History – A. L. Lester

RAtR: Regency Romance

Read Around the Rainbow

As you’re probably aware, #RAtR is a blogging project I am doing with a few friends who also write LGBTQIA romance. You can find everyone by clicking here or on the image to the right.

This month we are writing about Regency Romance– whether we love it or hate it and why so many people love to both read and write it. This is bang in the middle of my area of interest as both a reader and writer of historical romance.

Firstly then, when, and what, was the Regency? In 1811, George III was finally declared permanently incapable of carrying out his royal duties. His eldest son, Prince George, ‘Prinny’, the next in line to the throne, was therefore installed as Regent. He was a fashion-conscious social butterfly who loved the adulation of his court, was swayed by flattery, resented his parents in the fine tradition of England’s Hanoverian Kings and was moody and mercurial. Between 1811 and 1820 when he became King in his own right is technically the Regency era. However, socially and culturally the term is used for the period from about 1795 to the ascension of Queen Victoria in 1837. The romance trope sits squarely in this period.

Why do we find it so attractive? My personal feeling is that it’s all down to Jane Austen. Generations of people grew up reading her model of middle class Georgian England. She centered her heroines in the story and we only get a frisson of the messy, dangerous rest of it… Mr Darcy going to London’s stews to find Lydia in Pride and Prejudice (1813); Captain Wentworth taking Ann Elliott’s party to Lyme to meet his friend, maimed aboard ship and living in poverty (Persuasion 1817); Marianne Dashwood falling for a roue and being abandoned in Sense and Sensibility (1811).

Georgette Heyer and Julia Quinn and their colleagues picked up the trope and ran with it. Sometimes the books aren’t even dated to a particular year and the historical period is contextualised for us through high waisted dresses, being presented at court, going to a ball, the love interest meeting his friends at Whites, getting vouchers for Almack’s, or having rooms at the Albany. If every hero in every book really had rooms at the Albany, they’d be queuing five deep around the block to get in.

When we chose this topic, Nell had a minor wobble, because she famously doesn’t read series’ and is dubious about historical romance in general. Several of us yelled at her about K J Charles and Cat Sebastian until she gave in; I recommended she try one of my favourites, A Seditious Affair by K J Charles. A dour book shop owner and publisher of seditious leaflets falls for a Home Office official who is tasked with suppressing dissent. Learn about the Cato Street Plot here! It’s the second of a trilogy called The Company of Gentlemen, which each focus on a different couple in a group of friends although I think it stands happily alone. The trilogy slides seamlessly into the London of it’s time, with Molly Houses, lamp-boys leading you astray in the fog, not having enough coal for a bath, being transported for seditious dissent and freed slaves; alongside clubs, tailors, country houses and banging unsuitable people in curtained alcoves. I’ll be interested to see whether Nell read it and what she made of it!

At the moment I’m reading The Oak and the Ash by Annick Trent, a new to me author. It’s part of a loosely connected series and this one is set at the end of the 1790s. So far I haven’t been able to pin an actual date. The whole feeling of it is Regency though, which is what I meant about it sometimes being a trope rather than a precise dating. In this story, a surgeon and a valet slowly fall in love after the valets employer — happily in an open marriage with a wife who has a lover as he has his — is injured in a duel. I’m looking forward to exploring more of the collection. It gives a gritty portrayal of the life of ordinary people, with a seditious newspaper, a reading club and the valet-protagonist fascinated with meteorological observations.

I suppose I should also hat-tip myself — The Flowers of Time, my own lesbian/non-binary/bisexual romance is set in the 1780s. It’s firmly pre-regency — we are still worrying about American Independence and the French Revolution — but we do get a flash forward at the end, with Jones and Edie watching Queen Victoria’s coronation and talking about taking the train. I think we forget people lived long and rich lives either side of the periods we set our stories.

I also want to hat-tip the lovely Ellie, my fellow RAtR blogger, who has a collection of Regency stories that I have to my shame not read. I am actually on holiday this week — I’m writing this on the plane, get me! — and I plan to rectify that as soon as I hit the lounger by the pool this afternoon.

So that’s the post! Please do check out what my colleagues have to say on the subject!

(Due to my extreme inability to use Jetpack on my phone and my refusal to bring my laptop with me on holiday I am having trouble with inserting links, for which I apologise -the below links go to last month’s posts.)

To read what my Read Around the Rainbow colleagues have written about Dark Romance, click through below!

Nell https://elliethomasromance.wordpress.com/ Iris : Ofelia Grand : Lillian Francis : Fiona Glass : Amy Spector : Ellie Thomas : Holly Day : K. L. Noone : Addison Albright

Guest Post: Ellie Thomas and Trick of the Light

Thank you so much, lovely Ally, for having me as your guest. I’m Ellie Thomas, I write MM Historical Romance, and I’m here today to chat about A Trick of the Light, my October release for JMS Books.

For this Halloween submission call, authors were requested to pick either Trick or Treat for their stories. Although I picked Trick for last year’s story, A Tricky Situation, making the same choice was deliberate rather than an oversight. Honest!

A Tricky Situation was Kit and Ned’s story, two young men of different colour and class in 18th century Bristol. After a dramatic encounter, when Ned rescues Kit from being mugged by some thugs, Kit, who is from the wealthy merchant class, struggles to stand up to his overbearing and ambitious father to fight for his own life direction and his growing bond with Ned.

That story lingered in my mind. So, not long afterwards, I got the idea of a parallel story, set in much more recent history featuring another young man living in the same house that Kit inhabited, struggling with similar issues. As this seemed suitable as a Halloween story, it seemed entirely appropriate to have Kit feature as a friendly and sympathetic ghost!

What engaged me about both stories was the idea of Kit and now Kenneth, my main character in A Trick of the Light, emerging from their haunting fears and insecurities at Halloween to be free to be themselves. Both are young gay men wanting to pursue a relationship without having their life ambitions dictated by an unsympathetic parent.

Despite draconian laws, many gay couples throughout history must have managed their happy ever after. After all, it was common for men to share lodgings as a matter of course. By choosing to set the second story in the late 1950s, I could imagine a more relaxed future for my modern couple, Kenneth the would-be aeronautical engineer and Gino, the son of an Italian immigrant café owner.

With the social reforms in the UK in the 1960s, not least the implementation of the 1957 Wolfenden Report, Kenneth could achieve his ambitions, and in time, he and Gino could live together as a couple without fear of the law. Knowing there were opportunities and happiness ahead for him and Gino, rather than feeling angst when writing about Kenneth’s moment of crisis, I felt uplifted and inspired.

Trick of the Light

Kenneth Taylor has bright plans for a future as an engineer. In the summer of 1957, as soon as he returns home to Bristol from two years of National Service in the Royal Signals, a furious row with his dad means he’s thrown out of the house, and his prospects are in jeopardy.

He finds lodgings in the hilltop, bomb-damaged suburb of Kingsdown, determined to be independent and juggling night school with his humdrum day job. He soon meets Gino, the good-looking son of a local café owner and is thrilled when the attraction proves to be mutual. As their romance blooms, Kenneth finds unexpected encouragement from an apparition in the mirror who inhabited the house in the late 18th century.

When the ghostly vision of Kit also appears to Kenneth in his dreams, it seems they have much in common when Kit reveals his dilemma at a similar age, concerning his growing attachment to a young man, Ned. Past and present intermingle as Kenneth faces parallel and difficult decisions. But can he trust Kit? Or is it all merely a trick of the light?

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Read an Excerpt

Kenneth got in the habit of dropping into the café when not in a rush for the bus. It wasn’t only the charms of the waiter but the hospitable atmosphere of the family-owned establishment that helped him pine less for his mum and sister.
Despite unprepossessing beginnings, his room on Kingsdown Parade was starting to take shape. The hilltop area might be a bit worn and battered, but he had all he needed nearby and was grateful for the convenience of the Co-op store at the top of the road. Also, his mum had sneaked a few items to give to Pamela to pass on to him, so his digs looked a bit more homely.
But as autumn began, he had to admit he was cold. He only switched on the two-bar electric fire for a short while in the evenings as he couldn’t afford to keep the electric meter ticking over too fast. One blustery Saturday afternoon, when his fingers nearly froze as he sat at the desk in front of the draughty windows trying to complete his homework, he decided he needed a change of scene.
Grabbing his bag of dirty washing to take to the launderette, he snagged his satchel and required textbooks and headed off down the hill. Once his laundry was in the machine, and the woman on duty kindly promised to put the wet load into the drier, he crossed the road to the café. He hoped that by now, he was enough of a regular customer to get away with ordering only the milky coffee he’d acquired a taste for.
He’d missed the lunchtime rush and was glad he’d had a sandwich at home beforehand since the scent of hot food was always tempting. Instead of the waiter, it was a girl who served Kenneth today. She looked young enough to still be in school, most likely expected to help out at the weekends, the resemblance to her brother evident in her dark eyes, olive skin, and wide smile.
She didn’t quibble at his order of coffee, so Kenneth arranged his books on the table and started to study. He was so focused on his calculations that he was taken aback when a voice asked, “Would you like a top-up?”
He looked up from his exercise book to see the waiter smiling down at him. Hesitating, he started to scrabble in his pocket for any change remaining from his trip to the launderette when the waiter said, “It’s alright. It’s on the house.” With another smile, he took the cup and saucer, allowing Kenneth to admire his departing backside.
When the waiter returned, he seemed inclined to chat further, asking, “What are you studying, then?”
“Engineering,” Kenneth replied. “Well, the bare bones of it anyway.”
“Smart fellow,” the waiter retorted, raising his elegantly arched eyebrows. “Dad would like me to study,” he said with a nod to the man behind the counter. “But I’m flat-out here most days, and anyway, I'm not brainy enough,” he added with an eloquent shrug of his shoulders. It seemed unfair to Kenneth that someone so attractive and personable should lack confidence in his ability. Without pausing to feel self-consciously tongue-tied, Kenneth replied, “If you can remember every order and give the right change all day, every day, then you must be savvy. There’s plenty of education growing up and working in a café."
“Maybe so,” the waiter agreed with that charming smile.
He seemed about to continue the conversation when a call came from the counter. “Gino, service for table two!”
“Speak of the devil,” he said. His smile deepened as he lingered.
“Doesn’t your dad need you?” Kenneth asked. As soon as the comment was out of his mouth, he wished he hadn’t spoken aloud.
“Nah, my sister’s helping too, so there’s no rush,” Gino replied. “Dad would soon let me know if it’s urgent. And anyway, I’m not usually in the habit of dawdling at the tables chatting up pretty boys, so I’m sure he’ll let me off this once,” he added with a dazzling grin as Kenneth felt a blush rising over his face to his hairline.
“Arrivo, Papa,” Gino called over his shoulder, before sauntering back towards the counter with a distinct sway of his hips.

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Meet Ellie

Ellie Thomas lives by the sea. She comes from a teaching background and goes for long seaside walks where she daydreams about history. She is a voracious reader especially about anything historical. She mainly writes historical gay romance.

Ellie also writes historical erotic romance as L. E. Thomas.

Website : Facebook : Twitter : Goodreads : Bookbub

World Naked Gardening Day: Is the setting for Warning! Deep Water secretly another character in the book?

Today is release day today for Warning! Deep Water, my World Naked Gardening Day story! The World Naked Gardening Day authors are Holly Day, Nell Iris, K. L. Noone, Amy Spector and I. We have all written gay romance novella’s based around World Naked Gardening Day, which happens on the first Saturday in May. Which is today! They are all releasing today with JMS Books and you can read about each of them here.

Warning! Deep Water is a 16,300 word gay romance set in the UK in 1947. George and Peter are two shy, quiet men I really enjoyed writing. They have a supporting cast of characters I would have liked to have had more space to flesh out; but sixteen thousand words is sixteen thousand words, so I was only able to give glimpses of them.

What I was also able to give glimpses of was the story setting.

My story is set on a horticultural nursery inspired very strongly by the place I grew up. I think will come as no surprise to anyone who actually reads the story that I do think of it as a character in its own right.

I think that’s less to do with my writing craft than a huge glob of self-insertion. Is it self-insertion if you put a place in? It feels like it might be, in this case anyway!

Growing up, the nursery always felt like a living being, with its own heartbeat. It needed taking care of—our days were structured around its needs. Literally the same as a person…it needed warming or cooling, water and food.

We had stoke-holes and boilers that blew warm air into the greenhouses to heat them. In the summer we had to open and shut the roof-vents and the doors for optimal air-flow to stop plants dying of heat. We’d have to remember to put newspaper over the buckets of flowers waiting to be bunched and sold in the WW2-era Nissen Hut we used as a packing shed if it was particularly cold at night to avoid them being frosted. The big bore-hole pumped water up from deep underground through hundreds of feet of pipe. Sometimes that was applied directly to the plants with the big hosepipes. Sometimes it first went in to the tank, where plant food could be added before the little pump moved it on out to where it needed to be. We got regular donations of manure from local farmers that were spread on the fallow ground between crops and then rotovated or trodden in.

We could never go and do anything as a family without taking in to account what the nursery would need whilst we were away. Our family holidays were in the autumn because in the high summer everything in the three acres under glass needed watering every other day. If we went out on a day-trip, we’d have to be home at dusk to shut up the hens.

Did I resent the hell out of it as a child?

Yeah. I did. I really, really did.

But looking back as an adult, it really was a semi-idyllic childhood; and I hope that comes across in this story. I know we often look back at where and how we grew up and we forget things—either the bad things or the good things, I guess, depending on how we feel overall about our experience. I’ve pretty much let the resentment go (really, despite the preceding paragraphs!). I feel I was able to take the good things I remember; the smell of the fine red soil in the dry greenhouses; the rich, deep greens the water tank; the sense of nurturing and growth and seasonal renewal that were always there in the background and make them a part of who I am and how I approach my life.

So…yes. In this story, the setting is definitely another character. Perhaps the most important one. Certainly the one I feel closest to, however much I love Peter and George.

Warning! Deep Water

It’s 1947. George is going through the motions, sowing seeds and tending plants and harvesting crops. The nursery went on without him perfectly well during the war and he spends a lot of time during the working day hiding from people and working on his own. In the evening he prowls round the place looking for odd jobs to do.

It’s been a long, cold winter and Peter doesn’t think he’ll ever get properly warm or clean again. Finding a place with heated greenhouses and plenty of nooks and crannies to kip in while he’s recovering from nasty flu was an enormous stroke of luck. He’s been here a few days now. The weather is beginning to warm up and he’s just realised there’s a huge reservoir of water in one of the greenhouses they use to water the plants. He’s become obsessed with getting in and having an all-over wash.

What will George do when he finds a scraggy ex-soldier bathing in his reservoir? What will Peter do? Is it time for them to both stop running from the past and settle down?

A Naked Gardening Day short story of 16,300 words.

Buy the naked gardening day box set

Read an Excerpt

“You didn’t say you liked music,” Peter said, as they were sitting across the table from each other over a cup of tea, once he’d finally pulled himself away from the instrument and reverentially closed the keyboard.
“Well,” said Peter. “It didn’t come up, did it?” He paused. “Mother used to play a bit,” he said, eventually. “Not like that, though. Hymns, mostly. She was big on chapel.”
There was clearly a story there.
“It’s nice to hear it played,” George went on. “Instruments should be used, not just sat there as part of the furniture. And…,” he paused again and blushed, “And you play very well.”
“Well,” said Peter shuffling with embarrassment. “I learned as a nipper and just carried on with it. Dad wanted me to go and study somewhere, but I wanted to get out and earn. It would have taken the joy out of it if I’d had to pass exams and such.”
George nodded. “I can see that. And you’re good with your hands.” He blushed again and became very absorbed with mashing the tiny amount of butter left from the ration into his baked potato.
Peter coughed. “Well yes,” he said. He couldn’t help smiling a little at George, although he didn’t let him see. He forged on. He really didn’t want him to be uncomfortable. “I think mathematics and music sort of go together, you know? And I was always good with numbers as well…it’s a good trait in a joiner.”
George nodded, clearly feeling they were on less dangerous territory. “Yes,” he said. “There’s all sorts of things you can use maths for; but music is pretty rarefied, isn’t it?”
Peter nodded. “This way I get to keep the music and earn a living. There’s always work for a carpenter, like you said the other day.”
He gradually became less self-conscious about playing when George and Mrs Leland were in the house over the next few weeks. It made him feel like another piece of what made him a person was coming back to life.
****
What it didn’t do was make him any less confused about what was happening between him and George. Half the time he thought George was completely uninterested. But then something would happen that would make him reconsider. The comment about being good with his hands was a case in point. It was a perfectly commonplace thing to say and George shouldn’t have been embarrassed. But he had been. Which meant he’d thought of it in a context that might cause embarrassment.
Peter spent several very enjoyable hours spread over several evenings working through different variations of what the other man might have been thinking.
George was nobody’s Bogart. But he was decent-looking. Nice face, especially when he smiled. A bit soft round the middle, but otherwise hard muscled from the physical work he did day in, day out. Clever…did his own accounts. Liked music. Made Peter laugh with his dry commentary on things in the paper or local gossip and the social pickles the girls reported on in the break room.
Peter liked him a lot. And fancied him. After the third night of considering at length how he could demonstrate how good with his hands he actually was, he gave up pretending. He fancied George a lot.

Buy the naked gardening day box set

The World Naked Gardening Day novellas

The Naked Gardening Day stories are a collaboration between Holly Day, Nell Iris, A. L. Lester, K. L. Noone and Amy Spector. They comprise five MM romance novellas featuring being naked in a garden somehow, somewhere, to mark World Naked Gardening Day on 7th May 2022.

All the World Naked Gardening Day stories

World Naked Gardening Day: Warning! Deep Water!

Warning! Deep Water! is my contribution to the Naked Gardening Day stories that are now out as a box set.

It’s part of a project with Holly Day, Nell Iris, K. L. Noone and Amy Spector. As regular readers will know, Ofelia Grand (who also writes as Holly), Nell Iris and I write together in the early mornings. This involves a fair amount of chat and discussion about what we’re working on.

As Holly, Ofelia writes stories to mark all the different holidays throughout the year and one day in December Nell and I were teasing her about what she should write next and joked that World Naked Gardening Day would be an excellent idea…and lo and behold, here are five of us writing on a similar theme. Our brief was that somehow, somewhere in the story, our MCs had to be naked in a garden.

Scroll on down to read an excerpt from Warning! Deep Water!

Warning! Deep Water is a 16,300 word novella set in England in 1948. When given half a chance I slip back in time, because as you know that’s my thing, pretty much. It’s set on a horticultural nursery in Somerset that’s a blend of the place I grew up and one or two other places I know personally or heard about from my parents and the people who worked for them.

It seemed natural to me to gravitate to somewhere like that when we had the idea. For me, gardening isn’t really about things that look pretty or are ornamental. I’m more a permaculture vegetables and banging things together with a bit of rusty wire sort of person.

The idea of actually gardening naked fills me with fear. What in hell’s teeth are people thinking? I mean, maybe it’s all right if you have an ornamental garden and can potter round wielding a pair of secateurs in a graceful fashion. But this most recent weekend my Apocalypse Gardening involved the supervision of helpers digging over and pulling up a four yard square patch of nettles and docks; and kneeling in the polytunnel picking out the tiny nettle plants from between the lettuce and spinach. Then we shovelled a load of rotted manure into the potato patch.

This morning, I’ve got soaked with muddy water trying to tape up a leak in my soaker-pipe watering system and a broody hen has scratched my arms as I moved her from her practice nest to the place I actually want her to sit.

Wafting round glamorously with my bottom on show to all is, quite frankly, against every health and safety guideline I have ever heard of.

However.

The concept of World Naked Gardening Day makes me giggle every single time it comes around. And I thoroughly admire anyone who does bare their all either for actual gardening purposes or just for cheeky photos. It was an absolute delight to collaborate with the others for these stories…they are unconnected, but they all feature someone naked in a garden somewhere, at some point.

I think mine is the only historical–the others are contemporaries–and I have had a great deal of fun both writing it and hanging out in the chat with the others.

With no further ado, let me introduce you to Warning! Deep Water!

Warning! Deep Water!

What will George do when he finds a scraggy ex-soldier bathing in his reservoir? What will Peter do? Is it time for them to both stop running from the past and settle down?

A Naked Gardening Day short story of 16,300 words.

Buy the naked gardening day box set

Read an excerpt…

Buy the naked gardening day box set

The World Naked Gardening Day novellas

#SampleSunday: Warning Deep Water

For #SampleSunday this week, I have the first bit of Warning! Deep Water for you in a blatant attempt to tempt you into a pre-order now it’s up on Amazon :). Meet George and Peter, finding their feet again after the second world war.

Book Bingo! Warning! Deep Water. Gay romance, 1940s England, Hurt-comfort, swimming, cute dog, salad vegetables! Celebrate World Naked Gardening Day!

Chapter 1 – The Stranger – George

George wrote the final cheque, put it in its envelope and wrote the address on it, threw it in the stack to be posted, and pushed the pile of paperwork away with a sigh. There, that was it. The month’s bills paid. And a bit left in the bank. A good month, then, especially after such a long, hard, winter.
He rubbed his hands up over his face and into his hair, easing the tension out of his forehead by pulling at it. It needed cutting. He’d ask Mrs Leland to do it for him when she came back in the morning. For now though, he’d been inside all day…it was time for a walk round the place, check that the vents and doors on the greenhouses were closed, and stretch his legs.
“Come on Polly,” he said to the dog stretched out in front of the Rayburn as he stood up. “On your feet!”
She raised her head and looked at him enquiringly, not sure whether he was really going out and not just moving round the kitchen to put the kettle on.
“Walk time,” he told her. “I’ll put my boots on and we can go. I want to see how they’ve got on with planting the Christmas chrysants.” It seemed like it had been lettuces and tomatoes for interminable years now—they’d started growing them at the beginning of the war to feed the troops stationed locally and had only been allowed to keep a minimal amount of flowers planted every year to keep their stocks fresh. This was the first year he’d been able to plan for a Christmas flower crop since 1939.
Once Polly could see he wasn’t kidding her, she got to her feet and stretched as George collected the heavy ring of keys from the hook beside the door and got his boots out of the boot cupboard. She was an old dog now, going on twelve…he should probably think about getting a pup, but he was comfortable as he was and didn’t want the bother of training one. Just as well, for over the past winter they’d spent most of the time hunkered down by the fire when they weren’t trying to clear the snow off the glasshouse roofs to avoid collapse. Perhaps later in the year, if things continued to look up, he’d think about it more seriously.
He took his slippers off and slid his feet into his wellingtons. He didn’t bother with his jacket, it was quite warm for the front end of May, even though it was late in the evening, just getting dark. Polly snaked around his legs and out of the door, waiting for him on the path. “Come on then, girl,” he said. “Let’s get going.”
They wound their way idly down past the break room toward the packing shed first, enjoying the mild evening and the dimpsy light. The lettuces they’d picked today were stacked in crates, ready to take down to the wholesaler in the morning. He shut the door, with the little lift needed to ease it onto the threshold and get it to latch. Locked it with the big, bent key. Made sure the tool shed was padlocked. Shut up the hens.
He looked into the big boiler house they used to heat the houses they were using for tomatoes and threw a bit more coal in. It had been a clear day, warm for the time of year, but he didn’t want to let the boilers out quite yet, it was still chilly at night.
Shutting the doors and releasing the levers to lower the ceiling vents in each of the long glasshouses, he made his way around the looping path until it turned and he began to make his way back toward the house.
Polly ran on ahead as usual, her initial stiffness worked out of her joints by this point in their evening perambulation. As she got to the top of the path by the smaller glasshouse where they grew on the young plants, she began to bark.
It wasn’t her rabbit-bark or her squirrel-bark. It was her here’s something odd bark.
George lengthened his stride to catch up with her.
“What’s up, girly?” he asked. “Fox?” It wasn’t her fox-bark, either.
As he drew level with her and turned the corner, he saw what she was barking at. There was someone in the pump house with the big water tank, at the end of one of the houses of young tomatoes. He could see them moving through the glass walls.
“Oi!” he shouted, as he began to run toward them, wellies slopping as he ran. “Oi! What’s going on?” The figure inside, who hadn’t seemed disturbed by the dog, moved sharply, clearly swinging round to face him.
He reached the door and pulled it open. It was a man. He had just climbed out of the mossy, green depths of the ten-thousand gallon tank. He was dripping wet, and completely naked.
George slammed to a halt as if he’d hit a brick wall, staring open mouthed.

Buy the naked gardening day box set