“Three or four families
in a country village is the very thing to work on…”
-- Jane Austen’s advice
to her niece Anna on writing novels
Ever since I penned my first multi-page story at the
age of six, I knew I wanted to be an author. Always drawn to stories set in the
past, I loved authors such as Louisa May Alcott and L.M. Montgomery as a girl,
before I discovered Jane Austen as a teenager. I felt destined to pen similar
stories of love and self-discovery, set in fascinating eras of history.
Despite writing throughout my younger years, I was in
my twenties before I knuckled down to finish a book. After I completed my first
full-length historical, I began to write a sequel. Featuring a jilted female
minor character from the first book, I planned to have a vicar help her through
her process of recovery, and have the two characters fall in love through her
healing. The book never went anywhere – the heroine was weak and insipid and I
soon lost steam. But the hero, the vicar, remained in the back of my mind.
The next book I wrote was a contemporary, and even through
that process the vicar would not leave me alone. His character developed almost
against my will. He kept telling me tales of his mercy missions in the seedy
parts of London. He told me about how he was given a living in a small village,
but that he would much rather be sailing the seas to adventures in exotic
lands. I was moved by his compassion, his earnestness, and his heart. I wrote
the opening pages of what would become “The Vagabond Vicar” as a shiny new idea
while I was supposed to be focussing on editing and finishing the contemporary.
I knew I had to find him a heroine worthy of his affections; one he would not
be able to keep away from despite his ambitions.
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