Keira Soleore: Cogitations and Meditations

The Winsor List: My 16 Favorite Romances

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 23:00:00 +0000

Jessica @Racy Romance Reviews is running The Winsor List meme on her blog today. Posting our favorite 16 romances on October 16 is an eminently suitable activity, given that it's the birthdate of romance great Kathleen Winsor (1919–2003). Her first book Forever Amber was published in 1944; the reissue from 2000 is still in print.

Here's my list of sixteen of my top romances in no particular order...

1. Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas
2. Flirting with Forty by Jane Porter
3. Sugar Daddy by Lisa Kleypas
4. For My Lady's Heart by Laura Kinsale
5. Untouched by Anna Campbell
6. Simply Magic by Mary Balogh
7. Never Love a Lawman by Jo Goodman
8. Romancing Mr. Bridgerton by Julia Quinn
9. A Duke of Her Own by Eloisa James
10. Tall Dark and Texan by Jodi Thomas
11. The Passionate One by Connie Brockway
12. Devilish by Jo Beverley
13. Ransom by Julie Garwood
14. Practice Makes Perfect by Julie James
15. Where Serpents Sleep by C.S. Harris
16. Just Breathe by Susan Wiggs

What does your list of Fave 16 contain?

Tuckered Out

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 05:56:00 +0000

After a week-long "improving course" and attending the regional Emerald City Writers' Conference, I'm pooped. The blog will be on a bit of a hiatus while I recover my writing chops.

Picture Day Friday

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:09:00 +0000

Picture Day Friday today is all about what Julia Quinn calls "spooting," spotting books on shelves.

It also celebrates debut releases by two fantastic authors who I'm also privileged to know as friends. Tessa Dare's trilogy from Ballantine, includes Goddess of the Hunt (7/28/09), Surrender of a Siren (8/25/09), and A Lady of Persuasion (9/29/09). Courtney Milan's books from HQN, include an anthology with Mary Balogh and Nicola Cornick is The Heart of Christmas (10/1/09), which will be followed by Proof by Seduction (1/10).

Surrender of a Siren spotted at Seattle airport in late August.

Surrender of a Siren spotted at Philadelphia airport in late August.

A Lady of Persuasion spotted at local Target on release day.

The Heart of Christmas spotted at local Target on release day.

Calls for Academic Papers

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:24:00 +0000

Romance area of the Popular Culture Association conference in St. Louis, MO, March 31-April 3, 2010

PCA is a fabulous conference to test out new ideas and start to be a part of the new and exciting field of Popular Romance Studies. We’re a lot of fun, very open and inviting and inclusive, and we’re specifically expanding this year beyond Popular Romance Fiction to Popular Romance Studies writ large. From the Call For Papers:

We are interested in any and all topics about or related to popular romance: all genres, all media, all countries, all kinds, and all eras. All representations of romance in popular culture (fiction, stage, screen—large or small, commercial, advertising, music, song, dance, online, real life, etc.), from anywhere and anywhen, are welcome topics of discussion.

Contact Sarah Frantz with questions or proposals.
Deadline: November 30, 2009

* *

International Association for the Study of Popular Romance conference in Belgium, August 5-7, 2010

This is the second annual conference for IASPR. Our first annual conference in Brisbane, Australia, was a great success, and Belgium looks to be even better. Our keynote speakers are Pamela Regis, Lynne Pearce, and Celestina Deleyto, a critic of romantic comedy films.

This conference has three main goals:

To bring to bear contemporary critical theory on the texts and contexts of popular romance, in all forms and media, from all national and cultural traditions

To foster comparative and intercultural analyses of popular romance, by documenting and/or theorizing what happens to tropes and texts as they move across national, linguistic, and cultural boundaries

To explore the relationships between popular romance tropes and texts as they circulate between elite and popular culture, between different media (e.g., from novel to film, or from song to music video), between cultural representations and the lived experience of readers, viewers, listeners, and lovers

Contact conference organizers with questions or proposals.
Deadline: January 1, 2010

Bid for Raffle Basket at ECWC

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 10:27:00 +0000

The International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (IASPR) and I are sponsoring a basket for raffle at the Emerald City Writers Conference (ECWC), entitled Romancing the Intellect: In Your Bodice, Analyzin Ur Literachur.

IASPR is dedicated to fostering and promoting the scholarly exploration of all popular representations of romantic love. It is committed to building a strong community of scholars of popular romance through open, digital access to all scholarly work published by the Association, by organizing or sponsoring an annual international conference on popular romance studies, and by encouraging the teaching of popular romance at all levels of higher education.

The ECWC is being held at the Hilton Bellevue Hotel (300 112th Avenue SE Bellevue WA 98004) from Friday, October 9, 2009 to Sunday, October 11, 2009. It is organized by the Greater Seattle RWA chapter (GSRWA). Registration opens at 3pm on Friday with the last event closing at 3:30pm on Sunday. The conference schedule is available here. All the proceeds from the raffle will be donated to a charity of choice by the GSRWA.

Basket goodies include: IASPR tote, pen, bookmarks, cards, badge ribbon; a hardcover Joyce Maynard; a trade paperback Mary Balogh; two mass-market romances; Hannah Howell tote, pens; excerpts, bookmarks, other author goodies; lavendar lotion and body oil; Sephora lip-gloss; Lancome makeup brush set; a special flower-blooming tea and a tin of lime-n-chilli snacking almonds to enjoy with your books; and of course, yummilicious chocolate.

So...bid high, bid often...and WIN!!

D'Éon: French Spy

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 04:33:00 +0000

This morning, I finished reading Jo Beverley's Winter Fire with a satisfied sigh. That feeling of having been in presence of a good story in the hands of a talented writer never fails to surface when I read JoBev's work. Winter Fire is a Christmas story about the Marquess of Ashart set at the Malloren stronghold Rothgar Abbey. And wherever the Marquess of Rothgar is, the tales of French spy Charles d'Éon de Beaumont are never far behind, given the tangled history between the two men.

Imagine my surprise then, when I turned to my daily calendar of Forgotten English by Jeffrey Kacirk, to find that today is d'Éon's birthday. He was a French diplomat, spy, and soldier of the Georgian era (1728–1810). His full name also included the names Geneviève, Louis, Auguste, André, and Thimothée. As d'Éon claimed throughout his life, he began life as a baby girl. However, his parents stood to inherit a fortune only if they had a male offspring, so d'Éon "became male."

In 1756, as Le Chevalier d'Éon, he enlisted in Louis XV's spy network Le Secret du Roi. He was posted to the Russian court of Empress Elizabeth, where he donned the guise of a maid of honor to the empress in order to pass secrets between the two courts.

In 1761, he chose to return as a man to France, and two years later, he moved to London as part of the diplomatic corps as a man. A betting pool was started on the London Stock Exchange to prove his sex. He was invited to participate, but he declined.

In 1774, d'Éon negotiated his successful return to the French court of Louis XVI, but there he was compelled to dress as a woman, because he insisted in wanting to be recognized as one. Thereafter, d'Éon stayed as woman, even when he returned to England in 1785.

Unfortunately for him, he died in London, where English physicians conducted a postmortem analysis and gleefully proclaimed that d'Éon was anatomically male. They then proceeded to coin a term Eonism to denote cross-dressing behavior (obviously prefering to forget about Shakespeare and all other English fans of cross-dressing.)

Another coincidence to a book I recently finished, Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, d'Éon was a Freemason.

Picture Day Friday

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 06:24:00 +0000

A view of the Prince Regent by George Cruikshank.

Tendjewberrymud!

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 03:01:00 +0000

The following is a telephone exchange between a hotel guest and room-service, at a hotel in Asia, which was recorded and published in the Far East Economic Review about 15 years ago. It made the rounds of the intranet at my company then, but fell out of favor. Then today, I ran across it in my archives and had to post it...

Room Service: "Morny. Ruin sorbees."

Guest : "Sorry, I thought I dialled room-service."

RS: "Rye. Ruin sorbees. morny! Djewish to odor sunteen??"

G : "Uh. I'd like some bacon and eggs."

RS: "Ow July den?"

G : "What??"

RS: "Ow July den? pry,boy, pooch?"

G : "Oh, the eggs! How do I like them? Sorry, scrambled please."

RS: "Ow July dee bayhcem crease?"

G : "Crisp will be fine."

RS: "Hokay. An San tos?"

G : "What?"

RS: "San tos. July San tos?"

G : "I don't think so."

RS: "No? Judo one toes??"

G : "I feel really bad about this, but I don't know what 'judo one toes' means."

RS: "Toes! toes! Qhy djew Don Juan toes? Ow bow singlish mopping we bother?"

G: "English muffin!! I've got it! You were saying 'Toast.' Fine. Yes, an English muffin will be fine.

RS: "We bother?"

G : "No, just put the bother on the side."

RS: "Wad?"

G : "I mean butter. Just put it on the side."

RS: "Copy?"

G : "Sorry?"

RS: "Copy, tea, mill?"

G : "Yes, Coffee please, and that's all."

RS: "One Minnie. Ass ruin torino fee, strangle ache, crease baychem,tossy,singlish mopping we bother honey sigh, and copy, rye??"

G : "Whatever you say."

RS: "Tendjewberrymud!"

G : "You're welcome."

In Memoriam

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:48:00 +0000

The romance publishing industry has lost one of its greatest advocates today.

In her long career of 35 years, Kate Duffy worked with Dell, Pocket Books, and Paddington Press (London) as a senior editor; editor-in-chief of Silhouette Books, Tudor Publishing, and Meteor Publishing; and editorial director at Kensington.

She was funny, irreverent, and passionate about books and writing. Watch her in action on YouTube. During an interview for A Romance Review, when Lori Foster asked her, "What’s your favorite part of being an editor?", Kate replied "The enormous paycheck. Oh, how I crack myself up. No the answer is—great writing and being the first to read it."

Author Mary Jo Putney says on Word Wenches, "[She] was a legend in the romance industry, known for her humor, her directness, her concern for authors, and her passion for the romance genre." Author Teresa Medeiros on Twitter, "From the very beginning of her career, Kate Duffy was one of the staunchest supporters of romance. She loved it as much as we do. My heart is broken! I adored Kate!" Leave it to the Squawkers to get at the heart of who Kate Duffy was with their interview by Kitty Kuttlestone.

The best tribute comes from Sarah Wendell: "She’s the Julia Child of romance!"

Kate's most famous admonishment to authors was: "Get off the Internet, and write!"

My October List

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 15:51:00 +0000

These are the books I'm looking for to next month:

Captive of the Sin by Anna Campbell

The Most Wicked of Sins by Kathryn Caskie

A Lady of Persuasion by Tessa Dare

Necessary as Blood by Deborah Crombie

Lord Wraybourne's Bethrothed by Jo Beverly

The Lone Texan by Jodi Thomas

The Heart of Christmas by Mary Balogh, Nicola Cornick, Courtney Milan

Urgent Care by C.J. Lyons

Sizzling Seduction by Gwyneth Bolton

What's on your list? Any other suggestions for me?

Picture Day Friday

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 07:38:00 +0000

This 7th Century Saxon gold strip carries the Latin inscription: "Rise up O Lord, and may thy enemies be dispersed and those who hate thee be driven from thy face" from Psalm 67, taken from the Vulgate, the Bible used by the Saxons.

In July, the UK's largest haul of Anglo-Saxon treasure was discovered buried beneath a field in South Staffordshire by Terry Herbert using a metal detector. Experts say the collection of nearly 1,500 gold and silver pieces containing warfare paraphernalia, including sword pommel caps and hilt plates inlaid with precious stones, is unparalleled in size and worth "a seven figure sum". The above gold strip is part of the haul.

Celebrating the Freedom to Read

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:09:00 +0000

We make a big song-n-dance about the Freedom of Speech here in America, but Freedom to Read is like a poor relation twice removed. Without the freedom to read, freedom to speak has no meaning. Without the infusion of new thoughts and new ideas, what in the world would you speak about?

Banned Books Week (BBW) by the American Library Association (ALA) serves to highlight the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books. BBW also stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them. While not every book is intended for every reader, each of us has the right to decide for ourselves what to read.

Since 1990, the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) has recorded more than 10,000 book challenges, including 513 in 2008. (A challenge is a formal, written complaint requesting a book be removed from library shelves or school curriculum.) About three out of four of all challenges are to material in schools or school libraries, and one in four are to material in public libraries. OIF estimates that less than one-quarter of challenges are reported and recorded.

This is horrifying. In this day and age, when we talk about the advances our civilization has made. WhAt?! WhErE?! Every time we limit access to even one book, we take a giant step back to our caveman days.

This year, BBW will be from September 26 to October 3. Go forth, and celebrate! And read!

[Edited 9/27: A different look at recent banned books: map of the country.]

Popular Romance Conference in Belgium

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:20:00 +0000

A Call For Proposals

for

The 2nd Annual International Conference on Popular Romance

Popular Romance Studies: Theory, Text and Practice

Brussels, Belgium
5-7 August, 2010

The International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (IASPR) is seeking proposals for innovative panels, papers, roundtables, discussion groups, and multi-media presentations that contribute to a sustained conversation about romantic love and its representations in popular media throughout the world, from antiquity to the present. We welcome analyses of individual textsbooks, films, websites, songs, performances, as well as broader inquiries into the creative industries that produce and market popular romance and into the emerging critical practice of popular romance studies.

This conference has three main goals:

To bring to bear contemporary critical theory on the texts and contexts of popular romance, in all forms and media, from all national and cultural traditions

After the conference, proceedings will be subjected to peer-review and published in the Journal of Popular Romance Studies (JPRS).

IASPR is pleased and proud to announce that the Keynote Speakers for the conference will be:
Celestino Deleyto, University of Zaragoza, Spain
Lynne Pearce, Lancaster University, UK
Pamela Regis, McDaniel College, USA

Please submit proposals by January 1, 2010. Direct questions to: conferences@iaspr.org.

We are currently pursuing funds to help defray the cost of travel to Belgium for the conference. If these funds become available, we will notify those accepted how to apply for support from IASPR.

(Please circulate this CFP far and wide!)

Romance Needs You

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:38:00 +0000

Harlequin is running their annual survey. All that positive press that we've been seeing in leading media outlets this year, stems mainly from Harlequin's and Romance Writers of America's surveys. So these surveys are very important to portray an accurate picture of the state of our industry.

Please do you bit. Take the survey!

Dan Brown Break

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 06:57:00 +0000

I'm determinedly plowing through The Lost Symbol despite eye-rolls every few paragraphs and numerous sighs in between. I'm a fifth of the way through and struggle isn't getting the pay-off.

If historical romances were written with such obvious historical errors and one-dimensional characters, editors and agents would toss is away as unpublishable. Even if someone somewhere made the mistake of publishing it, the author would get reamed by the readers for horrible character and my historians and other historical writers for all the errors that are so obviously the sign of lazy research.

I lay the blame for this wooden and highly inaccurate story squarely on the shoulders of the editor and copyeditors. They should've hired a research intern. They knew it was bad. They should've fixed it.

But despite it all, I'm doggone persistent in seeing this book through all its 507 pages. The saints of all religions preserve me and my family so that we may emerge from this unscathed and unscarred.

Arrrrrrgh!!

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 18:06:00 +0000

Ahoy mateys! Today be Pirates Day! Drink up! Yo ho-ho!

Picture Day Friday

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:54:00 +0000

Someday I'd like to own a gown like this red one or the green one below. Both are courtesy of Swords of Honor.

Then again there's this amazing Victorian costume by Leanna Renee Hieber in honor of the release of her debut book The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker. She's posing in this picture at DragonCon with author Marianne Mancusi.

Who Was First?

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 23:00:00 +0000

Was it Saint Columba of Iona or Saint Ninian of Whithorn who first brought Christianity to Scotland? The Scottish Parliament revisited the debate today, which is the feast day of St. Ninian.

South of Scotland MSP Alasdair Morgan brought the motion up for debate today, and it had already been backed by 18 MSPs, calling on Whithorn to be recognised as Scotland's "earliest known centre of Christianity... largely forgotten by a modern generation."

In 563, Columba, also known as Colm Cille, was exiled from his native Ireland as a result of his involvement in the Battle of Cul Dreimhne and founded a monastery on Iona, an island off the coast of Mull. From there, he and his twelve companions set about the conversion of Scotland and much of northern England to Christianity. Scroll, first-hand accounts, second-hand scholarly writings, relics, and artefacts form the anthropological evidence to Colomba's existence in Scotland.

In the 8th century, Bede wrote the first account of Ninian as an early Christian missionary among the Pictish peoples in what is now Scotland. For this reason he is known as the Apostle to the Southern Picts, throughout the Scottish Lowlands, and in parts of Northern England with a Northumbrian heritage. Lacking direct documentation, circumstancial evidence puts Ninian in Scotland in 397, well before Colomba.

However, Colomba claims that southern Scotland was pagan when he started preaching to them. So the case very well could be Ninian came, saw, preached but didn't conquer, whereas Colomba did. For the better part of the following millenium, scholars wrangled over "Who was first?" Now, politicians are getting into it.

But as with most things, the true reason behind the debate is not validity for the apostles, but rather tourist pounds and dollars.

Why Read a Romance?

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 05:48:00 +0000

Courtesy of Pearls Before Swine comes a good reason why you should read a romance. A book I highly recommend is Tasha Alexander's Tears of Pearl, a sweeping historical suspense set in Constantinople of the British Empire era.

Happy 3rd Birthday!

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 07:15:00 +0000

The Manor turns three on Monday, September 14 and Candice Hern's Bluestockings will be celebrating. Join us in the festivities and reminiscings. Prizes and giveaways will be awarded throughout the day, including one from yours truly.

Fruit of Every Tree

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 18:12:00 +0000

Robin of Dear Author posted an excellent, thought-provoking blog on bad mothers in romance on Romancing the Blog on Friday. It has generated a lively and interesting discussion in the comments section, too.

By "bad," Robin means "cruel, abusive, dismissively unfaithful, even violently and sexually perverse."

The crux of Robin's argument goes thusly: "If Genre Romance is a mirror for larger social dynamics, we know how much pressure motherhood comes with and how complex the dynamics between mothers and children, especially daughters. [...] is it a bit odd how many bad mothers there are in a genre that so strongly validates and celebrates domesticity and fertility? Or is that exactly the point? [...] I wonder whether the mimetic use of the bad mother type is mostly unconscious at this point, a vestige from other genres and other historical moments, or whether it is an intentionally placed element."

My comment: Those with the most influence usually are in the position of power to do the most damage. Even unknowingly and with the best of intentions, caregivers can greatly hurt children. It's a matter of perspective. What's straightforward, logical, and necessary for the future good of the child can be interpreted by the child as being mean, denigrating, and thwarting their goals. It's a rare parent and child who can safely navigate out of these difficult misunderstandings into a healthy adult relationship with each other. Hence the prevalence, in my opinion, of "bad" parents in fiction.

At the end, Robin asks the question: Why do you think there are so many bad mothers in Romance and what purpose(s) do they serve?

Picture Day Friday

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 07:26:00 +0000

Picture Day Friday this week, has been preponed to Thursday, in honor of those who died in the 9/11 bombings of the twin towers in NYC.

I visited Chateau de Chambord in the summer of 2001, and it's just as magnificient in real life as it is in this picture. Chambord is located in France's Loire Valley. It was built by Francois I from 1518 to 1547 with 40 rooms, 84 staircases, 365 fireplace, 1,200 horse stables all on 13,000 acres of woods.

Pointed Historical Fact

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:18:00 +0000

Today is the centenary of the filing of the patent for a modest nursing attachment that allowed a mother or wet nurse to breastfeed an infant in public "without attracting the errant gazes of men," according to Jeffrey Kacirck, author of Forgotten English.

The inventor submitted a drawing to the U.S. Patent Office of a "buckled, five-strapped leather harness that included pointy metal bra-cups, which held onto the mother's nipples with suction." (ouch!)

The inventor then went on to promise, "Whenever the child requires nursing, it is only necessary to slide one of the nursing nipples out from the waist and the child can obtain its proper nourishment without the exposure of the mother's person and the consequent embarassement which is often occasioned."

The U.S. Patent Office, in its infinite wisdom, granted the application on February 15, 1910.

Re-Reading Georgette Heyer

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 07:17:00 +0000

Cambridge University is also following suit after Princeton and Brisbane in hosting a conference on critical reading of popular romance. In this case, Lucy Cavendish College will be examining works by Georgette Heyer (8/16/1902–7/4/1974) as part of a series that includes, Virginia Woolf, and Jane Austen.

10:15 Jennifer Kloester: ‘The Life of Georgette Heyer'

10:45 Jay Dixon: ‘Heyer and Place’

11:15 Laura Vivanco: ‘”So educational!”, she said. “And quite unexceptionable.” The Nonesuch as Didactic Love Fiction.’

12:00 Mary Joannou: ‘Heyer and Austen’

12:15 Sam Rayner: ‘Publishing Heyer: Representing the Regency in Historical Romance’

12:45 STRUCTURED DISCUSSION: literary value … her place in academic study … her construction of the Regency world

2:00 Kerstin Frank: 'The Thermodynamics of Georgette Heyer: Variations on the Quest for Revitalisation'

2:30 Catherine Johns: ‘Class and Breeding’

3:00 Sarah Annes Brown: ‘Lady of Quality and Homosexual Panic’

3:15 K. Elizabeth Spillman: ‘Cross Dressing and Disguise in Heyer’s Historical Romances’

3:45 STRUCTURED DISCUSSION: gender and cross dressing … sexual politics … issues of class and race

Eloisa James's Design-a-Duchess Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 07:45:00 +0000

Eloisa James has come up with a fabulous contest. It's not only a contest with very cool bookish prizes, but there's also the tantalizing unknown of something Parisian for each of the five winners. As if this weren't enough, grown women (and men) get to play with paper dolls to their heart content, with nary a guilty feeling, because this is all for period research. So grab your glue gun and your scrapbooking supplies, and start read these simple instructions.

Download the Paper Doll & Clothes (designed by the wonderful artist Laurie Manifold), print the four pages, choose a dress and a wig or a hat, and decorate her costume however you'd like! The decorated examples you see on this page (click to make them bigger in a pop-up window), were created by Eloisa James and her daughter. They cut out fancy paper and then stuck jewels on top. You could use markers, crayons, fabrics, ribbons, or photoshop. Anything you'd like!

When your doll dress looks absolutely perfect, write your name on the back of each piece, package it carefully (you can send doll and dress and wig or just dress and wig or just dress), or scan it following very explicit directions, and send your entry and entry form by snail mail before October 15 to: Eloisa James Paper Doll, PO Box 300, Goshen, IN 46527-0300.

For more details and a FAQ, visit Eloisa's website or the Wax Creative blog.