An attempt at historical accuracy. No lace panties in the Regency, please, and whatever the covers show, no polyester gowns or men's shirts that button all the way down.

This is a quote from Janet's blog from a few days ago, discussing what she likes in an Historical. Ordinarily I would agree with her about the Regency gentleman's shirt buttoning all the way down, but I recently received the cover for my January 2008 Harlequin Historical--A Regency--The Vanishing Viscountess.

Note the open-front shirt. Totally wrong for the time period, but I love this cover!

The shirt is wrong, but the cover is so right. It conveys the right situation and mood between the hero and heroine. And I love the sensuality of it. Plus, having a handsome man baring his chest on the cover ought to entice readers to pick up the book!

I think historical accuracy is very important in historical romance and, like Janet, I work hard at trying to make my Regency Historicals as accurate as I can. I know some other authors are not hard-and-fast about this and it doesn't seem to affect their popularity with readers.

So what is important to readers? I know what is important to me as a reader.

1. Characters I can care about--I can forgive a lot of other problems if the characters seem like real people I can care about. I want a hero I can fall in love with and a heroine I can either identify with or someone I wouldn't mind having as a friend.

2. Something interesting happening--It doesn't have to be something complicated happening, or even something with lots of inherent drama, like a life-or-death situation. Just something that keeps me turning the pages.

3. Something surprising or unexpected--I want something about the story to be different from other books I've read.

4. I want the love story to feel genuine. I want to understand why these two people fall in love and to believe that no one else would be better suited for them.

5. I want sensuality in the story. I want to be able to feel the physical attraction between the hero and heroine and I want this expressed in a way that seems right for these characters.

6. I want to suspend my disbelief and be transported to whatever time period the book is set. This inevitably means historical detail, but I want the detail to be incorporated into the story. I don't want to be thrust out of the story by feeling like the author is showing off historical knowledge.

7. I also don't want to be thrust out of the story by historical inaccuracies. Because I write Regencies, I know a lot about the time period. I would forgive minor mistakes, but not ones that would be easy to research.

8. I don't want to be thrust out of the story by historical accuracy either. Sometimes historical accuracy is so foreign to us we cannot relate to it. I think Regency titles and names are sometimes an example of this. Use of title names instead of first names; having sons with different title names than their fathers; having surnames that are different than title names. It can get very confusing.

What is most important to me is that the mood and tone and characters feel as if they belonged in the historical time period.

This brings me back to my cover. It works perfectly for me, even with the inaccurate shirt, because it conveys the right mood, the right situation, the right sensuality for the story.

Plus it has that handsome bare-chested man on it!

What is important to you as a reader?

Visit The Risky Regencies blog this week to celebrate our second anniversary. Prizes every day and a Grand Prize for signing up for our newsletter by sending an email to riskies@yahoo.com. Just put "newsletter" in the subject line.

Visit Diane's website

Labels: Diane Gaston, The Vanishing Viscountess

posted by Diane Gaston @ 1:21 PM