Kaye Dacus is the author of humorous, hope-filled contemporary and historical
romances with Barbour Publishing, Harvest House Publishers, and B&H
Publishing. She holds a Master of Arts in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton
Hill University, is a former Vice President of American Christian Fiction
Writers, and currently serves as President of Middle Tennessee Christian
Writers. Kaye lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where she is a full-time academic
advisor and part-time English instructor for Bethel University.
Kaye, it’s
great to have you at Novel PASTimes today. Could you share with us some of the
surprises you’ve encountered along the road to publishing?
I think for me, the biggest surprise has been
in how far my books have reached. I never expected to be a bestseller (and I’m
not, really), but I occasionally get emails or blog comments from people all
over the world who’ve read my books, and it’s humbling.
Please tell
us something about your latest novel, Follow
the Heart.
Follow
the Heart is a
Victorian-set “sitting room” romance along the lines of my favorite Regency
romances. After writing the action-adventure of Royal Navy officers and pirates
in the “Ransome Trilogy”, I wanted something more intimate for my new
historicals. Because I’m fascinated by Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition of
1851, I decided that would be a perfect time to set the story. I also enjoy Downton Abbey and other stories about
Americans marrying into British society—but I wanted something a little
different, so I made the American woman the one who needs to marry money, not the
other way around. And it’s the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, so I
could make my characters much more mobile than before—a couple of hours by
train from Oxford to London, England—as well as connect the characters to the
wider world better than ever before. So while it still has that sitting-room
sensibility of a Regency (with house parties and balls and plenty of society),
it has the conveniences of the Victorian age.
Follow the Heart is set in historical England. What drew
you to write about this time period and the location of your story?
In 2001, I watched Victoria & Albert on A&E and
fell in love with the love story of these two monarchs of England. But that
wasn’t the only thing I took away from it. I was also fascinated by the scenes
which portrayed the planning and opening of The Great Exhibition in 1851. Then,
a few years later, I watched another mini-series: North & South. No, not the one about the American Civil War,
the one based on the classic, but little-known, novel by Elizabeth Gaskell. It
also has a scene that takes place at the Great Exhibition. Once I saw that, I
was hooked—on the era and on the event.
I read at least three or four British-set historical romances each
month—and without fail, the majority of them are set in London. It’s a setting
that has become over-exposed. Also, with a landscape architect as my main hero,
I needed the action to take place at a country house, not in the city. By the
1850s, Oxford was a large enough city to have railway service to all of the
other major cities, but still quaint/small enough to give the small-town feel
that I love to use in my stories. Plus, there was a lot of chaos happening in
London in early 1851 due to the final preparations for the Great Exhibition,
and I felt like that could overwhelm what I wanted my story and settings to be.
Have you
found that there are similar themes throughout your writing? Why? Or why not?
Yes—most of my characters tend to have trust
issues, whether it’s in trusting other people or in trusting God. And that
flows naturally from my own personality and experience. I am not a very
trusting person, so I work out a lot of my own questions and doubts about
relationships or about allowing God to have control in my characters and their
stories.
You discuss
on your web site how singleness allows you to look at love and romance in a
unique way. Would you care to share about this with our readers?
Many years ago, when involved in a discussion
of whether or not single women should write romance novels, I had an epiphany:
Romance novels are about SINGLE people—and since we’re told we should write
what we know, since I’m single, romance is the perfect genre for me to write!
I never set out to write role-model
single-adult characters. But I know from the feedback I’ve received, especially
from younger women, that the fact my books feature characters who are older—in
their late twenties all the way into their early forties—has let them feel like
they’re now off the hook when it comes to relationships. They feel like knowing
it’s okay to fall in love or get married for the first time at thirty-five or
forty-one is giving them permission to stop focusing on the desperation of
marrying before their mid-twenties and look at what God can use them for right
now, where they are, in their single state.
Once I realized this, it helped me focus on
my ministry—which is to represent a growing segment of the population that
seems to be increasingly left out in Christian communities: women in their late
twenties, thirties, and early forties (and older) who have never been married
and who want to be loved and accepted for who they are, not labeled or shoved
to the side. I write these books to help us hang on to the hope of finding a
well-adjusted, loving, marriage-minded Christian man and having a “happily ever
after” with him—but knowing we first need to learn to be content with being the
person God has created us to be in the meantime.
What drew
you to writing historical novels?
I’ve always loved history—minored in it in
college, in fact—and that love came from reading historical romances growing
up. But it was hard for me, at first, to do—because I would get so caught up in
the history that I’d lose the story. It wasn’t until I finished four
contemporary-set manuscripts that I tried my hand at historical. Once I started
writing Ransome’s Honor, I was hooked
on the world building and the excuse to do the research (and to watch/collect
costume dramas!), but now it was in the capacity of how it would enrich the
story. I do still love writing contemporaries as well, though, and hope to
return to that soon.
If you’re
anything like I am, one favorite book is hard to pick! Do you have two or three
top picks among the historical genre that you would care to recommend?
More tomorrow from author Kaye Dacus. Please leave a comment
by answering the question Kaye is asking below for a chance to win her novel, Follow the Heart. Don't forget to
include your email address in the form of name[at]domain[dot]com before 8:30
a.m. EDT this Friday morning to qualify for the drawing.
Kaye's question:
If you were to star in a romantic costume-drama movie,
what era would it be set in, and what actor would you choose to play your
leading man?
Posts
