Introduction This page contains spoilers! Don't read unless you've already read the book. I wanted to make this book into a pseudo-Gothic, playing off the traditions of the sub-genre while striking out in a new direction. For that reason, I broke one major convention from the start by having an older, wiser, more experienced heroine rather than the innocent ingénue that is more typical. That more than anything shaped the course of the book, along with the theme "there is no monster." In a way, the monster-less-ness of my Gothic disappoints the traditional forms, but I use the familiarity of the Gothic to ground the story rather than guide it, so I'm careful not to set up expectations that are other than what the story delivers. The Letter "My dear lady Victoria" - This address is insultingly intimate to write to a woman who is not one's close family friend or acknowledged lover. It sets the mocking tone for the rest of the letter. "I am, Your faithful servant, &cetera," - This is the way letters were often closed, and the "I am" indicates that it's the first time the writer has sent a letter to the recipient. A more formal and politer version could have replaced the "&cetera" with more protestations of amity, but this style was already falling out of favor as a little too archaic and elaborate. Victoria's name was already set when I started this manuscript — it came from my first Victorian set romance, currently being rewritten. Byron's I chose after Lord Byron for several reasons. First, I knew from the start they my duke would have a wild reputation — and well deserved. Also, the books was to be a play off the traditional Gothic, which made me think of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Mary Shelley ran with the wild crowd that included Lord Byron. Chapter One The idea for the start of this chapter — the sexually charged conversation — came from a number of romance books that I'd read recently and seemed particularly suited to this type of book. Getting it exactly how I wanted it took quite a bit of tweaking, though! I start with two characters who have unlikable aspects instead of the usual Fake Rake and Perky Miss that populate most romance Gothics today. That makes the whole situation much more delicate. p. 3  Raeburn Court - Raeburn Court has no "real world" model. I didn't like the traditional castle-ish construction so common in Gothics, so instead, I made it a mishmash of styles from many periods, which would give it a suitable spookiness without following the cliché too closely. p. 5 "His grace is expecting thoo at the house, my lady." - While I didn't use true eye-dialect for my Yorkshire natives in this book, picking which words to represent faithfully and which grammatical structures to reproduce proved to be a challenge in itself! This is the balance I finally found between authenticity and readability. I know it isn't entirely accurate — far, far from it, in fact — but I didn't want to bewilder my readers when this speech is such a small part of the book. I apologize now to anyone who wanted to see absolute accuracy here, but my attempts at it caused such screams of frustration that I eventually settled on mostly inaccurate instead. Please, don't lynch me. I'm too young to die. p. 5 limestone hills - Luck. Dumb luck. I was pretty sure that the Yorkshire dales were limestone, but I forgot to look it up to check. I realized this in the galley stage, but fortunately, I was right. p. 9 "Corn Laws, Rotten Boroughs, Reform Bills" - This refers to some of the most controversial legislature of the Victorian age. Mrs. Peasebody dislikes government interference as a rule, and she thinks that politics ought to be the exclusive realm of the nobles and gentry — who, of course, should let her continue to live her life as she always has! p. 10 Mrs. Peasebody - This name just seemed good for a busybody of a housekeeper. In an amusing coincidence, it turns out that one of my critique partners had a housekeeper with a very similar name, Mrs. Pease, in her book Pretty Persuasion. p. 12 "He took a swallow of his scotch" - In homage to his Scottish border origins, Byron drinks scotch rather than brandy. p. 16 "Better than a pound of flesh, I'll strip a ton from his pride." - This is an allusion to Merchant of Venice. Byron is casting himself in the role of Shylock, the surprisingly sympathetic villain of the play. Earlier, there is a biblical reference — "unto the seventh generation." There, less humbly, Byron casts himself in the role of God! p. 16 "Paris or Naples or Vevey" - Vevey was a Swiss lake resort town of great popularity during this time. It is reference in a short story by Henry James that plays off social themes, and it's also where Mary Shelley had her dream that became the book Frankenstein. Chapter Two p. 26 The language was indirect enough to obscure the exact nature of the bargain... - I have no idea what the contract actually says, so don't ask. Really. p. 28 This scene is a huge Gothic moment in the novel, so it had to be handled carefully to avoid being a repetition of all the hundreds of novels that came before. The tapestry is shamelessly stolen from The Hunt For the Unicorn, a series of French tapestries now in a museum. p. 30 The blank wall was, when I began to write it, nothing more than that, but by the time I'd finished, I realized that it was the key to the entire novel, and it guided the rest. The tapestry with nothing behind it, the terrible secret that isn't, the monster that doesn't exist. Chapter Three p. 36 It wasn't until Victoria and Byron started talking that I realized how important the ghosts of the past of Raeburn Court were to this novel. Byron's great-uncle, Annie's mother, and their stories quickly became a layer to the story I didn't expect. p. 37 Dowager House - A lot of novels speak of Dower Houses, fewer of Dowager Houses. They are, by the 19th century, essentially the same thing. Chapter Four Sex, sex, sex This was actually an experiment to see how well I could write without some huge external plot (which romance authors often use as crutches) and with a lot of sex (which sells really, really well right now and which works for my voice). No matter how sexy my books are, they'll never be pornography. In pornography, without the sex, there is no point to the story. In my books, without the stories, there is no point to the sex. To keep up the tone of the novel, I made up the tower room of debauchery, which belonged to the previous duke. There is a sensible reason for choosing it. Except for the Henry Suite and Unicorn Room, it's the only room suitable for such activities that's habitable at this point. There is no way Byron would let Victoria into his private quarters at this point, and he certainly doesn't want to come to her, so the tower room it is. p. 57 but I always repent - This is from a joking rejoinder that I say sometimes when asked something similar. She's not very joking at this moment, though! Chapter Five p. 76 beef pie - I admit it. I hate English food. This isn't what the aristocracy normally dined upon, but there was such a great potential for horridness that I could not pass it up. The cook is dreadful, and she will be gently retired between the last chapter and the epilogue. p. 77 Red didn't do the color justice - I have no idea where this came from. Slightly humorous moments kept slipping into this novel, and when they worked, I let them. It took a lot of balancing to keep the tone and humanity both working through moments like this. Chapter Six p. 87 Webb - I am an architecture freak. *g* Philip Speakman Webb was part of the aesthetic movement in architecture that eventually birthed the Arts and Crafts style. In its early forms, it was simple and medievalist, though it had a number of characteristics that any Craftsman enthusiast would immediately recognize and appreciate. I wanted something that worked for Byron and spoke of who he was, and this movement really spoke to me. p. 92 I admit it. I like to do stupid things on rainy days, too. *g* I just like rain! p. 97 "Yer were gone such a time!" - Okay, so why did the housekeeper suddenly say "yer" instead of "thoo"? "Thoo" is singular, and "yer" is plural! Just like "thou" and "you" in Old and Middle English, before it became Frenchified into formal/informal. I was tempted just to leave it all as "thoo" so as not to confuse readers, but then I *knew* I'd get lynched. Chapter Eight This chapter and the next caused me fits. I can't tell you the number of times I rewrote it before I was happy. Anyhow, the first scene in this chapter was never here until the line edits stage. I'm surprised at how well it clicked given how little editing I've done on it! Large parts of it were lifted from another scene, but it came together well. Chapter Nine The peach crumble wasn't planned — really. I decided that I'd been giving them enough terrible food that they deserved something good, and, well, this is what happened. p. 138 Victoria drools in her sleep sometimes. I realized it when I was writing an earlier incarnation of the scene, but it was right, so it stayed. Somehow, it just fits her. Chapter Ten p. 142 I had no idea what was going to happen to Victoria on this walk, and I knew nothing about Annie's past until Mrs. Peasebody started telling me. But it worked. So it stayed, and Annie grew to become more than just a necessary piece of furniture for the story. p. 150 Rook Keep - This place is the key to their week, in a way, and so it exerts a kind of psychological draw upon Victoria. There are symbols in it for Victoria and Byron, both, and each sees the other in it — the things that they fear most and love best. Chapter Eleven p. 153 Temple of Flora - This isn't one of the priceless incunabula (books printed before 1501). This is a Georgian regency-era book of flowers with lots of pretty plates that I like. I just like the pictures, so I decided to include it. It probably doesn't look a thing like the book he's searching for. p. 155 quarto-sized - Sheets of paper to be made into books once came in standard sizes. The number of times a piece of paper was folded before it was bound gave the end product its size. One fold into four leaves produced a folio, two folds into four leaves produced a quarto, three folds into eight leaves produces an octavo. It goes to 16 and 32 sheets, but those were very small books! A quarto was a bit larger than a normal modern hardback, and it was generally used for things less important, say, than great religious or extremely valued literary works but more important that ephemeral popular fiction. There. Far more than you ever wanted to know. p. 161 the ladder tipped up the front of her dress - A pet peeve of mine is historicals in which the characters wear period clothes yet don't actually wear them, if that makes any sense. There are descriptions of clothing, but the characters never move in the clothes described. It's hard to keep in mind as a writer, but it adds so much when you get it right! Chapter Twelve p. 165 ridgepole hooks - Hooks on the end of ropes were sometimes used to pull down burning building so the didn't do any harm to the surrounding buildings. p. 173 to melt the wax - Though the penny post was well established, it would be a number of years before self-gummed envelopes would become available. Chapter Thirteen p. 177 was that a hint of pork drippings? - I loathe English cookery. There are few things more horrible. And I'm afraid by opinions show! p. 183 This is the scene that made my agent decide she wanted to represent me even though she'd only read one other chapter. Chapter Fourteen p. 195 In the first draft, I did not realize Victoria's wildness until this scene. It caused a lot of revising! Half a scene got caught here and in the next chapter. I loved being able to write about riding and horses — since I ride, I know how to describe horse body language and riding in a vivid and realistic way. Chapter Fifteen p. 205 Byron and Victoria are very much people of their time with their social outlooks and concerns. The doom of the nobility was just then becoming clear, but many, like Byron, kept themselves wealthy through increasing the amount of real estate they owned and by renting out their lands to industrialists. p. 208 Lake Poets - The Lake Poets Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the rest) were major forces in the Romantic Movement and loved Yorkshire and the Lake District — wild moors and abandoned heaths over the bucolic farmlands that had been preferred until that point. "Lake Poets" was a demeaning name coined by their critics. p. 215 This was a scary scene to write since so much of the book hung upon it! Chapter Sixteen p. 217 I loved writing this scene! Finally, ACTION! I was very confident at action scenes — I knew I was good at them — and so writing this was like stepping into a pair of well-worn slippers. p. 222 he could feel it searing his cheeks - Byron has erythropoietic protoporphyria, which is very painful and leaves some scars but does not eat away at soft tissue the way erythropoietic porphyria does. It also gets quite a bit better typically when a person is in his mid-30s. Byron's just slightly late. Chapter Seventeen p. 228 I really enjoy writing delusional scenes, mostly because it's such a challenge. *g* This was fun! I did rewrite it a number of times, but all the pieces worked. p. 228 beef tea - Think beef broth, the 19th-century equivalent to chicken noodle soup. Chapter Eighteen p. 244 "Did they love each other?" - A major theme of this book are human relationships — those of the old duke versus the new one, of brother-sister, mother-daughter, friends, and lovers — and not just how they are ideally but all the different, less usual forms they take between people. Chapter Nineteen p. 250 his fingers came away damp - I didn't know this was going to happen, but when it did, it felt so right! The revelatory scene that came after is one of the ones I'm most pleased with in the entire book. Chapter Twenty Here is the chapter where the Beauty and the Beast theme clearly overtakes the traditional Gothic theme. It is a quiet sort of echo of the fairy tale. I wasn't even conscious of it at first. And yet here is our heroine, who almost loves the Beast and is going away for the sake of her family... Chapter Twenty-One p. 280 "thrown into the Thames" - a tragically frequent — almost routine — end for unwanted bastard infants in Victorian London. Chapter Twenty-Two The timeline here was tricky, but I eventually ironed it out! I had to rewrite entirely it because I'd written the end when I was only halfway through the book, and it didn't quite fit who Byron and Victoria had become. Epilogue One reader mentioned that the situation her is perhaps unique to romance. Maybe it is. I was tired of the mommy-and-daddy epilogues (as if babies were proof of love!), and so I wanted to do something else. Read MUSIC OF THE NIGHT to see how this turns out! Buy It Now top

   

  
  

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Coming soon! Buy It Now top