I'm pleased to welcome Paula Paul to Jo-Jo Loves to Read today! You can read all about Sins of the Empress
here, but today I asked Paula to tell me about her idea of a perfect summer evening. From her guest post we get snippets from her book that give us just enough to want to read more!
Here is what Paula has to say:
A
Russian summer night stays only long enough to shake the stars out of
its hair before the gaudy sun returns and chases it away. Yet we were
able to make the most of the night’s short visit, Greshenka and I,
winding our way, candles in hand, down the long and sultry outdoor
passage to the royal baths.
That’s the opening paragraph for Chapter 34 in my novel Sins of the Empress.
When I was asked to write a guest blog about my idea of a perfect
summer evening, those are the words that came to mind. You’ve just
witnessed Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, and her lover, Grigory
Potempkin, whom she called Greshenka, on a summer evening at the palace
in St. Petersburg in the 1770s. They will make love in the palace bath
house on this night and on many more summer nights.
Later, on another summer night, they will steal away by boat and
carriage, traveling separately to meet eventually in a tiny chapel in
the country side. There, a priest will perform a secret marriage
ceremony. Afterward, Catherine will return to her throne and Greshenka
to his regiment because to allow their marriage to become public
knowledge would spell disaster for both of them.
I have to confess that my idea of a perfect summer evening is much less
interesting—a gathering of family and friends on our patio. Good food,
a little wine to sip later while we talk, with the laughter of children
coming to us from the lawn.
Ah, but Catherine’s summer gatherings were much more interesting. She hosted outdoor banquets,
not just hamburgers on the patio table with the neighbors. This one, a
mechanism in one of her schemes, occurred when she was still a mere
duchess:
I
was dressed as Helen of Troy in a slender gossamer gown…The weather was
perfect—balmy with a slight breeze but not enough to disturb the
elaborate hair styles most of the women wore. A trumpet herald called us
to dine. . . The highlight of the evening began when we heard music
from a distance, and the guests were compelled to turn toward the grand
avenue leading from the palace grounds to my garden. . .Twenty oxen
appeared at the end of the path, each ox festooned with garlands of
fresh flowers. They pulled a large wooden cart I’d had designed by
Antonio Rinaldi. The cart was enormous—large enough to hold an
orchestra of sixty musicians and singers while twenty costumed male and
female dancers cavorted around it as it moved. I’d had the music and
songs composed especially for the event. . .(Later,) another trumpeter,
this one dressed as a mountebank in flamboyant colors, called everyone
to the opposite end of the garden where two tents had been set up, one
to dispense free lottery tickets and the other to redeem the tickets for
porcelain, flowers, gloves, ribbons, fans, and other finery,
It
just never occurred to me to have twenty oxen pull a cart full of
singers and musicians surrounded by cavorting dancers down my street and
into my backyard. I’m afraid it would frighten Sydney, the
two-year-old next door.
I also confess that I have never spent a summer night as Catherine did on this night when she seized the throne:
I rode out of St. Petersburg leading 18,000 guardsmen toward Peterhoff
and Oraninbaum. We had hardly left the edge of the city when we saw
horsemen ahead of us. Long before I could discern a face, my instincts
informed me that it could be non other than a contingent of Peter’s
guards. . . (The head guardsman) raised his sword and told me he would
rally troops against me.
With a glance over my shoulder at the 18,000 troops who followed me, I said, “You are free to try.”
I’ve never spent a single summer evening leading 18,000 troops into
battle to seize a throne, although I did once chase away a big dog who
was snarling at my little mutt. But that was mid-day in winter, not a
balmy summer evening
The
truth is, my ideal summer evening is perfectly boring, but I will get
up the next morning and create any number of exciting or sexy or
poignant or hair-raising scenes on my laptop and hope that people will
read them. You could start with Sins of the Empress.
**End of guest post**
Thanks for stopping by today Paula! I have to admit that I would not want to spend a summer evening leading troops into battle, but it sure would make an interesting journal entry.
Paula
Paul is the award-winning author of 25 novels for both children and
adults. She also had a career as a newspaper journalist and has won
several state and national awards in that field. A native Texan, she
grew up on a cotton farm/ranch in Bailey County, a county named for her
ancestor who died at the Alamo. She loves playing the piano and learning
how to or about just about anything. Oh, and big family get-togethers
with her two children and their families. She lives in Albuquerque, New
Mexico, with her husband.
