Capturing a Moment in Time
I think I am speaking for most of us who writer historical settings, whether its historical romance, historical fiction, historical mystery, or time travel, there’s a passion for the period. I don’t know a author who writes about a certain time and place that doesn’t also read books that are set in the same period.
My father taught history so it was a common topic in our house when I was growing up. He spoke of many different eras and regions and/or countries. But even as a young girl, I had my favorites. Medieval history struck a chord with me. Like so many girls and women, knights and the Age of Chivalry captured my imagination.
Once I decided to write my first book, which was from a story idea I had for many years, I knew the romantic hero would be a knight. That book has been followed by two sequels, all involving medieval English knights. All are part of my Knights in Time series. When considering a particular period for my books, I like to focus on an event or historical figure. In that series, all the heroes are knights (friends) who fought in the Battle of Poitiers, a famous English victory. Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince, led the English army to that victory. My knights are associates of his and fight alongside him. The battle and the prince are the common denominators in all three books.
My latest book, Silk, is a historical suspense set in Victorian London. The setting was my first and only choice. To me, the city in that period of time is perfectly suited to the genre for many reasons: the mood of the people with Jack the Ripper running loose, the sumptuous lifestyle of the wealthy upper class vs. the struggling lower classes across town, the way the fog could swallow up a person walking after dark, and the incredible mix of architecture, to name a few.
For a long time, I’ve had a passing interest in the Zulu Wars between the Zulus and the British army (the South Wales Borderers regiment) in 1879, especially the battle at Isandhlwana and Rorke’s Drift. Several years ago I had the opportunity to visit the SWB regimental museum. The volunteers spoke to me for a long time about the two actions. The Victoria Cross (the equivalent of the Medal of Honor) was awarded to eleven men of the regiment who fought at Rorke’s Drift. I left knowing that one day I wanted to write a story with a hero who was a veteran of that battle.
Detective Inspector Rudyard Bloodstone, is Silk’s determined investigator and the veteran of Rorke’s Drift I sought to portray. He was, for me, the perfect character to reflect that moment in time. He’s a hero who doesn’t consider himself one. He likes to hang with a veteran friend who owns a pub, he enjoys music hall entertainment, he’s not a man who envy’s others. He is what he is.
As a writer, it is such fun to “walk” with a character, shadow them. To bring them to life using the time and place. Rudyard (Ruddy) moves from crime scenes to his friend’s pub to the moors of Cornwall.
Historical fiction creates a scene that hopefully readers will experience with their senses. You want them to know the cold and disorienting feel of the evening fog, the smell of popular perfumes used by ladies at the time, the sight of a black polished carriage drawn by a team of elegant horses, the call of newsboys repeating the headlines of the latest editions, even the taste of a warm stew of some kind.
I love to hear from readers who talk about how real the setting was for them. It doesn’t matter if the setting scared them or delighted them, only that it took them to another place. That place for a brief time became a living, breathing thing, another character so to speak.
Knights in Time Heroes Live Forever
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Giving Your Antagonist a POV
I read across the board genres, especially romances, thrillers, and historical fiction. I write paranormal romances and romantic thrillers. With my first two paranormal novels, Heroes Live Forever and Journey in Time, Point of View was limited to either the hero or the heroine. The antagonists in those stories were the situations they found themselves in and had to overcome. On occasion, the situations generated villainous characters for them to encounter, but those characters did not have running roles throughout the stories.
On the other hand, Golden Chariot and Byzantine Gold, the romantic thrillers, had definite antagonists. They were cunning and dangerous people who placed the protagonists in perilous circumstances. These are not characters out of a Criminal Minds episode driven by blood lust. They’re men with an agenda. They have a goal and what they consider a logical purpose for their actions. Whether it’s for revenge, financial gain, or for a cause they believe in, they feel justified in everything they do.
Golden Chariot has three antagonists. Two are the masterminds behind the artifact smuggling operation. The third is a contract killer hired by the other two. When one of the conspirators orders an agent murdered without the other’s knowledge, the co-conspirator is incensed. Their entire scheme nearly falls apart, a situation the man who ordered the murder can’t afford to have happen. I needed to give him an extraordinary reason for taking this risk. To justify his actions, he required a POV. Taking a path less traveled by handing the antagonist this power can be more than fun, it can be enlightening for both the author and reader. What resulted was suddenly seeing both the man behind the murder and the victim is a different light. That didn’t change the fact the killing was wrong, but it helped to understand why the man who ordered the murder felt justified.
I also gave the contract killer a POV. The reader sees him exactly for what he is: a man who kills for profit. He doesn’t moralize about his business or try to justify his actions. He is what he is, most of the time. In addition to a POV, I gave him moments of surprise for the reader. There is one scene where he performs a random act of kindness, totally unexpected for the amoral and generally cruel man he is.
In another scene we see him at home. Through the eyes of the heroine, we see his taste in furniture, in music, in something as simple as fine crystal. It is easy to forget that the antagonist has a mother, possibly siblings, food he/she likes, a certain style of décor or clothing. Those reveals can pull a reader in closer to the story. The enemy isn’t an indistinct, vacuous man or woman who is just evil. They have personality and that personality can go many directions.
This same killer returns in Byzantine Gold. For that story, I took him a step further and gave him a love interest. This is by no means a man who desires love or even has the capacity to give it in any deep way. As mentioned, he is amoral and without true warmth of character. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a woman who finds a way to love him. In this book, he finds himself attracted to a young woman and he chooses to let her travel with him. They share moments where he is true to his nature and brutal to her. There are other moments where he has the opportunity to show an unexpected side of himself.
Byzantine Gold also has a political terrorist who shares the role of antagonist. As horrifying as terrorism is to us, to him, his cause is righteous and he will do anything he must to achieve his goal.
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I spent nineteen of my twenty-five years in law enforcement as a detective. Long before I became a police officer, I wanted to be a writer. But I feared it wasn’t a practical profession and lacked the confidence to an attempt at it. Shortly after I retired from law enforcement, I found the courage to try my hand writing a story that I had floated around in my imagination for years. I started taking classes to learn the craft and began my first book at the same time.
When I went to conferences and seminars the same question was asked: why don’t I write a cop story? I never had the desire to write one—to relive my career through my characters. I enjoy a good police story as much as anyone. My favorite authors in the genre are Mike Connelly, Joe Wambaugh, and John Sandford. I just didn’t want to take that road.
I have a great love of history. The story I had in my head all those years involved a medieval knight and a young English woman. The two subsequent books were based on characters from that original story. All were historical romances and had a medieval element. I also wrote two romantic thrillers in addition to the others where the protagonists are nautical archaeologists.
I was in the process of writing the third historical romance when I had the idea for an old fashioned detective. I knew he’d work in London and I couldn’t think of a better setting for a murder/suspense than Victorian England. Detective Inspector Rudyard Bloodstone (Ruddy) was created. At the same time, the killer came to me. Both personalities were crystal clear in my mind before I wrote the first word of Silk.
Since Ruddy was a 19th Century detective, when I started the book it hadn’t occurred to me how much of my personal background would influence the story. I wanted to put my spin on a classical British mystery. I found when writing the romantic thrillers including the POV of the antagonists added a lot of interesting aspects to their characters. They remained villains, but they weren’t flat, black and white ones. I knew I do the same with William Everhard, the killer in Silk. I liked the idea of showing his descent into madness. It added a cat and mouse feel to the story that I had fun with.
My detective experience became important during Ruddy’s investigation. The story is set in 1888, a year before the first rudimentary work with fingertips began. He literally has no forensic science to help him. With each murder, I had to walk the scene with him, observe with him, and consider what could possibly serve as a clue. I had to think about every detail I included in the scene and then figure out how to use the potential clues. To stay true to the period, I had to strip away everything I knew from modern investigations and fall back on old fashioned police work.
I did give him an issue that crosses timelines and can be problematic to any investigation: a high profile (receiving a lot of media coverage), the manner in which it presented to the public, and influences of a political nature. I used how the press that surrounded the Jack the Ripper cases affected Ruddy’s. I also added in departmental rivalries between the two main police agencies, and political/economic forces coming to bear by making Everhard a wealthy nobleman in the House of Lords.
I found by putting the Victorian spin on it, I surprisingly loved the challenge of writing a cop story. Detective Bloodstone just may be my favorite character. He’ll definitely get more cases to solve in the near future.
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