Showing posts with label Regency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Regency. Show all posts

Friday, March 23, 2018

Giving in to Emmaline by Victoria Chatham



AMAZON AND ALL MARKETS
When I first saw Emmeline Devereux, my heroine in His Dark Enchantress, she was soaking wet with her long black hair plastered to her head and her dress cloaking her like a second skin. I saw her clearly, I knew her name, I knew she liked horses, I knew she was venturesome and then…what was I going to do with her? She really didn’t tell me anything more about herself and each time I put her into a story, it just didn’t work out for her or for me.

I’m sure there are many authors who will know exactly what I mean just as I’m equally sure that non-writers will shake their heads in disbelief or despair that anyone could be so fanciful. But it’s being fanciful that gets books written and on the shelves for readers to enjoy, or not, as the case may be.

Emmaline bugged me for weeks. I first gave her a Lara Croft type role. Anyone not familiar with that name might be more familiar with the Tomb Raider video game series that morphed into the 1993 movie starring Angelina Jolie. A remake featuring Alicia Vikander is currently playing. That role wasn’t quite right for Emmaline nor were any of the more contemporary settings I tried putting her in. A western romance didn’t work at all as she didn’t like the clothes. Once I knew that clothes had to be right for her, I started dressing her in different costumes. Maybe she was a Regency belle all along because as soon as I dressed her in a muslin gown, spencer jacket, and wide-brimmed bonnet everything fell into place and the words just flowed.


They weren’t necessarily good words, but first drafts rarely are. The purpose of a first draft is to get the story out of the author’s head and into a working document. Making it pretty and interesting comes with rewrites and revisions, help from critique partners and beta readers and a whole village of people. Here is an excerpt from His Dark Enchantress. I hope you enjoy it.

***

With Emmaline gone to the village, Lucius took a gun and two of his spaniels and set out across the park for a far covert where he hoped to flush out a brace of pheasant. 

The September afternoon basked under a clear blue sky. The gentlest of breezes occasionally buffeted his face and ruffled his hair, and all was as perfect as it could be. He traipsed through the fields, clambered over walls and fences that he would be jumping over once the hunting season started, got his feet wet in the trout stream that ran close to the southern boundary of the Park and the Beamish estate, and returned home well satisfied. 

He cut through the stable yard after leaving the dogs in the kennels and noticed the carriage house door ajar. Curious, he pulled it open. 

The place where the gig should have been was still empty. 

Puzzled, he closed the door and checked Sadie’s stable. It was also empty. He looked up at the stable yard clock. It was gone five. 

Panic gripped his heart, almost stilled his breathing. 

He charged up the stairs to the grooms’ quarters, two at a time bellowing for Noble who met him at the door. 

“What time did her ladyship leave, Noble, and who accompanied her?” he barked. 

“She left a little after noon, my Lord, and insisted she drive herself.” 

“Did she indeed?” Lucius seethed inwardly but paused for a moment, holding his temper. “And you let her go alone? Where were your wits? Saddle a hunter, Noble, I’ll go to Nettleford across country.” 

As soon as the horse was ready, Lucius set off at a steady gallop across the park, scattering the herds of fallow deer and sheep that grazed there. 

Damn her. The pig was one thing, but driving off without a groom? Who did she think she was to drive herself unaccompanied? And how could Noble have been so foolish as to let her go alone? 
He steadied the horse for a post and rail fence, soared over it and picked up the pace across the next field. A gate and two hedges later he was pounding along the road into the village where he pulled up abruptly and dismounted outside the inn. 

“Jackson.” he roared as he pushed into the taproom. 

The landlord had already heard him and sent a boy to take the horse and now met him in the corridor. 

“What’s amiss Milord?” 

“Have you seen her Ladyship?” Lucius demanded. 

“Put the gig up here while she did some visiting, left about mid-afternoon.” 

“Then where the devil is she?” Fear replaced the panic in Lucius’ heart and he cursed himself for not having asked the whereabouts of those she planned to visit. 

***











Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Where It All Started by Victoria Chatham

 I’ve been fascinated with the Regency era from a very early age. Largely, I suspect, from 
being born in Clifton, Bristol, in England, an area renowned for its classic Regency architecture. Even as a small child, the sweeping curves and many storeys of the terraces close to my grandmother’s house at Number 2 Windsor Place, fascinated me.

Clifton itself appears in the Domesday book, a document devised by William the Conqueror and completed in 1086. Back then Clifton was a village known as Clistone, meaning a hillside settlement. I can vouch for its position on a steep hill as the house I lived in perched on the side of Granby Hill, one of the steepest hills in Bristol.

Royal York Terrace
Below Windsor Place was Windsor Terrace and overlooking each rose the imposing Paragon. Further up the hill, Royal York Terrace, reputed to be the longest terrace in Europe, was just about the first thing I saw every morning. A friend of the family had a home in Cornwallis Crescent where my cousins and I had fun hopping over the stone blocks, once used for entering and exiting carriages and which sat at the edge of the pavement before each front door. These have long since been removed and the street now has car-parking on either side.   


All these elegancies entranced me and when I started reading Regency romances I just had to write them, too. I am currently at work on Book 3 in my Berkeley Square series. My hero and heroine are drawn from His Dark Enchantress, Book 1 in the series. No dashing Lord and feisty Lady in Book 3, His Unexpected Muse, these characters are much quieter and more retiring, but I had to tell their story. I hope you enjoy this snippet.  

HIS UNEXPECTED MUSE
By
Victoria Chatham

Chapter One

A crackling log on the hearth roused the somnambulant figure sprawled in a fireside chair. Lord Peter Skeffington yawned as he hauled himself into a sitting position. He scrubbed a hand over his face as his befogged mind tried to recollect where in tarnation he might be. The fireplace, with its ornate set of fire irons and a variety of bibelots decorating the mantle above it, winking in the glow from the firelight, were all unfamiliar to him.
He blinked and looked about but could see no further than the circle cast by the flickering flames. The gloom, however, rather than disconcert him, gave him an overall sensation of familiarity as he inhaled the aromas of ink and the mustiness peculiar to old books. From this, he deduced he had entered a study, though whose study it might be escaped him. What had he been doing that evening? The clouds in his mind suddenly parted and recollection came to him in a disconcerting rush.
He’d attended Lord and Lady Suffield’s damned rout-party. With his mother. Dragged along like a lamb to the slaughter. Whether that description applied to himself or the obligatory female of marriageable age to whom he had been introduced, he could not determine.
He remembered making his escape from the main salon, snagging a brandy decanter along the way. What had he done with it? He groped on the side table for the lead crystal snifter he remembered bringing with him. His long fingers connected with the stem but, before he could raise the glass to his lips, a sound behind him startled him.
What was that? He strained his ears, thinking he heard the soft susurration of a breath, or maybe the page of book turning. Could that be possible?


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