The Lady Jane Founders: Ron Hogan, Hope Tarr, Leanna Renee Hieber & Maya Rodale take a breath--and a bow.

The Salon celebrated Her Ladyship’s second anniversary in grand style, drawing quite possibly our biggest audience ever.Not only was sitting and standing room at premium but so, at times, was breathing space!

Roses from the darlings at Madame X, our host venue for these two years (and counting!), set a festive, romantic mood from the start.

On hand to help us ring in the Big 0-2 were our fabulous guest authors: Courtney Milan, Lauren Willig, and Caridad Ferrer.

Guest emcee, Andrew Shaffer had us all rolling in what little aisle space was left with his rousing and oh so hilarious readings from GREAT PHILOSOPHERS WHO FAILED AT LOVE. Poor Abelard and Heloise. It really isn’t funny–and yet it was!

Alyssa Montoya accepts our donation check on behalf of W-I-N.

But Lady Jane’s isn’t just about the razzle dazzle. From the very first, a vital component of the Salon’s mission has been to give back to our community. At the midpoint break, we Salon founders had the great pleasure of presenting our 2010 donation check to our chosen charity, Women-in-Need.

Afterward, it was time to break out the champers and cupcakes.Thanks to “guest bartender,” Sarah MacLean, for coming to the rescue with a ready pouring hand. By the by, Sarah writes a mean romance novel, too. Look for her as a return guest reader at our June 27th Special Event Salon.

Model, blogger and author, Isobella Jade generously donated a copy of her book, ALMOST 5’4 for our raffle. Thanks, Isobella! As someone who stands just ever so slightly *over* 5’4, I heart you!

In case you don't believe us about the crowd...

Last but never least, thanks to all our friends and fellow writers at Romance Writers of America/New York City for their consistent and loving support, and to all of you–yes, YOU–who’ve made Lady Jane’s a success these two years by coming month after month, blogging about the event, and generally sharing the goodness through word-of-mouth buzz. We wouldn’t be here without you.

Huzzah and Happy Anniversary!

Hope Tarr

Salon Co-Founder

For a recap of the night, plus video, visit my author blog at HopeTarr.com.

But, as they say, there’s more…

Please join me on Monday, December 13th as I blog at Borders True Romance with host, Sue Grimshaw. The topic will be Lady Jane, of course. Yes, Jane…pardon me, Her Ladyship, will turn two on February and we on the Lady Jane Team have grand plans for the February 7th Birthday Blitz Salon. Post a comment on Monday–a simple birthday well wish will do–and be entered to win a signed copy of my winter holiday anthology, A Harlequin Christmas Carol.

Wishing you a holiday season filled with mistletoe moments,

Hope Tarr

Co-Founder, Lady Jane’s Salon

Hopefully not.

Still, the winter holidays are indeed upon us, and we at Lady Jane’s Salon are looking forward to celebrating in romantic literary style.

The December Salon tosses out the tinsel with three historical romance authors reading from m/our holiday releases. Getting the party started, first-time Salon guest Jacquie D’Alessandro and I will read from our Dickens’ inspired romance anthology, A Harlequin Christmas Carol. Jacquie’s delightful Shakespeare-inspired Today’s Longing will have you rolling in the aisles before the first eggnog is poured.

Salon Co-Founder, Hope Tarr signing at the December '09 Lady Jane's.

Next, I’ll read from my novella, Tomorrow’s Destiny, an even more paranormal re-telling of Dickens’ Christmas Yet To Come. Prickly, scotch swilling Covent Garden bookshop proprietress, Fiona MacPherson faces turning thirty and losing her beloved bookshop, both by the New Year. Unearthly pale and sun blind, Tobias Templeton doesn’t care a whit about the shop, but there’s one book in particular he’s convinced holds the cure for his “curse.” Can a nocturnal visit from Fiona’s “Angel of Christmas Future” turn the tide toward uniting Fiona with her One True Love, her soul’s mate, before it’s too late?

Returning to the Salon is our dear friend, Lauren Willig. Lauren will read from her latest release in the Pink Carnation series,The Mischief of the Mistletoe.

Best-selling author, Jacquie D'Alessandro.

The December Salon convenes on Monday, December 6th from 7-9PM at Madame X. Admission is $5 or one gently used romance novel. Net proceeds support an end-of-year donation to a NYC based women’s charity. Cash bar. Raffle. Author books will be available for sale on site.

It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas…

Salon Co-Founder, Hope Tarr has written fifteen historical and contemporary romance novels for multiple publishers. Tomorrow’s Destiny in A Harlequin Christmas Carol is her first novella. Visit her at www.HopeTarr.com and enter her holiday contest.

Ah, Lady Jane’s Salon! What a wonderful night of reading and mingling in Greenwich Village! I had the good fortune to meet one of Lady Jane’s founders, Leanna Hieber, a few months ago at another book signing, so when she offered me a November spot to read, I was thrilled. I’ll admit, though, as the date grew closer I developed a terrible case of nerves (looking back, this seems silly – I mean, as a high school English teacher I talk in front of people all the time. Still, this felt different). However, I survived and even managed to enjoy myself, mostly about halfway through my reading when I realized I wasn’t going to pass out from nerves.

Madame X is a narrow little bar with a separate room upstairs decorated entirely in red, with cushy couches and ottomans everywhere. And yes, I decided to dress to match the décor J  About 10 of my own friends joined me, some who live in the city and some who came down from my hometown about 60 miles north. I’d say there were maybe 50 people attending in all. Four authors read, and the nice thing is that we all wrote in different genres of romance. I chose a passage from my latest sweet contemporary, One Night in Napa (though check out the cover for my very newest release, Summer’s Song - I love it!). Sarah MacLean followed with a hilarious scene between her Regency hero and heroine and had everyone laughing. After intermission (during which I enjoyed one of the bar’s signature cocktails – yum!), Terence Taylor read from his paranormal romance novel. It was wonderful to have a male romance author as part of our group, and the audience loved his New Orleans accent and literary nod to Zora Neale Hurston. Finally, the awesomely-garbed Stella Price read from one of the stories in her latest erotica collection.

Author Allie Boniface at the November '10 Lady Jane's.

All in all, it was a terrific night. We had a chance for mingling and picture-taking afterward, and, well, you can’t really go wrong spending an evening in NYC. If you arrive early (and you should!), take a walk around the neighborhood and have dinner or drinks in one of the many cozy restaurants in Greenwich Village.

So romance authors, if you have the chance to read at Lady Jane’s Salon, do so! It’s a wonderful experience. Hey, if you’re a romance fan at all and you find yourself in NYC on the first Monday of any month, I highly recommend stopping by Madame X at 94 West Houston Street between 7 and 9 pm. At the very least, you can’t beat the $5 cocktails!

Huh?  Romance reading series?  Bar? Madame X?  Writers get some strange invitations (I’ll share those stories another time—some of them aren’t internet appropriate), but this sounded pretty weird even by my usual standards.

Upon reflection, it was actually a fairly clever notion, getting together a romance reading series.  Every other literary group seemed to have them.  The poets had their open mike nights (with that strange poet inflection we so mocked in all the writers’ camps I went to as a teen); the mystery writers had their cloak and dagger cabals; the serious Literary writers had their prescribed podia.  Why not romance writers, too?

But, still, reading in a bar?  This was going to work how?  I’d been to bar events before.  They invariably involved a lot of bar and not a lot of event.  I toddled off to that inaugural meeting of Lady Jane’s Salon with a novel in hand—to donate to Maya’s chosen charity, Share the Love—and a whole bundle of serious doubts.

Take crow; roast lightly; chew and swallow.  I am happy to say that I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The upstairs lounge of Madame X was packed with a smart crowd of romance writers and readers, many with champagne flutes in hand.  The interior was all red velvet, lush without being louche, with a tiny stage at one end of room.  Perfect for balcony scenes!  Within in a remarkably short while, the crowd was herded to their seats and the reading began.  And it worked.  People listened and laughed and clapped in the right places.  There was no whispering or chatting at the back of the room—there would be time for that during intermission—just genuine interest and appreciation for the people up there on that podium.

In short, Lady Jane’s was a stroke of genius.

Rather than being a one month wonder, Lady Jane’s Salon has grown from month to month, building up a population of both repeat visitors and friends of friends.  Whether writer or reader, everyone is there for the same reason: a shared love of romance fiction.  Basically, we’re all romance nerds at heart.  This makes for very easy interactions and some occasionally rather bizarre conversations.  A recent favorite: “I’m really not attracted to zombies.”

Nowhere else, folks, nowhere else.

I owe Lady Jane’s a personal debt of gratitude, not just for the friendships formed or the warm reception at my reading last year, but because, without Lady Jane’s, I probably wouldn’t be teaching a class at Yale this spring.  One of the readers at the first meeting of Lady Jane’s was Cara Elliott, a fellow Yalie turned romance writer.  During the intermission, we got to talking about the romance scholarship movement, how much we wished there had been classes taking a serious and literary look at romance novels during our undergrad days.  Glasses of wine in hand, we began brainstorming about how we would go about crafting and teaching such a class, a survey of the Regency romance novel from its origins in Austen to its more eccentric offshoots today—and now we’re teaching it.  Thanks, primarily, to Lady Jane’s.

Lady Jane’s has done all of us in the romance writing and reading community a vast service by providing us a place to meet up and, yes, share the love.

I hope you’ll join me on Monday in raising a great big toast to Lady Jane’s Salon and her founders.  Many, many happy returns of the day, Lady Jane!

Thank you to  the lovely Lauren Willig–New York Times Bestselling author and repeat Lady Jane’s Salon reader–for this wonderful blog post! She will be reading from her latest, The Betrayal of The Blood Lily.

Special guest emcee Leslie Carroll will share some of the juicy stories from her new history book, Notorious Royal Marriages, and we’re also proud to formally welcome debut novelist Sara Lindsey into the Lady Jane’s fold.

The evening starts at 7 p.m. at Madame X, 94 W. Houston St. (212.539.0808). Admission is $5.00 or one gently used romance novel. Cash bar, but seeing as it’s an anniversary party, there may be a special surprise—but you won’t find out unless you come by!