gwynnega: (coffee poisoninjest)
gwynnega ([personal profile] gwynnega) wrote2009-11-21 02:59 pm

novelin' Saturday

I'm having a cozy day at home, while outside it's LA-autumnal. Just had a second (small) pot of Trader Joe's Wintry Blend coffee, which I adore. I just wrote 500 words of chapter 20, and will do more. I need to do some research too. The chapter is set at a 1976 daytime TV awards ceremony, so I've been researching the Daytime Emmys, which only got started in 1973. I can't find any Youtube clips from the 1976 show, but the 1975 show, weirdly enough, took place on a boat in the Hudson! Everyone looks a little discombobulated, or, possibly, seasick. The 1976 Daytime Emmys took place at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center.

I've started reading Georgette Heyer's The Corinthian. I find I can't read as much as I'd like these days, focused as I am on the home stretch of the Jo book, but Heyer seems to work. Also I'm back to watching the 1966 pre-Barnabas episodes of Dark Shadows, which are comforting in their glacial pace. David Collins is an excellent Creepy Child.

Victoria Winters (David's governess): You said you hated me. You said if I died, you wouldn't come to my funeral.

David: Did I say that? If you died, I would go to your funeral.

Victoria: Why?

David: Because I LIKE funerals.

Heeee.

[identity profile] ex-camillea.livejournal.com 2009-11-22 05:47 am (UTC)(link)
Heyer is one of my three favorite authors in the universe. Except for her medievals. Can't stand those. And I say that publicly only because she is deceased and therefore beyond caring (probably) about my thoughts on the matter.

[identity profile] ex-camillea.livejournal.com 2009-11-22 06:15 am (UTC)(link)
Seriously -- Heyer is the main reason I started writing! Did you know she was only like, 17 when she wrote The Black Moth (I think it was originally published under a different title, though).

My top threes list is rather fluid, though Heyer has maintained a slot since I first read her about 3 years ago. I read every single Regency work of hers in one summer, as well as a few of her mysteries (which not everyone likes, though I do!).

Off the top of my head, I'd say M. T. Anderson is my second, and I've just recently devoured everything I could find by Mitchell Smith (of whom nobody seems to have heard!). There are plenty of other fabulous books, but those are three of my favorites for consistent excellence.

[identity profile] ex-camillea.livejournal.com 2009-11-22 10:00 am (UTC)(link)
Wellll...there are some downsides to Mitchell Smith (his suspense stuff can get pretty brutal, though how he manages to intersperse the brutality with beauty is astounding to me), but I'm in awe of some aspects of his prose and storytelling. He has a series out from TOR called the Snowfall trilogy.

[identity profile] ex-camillea.livejournal.com 2009-11-22 10:01 am (UTC)(link)
Oh! And I love Heyer's The Masqueraders. She was all of 19 or something when she wrote that one.