Time, Place, and Beyond: Bring Your Setting to Life

In Time, Place and Beyond: Bring Your Setting To Life, will examine various methods for plunging your reader into your setting and making it real.

We will cover:

• The Basics—Time, place, and mood.
• World Buildings—Researching your setting.
• Make Your Setting a Character—Give your setting a unique personality.
• Storyboarding—It’s not just for plotting anymore!
• Those Who Forget the Past—The history of your setting.
• Geography 101—Your setting’s geography.
• Moody Blues—Creating your setting’s mood.
• It’s Tradition!—How tradition and folklore can reveal your setting.
• What’s in A Name?: Your fictional setting’s name.
• Included in the workshop is a workbook with assignments, worksheets, and more.

I believe I was destined to be interested in history. One of my distant ancestors, Thomas Aubert, reportedly sailed up the St. Lawrence River to discover Canada some 26 years before Jacques Cartier’s 1534 voyage. Another relative was a 17^th Century “King’s Girl,” one of a group of young unmarried girls sent to New France (now the province of  Quebec) as brides for the habitants (settlers) there.

My passion for reading made me long to write books like the ones I enjoyed, and I tried penning sequels to my favorite Nancy Drew mysteries. Later, fancying myself a female version of Andrew Lloyd Weber, I drafted a musical set in Paris during WWII.

A former journalist and lifelong Celtophile, I enjoyed a previous career as a reporter/editor for a small chain of community newspapers before returning to my first love, romantic fiction. My stories usually include an Irish setting, a hero or heroine, and sometimes all three.

I’m the author of The Claddagh Series, historical romances set in Ireland and beyond, and The Wild Geese Series, in which five Irish heroes return from the American Civil War to find love and adventure. I
also, teach specialized classes in fiction writing.

I’m a member of the Romance Writers of America and Hearts Through History Romance Writers. A lifelong resident of Montreal, Canada, I still live there with my own Celtic hero. I have two adult children.