Superficial by Diane Billas Virtual Book Tour

 Guest Post

Inspiration in the Most Unlikely Places

By: Diane Billas

Music is a way into my soul. I’ve been exposed to music even before I was born because I come from a musical family. My parents were both music majors and taught me the French horn and piano, and I also went on to study at a conservatory for college, but for music management rather than music education like my parents. Many of my extended family members also play an instrument. They would all visit during Easter and perform for our church service where my dad was the choir director. We were like the Von Trapp family except with brass instruments. 

Listening to and playing music is one way that I get inspired to write. If I’m ever feeling writer’s block, I’ll sit down at the piano and start to play to help work through whatever I’m stuck on. And it goes the other way around too. Sometimes I’m just playing or listening to some music when an idea hits and I have to stop what I’m doing and start writing. 

I also get inspired when I read really engaging books. If I’m reading something that I’m falling in love with, I sometimes develop a story, even if it has nothing to do with what I’m reading.  Just the act of reading something so thought provoking will fire up my engines and get me excited for something new. That happened recently actually. I was reading a sapphic fall romance and was totally in love with it. I’ve always wanted to write a sapphic romance set in winter and because this book I was reading was so good, I decided to give my own holiday story a go.

Sometimes ideas come when I least expect them. I was participating in a Twitter pitch contest when I was querying my first book Does Love Alway Win? and I saw some really cool pitches centered around an event, like a baking competition. That got me thinking, if I were to base a story around an event, what would I pick? I remembered how much fun I had at a Comic-Con convention in Philadelphia and decided to form a story around that. Then, as I was writing, one of the main characters not only was an actor attending the convention, but secretly a superhero in real life, and my newest book, Superficial, was born.

I never know when my next story idea will hit me; I just make sure that I have something to write with at all times so I can start on it as soon as I can!

Embark on a thrilling adventure with Lea and Jake as they navigate the unexpected twists and turns at the biggest superhero fan convention of the year. When Lea finds herself trapped in an elevator during the event with superstar Jake, also known as The Amazing Boy, they realize something sinister is afoot. With everyone at the convention frozen, including Lea's friends, Lea and Jake must team up to unravel the mystery behind the villainous acts plaguing Philadelphia. As they race against time, Lea grapples with whom to trust, while Jake uncovers startling truths about his own identity. A pulse-pounding journey filled with friendship, betrayal, and the ultimate quest for justice, will Lea and Jake save the day, or will supervillains prevail? Dive into this gripping tale that will leave you on the edge of your seat until the very end.

Excerpt

LEA

A lone figure lingers in the back corner of the elevator wearing a navy-blue Yankees baseball hat, their face cast downwards. I push for level two when there is a large bang. The lights flicker and go out. Deathly silence follows but is broken by a curse word behind me. I whip around, trying to make out the figure’s face.

“Watch that cape, you almost gave me cape burn,” the voice grumbles.

“Sorry. I never knew how annoying wearing a cosplay costume would be,” I reply, biting my lip.

When the silence continues, I nervously keep up my word vomit. “This is my first time coming to one of these things. I should’ve taken a page out of your book and worn the incognito star look. I would’ve been more comfortable on the plane flight earlier this morning and gotten less strange looks.”

Backup lights flicker on. I can barely see the figure lift his head and look at me directly in the eyes. My heart drops.

“About the incognito star look,” he says, his dark eyes full of hesitation.

No way.

No freaking way.

He isn’t playing an incognito star.

He is the star of today’s show. The last-minute addition that made the entire WizCon event sell out as soon as his name was announced.

A gasp escapes my mouth. I can’t physically stop it if I tried. I’m from the middle of nowhere Ohio. You don’t see a movie star on an elevator or anywhere in your vicinity. Keep calm, Lea, don’t scare him off. He’s incognito for a reason.

“Oh.”

That’s what I come up with to say. I mean, what else am I going to utter aloud?

Diane Billas currently lives in Philadelphia with her husband and son. When she’s not writing she can be found reading multiple books at once, performing the French horn or piano, or dreaming of the next country she’s going to visit.

Does Love Always Win? is her debut novel, which released June 2023 from Creative James Media. This book was drawn from Diane’s personal experiences as a queer individual who has struggled throughout life being comfortable identifying and expressing herself. Diane wrote the book she wished was available to her when she was in high school. 

Website:  https://dianebillas.com

 Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/dianebillaswrites

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dianebillas

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/dianebillas

TikTok: http://www.tiktok.com/dianebillas.

Photographer credit

Sam Rodriguez 

S.R.WeddingStory

Giveaway

The author will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner.

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On the Threshold by M. Laszlo Virtual Book Tour

 Guest Post

Do your characters seem to hijack the story or do you feel like you have the reins of the story? Explain.

The answer to the question is relative to the section or scene I’m working on. Sometimes this or that character can and will hijack the story and demand that I add something or go off in a direction that had not been previously planned. Other times, the basic idea of the story suffices—and I really do feel like I have the reins.

The important thing is to be open-minded enough to give the characters whatever unexpected content they want, and at the same time, remain confident enough not to second-guess those parts of the story that seem to fall into place as intended.

To be a good writer, one must be pragmatic. There’s never a good reason to be too dogmatic or to paint oneself into a tight corner. Decisions must be made carefully and thoughtfully. 

On the Threshold is full of examples. Here’s one: because I am quite the Germanophile, I wanted to include several German characters—but I had to be very careful not to put them in a bad light. And in early drafts, I had the tendency to denigrate them only because my protagonist, a Scotsman, didn’t have such a good impression of them. Bear in mind my protagonist lived through the Great War along with WWII. In the end, I had to let my protagonist, Fingal, have his somewhat negative image of the German people, but at the same time, I had to make doubly sure that the narration did not reduplicate his bias.

Here’s another example. From my own personal viewpoint, academia is not such a great or trustworthy institution; however, my Fingal kept asking for a relationship with local university scholars. In the end, I had to agree: my protagonist would in fact naturally reach out to academia in order to try to find someone who might help with this or that engineering problem.

Another character happened to be a cinephile who loved to write esoteric essays on the movies she had seen. In the end, I had to let her become an academic. There did not seem to be any more natural or fitting place for her to be.

Finally, when writing the last section of the work, the one that takes place in the 1960’s, I realized that it would be a good idea to bring in a great deal of American pop culture—including drive-in movies, television shows, and popular music. Though that had not necessarily been an aspect of the original vision of the story, my characters asked for it: though they were very old and though the world of the sixties seemed alien to them, they did find it all quite fascinating. And they wanted to contemplate the absurd television shows they watched when bored. For my part, there was no way to deny my characters their indulgences because by letting them have their quirks, my characters became real, believable, and most important of all, relatable.

Obsessed with learning the origins of the cosmos, the actual meaning of life, and the true purpose of civilization, a fine Scotsman named Fingal T. Smyth dedicates himself to the study of Plato’s most extraordinary ideas. Convinced of Plato’s belief that humankind possesses any and all innate knowledge deep within the collective unconscious mind, Fingal soon conducts a series of bold, pioneering occult-science experiments by which to resolve the riddle of the universe once and for all. However, Fingal forgets how violent and perilous the animal impulses that reside in the deepest recesses of the unconscious mind. And when Fingal unleashes a mysterious avatar of his innate knowledge, the entity appears as a burning man and immediately seeks to manipulate innocent and unsuspecting people everywhere into immolating themselves. Now, with little hope of returning the fiery figure into his being, Fingal must capture his nemesis before it destroys the world.

Excerpt

Autumn, 1907: late one morning, some kind of torrid, invisible beast seemed to wrap itself all around Fingal T. Smyth’s body. Each one of his toes twitching fiercely, he exited the castle and scanned the distant, Scottish Highlands. Go back where you came from. As the entity wrapped itself tighter all about his person, Fingal blinked back his tears. I’m melting, I am. Aye, it’s the heat of fusion.

Gradually, the beast’s heartbeat became audible—each pulsation. At the same time, too, the illusory heat of transformation emitted an odor as of oven-roasted peppercorns dissolving in a cup of burnt coffee.

Over by the gatehouse, Fräulein Wunderwaffe appeared—the little German girl wearing a plain-sewn robe and square-crown bowler. In that moment, she no longer seemed to be a sickly child of seven years: her inscrutable expression resembled that of a wise, indifferent cat. 

Perhaps even some kind of lioness. Fingal cringed, and he recalled a fragment of conversation from three weeks earlier.

“She suffers from a most unnatural pathology, an anguished, maniacal obsession with cats,” Doktor Hubertus Pflug had explained. “Ever since the poor girl was a baby, she has always regarded it her fate to one day metamorphose into a glorious panther, for she believes herself to be ein Gestaltwandler. Do you know this word? It means shapeshifter and refers to someone who possesses the power to take the form of anything in nature.”

The heat radiated up and down Fingal’s spine now, and his thoughts turned back to the present. Aye, it’s a change of phase. I’m melting into a chemical compound. Despite all, he greeted the girl and willed himself to flash a grin.

M. Laszlo is an aging recluse who lives in Bath, Ohio. Rumor holds that his pseudonym is a reference to Victor Laszlo, a character in the classic film Casablanca. On the Threshold is his first release with the acclaimed, Australian hybrid house AIA Publishing. Oddly, M. Laszlo insists that his latest work, On the Threshold, does in fact provide the correct answer to the riddle of the universe.  

Buy link: https://aiapublishing.com/product/on-the-threshold-m-laszlo/

Giveaway

M. Laszlo will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner.

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Virtual Book Tour: The True Adventurer by Robyn Singer

Guest Post

Discuss the World You’ve Created For the Book 

My philosophy toward world building is that, if a detail doesn’t contribute to the story, the characters, or the atmosphere, it has no reason to be included. The result of this is that, even after three books, the world of The Ricochet Trilogy is vague in places, and absolutely open to interpretation, but clearly defined in others. 

“The True Adventurer,” the final book in The Ricochet Trilogy, is a space opera and war story that spans an entire universe. The book is set thousands of years in the future, and depicts a time where humanity has settled on thousands of different planets. There are no aliens in this setting, but each planet still has its own unique culture, subcultures, and geography. The weapons and ships are high-tech and capable of incredible feats, while other technological advancements are on the sillier sides. The two dominant forces in this universe are The Cykebian Empire, an ancient and massive imperialistic force with a rigid class system, and The Utozex Authority, a relatively smaller, more recently assembled legion of allied worlds who believe a meritocracy is the path to a utopia. 

In spite of how far off in the future the book is set, with so many worlds, some of them more closely resemble modern human society than others. Some people attend familiar seeming universities and attend boy band concerts, while others spend their days serving as guards on space stations designed to house the universe’s most dangerous criminals. And, while “The True Adventurer” is a sci-fi story first and foremost, it also contains a single magical element in the form of the strange, eponymous power wielded by the book’s hero, Layla N’gwa, as well as several other characters. With the power of The True Adventuer being such a rarity, most other major combatants in this universe rely on a combination of genetic engineering and cybernetic upgrades. 

Layla N’gwa is finally free to attend art school and live a life of peace. She’s sipping spinach smoothies in the quad with her new friends, attending protests against the ongoing war, and studying to fulfill her dream of becoming a great glassblower.

Layla’s former friend, Kaya Langstone Bythora-the boy-band-loving cyborg princess of the Cykebian Empire-has embraced being evil since killing Yael, and now acts as the ultimate sword of her mother, Empress Molina. With Kaya’s help, her mother will become the absolute ruler of the universe by winning the war with the Utozin Authority. Kaya wishes she wasn’t doomed to be a monster but feels resigned to her fate and just seeks acceptance from her only friend, Layla.

Layla loves her new life, but she can’t stand back and watch as Kaya is used as a weapon and her old professor conquers planet after planet. As a war rages with the fate of all life in the balance, Layla and Kaya find themselves on opposite sides. Kaya may be the most powerful cyborg ever designed, but Layla has some new tricks up her sleeve. Has absolute order snuffed out all freedom, or is there still room among the stars for a little chaos? Only together can Layla and Kaya find the answer.

Excerpt

Good morning, human!

I yawned as I sat up in my bed and stretched my arms out, reaching for the sun. “Good morning, Juri.”

Leaping out of bed and greeting the day, I pulled my curtains open to reveal the beautiful sky. It was a perfect, light shade of magenta that made the stunning cobalt sun stand out even more than it usually did as it rose.

Proquenna was a beautiful world, with fabulous flora and adorable fauna, and Fexxa University’s campus was the prettiest spot on the whole planet. Every student here was an elite artist, and we were all permitted to put up our pieces wherever we wanted. The shelves in my own dorm room were, of course, filled exclusively with some of my awesome creations, but once I stepped out into the dormitory halls, and especially once I stepped outside the building, I couldn’t turn around without seeing a masterpiece of a painting or sculpture created by one of my peers or instructors.

It had been the perfect environment for me to study and truly hone my craft. Thanks to the instruction of Ms. Bunny, the reading assignments others might have skimmed through, and the vast resources offered by the school, I wasn’t the same glassblower I’d been a year ago.

This school was everything I’d always dreamed of. By the time I graduated in three years, I was going to be renowned as one of the best glassblowers in the universe. I may have valued the craft over gidgits, but if I did get super rich off of my work, I’d be able to rub it in g-gma’s face. Hopefully, she’d gotten over the whole blackmail thing and wasn’t plotting to kill me.

What are you standing around for? Juri asked. Get dressed and go get us some foooooood!

I nodded. Under different circumstances, I might have.

Robyn Singer is a lifelong New Yorker, and since she was a kid playing with her action figures, all she’s wanted to do is tell stories. She went to SUNY Purchase to get a degree in Playwriting & Screenwriting with a minor in Film and has produced several comic books, but she’s always had her eye on becoming a published novelist.

As an Autistic, bisexual trans woman, diversity and inclusion in stories are vitally important to her, and she seeks to represent as many groups as possible in her work. While she wants to show characters of marginalized groups experiencing joy, she also draws inspiration from real-world problems which bother her.

The Sunrisers was her debut novel. The Order of the Banshee is book 2 in the The Ricochet Trilogy. Robyn was the author in residence for the first quarter of 2022 for Cinnabar Moth Literary Collections. She writes novels and short stories of all genres and for all ages, and she continues to produce comic books. Her ongoing series, Final Gamble, began publication by Band of Bards in 2022.

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Robyn-Singer/author/B0BCVQ8JJ6

Publisher Author Page: https://cinnabarmoth.com/robyn-singer/

Giveaway

The author will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner.

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NBtM Virtual Book Tour Pieces of You by April Farlow

Guest Post

Things that inspire you and why:

I am most inspired by people! When I was 14 years old, my mom was going through the certification to become a Dale Carnegie Instructor. Dale Carnegie is most known for the books, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” and “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.” So, I took my first corporate class while my mom was being tested with daisies on my dress. While everyone made commitments to get along with their co-workers and bosses, I decided to be nicer to my brother.

This experience shaped me because at 14, I was uncomfortable in my own skin just like all the other kids I was surrounded by at school. But I looked around the room at adults who were nervous to stand up and speak and trying to get along better with co-workers. These people were my parents age – and they had doubts and questions to navigate, I was shocked! Everyone was super nice to me, kind of like I was the class mascot, and somehow, we all became friends, even at very different ages. They would ask me questions about their own kids, and I learned from them at the same time. Mostly, I learned that it doesn’t really matter how old you are, we are all trying to answer the same question, “Who am I?”

Eight years later, I became an instructor and now I am the age of the people when I first took a class. I have spent my entire adult life getting to meet new people and figure out who they are and what makes them perform their best. Every week, I meet people from different companies, countries and cultures and at the end of sessions, I get asked the same question routinely; “are all your groups this good?” These are usually people who have worked together for a long time, but they just never took the time to get to know each other. Let’s be real, even when you work with someone for a long time, we don’t usually ask about life events from childhood or the family we grew up in. But when we do, there are some incredible things to learn and respect.

I don’t know about you, but I am not inspired by small talk. I am very inspired when people trust me enough to know their real story. I love connecting with people and seeing them be their best. I get inspired when I watch people do what they do best, whether that is parenting, a sports team, performers singing, or a company solving a problem. It is exciting to watch people shine!

One of my best friends is a veterinarian. I have heard her talk about work for years and I was proud of all she has accomplished. But one day, I was pet sitting for my neighbor and one of the goats went into labor with complications. I called Meg and she rushed over to help me. When I saw her take off her jacket and save the day, I was amazed!

“Pieces of You” was written to connect my love for people and corporate training with faith and answer the question, “Who am I, really?” To test content, I held a class, much like the ones I teach for work, and gathered 30 friends to get to share their stories connected to the topics in the book: relationships, values, beliefs, rules, purpose and vision for the future. Turns out my friends liked real conversation too. No one wanted to leave the sessions, and we found that everyone in the group was uniquely awesome.

Yes, I get inspired by people. I hope you get inspired by my people who I call my ‘kaleidoscopes’ throughout the book as well! I also hope my stories will inspire you to figure out some of your unique pieces!

Knowing who you are has always been challenging, and in today’s world, more and more voices are coming from more and more places telling us who we should be. The result? A broken sense of identity that we’re struggling to put back together.

In Pieces of You, April Farlow shares how she discovered her identity is formed by the God who made her. Along the way, she’s learned that if we want to put the pieces of who we are together in a real, lasting way, we have to look to Whose we are for help.

It’s time to take a look at the unique pieces that make up who you are …

The pieces you compare …
The pieces informed by the father figure in your life …
The painful pieces …
The pieces of your relationships …
The pieces on which you’ve built your beliefs …
The pieces that give you rules and boundaries …
The pieces that show what you value …
The pieces that give you purpose …
The pieces that help you build a vision for what’s to come.

As we work to put those pieces together, we’ll look to the God who made us, knows us, and loves us to guide us. Because when you take all your pieces—the good, the bad, the broken, and the beautiful—and place them in your Heavenly Father’s hands, there, you’ll find peace. There, you’ll find security. There, you’ll find a real sense of who you are and Whose you are.

Excerpt

Over just a few hours, my Kaleidoscopes began to lean into each other’s stories. Things got real fast. And I think that’s because we took a break from measuring ourselves against each other. Instead of comparing, we chose to share.

And that’s a great place to start.

To stand confidently in both who you are and Whose you are, you must first learn to avoid the temptation to compare. Staying out of the comparison trap is an essential piece of the puzzle that is discovering and embracing our identity.

After our meeting, my friend Angela went home and looked in her daughter’s school folder. There, she found a worksheet her seven-year-old, Elle, had filled out. “Color yourself and then write words to describe yourself in the circles,” the instructions said across the top. That’s precisely what Elle did. She colored her hair and eyes to match hers and wrote six words to describe herself.

Funny
Artistic
Pretty
Love
Kind
Smart

For Angela, her daughter’s list was not only accurate, but it was also a stark contrast to the list she and the other women had made. Angela told me about it later: "I wonder at what age we stop believing the good? I wonder what happens to cause us to begin seeing the negative before the positive?”

I wonder the same for all of us.

April Farlow has spent the last 20 years motivating audiences to get out of their comfort zone, speak up, and represent their values. In corporate environments, one piece is missed—the ability to talk about forming your identity in God. Today, as a speaker, author, coach, and non-profit leader, April is changing this by sharing her faith journey and helping others do the same with clarity and conviction.

In 2017, after speaking to a group of foster youth, April founded Lydia’s Place, a ministry serving young adults who have experienced foster care or homelessness. April and her husband have four girls and live on a mini-farm outside of Athens, Georgia.

http://www.aprilfarlow.com

http://www.instagram.com/aprilwfarlow

Giveaway

The author will be awarding a $15 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Rafflecopter giveaway

NBtM Virtual Tour: Smelling Daisies by Elysia and Mark Stevens

 Guest Post

 Did you have a minor character who insisted on playing a larger role in the story? If so, please tell us about it.

Crayton’s ability to play both sides really surprised us. Initially, we saw him as a supporting character, but the more that we wrote, the more his motivations began to reveal layers of complexity. He had insights into both sides in the story, which allowed him to manipulate situations in ways that significantly impacted the plot.
As he navigated alliances, we realized that he could serve as a spark plug for tension and conflict, while driving key moments in the narrative. His choices added unpredictability, which forced other characters to confront their own beliefs and decisions throughout the story. This not only expanded his role but also challenged the themes of loyalty and betrayal for the character. We found that by embracing his character’s lack of conscience, Crayton became essential to the story's progression, which ended up leading to some of the most pivotal scenes of the story.

Whenever things seem to fall apart around Daisy, romance novels are her way of escaping. When immersed in a novel, she can imagine herself in the story as the lead female character. Still, the difference between her and the typical female character in her novels is that she is not your average damsel in distress.

Daisy was raised by a military father who ensured his daughter knew survival skills and how to protect herself. Following in her beloved father's footsteps, Daisy joined the army and met Justin. Eventually, Daisy's dreams would come true. While on a decompression stop after a deployment overseas, she finds herself at the Lachlan Castle in Scotland. There, she is thrown back in time to the era she loves to read about, but things are nothing like she imagined.

When Daisy befriends a bonnie Scottish lass, she finds herself in a haven under the roof of the girl's brother, a laird named Alick. It becomes clear that the laird is constantly challenged by the many nuances of Daisy's status as a modern-day female soldier as she attempts to navigate the dangerous life in medieval Scotland. While trying her best to fit in, Daisy stumbles upon a psychotic baron named Thomas, who loves to torture women and is fascinated with her.

Both Laird Alick and Baron Thomas want to tame the lioness in Daisy but for different reasons. But Daisy is ill-prepared for medieval love or warfare and must train her heart and head to face what's coming next.

AMAZON.COM: https://amazon.com/dp/1779418647

AMAZON.CA: https://amazon.ca/dp/1779418647

INDIGO CHAPTERS: https://www.indigo.ca/en-ca/smelling-daisies-modern-day-soldier-daisy-time-travels-to-old-world-scotland-where-her-bravery-is-put-to-the-test-while-giving-love-another-chance/bcef4af7-c5a7-3714-857e-5457028cbc8d.html

BARNES & NOBLE: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/smelling-daisies-elysia-stevens/1146227969?ean=9781779418654

IBOOKS: https://books.apple.com/us/book/smelling-daisies/id6670277003

Excerpt

Two floors below mine, I felt safe that I would come out of this situation unscathed, so I decided to sneak out a little squeaker to relieve some of the pressure. If I learned anything from this situation, it was this: you can spend your whole day out and about and not see one goodlooking guy, but if you blow one little fart in an elevator, one will suddenly appear like Houdini.

As the ding chimed and the elevator doors opened one floor below mine, I sheepishly stood in my stench, staring into the face of a tall, muscular, blond-haired, brown-eyed hunk of a man. I could tell he didn’t appreciate the treat that I left for him. So, there was only one thing to do in this situation, and that was to stay cool and collected, as though nothing had happened, even though it was pretty evident that I had just dumped my guts. The look he gave me as he stopped in his tracks and raised one eyebrow before turning and pressing the button for the thirtieth floor made me blurt out the first thing that came to mind.

“Do you smell popcorn?” I said. Instantly, I regretted my words, as heat rose to my cheeks.

He gave me a sideways smirk and faced the doors as they closed, replying, “I am not sure where you buy your popcorn, but if it smells like that, I wouldn’t recommend buying it again.”

Hi, I am Elysia Stevens, and I am a big fan of rom-coms, which should not be a surprise after reading this story. Most would describe me as eccentric in my personality, which really stands out in my choice of attire. I love to wear fun socks, and every Friday I celebrate “Fabio Friday” by wearing a Fabio T-shirt for all to enjoy (luv ya, Fabio!). Thankfully, my husband, Mark Stevens, has a lot of patience because I can’t sit still for more than five minutes at a time and always have my head in the clouds. He has been my partner in life for over eighteen years, and there is nothing we can’t and don’t tackle together. My husband’s taste generally ranges from Stephen King to classic literature, but being the great guy he is, he not only read my rom-com novel but also co-authored it with me! Unfortunately, he still doesn’t understand the appeal of a good naughty scene in a book, but I won’t hold that against him.

WEBSITE: https://elysiamarkstevensbooks.ca/

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/elysiamarkstevensbooks/

Giveaway

The author will be awarding a $15 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner.

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Hidden Treasures by Kathleen Buckley NBtM Virtual Tour

 

Guest Post

Do your characters seem to hijack the story or do you feel like you have the reins of the story? Explain.


My control over my characters is pretty much limited to naming them, giving them some background (parentage, where they live, hair and eye color), and what role they’re supposed to play in the book. They go along with the first and second things. Often they develop in ways I don’t expect, which makes the writing fun. I would never have guessed that Alex in my second novel, Most Secret, would have a talent for amateur theatricals which proved an advantage in the story. But sometimes characters balk at their assignment in my story.

Before I gave up trying to control my characters, I had a novel stall and die because the male and female characters refused to fall in love. I was a much less experienced writer at the time and it took me years to understand that the characters would only act in ways consistent with their personalities. For some reason, the pair were not a good match. Even now, I don’t think I could have persuaded them into a relationship.

Now it’s most often the villains who act out. They feel they’re more sinned against than sinning, or have perfectly good reasons for their actions or think they do, or have been led astray by another character. Which is actually pretty true to life, isn’t it?

Recently I needed my antagonist to be out of the country for some years. That was almost all I knew about him except that he was supposed to have a horde of criminals in his employ. For a bit of backstory, I had him sent to live with an uncle in the American colonies as a boy. Why would that be? Ah ha! Behavioral problems! Of course he’d run away and end up working for an army officer who cheated at cards and taught him how to do so. Returning to England set off a chain of events that gave an unexpected twist to the story. Unexpected by me, anyway; I had to do some extensive revision but it improved the ending beyond recognition. Clearly he planned the whole thing.

Thinking about it, although the antagonists may fail to cooperate with me, they’re easier to deal with than the truly despicable characters who are not criminals and who are happy to be as evil as they can be. These are the toxic characters: the resentful stepmother in one or the hateful sister-in-law and spoiled nieces another. Most of us never deal with a level of villainy worse than that, which is bad enough.

Allan Everard, an earl's illegitimate son, is dismissed from his employment at his father’s death but inherits a former coaching inn. Needing to make a new life in London, he begins by leasing the inn to a charity.

Unexpectedly orphaned, Rosabel Stanbury and her younger sister are made wards of a distant, unknown cousin. Fearing his secretive ways and his intentions for them, Rosabel and Oriana flee to London where they are taken in by a women’s charity.

Drawn into Rosabel's problems, with his inn under surveillance by criminals, Allan has only a handful of unlikely allies, including an elderly general, a burglar, and an old lady who knows criminal slang. A traditional romance.




Excerpt

“Sir, we came to London to live with our grandfather, but he is ill, and we couldn’t see him, and our uncle’s wife didn’t believe we are his grandchildren, and now we have no place to go.”

Rosabel wished whoever he was might be able to aid them, knowing she dare not trust him, not after their encounter with the woman at the inn. He was probably a rakehell. Gentlemen did not otherwise concern themselves with females of the servant class, as they must appear to be, clad in their dusty, countrified clothing.

Blinking away her last tears, she was tempted to revise her opinion. His plain black suit, slight body, and untidy hair suggested quite another sort of man. His eyes twinkled when she met his gaze. “May I introduce myself, ma’am? Wilfred Simmons, curate, St. Giles-without-Cripplegate. If you and your sister have nowhere to stay, your situation is serious. London is a hard place even for men if they have no work and no money. A female without resources risks danger to both body and soul. Please let me assist you.”

She bit her lip. Mr. Simmons appeared to be respectable. He had a gentleman’s voice and was no more than four-and-twenty, she guessed. Beside her, Ory sniffed dolefully.

“You are wise not to be too trusting. I have friends who will vouch for me inside.” He smiled at her expression. “Ma’am, no one has ever been abducted from St. George’s Church, Hanover Square.”

About the Author

Kathleen Buckley writes traditional historical romance (i.e. no explicit sex). There are fewer ballrooms and aristocratic courting rituals in her books and more problems than does-he-love-me/does-he-not. Sometimes there’s humor. Kathleen wanted to write from the time she learned to read and pursued this passion through a Master’s Degree in English, followed by the kind of jobs one might expect: light bookkeeping, security officer, paralegal. She did sell two stories to the late Robert Bloch, author of Psycho. And no, he wasn’t late at the time.

After moving to Albuquerque, New Mexico, she wrote her first historical romance, striving for Georgette Heyer’s style, followed by nine more.

In Kathleen’s gentle romances, the characters tend to slide into love rather than fall in lust. Their stories are often set against the background of family relationships, crime, and legal issues, probably because of her work in a law firm.

When she’s not writing or reading, she enjoys cooking dishes from eighteenth century cookbooks. Those dishes and more appear in her stories. Udder and root vegetables, anyone?

Kathleen Buckley’s current work in progress is her first historical mystery, tentatively titled A Murder of Convenience.

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/kathleen_buckley

Website: https://18thcenturyromance.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/18thcenturyromance/

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Kathleen-Buckley/author/B072J2GPZ3

Giveaway

Kathleen Buckley will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. 

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