Category: Dark Prelude

Writing Tips: Naming Your Characters

Posted on | by Andrea | 6 Comments on Writing Tips: Naming Your Characters

Names are delicious to me.  I love how the sound and meanings of them filter through my mind and how they immediately give an image of the person they fit.  Naming my own children was such a lovely, slow process.  How to pick from all the wonderful choices and the phonetic combinations and to avoid the pitfalls of names easily tuned up with silly associations or nicknames a child might not wish to carry for a lifetime was the challenge.

My children number two, hardly enough to satisfy my desire to use the dozens more names on my list.  Happily, my offspring are satisfied with their monikers and I found another way to satisfy my naming fetish.

I name characters.  Sometimes a dozen or two in a book.  It is great fun and a careful process.  I admit that most of the time my protagonists show up in my head and introduce themselves.  They do, however, willingly submit to name changes, if need be, or the addition of a surname.

Roman, the hero in Dark Splendor and Dark Prelude, needed a surname and a name for his brother.  They became Roman and Morgan Toller, names which seemed appropriate for strong, virile, colonial era men of German descent.

Silvia Bradstreet, heroine of the same books, needed a surname that was not aristocratic and which told of her British heritage.

Amanda Fairfax hints at the sweetness and beauty of the heroine of  Whispers at Midnight, another colonial era romance.

In Whispers At Midnight, hero Ryne Sullivan has a brother named Gardner.  It is easy to tell who is the more steadfast of the two.

Switching to Westerns, I chose Tabor Stanton as the handle for the hero in Delilah’s Flame, an uncommon name for an uncommon man of the west.

Which he had to be to contend with the heroine, Lilah Damon, a soft-hearted woman with a duplicitous nature.  Her alias is Delilah.

There are scores more names in each of my books.  I strive to make each choice distinctive and a good fit for the character and the story and the genre.  Names imply much about personality and station in life for characters.  I rarely use names of my friends and family, but occasionally I sneak one in.

I’m sure most readers would agree the names of characters add a special dimension to a story and a carefully chosen name can make a character more real and memorable.

For tips on how to choose names for your characters, read “Name That Character”, my guest blog post on Writers Unite.  Thanks to Writers Unite for featuring me and for the terrific support they give writers.

DARK PRELUDE, an excerpt of the prequel to Dark Splendor

Posted on | by Andrea

Dark Prelude (a prequel to my historical Gothic romance novel Dark Splendor) is free and is available at all major ebook  retailers.

Read Dark Prelude as a free download from Amazon Kindle Store.

Dark Prelude

There is a serpent in thy smile, my dear,
And bitter poison within thy tear.
—Shelley, The Cenci

Chapter 1

Shivering miserably, Silvia Bradstreet, clutched her heavy woolen cloak against the wind, her gloomy thoughts little better than the weather. Had she come to this? That she would freeze to death on the London streets? Winter held a formidable grip on the city, shutting out the sun with murky, grey clouds and the bitter pelting of a late snow that fell to the streets like a shower of brimstone to become dingy slush mottled by tracks of those unfortunate enough to be about in the treacherous weather.

The fierce wind bore a chilling moisture from the sea as it wailed between blackened buildings, sounding like the mournful cry of despairing souls. How foolish she had been not to defy Uncle Hollister. Lately he had grown impossible, his sober days largely outnumbered by the drunken ones. But to send her on a fool’s errand in such weather was demeaning and cruel.

Still, she had little choice.

At times her uncle flew into a scalding rage over the simplest matter and she had begun to fear for her safety. Today his attack of angry words had wounded her pride and brought a flood of tears to her eyes. “Curse me, Missy. I’ll be master of this house ’til my dying day and I’ll not have you trying to run it for me,” he had shouted and kicked a chair across the kitchen. “Left to you we would eat nothing but soup and stew! Now get to the butcher and buy the chops and have a dinner on the table this night that’ll fill a man’s belly! And don’t be forgetting your place again!”

With that he had taken the stewpot from the stove and tossed it into the street. She choked back a lump in her throat. No danger she would forget her place again. She had no place. Her once kindly uncle had turned caustic and she was little more than a maid to him.

She sighed ruefully, then set her jaw and trudged on. Lips, blue from the cold, curved into a deeper frown. She had a more immediate concern than Uncle Hollister’s abominable disposition— getting home before the cold claimed her. Because of her uncle’s poor credit, she had been forced to walk blocks farther to find a butcher they did not owe. Passing the docks, as she made her way home with the bundle, the wind roared colder and stronger, biting and stinging her face like a spray of icy needles.

Behind her a carriage rattled its way along the cobbled street, spinning dirty snow behind its wheels. Before she could jump aside, a splash of filthy wetness splattered her cloak. The carriage swept past while Silvia shook the snow from her garment. Almost instantly a stabbing cold pierced the damp fabric to sap the little remaining warmth in her body.

She could fight the chill no longer and drew into the narrow, secluded entry of a shipping company to escape the angry wind. A lantern mounted beside the door flickered haltingly in the dimness of the winter afternoon.

Silvia folded her arms across her chest. Still she shivered with cold. She thought dejectedly of her situation. There was no reasoning with Uncle Hollister. He would have his way and damn those who tried to deter him. She sighed dispiritedly, longing to reach the warmth of the kitchen. But the numbness of her feet and the thought of the rude welcome she would receive from Uncle Hollister kept her from hurrying back along the street.

Slumping against the wall in despair, Silvia brushed the snow from her lashes with the back of a dusky wool mitten. Her gaze lingered on a notice posted beside a window frame in the entryway. The lines blurred together until her eyes cleared.

Able bodied men and women wanted
Passage paid
Sailing date: the twentieth of March, in the year of our Lord, one thousand and fifty-one.

Dark Prelude, a prequel to Dark Splendor, now available

Posted on | by Andrea

Dark Prelude, a novella-length prequel to my sexy Gothic romance novel Dark Splendor, is now available free from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Smashwords and other ebook retailers. Dark Prelude is an expression of thanks to my readers.  It is yours to download and enjoy.

Dark PreludeIf you have read Dark Splendor, (and I thank you if you have), you know the protagonists first meet aboard the Eastwind. What you don’t know is that the story almost began a different way.

Handsome sea captain Roman Toller and his irascible brother Morgan made their appearance in London some days before boarding the Eastwind for a journey to their Uncle’s private island off the Georgia colony of 1751.  Their days were spent indulging in food and drink, their nights in debauchery with the damsel of the day.

Across London, lovely and resourceful Silvia Bradstreet was scrapping to keep her life together until she could escape on the same ship.  Her days were occupied with work and worry, her nights with fear and dread of her Uncle Hollister who had made her a servant in his home.

That the three of them should meet was inevitable but how and when became a study in fate, a glimpse of how a single event can change everything.  But that is more my story than theirs.  I wrote the first few chapters of my first novel Dark Splendor and sent it off to an editor at Signet Books.  Those chapters earned a multiple book contract for me and swelled my heart with joy that I was about to become a published author.

With the papers signed and the deadlines established, my editor said, “Start the book where those chapters end.”  A novice at this game, I dared not question but agonized over the loss of my golden words in those first chapters.  She was right, of course.  I realized that later as I dealt with length restrictions.  With a new beginning, the story veered in a new direction, thus Dark Prelude is more character study than missing chapters.  Nevertheless, I tucked those early pages in a file and kept them.

Today they have become Dark Prelude, a novella that explores the lives of Roman and Morgan and Silvia and how things might have been had they first met a few hours earlier. If you have read Dark Splendor, or when you read it, you will see that, indeed, a single event that does or does not take place changes the course of many lives, and, sometimes, a book.

Dark Prelude is a gift to my romantic readers, both new and old.  It is a chance to chuckle at the antics of Roman and Morgan and to appreciate Silvia’s tenuous relationship with the two of them. Hopefully, you will decide to follow up with Dark Splendor or another of my books.  If not, enjoy the read and meeting these three characters who are dear to my heart.

Clenchless

Posted on | by Andrea | 2 Comments on Clenchless

Dark PreludeMore observations about Romance covers with the arrival of the cover for the soon to be released Dark Prelude, a prequel to Dark Splendor.

Sometimes there is no clench, no romantically entwined couple at all on the cover. Sometimes elements from the story perfectly capture the mood, tone and setting of the book or story.  Add just the right title and just the right shades of color and the impact is magic.

I am taken with the cover for Dark Prelude and am reminded by its effect on me just how much covers matter.  Covers likely lead to the first click or the first reach that has a reader looking for more. In a glance there is a sense of what the story is about and a hint of the adventures between the pages.

Dark Prelude is a novella which gives a glimpse into the lives of Silvia Bradstreet and Roman Toller in the weeks before they meet.  If Dark Splendor were a movie they would be the scenes on the cutting room floor later added to the director’s cut version of the film or shown as extras on the DVD release. In the case of Dark Prelude, they are the editor’s cuts because of length constraints.

The early chapters might have taken Dark Splendor in a slightly different direction. In Dark Prelude, Roman and Silvia meet a few hours earlier and certainly with a bang. The Dark Prelude cover perfectly captures significant elements of the story I wanted to convey. The quill and ink seal someone’s fate, the sailing ship is a way to escape, intrigue hangs heavy as the fog.

Thanks again to my publisher at TroveBooks.com and Frauke Spanuth at Croco Designs for so amazingly capturing my abstract ideas for the Dark Prelude cover.