Opal Carew | The Confessions of an Erotic Romance Author Or How I Research my Erotic Romance Books

Do I do all those things I describe in my books?

As an erotic romance author, I find that people seem to be fascinated with how I research my novels. It is the most frequent question people ask me — usually with a wink and a grin. At a recent signing at a show called Sexapalooza in my home city of Ottawa, Canada, many people asked if it’s personal experience. I glanced around at the piles of books (6 different novels) and winked, telling them I’ve been a very busy lady. (My husband of over 25 years just chuckled! Um, yeah, I was about 2 when I got married!)

So how do I do my research? Well, I’ve found that there is an unexpected wealth of information all around us. At a family gathering, my niece, who has studied hypnotherapy, told me about an intriguing concept called erotic hypnosis. That inspired me to write a scene where one of my heroines (Hanna in BLUSH) enjoyed a very hot erotic fantasy with a plethora of sexy, leather-clad bikers. What I loved most was that I could really push the limits because it was a guided flight of imagination.

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Louisa Burton | Confessions of a Research Slut

When I first set out to write stories about incubi, succubi, and vampires, all I really knew about them was that they were mythological beings known for ravishing humans—a good premise, I thought, for a series of scalding erotic romances. Being an obsessive-compulsive researcher, I read everything I could find on the subject in order to build a world for my characters: a Babylonian succubus, a brooding djinni, a cheerfully lusty satyr, a tall, babe-alicious Nordic elf, and the occasional bothersome bloodsucker. It turns out that, until fairly recently, most people, no matter how learned, regarded “sexual demons” as real (in fact, a surprising number still do).

St. Augustine (354-430) wrote that “...sylvans and fauns, who are commonly called ‘incubi,’ had often made wicked assaults upon women, and satisfied their lust upon them.” Nine hundred years later, St. Thomas Aquinas explained that incubi could actually beget human beings, “not from the seed of such demons... but from the seed of men taken for the purpose; as when the demon assumes first the form of a woman, and afterwards of a man.” Hmm... Digging deeper, I found a 17th century treatise by Father Ludovicus Maria Sinistrari de Ameno, in which he described in salacious detail how an incubus, having morphed into a female succubus, will ravish “ardent, robust men” for the purpose of capturing their high-test seed. (Nice work if you can get it.) After turning back into a male, he targets “women of a like constitution, with whom the incubus copulates, taking care that both shall enjoy a more than normal orgasm...”

I am not making this up.

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Kyle Mills | Research: The Art of Not Making Things Up

I’ve learned a lot about novel writing in the more than ten years I’ve been doing it, but most of those lessons came with my first, Rising Phoenix.

People really care about the books they read. And I love that.

Unfortunately, I wrote Rising while I was working full time, so there was no way for me to scout the exotic locations I included. And the Internet didn’t exist yet, so casually clicking my way to enlightenment wasn’t an option. I did the best I could with magazine articles and encyclopedias until the excitement of finding a publisher made me completely forget the stuff I’d glossed over.

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Anne McAllister | Where do you get your ideas?

The most common question writers are asked is: Where do you get your ideas?

Generally the people asking it are perplexed because they can't quite fathom how such ideas come or how they are different from other ideas or what writers can possibly do with them when they do turn up.

Usually I say, "Ideas are everywhere."

But that doesn't really help. So in case you're wondering how things come together, let me just illustrate with my January Harlequin Presents, Antonides' Forbidden Wife.

It certainly didn't come as a full-blown story. No IDEA (in capital letters) popped up in my head. In fact, it wasn't supposed to be a story at all -- because PJ Antonides is not what is commonly considered "a Presents hero." He was a surfer, for heaven's sake!

He made an appearance in an earlier book. As the younger brother of the uptight, determined, severely responsible hero, PJ was by turns annoying, misunderstood, breezy and charming. Pretty much everything his brother was not. He also didn't own any multi-national corporations on the side.

He was also, in that book, called Peter because that's my husband's name and I called him that because I wanted a name I liked but one that I wouldn't be using for a hero (one hero named Peter is all anyone is allowed, I figure).

But I needed a book (I'd just stopped writing the one I had been working on, due to circumstances beyond my control), and one of the higher beings in the Harlequin pantheon of editors suggested Peter's story.

I said, "What story?"

Long pause on the trans-atlantic telephone line.

"He's a surfer!" I said.

"I thought you left him running the company," she replied, "when Elias went off to build boats." There was a sniff of disapproval about Elias's behavior.

"Well, yes," I said. And already the wheels were turning. I had left Peter running the company. But he was pretty much an unknown quantity as far as the family went. They'd barely seen him in ten years. He'd gone off to Hawaii and rarely came back. He'd even left his old identity behind. He'd become PJ out there. (Tricky guy. He obviously had designs on becoming a hero).

I wondered what other secrets he might have.

No secrets, he told me. Just a wife.

A wife? Where did that come from?

I have no idea. I guess it was mulling over what shocking revelation might create an interesting set-up and provide a stepping stone for some conflict. Yeah, a wife would definitely do that!

But where did he get her? Hawaii, apparently, because that's where he'd gone. Who was PJ likely to meet in Hawaii?

And just when I needed her, Ally Maruyama waltzed into the book.

Ally was a combination of several girls I'd known growing up in California -- daughters of mixed cultural backgrounds who had to try to deal with "old world" expectations within the world they wanted to live.

But why did PJ marry her? And where was she now? And what had brought her back?

All these questions demanded ideas to answer them. They were questions that took a lot of thought -- a lot of playing around with who these people were, what mattered to them, what drove them.

And then, of course, I had to ask who was Ally now, so many years later?

There were, as I said, lots of ideas involved in discovering the answers to that.

And that's where another bit of my own background came in. One of my best friends, growing up, has become a talent fiber artist. Melody Crust has won awards, written books, taught scads of workshops. Her career informed Ally's. I read Melody's book, A Fine Line, trying to see it through Ally's eyes.

I didn't know a lot about fiber art. I'm not an intensely visual person. But one of the joys of writing, as Silhouette author Karen Sandler said the other day at the Harlequin Open House, is learning about so many different things in the course of research.

Melody's vocation was my starting point. Ally's career and Ally's personality grew from there.

That's what most ideas are -- they are beginnings. They are catalysts. But alone they are no more than sparks. They need to ignite interest, research, discussion, and ultimately they need to create more questions and more answers until the story begins to develop and, eventually, takes on a life of its own.

And when it does, the characters come up with their own ideas -- and it's all I can do to keep up with them!

Anne McAllister
www.annemcallister.com/

Lindsay McKenna | Researching blog

I love research. It gets me out in the field and I meet some of the most remarkable people in those professions. Research, to me, is more fun than writing the book! I get to travel, learn something new and look at what I’m being educated about and how it might fit into a brewing plot in my head.

Every writer, in my opinion, should write what she or he knows. No matter how much your experience, you’re going to run out of books based upon your life knowledge. And then, moving to topics that make you salivate, is the next step.

For example, using DANGEROUS PREY, my HQN that is coming out in December, 2008, will give you some helpful information. It is a book where the hero is a raptor rehabilitator.

I can tell you that I’m not an expert on raptors or how to help them when they get injured. Sometimes kismet occurs and a writer gets lucky. I’m a member of the Flagstaff, Arizona Arboretum . I was up there about two years ago to do some photographing of their flowers.

Imagine my shock and surprise when I saw this gorgeous blond haired woman with a hawk on her glove walk by! Stunned, I followed her. That woman was Susan Hamilton who is the owner of High Country Raptors. She is licensed in the state of Arizona to care for injured or sick raptors (hawks, owls and falcons). She was putting on an educational program for those visiting the Arboretum. Mesmerized, I went over there and simply sat and listened. The birds she had were incredible! And she had plenty of helpers.

Susan gave a wonderful, enthusiastic talk about raptors and why we should never kill them. They are necessary for the balance in our environment. They eat mice, rats and other vermin which we don’t want around or in our homes. They do a lot of good. As I watched her and her helpers with all these raptors, a book popped into my mind and DANGEROUS PREY was hatched!

It took two years of driving up to Flag to be with Susan to learn how she cared for her raptors, the mews, the feeding, what they ate, their feeding schedule and a hundred other things that were necessary to give these birds a good, stable life. I always looked forward to going up there and have gotten to hold some of the birds on a gauntlet. It was a thrill.

One raptor in particular stood out. That was Luna. She is a European Eagle-Owl and eventually became the feathered heroine in my book. This female is seven pounds with a five foot wingspan. She’s the largest owl in Europe and is larger than our own Great Horned Owl. I’ve gotten to work with her a lot and I fell in love with her gentle growling sounds she’d utter when you hold her on the glove.

Another thing I had Susan do was read my rough draft manuscript when I was done. I wanted her to spot any inconsistencies or mistakes I’d made long before the book went to press. This is another area that’s helpful to a writer is having an expert’s eyes on the information. That way, I don’t get letters from upset readers who have spotted an error.

On my web site, http://www.lindsaymckenna.com/, on the front page with the cover of DANGEROUS PREY are four URL addresses. These go to my blog. While doing the research on the raptors, I took plenty of photos. If you go over there you’ll meet Susan and her birds.

No author wants mistakes in her book. If you are doing research, be sure to have the expert read your manuscript for errors. It’s a helpful process. I can say that Susan Hamilton became my friend over the years that we conspired together on my book. This is one of the many wonderful things that happens during research work. Even better, I have an understanding of the raptors that I love so much. And I also have a great admiration and respect for the 2,500 raptor rehabilitators here in the USA. They give up untold hours of time, their own money, to ensure these raptors can be returned to their wild life once more. Truly, they are heroes and heroines in my eyes.

Deanna Raybourn | Writer’s Passion

As a writer of historical fiction, I am frequently asked about research. Specifically, readers—and aspiring writers—want to know if it is necessary for me to visit the sites I write about. On this point I always give a firm and unequivocal yes. And no. Contradictory, I know, but hear me out. Developing a historical novel means creating a dual setting; it means creating a specific time and place for your reader to inhabit. They are a tourist in your world, and you must give them a guidebook of essential details to help them get around. In order to do that, you have to know the neighborhood at least as well as they do—and preferably better!

In preparation for writing Silent in the Grave, I traveled to England. (Technically, I tagged along on a school trip as a chaperone—a maneuver I only recommend to the truly desperate or masochistic.) I had planned that Grave would be a Regency effort, light and sparkling and frothy as a syllabub with just a spot of murder to spice the pot. But once I began writing, I realized the book needed Victorian London, a city of foggy streets, shadowed by industry and populated by Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes. The only difficulty was that I knew much less about 1886 than I did 1816. Luckily, I changed the setting the week before I was scheduled to depart. Once I knew my setting would be changed, the trip to London enabled me to experience that setting through new eyes. I sat on the same park bench that Lady Julia Grey shared with a London prostitute; I walked past her house on Curzon Street; I chatted with a raven in the Tower. And just as importantly, I was able to purchase maps and historical guides only published in England—books and ephemera that were indescribably valuable in establishing the London of Julia Grey and Nicholas Brisbane.

On the other hand—and you knew there would be another hand, didn’t you?—when it came time to write Silent in the Sanctuary I was desperately pressed for time. (My publisher may have gotten the idea that I was just a bit further along than I actually was…) With a deadline looming and the dollar falling, I had no choice but to press on and write the book without a trip. I relied instead upon mountains of research books and the blessed expanse of the internet. I found floorplans to Cistercian abbeys, photographs of jubilee towers, and moon tables for 1886 so that I could write with confidence that the moon was full and streaming its silvery light into the windows of Bellmont Abbey.

I have repeated the pattern in subsequent books. For Silent on the Moor, I told my husband I needed to smell a moor, and we packed our bags to spend Easter week of 2007 in Yorkshire. (And a very good thing we did. It turns out that moors have a very distinctive smell, and that it is very difficult to hold a proper conversation upon one.) The book I am just beginning to write, The Dead Travel Fast, is a compromise. It opens in Edinburgh, a city I have visited twice, but the action quickly moves to Transylvania, and I am forced once again to rely upon research and my own imagination.

And in the end, I think that is the most important travel tool of all. All of the scrambling over pyramids or sailing down the Danube will never convey the atmosphere of a place to a reader. Only a writer’s passion for a setting can do that, and while travel is broadening and inspiring, it is no substitute for the journey of imagination.

Deanna Raybourn
www.deannaraybourn.com/

C. C. Harrison | Strong Women

I admire strong women, don’t you? I’m not talking about famous women who have made important world changing contributions to science, literature, medicine or other areas of our culture. I’m talking about the young women of today who set goals, plan their lives, and make intelligent decisions for themselves. Women like Amanda, Tricia and Melissa, the three college students who were with me on the Navajo Indian Reservation as VISTA volunteers. They were smart and sharp, knew what they wanted, and deliberately set out to get it.

But I’m also talking about fictional women. My favorite is Scarlett O’Hara. I read GONE WITH THE WIND scads of years ago, but I will never forget the feeling of empowerment that came over me when time after time, Scarlett stood firm and met seemingly impossible challenges while everyone around her was going to pieces. Remember when she stood in that weather-ravaged potato field swearing she would never go hungry again? It gives me a thrill even now.

And I loved all the fictional heroines of those wonderful gothic novels of the seventies written by fabulous authors like Victoria Holt, Mary Stewart, Norah Lofts, and Phyllis Whitney. When the women in their stories heard all those creepy noises and thumpy bumps in the attic, did they slam the door and run away? NO! They went up that creaky staircase to check it out! I loved that! People joke about it, call those women TSTL (to stupid to live), but I thought then and I think now it took guts to do that. To me, courage is being afraid but doing it anyway.

I’m also talking about the women in my books who I hope readers find inspiring in the courage they show over the course of their story.

In THE CHARMSTONE, set in Monument Valley on the Navajo Indian Reservation, Amanda Bell leaves the comfort zone of her ordinary life in Beverly Hills when she is called upon to travel to a place she’s never been, and where she didn’t know anyone in order to fulfill her estranged father’s last wish. When she arrived in Monument Valley on the Navajo Indian Reservation, a place as foreign to her as if it were in another country, she felt uncertain, out of place, and, yes, afraid. Over the course of the story, she made mistakes that she learned from, overcame doubts and fears, faced mysterious threats, and despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles, persevered.

In RUNNING FROM STRANGERS (due out from Five Star in September), child advocate Allie Hudson finds herself running for her life with a child in her care. She raced across the country to the only person she could trust, hoping he’d forgive her for leaving him practically at the altar. Once there, she endured scorn, uncertainty, rejection, and danger, but she never backed down. She had a child to protect.

In SAGE CANE’S HOUSE OF GRACE AND FAVOR (written as Christy Hubbard, scheduled for release in July 2009 from Five Star), lack of finances propelled Sage Cane, a prim and proper city woman, to relocate to a rough and rugged mining town in a remote area of the Rocky Mountains. She had to learn to survive in a whole new — and to her, impossible — environment. It wasn’t easy, but she found a way to empower herself and the other women in town, and together they turned the entire place on its collective ear. Sort of Girl power in the Old West!

Before beginning that book, I did a lot of research on women who traveled into the historic frontier, and I am in awe of them for the colossal courage they showed in going to a place that was not only new and strange, but dangerous too. Sage Cane is my tribute to them.

Who are some of the strong women you admire, fictional or otherwise?

C. C. Harrison
www.ccharrison-author.com/

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/

Susan Lyons | I Hate Research – Except When I Don’t

Personally, I’m not a big fan of research, and after 10 years of university I’d hoped my research days were behind me. Not so! But at least when I’m writing fiction, I can choose topics that interest me.

Firefighters, for example. I decided that the hero of HOT IN HERE (the 2nd book in my Awesome Foursome series, which is a kind of "Sex And The City" series set in Vancouver, BC), would be a firefighter. Now there, let me tell you, was one tough research assignment! Drinking tea in a Vancouver fire hall kitchen with a group of hot firefighters; visiting a firefighter training centre in Reno; having a couple of Queensland firefighters dress me up in full turnout regalia, then catch me when I promptly toppled over!

Not all research is that much fun, unfortunately. Sometimes it’s a matter of a quick or lengthy internet search or reading a stack of library books. That’s great for getting the factual info. I’ll usually start there. Then, if possible, I’ll set up an interview or two. Hearing people’s experiences and insights adds so much flesh to those factual bones. Personal experience is the best thing, of course – it gives us sensory details, ambience, emotion. (For those who’ve read HOT IN HERE, yes, I actually did take a pole-dancing lesson!)

This week, I was at the library reading a brief excerpt from my latest release, SHE'S ON TOP (the 4th book in the Awesome Foursome series). I realized my background research included the following: the Banff summer music school (where the heroine and hero first met), Armed Forces families (because the heroine’s dad was with the Air Force and they travelled all the time), Jewish customs (because her mother was Jewish and her faith was very important to her), and the life of a professional classical musician (which the heroine lives). Of course the scene isn’t an info dump, it’s all about Rina and Giancarlo catching up after nine years, and the reader getting to see some of their similarities and differences – and getting an idea of the conflicts that are going to make for trouble between them.

The point of doing research isn’t to dump it all into the middle of a story, but to give the authentic details and “feel” that make the characters and story come alive and ring true. I know some readers (and writers) are obsessed about total accuracy, but in my opinion it’s fine to fudge a little with the facts; what really matters is emotional truth and resonance. If you’re a writer, how do you feel about the research aspects of your work? If you’re a reader, are you one of the people who notices if a tiny detail is wrong, or are you happy to opt into a “it’s all made up anyhow” approach and just go where the author (and characters) take you?

Thanks so much for inviting me to blog at Fresh Fiction.

Susan Lyons

For sexy romance that’s intense, passionate, heartwarming and fun

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Larissa Ione | Keeping It Real

"Write what you know." We’ve all heard it, and maybe we’ve even stayed true to that. But what happens when you need to write about something you don’t know?

Well, that’s where research comes in.

Now, I love research, and right now, I’m researching something I’ve always been interested in – modern and ancient Egypt. The problem? Trying to blend fact with not only fiction, but paranormal fiction, and strangely enough, while there is a ton of information about ancient Egypt, information on modern Egypt, outside of politics, is lacking.

See, I’m working on the third book in my Demonica series, which is set mainly in Egypt. The first two books, Pleasure Unbound (July 08,) and Shadow Lover (April 09) were largely set in New York City and in an underworld hospital. New York was easy enough to research, since there is oodles of information available (plus, I was constantly bugging Stephanie Tyler, my Sydney Croft writing partner, for details, since she lives there,) and the hospital was easy, because I made it up, using real hospitals and my depraved imagination (hey, it’s a hospital run by vampires, demons, and werewolves – it takes a little depravity to come up with the creepier details.)

But trying to work sketchy information about modern Egypt and Egyptian culture into a world where paranormal creatures and their human enemies collide both above ground and below? Well, that’s proving to be a challenge, especially because I’m a stickler for detail and getting it right.

I don’t have a problem manipulating gray areas into something that works for a fictional situation, but I absolutely hate getting details wrong – so much so that when Stephanie and I were writing the first three books in the Sydney Croft Storm series (Riding The Storm and Unleashing The Storm, both available now, and Seduced By The Storm, available September 08,) I contacted several meteorologist friends for information, even though I spent 15 years working in the weather field for the US Air Force and National Weather Service, and I know meteorology. But I wanted to make absolutely certain that our fictional weather machine could, theoretically, do what we needed it to do.

So what about you? As a reader, how important to you is technical detail (whether or not you know it’s accurate?) For example, I have NO idea if Tom Clancy’s incredible detail is accurate or not, but he writes with such authority that he could tell me the earth has two moons and I’d believe it. So does technical detail help pull you into a rich world, or does it bog down a story for you?

Larissa Ione (http://www.larissaione.com/)

Sydney Croft (http://www.sydneycroft.com/)

Anne Easter Smith | Research

I've just come off my first book tour and for the most part it was a blast! The weather was my only real complaint. What a thrill to meet readers and hear first-hand how my two books have impacted them.

As an historical novelist, the aspect of authoring that seemed to interest people and provoke the most questions was the research. “How much research do you do?” or “What percentage of your day goes to research and what to writing?” or even “Do you enjoy researching?” were common questions I was asked.

Yes, I love the research – especially when it takes me to neat places like Lisbon, Bruges, Edinburgh and London. I usually spend two or three weeks before starting to write in Europe—you know, if it's Tuesday it must be Belgium (and in my case that happened a lot for “Daughter Of York”)--and I have to confess it is tiring following in the footsteps of my characters. But without seeing the cities, churches, castles and landscapes that my characters would have seen, how can I give you a good idea of what it was to live there in those times? I need to look out of the third floor window of Louis de Gruuthuyse's house in Bruges and see what he could see. I loved peering down through the leaded panes of his little oratory room window and at the high altar in the Church of Our Lady next door. He built a bridge over a side road between his house and the church so that he and his family need not leave the house to join the Mass! I have Margaret shown the room by Louis in “Daughter of York” when she visits him. I love those little details in other good historicals I have read, so I was determined to include them, too.

But it takes time and perseverance to find what you need. I spend hours in libraries and archives looking for letters, drawings of palaces and castles, and medieval maps of the city or town I'm in. I've met with town historians and university professors who have given of their time to help me. Then there was the time in Mechelen (in Margaret of York's time it was more often referred to as Malines) when,one morning, I was snooping around the stage door of the theater there which is all that remains of Margaret's palace and found an unlocked door; so I snuck in. Halfway up the stairs I was confronted by a woman who was most indignant that I was trespassing. When I apologized and explained why, she identified herself as the artistic director of the theater and took me into the Green Room, which was once half of Margaret's great hall. How wonderful was that! It gave me goosebumps to be standing in Margaret's home. It pays to be bold, I guess.

While at my computer in the writing phase, I never stop researching and find I cannot continue halfway through a paragraph if something comes up that I am not sure of: like whether I could say that my protagonist in the third book reminded her friend of a wren. I grew up loving those sweet little birds in England. But something nagged at me and I went into my Observer's Book of British Birds and found out that the wren is actually an immigrant from North America. This is 1485 and Columbus has not yet sailed the ocean blue! So I had to use a sparrow instead—a native but not so perfect a species for my purpose. Boo! Also, things like how long a ride in a carriage would have taken from London to Canterbury, or where did the medieval road take you through. Sometimes I wonder why I chose this genre—surely it would have been simpler to write about today and what I know!

But no, this is truly where I belong—after all there had to be a reason why I spent all my daydreams as a child in a long dress, wandering through Gothic cathedrals, down narrow dirty streets, or through meadows of wild flowers searching for my knight in shining armor!

Anne Easter Smith, author of “A Rose for the Crown” and “Daughter of York”

http://www.anneeastersmith.com/
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