Coaching Inns were the motels of the Regency period. They were also the gas stations, the gas being horses. At this moment, I am writing a Coaching Inn scene, so I thought I’d share what an Inn of the period would look like.

In Southwark, London, there remains a Coaching Inn existing since the 1500s. After a fire destroyed most of the area, the inn was rebuilt in 1676 and this is the building that remains today, owned now by the National Trust and operating as a restaurant.

Coaching Inns were built around a central courtyard where the coaches entered and the teams of horses were changed. Fresh horses were contracted for the Royal Mail, but some could be leased by private individuals. Inns provided rooms for travelers to spend the night and a public room or tavern where food and drink were served. Private dining parlors could also be procured.

In the George Inn, the public rooms were on the street level and the bed rooms were above.

When I visited the George Inn in 2003, I took a photo of a photo of the Inn in 1880. The wing that is most easily seen in this photo was pulled down when the Great Northern Railroad used the Inn as a depot.

But in the George’s heyday, it was a bustling, busy place. Shakespeare visited the Inn, and Dickens was known to have frequented its Coffee room. Dickens mentions the Inn in Little Dorrit.

You can just about see the Inn’s sign in the first photo. It is of St. George slaying the dragon. Before there was widespread literacy, signs like this identified the inns and other buildings as well.

Any time I write a scene about an inn, you can bet something memorable will happen there and most of the time that means a love scene!

In your travels what sorts of memorable things have happened to you in motels or hotels….besides the romantic things, that is!

I can think of two things: 1. When I was in junior high and our family was traveling, I dared my sister to jump into the motel pool with her clothes on and she did! 2. When traveling with our adult daughter she took in a stray cat that happily spent the night in her room. Luckily, it ran off in the morning or we might have added a cat to our collection!

Next Monday at Risky Regencies I’m having a guest blogger. Victoria Vane aka Emery Lee will be blogging about her erotic Georgian novella, A Breach of Promise. She’ll be giving away one free download of the novella.

2012 must do without one of Romance’s icons. On December 31, Harlequin Mills and Boon author Penny Jordan lost her long battle with cancer. My heart goes out to her family and friends and to all the aspiring writers Penny helped along the way. It will be hard knowing she is gone.

I met Penny in 2003. I had just sold my first book, The Mysterious Miss M, to Harlequin Mills and Boon, the UK branch of Harlequin and I was meeting my editors for the first time at Romance Writers of America’s annual conference in New York City. Among all the other exciting things that happened at that conference, I also attended my very first Harlequin party, a Black and White Ball, at the Waldorf Astoria’s Starlight Roof.

Almost everyone (certainly me!) dressed in black (it’s slimming!) for the Black and White Ball. One glorious exception was Penny Jordan, who wore a glamourous white, full-length gown, complete with white fur stole. Penny was exceptionally kind and welcoming to this newcomer and I will never forget her for it.

When I sold my first book, I was fairly new to any of the Harlequin series books, so I did not know exactly who Penny was when I met her.  I only learned later what a successful Mills and Boon author she was, writing the most popular of the series books, the Moderns (Harlequin Presents). I also learned that she ran a long-standing writers group where she mentored countless aspiring writers. My admiration for her grew.

This year the Romantic Novelists’Association in the UK gave Penny its Outstanding Achievement Award, adding her to the list of other receipients, such as Maeve Binchy, Mary Stewart, Rosamund Pilcher. Penny wrote 188 books for Mills and Boon and Mira, selling over 70 million copies. I also just learned a couple of weeks ago that Penny also wrote under the names Annie Groves (WWII and other sagas). I learned today that she used to write Regency Romances as Caroline Courtney.

It is a marvelous thing that books endure, because we shall always have Penny among us in the stories she wrote. I’m saddened by her passing, though. I always thought that I’d meet her again.

Have you read a Penny Jordan book or one of Penny’s books written under other names? Do you have a memory of the book or of Penny you would like to share?

Dear Readers and Friends,

I have a pre-Christmas cold, so let me just wish you all a wonderful holiday!

Best wishes always.

Diane