There’s a wall by your house. It’s old, decrepit. Sad thing, really. There’s bound to be little furry, slimy things living in its stones. Maybe some beautiful, rare flowers grow just on the other side. Or this is the refuge of the Fairy Queen & her Sparrow Prince.
Writing has always felt like this to me: a curiosity, something to step towards slowly so I don’t disturb the rest of the world. To stand before, nervous because I don’t know how to find my footing. To finally grip, slip, & fall. To grip again, & again, until I pull myself over the ledge.
I’ve come to find my footing in writing fantasy with characters who crack wise, screw up, and hurt. Hard. Come with me now, and find them in worlds of magic that sing with the elements and race beyond the stars.
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Good morning, fellow creatives! While I frantically put together my analysis of Aunt Maria for Witch Week, please welcome the magical Juli D. Revezzo, author of over a dozen novels of magic and love. Tell us a bit about yourself, please!
Your historical romances, like House of Dark Envy and Courting the Stationmaster’s Daughter, are set in the 18th and 19th centuries. What draws you to the Victorian and Gothic periods? What kind of research do you do to help you prepare for storytelling in the past?
Well, House of Dark Envy and Courting the Stationmaster’s Daughter are both set in the 19th century. My Gothic paranormal romance Lady of the Tarot is set in the 18th century and Fifty Measly Bucks, the 17th. I’ve also written in the Medieval periods–and one in World War II. 🙂 What draws me to the Victorian era, though, is… well, actually, I have a degree in Literature and from my early 20s have been reading Victorian lit through the lit of the mid-to-late 20th century ever since. And most of my biggest influences (sans Moorcock) are the writers of that era. I find the 19th century sense of wonder and drive for exploration particularly inspiring, they let their imaginations run wild (whoever thought we might travel faster than a horse?? Our 19th century ancestors, of course!), and that was for the most part, the birth of the fantasy genre, as well as the birth of women’s rights. So it’s a ready made hotbed of conflict.
Your time-travel novella Fifty Measly Bucks features protagonist Denver being caught up in the Salem Witch Trials. What would you consider to be the ethics of writing about historical figures?
There are none in my novels. Well, no. Not often, I should say. I’ll mention them, but I have a particular aversion to putting words in a real figure’s mouth. I don’t know why; I just always have. So, I write around them. I change names and invent characters to stand in for them. There might be gossip a figure overhears about such and such a real life character, but I always try to corroborate the gossip. If I can’t I don’t use it. The only time I ever have was in House of Dark Envy. My hero corresponds with Tesla (yes, the Tesla) and I struggled with that, until I found the tidbit that said “Tesla wrote hundreds of letters” so….why couldn’t he have correspondence with Felix? 🙂 Fifty Measly Bucks, though, I mentioned the judges and the girls (Betty Parris, Abigail Williams, and Ann Putnam, Jr.), but extended the period deliberately to push out having to involve the three girls–and made one character a friend of the girls…. I can’t explain much more than that without spoiling it. Everything in the book, though, happens because of that extension.
You recently published the fifth installment to your Antique Magic series, The Dragon’s Seamstress. Congratulations!
Thank you. I hope your readers will
love The Dragon’s Seamstress. It was
a different assignment for Caitlin and Trevor but I couldn’t resist? Who
wouldn’t love having a dragon drop in for help? Its synopsis (because, why not?
;)) is as follows:
Since Caitlin and Trevor vowed to assist the Otherworld and opened their enchanted antique shop, they’ve seen many strange things. But now, someone comes in asking for a mundane item: kitschy “witches” brooms. Has their magical life returned to normal?
As the couple prepares to host a family gathering, fate intervenes and something they’ve never seen before roars into their life: A creature out of Welsh legend and fantasy: A blundering, somewhat underdeveloped dragon—not at all the type of dragon they ever expected to meet.
Forced to undertake his unique challenge, Caitlin and Trevor are perplexed by his demands, but the magical beast is certain they are the only witches who can help him. Doing so might unlock an ancient hidden secret. Refusing might destroy them.
This series has a unique episodic feel thanks to the profession of your protagonists Trevor and Caitlin, married owners of an antique shop that attracts gods, ghosts, and more. Earlier this year I discussed the writer’s problem of writing cliffhangers vs. standalones; do you feel having an episodic series is a strong compromise of giving readers more of the heroes they want without leaving them hanging when a book ends? (Gosh, I hope this question makes sense)
If I understand the question
correctly, yes. Maybe? I do try to tie up the end of each tale. Caitlin always
finds the answer to each client/sellers’ problem/mystery, book to book, but
where the “episode” comes in is that their year progresses–or by
this point, it’s been five years. 🙂 There’s a progression book to book of Trevor
and Caitlin’s ages, their anniversary, the holidays. While there’s also two
characters in school and their education advances, the biggest hold over is the
Curse that hangs over the heads of Trevor’s family. So the question of why did
that thing happen to his brother, sister, and mother casts a long shadow over
the series, despite each wrapped-up happy ending. To my longtime readers, I
know the answer to that question, and yes, you will be getting it soon.
That’s just a long way of saying,
yes having an episodic series is a compromise, but more, I’ve done it because
it felt right to continue following Caitlin’s life, in a linear progression.
But finding where to cut without a cliffhanger is too much of a nuisance, so
I’d rather have a clear end to the manuscript. Otherwise, the five books would
still be in my computer, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
You write fantasy and steampunk as well, such as Watchmaker’s Heart. Do you find yourself doing the same kind of research as you do for historical romances, or do you toss history out the window and write the world as you wish? 🙂
A little bit of both. The thing
about Steampunk is that it’s the aesthetics of our 19th century with the
technology of…well? Star Trek but run on steam. So, as much as you get to
have fun coming up with airships, gaslamps, and steampowered cars and weird
robotic things, Queen Victoria is always in charge (unless there’s been some
coup by we pesky Americans! ;)) and there’s always some 19th century cultural
something or ‘nother going on. So, depending on what that cultural something is
I want to noodle with, I’ll have to delve into the research lake. In Watchmaker’s Heart it was the mechanics
of the underworld, as my hero is an ex-gang member trying to go straight, and I
also had to do a little bit into the workings of the House of Commons for
another character. With House of Dark Envy, again, that was such a time of
technological exploration, and I had a readymade Steampunk feel in the work my
hero (and in real life history of the time Tesla) were doing concerning DC and
AC power, it was easy to just throw in some goggles and arcing magic Tesla
beams. With a book like my faery tale-based/faery godmother story Changeling’s Crown…well, it was a
mixture of faery tale setting and real world setting so that was fun to play
with. Having castles on one hand, and cars and modern ranches and cell phones
on the other. J
And Caitlin even dips into the historical through the Antique Magic series, with the psychic trips the things in her
antique shop sometimes spring on her. So far, she’s been hit with the
prohibition era, the ‘60s, Civil War
battles, (due to a Civil War fort she lives near, and the ghost of Trevor’s
ancestor from the 19th century who lives in their house and *cough*
helps out more often than not), and the most recently, a glimpse of Medieval
Wales.
Thank you so much for sharing your stories with us, Juli! Let’s wrap up with one last craft question.How do you balance making demands on the reader with taking care of the reader?
Critique Partners! In series (like Antique Magic), it gets particularly
sticky, as I try to explain as much as I think necessary, but I have to leave
it up to my critique partners to let me know if more is needed. And even then,
sometimes, we miss. Personally, I see no need to regurgitate the entire story in
all books throughout a series; in
fact, that bugs me to no end when I read other writers doing it. I’ve skipped
more pages, and put more books I read down for that than I have for not understanding something in a series of
which I neglected to read from the beginning.
But editors and cps seem to think differently, so I sometimes have to overcompensate to bring them up to speed. I hope I don’t bore the heck out of my longtime readers when they pick up a #x story, doing a recap, but if so, I hope they’ll forgive me. So, how do I balance it? Very carefully and not without pulling my hair out. 😉 So, The Dragon Seamstress, while it can stand alone, being the fifth time I’ve revisited the couple, is very much part of the series. I hope your readers will enjoy them all.
I’m sure they will, Juli, especially when you share of your novellas for FREE! That’s right, folks–you can get the ebook Caitlin’s Book of Shadows for free right now, at this very moment, instantly, today.
Though their fame became legend, a rumor cropped up about the Fulmer family: Something terrifying stalked Caitlin and her beloved Trevor. Something the bits and pieces she left claimed she had to make sense of. When the curator of their collection finds Caitlin’s long forgotten diary, she wonders will it tell the whole tale? Will it tell why Caitlin seemed so determined to tell the difference between reality and nightmare? Why she thought herself a witch?
What will the holidays hold for Caitlin? Perhaps the answer lies between the lines of her story, one of lessons, struggles, and hopes for each new year.
We are diving deep into a world of witchcraft and waltzes, haunting melodies and dissonant sexes.
Blondie is also super excited to share a project she’s working on, and I might just have a spooky surprise or two in store for you before All Hallows’ Eve.
