Drama in the family!

Recently there haven’t been as many family feud stories in the romance novel, which is a shame, because there is so much potential for it.

But when the muse strikes, it strikes and there wasn’t much I could do about it. That, and the resurgence of the more angsty historical romance gave me a chance to write about something that’s fascinated me for most of my life. Along with writing about passion, tempestuous relationships and people falling in love, that is.

My stories are based in Georgian England, just before the Regency period, so to do some research, recently I went to the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace to research the Jacobites. Culloden, the ‘forty-five, Bonnie Prince Charlie and all that. They have a great display of maps and portraits, letters and even a copy of an order to spies. Then it struck me. The Jacobites were the enemies of the Hanoverians, and they were the ancestors of the current generation. The Queen is a Hanoverian. And she has loads of stuff on the rebellion and the Jacobites. So why would their enemy treasure and preserve all that material?

Because it was a family feud. The Queen has Stuart ancestry too. So the Jacobite rebellion could be seen as one big family feud.

I hope the Queen forgives the whoop I gave when I realized that, because my series, “The Emperors of London,” is about two warring families, and the trouble they cause. The Dankworths are for the Stuarts and the heroes of this series, nicknamed the Emperors of London, want to keep the status quo.

Moreover (don’t you love that word?) I set it in the 1750’s, a time of turmoil for Britain, with an ageing king, an underage heir and lots of unrest at home and in Europe.

But romances aren’t about all that. They’re about how individuals cope, and how they cope when they fall in love with the most inconvenient people! So I had fun creating a Deep Dark Secret that could mean the safety of the country is at stake. It’s only hinted at in the first book, “Rogue in Red Velvet,” but the feud is there, and the ramifications for the two lovers at the heart of the story.

Still about the romance, but I’m having such fun with the family feud! Some of the books are lighter on the feud than others, because I didn’t want to shoehorn a trope into the stories. And my other love, making the past come to life, shared by that brilliant eccentric, Dennis Severs, whose house I also went to see (don’t you love research?)

When you start to look, there are family feuds all over the place. “Romeo and Juliet” is probably the most straightforward one. I wept buckets over the Zefferelli movie when we went to see it at school, and I guess that was the time I started to get Shakespeare. Then there’s the massively popular “Game of Thrones,” but that one isn’t exactly a romance, is it?

It’s got built-in tension, but it would be easy to make it a one-note series, so I decided to draw from the backstory as needed. New revelations in each book, but the real emphasis is on people falling in love under adversity.

When it comes down to basics, everything is personal. Bonnie Prince Charlie lost his campaign as much through personal failures as political. He was personable, a charming man, but feckless, not very bright and even by the ‘forty-five, when he was regarded as a romantic hero, he was a drunk, if not an alcoholic. By the 1750’s, he’d put on weight, gained a florid complexion and any hope he had of remaining romantic had gone. But then, the Georges were hardly the romantic type. Except they had deep, dark family secrets, too, such as the wife George I kept locked up in a tower because she’d taken a lover. A real-life Rapunzel, though I don’t know how long her hair was. And the secret baby Princess Amelia, daughter of George II, was rumored to have had by a member of her household. A lifelong spinster, if rumor was correct, she wasn’t a lifelong virgin!

Secrets and families. Such rich material for a romantic suspense! So do you enjoy the trope? And can you think of some that really worked for you?

 You can check out the Emperors of London here! 

What's Another Year?

It's hard to believe my first book was published way back in 2001. It doesn't seem that long! I've lost count of the ups and downs during that time, the successes and the not-so-goods. I won't say failure, because I've not had one of those, not completely. I've had books that have done really well, and books that haven't.
Looking back, yes, it's surprising. My first success was the Richard and Rose series. I planned it as a historical mystery series, with the hero and heroine as two quiet, unprepossessing minor aristocrats who solved country house mysteries.
It didn't quite turn out that way. Richard Strang turned out to be far from unprepossessing, and minor was not a description that suited him in any way at all! I wrote the series in the first person, with the same protagonists in each book, showing what happened before, and during their marriage. All those things were no-nos when I wrote the series, and yet they were a huge success for me.
And should I write paranormals? The prevailing wisdom was that you should stick to your genre, and yet the Department 57 series, about a group of Talents (vampires, shape-shifters, mermen) who worked as secret agents did so well I started a new series, STORM, which is being reissued next year.
Rock stars fighting for their women? Yup, Pure Wildfire and Nightstar.
Back to history, and I'm in the throes of writing two series. One is about the children of the Old Pretender (Bonnie Prince Charlie's father). They have a lot of history about them, with a big helping of romance. The first three books have all featured in the Amazon Top Ten.
I'm writing a series about the Roman gods and goddesses come back to life in the 18th century. That's another thing you're not supposed to do. Paranormal and historical aren't supposed to do well.
Now they tell me that vampires are dead. Darlings, vampires will never die. Not as long as I'm here to write about them!
I guess what I want to say is that new year resolutions and a structured career are good ideas, but phhht - who wants to do that when you can be having fun?
I did make an effort this year to structure my novels, but Things Happen and as I get to know my characters, it becomes clear that's not going to work out like I wanted it to. So yet again, I'm doing a plan, but I'm not counting on it happening.
Next year I'll probably look back and laugh. Just like I'm doing now.

A Historical Mystery

I haven’t written a contemporary mystery for Carina for a while, but I do write them in different genres for other publishers. One of them is the historical.
All my books include some kind of problem for the protagonists to solve, and for the most part I base them on real life stories.
Take the Emperors of London. They’re called that because their parents, who were siblings, called them ridiculous names. And because they are one of the most powerful familial networks in the country in the 1750’s.
Ranged against them are the Dankworths, an equally powerful family who are still recovering from supporting the wrong side in the Jacobite Rebellion, ie the losing side.
That’s the basic premise of the story, anyway, and with every book I write, I’m finding out more and more about the shadowy life of the Stuart family after they were deposed in 1688.
I discovered that the son of James II, called by Jacobites James III, and by Hanoverian loyalists as the Old Pretender, was a melancholic. Probably bipolar, considering his swift changes in mood and his reputation as a brooder with fierce temper tantrums.
He married in 1719, to Maria Clementina, commonly known by her second name. She bore him two children, two sons, and then she left him to enter a convent. Not because she was particularly religious, but because she couldn’t stand living with him any more. Witnesses reported blazing arguments and weeks of sulking, mostly on his part.
So here come the “what if”s. A writer thrives on the “what if” moments!
What if, before he married in 1719, James married another woman, her identity often confused with his official wife, because her name was Maria, too? What if he put her aside when he married Clementina, but after Clementina left him, his advisors begged the shadowy wife to return to him because only she could control his moods? What if they had children? And what if Maria, afraid for the safety of her babies, sent them away to be brought up elsewhere?
I tested every step of the argument, and found it all possible. Marriage was an irregular affair before it was regulated later in the century. James, the Old Pretender, was known to have mistresses, and there was plenty of time for him to sire enough children to make this series possible. He died in 1766, a long and unproductive life, but he remained mired in politics to the end of his days, trying to alter the fate of Europe and building a network of advisors and supporters.
The bombshell about the children gave me the cue for the Emperors of London series. That, and the volatile state of politics in the 1750’s. With the adult Prince of Wales dead, and the new Prince of Wales under the control of his mother and her (some say) lover and close advisor, both unpopular with the people, that gave another party the way in to power.
The Emperors set out to discover the children, and neutralise them. The Dankworths want to find them and marry them off to their own children, getting a foothold in power that way. The Young Pretender just wants them dead.
The three-pronged aspect gives me a great choice of stories, and I can flesh them out with sumptuous romances. The more I discover about this period, the more fascinating it gets. And my scenario becomes more real.

The stage was set. I don’t reveal all the secrets in the first few books, but I do make it obvious for anybody who is interested in the era.