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Time Travels – A Cheat’s Way Of Sneaking In The Unpopular
Eras
Everyone keeps saying the historical
romance market is dead. Yet
despite the industry’s attempts to bury it, readers keep insisting it’s still
alive by snapping up copies of any title a brave and solo publisher dares to
put on the market, thereby showing the ol’ genre still has some life in ‘er
yet. But...
Mostly those titles are in a select few “safe”
historical eras and locations. If
you’re a fan of historical romance at all, you can probably rattle off those
eras without trying too hard:
·
Medieval Britain – preferably the
Plantagenets, even better if it’s during Richard’s reign.
·
Regency novels. (Gag me. I am not a Regency fan at all. Personal taste, I know, but the
mannered style of these novels I just don’t get.)
·
Victorian Britain, especially late
Victorian, especially London during the Season.
·
Western America during the late 1800’s.
Anything outside these few safe and
traditional eras and locations is considered a risky, atypical historical
romance.
Until recently, many publishers may have
shied from publishing the novel no matter how well it was written, based purely
on that fact alone. Even if you
could find a publisher who will buy your book, many readers won’t buy the book
because they aren’t comfortable with the era or the location. If they can’t visualize it in their
heads, they won’t read it. While
there are many readers who love reading about new and exotic places, there are
many more readers who want the comfort of the familiar and the known. It’s little benefit to know that
readers are raving about your romance set in 1923 Paraguay, when those readers
number in the single digits, and your royalty cheque was held over until next
semester because it didn’t make the minimum amount to be generated this period.
The marketplace is shifting a little bit,
though. Carina Press, the
electronic publishing arm of Harlequin Silhouette, stated at the RT Booklovers
Convention in Columbus, Ohio in late April 2010 that they are currently buying
historical romances for their launch in June, 2010, and the majority of those
historicals are not in the “safe” eras.
However, with Carina Press being one of the
few exceptions to the safe rule, authors like me who just love playing around
in the historical danger zones have found the odd safety valve here and there,
and in Kiss Across Time I used one: Time travel. Instead of setting an entire novel in one era, I had my
characters travel through time, and dropping into four different times in the
space of a single story, never spending long enough in any one period to
alienate a reader, but long enough for me to muck about with the history,
language and politics of the day before hauling my characters back to the
present.
Oh, I had fun!
Call it the cheat’s way of writing
historical novels, when you can’t write historical novels anymore, and have to
get your fix. The one good thing
about paranormals and magic: It
can solve all sorts of things if you apply it creatively.
What’s your favourite historical era? Read any good books set in it
lately? Wish you had?
_________________
Kiss Across
Time
Taylor Yates just got fired from her
university for insisting that the 5th Century British poet and
playwright, Inigo Domhnall, existed. When she hears the poet’s lyrics in a
death metal song, she engineers a meeting with the dark-eyed, dark-haired lead
singer, Brody Gallagher. An unintended kiss sends them spinning back to the
poet’s time, when Saxons were pillaging King Arthur’s Britain, and a warrior
expects a proper farewell from his woman before he sets off for war.
Brody’s all for kissing her again. More, he’d like her to try kissing his
friend and lover, Veris, just to see what will happen. His blond, tall, blue-eyed Saxon friend Veris.
_______________________________
Excerpt
(R-Rated!) --
Taylor laughed. “Why
on earth would it?” Then something in Brody’s expression registered on her. “Oh…he’s
your lover, isn’t he?”
Brody lifted a
brow.
“A very
long-term lover,” Taylor concluded with growing wonder. She tilted her head to
study him. “What is his name?”
“Most people
call me Veris, because they can’t pronounce my real name.”
She whirled
around to face the voice.
He was sitting
on the arm of the chair where the suit jacket had been a few moments before.
Blond hair, blue eyes, six foot two inches of self-assured, very
broad-shouldered male.
“You!” She struggled
for the name. “Dr. Gerhardsson. You consulted with me last week, about the
Domhnall plays.”
“Jesus, you son
of a bitch,” Brody said behind her. “You went and did it after all.”
Veris smiled. “I
did.”
Brody brushed
past Taylor and threw himself into the lounge chair. He looked at Taylor. “You’re
a history professor?”
“I nearly was,”
she said flatly.
“You don’t look
like one,” Brody commented.
“Neither does
he,” she said, pointing at Veris. He was wearing leather pants and a sleeveless
white cotton overshirt that made the most of the tanned, rounded caps of his
shoulders and the bunches of muscles of his arms. Veris crossed his arms over
his chest, which just seemed to multiply the amount of tanned muscle on
display. His blue eyes twinkled.
Brody seemed
more than mildly pissed about Veris’ consultation, which had been utterly
professional in nature. Dr. V. Gerhardsson had not indicated by so much as an
inch that he even recognized that Taylor was a woman.
Even so, Taylor
had been left feeling edgy and weak-kneed after the evening consultation and
had fallen into bed and indulged in a rare session of masturbation that
featured Gerhardsson and his blue eyes and broad shoulders and various parts of
his magnificent anatomy, over and over again.
Brody glared at
Veris now. “I can see now why you came home in such a muck-sweat that night…the
seventeenth, right?”
Taylor jumped.
That was the night.
Veris just
shrugged a little. No pride lost there. “I have no objections to kissing the
lady now, if that’s what you want.” He smiled a little but his eyes were
dancing with merriment.
Brody glared for
a moment longer, then gave up. Taylor knew he had tabled the argument for
later. He sat forward on the seat and spoke to Veris. “I told you what happened
during the concert. I want to see if it happens to you when you kiss Taylor,
because of our bond. If it does, then we’re going to have to tell Taylor.”
Veris glanced at
Taylor. “And that won’t have tipped her off at all,” he said.
“Like consulting
her about the Domhnall plays won’t have?” Brody shot back.
Veris grimaced. “I
see your point.” He got to his feet and walked toward her and Taylor knew that
the equivalent of a nuclear explosion would have to go off before she would
move from the spot.
Veris stopped in
front of her. “May I?” he asked. He seemed to tower over her five-foot-six
frame, even with her spiked boots.
She thought her
knees would give out. “Yes,” she said, her voice hoarse.
He slid his hand
around her waist and the other under her hair. This close, his blue eyes were
mesmerizing and she could feel her heart thundering. It hurt as it slammed
against her chest. She gripped Veris’ shirt almost convulsively, suddenly
afraid.
“It’s all right,”
he whispered, his lips brushing hers, his breath fanning her. “I have you.”
He kissed her.
His lips were
surprisingly soft. But just for a moment. Then his mouth hardened against hers
and his tongue thrust inside, , sweeping against her tongue and teeth,
exploring.
Taylor moaned.
She couldn’t help it. This was better than she had imagined in her lonely bed
last week. She spread her fingers over the cotton shirt to feel the muscles
beneath, as she had longed to do all through the meeting. But instead of
cotton, she felt leather.
She opened her
eyes. The room was round and there was a hole in the middle of the roof. That
was for venting smoke from the fire, she knew. Veris lifted his lips from hers,
trailed them to her ear and thrust his tongue inside. Not Veris. Vidar. She
groaned, her whole body blossoming with arousal. Vidar was home for such a
short while. But they were preparing for all-out war. Even now the longboats
were being prepared for the journey over the sea to Britain.
She thrust her
hands into his hair, hiding her fear. “Kiss me again, my husband,” she
demanded, fumbling with the buckles on the leather chest plate he wore.
“There’s no
time.” He brushed her hair from her temple and stroked her neck. His hand fell
to her breast and stroked it through the material of her dress.
“There will be
enough,” she told him, sliding the second buckle undone, as the sweet pleasure
from his hand transmitted to her cl§toris and made her body begin to tremble
and throb with desire. She was moist and ready for him.
She slid the
third buckle apart and he tossed the breastplate over his head and onto the
floor with an impatient shrug. He pushed her up against the wall, his blue eyes
snapping fire. “You are ever an inspiration, Tyra,” he growled. He grabbed the
scooped front of her white dress and tugged. The fabric tore down to her knees
and he pushed on it with his boot to get rid of it, pulling the sleeves off her
arms as he did so.
Tyra stood naked
before him, her breasts rising and falling rapidly, telling him of her
excitement.
Vidar removed
his shirt and tossed it onto the breastplate. As he turned away, she saw a
long, writhing scar along his back, high up under the shoulder blade. Then he
turned back and unfastened his trews, revealing his pulsing c§ck. He stroked it
as he approached her, letting her see the tip of it in his hand. She began to
tremble with anticipation.
“Hurry,” she
whispered.
He shook his
head. “No.” His voice was a rumble. He pressed up against her. “Not now.” His
eyes danced. “Ooooh, no.” He dropped his head and licked her collarbone,
sliding his tongue along the depression to the nape of her neck, making her
catch her breath.
Then he slid it
down to her breast and sucked the tip into his mouth and began to play with it.
Tyra cried out,
her hands slapping against the wall, as the pleasurable sensations bombarded
her. She was melting into a puddle of joy. Dimly, she felt Vidar’s hands around
her waist, holding her up, as his mouth switched to her other breast and
continued the medley. She was gasping and trembling and aching to have him
inside her. She reached for his head, twining her fingers in his hair, trying
to coax him to rise, to press against her.
It was like
trying to move a rock. And she was hazy and weak from the pleasure he was
giving her, anyway.
“Vidar…f§ck me,”
she said hoarsely. It was the wrong word, she knew that. But it was the only
word she could think of right now. It would have to do.
He straightened
and his hands around her waist lifted her like she was as light as his spear.
She wrapped her legs around his waist, eager for his possession. Looking deep
into her eyes, he thrust his long c§ck inside her with one deep, slow thrust.
He groaned as he came to a halt, his swollen balls resting against her ass. “My
woman,” he growled.
“Yes,” she said,
as he thrust inside her. It felt so good, she was melting around him. She
clutched at his shoulders. “Harder,” she begged. “Faster.”
He gripped her
hips and thrust harder and faster, his pelvis kissing her cl§t, making her feel
faint and swoony. Her climax was building, rushing at her. Her breath caught in
her chest as the first convulsions of her climax washed over her. Vidar was
slamming into her, driving her pleasure with his heated shaft.
Then she felt
him spasm and his seed spill into her even as she shuddered against him. It
touched off another powerful climax, one so deep and wrenching that she let her
head fall back as she cried out, her eyes closing in ecstasy.
“Tyra. Taylor.”
Vidar’s voice. Breathless. Close by her ear.
She snapped her
eyes open at the use of her name. Her real name.
The room. The
square room. Veris’ face was a bare inch or so from hers. He watched her
warily. “Do you know where you are?”
“San Bernadino,”
she said. “And you’re Veris again.”
He licked his
lips. “And you’re Taylor again.”
______________________________________
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