Over the last few months I have been interviewed at various places. Here are some of them:
Joyce DiPastena at her Blog:
Today I have an author interview and giveaway with David William (D.W.) Wilkin, who among many other things, writes Regency romances. David has graciously agreed to give away one of his books at the end of this interview, Colonel Fiztwilliam’s Correspondence, a Regency romance based on some characters from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Read on to learn more about David and find out how you can enter to win a copy of this book! (E-book open to International and US entries, print copy US only)
JDP: Thank you for joining us today, David. How did you become interested in writing about the Regency period?
David: That is a tale, and bear with me, I shall lead you to the end of the trail. I liked history enough from High School to make it my major in college. I specialized in Pre-Modern Asian history while getting my degree which is pretty far from the study of Regency England. But History, I have always found, is stories. I like stories and even before college I wrote some, but after, I started my quest to be a novelist. I also became an Historical Re-enactor.
I joined groups where we made the costumes of the era we were Re-enacting. I learned the dances from those times, and then actually taught well over 1000 people how to do them. Running regular dance practices. My early main focus was Medieval and Renaissance, but one day a friend said, ‘Have I got a girl for you to meet,’ and dragged me to a Regency Dance. Well, not that girl, but several years later, I met my wife, Cheryl at a Regency Ball.
To woo her (she was very far away), I wrote her a regency romance, a few pages a day, that turned into a novel. When taking a class to further enhance my writing, I resurrected the story and worked on it more. Then over the last ten years, found that a good third of my output was Regency Romances.
JDP: Wow, that’s an amazing (and wonderfully romantic) story! What do you find most fascinating about the Regency era?
David: We of course stylize the era. How many of us portray London or Town, other than full of beauty and elegant living? When of course you step outside those stately homes, and there is filth in the streets. The lower classes are everywhere, and the middle classes are struggling. But in our Regencies, we set aside that and in is light and glitters. That is something I love. It is actually a fantasy world we create each time.
Even in movies, or especially in movies, the clothes our heroines and heroes wear are never smudged with dirt, or tattered. I find it hard to imagine that everything would look so clean back in the day. So on my Planet, where I recreate the Regency, I can enter the world of the Aristocracy and Nobility, and share those titles, and those riches. I think of it as a great escape.
JDP: Ah, yes, I relate to your cleaned up fantasy world. Only my characters live on Planet Medieval, rather than Planet Regency. I’m always interested in how authors research their historical novels. Could you tell us a little about how you researched the historical background for Colonel Fitzwilliam’s Correspondence?
David: Colonel Fitzwilliam’s Correspondence is of course a sequel to Pride and Prejudice. So first, I reread Austen’s classic. My book also focuses on Darcy’s cousin, who does not get a lot of play in a novel set during the Napoleonic Wars. It was still a time where a very rich man could purchase their rank, and one can imagine that the Earl of M—-K, as Austen calls Fitzwilliam’s father, having done so for his son.
As a history major, I have delved into military history, and have learned a thing or two about the Napoleonic Wars. Philip Haythornwaite’s Wellington’s Military Machine , Sir Charles Oman’s History of the Peninsular War , David Chandler’s The Campaigns of Napoleon  and David Gates The Spanish Ulcer  all have places on my bookshelf along with dozens of others about the battles and period of the war. In addition to many books about the Regency. Knowing about the war and thinking about the Colonel, I knew that he had to be a participant in it.
I knew that by bringing the two together, I could craft a story with a little steel in our hero. (I hope I’ve conveyed that.) And that during the period, many, many men were affected truly by the war.
JDP: Can you share with us your top three favorite research books or other resources?
David: For the Regency era, my all time favorite is What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew by Daniel Pool . Very similar but with enough extra is Kristine Hughes Everyday Life in Regency England . Last, since I have been influenced by Georgette Heyer in creating my view of the Regency since a friend told me at one of those Regency Dances I just had to read Frederica , is Jennifer Kloester’s Georgette Heyer’s Regency World.
JDP: Ahhh, I love Frederica, by Georgette Heyer! (And Friday’s Child and These Old Shades and The Convenient Marriage and The Talisman Ring… Oops! Better stop and get on with the interview!) Are there any historical figures from the Regency era who particularly intrigue you?
David: We often forget that that across the channel a whole slew of characters, who were very much effecting what happened in London, were alive and influencing all of Europe. I think the most exciting is Ney. If your readers hear of his defense of the Grande Armee as it retreated from Russia and crossed the bridge at Kovno. Heroic stuff.
In England and our Regency, I love the many fictional Age of Sail officers. Hornblower shall always be a favorite, followed by Ramage, Bolitho, Drinkwater (isn’t that a great name that Richard Woodman gave us for a Naval Hero?) Nelson then is fascinating to me as are some of the other great British seamen, Hornblower’s Pellew was a real historical figure. Militarily Wellington and his generals are also fascinating. Henry Paget, a great cavalry commander that returns from the Peninsula and promptly runs-off with Wellington’s sister-in law. Wellington thus cannot have him serve on his staff, at least not until Waterloo years later and there his leg had to be amputated. He lived almost 40 years after that. Stapleton Cotton (What a great name), a Cavalry officer who lived to the age of 91 after the war.
What of Sir Harry Smith, who Heyer immortalizes in The Spanish Bride. Later to become a Lt. General and his wife, saved from Badajoz, becomes the woman that the cities (3 of them) of Ladysmith is named after. Beau Brummel and his Dandy Club, all I find fascinating.
David: Always. Currently being edited by my core group is a modern romance. I don’t want to say too much, but as it is Halloween, there are certain spectral beings that bring humor and channel Cupid. There are a few other Regencies also being edited at the moment. One called Beggars Can’t be Choosier, the other is Two Peas in a Pod. The last about identical twins and mistaken identities. Beggars has the underlying theme that so many Regency marriages were founded on, marrying for money.
Another Interview took place at English Epochs 101
An Interview with Author David W Wilkin
David Wilkin has been a historical re-enactor for twenty-five years. Most of that he has taught the dances of those past times to other re-enactors. With a degree in history and a passion for writing he has turned his hand to penning several novels about the past. A member of the English Historical Fiction Authors blog, today I interview him to tell us a little bit more about his work and the time periods he specializes in.
Where did you grow up, and where do you live now?
I am a Los Angeleno. Born in Los Angeles California. Went for two years of college at UC Santa Cruz before coming back to town and finishing at UCLA. I have spent the rest of my life here in Southern California.
You majored in History. How do you use that in your daily life?
In my daily life I have been a manufacturing executive for 20 years. History comes into play only when I relate stories to the workers about how we did it in the old day. Or an idea on how to counsel the employees. Citing how other companies in the world (I am an avid reader of business history) have overcome an obstacle and gone on to success. Talking about a Regency Dandy like Beau Brummels, or about Prinny, does me little good on the shop floor.
How did your interest in writing begin?
I liked creating stories when I was a child. Then in college I actually submitted an article and it was published. When I graduated, after my first out of college job ended, I tried my hand at writing stories. I find in comparison to what I create now, there was a lot more editing at the end of my drafts when I started then now.
How long have you been writing now?
Over thirty years. But the last ten have been the most fruitful period. And of that, two and half years ago we had to close my own company, Aspen Interiors. We made the woodwork found in the Cheesecake Factory restaurants. That was a blow, and so I turned to writing every day after sending out the resumes. I have written 9915 pages in the time between closing Aspen and reentering the work force. Lots of first draft material, some second draft, and some items actually now in print.
Where did your interest in the Regency Era come from?
That is a tale, and bear with me, I shall lead you to the end of the trail. I liked history enough from High School to make it my major in college. I specialized in Pre-Modern Asian history while getting my degree which is pretty far from the study of Regency England. But History, I have always found, is stories. I like stories and even before college I wrote some, but after, I started my quest to be a novelist. I also became an Historical Re-enactor.
I joined groups where we made the costumes of the era we were Re-enacting. I learned the dances from those times, and then actually taught well over 1000 people how to do them. Running regular dance practices. My early main focus was Medieval and Renaissance, but one day a friend said, ‘Have I got a girl for you to meet,’ and dragged me to a Regency Dance. Well, not that girl, but several years later, I met my wife, Cheryl at a Regency Ball.
To woo her (she was very far away), I wrote her a regency romance, a few pages a day, that turned into a novel. When taking a class to further enhance my writing, I resurrected the story and worked on it more. Then over the last ten years, found that a good third of my output was Regency Romances.
When did you first begin to think about writing a novel, and what motivated your
decision?
As I mentioned, when I left college I got a job right away. But six months later, nepotism and diminishing revenue meant cuts. I was out. So then I turned my hand to a science fiction, a tongue in cheek western, a fantasy. All have potential, but they need another edit based on all that I have learned about the craft. When unemployment ran out, and I only had rejection slips to show for it, I went back into the workforce.
Did you study the Regency when you were at University?
Not at all. I studied a little on the English Victorian era. I had a class on the American Revolutionary era, but otherwise I focused on premodern asian history, and then european, before Napoleon. The Regency era did not hold any interest then. I was college age and a guy. The medieval and renaissance had a lot of battles that appealed to me and the many stories such as King Arthur (whose time period is before the medieval era of course, but all the movies come out with medieval armor and fighting) or Richard Coeur de Lion.
What do you think is the hardest part of writing?
The middle is often hard. To keep everything energized when the Boy is struggling to redeem himself for the Girl, or to capture her interest. I have it plotted but often by the time I get there, secondary plot lines are coming into play and what I had originally glimpsed as interesting when I first thought to write, is now eclipsed by other better ideas. Then the true hard part is editing. Somedays I would rather take a catnap while reading my own words. I of course pretty much remember what they say and where it is going. (Not that I think so highly of my work knowing that it does need editing. But somedays a nap seems very appealing.)
Do you find it easy to choose character and place names
I cheat. I look up in the long list of peerages names and change a thing or two to get them right. Then for place names, I look for an area I want to put the action at, and if it needs to be fictitious I think up something. Using @@@@ford, or @@@@ ton often works. There are a lot of fords and tons in England.
Please tell us about your books.
I’ll just talk about the Regencies if that is alright. By far the most popular is Colonel Fitzwilliams Correspondence. It is a sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Originally I envisioned that the Colonel would emerge and have a romance, but I quickly put Kitty into the scene. With Lydia gone, I found Kitty torn between wanting to be a better young lady, than she had been while her more boisterous sister led her about, but also still a person of fun. I knew that the growth that occurs in all of us over time could be telling for one such as Kitty moving from being a girl to a woman.
I also knew that the war lasts for years, and a woman, if not married before her lover goes to war, most likely would not wait and appear to be on the shelf. When I placed the first letter in the story as a device to appease and contain the ever flighty Mrs. Bennet, I had no realization that would become the device I could employ for the entire story, but the truth is that England was growing closer by virtue of the post. Look to the original and the post between Jane and Lizzy telling of Lydia’s flight. Look at the missive Darcy places in the hands of Lizzy to explain himself. There is a great deal of letter writing occurring.
I believe that carries my book. That it is also the change in our hero, who becomes a great correspondent and uses his connections back in England to keep him sane amidst the battlefields of Portugal and Spain. The crux of both his growth, and that of his love interest occurs when he returns from the war. I attempt to place my own use of language, as did Heyer, into the story. I think this is a dividing point for my readers. Some have related that they find this works for them, while others expecting this book to be our current use of language can’t get past that.
The last caveat of a work based upon another’s writing is that many have their own ideas of what should be happening to the characters the original author created after writing The End. I of course take all those characters in the direction I chose. I used the last few paragraphs as a guideline, and I used Aldous Huxley’s view of Pride and Prejudice’s Catherine de Bourgh portrayed by Edna May Oliver for mine more than some of the others. Austen says that Lady Catherine and Elizabeth will make amends in the final paragraphs of the novel. The Olivier movie (1940) I think shows that clearly. (Edna May beats Judi Dench in this portrayal, hands down-IMO)
My other two Regencies are a little more of the typical pieces one finds with my twist. I try to emulate as best I can Georgette Heyer. So I don’t write to a Harlequin formula but my own. In each I tried to evoke certain parts of the history that is occurring. In The End of the World the location is Cornwall. At this time the first railroad track was laid, without a train, to transport the copper from the mines to the ships that carted it to wales. My fictitious mine is the site where this is first adopted. Not that it plays a central point to the entire tale, but it is there as background. Something our hero brings to the story.
In The Shattered Mirror we have a story that evolves around the true end of the war. It ended twice of course, since Napoleon came back. And when it ends a second time, our heroine, who wants a hero, is going up to Town (London) for her first season. When in Town, she meets, runs into, a man she played with as a child. He, however, is now crippled from an injury sustained in the war. I think that is a side we forget about and I find that most of my heroes have some sort of PTSD. They have seen demons and have to confront them and come to terms with them. I think a great many other heroes in the genre are not beset by such problems. None I have read at least.
My third Interview recently has been at Lauries Thoughts and Reviews
How did you start your writing career?
I’ve always liked stories. Hearing them, reading them, and then thinking about what happened next. That led to my own stories and the desire to write down the best ones so others could partake of them as well.
Who is your favorite author?
When writing a regency romance, then Georgette Heyer is my favorite author. But when not in the mode, for the sheer joy of the story, Charles Dickens is my favorite. I think he understood telling a story best and I like to think when I tell a story, others find I capture their interest as he captured mine.
Where do you research for your books?
I have an extensive library of books, over 1000 on history, culture, architecture. The needs that one as a genre writer uses. Now though we have wikipedia and google maps. Both of which are invaluable to me. When places some lords manor house, I can zoom down to great detail and see the lay of the land. It is much less expensive then flying to England and checking for myself, though should my books breakout, I’m on the next plane!
Does your significant other read your stuff?
When I was courting my SO, one of the things that united us was my writing her a romance. It was my first foray into Regency and we had met at a regency dance. As I crafted the story, she read it, but since, I have to twist her arm. It makes me wonder, especially since there is a question about it, if others have the same difficulties with their spouses.
Do you have critique partners or beta readers?
I do, but I am always looking for more. I think I produce more than they can handle. I took a critique class as part of getting a writing certificate from Cal State Fullerton some years ago. The group from that class continues to meet once a month for over a decade now. They are my first line of readers, and recently I have started a new writing group after relocating. Every writer needs more than their own pair of eyes on their work.
Do you listen to music while writing? If so what?
I have an extensive collection of music and over the last few years digitized everything onto the computer. I need the background of music to be my white noise to keep the distractions away. To allow me to concentrate. So I let it go onto shuffle play. It is one giant jukebox. Classical, opera, rock, pop, soundtracks. Can you imagine the expense before recorded music if i were to write with quill and ink? I would need a large orchestra, and many singers sitting outside my window serenading me. But then should they choose a selection I just did not want to hear, the fast forward button would be shouting, ‘Next Song!’ which would make one just a little guilty.
What book are you reading now?
I am reading Maggie Secara’s Molly September. A piratical romance by a good friend. Before that, I just finished books 9 & 10 in Simon Scarrow’s Macro and Cato series. The Gladiator and The Legion.
If you were to write a series of novels, what would it be about?
I am working on that. Two series actually. They are both fantasies. The first I started over 20 years ago (don’t all of us who write in the genre have such a series in their drawer?) Both have political, economic overtures. The first was conceived as a trilogy with a coup d’etat, civil wars, and magic. The second is more the avenging hidden prince, but I threw a unique device of an imperial game contest (others have that device as well, I suppose.) In order to succeed our hero must win the contest, but also must have the entire empire ready to back him. At the beginning he is a boy, he may have the right to succeed, but he has not earned it. By the end of the series, after a long dangerous road, he will have earned the right. Here there is no magic other than very active pantheon of Gods who push and pull at their faithful to get things going the way they wish.
And then last at JA Beard’s Unnecessary Musings
Dancing, Ghosts, and Jane Austen: An interview with author David Wilkin
Today I’m talking with David Wilkin, an author who normally specializes in Regency period novels. For this latest work, he satirically takes on the Jane Austen/monster mash-up trend in JANE AUSTEN AND GHOSTS.
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1) Tell us about your book.
JANE AUSTEN AND GHOSTS is a story about the making of the classic works of Jane into a movie with the twist that has recently come these last few years of including everything Jane with some type of monster. The novel is set in the here and now at a movie studio. Jane, being deceased, now falls into a category that we could include with zombies and vampires, werewolves and other monsters that Hollywood has done to death, so to speak. Jane now would be a ghost.
And were Jane a ghost, from the other side, she in my interpretation would not like at all what so many have done to her stories. Thus a haunting by Jane who most assuredly has been rolling over in her grave seems in order.
2) What inspired this book?
I actually have a cousin at the studios whose job is much like my protagonist, Ellis Abbot. Elizabeth, I mean Ellis Abbot is a finder for the studio. He looks for works that would make a great movie, and when he sees PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND Z*****s it was only natural for him to think that this would make a great camp movie. I played with that idea in my mind and what my cousin does, but I thought Jane would hate to see these movies made. She would probably hate to see these books having been written. (Though I never read one until I had finished the first draft of JANE AUSTEN AND GHOSTS, I was then very much surprised that the first seemed a graft onto Jane’s writing.)
Playing with the idea that Jane had rolled over in that grave in Winchester Cathedral (I visited her grave in 2007 and also looked for the God Begot House then as well which my cousin Arnold once ran a store out of just a few feet away) I thought what other Ghosts might accompany Jane to set things to right. What could come of that, and then how to link my knowledge of Hollywood (I worked at Dick Clark Productions when younger and taped every single American Bandstand there ever was) to that of Jane Austen.
3) For over two hundred years, people have been reworking Jane Austen. Besides simply mild setting time shifts, we’ve had modern updates, such as EMMA being reworked as CLUELESS and more extreme cultural transformations such as the Aishwarya Rai-lead Bollywood take on Austen, BRIDE AND PREJUDICE. Why do the works of an English woman who wrote so long ago about a fairly narrow socio-economic range of characters still appeal to so many people all over the world today?
I think that we have a love story in this and it is a little complicated. Thank you, Wickham, Lydia and Georgiana. That love story is a key to why we return to PRIDE AND PREJUDICE as perhaps the favorite of the tales. (I have to admit to liking PERSUASION at this time of life more.) The characters and the stereotypes we find in the work are all well detailed and where some parts of Jane’s writing would be far from considered a great novel today, her ability to spin a good story endures.
I look at the Regency Romances I delve into, including COLONEL FITZWILLIAM’S CORRESPONDENCE, my Jane sequel, as a dance with the beginning our seeing the Hero and Heroine. Then one or the other takes a fancy to the other, but that can not be returned. Boy meets Girl. Boy likes Girl, and of course Boy loses Girl. The next part is critical, Boy endeavors to get Girl back. Wentworth shows up in Bath and crosses paths with Anne, or Darcy after Elizabeth is found at Pemberly goes to London to make things right between Lydia and Wickham. Our Heroes must then do something heroic to show their love. In Jane Austen and Ghosts, Ellis has to do something to show his affection has something behind it as well.
4) Despite the various direct updates and the re-imaginings, it’s only in recent years that it’s become popular to try and fuse Jane Austen’s work directly with rather discordant elements such as zombies or sea monsters. Do you feel this nothing but a gimmick, or does it imply something deeper about our interface with Austen’s work?
I have to think that the mashups of the Austen stories with Monsters are gimmicks. Not a deep exploration of the theme of Love and love in a society where arranged marriages were normal. I can not speak to having read the first of the monster mash-ups beyond the Assembly Ball scene. With that book showing so much in the way of using Jane’s own writing and not original from the author, I think that highlights that it is riding on Jane’s work. Kudos to the author for a creative idea, but perhaps more kudos if the story had been completely written by the author and not grafted onto Jane’s writing.
For JANE AUSTEN AND GHOSTS, I hope those who read it find that I have been very creative in telling a light hearted romp that plays up Hollywood, Jane, B-Movie actors, and Hollywood legends, and the books that are in this recent trend. I think that the tale will bring a smile to the face of Janeites and others who read it.
5) What is the most common thing you feel people misunderstand about Jane Austen’s work?
I think that Jane is not the be all and end all of what the Regency period was about. Jane’s work gives us a great glimpse of country life for the edges of the Ton, where she was firmly ensconced. But so many Regencies talk of Dukes and Earls and with Jane we do not see that lifestyle at all. We have to look elsewhere to glimpse it and even when we look at someone like Darcy, or the Elliots, we do not see the members of the first stare.
6) You became interested in the Regency by studying period dance and teaching it. My own dance knowledge is fairly limited compared to yours, but I’ve noticed more than a few times, for instance, a film tossing the waltz in before it’d been introduced to England. Do you feel film and television adaptations of Regency, Georgian England, and Austen works tend to get the dance right, completely wrong, or something in-between?
They get dance wrong. Mr. Beveridge’s Maggot is one of our favorite dances, and the one done in the Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle P&P where they dance together. Choreographers of the period had to redo the steps that were on film because so many had done what they had done on screen and it was wrong. (The real version is better IMO) There is a lovely piece choreographed in Paltrow’s Emma, again beautiful on the screen but wrong. Or in the Olivier/Garson P&P, the Assembly Ball is filled with dances that come after the period.
There are plenty of great dances for the period, but the movies are just not correct. And waltzing is just out. Jane Austen died in 1817 and waltzing, as I wrote in an article at http://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.com/ in an article on waltz in the period, would have been about 3 years done. It would seem a stretch for Jane to have learned it, decided to have her characters master it, and then be able to dance it in such a short period of time.
7) Which do you prefer: contra dancing or the waltz?
I like them both. I had been known a few decades ago, to dance 4 nights a week, several of that contra dancing. (Great exercise, lost lots of pounds) But for wooing and it is Valentine’s Day, nothing beats the waltz, and after a couple years of waltzing, I was able to be proud of my waltzing. A sought after partner here in Southern California at the local balls we have.
8) You’ve written several works set directly in the Regency. Can you briefly describe those for us?
I have 3 Regencies currently available. COLONEL FITZWILLIAM’S CORRESPONDENCE, THE SHATTERED MIRROR and THE END OF THE WORLD. I consider all three a little different. The first of course is a continuation of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. We look at the war through the Colonel’s eyes, and we look at society through Kitty’s. As the Colonel is away in Portugal and Spain, letters are sent back and forth and we catch up what is happening with our favorite characters as life moves on. That this lasted sometime, we have developments in all the lives of the characters continuing even as our heroes in this story become united, and parted, in their own ways. And of course we can not forget Lady Catherine. She is present as well (Though my interpretation is more that of Edna May Oliver)
In THE SHATTERED MIRROR, I deal with the effects of the war on our hero, and how a man wounded in the war, as so many were, might think that there can never be love again for him. As a Regency, we know that somewhere along the way there will be love, so our Heroine is young and vivacious and wanting to find love with a real hero of the war. Not realizing that our wounded hero might very well be that man.
Last I have THE END OF THE WORLD, where our heroine does not expect to find love being in the shadow of her sister. Here my hero also is not looking to fall in love as he runs from his own demons only to find the girl and her family beset by neighbors and those who once were friends.
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Thanks, David.
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