with Katharine Ashe
We are delighted to welcome historical romance novelist Katharine Ashe to Omnimystery News today.
Katharine's second book in her "Prince Catchers" series is I Adored a Lord (Avon; July 2014 mass market paperback and ebook formats) and we recently had the opportunity to catch up with her to talk more about it.
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Omnimystery News: Introduce us to the characters of your latest series.
Photo provided courtesy of
Katharine Ashe
Katharine Ashe: My new book, I Adored a Lord, is the second in a trilogy of romances set in early nineteenth-century England and France. In the first book of my Prince Catchers series, I Married the Duke, three orphaned sisters learn from a fortuneteller that they will only discover their true identities if one of them someday marries a prince. Years later, the heroine of I Adored a Lord, an amateur veterinarian, doesn't have time for ridiculous fortunes. Nevertheless, her determined sister sends her off to a castle in the mountains of France to the bride-hunting party of a foreign prince. Then a murdered man is found encased in a suit of armor, and everybody in the castle is a suspect.
The sisters' three destinies and their devotion to each other propel the series, and I loved writing them. I have four sisters and I drew on each of our unique relationships to create the bonds between my three very different heroines.
The hero of I Adored a Lord, Vitor Courtenay, suffered torture during war at the hands of his half-brother. Two years in a remote monastery have taught him to cage his anger, but he's restless now, and eager to move on to the next dangerous adventure. His former wartime work makes him ideally suited to investigate the mystery of the murdered houseguest at the prince's party. But Ravenna's determination to assist him in this perilous task becomes his greatest challenge. Should he keep her at safe arms' length, or hold her far too close for comfort?
Intrigue and adventure are staples of all my novels, but I Adored a Lord is the first house party whodunit I've published. I modeled it loosely on the board game Clue (I even named the characters accordingly) — a favorite of mine as a child. The design of I Adored a Lord as a classic murder mystery made it easy to do what I simply adore doing in my historical romances: create a large cast of varied characters.
OMN: Describe your writing process for us.
KA: The Prince Catchers is a historical romance trilogy, with additional spin-off novellas. Most genre romances feature a unique hero and heroine whose "Happily Ever After" together are assured at the end of the book. Romance readers love to see their favorite heroes and heroines play small roles in later books, as well as beloved minor characters, and I'm always thrilled to bring a character back for a cameo. In the case of the Prince Catchers, each of the sisters plays a crucial role in her sisters' stories. As their heroes are introduced into the series, they are too.
I begin every novel with a portrait in my imagination of the romantic dynamic between the hero and heroine. I draw the story around that, including the creation of new characters or of characters that I bring back from my earlier novels. No characters remain static, and even secondary characters continue to develop from story to story.
OMN: Given this is a historical series, how do you go about creating an accurate voice for your characters?
KA: Genre romance is typically told from the deep point-of-view of both the hero and the heroine, so every romance I write features two protagonists. I've heard some female romance writers claim to write the male voice authentically. But that assumes a monolithic, homogenous male voice, which is a notion I don't ascribe to. Also, in Regency-era England, ideas of masculinity and femininity were not the same as in the current US, so what seems authentically male to us now doesn't necessarily describe "authentic male" in early nineteenth-century England. Each character I write speaks his or her unique voice to me, and I try to put that on the page.
Smiling now, I'm put in mind of the one question romance authors are always asked: Do you do all the research for your sex scenes (asked with a wink-wink and an elbow nudge)? My response is that I haven't yet in my life battled with a villainous pirate on the deck of a ship, danced at a ball with a duke, or raced my curricle up the Old North Road (though I'm still looking forward to the latter, someday … ), yet I've written those scenes too. I am an author of fiction — fantasy made to look real. I write what I experience, but I also write what I learn and what I intuit, including the male voice.
OMN: Give us a summary of I Adored a Lord in a tweet.
KA: She's intended for his brother. He's destined for adventure. Then a dangerous mystery throws them together, and all they want is each other.
OMN: You mentioned that "fantasy [is] made to look real", but how much of your own personal experience have you included in your books?
KA: Twice I've based characters firmly upon people I'd actually known, but even those characters became their own unique selves as I wrote them, different from the original actual person.
To me a good romance novel is roughly four parts emotion and one part everything else. There are plenty of sword fights and balls and ships and what-have-you's in my books, but mostly you'll find loads of deep emotion. To write these stories, I draw from my emotional experiences and those of people I've loved.
OMN: Where might we find you writing?
KA: Everywhere! I write a lot like I read a good book: without pause to the end. I simply can't wait to get to the happily-ever-after. I kid you not. I know how it's going to end. Not only is it genre romance, which means the girl always gets the boy in the end, but of course I'm the one making it up, so … Right? I'm impatient, though, and addicted to the thrill ride of a good love story. This often means that when I'm writing the first draft of a novel, I write wherever I am and whatever else I'm doing. (My husband once took a picture of me standing at the stove, typing with one hand as I stirred dinner with the other.) For the minutes when I absolutely cannot be at my laptop during a writing binge — on the dog walk, doing errands — I make a soundtrack of music that reminds me of characters and scenes from the book, and I write scenes in my head until I can get to a pen and paper or computer.
OMN: If you could travel anywhere in the world to research the setting for a book — on our dime, of course! — where would it be?
KA: Saint Petersburg, Russia. There is an epic romance to the history of the city that calls to me. And the architecture … Oh, the architecture!
OMN: What are some of your outside interests? And have any of these found their way into your books?
KA: My family, dog, garden. Running. Music. And I teach history to university students part time.
I Adored a Lord features a few of these. I've already mentioned my sisters; Ravenna loves hers as I love mine, despite of and probably because of our differences. Ravenna is an animal caretaker and amateur veterinarian, and the book includes several very significant canine characters, as well as many other animals. (As a child I wanted to grow up to be a vet. Bringing together that old love, archive research into early nineteenth-century veterinary medicine, and writing a romance was pretty much heaven to me.) I'm trained as a medievalist, and I always have great fun peppering my novels with nifty historical tidbits that I know from studying and teaching classical and medieval history. The castle at which the mystery in I Adored a Lord takes place is a fourteenth-century fortress (modeled on Château de Cléron), and the armor in which the murdered man is found is late-medieval too.
I adore history. The broad, varied tapestry of human cultures and the alternate beauty and tragedy of human endeavor in history enthralls me. The romances I write are set mostly in England during that kingdom's imperial era. At that time the British Empire stretched across oceans and continents. When I'm developing a story set in this era, I'm a kid on Christmas morning. While my stories often find their homes in the British Isles, I people them with characters from all over the world and all situations in life. For instance, my heroes include a vigilante anti-slaver with a crew of Haitian sailors, a half-Egyptian former slave and ex-pirate, and an Anglo-Indian lord reared in British India, among others. I've written love scenes set on the Atlantic ocean, swordplay set in Madras, cane fields burning in the Caribbean, a road trip across Wales in the pouring rain, a ball at a French chateau (that looks suspiciously like Chenonceau), and a ship battle upon the Irish Sea. I love to explore the rich crisscrossing of cultures and intermingling of peoples in this era of war and tumult across the colonial world. While romance is the core and purpose of each of my books, the exciting texture of real history colors the experiences and identities of all my characters. I was raised on epic adventures, and I adore them, and I hope that the love stories I write resonate with that.
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Katharine lives in the wonderfully warm Southeast with her husband, son, dog, and a garden she likes to call romantic rather than unkempt. A professor of European history, she writes fiction because she thinks modern readers deserve grand adventures and breathtaking sensuality too.
For more information about the author, please visit her website at KatharineAshe.com or find her on Facebook and Twitter.
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I Adored a Lord
Katharine Ashe
A Novel of Romantic Suspense
She's intended for his brother. He's destined for adventure. Then a dangerous mystery throws them together, and all they want is each other.
Three very different sisters beguile society with their beauty and charm, but only one of them must fulfill a prophecy: marry a prince. Who is the mystery Prince Charming, and which sister will be his bride?
All that clever, passionate Ravenna Caulfield wants is to stay far away from high society's mean girls.
All that handsome, heroic Lord Vitor Courtenay wants is to dash from dangerous adventure to adventure.
Now, snowbound in a castle with a bevy of the ton's scheming maidens all competing for a prince's hand in marriage, Ravenna's worst nightmare has come true.
Now, playing babysitter to his spoiled prince of a half-brother and potential brides, Vitor is champing at the bit to be gone.
When a stolen kiss in a stable leads to a corpse in a suit of armor, a canine kidnapping, and any number of scandalous liaisons, Ravenna and Vitor find themselves wrapped in a mystery they're perfectly paired to solve. But as for the mysteries of love and sex, Vitor's not about to let Ravenna escape until he's gotten what he desires …
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