Baby, It's You (28 page)

Dear Reader,

As a romance reader from a very young age, and a girl who never got to sleep easily so I told myself stories to get that way (all romances, of course), I had a bevy of “starts” to stories I never really finished.

Not until I finally started to tap away on my keyboard.

One of them that popped up often was of a woman alone, heading to a remote location, not feeling well, and meeting the man of her dreams who would nurse her back to health. Except, obviously (this
is
a romance), at first meeting him, she doesn’t know he’s the man of her dreams and decides instantly (for good reason) she doesn’t like him all that much.

Therefore, I was delighted finally to get stuck in Nina and Max’s story in THE GAMBLE. I’d so long wanted to start a story that way and I was thrilled I finally got to do it. I got such a kick out of seeing that first chapter unfold, their less-than-auspicious beginning, the crackling dialogue, Max’s A-frame (inside and out) forming in my head.

But I had absolutely no clue about the epic journey I was about to take—murder, assault, kidnapping, suicide and rape, trust earned and tested—and amongst all this, a man and a woman falling in love.

The focus of the book is on Nina’s story—oft-bitten, very shy, to the point where she’s hardly living her life anymore, feels it, and knows she needs to do something about it even as she’s terrified.

But whenever I read THE GAMBLE, it’s Max’s story that touches me. How he had so much from such a young age and lost it so tragically. How he took care of everyone around him in his mountain man way, but also was living half a life. And last, how Nina lit up his world and revived that protective, loving part of him he thought long dead.

The struggle with this, however, was Anna, the love Max lost. See, I knew her well and she was an amazing person who made Max happy. They were very much in love and neither Max (in my head) nor I wanted to give her short-shrift or make any less of the love they shared even as Max fell deeply in love with Nina.

I didn’t know if this was working very well, for Nina was so very much
not
like Anna, but, at least to me, I found her quite lovable. This was good; you shouldn’t try to find what you lost but simply find something that makes you happy. But still, it was important for me that the love Max shared with Anna wasn’t entirely overshadowed by the love he had for Nina because Anna was in his life, she was important, and being so was part of what made him the man he turned out to be.

In a book that has a good deal of raw emotion, one line always jumps out at me and there’s a reason for that. I was relieved when a friend of mine told me it was her favorite in this whole, very long book. So simple but also, by it being her favorite, it told me that I’d won that struggle.

It was Max saying to Nina,
“I see what I had with Anna for the gift it was but now that’s gone. With this act, are you sayin’, in this life that’s all I get?”

In a book where grave tragedy had consistently struck many of the characters (as life often hands us our trials), I love the hope in this line. I love that Max finally comes to realize that the beauty he had and lost was not all he should expect. That he should reach out for more.

And he
does
reach out for more.

And in the end, he finds that it isn’t all he would get. Being a good man and taking a gamble on a feisty woman who shows up in a snowstorm with attitude (and her sinuses hurting), he gets much,
much
more.

So I was absolutely delighted to take his journey.

Because he deserves it.

Dear Reader,

What is the worst part of writing a historical romance? Once upon a time, I might have thought it was most difficult to unravel the plot and character motivations, but the more I write, the more I realize the truth. It’s the research! And I don’t mean that in a moan-and-groan-it’s-homework way. I mean that the more I research for the sake of a book, the more I get flat-out distracted by all the little golden nuggets I find.

When I start researching, I tend to trawl the
London Times
archives, which has a searchable database that is so beautiful and easy to use that it almost makes me cry. For A DREAM OF DESIRE, I started by looking up articles about prisons and juvenile delinquency, but got quickly distracted by other things like the classified advertisements. The
Times
was full of ads for polka and mazurka lessons, “paper hanging” sales, tea companies, and job openings for schoolmistresses and butlers. The “prisons” search term appeared in the classifieds in an advertisement for “prisons supply of coal, meat, bread, oatmeal, barley, candles, and stockings.” The ad requested that suppliers submit an application to the keeper of the prisons to be considered for the position.

I also get distracted by other articles about criminal court proceedings (a goldmine of story ideas), new laws, intelligence from overseas, and details about royal court life, like the state ball of 1845 at Buckingham Palace, which was attended by over one thousand members of the nobility and gentry and where Her Majesty and the Hereditary Grand Duke of Mecklenburgh Strelitz danced the quadrille in the ballroom, which was festooned with crimson and gold draperies and lit by a huge, cut-glass lustre.

I find that fascinating. But distractions aside, it really is within the pages of the newspapers and magazines published in the nineteenth century that the most vivid details of a story can come to life. When I first started writing A DREAM OF DESIRE, I thought surely the term “juvenile delinquent” was a historical anachronism, but it was used often in Victorian-era
Times
articles about “juvenile destitution and crime.”

I’ve come to accept the fact that rather than being a dedicated, focused researcher, I’m more like a magpie whose attention is caught by shiny objects. But I’ve also learned to appreciate how much all those little tidbits of information come in handy when crafting a story—what might happen if the hero and heroine were in attendance at Her Majesty’s state ball? What if the heroine was having a clumsy moment (or better yet, was distracted by the hero’s rakish good looks) and tripped over the Grand Duke in the middle of the quadrille? What if she found herself face-to-face with a rather irate Queen Victoria?

Must go. I have some writing to do!

Dear Reader,

I like wine. Any kind of wine. I’ve learned a lot about it over the years, but only because if you use any product enough, you’ll end up pretty educated about it. (If I ate 147 different kinds of Little Debbie snack cakes, I’d know a lot about them, too.) I can swirl, sniff, and sip with the best of them. But the fourth S: spit? Seriously? The theory is that one should merely taste the wine without getting tipsy, but come on. Who in his right mind tastes good wine and then spits it out?

My husband and I once went to a wine tasting/competition where we took our glasses around to the various vintners’ booths and received tiny tasting pours, which we were to sip, savor, and judge. By the time we sampled the offerings of about two dozen vineyards, those tiny pours added up. At first we discussed acidity, mouth feel, and finish, then thoughtfully marked our scorecards. By the end of the event, we’d lost our scorecards and were wondering if there was a frat party nearby we could crash. Okay, so maybe that spitting thing has some merit.

In BABY, IT’S YOU, the hero, Marc Cordero, runs an estate vineyard in the Texas Hill Country that has been in his family for generations. As I researched winemaking for the book, I discovered it’s both a science and an art, requiring intelligence, intuition, willpower, and above all, heart. The heroine, Kari Worthington, feels Marc’s pride as he looks out over the grapevine-covered hills, and she’s in awe of his determination to protect his family legacy. For a flighty, free-spirited, runaway bride who’s never had a place to truly call home, Cordero Vineyards and the passionate man who runs it are the things of which her dreams are made.

So next time I go to a wine tasting, I’m going to think about the myriad challenges that winemakers faced in order to present that bottle for me to enjoy. But I’m still not gonna spit.

I hope you enjoy BABY, IT’S YOU!

JaneGraves.com

Twitter @JaneGraves

Facebook.com/AuthorJaneGraves