Steve Berry | The Mystery of Charlemagne

Charlemagne is a historical figure you don't see a lot of in thrillers. Katherine Neville is the only writer I can recall who’s made good use of him. But he's fascinating. He ruled for 47 years, and lived to be 74, at a time when kings rarely reigned more than 5 years, and people died long before age 40. He unified a continent, laid the groundwork for the formation, centuries later, of a modern Europe, and many of his policies and practices became proven models for western civilization. He was a visionary who surrounded himself with smart people and, for the first time, placed the needs of his subjects before royal ambition. He was so progressive that it begs the question—did he have help? Was he privy to special knowledge?

Both questions spurred my imagination.

Within The Charlemagne Pursuit I utilized an actual artifact known as the Voynich Manuscript. It’s preserved in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University . Supposedly created sometime in the 15th or 16th centuries, its folios are penned in a language that no one has ever been able to decipher. In addition, there are a multitude of colorful, odd drawings. By general consensus the Voynich Manuscript is probably an elaborate medieval hoax, designed to fleece a royal patron out of a hefty payment. But no one knows for sure. Writing may well have been the single most important creation of human kind. Once we learned to memorialize our thoughts, in languages that could be understood by others many millennia later, human civilization rose to new levels. The Charlemagne Pursuit explores this all-to-real-phenomena.

The Charlemagne Pursuit is an intensely personal journey for my recurring hero, Cotton Malone. For 38 years he’s pondered what really happened when his father died in a submarine disaster in the North Atlantic. Then I came across the book Ice, by Marianna Gosnell, which described the amazing affects of Antarctic cold. Once I realized what was actually possible, I increased the intensity of Malone’s journey. As a writer, I struggle with character development. This book, my seventh novel, allowed me an opportunity to work on that aspect of my craft. It's much more character-driven than the others (though I don't scrimp on plot). I only hope reader’s regard my effort as a positive one.

In writing the story, I visited the Zugspitze in Bavaria and rode the same cable car, 10,000 feet up, that Malone finds himself trapped on. I also loitered around the cathedral in Aachen for four days, trying to conjure up the Charlemagne pursuit. Biltmore Estate in Asheville is one of my favorite places. I’ve visited several times, especially at Christmas. As for Antarctica, unfortunately I didn’t make it there (thank goodness the good Lord created National Geographic). My goal is to walk upon all seven continents. I have two to go.

Steve Berry
www.steveberry.org

Barbara Pierce | A SILENT CHARACTER: THE ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSE

In many ways, I view the country house as a silent character in my books. Although its role is often relegated to the background, the country house represents different things to different characters. For Amara Claeg in Tempting the Heiress, the family’s country house, Arras Green was a tragic reminder of Lord Cornley’s violent assault. In A Lady Mischief, Foxenclover was both a prison and sanctuary for young Maddy, while it represented a reclaimed birthright to her brother Tipton. Lady Fayre in Wicked Under the Covers viewed Arianrod simply as her beloved home, whereas in my current release, Scandalous by Night, Lord Everod was banished from Worrington Hall. The house became a symbol of all that he had lost.

Once I’ve locked down the plot and characters for a new story, I set to work on creating the various country houses and London town houses that will be featured. This is a great deal of fun for me because it mixes history with my imagination. It also has given me a chance to set up at least a half a dozen dream houses. Most of what I design never makes it into my books. This step is mainly a personal tool to help me visualize the setting. What’s relevant to the characters does go into the book, since I am telling the story through their point of view.

For fun, I’ve selected three country houses that have exteriors and interiors that never cease to inspire me. The first one is Chatsworth House. With four hundred and fifty years of history, the country seat of the Dukes of Devonshire and the family are both worth studying. Its extensive gardens are renowned throughout England. Chatsworth was used as Mr. Darcy’s Pemberley in the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice. The house also makes an appearance in Keira Knightley’s new film, The Duchess.

Levens Hall is a manor house located in the county of Cumbria. The original house was built by the Redman family in 1350. The Bellingham family added to the house during the Elizabethan period. Additional renovations were done in the 17th and 19th centuries. One of the more interesting features of Levens Hall is its topiary gardens. The gardens date back to 1694, and are some of the oldest in the world.

Another one of my personal favorites is Stourhead. The 2,650 acre estate is located in Wiltshire. The Palladian mansion was designed by Colen Campbell and built by Nathaniel Ireson circa 1720. The house was gutted by fire in 1901, but the Hoare family rebuilt the house in its original style. The natural landscape gardens are breathtaking.

Do you have a favorite English country house, castle, or garden? Has a book ever inspired you to decorate your own home in a certain style or design a garden?

Barbara Pierce
www.barbarapierce.com/
www.myspace.com/barbarapierce

Dianna Love | Walk the Land

Research is the strength of all stories, regardless if it is contemporary, historical, fantasy or futuristic. So how does an author create real settings in all of these worlds?

I like to walk the land every time I can to pick up details we don’t see in a casual passing or on the internet. When Sherrilyn Kenyon and I were writing our new romantic-suspense story PHANTOM IN THE NIGHT (Pocket/June 10, 2008) last fall, we spent time in New Orleans (NO) surveying areas specifically for the story in spite of our joint knowledge of Louisiana. Sherrilyn knows New Orleans well since her Dark-Hunter series is set primarily there, KCON (Kenyon Convention) is in or around the French Quarter each year and she lived in NO at one time. I had family in Louisiana at one time and still do in Biloxi, Mississippi, plus friends in NO. I’ve fished from many of the coastal Louisiana towns along the Gulf of Mexico and had a business in NO at one time, so Louisiana has been a favorite location of mine for many years.

Even with all this background, we spent time there last fall “walking the land” so we had fresh images of law enforcement locations and proximity of residences to the French Quarter, exit routes, airports (small ones, too) and shipping container storage facilities. I photographed areas and wrote notes pertinent to the story. And we always talk to people wherever we go. All this played a part in creating realistic scenes. When I wrote my RITA award-winning book, WORTH EVERY RISK, I had a lot of emails from readers saying how the setting in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida felt so real. That wasn’t too hard to do since I grew up in Florida and chose that city for many reasons that fit the story.

What about paranormal or fantasy stories – where do those settings come from? Sherrilyn has created such realistic sounding locations her books that fans often ask about the actual location of Sanctuary (Were Bear Bar) that will appear again in the upcoming ACHERON book (St. Martin’s Press/August 5, 2008), even though it is a fabricated establishment. She gives fans a walking tour through the French Quarter each year at KCON so they can see where different scenes occurred.

I have a paranormal novella coming out this fall that leans heavily toward fantasy. The setting is midtown Atlanta, Georgia – not far from where I live in Peachtree City. Even though I’ve lived here for many years and visit midtown quite often I still spent time walking through Piedmont Park just for the story, visualizing major scenes then traveling between different locations to get a good feel for time and place. But one setting is under a mystical mountain that is part of the actual Hindu mythology, another blend of mythical history with fictitious properties. I hope you’ll get a chance to read MIDNIGHT KISS GOODBYE (in the Dead After Dark Anthology by St. Martins Press/December 2, 2008) to see how I used real locations with fantasy elements.

~ Do you have a favorite story setting?

~ Did you ever read something that felt so real you wanted to go find that location…and did you try?

~ Have you read about a paranormal, fantasy or futuristic location you’d like to visit? Please tell us.

Visit my ONE DAY ONLY blog contest for a chance to win a copy of PHANTOM IN THE NIGHT. Two winners!!

Dianna Love

Dianna Love writes a romantic-thriller series with #1 NYT best seller Sherrilyn Kenyon. For more on PHANTOM IN THE NIGHT and Dianna please visit www.authordiannalove.com/, and for information on Dianna’s nonfiction book Break Into Fiction™: Power Plot YOUR Novel coming out in 2009 visit www.breakintofiction.com/