Oh Those Romantics! Poetry, Dreams, and Nightmare Fuel OR History is Back!

Dec 01, 2021 8:01 pm

Hello lovely readers!

Tomorrow is birthday time for A Dare Too Far!

I hope you laugh and swoon and thoroughly enjoy it.

A few updates!

I'm writing fast to complete Kiss or Dare, Lillian and Devon's story, and Teach a Rogue New Tricks, in which Ada Cavendish tames a villain, is with my lovely and talented critique partner. I've got a rough outline for Bring a Boxer to His Knees, Nora Cavendish's story, and I'm excited to see it's turning into a really odd little book that starts in a circus, travels to a dilapidated country house, and ends, oh who knows where yet, but definitely with a happily ever after.

I also wanted to share with you all some of the research I did for A Dare Too Far. Mainly, I dove into the Regency era's opioid epidemic. Laudanum was one of the few ways to address pain and perform medical procedures, and many became addicted to it after taking it for physical or emotional ailments. Interestingly, well-off women were a large percentage of the addicts (though they did not really use that word for opium use yet).

Because I'm an English major at heart, my first stop on my research journey was Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas De Quincey. Coleridge's habit ruined his health and his personal relationships, including his friendship with fellow poet and Romantic William Wordsworth. Wordsworth has this really bittersweet poem about losing Coleridge to the drug, and I wish I could remember the title... Anyway, Coleridge famously writes his poem "Kubla Khan" from an opium dream, and then it's ruined by "the person from Porlock" who knocks on his door in the middle of writing furiously. Or so Coleridge said. We all have our doubts. Anyway, he could never find that state of fevered inspiration again, and the poem is famously a fragment, though it seems pretty complete to me.

In A Dare Too Far, the hero's uncle is interested, as Coleridge was, in the creative possibilities of opium dreams, and as his addiction increases, his dream-like fantasies become inescapable nightmares.

De Quincey, whose Confessions of an Opium Eater was published after the Regency era, wrote in detail about what opium addiction was like, describing vivid dream states and horrifying hallucinations. He tried to kick the habit many times throughout his life, but the withdrawal symptoms, including worsening nightmares, often bested him.

It's some heavy stuff! But you'll also find hilarity in this book, too, from a dating-game-style courtship to hedge maze shenanigans and pig kissing. It wouldn't be a romcom without a bit of porcine puckering up, now would it? :)

It's also got some more light hearted research involving poetry. I mean, poetry is almost always in all my books, but the hero, who loves poetry and reads it often, teases Jane with it, and one of my personal favorite poets--ultimate pick-up-line artist John Donne--makes several appearances.

Anyway, if you want to know more about any of this, I'll leave some links on my blog!