Medieval to Modern
March 10, 2025 • 1 Comment
I love a good historical romance/adventure/fantasy. I love the swords and the sorcery, the tournaments, the gowns, and the oh-so-buff knightly knights. But I love them in my imagination, where I can omit the mud, disease, and bad dentistry. My standard response to those who chirp, “Oh, wouldn’t you just love to go back in time?” is a hard nope.
I have similar discussions with a good friend who loves camping and periodically tries to tempt me into the great outdoors. Yes, I adore nature, as seen from the patio of a quaint wine bar with a view of rolling vineyards. But that’s another rant …
Back to the hazards of time travel. It took me a while to shake off an inexplicable sense of guilt because, as a writer and lover of history, I SHOULD want to embrace the authentic past, chilly toes and all. But I don’t.
I have slept in an actual castle, and let me say cold and damp clings to ancient stone like a spectral lover. Should Guinevere encounter central heat and hot water, she would have mounted a crusade of a whole other kind to get it installed at good old Camelot.
Maybe it was this brutal truth that inspired me to set my Arthurian romances in the present day. There are occasional romps in the past with Ye Olde Authentick Mudde, but for the most part the Knights of the Round Table get to shower and order take-out. They also have jobs in a medieval theme park, because their skill sets are pretty specific. It’s a fun-to-write combination, where my imagination gets to play in two worlds at the same time. Enchanted Warrior, the first Camelot Reborn novel features Gawain, the hot-head of the bunch. He’s courageous and studly and, well, has a few things to learn about modern women. Fortunately, he’s one fish-out-of-water that’s worth the catch.
What’s not to love, when one can have all the swashbuckling drama and modern comfort both? That’s a fantasy I can get behind—and if there’s an occasional misplaced wizard, oh well. Merlin always was the outlier, whatever time period he was in. That gives his particular story a very special twist.
Author proposes what comes next.
January 22, 2017 • 4 Comments
Three – count ’em – three proposals are now out there in the universe. For me, that’s a bunch. Since I rarely restrict myself to one series at a go, that doesn’t mean only one of these three proposals I just finished will go forward at the expense of everything else. There’s the next Camelot Reborn book, which will happen one way or another. The other two are for brand new series more in the vein of the Baskerville Affair – adventure stories with a nod to romance rather than vice versa. I’ve been waiting for an A+ idea for the Emma Jane Holloway stable, and the muse finally delivered two. I have now sent them to my agent
. The second absorbed a chunk of my Christmas holidays, but I can’t think of a better way for a writer to celebrate than with a whole new universe to play in!
For those that don’t know, a book proposal is about the first three chapters plus an outline, plus some other supporting materials. Mine generally run around fifty pages or so if it’s for a new series, mostly because I want to be sure to get my idea across. There’s an art to writing these things, and most of what people say about synopsis construction isn’t that helpful (at least to me). I struggle every time, and the events I talk about in the outline may well be lies. I’m a plotter, but quite happy to change course at the drop of a hat. What really matters is digging deep enough to come up with the core themes and conflicts and making them shine. I always imagine my future editor reading the proposal in some far-off place, maybe on a subway with no sleep and a squalling kid across the aisle. I ask myself if the ideas are good enough to overcome the background noise and make him/her keep listening and keep wanting more.
Anyway, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the spark I see in my mind’s eye translates to the page.