:welcome: Please join us in welcoming Historical Author, Gina Black. Her debut novel, The Raven’s Revenge is a new release from The Wild Rose Press. After you read her fabulous post, leave a comment or a question and you’ll automatically be entered in Gina’s book giveaway. One lucky poster will win a copy of The Raven’s Revenge.

And now here’s Gina!
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Thank you Southern Fried Chicas for your gracious hospitality in inviting me to blog today. And Tanya, thank you for the tea. It’s so very . . . sweet of you. But enough about you. This is about me and my first published book, right? So let me take you back to the beginning . . .

Once upon a time there was a fledgling writer named Gina Black who decided she’d write a story set in England’s Restoration period (around 1660 right after Cromwell died and the English decided they wanted their fun–and their King–back and they invited Charles II home to govern). One of my favorite books, The Fireflower by Edith Layton, is set then and it starts with the hero returning to England after years abroad to reclaim his ancestral lands. He arrives as London is going up in flames during the Great Fire of 1666. So, I thought, let me take that same premise, put it a few years earlier with a different man and see where it takes me.

Characters always come to me first, and the hero, Nicholas (Edward Henry Philip Montford, Seventh Earl of Ashton), jumped into my imagination fully formed (and named). A passage in one of my research books gave him to me:

“The family life of the rural gentry, that had produced generation after generation of Verneys, Hydes, and Hampdens, had now for twenty years been broken up; its traditions were therefore unknown to the younger generation. While his sisters had been living in a corner of the sacked manor-house under the charge of the steward, the heir had been seeking bread for his mouth among the bullies and sharpers of low life in Dutch port towns, or sponging on the vicious nobility of France and Spain . . . with no instruction in morals and dignity of conduct beyond salt stories of Puritan hypocrisy, in which the defeated veterans found solace and revenge.” –England Under the Stuarts, G.M. Trevelyan

That was my Nicholas. A man who’d grown up without roots or moral direction, but who’d managed to scrape his way through life and survive. Now he was in a position to return home to the land of his birth and fulfill the promise he’d made to his dying father: He would get back the family lands.

The heroine, Katherine, did not come so easily. I wanted her to be a woman of her times facing a problem so big that she had to disobey her family and risk everything. I wanted her to be intelligent and thoughtful. I wanted her to be strong. That meant she’d also endured much, and had learned to keep her thoughts to herself. In fact, Katherine was so very good at that, she kept many of her thoughts from me, finally loosening up on the fourth (I kid you not) draft.

So, she disobeys her father and refuses to marry their evil neighbor, and makes a pact with Nicholas–who, while masquerading as a highwayman (it’s a long story, you should read it sometime) gets shot–and they’re off on the road to London. A very bumpy road. In fact, in Restoration England, the roads were notoriously bad, especially after the rains. And yes, it does rain in the story, how nice of you to ask! (And, thank you, I will have some more of that tea, if you don’t mind.)

I had loads of fun writing a “chase” romance. Being on the road together is a great way for a Puritan and a Cavalier with nothing in common to get to know each other. Also a wonderful way for me to puzzle over maps for hours and hours. (And send lots of SOS emails to anyone who knew about horses.)

It wasn’t long before several really fun secondary characters showed up, and then, wouldn’t you know it, the king himself made a cameo. Once he appeared, he pulled me aside and told me he wanted an even bigger role. What could I do? One cannot gainsay a king!

I finished the book, revised it half a million times, entered it in a biznillion contests (which is one of the ways we got to know each other, isn’t it Tanya?) finally sending it to Dorchester for the American Title II competition. It finaled! I was over the moon and learning how to promote all of a sudden. The Raven’s Revenge stayed in the competition into the fourth round. (My characters were quite put out that their love scene was not up for votes so I posted it in the American Title archive on my website to make them feel better.)

Then, last March, I submitted the book to The Wild Rose Press and they offered for it within a week of receiving the full manuscript. Nicholas and Katherine were elated. We revised. We copy edited. We threw out one epilogue and wrote another.

And now The Raven’s Revenge is out in the Big World. My characters have not stopped preening, and–wouldn’t you know it–one of the secondary characters is beginning to demand a book of his own.

Characters. Can’t live with ‘em. Can’t write without em. How do you develop yours? (And how do you keep them in line?)

~~Gina