Category Archives: Tidbits

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.

Where Did the Loving Husband Trilogy Come From?

I’m sitting here twiddling my thumbs since I have absolutely nothing I have to do, and it feels…odd. Since I feel like I should be writing something, I decided to respond to a few e-mails I’ve received regarding the origin of the James and Sarah saga. I’ve told bits and pieces of the story in previous interviews, but here’s the scoop in its entirety:

The story was inspired first by Twilight simply because if I hadn’t read the Twilight books I never would have watched True Blood on HBO, and it’s more accurate to say the Loving Husband Trilogy was inspired by True Blood. If I’m being entirely honest, I should say it was directly inspired by great acting from Stephen Moyer.

There’s an episode early in the first season of True Blood (I think it’s episode four, but don’t quote me) where vampire Bill is giving a talk at Sookie’s grandmother’s church. Someone shows Bill a picture of his family from his human days before the American Civil War, and Bill becomes so emotional at the remembrance of them. That’s what clicked my brain into gear. Here’s this vampire who has everything humans only dream of—extraordinary strength, immortal life—and yet he becomes so emotional at the sight of the ones he loved as a human. That episode of True Blood aired somewhere around October 2008 (at least I think that’s when I saw it; again, don’t quote me). So thank you, Stephen Moyer. And, no, your eyes did not deceive you—I did plant a few odes to True Blood throughout the Loving Husband Trilogy. The most obvious example would be that James cries blood.

After that episode, I started wondering… What would happen to a vampire who lives forever? Obviously, the humans he loved would have died at some point. Would he forget about them and go on? Would he have trouble moving on? What if he fell in love again? What would that look like, and who would that be with? If he was so in love with his wife, could he ever love anyone else?

I didn’t have any immediate sense that there was something tangible in those oddball wanderings. I like to tell stories, in case you haven’t noticed, and I’m always kicking scenarios around in this empty head of mine, most of which come to nothing. When I was still thinking of this idea about the vampire six months later, I decided to see if there was anything to it.

The exact date I began writing was April 15, 2009. It was a Wednesday. I remember the date because I was off for Spring Break that week. I had just come back from a few days in my hometown, Los Angeles, to spend some time by the beach and visit my favorite coffee/tea joint—Urth Café. Back home in Vegas, I woke up that Wednesday morning and the crazy vampire idea was distracting me again. I made myself eggs, toast, and coffee, sat down at the computer, started typing out whatever I knew about this vampire and the woman he loved, and never looked back. In case you were wondering, James’s official birthday is April 19 because that was the day he found his name. When it comes to character names, I feel like the name is inherent with the character; in other words, they already know their names, but they leave it to me to guess. I feel like the miller’s daughter scrambling to guess Rumplestiltskin’s name. Is it Bob? Is it Herbert? Is it Randolph or George or Ichabod? At some point I do guess correctly, and that’s without the help of a messenger spying on the One-To-Be-Named.

Since I’ve received so many e-mails lately asking about the Loving Husband Trilogy, and a lot of the questions are similar, I’m in the process of compiling a Loving Husband Trilogy FAQ I’ll be posting here in a few days.

Thank You For an Amazing Summer

This time of year is always a shock to my system. After 2 ½ months of summer days where I can pretend I’m a full-time writer, I fall into the end of August like I’ve tripped into a vat of cold water. I love my work, but it takes a couple of weeks to get back into the routine of having a day job.

I have many reasons to be grateful for this past summer. In early June, sales of Her Dear & Loving Husband slowed, so to shake things up I set the price to free on Smashwords. Over the next two weeks, the free price filtered out to BN, iTunes, Sony, and then around June 20th Amazon caught onto the free price. Over the next four weeks, Her Dear & Loving Husband was downloaded over 100,000 times from Amazon and about 20,000 times from BN. Her Dear & Loving Husband had the honor of being number one on the Amazon free historical fiction and free literary fiction charts for about a week. I still have the screenshot of Her Dear & Loving Husband next to Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities on the best-seller list.

Now that the book is no longer free, it continues to sell at a much faster rate than it did before the free promotion. I changed the categories from historical and literary to occult and vampire-romance because I thought that would help keep the book visible to potential readers who dig vampires. Someone who has read and enjoyed Deborah Harkeness’ A Discovery of Witches might also like Her Dear & Loving Husband, and this way they can find it. Now both Her Dear & Loving Husband and Her Loving Husband’s Curse are on the paid occult best seller lists. At this exact moment they’re numbers 15 (HDLH) and 20 (HLHC). How did being free help sales? Before the book was free in June, I’d sell anywhere from 20-80 copies a month. If I sold 30 copies a month I was thrilled because that meant one person a day was buying. In the month of August nearly 4000 copies of the books sold—and that’s just on Amazon. Thank you.

It isn’t only the rise in sales that made this a great summer. Since July, the number of messages I’ve been receiving from readers has increased exponentially. Whether the messages are from my Contact Me page, comments on the posts, e-mails, Facebook, Twitter, from wherever—I love them all. As much as I love books, I have never once written to an author to tell her I liked her work. That a reader would take time from her busy day to write a review or send me a note about how much she loves James and Sarah means the world to me. I’ve received some of the loveliest messages any author can hope for.

One of the funniest things that happened to me happened just yesterday. I was on my Amazon Author Central page adding some information for the new historical novels I released, and out of the corner of my eye I spotted my name at the bottom of the screen. I looked to see what it was, and it was a note on a message board asking when Book Three of the Loving Husband Trilogy was going to be out! I wasn’t sure if, as the author, I should respond, but I figured hey, who knows the answer to that question better than me? Right now, the best I can say is early 2013—probably around March. I’m working on it as quickly as I can because I know readers are eager, but at the same time I don’t want to rush. The ending for James and Sarah has to be a good one. I want readers to be glad they stuck around.

Finally, Wednesday night, I was able to publish My Brother’s Battle, a Civil War novel I originally published in 2000 through Xlibris. I accomplished my summer’s main goal, which was to revise, edit, and release the three historical novels I had written in years past. I’ll have more to say about those soon, but for now they’re available for free on Smashwords, iTunes, and soon BN. You can find the links to download the free books on the right. While they’re not at all like the Loving Husband Trilogy (these characters are fully human), I hope you still like them.

Thank you, thank you for an amazing summer. I’m not sad to see summer end, though. There are many more historical journeys we can travel together, not to mention the release of Book Three in 2013. This is a fun, crazy ride. You are all genuinely appreciated.

The Courage To Let Our Light Shine

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

                        ~Marianne Williamson

I’m watching Super Soul Sunday, which is how I’ve been spending my Sundays for as long as the show has been on OWN. Today’s movie was called The Shadow Effect from Debbie Ford, which is about acknowledging the darkness within ourselves so we can bask in the light. I was particularly struck by the quote about our deepest fear from Marianne Williamson.

I’ve read A Return to Love, the book from where the quote comes, but today I realized that the quote spoke directly to the part in me that has been struggling the most lately—the part that feels like it needs to dim the light I have been striving for years to ignite. Williamson says, “Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.” I had what Oprah calls an “Aha! moment” as I realized that I’ve been playing small to make those around me feel better.

A friend at work was so happy for me when a local magazine featured an article about me that she posted a link to the article on our school’s message board. As soon as I saw her post, I thought, “Oh no. This isn’t going to be good.” I learned a long time ago that people aren’t always happy when good things happen to someone else. When I was still living in California, an article about my writing and publishing appeared in The Los Angeles Times, and I told a few teachers I worked with about it. I thought it was cool, that’s all. I had worked hard to get some notice for The Copperfield Review and now there was an article about it in a major newspaper. The next day I heard from a friend that the talk in the staff room was about me: “Who does she think she is? She thinks she’s so special now?” As an intensely private person, I shuddered internally at the knowledge that people were speaking negatively about me, especially over something I meant to be positive. That’s when I slipped the dimmer over my light and stopped sharing anything about my writing or publishing successes with anyone except a trusted few.

The story hasn’t changed. After my friend posted the link to the article on the school message board, a few teachers went to her with the same “Who does she think she is?” I heard years before. One teacher congratulated me, but otherwise it was silence (crickets) from the rest of the staff. I tried to explain to someone that if I’ve had writing success it’s because of my life choices. Most people marry and have children, but I didn’t marry and I don’t have human children (my children say meow and sit on the keyboard while I’m writing). I can spend my free time however I choose, and I choose to write. In retrospect, I realize my response doesn’t really work since there are plenty of people with full-time jobs, spouses, and children who manage to pursue their dreams. But at the time I thought I could explain away why I was receiving attention for my writing.

Suddenly, I began slinking around, my head hung low, avoiding eye contact with anyone. I was embarrassed (again) that anyone had been talking negatively about me. Then a few weeks ago (I’m a little slow sometimes) it finally occurred to me—why am I the one trying to hide? What have I done wrong? Does the fact that I’ve stayed stubbornly true to my dreams mean I have to feel embarrassed about it for the rest of my life? Seeing Super Soul Sunday simply expounded the “light bulb moment” I already had. Why do I feel the need to explain away my successes when I don’t expect anyone else to explain away their successes? I’ve been letting others make me feel small, but that’s my fault, not theirs. People can have whatever reactions they want. It’s up to me to remember to, as Marianne Williamson says, “make manifest the glory of God that is within us.” When I’m writing, I’m manifesting the glory of God that is within me. It’s what I’m called to do. No apologies required.

I’ve decided that I will no longer hide from my successes. I’ve earned every single one with years of hard work. Whenever I’m tempted to cower from public acknowledgement of that hard work, I’ll remember Williamson’s words: “And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Amen.