Sourcebooks Casablanca Romance Authors

by Amanda Forester The biggest romance conference of the year, the annual Romance Writers of America Annual Conference, begins in just a few days and I am already on the road on the way to New York City.  So exciting! Some people are expert travelers. They can stuff everything they need for a month’s vacation into a carry on. I am not one of those people. I pack for an overnight looking like I’m going on an expedition to the North Pole. A trip to New York requires more luggage than I own, or certainly care to lug around.   So, I have had to get creative with my packing to make the most of the limited space I have.   Most people will tell you to take less stuff. That is excellent advice…but for those who need (or feel compelled) to bring more than they have space for, here are some tips for cramming more stuff into a small space. 1.        Roll Clothes – rolled clothes fit into the corners of small spaces better and actually ...

 My debut Regency-era novel, The Rake’s Handbook: Including Field Guide , will be released soon on November 4 th . Some of you may already know that the inspiration for this book is the BBC’s TV program of North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. I’ll discuss my pathway to publication on this blog when the book is released. Today I’d like to tell you about a trip I made to England that became the inspiration for my all of my books in The Rake’s Handbook series.  After viewing North and South, I became fascinated by the cotton industry around Manchester at the beginning of the 19 th century. I had already read the Gaskell book and other so-called “industrial novels” written by people like Charles Dickens. I also read a few nonfiction books, like Friedrich Engels’ book on the working class in England and treatises on cotton manufacture. Then I joined a message-board of intelligent ladies, mostly living in Great Britain, who posted many online conversations about this v...