Candace Camp

I haven't yet put up the cover, but I had a story in one of the Harlequin anthologies in June. The name of the book is From This Day Forward and it's Harlequin's 60th anniversary, so they made their June anthology center around a 6oth wedding anniversary. Gina Wilkins and Allison Leigh wrote the other two stories, and I think you will find the whole book a lot of fun. My characters are the couple now celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary, and my portion of the book tells their love story, which happened in 1949. So it's a little historical! Gina's and Allison's characters are two of their grandchildren who are putting on the secret 60th anniversary celebration.

I was really drawn to the time period, as that was almost right when I was born---yes, I know, I'm showing my age---so I decided to set it in my hometown, Amarillo, TX. It was great fun researching it----it's amazing how many things I've forgotten about the place over the years, and, of course, it's set in a time that I can't really remember. I got a lot of help from my older half-sister and her husband. The nightclub that plays a role in the story is real and was a club where my parents used to go dancing when they were dating.

Hope you enjoy it!

I can now be found on twitter as campcandace. (There was already a woman on there who has the same name, so I put mine backward---kind of sounds like Camp Silverwood or something, though.)

twitter.com/campcandace

Sorry it's been so long since I blogged. I got discouraged by all the crazy spam comments and I just kind of gave up on it, but I decided finally to come back and clean it all out. So all the comments should be gone. Unfortunately, i could see no way to screen out all the weird spam stuff, so I've had to stop allowing comments. Hopefully that will work And I'm sorry that those of you with legitimate comments have been taken off, too.

But you can still add your name to my reading list, and you can correspond with me that way.

I'm happy to say that The Wedding Challenge will be out soon. I'm very excited about it. I have just really enjoyed this series. I hope that you will enjoy The Wedding Challenge as much as you have the first two books.

I'm afraid I haven't been keeping very up to date with this blog. Since finishing the last book of the Matchmaker series, I've been busy writing two novellas for Harlequin. One is for their More than Words anthology that comes out in 2009, and the other is for the Harlequin Sixtieth Anniversary anthology. This one is an interesting idea---a book where all the stories have to do with a sixtieth wedding anniversary of a certain couple. (It also is Harlequin's sixtieth anniversary.)

I decided to take the couple who is having their anniversary, now obviously up in years, and write the story of their falling in love back in 1949. I set it in my hometown of Amarillo, Texas, and I had a lot of fun researching the book. A pivotal scene takes place in the Nat Ballroom, a dance club that my mother and father went to, and it was so interesting to look up pictures and info about it so many years after the fact.

I've also been working up an idea for a new series to follow the Matchmaker series. It's still in the planning stages, but I'm pretty excited about it.

Hope you all enjoy The Wedding Challenge!

Wow! I just saw how long it had been since I blogged, so I thought I'd pull out a subject that people often ask me---how I got started writing.
I started writing because I loved to read, first of all. But that wasn't enough. I always made up stories, as well, from as far back as I can remember. One of my very earliest memories---it has to be before I was five because I was not yet in school, and I was sitting on the floor of our den, playing with my mother's kitchen utensils and giving them names and histories and stories. (I'm sure my mother just loved this form of playing.) I remember that the potato masher was the king, and the pasty blender was the queen.

It helped, I'm sure, that my mother was also a writer. She worked for the newspaper before she married my dad---in fact, that's where they met. She was also a tremendous romantic. She took me to see Gone With the Wind when I was very young---one of its re-releases. And we used to watch old movies on television---lots of Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, that sort of thing. And once I learned to read, that was all I wanted to do. Well, not all, because I still loved making up my stories and acting them out.

I wrote my first story when I was ten and home for a snow day. It was all of ten pages long and relied heavily on plot devices I'd just read in two of my sister's young adult novels---I couldn't make up my mind which story I liked better, so I just threw them all in there, which gave the heroine a split personality. After the sixth grade, I took a summer typing course for kids, and after that I wrote my stories on my mother's ancient Royal typewriter (with the keys painted over in red nail polish from when I sister took a typing course in high school). This enabled me to write much longer pieces, though I could never manage to get past about three or four chapters before I was seduced by some new idea. I continued to write all though high school. I did less of it in college because I didn't have the time. But when I was 23 and working in a bank, I discovered the 'new' kind of romance novels---the hot ones. I was immediately hooked, as were all the other women I worked with. And I was also certain that I could write this kind of book. This was my kind of stuff!

I started a book, but only got a few chapters done---I was dating and working and just didn't have much time. But then my brother convinced me to go to law school, and so I did. There I was in a completely new town, knowing no one, with all this dull stuff to read, and my boyfriend broke up with me. So I had time to write (not a lot, but enough) and most of all, it was a way to escape from my misery. So I dug out the book I'd started the year before and realized that it needed to start several weeks earlier and with a much more exciting beginning. I wrote on it all year long. And for once in my life, I stuck with the story all the way through to the end. I always credit law school with giving me the discipline to finish it, which I'd never had before. However, I think it also had to do with the fact that this was a story with a market waiting for it. Publishers were practically begging for romances. And there was, for the first time in my life, the real possibility that I could write for a living instead of doing something l really didn't like all day long everyday---like work in a bank or be a lawyer.

So that's the story of my very first book, Bonds of Love. My good friend Jill typed it up for me because she was a vastly superior typist. My brother copied it off at his office, and I sent it in. Jove bought it after I graduated from law school, and within another year and a half, I was writing full time.

I am working right now on a plot for a novella to be included in the Harlequin 60th Anniversary anthology to come out in June 2009. There will be three stories by three different authors, and they center around a couple's 60th wedding anniversary. I have chosen to do the story of the couple when they met and married sixty years before. So right now I am researching the period---lots of fun---and mulling over ideas. In talking to my older sister tonight, I found out that at that time, girls were supposed to be sure that they did not wear too many accessories. They were supposed to count all their bracelets, rings, earrings (each one counted), etc, and could not have more than a certain number. Unfortunately, she could not remember the number. She thought it was thirteen, but we decided that that sounded a little high. I asked what would be the problem if one wore more than that, and she said that the girl would be considered 'flashy' or 'trashy.' As in my Regencies, certain things 'simply were not done.'

One of my readers mentioned the other day that she wondered about the origins of 'the ton'. This word is used liberally in Regencies to indicate the upper crust of London society. It actually comes from a French phrase le bon ton which means something like 'in the fashionable style.' I think maybe it translates best as 'the in crowd.'
Another phrase I use sometimes for this same group of high society people is 'beau monde', another phrase they used, meaning 'beautiful world.' (These people thought a lot of themselves, didn't they?)

No one who knows me would ever say that I had any interest in clothes, but I do love historical costumes, and the Regency period is one of my favorites. The other is 1870's--1880's---I love those pulled back skirts with the bustles (though I certainly would never have wanted to wear one.)
Regency women's clothes have a wonderful simplicity compared to both earlier and later women's fashion. I can get away without tons of petticoats and those whalebone corsets for my heroines. There are lots of terms thrown about about various dresses in my books and others---walking dresses, carriage dresses, day dresses, afternoon dresses, round gowns, etc. So I thought I would explain a little about them. In general, with the day, afternoon, and evening gowns, the dress gets progressively fancier and lower-cut as the day goes along. The morning dress is the simpler, more comfortable attire, and covers all the chest and shoulders. It was what the woman wore at home in the company of her family. An afternoon dress is more decorated and dressier and often shows a little more of her chest. It is what she would wear out shopping or paying calls. I think the distinction really came from the period before this one, when women were wearing those stiff, heavy dresses with the wide sideways hoops and panniers, very low-cut bodices, and had the big powdered hair. At that time, when at home after she got up in the morning, women put on dresses called sacque or sack dresses, which were much looser and more comfortable and usually were pulled back and tied in the back. Then, when they went out, they would squeeze themselves into the corsets and uncomfortable, heavy clothes. But in Regency times, with the looser, lighter, more comfortable clothing, the line between these two kinds of dresses began to blur, and it is often a little difficult to tell the difference between them.
Evening gowns, of course, were lower, often showing off the bosom to some degree, and they were of richer materials, with more frills and furbelows. This is the sort of gown they put on when they "dressed" for dinner or went to the theater. Ball gowns were the most elegant. Again, the difference between these were blurred. If one had to be presented at Court---as when a debutante came out, a woman wore a very elegant dress in a style much more of the era that had just passed, and for some reason, it was apparently essential that they wear some sort of tiara with ostrich feathers stuck in it. I'm not sure why. It's not something my characters ever do.
Then there were these other types of dresses, and there's not much difference between them and the other day dresses. A "round" gown is a reference to the newer style (after 1810 or so) that didn't have any sort of train in the back; the hemline went all the way around the same. The walking dress was a slightly shorter dress, presumably to make walking easier, but all the drawings I have seen of them were of quite elegant looking dresses, so not really what you'd wear to go for a hike. Carriage dresses were for riding around and being seen in an open carriage, so they, too, were usually dressy, and they often had a sort of coat style and looked heavier. Promenade dresses were, I think, pretty much like walking dresses.
With their dresses, Regency women often wore these charming jackets called spencers. They are very similar to the shrugs that were popular two or three years ago---very short jackets, usually buttoned, and with long sleeves, often puffed at the top. They added a nice bit of color and decoration to the simple white dresses that were the staple of Regency fashion. However, I am sure that they were largely worn because the women were probably very cold most of the time in England in those light dresses with only one petticoat and a chemise beneath. You'll notice that they frequently throw on shawls over their bare arms and shoulders, too. t's just the opposite of what I always think of in the summertime here in Texas---how did those women who settled here stand the 98 degree weather in all those petticoats, long dresses, and corsets!

A reader recently wrote me asking some questions about doing research for my novels. I thought it might be of interest to those of you who want to write regencies---and maybe even to those who just like to read historicals. My books are much more concerned with daily happenings than with the grand events of history. For instance, in researching The Marriage Wager, my main interest in political events was when and where the hero, Viscount Leighton, would have served in the army during the Napoleonic era and what sort of division he would have been in, i.e. dragoons, hussars, light infantry, etc. The majority of my research was on clothes and where they would have bought their clothes, the sort of activities pursued at a country house party, foods, manners, etc. The books that I use all the time for this kind of thing are What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew by Daniel Pool and An Elegant Madness by Venetia Murray.
I also rely heavily on costume and clothing books. I've had one large book for years that covers the history of fashion, but since the last few years I've been writing mainly books with a Regency setting and a few of the Victorian period, what I use most now are Ackermann's Costume Plates, and Costume in Detail 1730-1930. The latter has a wonderful wealth of detail about the clothes, from buttons to sleeves to petticoats. I even use a book about the history of undergarments. I also have two or three books about the British landscape and British estates and manor houses on which I rely heavily. I keep all these books at hand because I use them so often. But, of course, on more specific issues, I usually have to find a book at the library. And it's amazing what you can find there. When I wrote Mesmerized, I was quite surprised to find three books at the library written about the spiritualism movement in England and the US during the middle to late 19th century.
You can also find tons of things on the Internet, although there you have to be careful about its authenticity. I did a lot of search for Beyond Compare on the Internet, including the sacking of Constantinople, Byzantine art and artifacts, ancient goddesses of the Middle East,opium addiction, and more.
I generally run into two kinds of problems: One is needing to know some little strange thing that is not usually mentioned in books, most often how long it would have taken to get from one place to another on horseback or in a private carriage or by stage. The other is getting so carried away in the research that I spend way too much time on it. (I always tell myself, though, that maybe I'll be able to use it in some other book.)
Well, that's probably more than anyone wanted to know. I hope some of it is useful to you.
If you have any questions about specific things, please feel free to write a comment or send me an e-mail.

My agent informed me that Bridal Quest is debuting at #24 on the New York Times paperback list on March 16---apparently they do these things way in advance. I'm very happy about that. I also just finished the fourth book in the Matchmaker Series, The Courtship Dance, last week and sent it off my editor. I have to admit that when I finished the ending and the epilogue, I got a little teary-eyed---which is not typical of me! But I just enjoyed all the characters and their stories so. I hope you all will have the same feeling of satisfaction when you read it.

I had a question about the next book. It will be The Wedding Challenge, and it is due out in September of this year. It will concern Callie, the duke's sister, and it will offer some more insight into the whole Francesca/Duke relationship. They play a little bit larger role in the third book than in the first two, I think. I like Irene because a person with a sharp tongue is always fun to write, but these last two books are my favorites of the series.

Happy Reading!