Diane Gaston talks about Scandalizing the Ton

What would you do if the paparazzi were hounding you?

The last couple of years have thrust the paparazzi onto the front page again with their incessant hounding of celebrities like Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and Anna Nicole Smith. Even my fav actor, Gerard Butler, has been in the news lately for allegedly punching a paparazzi in the face. So, what would you do if the paparazzi were hounding you?

Scandalizing The Ton, my October 2008 release from Harlequin Historical, was inspired by this question. What would it be like for a proper Regency lady to be hounded by an 1800s version of the paparazzi?

Scandalizing the Ton tells the story of Lydia, Lady Wexin, whose husband's scandalous death has left her impoverished and at the mercy of the gossip-mongering press. They camp out on her doorstep and are whipped into a frenzy of speculation when they discover she is pregnant. Who is the father? One man knows. Adrian Pomroy, the Viscount Cavanley. But how can the once betrayed Lydia trust her baby's future and her own to the ton's foremost rake?

The Regency period (England 1810 to 1821, the time of Byron, Jane Austen, and the war with Napoleon, when George III went mad and his son was declared Prince Regent) was also a time when the news media loved to fuel their readers' love of gossip. The celebrities of the time were mostly members of the aristocracy and the convention at the time was to use initials instead of names. The Duchess of Devonshire (popular in the late 1700s and the subject of the film The Duchess) became "the Duchess of D—," Mrs. Fitzherbert (the Regent's secret, unlawful wife) became Mrs. F—tzh—t. Everyone knew who the initials represented.

This didn't entirely protect the press from charges of libel, however. The Hunt brothers, editors of The Examiner, went to prison because they wrote scathing criticisms of the Prince Regent, but Theodore Hook, editor of The John Bull, got away with blatant lies—about the Regent's enemies, that is. Like some of today's tabloids, truth wasn't an important element of the news stories, as you will see in Scandalizing the Ton.

The Regency even had its version of YouTube (see my book trailer on YouTube). Print shops did a brisk business selling caricatures of the beau monde. Caricaturists such as Gillray and Rowlandson depicted scandalous acts in satirical splendor.

Lydia and Adrian fall victim to the caricaturists as well as the Regency's version of the tabloid press. Can they rise above them and find their happy ending? Leave a comment and I'll select one of you at random to win a copy of Scandalizing the Ton.

What do you think of today's paparazzi? 'Fess up. Do you like to read about celebrities? What do you think it would be like to be pursued by paparazzi?

Scandalizing the Ton is on sale in bookstores through October and will remain available online afterwards, but don't delay. Get your copy now. There are easy order

links on my website.

Diana Gaston