Romancing the Genres: Old Melbourne Gaol

Making It Real in Historical Romance

By Cheryl Wright

Cheryl Wright

As an Australian writer, I like to write about the towns and cities in my own country, particularly the state of Victoria, where I live.

As a young child, my parents travelled around the country in a caravan, taking my siblings and me to many places I would never have seen otherwise. Along the way, my father – who was a true man of the land, talked about the history of the areas we visited, including places he’d been to as a young lad working in rodeos. This instilled a love of Australian history, and as a result, wherever possible, I include local history in my stories, without making them sound boring.

I’ve long been intrigued by the Old Melbourne Gaol, which is where the infamous Ned Kelly was hanged. Over the years I’ve written several articles for magazines in the US about Ned Kelly and the place of his demise, and along the way learned loads of historical information that only added to my interest.

So it made perfect sense that I’d use it as the basis for one of the chapters in my romantic suspense novel, Running Scared. Which wasn’t all that difficult since that particular section of my novel was located in the vicinity of the ‘gaol’.

Running Scared is the story of an undercover cop who falls in love with a very mysterious woman.

When Emma Larkin meets Gary Bedford, she has no idea he’s a cop, undercover or otherwise. Past girlfriends have dumped him because of his dangerous job, and he has no intention of losing Emma.

Emma is being stalked by her husband’s killers, and she must find what they’re looking for before she becomes their next victim. She also needs to keep her four-year-old daughter Sally safe from the killers.

Emma is a massage therapist who uses aromatherapy. This is one of my favourite subjects, and I’ve done multiple courses over the years to learn as much as possible about both aromatherapy and massage. At one point I even considered doing an accreditation course to become a massage therapist, after doing a hobby course that spanned several weeks.

I pride myself on crafting characters that readers will connect with, and do a lot of research (where necessary) to ensure that happens. As a reader, I cringe when I read something that doesn’t ring true, so as a writer, I like to ensure my books have credibility and realistic characters.

To that end, I’ve done my fair share of interviewing real-life police officers, detectives, and private investigators. I’ve also learned as much as possible about guns, without being pin-pointed as a suspicious character, although I admit to being told by a librarian that I was a ‘very dangerous woman!”.

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An excerpt of Running Scared can be found at: http://cheryl-wright.com/freebies.htm

My website is: http://cheryl-wright.com/

And blog is: http://cheryl-wright.com/blog

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Twitter: https://twitter.com/writercheryl