CREATURE FEATURES by Juliet Waldron

Several years ago I decided to begin to write a story centered around a creature. By doing that, I knew I was entering a crowded, expert field that had been successfully creating vampires and werewolves, witches, and all the rest of the occult cousinage for many, many years.

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Still, why not? I had had a notion to write a sequel to Red Magic. Unlike the other novels I’ve written which are full-on historical fiction, Red Magic  was cross-genre in at least four ways, because there are elements of fantasy, history and adventure as well as the old-fashioned romance at the core. Moreover, if you end a story with the birth of fraternal twins-- in this case, a girl and a boy--there is an obligation to write a follow-up around them. It’s an ancient story-teller's convention, probably well-established by the time the Greeks dreamed up Apollo and Diana.   

 

Okay, so all well and good, but almost immediately I was stuck again. The tall, dark hero and his red-headed sister I already knew something about—their loves, loyalties and a few of their day-to-day human problems. The question remained: into exactly what sort of creature would my hero morph?

Personally, vampires alarm me. It seems to me there are enough scary people in the real world who fit into this category without making up fictional ones who are going to (somehow) become the love interest. On the other hand, I’ve always had a soft spot for werewolves, but there sure are a lot of them howling at the moon already.

I decided to step back a pace. Why not try something less limiting? Going after the all-encompassing “shape-shifter” idea seemed a way to make an unusual hero who wasn’t boxed into a particular set of conventions, such as drinking blood or only being active after dark. If the hero/creature could become different animals, his metamorphosis could be different every time, which would definitely give my imagination a work-out. Like the boy Wart in The Sword in the Stone, my hero could sometimes be a carnivore and sometimes a herbivore, sometimes four-legged, sometimes winged, as the need and/or inclination arose.

I'm nearing the completion of Black Magic now. If I can just keep my "fanny in the chair," it should be done within the next month and ready for a stern edit. For me, it's been quite an experience, a crazy road trip out of my usual historical writer's comfort zone. 

More about all my books at:

 

http://www.julietwaldron.com

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http://www.bookswelove.net/julietwaldron

 

    

 

RED MAGIC ~ CHRISTOPH ~ A Character Blog

 

My days of intemperance--of gambling, womanizing, and drinking--are done. Whether my sins ended when the cannon burst , nearly taking my leg, or whether they ended last month, when my affianced, an endlessly forgiving lady whom I’d at last agreed to wed, fell from her horse and broke her neck, matters little. My dear lost Wili, fool that I am, I took you for granted, thought you would always be there, arms open, ready to love and forgive!

That part of my life, full of deception and lies, those days of selfish pleasure—are over.  As my confessor says, God has granted me wealth, position, strength and grace of form, but I have taken His gifts for granted, have evaded the duties and tasks which are required of a gentleman.

 I am to marry my lost bride’s little sister and take up the duties of lordship, tending to neglected family property and assisting my father with diligence and honesty. My young cousin Caterina will not make an easy wife, for she justly blames me for her beloved sister’s years of unhappiness.   Caterina is, to all intents and purposes, a child, with little knowledge of the world or of the duties required of a gentleman’s wife. There is almost nothing about her—beyond her lanky promise of beauty—which interests me, except for her surprising knowledge of horseflesh, which rivals that of any man I've ever known.   

 If I am to fulfill the promises I’ve made to my family and to God, I must be patient with my young cousin, be at first far more a stern and loving father than a husband.  This will not be easy for me, as I have hitherto been accustomed to always have my way with the ladies...

 

~~ Christoph von Hagen

 

 

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~Juliette Waldron

Historical Novels with Passion and Magic 

http://www.julietwaldron.com

The Character who Keeps Coming Back

The character who keeps coming back; most writers have them. The book that can’t or won’t be finished--there's at least one on every writer’s hard drive. My particular dark horse always returns in the first warm weather, this year occurring in March. Her sweet German nickname is Blumchen and she’s here again, sucking up my waking hours. Needless to say, I’m reediting and reimagining scenes and conversations I’ve visited many, many times. I’ve journeyed to this imaginary world regularly, at least once a year, since 1986.

A complete reworking doesn’t take place every year, at least not since the first decade. Blumechen's is the first book I ever completed, although a satisfactory ending, I think, still eludes me. Like Constanze of my Mozart’s Wife, this young heroine insists on speaking in the first person, which both narrows and deepens her POV. It’s like writing pinned inside her dress. What's more, she belongs to the cast of characters already familiar to readers who are interested in Mozart and his circle of musicians, dancers, con artists, noblemen, Masons, and various stage-struck hangers on.

I’ve heard authors talk about having a “channeling” experience with their characters. There are many tales of automatic writing and spirit dictation, which sounded at first as if they should be taken with great handfuls of salt. However, after the experience I have had in writing this old and perhaps never-to-be-finished novel, I know channeling does happen. Ordinarily it takes a period of work to make your character dolls start moving independently, but in this case, it appears I was the vessel chosen by a voice from the past. She wanted me to tell me about the events of a single, intense summer, and I've tried to give her my attention.  She came at night, during a time when I was still working in an office, and kept me awake for most of the night. As you can imagine, this eventually lost me my day job, but that's all water under the bridge now.

So began this tulip-time, and now we're into green May and Blumechen is back again, stamping her little foot and calling for rewrites and editing. She insists I do my best work, despite the fact that the story is a humble “historical romance.” I hasten to add that it’s "romance" in the original sense of the word, in the way Romeo & Juliet or The Scarlet Pimpernel  or Wuthering Heights are "romances." I’m not using the modern commercial sense of the word with a happily ever after ending . I’m using the old-fashioned bloody insanity of a love affair, the madness which can so easily end in tragedy. IMO that's the true nature of the beast, and exactly what makes completing a tale of a hopeless passion so very, very difficult.

--Juliet Waldron

 http://www.julietwaldron.com/

Juliet Waldron is the author of several historical novels set in the erotic, exotic18th Century:

Mozart's Wife

Genesee

Red Magic

All available from BWL