Canadian Romance Author Melanie Robertson-King

Love Can Encompass Time and Place 

By Melanie Robertson-King

Melanie Robertson-King

First off, I have to say how thrilled I am to be invited back, especially for your 2nd Blog-O-Versary celebrations. Congratulations, Genre-istas on this auspicious occasion.

While we’re talking about romance and anniversaries; my husband and I will be celebrating our 38th next month. He’s been a great supporter of my dream to become a published author and now supports me as I promote my debut novel and work on my second.

True love knows no boundaries. Great obstacles can/are and have been overcome when you love someone enough.

One truly romantic story (well, I think it is) that’s been passed down through the generations in my husband’s family is about his great-grandparents. His great-grandmother told her husband that she would follow him anywhere but across the ocean. Yet, the couple with eight of their nine children (the eldest was older than the others and employed as a domestic) boarded a ship bound from England to Canada. Family lore said it was because of the sinking of the Titanic that she wouldn’t get on a ship but they sailed before that and their two youngest children were born in Canada – and both before 1912. Still, it’s a lovely story.

I wish I had something romantic like that hidden away in the archives of my family. I never knew my grandparents on my father’s side, let alone my great-grandparents so I don’t know if there were any romantic stories about them or not. The only one I’ve heard is that my grandfather was a great cricket player and was a member of the Huntly Cricket Club (note to self, must investigate this the next time I get over). I can’t see anything romantic coming out of playing cricket – a few sniggers and belly laughs over some of the terminology used in the game – definitely.

My main purpose when I visited Scotland for the first time in 1993 was to discover my roots and meet family members living there. Little did I know how much more important that trip would become. Yes, I visited the cemeteries where my ancestors were buried and I met living relatives but somewhere along the way, I fell in love with the musical lilt of the Scottish voices, the rugged beauty of the country and the hulking ruins of a derelict mansion – all in close proximity to my father’s birthplace.

One of the things I love most about Scotland, England, and Wales (yes, been there, too) is the age of things. Castles, abbeys, stone circles, standing stones – things we don’t see here in what we affectionately refer to as “the great white north” (this past winter that moniker was most deserved) except in books, movies or on television. History is embraced and these ancient monuments remain for people to enjoy, thanks to organizations that work to preserve the past.

Love doesn’t have to be for another person. It can be for a place, an object, an era.

A Shadow in the Past

When a contemporary teen is transported back through time to the Victorian era, she becomes A Shadow in the Past…

Nineteen-year-old Sarah Shand finds herself thrust back into the past. There she struggles to keep her real identity from a society that finds her comments and ideas strange and her speech and actions forward, unlike Victorian women. When Sarah verbally confronts confining social practices, including arranged marriages, powerful enemies commit her to a lunatic asylum. After falling in love with the handsome Laird of Weetshill, Robert Robertson, she must decide whether to find her way back to her own time or to remain in the past with him.

Publisher: 4RV Publishing LLC
Author Website: http://www.melanierobertson-king.com/
Author Blog: Celtic Connexions http://www.melanierobertson-king.com/wp02/
Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Melanie-Robertson-King/221018701298979
Twitter Account: @RobertsoKing https://twitter.com/#!/RobertsoKing

Debut Romance Author - Melanie Robertson-King

Melanie Robertson-King

Thank you for inviting me to Romancing the Genres to talk about my publishing journey. Conventional or not, it’s how I got there.

I’ve always had a vivid imagination so writing fiction is a great place to put it to use, especially when I work in a job that is very cut and dried with no grey areas. The summer I graduated from elementary school, I started writing and illustrating a story. There was little plot and it went on and on and on… Thankfully, secondary school began and this never-ending story came to an end.

Throughout school, I hated history – with a passion, I might add. It was boring. Only dry facts that we had to learn and memorize. The only Canadian history we ever studied was the War of 1812... over and over and over.

I always knew my Dad was raised in an orphanage in Scotland before he immigrated to Canada but it wasn’t until the genealogy bug bit me that I delved into my own heritage and realized that history isn’t so bad after all. At least now, I was finding more than just hatch, match and dispatch (birth, marriage, death) dates and places.

In 1993, I made my first trip to Scotland where I visited the former orphanage and my father’s birthplace. I’m not sure if that’s when the wheels started turning or not, but I was inspired by the rugged beauty of the country, and its broodiness in foul weather.

Return trips in 1997 and 1999 (I schmoozed with Royalty on this trip when I met Princess Anne at the former orphanage) and reading Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series really set the wheels churning. A friend and co-worker who had read my short stories fuelled the fire even more when she told me I should try writing a book because she thought I could do just as good a job.

My debut novel began its life as a (not-so-well written) novella, or as I referred to it back then an overgrown short story because I had no idea what a novella was. Boy was I green.

Many drafts, new characters, and umpteen more revisions later, and just as many rejections, I was about to give up. Then I heard about an online writing conference where there were workshops and the opportunity to pitch to publishers and agents. I signed up and got a pitch appointment with the President of 4RV Publishing, Vivian Zabel. I mean nothing ventured, nothing gained. The pitch session went extremely well and I was asked to submit.

By Thanksgiving Monday (Columbus Day in the US), I had my submission as perfect as it possibly could be and sent it off. According to the 4RV website, it could take some time to get a response, so I was completely gobsmacked when later that evening, I had a return e-mail saying they were offering me a contract. 

And that’s been my publishing journey from the very early days until now – October 2011 contract offer, January 2012 assigned an editor and my cover (which I had input on), and finally September 2012 when my book made its debut at the Kansas Book Festival. Since then, I hosted a launch in my hometown, did a twenty-one stop, fifteen day blog tour, and did signings at various seasonal events in the lead-up to Christmas.

The one line that best describes my book is “When a contemporary teen is transported back through time to the Victorian era, she becomes A Shadow in the Past…”

Check out Melanie's website Here