Archive for The Lady of Bolton Hill

A New Feature on my Website….

Posted by ElizabethCamden on September 20, 2012 | Comments

I thought I’d add a little content to spiff up my website called “Book Extras.”

All books have a ton of behind-the-scenes stories that never make it into print. Sometimes there are entire chapters or alternate endings. There are usually several versions of book covers or titles. Readers are often curious about what triggered an idea, or what details from the novel were based on historical fact and which were pure fabrication.

I will be including some of these details on my website, and have just rolled out the extra content for The Lady of Bolton Hill. You can check it out here.

When I first wrote The Lady of Bolton Hill, I had several chapters at the beginning devoted to Daniel and Clara’s early friendship. For a number of reasons, those chapters had to be cut, but I am thrilled I can now release them to curious readers. There are also some alternate covers for the book and other behind-the-scenes trivia.

I will eventually release Book Extra sections for all my novels, but The Lady of Bolton Hill is up first. I hope you will swing by and check it out!

A Guilty Pleasure: The Revenge Plot

Posted by ElizabethCamden on April 9, 2012 | Comments

One of the most popular new television series this year was ABC’s Revenge, an over-the-top romantic soap opera set in the glittering world of the Hamptons.  I confess to getting sucked in.  The plot features a young girl (Emily) whose adored father is framed for a horrible crime and sent to prison, where he is murdered.  Her subsequent years were spent in psychiatric wards as the villains try to neutralize her by convincing the world she is crazy.  The story picks up as Emily, now a powerful young woman, returns to the Hamptons under an assumed identity to wreak havoc on the people who destroyed her father.

Revenge plots are intriguing because they combine our desire to see an underdog get an upper-hand over someone who did him or her wrong.

Readers have a sense of fair play and they want to see the good guy win….but the protagonist in a revenge plot is walking a very fine line as they risk becoming a bad guy themselves.

I played with the revenge fantasy in The Lady of Bolton Hill.  Daniel’s quest for vengeance on a business rival was rife with unsavory aspects, and although I wanted the reader to sympathize with him, I definitely had him walking along that razor-thin edge where he risked falling over into the villain category himself.  This gave me the opportunity to explore some of the ethical issues between vengeance and justice.

For me, there are a handful of things a good revenge story must have if it is going to work as a thrilling novel in which you can still root for the protagonist:

  • The reason for revenge must be believable, profound, and have lasting consequences….otherwise the protagonist comes off as a petty, amoral jerk.
  • The ethical angle must be addressed.  I think this is where the ABC series Revenge stumbled a little.  Emily unleashes a real reign of terror and doesn’t balk very much when innocent people get entangled in her web.
  • The consequences of the revenge should be explored.  Watching the villain get his comeuppance isn’t very satisfying if we don’t see the ripple effect it has on the hero.

While I don’t want a steady diet of revenge stories, a good one every now and then is a delightful, guilty pleasure.

 

 

Bane….Is….Back!

Posted by ElizabethCamden on February 13, 2012 | Comments

I’m hugely excited to announce that my next novel, Against the Tide, will feature my all-time favorite character.  Bane Alexander first appeared in the Lady of Bolton Hill as a whiplash smart and lethally dangerous 17-year old troublemaker.   He is now all grown up, has straightened himself out, and is ready to set the world on fire.

If you haven’t read The Lady of Bolton Hill, no worries.  Against the Tide is an entirely stand-alone novel set in Boston of 1891.  The heroine is Lydia Pallas, a translator for the U.S. Navy whose skills Bane desperately needs to unravel a smuggling ring.

It took me a while to dream up a heroine who was a match for Bane.  Bane is such an overwhelming force who was a scene-stealer in The Lady of Bolton Hill, so I needed a woman who could match him in terms of wit, intelligence, and bravado.  She also needed to have a deep gash of vulnerability that would slice through Bane’s tough, cynical hide and make him go weak in the knees.  I think that Against the Tide is the most romantic of any book I’ve written.  Look for it to hit the shelves in October of 2012.  Keep your eyes peeled!

 

North & South

Posted by ElizabethCamden on October 17, 2011 | Comments

When The Lady of Bolton Hill was first released, a handful of the early reviewers compared it to a miniseries called North & South.  I mistakenly thought they were referring to the John Jakes mini-series by the same name.  The John Jakes story was set during the American Civil War and featured two men whose differing political allegiances tore their friendship asunder.  It bore literally zero similarity to The Lady of Bolton Hill, so I dug a little deeper and found the BBC miniseries based on the novel by Elizabeth Gaskell.

I decided to order the BBC version of North & South through NetFlix and take a peek.  I am so glad I did!  The BBC version is a splendid tale of star-crossed lovers and class struggles.  Set in Victorian England, it tells the story of a privileged young woman who moves from a serene, bucolic village to a grimy factory town.  There she meets the brooding and passionate John Thornton, who owns one of the largest factories.  These two could not be more opposite.  Mr. Thornton develops an immediate attraction to the heroine, but Margaret is repulsed by what she perceives to be his cruelty and ruthless business practices.

The storyline is good, cinematography is gorgeous, the soundtrack is haunting…but what really makes the movie is the magnificent Richard Armitage who stars as John Thornton.  Just beneath his stern demeanor we can see this simmering, passionate man who is ripped apart by his unrequited love for Margaret.  Time and again she stomps on his heart, to which he responds by getting colder and more remote….but the viewer can see him wrestling with these terribly inconvenient emotions he can’t subdue.   He is a complex character and it is fascinating to watch him confront one challenge after another over the course of the miniseries.  Oh, and he’s also smoking hot.  Just saying.

I admit to a fair amount of trepidation before watching North & South.  So many reviewers had commented on the similarities between my book and the miniseries that I worried people might think I had sponged ideas or plot lines from it.  Although there is a superficial similarity in the basic plot (rich factory owner, girl of privilege who disapproves of his business tactics) that is where the similarity ends.  And after watching the miniseries, I was flattered down to my toes that people thought my book and the miniseries were mentioned in the same sentence.

 If you’ve never seen North & South, you are in for a treat.  It is available on NetFlix, and also on the new streaming video service from Amazon.

The Lady of Bolton Hill: The Cover Story

Posted by ElizabethCamden on July 29, 2011 | Comments

After years of madly scribbling away in the privacy of my office, I can’t tell you how thrilling it is to finally know that actual people are reading and enjoying my book.  A huge majority of the comments note the lovely cover.  I agree!   

At the very beginning of the design process, my editor asked me to write up some notes about what the characters look like and the setting of the book.  Unlike many inspirational romance novels that are set on the prairie, The Lady of Bolton Hill takes place in Baltimore during the gilded age, so it was important to communicate the setting so people knew what they were getting.  Hence, the skyline through the window.  In my design notes, I spoke a lot of the heroine, Clara, as a very refined and gentle woman.  This quality really comes through on the cover. 

Aside from those initial notes, the cover illustration is an aspect of the book I have almost zero control over, so I was sweating bullets over what it would look like.  In my head I have a vision of the tone, setting, and atmosphere of the book, and it is a huge leap of faith to turn all that over to someone else.   I was very lucky to be paired up with such a gifted artist, Jennifer Parker, for my first cover.   

It was late at night when I got the email with the cover image attached, and my computer was unusually sluggish.  I remember the wave of nervous anxiety as I waited for that image to load.  I think I was clenching my teeth so hard I almost gave myself lockjaw. Anyway, what a huge relief to be greeted with something so lovely!  

I never realized how much work goes into the design process.  The cover illustrator actually came up with several mock-ups of the cover before settling on the lady in the blue dress.  Here are the rough drafts of alternate cover ideas:

Once they decided on a lady standing before a window, they hired a model, a photographer, and went to work.  Here are the two, almost identical versions of the cover that made it to the final round:

They ultimately decided on the version on the left.  After that, they began working on the artwork, text, spine, and layout of the back cover.  All in all, I was immensely pleased and humbled to have such a great team of people working on my cover.