Her Hearts Surrender by Allison Merritt... Vikings, Love and War... Release Day

Allison Merritt stopped by to chat about how she chose her characters' names in the just released Her Heart's Surrender. Links to purchase your eBook copy can be found at Three Worlds Press

First a little about Her Heart's Surrender

Taken from her village as a child, Ealasaid has lived under the iron rule of a Viking king for far too long. The only good to come out of her life is her son. As long as the king lives, their freedom and hope for the future seems dismal. Despite her contempt for the king and his bloodline, she's drawn to Hella Ingvasson, the man who kidnapped her, and the plight he faces when the king dies.

His father's final demand is that Hella must wed if he's to claim the throne. What better revenge than to marry the thrall his father hated most? Despite her fears Hella will become like his father, Ealasaid agrees to marry for her son’s sake, but she quickly learns her husband’s battle scarred body provides more pleasure than nightmares.

Word comes that her brothers also survived the raid and have assembled an army. They march toward a Norse settlement with the intention of revenge. Unless she can reach her brothers and convince them not to slaughter the man and people she's come to love, Hella may become another bloody stain on history's tapestry.

So Allison, share with our readers and current and future fans some background about what naming Viking characters.

Allison Merritt: I often pick names with meanings when I bring characters to life. Or when they choose me to make them real, however you want to look at that. Mostly I write historical romance set in the 19th century or later, so a lot of careful thought went into naming the characters in Her Heart's Surrender. Here's a bit about them and the characters. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Behindthename.com is an author's best friend.

Ealasaid – It's a Scottish-Gaelic form of Elizabeth (betcha didn't see that coming). A strong name for a strong heroine. When I start researching names, I almost called her Keavy, but I stumbled over this one and it fit her to a T. Keavy ended up being the name of Ealasaid's eldest sister.

Hella – Generally a girl's name (and I had a beta reader point that out). I wanted to call him Halle, but I thought that sounded way girlier. It means “flat stone”. Hard body, you betcha, but there's nothing flat about this hero.

Eoghann – I laughed so hard in Leap Year when Amy Adams' character called the guy at the bar E-o-gan. Um, it's “Owen” in case you're Hookt on Fonix like me. Eoghan is the son of Niall of the Nine Hostages in Irish lore. Yeah, he's a Saxon in the book and his heroic deeds might be a little questionable, but our Eoghann is willing to stand up for his sister when she needs back-up. They were the closest of the Kentigern siblings.

Ingvar – Old Norse meaning “warrior”. He's called many things in the book and he's also known as the White Raven, because as we all know, ravens as scavengers. He had to be fancy and rare, so his banner sigil is white—and very much to be feared.

Erik – Is there a Viking family that hasn't had a Viking named Erik? Well, maybe. Erik is Hella's adopted brother and potential heir to Ingvar's throne.

Birgir – Ealasaid's son is called after his Norse relatives, although she considered giving him a Saxon name. Birgir is from Birger, meaning “help, save, rescue”. Perfect, because he was literally the only thing that saved her during her time as a thrall.

Ulrika – The given name of two Swedish queens. She may be another Viking thrall, but she's also Ealasaid best friend and confidant. She was there when Birgir was born and is like a grandmother figure to him.

Diarmaid – It's consider to mean “without jealousy”, but the more you come to know Ealasaid's eldest brother, the more you realize Diarmaid's got a lot of jealousy and some poorly suppressed rage going on. You can never have too many bad guys in a story and he fits the bill pretty well. Okay, maybe you can have too many bad guys, but there were just the right amount in Her Heart's Surrender.

These are some of the major players in the book. I hope you enjoyed this little look at their names and personalities.

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About the author:

A love of reading inspired Allison Merritt to pursue her dream of becoming an author who writes historical, paranormal and fantasy romances, often combining the sub-genres. She lives in a small town in the Ozark Mountains with her husband and dogs. When she's not writing or reading, she hikes in national parks and conservation areas.

Allison graduated from College of the Ozarks in Point Lookout, Missouri with a B.A. in mass communications that's gathering dust after it was determined that she's better at writing fluff than hard news.

Social links:

Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/authorallisonmerritt

Twitter - http://twitter.com/#!/Allison_Merritt

Blog – http://havenovelwilledit.blogspot.com

Pinterest - http://www.pinterest.com/allisonmwrites/

Goodreads - http://www.goodreads.com/allisonmwrites

Tell Them You "Scene" It Here First

 

My first novel, Dark Dealings, is dedicated to Barbara Rogan who took on a student “with delusions of authorship”.  She took a group up us and turned the willing and thick-skinned into writers and authors. She is a former literary agent and a professional editor with eight traditionally published novels (and one more on the way) to her credit.

Barbara has been gracious enough to share her wisdom on the making of One Good Scene and what that means for the novel.

I’ll say it straight out: There’s no point writing a novel if you cannot write a scene. It sounds obvious when you say it, but many people try. You don’t have to write short stories to work up to writing a novel; they’re different genres entirely, and not every writer is capable of both.  But you do have to be able to write a knock-out scene before you can hope to write a credible novel, because scenes are the building blocks of stories.

By scenes I mean bits of action that take place in a specific place and time, involving a specific character or characters.  I find it helpful to think of a scene as something you could film in a single location. 

Say we’re writing a story in which a husband and wife quarrel over breakfast. The story follows the wife out to the yard, where she chats with a neighbor while weeding the garden; then it switches to the husband sharpening blades in his workshop. 

How many scenes would it take to convey that action?

If you answered three, we’re on the same page. Each of these three is a separate entity, not only an essential part of the structure we’re creating, but also a pleasing object in itself. Coming up with a story is only a first step; writers then have to break the story down into scenes and write each scene, one at a time. Of course, not every event in a novel can be a scene, or novels would be infinitely long. Virginia Woolf wrote a whole book on one day in the life of Mrs. Dalloway, and even then she couldn’t dramatize every moment and memory. As writers, we need to choose which events to make into scenes, which memories to make into flashbacks. 

Let’s go back to our film analogy one more time. Imagine you’re making a film on a strict budget, and every scene costs a million dollars. How carefully would you plan your scenes? How much would you expect of each?   

Writers have budgets, too, though they’re measured in words instead of dollars. We can only fit so many scenes into a short story or novel, so they’d better be scenes that contribute vitally and in multiple ways to the enterprise. In order to earn its keep, every scene has to multitask. A scene that advances the plot without contributing to characterization, or one that exists only to establish setting or illustrate theme or convey backstory: those are wasted opportunities, empty scenes. A good scene does all those things, or many of them. 

It’s no small thing to write one good scene. The skills required are the same as those required to write a good novel. We need dialogue that entertains even as it advances the story and reveals character and relationships. We need a setting so vividly realized that it can draw readers out of their world and into yours. We need characters driven by their own agendas, which are often imperfectly understood or concealed. We need conflict and tension, not only in every scene but on every page. And we need to create all this in language that is fresh and beautiful.  Language is our medium, our palette. Just as great painters are fanatical about the paints they use, so are great writers choosy with their words. To be a writer is to care, not only about story, but also about language.    

The beauty of focusing on scenes is that they contain all the same ingredients as stories and novels, in smaller amounts: cupcakes as opposed to cakes, let’s say. Over a long career in publishing, as a former agent and editor, and now as a writing teacher, I’ve encountered an awful lot of failed cakes: good story ideas that failed to make the transition into good novels. Those are the writers who inspired my workshop, “One Good Scene,” as a manageable way to learn a challenging craft. If you can write one really good scene, you can write a string of them; you can write a novel.






Barbara Rogan is the author of eight novels, including Suspicion and Hindsight (Simon & Schuster), and coauthor of several nonfiction books. Her books have been widely translated, featured by the major book clubs, optioned for movie and television and issued as audio books and eBooks. Her next novel, A DANGEROUS FICTION, will appear early in 2013 with Viking/Penguin.   

She has also worked extensively in publishing as an editor and a literary agent. She taught fiction writing at Hofstra University and SUNY Farmingdale before starting her own online school, Next Level Workshops. She’s a frequent lecturer on both the business and craft of writing and teaches seminars and master classes at writers’ conferences.

Will you look at your writing or the book you are reading differently? How so?