A Kasey Michaels Classic Alphabet Regency.
You've heard about them, "those perfect little books" USA TODAY and NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author Kasey Michaels penned in the 1980s, known to her many fans as her "Alphabet Regencies." These are classic Regencies, not Regency historicals, and they center on the foibles of the day, the eccentrics that populated the drawing rooms (and there were many of these silly people, especially when Kasey is the one telling their stories). The love scenes fade to black with the reader encouraged to use her or his imagination to fill in the blanks — oh, come on, you know how to do that, right! Classic, traditional Regencies are sophisticated, lighthearted character studies if you will, and a fine introduction to the Regency Era.
They're also a lot of fun.
Being Kasey, she didn't start with the letter A, and then move on to B, C, etc. No, she started with B…and then jumped to T and The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane for her second book. Why? Because nobody told her she couldn't, that's why. That's the beauty of being a writer — when it hits you, it hits you, and you run with it.
Tansy Tamerlane hit Kasey like a ton of bricks one day, refusing to be anyone but who she was, refusing any name that ended with A, or even C. That's the thing about Tansy. She's tenacious (which is just a short hop to "stubborn," but nobody ever got anywhere by being a shy, shrinking violet, now did they?).
Tansy, left penniless by her late father, has been putting herself out as a governess to other people's brats for two years when she is somehow caught up in playing chaperone to a distant cousin, the sister of a duke, no less. Ashley Benedict, Duke of Avonall, is a man beleaguered. His grandmother is a terror, his sister a lovely but none-too-bright chit, his valet a superstitious twit, and his aunt Lucinda is … well, different. Singular. Okay, so she's downright odd.
Lucinda Benedict, you see, speaks only in quotes. Other people's words. Really. And if you think an author can't have a lot of fun with a character like that, well, you haven't yet met Aunt Lucinda! In fact, Kasey was so taken with her that Aunt Lucinda went on to appear in THE PLAYFUL LADY PENELOPE, and (as a ghost, no less!) in THE HAUNTED MISS HAMPSHIRE.
You'll notice that Kasey never did buckle down and do the alphabet in order. Too boring by half, as Tansy would have said.
Thanks to the wonders of technology, Aunt Lucinda is back, along with Tansy and Ashley, and all the other eccentric characters that make up Kasey's "rainy day book," the one she penned during a very trying time in her personal life (see accompanying bio), and a book that has brought a smile and a laugh or twelve to thousands of readers over the years. Indeed, one reviewer wrote Kasey to complain that she had to get off the New York city bus she was riding to work because she was reading Tansy's story and began to laugh so hard that "people were looking at me funny."
Be sure to search out THE PLAYFUL LADY PENELOPE and THE HAUNTED MISS HAMPSHIRE, and more of Kasey's Alphabet Regencies, soon available in e-book form.
After all, everyone needs a good laugh now and then, right?
