Leslie Carroll's new blog address is just a hyphen away!

Because this blog address and format was created before the Google/Blogger merger and because I can't find an actual human being at Blogger to query regarding how to transfer this blog address into the new format ("It's no way to run a railroad," as my late grandfather woudl have said), I have set up an entirely new blog at Blogger.



From now on, you can find me at http://www.leslie-carroll.blogspot.com/ and I look forward to entertaining you and chatting with you!

Okay, so it's been a while...

I have only one excuse for not blogging in dogs' years. Okay, maybe two. As Amanda Elyot, the pen name under which I write historical fiction, I've been blogging over at http://www.historyhoydens.blogspot.com/ (first excuse for not keeping The Lady Novelist up to date) and because I've got four books coming out between January and June. Four? I'm a bit amazed myself.

One of them is a German translation of "Amanda's" 2005 release BY A LADY, Being the Adventures of an Enlightened American in Jane Austen's England.

Eine Lady in Bath will be on sale in February, 2008.

By then, my two most recent releases will have hit U.S. bookstores and booksellers websites.

On January 22, the next Leslie Carroll novel from Avon, CHOOSING SOPHIE, a contemporary mother-daughter story about second chances, hits the bookstores.

And on February 5, the next Amanda Elyot historical fiction novel, ALL FOR LOVE: The Scandalous Life and Times of Royal Mistress Mary Robinson, will be released.

Not only that ... as Leslie Carroll I'll be making my historical nonfiction debut in June, 2008, with ROYAL AFFAIRS: A Lusty Romp Through the Extramarital Adventures that Rocked the British Monarchy.

I had all of five months to put together ROYAL AFFAIRS, which was like taking a self-taught graduate-level course in English History. Now, when I wonder if I can meet a deadline, I think about how much work it took to pull ROYAL AFFAIRS together with such a brief window in which to research and write it, and I believe that anything is possible!

Readers--when you know of writers who wear more than one creative hat (such as Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb), do you devour both of their genres with equal delight? Or do you prefer one over the other?

And what about you writers out there who have these split personalities? Care to share some of your "war stories" about writing under more than one name and in more than one genre?

Just the Facts Ma'am

Okay, I'm in a little bit of a rant-y mood, but that's what blogs are for, right? Or so they tell me. I'm still on the subject of reviewers whose reviews reveal more about themselves and their own prejudices than about the book they're covering, but this time I'm venting at the so-called professional reviewers who write for accredited publications -- literary review -- and couldn't find their ass with both hands, even if they were looking in a three-way mirror in a Saks Fifth Avenue dressing room. If you're assigned a work of historical fiction to review, and history was never your best subject in school, don't damn the plot and the writer for including something you think is historically inaccurate unless you're sure of your facts. Otherwise you mislead the reader into thinking the writer (who spent months, if not years, of his or her life researching, writing, and revising the novel), hasn't a clue, or is rewriting history. I'm not talking about something egregious like sticking a war into the wrong century, which certainly bears critical mention and a caveat emptor that if something so obvious is wrong, who knows what else might be erronious; I'm talking about knowing whether the writer is right or wrong vis-a-vis the manners and mores, the sensibilities, the little touches that enhance the novel with the appropriate atmosphere and tone.

If this complaint seems like the opposite of my beef with literal Linear B-guy, in a way, it's approaching the same issue from either side. I've been referring to a genre called HISTORICAL FICTION. Literal Linear-B guy should remember that he's read a novel. FICTION, Mister. OF COURSE the novelist won't literally take out her stylus and scratch the story onto clay tablets in a long-dead language. In the contract between writers and readers, we tell the story and the readers supply their imaginations and accept that we're all PRETENDING that -- in the case of my book THE MEMOIRS OF HELEN OF TROY, the story wasn't written in English in the here and now. Just like th audience accepts that the man on stage playing Hamlet isn't REALLY going to kill the actor playing Polonius.

The reviewers who think the writer is inventing history in his or her novel, should remember that the book they read is HISTORICAL fiction and, unless there are grievous factual errors and the reviewer is certain of them, the reviewer should give the author the benefit of the doubt that they might actually know what they're talking about.

It boggles the mind.

What do you guys think?

What's up with these people?

I have to say that I don't believe any novelist who has even a shred of curiousity (not to mention ego), who claims not to read their reviews. Naturally, I agree with the people who love my books, and I think that the total strangers (of course from friends it would be even worse) who trash them in a public forum (such as Amazon) are nuts. Who feels compelled to say something dreadful and devastating about a book? There have been books I've not taken much of a shine to, but I would never take the time and energy to eviscerate them and their authors on the internet. That's like walking up to a woman wheeling a stroller on the street and exclaiming, "Damn, that's an ugly baby!"

So, there's a guy out there (okay, I'm assuming it's a guy) who dismissed THE MEMOIRS OF HELEN OF TROY out of hand because he says it should have been written in Linear B, which was the format--"platform" for us 21st century residents--during the Bronze Age. Like I wouldn't know that? I've only spent several months of research on the era. Oh, and he objects to my referring to scrolls, claiming they were invented by the Christians centuries later. Actually, if he really read the book, he'd see that my Helen writes on papyrus, which was invented by the Egyptians and would have been around back then ... but if I have written it on clay tablets in Linear B (this is where the FICTION element of "historical fiction" comes into play, Mr. "Historybuff") would Mr. Historybuff have been able to read them?

Then there was the man (I wonder how he sleeps at night) who felt compelled to dismiss HELEN with one sentence ("unreadable leftist-feminist trash.") I would laugh my head off, if I didn't wonder how many consumers gauge whether they want to purchase a book based on how many stars it's received on Amazon.

Anyone out there want to chime in on this?

Take a Bath with me

Okay ... the title of this post was intended to be provocative to catch your attention. I received very exciting news last week. I've been tapped to lead a tour in the spring of 2006 of Jane Austen's Bath -- and other locations where Austen lived and/or visited. My novel BY A LADY, which is set primarily in Bath, and which features Jane Austen as a major secondary character, got me the job. It's hard to imagine anything more delightful than spending a week in one of my favorite places in the world, and a wonderful opportunity for me to be able to tie in the timing of the tour with the release of BY A LADY, which is set to hit the bookstores in March. If you're interested in booking the tour, visit www.pausesinc.com to learn more about it, and watch that site for itinerary details.

How do you say "PLAY DATES" in Italian?

I had a rather exhilirating 48 hours. First I learn that PLAY DATES, my January '05 release from Avon Trade, was excerpted in the New York Times and then I hear that the Italian language rights to PLAY DATES were sold. I can't wait to see it in translation! This is actually my second foreign rights sale. The Russian rights to REALITY CHECK were sold last fall. Hmmm... maybe a book tour to visit my little "foreign exhange students" might be in order.

I got my job through the New York Times...

I hate to drink alone, otherwise I would have popped the cork on a bottle of champagne to celebrate a publishing coup; PLAY DATES was excerpted in the NY Bookshelf feature of the Sunday 5/29/05 City section of the New York Times. I have stopped dancing around the room long enough to sit down and type this. As a measure of how hard it is to crack that particular Times nut, it takes about 5 months after your book is released before there's room for you on that Sunday "Bookshelf." Better late than never, of course.

And while my head is spinning, it's worth a mention that the novel formerly known as DIRTY LINEN is now the novel formerly known as DISPARATE HOUSEWIVES. HarperCollins' house counsel just thought the title was too much of an uh-oh. So, this entertaining Upper West Side story about a shrink who holds her unorthodox therapy sessions in her apartment building's laundry room is now called SPIN DOCTOR, to be published February-ish, 2006.