Category Archives: Her Dear & Loving Husband

FAQ Part 3

These are some general questions I’ve received, so though they’re not directly related to the Loving Husband Trilogy, I thought I’d answer them here:

1. I see you publish historical fiction. Will you publish me?

Maybe. I’m the Executive Editor of The Copperfield Review (named for the Dickens novel, not the magician—yes, I’ve had that question too), an award-winning literary journal for readers and writers of historical fiction, and we take great pride in publishing up-and-coming names in historical fiction. You can find the journal’s guidelines here. Here are some hints I have for authors who want to submit their work to literary journals for publication.

2. When/why did you start writing historical fiction?

Like most things about my writing, I started writing historical fiction by accident. I knew since high school that writing of some kind was in my future, though I didn’t know myself at that time what kind of writing it would be. At first I thought I’d be a journalist, but one high school journalism class showed me the “Just the facts, Ma’am” style of news writing didn’t work for me. In college, I turned my attention to screenwriting. I took a number of screenwriting classes, and I even worked for several film production companies.

Around this time (1994), I had seen Ken Burns’ PBS documentary about the American Civil War, and I had an inkling of a story I wanted to tell about how brothers, brought up in the same family, could come to fight on opposing sides in a war. When I sat down to write the screenplay, I realized, at about page twenty, that the screenplay format was too small for what I wanted to do. Screenplays are merely blueprints for directors, actors, set designers, costume designers, directors of photography, and the many others necessary to make a film. There were times when I worked in “The Industry” when I felt like the screenwriter was the least important person there. I didn’t want to write a blueprint. I wanted to describe exactly what the characters were wearing. I wanted to go into detail about the room they were sitting in. I wanted to get into the characters’ heads and wonder why they made the choices they did. In order to do that, I needed to write the story (which became My Brother’s Battle) as a novel. Thus, my journey into historical fiction had begun.

3. What other books have you written?

My other books can be found under the My Books category.

The only common denominator in my books is they’re all historical in one way or another. Other than that, each book is completely different from the ones that came before (except for the Loving Husband Trilogy, of course). I write about whatever I’m fascinated with at the time, which is why my subjects are so varied.

4. What are you writing next? When is your next book coming out?

At this exact moment I’m taking a break from writing fiction. I think I popped a few synapses in my brain finishing Her Loving Husband’s Return, so I’m giving myself a couple of months to recover. I do know what I’m going to write next, but it’s too early to give details other than it’s going to be a love story that takes place in Victorian London. I’m not giving myself a deadline for this new book, but some time in 2014 is a fair guess.

5. Did you name Sybil in Victory Garden after Lady Sybil in Downton Abbey?

I can say with 100% honesty that no, the Sybil in Victory Garden was not named for Lady Sybil in Downton Abbey. Sybil in Victory Garden is a minor character with a line or two in one scene—hardly worthy of a raise of Lady Mary’s eyebrows, or Mr. Carson’s for that matter. I know the period of Victory Garden is the same as in Downton Abbey (1917-1922), and it deals with many of the same subjects (mainly woman suffrage and World War I), but I wrote VG way, way back in the old-timey days of the late 1990s, long before Lady Sybil or the Earl of Grantham were glimmers in Julian Fellowes’ eye. So though Victory Garden was published in 2012, it was written 14 years before.

I am, I’m embarrassed to say, only lately come to the world of Downton Abbey, which is odd for someone who loves a good historical story as much as I do. I had heard all the raves about DA, but I was busy writing the Loving Husband Trilogy and my brain was too full of James and Sarah to take much notice. Recently, on a ten hour flight from London, there was an episode of Downton Abbey available to watch, and I did, and like so many millions before me, I was hooked. I now understand the phrase “binge-watch Downton Abbey” because I’ve done it myself. I watched all three seasons, something like 25 episodes, in two days. I’ve even started following a number of Downton-related feeds on Twitter to keep up with the latest news. For fans of the show, I found a great website called Downton Abbey Addicts.

Thank you so much to those of you who have been contacting me with questions or comments. I love hearing from my readers. You guys are the best.

Loving Husband Trilogy FAQ Part 2

1. How do you come up with story ideas/characters?

For the story ideas, something—a news story, something I’ve seen, something I’ve read—captures my imagination, grabs hold of my brain cells, and won’t shake loose. I have a lot of ideas that float through my brain at any and all times of the day, but the ones that become novels are the ones that latch on and won’t let go. The Loving Husband Trilogy was born from True Blood and reading vampire novels. Victory Garden was inspired by a news report that said women weren’t voting in high numbers (this was more than fifteen years ago) and I was reminded of a story I read in school about women who were arrested and force fed for fighting for the right to vote. My Brother’s Battle was inspired by the Ken Burns documentary about the American Civil War. Woman of Stones came about because I was reading the Bible a lot in those days, and I’ve always loved “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”—in a nutshell, the secret to peace on earth. One of my next projects has been brewing in one way or another for more than ten years, born from my love of Dickens and my fascination with Victorian London.

As to the characters, those are more of a mystery to me. I don’t know how to explain it except to say that to me, the characters are already there, inherent in the story, and it’s up to me to figure out who they are and what role they have in this tale I want to tell. The characters and the story are too intertwined—I can’t separate them one from the other. When I started imagining this vampire mourning his long-dead human wife, that vampire was James, even if I didn’t always know his name.

2. How do you research the history in your fiction?

I know we live in the Internet age, but I’m still a fan of the old fashioned way of researching. I enjoy going to the library, searching the stacks, and weeding through the books to find exactly what I’m looking for. It’s no surprise to me that Sarah is a librarian! One of the nice things about the Internet is that I can do a lot of my library searching from home so I know where to go when I get to the library. I still like to take my notes by hand. That’s a personal preference, but I feel like I absorb the information better that way. I do like that more and more we’re able to access whole books on the Internet, and Google Books has been a strong resource. I love the Internet for on the spot research, like if I realize I need a date or a street name or something of the sort, though I often cross reference the information with several websites.

When I first started writing historical fiction in the dear, dim past when I began My Brother’s Battle (written from 1994-2000, with major revisions in 2012), I studied everything I could find about the American Civil War, and trust me, there’s a ton of information out there. Shelby Foote dedicated twenty years of his life to writing about the American Civil War. My earlier drafts of the story had a ton of research that wasn’t part of the fictional story I had created about Benjamin Honeysuckle and it caused the narrative to drag in places. By the time I got to Her Dear & Loving Husband in 2009, I learned that the purpose of historical fiction is for the history to illuminate the fiction, not for the fiction to illuminate the history. Paragraphs of facts that have nothing to do with the story, or that detract too much from the plot, slow the story down. As a result, I learned to do general research on the historical period for my own knowledge, but in my writing I’ll only use bits of history that makes sense within the story. In other words, Her Dear & Loving Husband isn’t a treatise on the Salem Witch Trials; instead, details of the witch hunts are used to help illuminate James and Sarah’s story.

3. Do you believe in paranormal elements, reincarnation, Wiccans? What do you think happens after we die?

I’ve had a lot of questions about whether or not I believe in the supernatural elements of the James and Sarah books. I don’t believe in vampires or werewolves. I don’t think it’s so much about believing in Wiccans because they’re really there. There are many all over the world who consider themselves Wiccan. Do they have magic powers like Jennifer and Olivia? I know Wiccans cast spells, and I’m not one to judge whether or not their spells work!

As for reincarnation…I certainly don’t know. I believe that human beings are composed of body, mind, and spirit. I believe we’re more than our earthly experiences and five senses show us. I watch Super Soul Sunday on OWN, and I believe a lot of Oprah’s experts when they talk about the soul. I do believe our souls go on after our human bodies die, and I think it’s possible that those souls go on to be reincarnated.

The Loving Husband Trilogy is fiction, and the reason I love writing fiction above all else is because it allows me to explore the possibilities. Reincarnation may or may not happen—I don’t know for sure one way or the other—but writing these books was my way of wondering aloud what reincarnations (and vampires and witches) might look like if they were real.

5. I want to write historical fiction. What is your advice for me?

I have some general advice for writers of historical fiction here. Really, my best advice for anyone who wants to write anything is to take your time learning —find your unique voice and figure out what you want to put out into the world. Reading, if the writer has done her job, should be easy, but writing isn’t easy.

6. Geoffrey? Really?

I’ve had this question asked a few different ways, and it always makes me smile. I can’t say too much for those of you who are still reading Her Loving Husband’s Return, but it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to learn that there’s more to James and Geoffrey’s relationship than meets the eye. The clues are there, mainly in Her Loving Husband’s Curse. A couple of you have written to me to say you figured the mystery out before it was revealed at the end of HLHR. Well done! I love it when readers read with an eye for detail.

7. Will there be a Book Four? Pretty please?

I’m thrilled that there are so many of you who love James and Sarah’s story so much you want it to continue. What I can say for certain is that at this moment I have no plans for a fourth book. From early in the writing process I saw this as a trilogy, and I think the story is wrapped up pretty well at the end of Her Loving Husband’s Return. I already know the next two books I’m going to be writing, and they’re very different from the Loving Husband Trilogy—one is a modern-day love story, and the next is right back to historical fiction with a setting in Victorian London.

Having said that, I’m also a never say never kind of person. As soon as someone says “I’ll never…” the universe has a funny way of throwing that exact thing right back into the person’s face. That’s why some singers are on their seventh “Farewell Tour.” If an idea occurs to me that I’m excited about and that I feel will add to James and Sarah’s story, then by all means I’ll write it. I can’t say when that would be, or if it would definitely happen, but I’m open to the idea.

Keep those questions coming! FAQ Part 3 next week.

Loving Husband Trilogy FAQ Part 1

Her Loving Husband’s Return has been on the Amazon Best-Seller List since the day after it was released. Thank you.

I’ve received a number of questions about The Loving Husband Trilogy, so I decided to answer some of the most frequently asked questions here. Some of these I’ve answered in bits and pieces in various interviews. Today, Part 1.

1. Where did you come up with the idea for The Loving Husband Trilogy?

Here’s my answer in this previous post. Between watching True Blood, reading Charlaine Harris, Anne Rice, Bram Stoker, and the Twilight books, believe me, I had a brain full of vampire waiting to get out. Luckily for me, that vampire turned out to be James Wentworth.

2. Did you always know it would be a trilogy?

I did. From very early in the idea gathering process for this story I knew the connection between James/Elizabeth/Sarah and I knew the ending as we find it in Her Loving Husband’s Return. The further I went into mapping out the story, the more I knew I wanted to cover several different historical periods. In order to keep the story as I saw it a manageable length, I split it into three books. In an earlier interview I said as a joke that I wanted to avoid writing a 900-page tome that would send readers screaming for mercy. I wasn’t too far off. The combined page count of the Loving Husband Trilogy is 818 pages.

3.  How did you come to set the stories in Salem? Have you ever lived/visited there?

I decided to set the story in Salem by accident. I was deciding where to set the story, and I deliberately stayed away from the Pacific Northwest and Louisiana in the U.S. since other well-known literary vampires live there. I thought of my hometown Los Angeles or where I live now in Las Vegas, but neither of those felt right. Too bright, I think. Then I decided that if I wasn’t going Northwest how about Northeast? I pulled up a map of the U.S., looked at the Northeast, saw Massachusetts, and there in a little dot near Boston was Salem. That’s it. It took me as long to decide to set the story in Salem as it took me to write these sentences.

I have never lived in Salem or anywhere in Massachusetts. I was born in New York, but we moved to the West Coast when I was seven and I consider Los Angeles my hometown. In fact, I had never even visited Salem when I wrote Her Dear & Loving Husband. Thank goodness for the Internet, websites about Salem, and Google Earth. I did finally visit Salem in July 2011 while I was writing Her Loving Husband’s Curse, and I loved it. In fact, I wanted to move there. Luckily, everything in Salem was where I thought it should be. You can see my posts about my trip to Salem here.

4. How did you decide which historical periods to use?

The decision to use the Salem Witch Trials was a no-brainer once I decided to set the story in Salem. Since I wanted the historical periods to echo what was happening to James and Sarah in the present day, I needed to choose the historical periods carefully. The Trail of Tears and the Japanese-American Internments happened to coincide with the way I saw the story progressing. To a degree, you could say the history informed the story; in other words, once I decided on the historical periods that helped me shape the plot.

5.  How long did it take you to write the books?

It was four years, almost exactly to the day, from when I first pressed fingers to the keyboard typing out the ideas for Her Dear & Loving Husband (in April 2009) until Her Loving Husband’s Return was published (in April 2013). It took longer than a year for me to write Her Dear & Loving Husband because it took time for me to find the narrative thread. The plot was more complex than other novels I had written, weaving the way it does between the past and the present, and it took time for me to work it out.

I read about these authors who publish 3, 4, 5 books a year and I’m amazed by them. When all is said and done, it takes me about a year to write a book. Keep in mind I’m not writing the whole time. I have to live with an idea in my head for a while before I ever start writing. I have to kick the idea around, soften it up, pull it here and tug it there to see if there’s anything in those odd daydreams. I kicked the idea around about the vampire missing his long-dead human wife for about six months before I ever began writing about James and Sarah. Once I start writing, it can take anywhere from 4-6 months for me to have a draft I’m happy with, and then the editing process is intensive because I’m persnickety about how the words read on the page. The editing process for me takes 1-2 months.

6.  Do you have editors/beta readers?

You betcha. It’s imperative to have other sets of eyes read your fiction. As authors we can get caught up in our own heads and we forget to make our stories cohesive for our readers.

Her Dear & Loving Husband wouldn’t be the story it is without the help of an amazing romance author and critique extraordinare, Laurin Wittig. I saw the story so clearly in my head, but I was having trouble articulating it on the page. With Laurin’s sharp eye and finely tuned comments, I was able to finally write the story I meant to write in the first place. Once I figured out what I was doing with Her Dear & Loving Husband, writing the next two was an easier process, though I always have editors/other readers helping me.

Here’s a Loving Husband Trilogy F.Y.I: The original title of Her Dear & Loving Husband was The Vampire’s Wife. Laurin suggested that The Vampire’s Wife was too much of a giveaway about the story, so after stumbling across Anne Bradstreet’s poem “To My Dear and Loving Husband” I changed it to Her Dear & Loving Husband. The revised title has the same idea as the original title, but it takes a little more digging to figure out what it means. And I love that the poem was able to serve as a connection between James and Elizabeth and James and Sarah. Little things like that make me happy.