Critiquing Conflict

By Jessica Darago

Okay, breathe, this post isn’t about conflict with critiques or critiquers. It’s about two of my partners, each of whom is struggling with conflict in her story.

I attended the Washington Romance Writers annual retreat this weekend (and, on a side note, free copy of Beyond Heaving Bosoms in the goodie bag: *SQUEE!!!*). It was my first time attending, and it was everything I was assured it was — pitching, drinking, and impromptu songfests. Good times. But it was also one of those all-too-rare opportunities to really talk craft in person with people who get it.

One of my critique partners was talking about a breakthrough she had recently. She’s got a great voice and fantastic characters, but she always feels like she struggles with plot. “And then I realized,” she said, “I’ve been confusing conflict with action.” She writes romantic suspense, and she had things blowing up and the world in peril, but she hadn’t given the hero and heroine an interpersonal conflict to overcome.

She gets it now. Awesome! I’m so psyched to see her next draft.

But that also reminded me of a situation in a manuscript from my non-romance, online critique group. This author friend has had some success with poetry and short stories, but she has yet to break out with a novel, and she’s struggling in particular with an epic high fantasy that is truly her “baby.”

(Keep in mind, even though it’s not a romance, the same principles of conflict will apply. Bear with me here.)

Two of the book’s most important secondary characters are the heroine’s best friend (let’s pick a romance-friendly name here and call her Ashley) and the bad guy’s dragon. (No, not a literal dragon; a second-in-command-in-disguise — we’ll call him Tom.) Ashley and Tom and the rest have been thrown together by the main plot. Ashley and Tom have been bickering almost nonstop since they met — and not in a cute sexual tension way. Ashley knows Tom’s up to no good, but the gang needs him to get the job done. And Tom? He’s just a giant douche.

So, bicker bicker bicker, quest quest quest, bicker bicker quest quest bicker … and then, suddenly, the heroine’s life is hanging by a thread, and only a wizard-type can save her.

As it happens, Ashley and Tom are both wizards.

Now, gentle reader, put yourself in the gentle writer’s hands. What happens next?

a) Ashley saves the heroine’s life — all is well.
b) Tom saves the heroine’s life — but now he’s got power over her.
c) Ashley and Tom finally have that gigantic throwdown you’ve been waiting for over who gets to save her. Fists and fireballs fly, but Tom wins, saves the heroine’s life, and how has power over her.

I think we can agree (a) is too lame to even speak of. And I’m obviously leading you a bit, because (c) has fireballs, people. Fireballs. But in her original draft, my writer friend chose option (b).

Now, option (b) is okay. Option (b) may even be the most realistic choice. But what (aside from fireballs!!!) is (c) giving you that’s so much better? The way I see it, the answer is twofold:

1) With option (c), Ashley loses power, rather than simply being powerless.
2) With option (c), the bad guy encounters a barrier to his will, and he gets to prove he’s stronger than the good guys — a worthy foe.

In a sense, this second writer made the opposite misstep from the first. The first was all action, no conflict; the second had plenty of conflict, but she forgot about action.

The best option is always using both.

But there’s a second lesson here for romance writers, something I often see editors and critics complain about. In our genre, in its myriad forms, we writers tend to focus on developing the conflict between the hero and heroine (and, if we’re clever, between the villian and the hero or heroine). And we are very, very good at it. But sometimes we forget about everyone else. Secondary characters need GMCs just as much as the main characters do. It gives the plot depth and texture … and if you’re lucky, it gives you an idea for another novel. This weekend, when an editor put me on the spot about sequels, I was able to give her quick-n-dirty pitches for two more novels (one about Gladys, the other about Sophie) that I haven’t fully plotted yet, simply because I gave them GMCs (a desire to better herself socially and a desire to have a purpose beyond marriagability) when writing The Serpent’s Tooth.

And now I’ve got a request to submit the full with two more proposals. And a case of the hives. All thanks to conflict.

The care and feeding of muses

By Jessica Darago

Sometimes I think I spend too much time immersed in words. My new writing has been very slow these past few months, while I argued with my muse–”No, no you may not rewrite the Skye scenes for the fourth time. Here. Read about Charles II.”–mostly to no avail. Lovely and useful creatures though they are, muses are fussy, moody, and bloody minded. You cannot make them do anything.

The best you can do is distract them.

That’s why, instead of taking advantage of a rare free weekend by duct-taping myself to a keyboard, I went for a walk. A loooooong walk. Rough terrain, strong winds, the Once soundtrack blaring on my ebook reader iPod, and some of the most beautiful scenery Washington DC has to offer–I’m not sure it did my muse any good, but it did wonders for my mood.

And thanks to my other, other, other artistic pursuit, I can share some of my walk with you. Enjoy!

One of DC's famous flowering cherries.

Of course, the cherries aren't all that's in bloom.

And it wouldn't be DC without a few columns.

Three Books: Inspiration

By Jessica Darago

On the way home from work the other night, I happened to catch the NPR segment called Three Books, where a reviewer talks about three of his or her favorite books on one theme–topic, genre, character type, what have you. My first thought (okay, my first thought was probably, “Ooo, books!”, but my second thought) was “I’m totally stealing this idea for the blog!”

As I mentioned in my official bio on the Romantic Times website, It was M. M. Kaye’s The Shadow of the Moon that first inspired me to write gothic historical fiction. The story is set primarily in India in the 1850s, in the buildup to and amid the horrors of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 (which is also addressed in Meredith Duran’s stunning debut novel, The Duke of Shadows–are the titles mere coincidence?). Winter de Ballestros, trapped in a nightmare marriage to a commissioner of the British East India Company, uncovers hints of a native conspiracy to overthrow the British occupying forces. She turns to the only British officer she can trust–Alex Randall, her husband’s assistant and the man she secretly loves. Alex has long been aware of the coming storm, but he cannot convince the Company’s leaders of the danger. When the Company’s callous treatment of the Indian people drives the native soldiers to mutiny, Alex cannot stop the tide of violence and horror, and he and Winter must run to survive.

I’ve often called Shadow my Ur-romance novel, an example of everything I think historical romance should be: full of lush detail, a cast of authentic, original characters, and the fate of a nation at stake. For historical drama, it doesn’t get any better than this.

Though I usually list Shadow as my favorite, it was far from the only book of its kind to make an impression on my adolescent psyche. In fact, the first romance novel I ever read was by the prolific and beloved Victoria Holt. She (under her various pseudonyms, but especially as Holt or as Jean Plaidy) was my grandmother’s favorite author. I think my mother still has a shelf full of her hardbacks. One lazy summer day when I was 13, hot and bored and looking for something to read, I pulled The Judas Kiss off that shelf. I read it in one gigantic gulp, then immediately gave it to my best friend Robyn to read. She devoured it too, and thus two obsessions with all novels gothic were born.

The Judas Kiss tells the story of Pippa Ewell, a woman on a quest to find her sister’s killer and recover her sister’s son, whom no one else believes exists. Along the way, she meets Conrad, a mysterious stranger (all good gothic novels have a mysterious stranger!) who sweeps her off her feet (and into bed). But when she learns Conrad’s true identity, she realizes he may be the man behind her sister’s murder. This novel follows my number one rule for creating conflict in a romance: The main character falls for the last person in the world she should love. The book is also remarkable by recent standards for not being set Germany, not Britain, a lovely and dramatic change of scenery.

Finally, I come to a novel that by current standards many would hesitate to call a romance. But I would call it one, and in fact I believe Anya Seton practically invented the paranormal romance genre in her dark tale of love, politics, and reincarnation, Green Darkness. Celia Marsden is a woman literally haunted by her past–her past life, that is. As Celia de Bohun, her forbidden romance with Brother Stephen during the turbulent days of the Tudor Reformation brought her to a horrific end. Now a 20th-century American woman, her marriage to English nobleman Sir Richard Marsden is being torn apart by Richard’s strange moods and Celia’s terrifying visions of her former life. Enter Dr. Akananda, a Hindu psychologist who recognizes the cause of Celia’s growing madness and helps her through a past life regression in the hopes of setting her free.

Green Darkness is not an easy book to read. It is full of the brutality of life in the Tudor era and the cruelties of madness and a crumbling marriage. But it is a sprawling, dense, engrossing, thought-provoking, and satisfying novel for fans of history and fantasy alike.

Pretty clear, isn’t it, why I write dark gothic historicals. I can see elements of The Serpent’s Tooth in all of these books: Winter’s loneliness and searching for a home; the tragic conflict between Pippa’s love of her family and love of the hero; the sometimes un-romantic honesty about the political realities of Britain’s past shown in Seton’s novel. It’s been 20 years or more since I first read these three novels, but I know all three will always be a part of me as a writer.

It could be worse!

By Jessica Darago

I just finished up judging seven entries for Washington Romance Writers’ annual Marlene contest. I really enjoy judging, in a masochistic sort of way. It’s procrastination I can feel good about!

But I do sometimes worry. I’ve entered a half-dozen RWA sponsored contests with The Serpent’s Tooth and finaled in about half of them. I’ve gotten some great feedback…and some not so great. Them’s just the breaks. Not everyone is going to “get” your story, and not everyone will share your taste.

When judging, I do my best to read deeply and carefully for the author’s intention, and I try to explain my scoring thoroughly, so even if the contestant thinks I’m wrong, she won’t think I’m completely off my head.

Some may still think I’m off my head, though.

Be that as it may, I offer you, gentle readers (and writers) a little video to cheer you the next time you receive feedback that makes you make your WTF face. It could be way worse. It could be like this:

Let Go

by Jessica Darago

At the beginning of this year, like at the beginning of every year, I set a few goals for myself. Not resolutions, exactly; more like guidelines signposts. If there’s one thing you can say about the eight AT-V finalists, whether we’re now in or out of the running, we all passed one dilly of a signpost back in 2008, like one of those neon South of the Border billboards with giant 3-D sombrero on top, and it said, YES, YOU ARE A REAL WRITER.

(Okay, being a South of the Border billboard, what it actually said was probably some atrocious, offensively ethnocentric pun about hats or chili peppers, but I haven’t had my coffee yet, so just roll with me here.)

The first few weeks…nah, the first few months of the contest became a mad dash to get all our contest entries ready and to learn and apply something, anything we could about publicity to get people’s attention and get out the vote: bookmarks and guest blogs and Facebook and all the networking we could handle. Meanwhile, our “real” lives never let up, not our jobs or families or laundry or cleaning or commuting or community work or reading for our critique partners or judging RWA contests or–

Hey, wait a minute. Where did the writing go?

I turned 37 yesterday. One of the advantages of a February birthday is that it’s a lot like having a second New Year’s. You can see, very quickly, how you’re doing on your plans for the year and adjust accordingly before things get so far off the map that they’re unrecoverable. So I looked back at the previous five weeks, and here’s what I found.

Words revised: 0
New words written: Under 1,000

And I thought, “What the hell have I been doing?”

Turns out, I’ve been tending to my job(s) and my family and my laundry and my cleaning and my commute and my volunteering and my critique partners and my contest judging and my contest promotion and–

And I know I’m not the only one.

We live in a world that asks us (and, sorry to say, especially asks women) to put aside what we want to do and need to do for what we “should” do. We let ourselves get buried by what’s unimportant, because we think we have to do it all. We have to meet everyone else’s goals. We have to say yes. We have to win.

What a silly notion.

Today I’m going to do something I find very difficult. I’m going to be imperfect. I’m going to say no. I’m going to be a person who makes time for herself. I’m going to be a writer again.

Does this sound familiar? Are you getting nothing done because you’re too busy doing it all? If so, I have a present for you: By the power vested in me by absolutely nothing whatsoever, I hereby absolve you of the requirement to clean your bathroom grout with a toothbrush, to drive two hours there and back to a one-hour yoga class, to cook for every bake sale or potluck your church/kid’s school/office has, to keep up with every writer’s mailing list and social networking site out there, to do anything that stops you from doing what you love.

Let go.

Guest blogger Heidi Betts, with a giveaway!

I’m hugely excited about today’s guest blogger, Heidi Betts. Heidi writes terrific, spicy contemporaries, and her latest novel, TANGLED UP IN LOVE, is a romance about my other favorite pastime…knitting. (*wink*)  Plus, she’s got a giveaway for our readers. Thanks, Heidi, for sharing the story of how TANGLED came to be.

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Good morning! Thank you so much to Jessica and all of her fellow American Title V Finalists for inviting me to blog today. (I’m actually hoping I can convince Jessica to guest blog for me soon over at my new knitting and romance blog, Must Love Yarn, because she’s another writer who knits and I want to pick her brain. )

So I’m here to talk about my sexy, funny single title contemporary debut & the first book in the “Chicks with Sticks” knitting trilogy, TANGLED UP IN LOVE, which will be in stores on February 3rd.

And Fate, because I truly believe that without it, this series would not exist.

Have you ever read the adorable children’s book FORTUNATELY by Remy Charlip? It’s wonderful, and if you haven’t, you definitely, definitely should. The path that led me to write TANGLED UP IN LOVE was so littered with Fortunately/Unfortunately situations that the book jumps immediately to mind every time I think of it. I can’t tell you the number of times my agent began phone conversations with “Well, I have some good news and some bad news.” Oh, how I came to loathe those words! And when all was said and done, he got a copy of FORTUNATELY to add to his personal bookshelf, as well as stern orders never to use that phrase with me again.

You see, I’ve always wanted to write romantic comedy, but the timing never seemed to work out for me. (Unfortunately.) Then I came up with this idea. A brilliant idea, if I do say so myself. An idea I loved and just knew was going to be a big hit. I showed it to my agent. He thought it was rather impressive as well and sent it immediately over to St. Martin’s Press, where an editor loved it. (Fortunately!) Unfortunately, they had another author already writing for them who was doing something similar (&^%#!), so she couldn’t make an offer. Fortunately, she loved my writing and wanted to see something else.

It took me all of about two seconds to tell my agent that, yes, I would definitely be willing to work up a few more ideas…well, okay, ideas I had; it was proposals that would take a bit of time to flesh out. He suggested I call the editor and talk to her about what she might be looking for. Smart man. Because, you see, it was during that conversation that she happened to mention how much she enjoys knitting, how popular knitting has becoming thanks to books like Kate Jacobs’s FRIDAY NIGHT KNITTING CLUB, and how much she’d love to find a hot and sexy knitting romance unlike anything that had been done already. (Hey, I write hot! I write sexy!) And then she uttered the eight words that changed my life: “I don’t suppose you know anything about knitting.”

I do! I do know something about knitting! As a matter of fact, when I first came home from college and announced to my parents that I wanted to write romance novels instead of becoming a teacher the way they’d expected, my mother taught me to knit so that I could sell dishcloths and bath mitts to local craft stores. (It wasn’t much, but it satisfied my parents’ demand that I work while also allowing me time to stay home and write.) Imagine my amusement when I realized that my knowledge of what I’d always considered simply a hobby might now open a wonderful new door in my writing career!

This was on a Friday, and I spent the entire weekend wracking my brain for hot, sexy knitting ideas. By Monday morning, I had a one-page proposal ready that I thought did a pretty good job of fitting the bill. It didn’t take long to hear back, and the news was all good this time. (Fortunately!) She—and everyone else at St. Martin’s—loved it. In fact, they wanted me to turn that single idea into a trilogy. The only instructions they gave me were to make it as sexy and funny as I possibly could.

So, you see, it was definitely Fate that led me down the knitting romance trail…and reminded me that sometimes what we want to happen isn’t necessarily as great as what’s meant to happen. And I’m so very grateful that things worked out the way they did, because now I get to write three books about three amazingly fun couples I never would have met otherwise.

I finally get to spread my wings and write the hot, sexy, funny contemporary romance I’ve always wanted to write.

And now that I’ve had my chance to share, tell me what you think… Do you believe in Fate—or as my agent would call it bashert (which is Yiddish for “it is as it should be”)? Or are you more of a mind that life is just a series of random events dotted with coincidence, and no one is up there leading us to anything?

I can’t wait to hear your responses. Thank you so much for spending the day with me and for letting me voice my enthusiasm over TANGLED UP IN LOVE. I’d love to invite everyone to visit my website (www.HeidiBetts.com)—where you can read an excerpt for TANGLED to tide you over until the book hits shelves on February 3rd!—my WIPs and Chains blog (a.k.a. The Dungeon), and my Must Love Yarn blog to read more about TANGLED…or to simply chat and have fun!

Also, if Jessica and her ATV comrades will be kind enough to allow me, I’d love to give away three autographed books from my backlist to three commentors to today’s post.

Love & stitches,

Heidi Betts
www.HeidiBetts.com
www.HeidiBetts.com/WIPSandChains
www.HeidiBetts.com/MustLoveYarn

Round Two has begun!

by Jessica Darago

Today’s post will be a short one, because the most important American Title V news of the day is that voting is open for Round Two!

This round features hero and heroine profiles. Come see all the entries and vote for your favorite at http://www.romantictimes.com/news_amtitle3.php.

On a more somber note, moving on to Round Two means one finalist has been eliminated. I’m sad to announce that it was Qaey’s entry, the first line of In a Lover’s Silence. I thought Qaey’s sentence was punchy and vivid, and I’m sure the voting was very close. I’m also still dying to read the whole thing! Um, Qaey? Email me!

The good news, though, is that she currently has two ebook releases available from Loose Id, Meeting a Neighbor’s Needs and the holiday-themed Santa’s Elf. She’s also working hard on the edits of her January Loose Id release, Diablo Blanco Club: Unfair Advantage. So you can still get your Qaey fix!

And never fear, Qaey is still an AT-V finalist, still one of us, so she’ll still be blogging here at Love Conquers. We can’t wait to hear more about her novels and her career journey.

That’s all for me for now. I have to dash back to my part-time seasonal job as an elf. (Yes, that was a short joke — though the “busy” part is perfectly serious!) Tomorrow, check out my personal blog at LiveJournal for how you can win a basket of British goodies just for promoting American Title V!

I’ll be back in two weeks, talking about a writer’s New Year’s Resolutions — and a reader’s too. And we’re lining up some more guest bloggers too, so come back and visit us soon!

Happy holidays, everyone!

…IN SPACE!

by Jessica Darago

I’ve never been the sort of writer who has trouble with ideas, only with execution. When I get writer’s block, it often helps me to walk away from the story at hand and play with something shiny and new. “…IN SPACE!” is one of my favorite exercises for finding something to play with.

Some writers say there are only seven plots. Some more generously minded folk say there are 20. Whether either number is correct or whether the possibilities are endless, one thing is true: none of us writes in a vacuum. We are all influenced by what we have read, heard, and seen before.

The “…IN SPACE!” game takes full advantage of the notion that there’s nothing new under the sun. It challenges you to look at the same ol’ plot in a brand new way, to use two (or more) familiar elements to create something new. Sounds like a recipe for derivative schlock? It doesn’t have to be. Consider, for example:

• Firefly: Cowboys and Indians (or, arguably, The Tempest)…IN SPACE!
• 10 Things I Hate About You: The Taming of the Shrew…IN HIGH SCHOOL!
• Ran: King Lear…IN MEDIEVAL JAPAN! (Honestly, I could fill this post with Shakespeare examples alone.)
• Bridget Jones’ Diary: Pride and Prejudice…IN CONTEMPORARY LONDON!
• Joyce’s Ulysses: Homer’s Odyssey…IN DUBLIN!
• Stephen King’s Dark Tower novels: “Childe Roland”…AFTER THE APOCALYPSE!
• Noises Off: A classic sex farce…BACKSTAGE AT A CLASSIC SEX FARCE!
• Lost in Space: The Swiss Family Robinson…GUESS WHERE!

I could go on…and on…and on…but I’ll restrain myself.

So here’s our game. Take an example from the “Plot” column and an example from the “Setting” column, and see where it leads your imagination. You can also jump off the list and supply your own plot/setting mashup.

Then try to take it a step further and create a log line. For example, I could take The Canterbury Tales as my plot and …IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICA! as my setting. I chew on that for a while, and I come out with, “A group of strangers on a bus trip to Graceland exchange stories about their lives, their loves, their regrets, and their dreams.”

Or, you can issue a challenge. For example, if someone can come up with a decent log line for “It’s High School Musical…BUT THEY’RE ALL GHOSTS!” I will give you a cookie. No, really. I will pack one up and ship it to you.

The secret to playing the game well is courage. Don’t go for the obvious. Frankenstein…STEAMPUNK STYLE! probably won’t get you very far. But “Little Red Riding Hood”…AFTER THE APOCALYPSE! That’s got possibilities.

Sound like fun? Give it a whirl!

Plot	Setting
Any Shakespeare play	…IN SPACE!
Any Jane Austen novel	…IN THE WILD WEST!
Any Arthurian legend	…IN ANCIENT EGYPT!
Any fairy tale	…FROM THE VILLAIN’S POINT OF VIEW!
Cowboys and Indians	…BUT THEY’RE ALL GHOSTS!
A political campaign	…WITH VAMPIRES!
A gang war	…IN A HOSPITAL!
Facing a natural disaster	…STEAMPUNK STYLE!
Exploring a new world	…AFTER THE APOCALYPSE!
First day on the job	…FROM [minor character's] POINT OF VIEW!
Reunion with a long lost [????]	…ON A FILM SET!
A soldier’s first battle	…ONLY BACKWARDS!
A case of mistaken identity	…BUT THEY’RE ALL CATS!
[fill in the blank]	…[fill in the blank]

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Today over on Sylvia Day’s blog, our own Marie-Claude interviews Michelle Lauren about How to Tame a Harpy. Come by and comment to win prizes!

Also, Romantic Times has vanquished those nasty little server gremlins, so the American Title pages are back up. Only seven more days to vote!

What’s in a genre?

by Jessica Darago

I’ve been thinking a lot about genre lately. The closer you get to being published (*knock wood*), the more you have to think about marketing, about how to present yourself to agents, editors, and the reading public. If you’ve not yet had to do this, you might be unaware of just how complicated the notion of “genre” has become. You have half-dozen to a dozen (depending on who’s counting) romance subgenres, and you have the charming euphemism “women’s fiction” (one wonders what “men’s fiction” might comprise), and then you have all the other fiction genres “with strong romantic elements.” It’s this last category that leaves me scratching my head, because I’m trying to think of the last time I read a book aimed at an adult audience (or a YA audience, for that matter) that didn’t have strong romantic elements.

As readers and writers of romance, no matter how supportive our friends and family are as a whole, each of us has at some point received The Look. You know the one I’m talking about: eyes wide, brows raised, mouth poised halfway between a prurient grin and a horrified O, almost always accompanied by the repetition of the dread word, “Romance?” I used to respond to this with an embarrassed grin and an attempt at justification. Not anymore. Now I just say “Yeah, romance,” and then I steer the conversation off in another direction, because I know I’m dealing with someone who hasn’t come to terms with the ultimate truth of Western art.

It’s all romance.

Don’t believe me? Take a gander at the classics: Homer, Ovid, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare…need I mention Jane Austen? Even the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest written story in the Western world, describes the devastating heartbreak of a love lost (Enkidu) and the power of love to heal that same wound (Sayuri). Even today, some of the most praised writers, the most beloved and admired novels, carry on the tradition, writers like A. S. Byatt, Charles Frazier, and Ian McEwan. Call it by whatever name you like, romance is everywhere.

Of course, I’ve been known to see romance in the oddest of places. (Vaarsuvius and Belkar 4 EVA!) I’m more than confident, however, that I’m not alone.

So what’s your favorite no-really-it’s-a-romance romance?

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Just a reminder, interviews with the American Title V finalists continue over at Title Magic, the blog of the AT-IV finalists. Today they’re talking with Marie-Claude Bourque, and yours truly is up tomorrow! Stop by and say hi.

Marie-Claude is also interviewing finalist Qaey Williams over at Sylvia Day’s blog. Remember to leave a comment for a chance to win a prize, courtesy of our gracious hostess Sylvia.

Happy Monday, everyone!

Welcome!

by Jessica Darago

Welcome, everyone, to the American Title V finalists’ blog! On behalf of all of us, thank you for coming by. We’ve only just begun our journey, and already it’s been a wild ride. We’re glad to have your company over the next few months and beyond.

First things first: Along the sidebar you’ll find lots of links to more information about us, the American Title Contest, Romantic Times Magazine, and Dorchester Publishing. More links are forthcoming, so be sure to check them often!

Second, bestselling author Sylvia Day has graciously invited us into her online home. Each week from now through December, Sylvia will host a Q&A with each of the American Title V authors and with one of her characters! The author interviews will be conducted by our own Marie-Claude Bourque (thanks, M-C!). You can find the interview schedule on Sylvia’s blog

First up is Edie Ramer, talking about her romantic ghost story, Dead People. Stop by for a fun read, and leave a comment for a chance to win prizes!

*administrator hat off*
*writer hat on*

It’s a glorious autumn day here in Northern Virginia. I took the long way to work this morning, along twisting roads lined with frosted, fallow fields. You’d never know such quiet and beauty lie so near the noise and rush of the nation’s capital. And while DC’s crowing glory is the springtime, for Virginia, it’s autumn.

When I set a scene, I love being able to base it on a real location. The internet is a wondrous thing, and it’s made a writer’s work infinitely easier (especially for those of us who write historicals), but there’s nothing quite like being there. A location is more than just an image; it’s sound and smell and texture and sometimes taste and … okay, I’ll say it, it’s the vibe you get from a place.

One day last autumn, a friend suggested we go hiking in Sky Meadows State Park. I was hip-deep in revisions on The Serpent’s Tooth at the time, wrestling with one scene in particular, a clandestine meeting between the heroine’s uncle and the woman he’s forbidden to love. A lot of my best writing happens when I’m hiking (the inside-my-head part of writing, anyway), so I agreed. And it was there, along an old carriage road, that I saw it: Toby, his collar turned up against the autumn wind, would ride his horse around that bend right there, and he would see Mary standing by the split-rail fence, her hands resting gracefully atop a fencepost, her searching eyes finding him at last and sparking with joy….

I found out later that Sky Meadows was named by former owner Robert Hadow after the Isle of Skye, the region of Scotland where many of the book’s characters come from and where a good chunk of the story takes place. It’s been years since I last visited that original Skye, but I saw the resemblance. I felt the vibe.

I didn’t type a single word that day, but it was one of the best writing days I’d had in a while.

There’s nothing like being there.

Have a great day, everyone!