as well as other people, but to think that he was to be triumphant there; for much to the amusement of all who beheld him [...] he crowed away so loudly that he brought some of the sleepy citizens of Prince's Street, in their night-caps, from their beds to their windows, to wonder at so unwonted a summon.

(from Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, November 1839)

My latest release THE BRIDE PRIZE is set against the backdrop of the Eglinton Tournament, and my hero and heroine are among the people travelling to Scotland in August 1839. Click below to listen to an excerpt.

THE BRIDE PRIZE is available from Amazon US / UK (and all other Amazon stores) & from Kobo

But wait! You can also win a signed copy of the novella if you sign up to my newsletter during the Summer for Love Blog Hop!

And there is even more!
Leave a comment here on this blog with your name and your e-mail to be entered into the Grand Prize drawing for a chance to win one of six $50 Amazon or B&N giftcards! Just tell me about your favorite summer destination.

Comments without name and email will not be counted.

Commenting on each and every stop will increase your chances of winning.

You can find the list with all stops here.

The Grand Prizes will be awarded to randomly drawn participants / commenters.

Winners will be drawn and announced on THE ROMANCE TROUPE blog by June 10th using random.org to determine each winner.

Phone box? No, it's a library!

I went to Hofheim today, and this time I remember to take a picture of this pretty thing here: the phone box that has been transformed into a mini-library! (I snatched up an older German children's book.)

This Week in 1844: Awesome Ad

In contrast to the second half of the nineteenth century, in the first half, illustrated ads were the exception due to the high taxes on advertisements. So I was tickled pink to find this lovely thing in this week's ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS. It's a traveling dressing case with an in-built writer's desk. Very cool, isn't it?

Writer's Desk: Plotting Falling for a Scoundrel

Let's put it like this: I'm a tad late with this....

Fiction vs Reality

There's a scene in Mercedes Lackey's MAGIC'S PRICE where Stef, one of the main characters, plays the harp for too long and ends up with terrible, bleeding blisters on his hands. I've always thought this was some kind of dramatic exaggeration.

Eh.... not quite. In this case fiction seems to be uncomfortably close to reality.

An hour with the sweet thing in the picture up there and I have the beginnings of a fiendish blister on my index finger. As a (former) piano player, I've never fully appreciated the physical problems players of stringed instruments have to deal with.

But isn't it a pretty thing? It's a concert ukulele from Luna

This Week in 1844: Metropolitan News

 One of the columns in the Illustrated London News was titled "Metropolitan News" - and the following snippet appeared in the issue from 18 May 1844:

On Wednesday evening the Lord Mayor entertained her Majesty's Ministers, and several members of both houses of Parliament, at dinner, in the Egyptian Hall, at the Mansion-House [= i.e. the residence of the mayor of London]. Among the guests, who were very numerous, we observed the Lord Chancellor, Lord Wharncliffe, the Duke of Buccleuch, the Earl of Lincoln, Earl Delawarr, Earl of Devon, Earl of Shaftesbury, Earl of Jersey, Earl Jermyn, Lord S. Somerset, Viscount Barrington, Lord Canning, Lord Ashley, Lord Eliot, the Bishop of Llandaff, Sir Robert Peel, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Monteagle, Sirs G. Murray, James Graham, E. Knatchbull, Mr. E. Gladstone, Sir J. Nicholl, Captain Gordon, &c. All the leading members of the Corporation were also present.

(I assume that "Corporation" refers to the Corporation of London, the local government.)