Listen to Your Characters by Victoria Chatham

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When talking to readers who do not write, the question of how an author creates characters is often raised. 

I am quite fortunate in that I don't often have problems visualizing them. I get the hair and eye colour, their body type even before I have named them; I write out a timeline for them and create their birthday. Using astrological signs is one way of determining their strengths and weaknesses which is often an indication of how the conflict in the story might develop. If they have siblings can also affect their character depending on where they come in the lineup. A firstborn, for instance, is often an A-type personality.

The one thing that often causes an 'oh, yeah', kind of look is when I say I listen to my characters and go where they take me. But, if you are the author, I'm asked, how that can be? Don't you just have them do this or that and move them around like pieces on a chessboard? Well, no. That would lead to creating a cast of cardboard characters, so I do not ignore what they tell me. All of my characters are very different. Emmaline in His Dark Enchantress and Juliana in His Ocean Vixen, are both pretty feisty, outside the box kind of gals. Olivia, in His Unexpected Muse, is quite the opposite. She has reasons for being quiet and shy and I found it much more of a challenge to tell her story. 

I love each of my leading ladies. They have made me laugh, given me headaches, surprised me in some of the things they have done but never, ever, bored me. I hope that comes across in my writing and that my readers enjoy my characters as much as I do.

Victoria Chatham

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Announcing a New Book by Victoria Chatham

There is nothing quite as satisfying for an author as to write THE END on a current work-in-progress as I have now done with His Unexpected Muse, Book 3 in my Berkeley Square Regency romance series.

When I started writing Book 1, I had no idea that it would expand beyond that. It wasn’t even Book 1 at that point, just an idea for a stand-alone Regency romance. My heroine in that book is Emmeline Devereux, whose best friend Lady Juliana intruded at every opportunity

but that’s what happens when characters almost jump off the page and demand their own books.

Okay, okay. Not literally, of course. It’s just one of those quirky writer’s

foibles. Non-writers rarely get the concept of having people wandering around in your head and whispering in your ear from the inside out. When I finally promised Juliana that I would write her story, His Ocean Vixen, Book 2 in the series, she went away and let me write Emmaline’s story in peace.

When that book was finished, and believing I had done with those characters, I started thinking about what else I could write. However, a reader query asking if Lady Rosemary Darnley, the villainess in Book 1, ever got her comeuppance, started me on another path which led to His Unexpected Muse, Book 3. This involves the unexpected (as the title suggests) romance between Lady Olivia Darnley (Rosemary’s daughter) and Lord Peter Skeffington.

Olivia and Peter, both characters from Book 1, are very different from the rest of the cast. Olivia is shy and retiring and Peter is painfully aware of his tall and very slender physique, nothing at all like your regular nonpareil Regency beau. How these two characters fall into romance was a very different path to take from that of Emmaline and Juliana, who were both pretty feisty females.

I am already at work plotting a new Regency series and am looking forward to meeting some new characters and telling their stories. But, for a few weeks at least, I’m going to enjoy kicking back and catching up on books on my To Be Read list.

 To be released August 3rd, 2019

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A Cover Story by Victoria Chatham

My new cover!

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We all know the adage that you don’t judge a book by its cover. I have, especially in my early days of purchasing e-books, done exactly that and then been hugely disappointed when the quality of the content failed to match the quality of the cover. These days I look at the cover and then click on the ‘Look Inside’ button and read the excerpt before I decide whether to purchase or not.

I must admit that the last thing I thought about when I started writing my first Regency romance was the cover. It was a tough enough job to get the words flowing without having the angst of considering how those words would all be wrapped up in a neat package. I was totally ignorant of fonts, colors, and layout and had no idea how to create an attractive, appealing cover. Thank goodness for cover designers and, in particular, Books We Love’s own cover designer, Michelle Lee.

First e-book cover

I was so pleased with the first cover because it contained all the elements I thought I needed. My heroine, Emmaline Devereux, had long black hair, so the image of the girl was bang on. I needed a horse because she loved horses, and the old house in the background depicting her family home was so reminiscent of a house I had loved and lived in for more than ten years. But then my daughter made the comment that the image of Emmaline looked more like a schoolgirl than a clever spy capable of surviving the Peninsula War 1807 - 1814 when Napolean clashed with the Spanish Empire. Oh, oh. One burst bubble as I reconsidered what the image was actually portraying. 

Thanks to Books We Love, I had the opportunity for a new cover design when the book went into print. Again, Michelle Lee pulled in all the elements I requested on my Cover Art Form.

First print cover

The result, as you can see, is a more adult female image. I still had to have a horse to convey her love of horses, plus my hero. A similar female image graced the cover of His Ocean Vixen, Book 2 in the series but with the third book, His Unexpected Muse, coming in February 2019, I thought a new look all round might better pull the series together.

By now a little more savvy about cover design, I looked at the covers of the Regency romance best sellers on Amazon and noticed that invariably there was just a female image against an attractive background. Publisher Jude Pittman was again in agreement with the update and I spent most of one Sunday scrolling through images until I found a few that I thought worked. I am now totally happy with the image and feel that, finally, His Dark Enchantress has grown up.

After I revealed it on my Facebook author page, I had quite a few people contact me to tell me how much they liked it, most much more so than the previous two. I'm now looking forward to the update for His Ocean Vixen and next year for His Unexpected Muse. 

Visit Victoria Chatham here:

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Meeting a Fan by Victoria Chatham

I was at an event recently where I met a lady who had read all of my books. More to the point, she enjoyed each of them. To hear that was music to my ears and I was very happy to engage in conversation with her.

What I invariably find is that people who do not write are amazed at the amount of work that is involved in writing a book. My new fan thought I must be an experienced sailor to have written my sailing scenes as well as I did. I would have loved to say, yes, I’ve been to sea many times but that is simply not true. Thanks to Google, YouTube, and my youngest son, I managed to construct my scenes with some semblance of reality for the era in which my story is set after hours of research.

I read nautical manuals, I read a few of Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey/Maturin books set during the Napoleonic Wars and watched YouTube clips of the art of sailing three-masted ships over and over again. My fan, and her husband, both said they would not have the patience to do that. And that’s what research takes, patience. Sometimes you have to travel through many avenues to arrive at the nugget of knowledge you need for a particular scene or to add just that kick of spice to your book.

Writing any book requires so much more than ‘just coming up with an idea’. It is not a process for the faint of heart because an author needs a passion for their project, insight, patience, the determination to write and then write more, then work through revisions and re-write, sometimes again and again until the point is reached that they know they have done the best they can. Then it’s time to let the baby go. As a writer, I hoped I had learned the skill of drawing my reader into the world I created. From the conversation I had with my fan (and her husband, by the way), I consider I achieved that goal. And just to whet your appetite, here is a scene from His Ocean Vixen.

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Still trembling in the darkness, dread seeping into her very bones, Juliana chastised herself for not having the courage to venture beyond the safety the locker afforded her. Much as she did not like to admit it, she knew Doctor Tryon had been right. Whoever had overrun them would soon best one lone female, armed or not. The only clear thought in her mind was that she would use her sword however she could to defend herself to the death.

For once in her life she did as she was told and stayed exactly where the doctor had stowed her. She did not know how long she huddled in the locker, praying all the while that Doctor Tryon had kept his promise to help William. The sound of voices faded away as the ship rocked a little, her timbers protesting as she settled in the water. She reached forward and lifted the latch, pushed the door ajar.

All she could hear was the sigh and whisper of the ocean and the squeak and rustle of rats as they scurried along the struts. She waited a few minutes more, each second taking a toll on her nerves, then pushed the door all the way open and emerged slowly, listening intently for any sounds of life above decks.

The boom of a cannon close by made her jump, and then a moment later the Jenny Wren shuddered under the impact as another missile found its mark. Juliana fell back, grabbing for a handhold in the darkness. Another explosion followed the first and the ship groaned as if in anguish and listed heavily to one side.

Juliana sprang into action, not caring about the swirling bilges or the rats jabbering about her feet. The sounds of splintering wood filled her ears as she scrambled up the steep steps of the stairwells. As her head cleared the last set of stairs, she stopped and took in the hellish scene on deck with wide-eyed disbelief.

Scorched stumps were all that remained of the once proud and tall fore and main masts. The masts themselves, with their yardarms and rigging, were a tangled mess of fragmented timber littering the deck. Shredded by cannon fire, what was left of the sails now draped the gunwales in tattered strips of canvas. Amidships the deck was nothing more than a black hole still reeking of gunpowder and smoke. The ship listed a little more.

Tripping on the end of a trailing rope, Juliana lost her balance and tumbled to the deck. Her fingers slipped through something wet and greasy as she tried to get up, and she fell again. Bile rose in her throat when she saw the blood on her hand. The coppery taste of it tainted her tongue. There was so much blood everywhere and, unable to get to her feet, she slid through it across the deck, grasping at anything that might halt her progress.

She landed against an untidy heap of clothing, caught her breath and screamed when she saw the huge, ragged splinters that pinned the man’s body to the deck. His sightless eyes stared at her and her stomach lurched. That was all the incentive she needed to grab at the cargo netting on the gunwale and haul herself to her feet.

 For more information about Victoria, visit her at www.victoriachatham.com