Jobev Jo Bev here, doing a quick blog on a funky set-up — our household computer system was attacked!
Here in the UK, we’re embroiled in a referendum as to whether we should leave the EU – the European Union. I won’t go into it, but it’s got me thinking about borders and boundaries in history.
Hi, Jo Beverley here, pulling together an AAW. If you dont know, AAW is Ask A Wench, and the question this time is:
How do you come up with names for characters and places that feel
right for the place and period? What about titles, familiar names, and nicknames?
My answers would be similar to the other Wenches, but I'll add a bit at the end.
Anne I don't have any single way to choose names or titles. Sometimes they just come to me, sometimes I note a good name down in a little notebook when I come across it. For instance, Hewitt Featherby, the butler in my current series, was the name of an ancestor of a friend of mine. I heard it years ago, thought it was a great name, and then when my butler character popped up, I knew it was his name. 
Jo here, returning to a subject I wrote about in May 2015 — the death of Princess Charlotte in childbirth in November 1817. Why? Because it's a lynch pin for my April book, The Viscount Needs a Wife, and for the one I'm writing now for 2017, Merely a Marriage.
I write my Company of Rogues books (follow that link for more) along a time line that started in 1814, and though I've gone slowly I've arrived at the great tragedy of the death of Princess Charlotte. I had wondered how I would deal with it, as it cannot be ignored, but it fell into place.
Death in Childbirth
People sometimes think that death in childbirth was common in the past. I may write a blog post on that subject, but though it was more common than now, it wasn't so common that the death of a young, healthy woman and her baby was taken in stride.
The nation was plunged into a genuine and almost manic mourning that continued well into 1818. Court mourning plunged the aristocracy into black, and nearly everyone in the nation wore sober colors, black arm bands and similar signs of grief. Not to do so was to declare oneself a Republican, but also a heartless person, because this was a tragedy, royal or not.
The Royal Succession
In addition to a human tragedy, Charlotte's death created a succession crisis.
So, I have a book hitting the shelves in a few weeks, and everyone's anticipating a new Rogues book. And it is, sort of. It's set in the Rogues' World, but to be blunt, I've run out of Rogues! Not long ago I realized that my Company of Rogues series was the longest-running, still live, series in historical romance. But now I realize it's come to its natural end.
When I wrote the first one, An Arranged Marriage, long, long ago, (first draft 1977) I gave the hero, Nicholas Delaney, some friends, because he was going to need them. From somewhere (writing magic here) came the idea of a schooboy group and them keeping in touch, as school friends tend to. All the details about the Rogues trickled out over the subsequent decades as I occasionally wrote another Rogue's story. 
Simply because it seemed more interesting I created a variety of young men, then later I had to explain why some of them were at Harrow.
Hi, Jo Bev here with a quick blog as I'm traveling.
My next book The Viscount Needs a Wife, and the one I'm working on, are both triggered by the death of Princess Charlotte in November 1817. That leads them straight into winter. I blogged back in December about winter cold, and here we are now on the edge of spring, in England at least. (We won't mention Australia and other southern hemisphere places, which are heading for colder times.)
