Thank you, Tina, for having me in your Spotlight today! I’m excited about my new release called Vain, book three in my Evolution Series. In this historical romance, a tailor’s abandoned daughter fashions a vain nobleman’s tunic, finding passion between the neckline and hem as misfortune forces her into his precarious aristocratic world.

You cover many genres here, so I will talk about why people who enjoy contemporary fiction should give my historicals a try. (Hopefully the blurb above was enough to entice your readers who already love the historical genre.)

Language

I don’t use “thither” and “shan’t” and other affectations. I strive to keep my dialogue a little more formal to give a sense of the time period, but still very readable.

Nitty Gritty Life

My stories are set in the Middle Ages in Charlemagne’s empire. Vain is in 839. The empire faces its third civil war in a decade. Intrigue, violence, and political posturing are very much part of our hero’s life. He is Theophilus, Lord of Ribeauville, but don’t worry, he is referred to as Theo most of the time. Theo is a man of power and status, but he is feeling unfulfilled now that he is settled into his “job” as a nobleman.

Lily, our heroine, does not lead a sheltered or pampered life. She is a merchant whose world is falling apart and she is doing her best to fix it.
Differences of the Time

I don’t shy away from the rustic life of the 800s. Reading fiction should be like taking a journey, and I try to carry my readers back in time to show both the advantages and disadvantages of the time period.

Advantage: No phone, no email, no texts. Let’s take a romantic, uninterrupted walk together with Lily and Theo.

Disadvantage: No phone, no email, no texts!!! How will Theo ever find out that Lily needs him?!?!??!!

These differences create a specific set of challenges for the author of historical fiction. It is hard to describe the things that are missing. How do you convey that saddles did not have stirrups without using the word stirrup? Can you imagine that chimneys were not really in use yet? It was hard to give up on the idea of an interlude by the fireplace, but fireplaces didn't exist.

Social Expectations

We all live within the structure of our society. Some of us more than others. Many contemporary romances now are built around the single parent. Single moms who have never been married are characters we can sympathize with but still carry a little bit of stigma. In Vain, I didn’t go so far as to make Lily an unwed mother because that would have been off the charts in the 800s, but she is left alone, and the townspeople become suspicious of her morals. She is judged, and who among us can’t relate to that?

I try to keep all my characters realistic for the time period. The heroes are not omniscient, super-rich,gods. None of the heroines are sword-wielding warriors or potion-making witches. They are all generally nice people – except for Doeg, the hero of Redeemed – doing their best to find a path through their lives, and luckily, they all find love on the way. (Doeg was the villain in the first book, and the hero in the second, so his path has a little steeper climb than most).

What better way to sell you on my style of writing than to give you a sip of the wine? This excerpt is from a scene for the first fitting of the new tunic Lily is making for Theo.

BEGINNING OF EXCERPT

Lily did not know what had changed. For just a moment, her lord had appeared angry, and now he jerked at the tunic like it did not fit properly when, in fact, she had done admirably well. “Please, my lord,” she interjected when the pins and threads tacking the tops of the shoulder became visible between the pieces of fabric. “You do not have to decide now. You also do not have to destroy it. I will fix whatever has displeased you.”

He froze. His hazel eyes, heated instead of droopy with kindness, flicked onto her. “Will you?”

She retreated another step, unsure of his meaning. The distrust on his face oddly combined with sudden, intense interest. This fitting had become very strange. Her insides had sparkled when she touched him. Could he have sensed that? “My lord, if you are satisfied with the general fit, I will have plenty of work to do. You can decide about the sleeves and hem another day.”

He straightened, finally letting the hem drop, but kept his narrowed eyes on her. “I like the sleeve where you have it. I am undecided on the hem,” he finally intoned with careful enunciation.

She lifted her hand to indicate his arm. “Can I just mark it, sir? The roll will come undone when you take the tunic off.” His eyes narrowed even further. He nodded curtly. She scurried to find her chalk and made one quick streak of white on the sleeve. “Should I help you?” she asked, trying to recover their professional manner of dealing with one another.

“No. Wait outside while I change,” he ordered.

Oh, dear. She rushed out the door, flustered. What had happened? Everything had been fine until she’d begun making adjustments to his hem. That had felt horribly awkward to her. Had it bothered him too? She had been trying to do her job briskly, just as her father had always done. Maybe a man did not mind another man touching his hem but very much minded a woman doing so. Lily sighed, pressing her back against the wall, then resting her head there, as well. Even though she occupied the same world she always had, every day brought unforeseen and unfamiliar questions and challenges. She did her best to guess and fool her way through it all. In truth, the only time she felt comfortable in her own skin was when she worked on the lord’s tunic. Or at least she felt comfortable when her lord was not in the tunic as she worked on it.

She sighed. If only her father had returned. He would have that hem rolled and marked in a thrice. He would explain Riculf. He would talk to Cluny and set her life on the right course again.

Her lord emerged, once again smartly attired in the green tunic and mantle she had sewn last spring about this time. He did not know she had sewn it. Her father had done the fitting. She had made every cut and stitch. “Father is never coming back, is he?” she blurted.

The question did not surprise him. He stood straight and proud and confident in his own comfortable life. “Not soon enough,” he said.

At first she did not understand the answer. Then it clicked. Not soon enough to help you. Not soon enough to manage Riculf or Cluny. Not soon enough to return you to normalcy or even respectability. “He lives with a woman?” she asked, eager to familiarize herself with all the ugliness at once.

Her lord cursed softly under his breath. “Yes. He misses your mother desperately.”

Her hand flew up, and she pressed the back of it to her mouth, stifling an unwanted sob of distress. She turned away to compose herself. “It must be very difficult for him,” she observed with the feeling of seeing things from a great distance.

“I did try, Lily. I reminded him of his duty to you. I reminded him of your mother. I tried every argument.”

Unwarranted resentment boiled up in her. Who was this Theophilus to involve himself in her life? Why should she feel gratitude when he stood so calmly to tell her how bad things were? Why should he be allowed to make her uncomfortable in her own shop? How dare he? She bit the inside of her cheek against the angry, unfair slander she wished to shout at him. “Thank you, my lord,” she gritted as meekly as she could manage. “I appreciate your efforts today. I am sure you have pleasanter plans for tomorrow. Now, I must continue my work.”

She forced herself stiffly through the door. She did not close it until she heard her lord’s retreating footsteps. The tunic waited, lovingly spread on the worktable. Her strange, quick anger receded, replaced with the more sane and familiar despair. Her fingertip traced across the slightly overlarge shoulder to the clever neckline. This neckline was the only perfect thing left in the entire world, as near as she could tell. Tonight, she would rework the shoulders. Tomorrow, she would sew the pleats and join the body pieces and sleeves. Soon, she promised herself, she would make tiny invisible stitches around this neckline, and that would be one right thing. And she must consider the embroidery. She must devote some time to the pattern.

Blessedly immersed in her work, she did not let herself think about Father anymore.

Jill Hughey has loved historical romance since sneaking peeks at her mother’s library years ago. She has enjoyed writing just as long. She prides herself on deep character development, and settings that take her readers on long, satisfying journeys to places they have probably never been in a book before. Jill lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two sons. Her hobby is singing lessons, in which she studies classical soprano and some lighthearted works.