Which Book and Why? by Victoria Chatham

 

AVAILABLE HERE

I was recently asked which of my books I enjoyed writing the most and why. I had to think about that as each has a place in my heart. My first Regency romance, His Dark Enchantress, was followed by His Ocean Vixen and His Unexpected Muse because my large cast of characters wanted to tell their stories.

The same happened with my second Regency series, Those Regency Belles: Hester Dymock, Charlotte Gray, and Phoebe Fisher. My Edwardian series, The Buxton Chronicles, started with the story of Lord Randolph and Lady Serena Buxton in the novella Cold Gold, followed by On Borrowed Time and Shell Shocked. When I began writing contemporary Western romance, I only intended to write one stand-alone title. Still, there are now three: Loving That Cowboy, Legacy of Love, and Loving Georgia Caldwell.  

 

Each has brought me joy and given me grief. Characters have wandered on stage in scenes where they didn't belong. They were intrusive, nosey, and noisy until I listened to what they were telling me. That might sound strange to non-writers, but any writer will tell you it happens. Sometimes, the only way to further a plot is to sit quietly and let the characters tell their story. Then, it is up to me, the author, to fit all the puzzle pieces together.

Part of that puzzle is the research that each book requires. Even though I had read many Regencies, and still do, when it came to writing my own, I researched each element as it occurred, whether it was the fabric for a lady's dress, a gentleman's cologne, an ornate hot chocolate cup, or the stagecoach timetable from London to Bristol. I did the same for all my books, but Brides of Banff Springs was the one I enjoyed writing the most, as Tilly McCormack was the gutsy kind of heroine I like. I also collaborated on Envy the Wind in the Canadian Historical Brides Collection. The premise for the Collection was that the stories had to be historically accurate and must contain a bride and a sweet romance suitable for readers of age thirteen and upwards.

I made many trips to Banff to delve into the archives in the Whyte Museum, spend time at the hotel, which is now the Fairmont Springs Hotel, and browse the Banff public library shelves. I talked to as many people as I could about the town's history to bring the story of Tilly McCormack to life. I recently discovered that my accountant, a distant relative of one of the real-life characters in the book, has read it several times. 

And that, after all, is what matters. However much I might enjoy my characters and the situations I may put them in, it is always so satisfying to know they matter to the readers, too. You can find all my books here:

 

https://bookswelove.net/chatham-victoria/

Scroll down the page, click on the cover, and choose your market source. Happy reading!

Victoria Chatham

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The changing style of romantic fiction...by Sheila Claydon

Click here for my BWL page

When I first started writing romance (a very long time ago) publishers wanted stories about powerful and wealthy men! Or very macho men! The heroines still had to be the main focus of the story but their attitudes were very different. It wasn't unusual for them to be an ingenue, or at the very least someone who had very little life experience. This type of romance wasn't something I aspired to and because of this I received a pile of rejection letters. They were mostly positive with regard to my actual writing but said that my stories had too much plot! That the reader just wanted to know about the relationship between the protagonists. I could never get my head around that. How could the hero and heroine get to know one another without a decent plot? Needless to say, at the beginning I wasn't very successful.

I kept going though, and slowly things improved. As more publishers began to concentrate on romantic fiction the genre expanded and by the time I was first published, in the early eighties, heroines had more spark. Nevertheless my first book 'Golden Girl,' (now republished as a Vintage Romance by Books We Love) still had a flavour of those original heroines because the main character was a 1960's secretary looking after her man! I held true to my beliefs though. There was a plot with several twists and turns, and although at the beginning of the story she was somewhat innocent, she wasn't needy and she was a fast learner.

Since those days, needless to say, things have changed. Contemporary Romance can be about anyone and anything, and although the 'happy ever after' aspect of the books is still there, the main characters are much more equal, and rightly so. Also, the settings are often far less exotic. Once upon a time in romance, luxury was a bit of a byword. As were the clothes the heroines wore. Now it is all very casual. In fact clothes and appearance are barely touched upon. It is much more about the plot and how this plays out in inner thoughts of the characters, their emotional connections, and even the mundane aspects of their lives. In fact you could say it is all more real life...except in the case of my Mapleby Memories series, it isn't quite!

Although the romantic genre eventually caught up with me and what I wanted to write, it has of course influenced my writing style over the years. Now, although I still sometimes write a stand alone romance, I prefer to follow a character who I find particularly interesting through several books rather than just end with a happy ever after. This is why I have written 'Loving Ellen' which was published by Books We Love on 1 February. It is also why I have introduced what I call my Mapleby Magic. This is the time travel aspect of each story. Time travel allows me to introduce a whole lot of back story in a much more interesting way than just have one of the characters recount it and I find it a really interesting thing to do. I also did something else when I started to write the Mapleby Memories series. I wrote in the first person. And I've found it fascinating because although I have always followed my heroine (yes they do take over!) I've discovered that I get to know them a whole lot better writing in first person. Maybe they are jogging my fingers as I write...or taking over my computer. Who knows!

In the first book of the Mapleby Memories series, 'Remembering Rose', the heroine, Rachel, was able to step into the past events that happened in and around the village of Mapleby as she followed the twists and turns of Rose's life and tried to make sense of it. In 'Loving Ellen,' this time travel continues but in a different way when the spirit of one of Mapleby's past residents returns on a personal quest to solve a very human problem. And who better to help her than Millie Carter? 

If you have read Book 1 you will know that after many twists and turns Millie became Rachel's best friend. You will know too that she has survived some of the worst things that life could throw at her and come up smiling, determined, hardworking and kind. Don't get me wrong though. She is far from your sweet do-gooder. Millie is gutsy and resilient and prepared to say her piece. And most important of all, she isn't traumatised by ghosts!

If you want to see who she is then go to the book snippets page on my website at www.sheilaclaydonwriter.com where you can read the opening pages of "Loving Ellen.' In the meantime I'm moving forward with Book 3. It'll be a while yet but there will still be time travel, and Rachel, and Millie, and of course Ellen too.

The books I've stopped reading by Sheila Claydon

Although I love to read I'm becoming more and more picky with age. I no longer read books where too many words get in the way of the story. Ditto books where the author shares every detail of every bit of research ever done. Recently I read a book that listed all the tools a thatcher uses together with a 'how to' guide, while another one described an autopsy in such detail over several pages that it read like a medical text book. Although I'm never going to thatch a roof or become a pathologist it doesn't mean I'm not interested. What I don't want to do, however, is waste time reading pages of badly disseminated research that add nothing to the story.

I didn't need to know about shearing hooks, legatts, crooks and pins and nor did the police sergeant in the story, who was told apropos of absolutely nothing. The detail, which took up 3 pages, was not only entirely irrelevant, it came out of nowhere. At first I thought the conversation held a hidden clue  but no, the victim was shot, not sliced open with a shearing hook.

I have another bugbear. If, after a paragraph or two, I find myself editing some of the author's convoluted and wordy sentences in my head, I know the book is not for me.

Facts are fine, so is descriptive prose if it adds to the story, but I'm of the Stephen King persuasion. Write the book. Put everything in it and then take out half when you first edit it, and more again the second time around.

Then there's the plot. A good plot keeps me guessing almost to the final page while a bad plot bores me to death. This happened last week and halfway through the book I did something I've never done before, I turned to the end. It was a crime novel by a well known author who has had work translated into a very successful TV series, so my expectation was high. The only downside as far as I could see was that it comprised 650 close typed pages, a bit long for a 'Whodunnit'. Sadly the author let me down. I worked out the entire plot as well the outcomes of quite a few of the side stories within the first half dozen chapters. When I also found myself continually re-writing some of the sentences in my head I gave up, turned to the end, confirmed what I already knew, and then chose another, very much more enjoyable and well written book about the young Australian war brides who were transported to Britain at the end of WW2.

That TV series thing gets to me too. Although I've read some good ones I've also read a number of poorly written books by different authors that have been turned into very successful TV series.  Is the success of the TV version down to a very talented script writer and director or have I missed something? I'd love to know how producers choose their stories. Do they actually prefer a book they can tinker with,  look for characters who need to become more rounded, a plot that needs tightening up? I wish I knew.

My attitude is a personal one of course. Some readers enjoy lengthy prose and I have one friend who can't abide modern literature and just re-reads all the old classics. There's certainly a place for those in our literary lexicon but fashions change, and some of the old stories I once enjoyed now seem wordy and contrived, although others have stood the test of time to an admiral degree, so yes, I'm picky about the classics too.

Am I like this because I'm becoming more selective as I grow older, or is it because I'm a writer? It's probably a bit of both, but what I do know is that life is far to short to waste time reading a book I'm not enjoying. What about you?

For a great many very readable books go to http://bookswelove.net

For my own (I hope) readable books, go to amazon.com/author/sheilaclaydon or http://bookswelove.net/authors/claydon-sheila/