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 Breath of Fresh Air by Victoria Chatham

Rough Winds

Primroses

Writers are always looking for ways to enhance the drama in their plots and the nuances of their characters. Just as we sometimes use the weather to create a mood or direct the way a scene goes, so we can make use of the seasons in our settings and in our characters’ moods. Never mind my characters, I know my mood definitely changes with the onset of spring but, after all my years living in Canada, I still miss an English springtime. My memories are of a gentle segue from the rough winds and rain of winter to the soft breezes and light showers of true spring, of standing on a hillside breathing in the fresh air under a clear blue sky and when the hedgerows began to green, of looking for the wildflowers that sheltered beneath them, snowdrops and crocuses, primroses and celandines. 

Do Shake the

Cheese Rolling

There are also all the events and activities the springtime weather shakes up. Much like those who long for the start of baseball in North America, competitors around the UK can take part in wellie wanging (how far can you throw a Wellington boot?), cheese rolling (chasing a 7-9 pound wheel of cheese down a 1-3 gradient hill), bog snorkelling and wife carrying. There are also the Tetbury woolsack races, guys carry a 60-pound sack and girls a 35-pound sack, which start in one of two pubs and are run up a 1-4 gradient hill. 

Darling Buds of May

May is also the time for Hawthorn, the 'haw' in this instance being an old word for hedge.

White Hawthorn

According to Celtic myth, hawthorn flowers are the most likely plant to harbour fairies which is why Hawthorn was never taken into the house. Its branches could be formed into garlands and hung on the door, or set into the ground outside the house to ward off evil spirits, illness, and death. The young leaves (known as bread and cheese) can be added to salads, along with dandelion greens and elderberry. The berries are well known for their anti-oxidant and heart health benefits. Add garlic for a super boost. Hawthorn once bloomed close to the beginning of the month and was known as the May-tree, the only British plant to be named for the month in which it blooms, but now blooms closer to the middle of the month.

Springtime sets the scene for the rest of the year. It is a time of renewal and hope and, who knows, it might bring ideas for a whole new set of characters and books, like my next Regency romance, coming in July.

A shocking betrayal by the man she has come to trust and begin to love, shatters Lady Olivia Darnley's new found happiness. Will Lord Peter Skeffington manage to overcome the rift between them that he has unwittingly caused? Will she accept not only his apology but also his proposal of marriage? Is there a future for this apparently mismatched pair?

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Photographs:

Cheese Rolling at Cooper's Hill courtesy of dailymail.uk 

Primroses, Hawthorn, from the author's library.

Paragraph Headings:

Quote from William Shakespeare's Sonnet #18

The Trouble With Conflict by Victoria Chatham

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I've been struggling with a current work in progress, His Unexpected Muse: Berkeley Square Book 3, because my characters are way too ordinary. I've been trying to imbue some darker aspects into them, and it's just not happening.

For me, being a non-violent person (read mile-wide yellow streak down my spine) I often find it challenging to write conflict into my stories. Murder mysteries and thrillers with graphic content tend to make me squirm or give up reading or watching them. That’s not to say that I can’t appreciate good writing or great acting, just that I’d rather not have my sleep disturbed by bad dreams after experiencing it, thank you very much. Yes, folks, that’s just how much it can upset me.

However, conflict is a must-have to write a good story. Without conflict, there really is no story. I think of an example I have given to writing classes in the past of a couple cleaning their teeth. Let's call them Amelia and Roger. They go into the bathroom. He takes the cap off the tube of toothpaste, squeezes it in the middle to get the required amount of paste on his brush, then gives the toothpaste to her. She does the same and, as soon as her toothbrush is loaded, she screws the cap back on. It's routine and boring. Nothing happens, and it does not move the story forward. Heck, it isn't even a story.

BUT – what if they don't go into the bathroom together? What if Roger goes in first, showers, shaves, cleans his teeth? What if he squeezes the toothpaste in the middle and she likes to press it from the bottom, rolling it up as each part of the tube becomes flattened? What if he always throws it on the side of the basin and leaves the cap off, allowing just a bit of toothpaste to escape and make a mess on the porcelain which causes her to yell at him? And he bellows right back "it's only frigging toothpaste!" What if this happens every morning until she could just shoot him? Oh, oh. Did I say ‘shoot him’? This is not routine or boring. We have conflict. We have a story. 

What I have just described is external conflict, but that can lead to internal conflict as well. What if Amelia now struggles with herself? If she feels so strongly that she could shoot Roger, does that mean she doesn't love him anymore? Or does it just suggest that because he has not paid any attention to her constant requests for him to replace the cap on the tube of toothpaste, she is just totally frustrated with him? Her internal conflict could escalate to the point where she could convince herself that she has to shoot him for her own sanity. And if she really could fire a gun at him, where would she get it? Is there one in the house? Does she have a license to carry? If she did actually shoot him, what then? Would her shot kill him, or just wound him? Or, her internal conflict could go in another direction altogether. What if this is the one small thing that finished their relationship? What if she decided to leave Roger instead? What horizons does that open up?

In these last two paragraphs what I've shown is person versus person conflict and then the internal conflict of one of the characters. Other types of conflict in writing could be a person against nature as in the movie about Aron Ralston who, after trapping his arm under a boulder in a Utah canyon, went five days without food and water before breaking his arm and amputating it with a pocketknife to get free. Or it could be a person against society as in any dystopian fable. A person against fate makes that person's freedom of choice seem impossible as in The Handmaid's Tale. A person against the unknown opens the door for all sorts of situations, I'm thinking Stephen King here. What about a person up against technology? Does anyone remember Hal the computer in the movie 2001 a Space Odyssey?

So now I am going to do interviews with my characters and hope that something dark emerges from each of them so that I can build it into a conflict between them. Hm. Actually, after writing this post, I can already see some possibilities with fate.

VICTORIA CHATHAM

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