The projects on my waiting-to-write or working-on-writing list
Riley Cole offered us this great question on the Hearts through History writers' discussion list:
"Jayne Ann Krentz (Amanda Quick) believes every writer has a core story they spend their careers exploring. She describes hers as romantic suspense-a passionate relationship intertwined with a murder mystery-and it's something all her books explore, across the 3 genres she writes.
Have you identified a core story of your own?"
What a great question! It really made me think. What an interesting definition of a writer's life -- and accurate I think.
I realized it all goes back to some silly thing my mother once said to me: "Never marry someone from your home town." (Good job, mom! I've never married anybody! *yet)
In all of my romance stories, the hero and heroine are from different, often conflicting, cultures, or, they're displaced. Having been raised on a ranch as an heiress with a strong sense of land being part of one's character, the places and societies people come from (city-country, country-country, and now, time travel!) always play a strong role in my stories.
And there is almost always some travel.
The first one was two east-coast people, displaced as so many Canadians were by the decline of fishing and the oil money out west. They actually WERE from the same place, but found each other out west.
The second one has a feisty (arrogant, like I was raised!) heroine from a cattle ranch who falls unwillingly for someone she originally labels a city boy turned mountain playboy from the east. (And after she gets taken down a peg, she learns how to get off her high horse and be happy.)
The third one has two people from the same home town, grew up together and best friends, but when romance blossoms and he pulls away from their relationship, she decides to get over him by going to Australia. And he follows, and keeps finding her, and she keeps running away, so it's kinda fun. He catches her eventually and makes his love/intentions clear so she stops running away.
The fourth one has two Australians travel to Asia.
Another two characters who are very strong but also quite naughty so I haven't written their novel yet, is Mariko and Max -- she's an Asian-Canadian in Vancouver and he's a BC country boy -- her culture, and her blossoming into the person she wants to be, and his nice-guy Canadian culture, are big parts of their characters.
In the fifth one, I started to reach even further than just places -- I started to long for finding an old-fashioned man, I guess. I couldn't get a date when I lived on a west coast island, and I thought how nice to have a hero from the Venetian Renaissance... and now I can't stop writing time travel. Love the interactions of cultures, attitudes, time periods. And my dragon jumped into that story, the one that lived with us on our west coast island, and then magic started seeping into my books too. Water-themed magic in this first dragon one for me.
The sixth one two cousins meet when one inherits a house in Edinburgh and falls through time to the enlightenment. The cousin from the past is delighted to come into the future and forge an amazing life with an amazing man with modern attitudes. It's really interesting to contrast the two women's self-esteems as the modern cousin also develops her romance with a fellow historian. Though they look nearly identical, one believes she's beautiful and the other doesn't -- only because of what each has been told about herself in their lives. And... yes, the hero is American, and he and heroine travel to Provence as their story develops. They explore communal architecture and capitalism in their conversations and interactions, and develop a really awesome housing development based on repurposed Roman arena design.
In Blodwyn's Redemption, also in-progress (but sort of on hold while I make money for son's upcoming university education), I take a city girl down a peg this time. Villainess Cynthia from Caterina's Renaissance loses her memory and is tossed back through fire to just-post-Roman-era Cornwall. She learns to love herself and everyone around her in the simpler context of early medieval life, so that when she regains her memory about the wealth-hungry villain she once was, she has a new perspective and resolution to mend the harm she has done. Seeing an early medieval energy healer in busy, noisy Toronto is also a very interesting perspective on modern life. And the magic in this book is all light/fire based.
In the book that follows Blodwyn's Redemption, magic connects an 18th-century Acadian woman (Acadians who survived their terrible expulsion and imprisonment and thrived back in France were certainly phoenixes -- born of fire) with an WWII Navajo man (was in Europe as a code talker during the war, but tumbles back through time to her).
So. Sense of place, and how that affects our character, that's my answer, and thank you for the amazing question, Riley!
Christa
www.christabedwin.com
"Jayne Ann Krentz (Amanda Quick) believes every writer has a core story they spend their careers exploring. She describes hers as romantic suspense-a passionate relationship intertwined with a murder mystery-and it's something all her books explore, across the 3 genres she writes.
Have you identified a core story of your own?"
What a great question! It really made me think. What an interesting definition of a writer's life -- and accurate I think.
I realized it all goes back to some silly thing my mother once said to me: "Never marry someone from your home town." (Good job, mom! I've never married anybody! *yet)
In all of my romance stories, the hero and heroine are from different, often conflicting, cultures, or, they're displaced. Having been raised on a ranch as an heiress with a strong sense of land being part of one's character, the places and societies people come from (city-country, country-country, and now, time travel!) always play a strong role in my stories.
And there is almost always some travel.
The first one was two east-coast people, displaced as so many Canadians were by the decline of fishing and the oil money out west. They actually WERE from the same place, but found each other out west.
The second one has a feisty (arrogant, like I was raised!) heroine from a cattle ranch who falls unwillingly for someone she originally labels a city boy turned mountain playboy from the east. (And after she gets taken down a peg, she learns how to get off her high horse and be happy.)
The third one has two people from the same home town, grew up together and best friends, but when romance blossoms and he pulls away from their relationship, she decides to get over him by going to Australia. And he follows, and keeps finding her, and she keeps running away, so it's kinda fun. He catches her eventually and makes his love/intentions clear so she stops running away.
The fourth one has two Australians travel to Asia.
Another two characters who are very strong but also quite naughty so I haven't written their novel yet, is Mariko and Max -- she's an Asian-Canadian in Vancouver and he's a BC country boy -- her culture, and her blossoming into the person she wants to be, and his nice-guy Canadian culture, are big parts of their characters.
In the fifth one, I started to reach even further than just places -- I started to long for finding an old-fashioned man, I guess. I couldn't get a date when I lived on a west coast island, and I thought how nice to have a hero from the Venetian Renaissance... and now I can't stop writing time travel. Love the interactions of cultures, attitudes, time periods. And my dragon jumped into that story, the one that lived with us on our west coast island, and then magic started seeping into my books too. Water-themed magic in this first dragon one for me.
The sixth one two cousins meet when one inherits a house in Edinburgh and falls through time to the enlightenment. The cousin from the past is delighted to come into the future and forge an amazing life with an amazing man with modern attitudes. It's really interesting to contrast the two women's self-esteems as the modern cousin also develops her romance with a fellow historian. Though they look nearly identical, one believes she's beautiful and the other doesn't -- only because of what each has been told about herself in their lives. And... yes, the hero is American, and he and heroine travel to Provence as their story develops. They explore communal architecture and capitalism in their conversations and interactions, and develop a really awesome housing development based on repurposed Roman arena design.
In Blodwyn's Redemption, also in-progress (but sort of on hold while I make money for son's upcoming university education), I take a city girl down a peg this time. Villainess Cynthia from Caterina's Renaissance loses her memory and is tossed back through fire to just-post-Roman-era Cornwall. She learns to love herself and everyone around her in the simpler context of early medieval life, so that when she regains her memory about the wealth-hungry villain she once was, she has a new perspective and resolution to mend the harm she has done. Seeing an early medieval energy healer in busy, noisy Toronto is also a very interesting perspective on modern life. And the magic in this book is all light/fire based.
In the book that follows Blodwyn's Redemption, magic connects an 18th-century Acadian woman (Acadians who survived their terrible expulsion and imprisonment and thrived back in France were certainly phoenixes -- born of fire) with an WWII Navajo man (was in Europe as a code talker during the war, but tumbles back through time to her).
So. Sense of place, and how that affects our character, that's my answer, and thank you for the amazing question, Riley!
Christa
www.christabedwin.com
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