Continuing with our Fantasy Romance month, we want to give a big welcome to R. F. Long.

Why Fantasy Romance?

By R. F. Long

Why do I write fantasy romance? Because I love it – always did, even when I didn’t know it had a name. Why do I love it?

Ah, there’s the question

The key ingredient to any love story is an adventure, a journey into the unknown, a mystery. A vital part of a fantasy is that the main characters strive, against all odds, to achieve their ends. Bringing the two, fantasy and romance, together heightens the effect. One builds on the other, with startling results.

I learned to read precociously early. My mother was a teacher and I suspect she taught me as a means of keeping me occupied. I read and I read and I read. I’d soon read all the books in the junior library – those that interested me, anyway. The Bumper book of Football Heroes stayed firmly on the shelf, as did anything relating to flying insects – *shudder*. But books involving swords, archery, medieval history, mythology, castles, Celts, Egyptians, Romans – oh yes, they were mine.

I got a special pass to the adult library, there being no such thing as YA back in the pre-historic era. And whole worlds opened up to me.

I can’t tell you what my earliest fantasy romances were. It always seemed to me that a romance was an integral part of not just a fantasy story, but of any story – part of what made rounded characters, characters I liked, was their ability to love. They didn’t have to end happily. Given the strong diet of Celtic legends they usually didn’t. They didn’t have to be resolved at the end, of even brought fully to the surface – they dwelt within the tales I read like a constant undercurrent, another theme to add depth to the characters and their stories. Maybe others didn’t notice them. Maybe the authors didn’t intend them to be there, but I found them nonetheless – love stories inside tales of enchantment, adventure and excitement.

Romance comes from the stories of the middle ages, told in the vernacular – mainly the romance languages: French, Spanish, but also in English and German. They were stories of the people rather than the church, earthy and action packed, of fabulous beasts and adventures far away. They tied in with the tradition of courtly love and the chivalric culture. Stories included King Arthur, Charlemagne and Alexander the Great. They were often the preserve of woman and their minstrels. Eleanor of Aquitaine played a huge role in the promotion of courtly love, its poetry and chivalry which placed woman at the centre of a male world – the object of that love. Such stories provided an escape, adventure and the first expectations that women could be loved for themselves. Love which wasn’t about duty or power, but about devotion, loyalty, and – a stunning fantasy at the time – equality. The woman could partake of the adventure, help her hero or refuse to do so, waiting for him to prove himself, but she was loved for herself and not for her possessions or her bloodline, something rarer than Holy Grails or Unicorns.

But these stories also encompassed fantasy and adventure. Knights and heroes travelled through distant lands, encountered great danger, fabulous beasts and supernatural enemies. They reworked older tales, rewording and retelling them for a modern audience, in exactly the same way we do today. They were helped and hindered by fairies and monsters, struggled and suffered through dangers untold until they won the love they so desperately craved, usually discovering that she has helped, advised and supported them throughout their trials. Hero and heroine gained a measure of mutual understanding and equality unheard of in the daily lives of those listening. Fantasy indeed. But fantasy teaches people to dream, and dreams become expectations. Pretty soon those same women were saying – why not me?

At their core, these early fantasy stories were love stories.

Fantasy and romance have always fitted together. Whether it’s just the brief mention of Eowyn and Faramir in The Lord of the Rings, or Gawain accepting that Ragnall has her own mind and desire which makes them blissfully happy in their marriage, or even a story like that Jeren and Shan in my own Tales of the Holtlands, where their love is the one thing they can hope to gain by fighting.

Interestingly, while I always wrote fantasy my stories only seemed to really click for me when I realised that the romance aspect was just as powerful as the fantasy. Instead of making it take a back seat, I needed to let it co-pilot the story.

I’ve encountered some marvellous tales over the years. Arthurian legends of course are amazing source material for a fantasy romance writer and there have been many.

Diana L. Paxson’s fascinating reworking of Tristan and Iseult, The White Raven, remains one of my favourites.

Another which surprised and enthralled me was Claudia Edward’s Taming the Forest King, where a strong, heroic and slightly jaded heroine must choose between two men (and avoid a civil war, assassinations attempts and magical traps along the way) and completely threw me by choosing not who I thought she would, but the one I wanted her to!

I often return to the Servant of Empire trilogy by Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts (Daughter, Servant and Mistress of Empire), the wonderful, complex character of Mara and her fraught relationship with her husband and the otherworlder slave she loves.

On the darker side Alan Garner’s The Owl Service remains with me to this day – and drawing on the Welsh tragedy of Blodeuwedd it is a dark love triangle indeed – but an enduring, fabulous and moving book.

Well written romance takes us to the core of the human condition. It encompasses the need for love, loyalty, protection and support – the primal urge not just for a mate but for a partner. Coupling this with a fantasy environment allows both writer and reader to examine the extreme extension of those concerns. It’s bad if your lover is from another town or another social sphere, but what if he’s not even human? What if her entire society is at war with yours? What if powers beyond your ability to control are telling you who to be with forever, or are pointing at the one you love as someone, or something that must be destroyed? As the what ifs get bigger on a primal level, so too do the conflicts.

And conflict is the lifeblood of any story.

Romance is the most flexible of genres, happily melding to all kinds of stories. But then love is universal, or even multiversal. We’ve all felt it, strived for it, found joy or heartache in it. Romance is about taking risks, about throwing ourselves into an adventure. Fantasy amplifies the emotions, the risks and ultimately the satisfaction.

Why do I love fantasy romance?

What’s not to love?

R.F. Long always had a thing for fantasy, romance and ancient mysteries. The combination was bound to cause trouble. In university she studied English Literature, History of Religions and Celtic Civilisation, which just compounded the problem.

Her Holtlands Novella The Wolf’s Sister: a Tale of the Holtlands , its sequel The Wolf’s Mate and her novels The Scroll Thief: a Tale of Ithian and the paranormal romance novel  Soul Fire are now available from Samhain Publishing. The Scroll Thief and Soul Fire are also now available in paperback. Songs of the Wolf a paperback edition containing both Holtlands stories will be out in December 2010.

Her contemporary YA fantasy May Queen is coming soon from Dial Books for Young Readers

She lives in Wicklow, the Garden County of Ireland, and works in a specialised library of rare and unusual books.

But they don’t talk to her that often.

Find out more at her website – www.rflong.com, or on Twitter @rflong

The Call by MJ Fredrick

The call: About 15 minutes before lunch, my phone rang. The kids were in centers and I was doing grades. I saw the area code and stood up even as I answered. I knew. I’d been waiting a bit longer than the stated guidelines at that point, and had sent an email the previous week, after a lot of hemming and hawing.

Now, I’m not supposed to answer the phone when I’m in the classroom, but I think you’ll agree these were special circumstances. When the voice on the other end said, “This is Angela James,” I squealed. (Okay, I have admired her for a LONG time. I think she’s damned smart and talented. I won’t tell her she’s the reason I started sewing again because that just sounds stalker-ish.) She laughed and said, “So, how do you know I’m not calling to wish you a happy Mother’s Day?” While that would also be very cool….but then she said she wanted to acquire Sunrise Over Texas.

By now the kids realized something was going on and they were getting noisy and coming to my desk. Later they told me they thought it was Johnny Depp on the phone. Don’t ask. I had to excuse myself and shush them, but really, I don’t remember much. She said my editor loves historicals, and another person on the acquisition team read and loved it, and that the revisions would be minor. (I got the revision letter by the time I got home and it wasn’t toooooo bad.) She said something else about knowing before RT and she apologized for not getting back to me. I’d sent an inquiry earlier this week and she mentioned that, yes, no news was good news. She went over the contract terms and congratulated me and wished me a happy Mother’s Day.

After I hung up I went into the hall and saw the reading specialist and ran to tell her. She gave me a big hug. Then another 4th grade teacher was coming down the hall and I told her. Susan, our youngest team member, wondered what the commotion was so I told her. Only then did I call the dh!!! At lunch I called Trish Milburn, who has been with me on this journey almost every step of the way. I’m like, “This is Mary.” It took her a minute (it WAS the middle of the day. Also her sister is named Mary.) Then I said, “Why would I call you in the middle of the day?” She said, “You sold something!” Much squealing ensued and then we realized we’ll both have books out in August. Very DIFFERENT books, but still. (Later my book got bumped to September.)

Then I called my baby brother (straight to voicemail) and then my step-dad, since he took me on the big research trip last spring break. I posted to Facebook, told my bosses and the other people at lunch. The kids got a REALLLLY long recess. Too bad it was so hot!

So while I’d sold books before, and since, this was my first call, and it was everything I thought it would be.

Big thanks to MJ for sharing with us her special call. And without these special calls, we wouldn’t have all of the awesomesauce books to read.

MJ Fredrick’s new title, Sunrise Over Texas, is released tomorrow with Carina Press. And just lookie at the cover:

Gorgeous!

MJ is also published with Samhain Publishing, and with The Wild Rose Press.

And with big thanks to MJ, she is going to give away a $10 gift certificate to Amazon or BN.com for one lucky reader. To enter, just comment below.

Good luck!

Giveaway is now closed.

For our fantasy romance theme this month, we would like to give a big warm welcome to M.K Hobson to the site!

Hi there! I’m M.K. Hobson. My debut novel—THE NATIVE STAR—has just been released from Spectra. It’s a historical fantasy romance set in an alternate 1876 with magic, and it follows the adventures of small-town witch from California and a New York City warlock as they race across the United States to keep a powerful magical artifact from falling into the hands of vicious blood-sorcerors.

THE NATIVE STAR has a little bit of everything. Transcontinental railroad travel, zombie miners, giant slimy mutant critters, biomechanical flying machines, secret societies, and more. This wild conglomeration of narrative elements hearkens back to the 19th century dime novels I immersed myself in while writing. I read every pulp novel and adventure tale I could get my hands on, but I was particularly drawn to the novels of Horatio Alger. His tidy little morality tales about the triumph of “luck and pluck” were wildly popular back then, and are still absorbing reading today. There’s something inherently satisfying about a good, hardworking character overcoming obstacles and triumphing over lazy, slovenly opponents. (Less satisfying, of course, is the fact that the character is always a white boy, and his opponents are often anything but.)

But it’s not just his willingness to work hard that sets a Horatio Alger hero above all others; it’s his honesty, his character, and his determination to “play fair.” As Horatio Alger himself put it, “a manly spirit is better than the gifts of fortune. Early trial and struggle, as the history of the majority of our successful men abundantly attests, tends to strengthen and invigorate the character.”

Clearly, there are a lot of problems with the Horatio Alger myth. While it’s attractive to think that a person’s success in life is determined by his work ethic and personal integrity, it assumes an equality of opportunity that is not borne out by historical fact. But even though it’s a myth, it’s a very American myth. And it was part of what made me want to write a steampunk-inspired novel set in the bright and brazen United States. I was dissatisfied with the mephitic fogs and dingy gaslamps of Victorian London. Much as I love that setting, the underlying mythology is vastly different. 19th century London was the center of a declining empire, and the class structures were much more ingrained and inflexible. 19th century America, on the other hand, was an empire at the moment of birth—where a ragged newsboy could grow up, become a captain of industry, and exploit the newsboys who came after him!

That 19th century sense of boundless optimism and potential, darkened by a modern awareness of the consequences that we as a nation would have to suffer as the result of our heedless capitalistic drive to manifest our destiny—that’s what I wanted to explore in THE NATIVE STAR and (even more so) in its sequel, THE HIDDEN GODDESS. Toss in a few explosions, some two-fisted brawls, and some tender romance, and I hoped I’d have a dime novel for the 21st century—something at least as enjoyable as anything Horatio Alger ever wrote. I’ll leave it to readers to decide how I did!

Regina by Carrie Lofty

One of the wonderful benefits of writing historical romance is research–wonderful, at least, for a history buff such as myself. I love finding unusual men and women who’ve since fallen through the cracks of history, and occasionally I’m lucky enough to bring their realities into my fiction.

When writing SONG OF SEDUCTION , about a widowed violin prodigy and the renowned composer she idolizes, I wanted to see if women in 1804 had been allowed to perform as violinists. My research led me to a violinist named Regina Strinassachi, who is best remembered because she and Mozart performed together for Joseph II, the Holy Roman Emperor, in 1784. Mozart’s “Sonata in B flat for Violin and Keyboard” (K. 454) is also known as the “Strinassachi Sonata.”

By all accounts, K. 454 is a very difficult piece, which speaks to Mozart’s high opinion of Strinassachi. He often wrote puff pieces for influential patrons’ children who had mediocre talent, but this was not one of them. In a letter to his father, Mozart wrote: “We now have here the famous Strinasacchi from Mantua, a very good violinist. She has a great deal of taste and feeling in her playing. I am this moment composing a sonata which we are going to play together on Thursday at her concert in the theater.”

Reading this account sparked off possibilities in my mind. Although women violinists were exceedingly rare, Regina proved that it was possible. I only look for the possible when writing historical romance, knowing that suspending disbelief won’t be utterly impossible for my readers!

In the following excerpt, SONG OF SEDUCTION’s heroine, Mathilda Heidel, first meets Regina–who’s known as Frau Schlick, having married a cellist in 1785. Talented but hesitant about pursuing a future in music, Mathilda has no idea that such a woman exists in the world. Arie de Voss–Mathilda’s idol, mentor, and soon-to-be lover–is intent on showing her what future awaits…if she’s brave enough.

***

Arie stood next to an elegant woman in her early forties. She wore an exquisite gown of ice-blue silk and ivory lace trim. Gray-streaked black hair arranged in an elaborate coiffure of spirals and curls accentuated the graceful lines of her neck and slender face. Magnetic black eyes shone from beneath heavy dark lashes. An oblong bruise along her left jaw marred her otherwise flawless olive skin.

Mathilda had never seen such an arresting woman.

“De Voss, there you are,” Haydn said.

“Gute Abend, Kapellmeister. And Frau Heidel. Lovely to see you.” Arie bowed deeply, his air bright and amused. He turned to present the elegant woman. “Allow me to present Frau Regina Schlick.”

“I am honored to meet you both,” the woman said. Her lilting Italian accent created melody out of plain speech. “Herr De Voss has told me you perform exquisitely.”

“Thank you.” Mathilda smiled broadly at the unexpected compliment. That Arie would speak of her in glowing terms to this exotic woman warmed her from top to toes. “The maestro flatters me.”

“Nonsense. He recognizes talent almost as well as he composes.” Frau Schlick turned and touched his arm. Mathilda fought an urge to slap her hand away. “Sir, your violin concerti remain among the most thrilling I know. I must have one of my own. You have promised for years.”

“Quality requires patience, my dear.” His smooth response convinced even Mathilda of his sincerity. He sounded perfectly gracious and even…charming?

Watching the exchange, her uncertainty increased. She never could have imitated the mysterious woman’s air of unquestioned authority, holding the rapt attention of every man within earshot. Arie smiled warmly and with an expression of genuine interest. Despondently, Mathilda wondered if he and the stylish woman had been intimate.

But no–he remained poised and cool, ignoring the fawning guests. Surely a public reunion with a former lover would throw her reticent Dutchman into bashful fits.

As patrons began to find seats, Haydn whisked the intriguing Frau Schlick to the front of Kaisersaal. Mathilda turned to her Dutch compass for direction. “Arie, who is she?”

“Patience. This way.”

They found seats almost halfway back from the tiny ensemble of musicians, away from the most prominent gossips. Mathilda settled her skirts and enjoyed the pleasant thrill of Arie’s thigh pressing against her own. She would not have retreated from his heat for all the world.

Duke Ferdinand took his seat in the center of the front row, while a handful of musicians assumed their appropriate places. Three violinists, two violists and two cellists briefly tuned their instruments in an incomplete double string quartet.

She leaned closer to Arie. “There are but seven musicians. Where is the other violinist?”

“Look.”

To Mathilda’s amazement, Frau Regina Schlick accepted her violin from an assistant and took her place at the head of the ensemble.

***

When you read historical romances, do you like to read about real people who shared the same time and place as the fictional protagonists? Do they clutter up the romantic fantasy? Which favorite “real life” historical characters have you read in romance?

Tormented by guilt. Haunted by scandal. Freed by love.

Austria, 1804

Eight years ago, composer Arie De Voss claimed his late mentor’s final symphony as his own and became an icon. But fame has a price: fear of discovery now poisons his attempts to compose a redemptive masterpiece. Until a new muse appears, intoxicating and inspiring him…

Mathilda Heidel renounced her own musical gift to marry, seeking a quiet life to escape the shame surrounding her birth. Sudden widowhood finds her tempted by song once more. An unexpected introduction to her idol, Arie De Voss, renews Mathilda’s passion for the violin–and ignites a passion for the man himself.

But when lust and lies reach a crescendo, Arie will be forced to choose: love or truth?

Thanks to Carrie, we also have a giveaway for Song of Seduction up for grabs! All you need to do is comment below. (Note this is an ebook and not a print book)

The giveaway ends Friday 18th, June at 12 am GMT.

Good Luck and a huge thanks to Carrie Lofty for visiting and for the wonderful giveaway!

On November first, I wrote something like 7,000 words. I remember looking at the total and thinking what a breeze the 50k was going to be. Over the next two days, I doubled my word count. If I remember correctly, by the end of the first week, I was over 20k. Then things slowed down to a crawl. I didn’t know where to go with the story. It was supposed to be a novel, but I couldn’t see how I could possibly stretch this little, weird, time-travel-but-not, paranormal-but-not, fantasy-maybe story into something long enough to be made into a book.

But I plowed ahead. I finished November with right around 53k. The story wasn’t done, but I was mentally fried. I’d pushed and pushed until I felt like I couldn’t see straight. So I set the writing portion aside, and posted the first chapter for the ritual disemboweling in my online writing group. It never came. People liked the story. Eventually that was enough to make me pick it up again (around February).

I’d been away from the story for so long, though, it took me months to finish what would end up as an 89,000 word novel. What made it even harder was that somewhere in there, I’d come up with this idea for a young adult novel that I really wanted to write. I ended up making a promise with myself that I could do it for NaNo 2008, but only if I finished Avalon’s Return.

That was my first clue that I was the type of person who needed a carrot to finish the race. I completed Avalon’s Return in August, took September to plot the young adult novel, and used October to apply reader feedback and edit Avalon’s Return. I started NaNo that year fresh again.

I plowed through November, reaching the 50k with ease, and then kept going into December until I’d finished the first draft of my YA urban fantasy Pretty Souls. Only then did I do a read-through of Avalon’s Return. I still thought it was good, so I sent it off to a total of ten agents. None of them wanted to see more than the initial submission packet.

In January, I went to Cryptic Confusion, a convention in Detroit, and had the opportunity to sit down and have lunch with the wonderful Kelley Armstrong. We talked writing, and she offered to look over my first chapter. Of course I jumped at the opportunity.  The email she sent came with a warning that I might not want to read what she said. I laughed. For the first time ever, I wanted — no, I needed — harsh feedback, and Kelley didn’t disappoint. I did some tweaking to the manuscript, but somewhere along the way, even I realized the problems were bigger than I could fix at the time.

So, I moved on to the project I was more excited about — Pretty Souls. I shined it and polished it until I would have sworn I could see my face in the surface of the title page. Around April, I sent it out to about twenty agents. I had an early request for more pages, which kept me going for a while, but it was the only request I got.

Sometime in May, I decided to take another good hard look at it. I’d become friends with the assistant who had requested the additional pages, and she gave me some constructive feedback, so through the summer, I took on the task of re-writing the manuscript from the ground up.

What took me less than forty-five days to write took over three months to re-write. And at the end, I still had no idea if it was any better. The fear at that point was worse than any I’d ever had when staring at a blank page.

I hope you’ll like what Julie has to say.

When Lou asked if I’d be interested in guest blogging here, my first thought was excitement. Of course, that joy was soon trampled by terror. Why would readers care what I have to say about writing? I’m just an aspiring author; none of them have any clue who I am.

Right about the time the self-doubt stopped screaming, I realized that maybe those worries, those weaknesses if you will, were actually blessings in disguise. Maybe since readers don’t know me, it’ll make me more approachable than writers with a bestseller or ten under their belt.  Maybe they’ll see me as a kindred spirit rather than someone whose career is unattainable (because believe me, you too can be an aspiring author, all it takes is some imagination and a really thick skin).

One thing most writers can tell you is self-doubt is standard operating procedure. We write something and immediately question it. I’ve been known to instant message writer friends with lines just to make sure they are, indeed, funny. (I think I’m hilarious, and so does my eight-year-old. Other people I’m not so sure about.) For me, that self-doubt stems from some of my early writing experiences. And really, in order to understand my path as a writer, you need to understand that piece of my past.

When I was little (yes, we’re going back that far), my family and teachers all encouraged my creativity — especially my writing. In fact, a few months ago my mother gave me a box of old school stuff, and in it was a paper I’d written sometime around third grade that said I wanted to be a writer when I grew up.  I won all sorts of awards through the school district for my writing. With stars in my eyes, I began my first novel during sixth grade.

That was also just about the time that the encouragement tapered off. Creative writing took a backseat to other things once Junior High started. And by a couple years later, my family had it drilled into my brain that writing was a hobby, not a career path. I needed to get serious about my future, and they made sure I knew it.

Once high school started, my creative pursuits were limited to poetry. I could crank out a decent poem in under an hour – a realistic time frame for a hobby. All those brilliant story/novel ideas were swept under a rug, never to be heard from again. After all, I was serious about my future. The fact that I was suffering from depression didn’t matter.

I went off to college with visions of a degree in aerospace engineering and a NASA job in my future (yes, I like to aim high).  Freshman year, my English professor added to my ever-increasing levels of self-doubt (I didn’t find out until later that she didn’t believe in giving As and was notorious for her beat-downs). My aerospace career suffered an early death too when I remembered how much I hated physics, and by sophomore year, I had changed my major.  Of course, I was still serious about my future, so I finished college with a degree in chemistry and a minor in education. I traded in NASA to teach high school.

Through all those years, I battled depression. The turning point for me came in the form of a student named Amy. I’d assigned my class an extra credit book report. A lot of extra points were involved, so the project was appropriately large. Because of their frustration, I wrote a sample report. Amy read and “graded” my example based on the format I would use for theirs. When she handed me back the paper, a post-it note was stuck to the top asking me why I wasn’t a writer. The note made me smile, thinking back to my childhood dreams, but I was serious about my future, so the note got filed away to collect dust.

About a year later, I found myself halfway across the country, at a new school (where I hated working) and unexpectedly pregnant. While I had a tenuous handle on my depression, my husband knew how much I hated my job. We made the decision that I would stay at home after our son was born. The first year, I was too busy to do anything other than care for my boy. Then his personality started developing, and I took to daydreaming about his future.

One day it hit me out of the blue that I wanted to encourage whatever he chose to do in life. (Though, to be fair, the current “evil genius” plan isn’t getting my fullest support.) Not long after, I realized that if sitting on the floor playing with blocks constituted taking my life seriously, then damn it, so did writing.

I started toying with a story idea that had proven obstinate about being discarded. Self-doubt still lingered, but I felt tendrils of depression start to drift away. And for the first time in about fifteen years, I approached the blank page with that gut-clenching combination of excitement and terror. Just like I came to this one.