Friday - Who She Was Before Featuring Victoria Chatham #MFRWauthor

1. What were you in your life before you became a writer? Did this influence your writing?

I think I was always I writer, I just didn’t believe it! Amongst my cousins I was always the story teller, so putting those stories down on paper just followed naturally. I won prizes for essays while I was still in school and then grew into a typical teenager. I was more interested in good ol’ rock ‘n roll and jiving at the local dance hall at least two nights a week. Getting married and having a family put any ideas I might have had about writing on the back burner but I was always going to to write a book one day. Every job I’ve ever had has had a large customer service element and as I find people fascinating it wasn’t too difficult for me to build characters. I joked that if people weren’t nice to me I’d make them a villain in a book.

2 Are you genre specific or general? Why? I don't mean genres like romance, mystery, fantasy etc. There are many subgenres of the above.

I’d have to say general even though I mostly write Regency romance. I like to think I could branch out into other genres if I wanted to. My last release was a western contemporary romance, Loving That Cowboy, and I really had to work hard on that book. That surprised me as I thought I would have no trouble branching into a contemporary story.  My soon to be released His Ocean Vixen has been a joy to write as I’m back in the Regency period. I got so lost in it that for the last couple of months I’ve really thought of very little else.

3. Did your reading choices have anything to do with your choice of a genre or genres?

Yes, I really enjoy historical novels, especially Regency romances. I fell in love with that genre in my teens and although I enjoy a good mystery or thriller I usually come back to the Regency. I also enjoy good western romances, by Kathleen Eagle and Linda Lael Miller especially. For pure westerns I turlike Zane Grey, Louis L’Amour, Larry McMurtry and Owen Wister. I tend to think of them as classical westerns.

4. What's your latest release?

This will be His Ocean Vixen, hopefully coming out mid-June. I’m working on revisions now. It’s the second in my Berkeley Square series.

Newly-wed Lady Juliana Beamish has much to look forward to but her future turns bleak when the ship she is voyaging on is attacked by pirates.

Captain Drake O’Hara serves no master and only one mistress – the sea. On course for Jamaica he is reluctant to waste time investigating wreckage strewn across the ocean’s surface but when the debris offers up a beautiful survivor, he has no option other than to take her aboard.

Drake undermines her every notion of what desire is but, uncertain if she is still a wife or might already be a widow, Juliana is unwilling to dishonor her marriage vows. Returning to England is the only recourse she has to determine her status. Can she continue to resist Drake or will she surrender to the unrelenting passions he has stirred in her?

There are two more to come in this series and might be more because as I create new characters in each story it’s a bit like ink on a blotting paper, the ideas just grow. I like to work with characters I’ve already created as they take on lives of their own and it’s not so hard to write their stories. They feel as familiar to me as old friends and I’m reluctant to let them go.

5. What are you working on now?

I’m already lining up my next book and have started with character outlines and reading histories of the area in which my book is set. This is a secret project so I can’t say too much except that I’m really excited about it. It’s set in 1935 so it is still a historical work.

6. Where can we find you?

All my books are listed on  http://bookswelove.net/authors/chatham-victoria/.  I had got really good at posting every week day on www.facebook.com/AuthorVictoriaChatham but have got a bit behind with finishing up His Ocean Vixen and then being on vacation. I post at least once a month on http://victoriachatham.blogspot.ca and also have a regular blog page on the twenty-third of each month on www.bwlauthors.blogspot.ca.