Historical Romance from an Author's Point of View

Why do I love reading and writing historical romance?  The answer is really quite simple.  Historical romances transport me to another time and place and immerse me in a love story.  Before I started writing historical romance, I never considered the skillful balance between facts and emotion in these stories, the delicate weave of details within a love story that creates a sense of time and place and brings the plot and the characters to life.  Now, as a writer of historical romance, I know firsthand the challenge of blending facts into a story without creating information overload.

While the developing emotional relationship between the heroine and her hero is the central focus of historical romance, historical details serve to sweep the reader away to another time and place.  Infusing facts throughout the story without sounding like a travel guide is a writer’s challenge.  Research, layering details through multiple revisions, and a willingness to cut facts that don’t enhance the story are my keys to achieving balance between historical detail, story flow, and emotional intensity.   

Of course, thorough research is a given.  Historical inaccuracies pull a reader out of a story, while details about historical events, clothing, food, transportation, communication, occupations, and social structure – the list could go on and on - provide scaffolding for a believable story.

After I become familiar with the essential characteristics of an era, I map out the plot and research specific aspects of the time period that may factor into the story.  What weapons were available?  What historical events, landmarks, and people might have impacted the characters’ lives? What literary and artistic works were prominent during that era?  In my new release, Angel in My Arms, set during the American Civil War, Union spy Amanda Emerson visits with Confederate first lady Varina Davis and ventures to Richmond’s Libby Prison to rescue a double agent. These historical details add to the tapestry of the story.  In Destiny, the heroine’s love of tragic romances factors into the plot.  Research to identify popular authors of the heroine’s time provided details that fleshed out the character’s actions and dialogue.
 
How much historical detail brings a story to life without bogging it down?  That depends on the story.  Are historical events plot elements, or does the historical setting provide a context for the story?  Angel in My Arms and Destiny are set against the background of the Civil War, but the plot events are entirely fictional.  Historical details woven throughout the story create a sense of time and place, and references to historical figures can add to a character’s development, but historical name-dropping can result in detail overload.  Your characters shouldn’t sound like Joan Rivers on a time travel adventure.

Every author develops a method that works best for him or her.  To me, research, layering details, and revision are the keys to crafting a love story that transports the reader to another time and place.   

Here’s a brief summary of Angel in My Arms:

Amanda Emerson must break her cousin, a notorious double agent, out of a Confederate prison before his imminent execution. She’s a skilled Union operative, but for this mission, she needs a man. Even a man who looks and acts like a Viking warrior.

Caught with Rebel battle plans and set for a hanging, Union spy Steve Dunham isn’t about to refuse the assistance of the sable-haired beauty who shows up at the jail and slips him the keys to his cell. Of course, she’s there for a reason besides saving his neck - he’s the key to her plan.

He may be trading one noose for another, but he won’t forsake her. The spoils of his victory will be her surrender. And the terms of surrender will be sweet.

CONTEST:   Based on the story blurb, who would you like to see portray Steve and Amanda if this were a movie? One lucky commenter will win a pdf of Angel in My Arms.

 

I hope readers will stop by my website and my blog, www.victoriagrayromance.com and www.victoriagrayromance.blogspot.com.

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Angel in My Arms is available from The Wild Rose Press

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Bad Boys - And TheWomen Who Tame Them

Last month, I posted a tribute to bad boys. Judging from the comments, I was right - romance readers and writers love our bad boys. Bad boy characters are appealing on a variety of levels. They’re highly sexual, they thrive on challenges, including women who challenge them, they don’t run from a fight, and in a great romance, they harbor a protectiveness for the heroine that brings out the best in the man.

But what about the woman who inspires a bad boy to be a man? What makes a heroine who tames a bad boy, and does it in a way that doesn’t make me go, “Yeah, right, that would happen…what was the author thinking?”

A bad boy’s heroine is just as sexual a creature as he is. Often, though, she doesn’t know it yet. Grease’s heroine, Sandy, certainly wasn’t attracted to Danny Zuko for his brains. She may have been innocent, but there was an inner Rizzo, waiting to get out – in fact, Sandy might have been more sexual than Rizzo, the outwardly worldly character. She certainly seemed to know what she wanted with more clarity than the bedhopping leader of the Pink Ladies. In my novel, Destiny, Emma is a romance-loving innocent, longing to be swept away by a brooding lover like Heathcliff or Mr. Rochester. Her abduction changes all that. Her captor, Jack Travis, soon teaches her that an alpha-male with a heart is hard to resist, and that surrender to her heart can be very satisfying.

A bad boy’s heroine might have buried her desire, but it’s still there, presenting a challenge to the hero to bring it to the surface. In Claiming the Courtesan, the heroine, Verity, is noted as the most desirable courtesan in her circles, but she’s actually turned off her own responses. For Verity, sex is a skill, not a pleasure. Until Kylemore unleashes the power of love and with it, the pleasure of her sexual interactions with the hero.

Bad boys love challenges. Physical challenges. And intellectual challenges. Even Danny Zuko, who certainly wasn’t known for his brains, fell for the smart girl. At their ideal, the bad boy is as proficient mentally as he is physically. In Sherlock Holmes, Robert Downey, Jr. essays a character who’s athletic and brilliant, so it comes as no surprise that the love of his life, Irene Adler, is as brilliant as he is. The fact that she’s chosen to put her brains to use as a thief rather than a crime-solver seems a natural pairing of opposites. A bad boy wants a girl who will match wits with him and spar with him, not simply nod in meek agreement.

To be believable, a bad boy’s heroine has to be strong, gutsy, and ultimately devoted to the hero. In Destiny, Emma Davenport, a powerful senator’s daughter, has lived a sheltered life, but that doesn’t stop her from running away to a forbidden marriage, matching wits with the arrogant captor who snatches her from a train, and ultimately, saving his life. Emma’s strong will, keen intelligence, ingenuity, and guts are irresistible to the alpha hero. Like Emma, Marion in Raiders of the Lost Ark is courageous, strong willed enough to challenge the swashbuckling Indiana Jones, and smart enough to challenge his intellect when he’s morphed back into Dr. Henry Jones, the professor. She doesn’t rely on her beauty or flaunting her sexuality, but there’s no doubt of the chemistry between the hero and heroine.

Romance is filled with feisty heroines and the bad boys who love them. One of my favorite new heroines is Catherine Marks, Leo’s love in Lisa Kleypas’ wonderful Married by Morning. Her sharp wit intrigues bad boy Leo long before he realizes she’s actually a beauty who’s taken great pains to drab down her looks. Catriona Kincaid in Teresa Medeiros’ Some Like It Wicked is a perfect heroine for dissolute former war hero Simon as she challenges him and inspires him to be the man he’s meant to be.

Who are some of your favorite women who tame bad boys from romance and film? What do you love most about them? I’ll choose a random commenter to win a pdf of Destiny.