The Maiden's Court: Interview with Juliet Waldron

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Interview with Juliet Waldron

Today I have the opportunity to welcome author Juliet Waldron to The Maiden’s Court. She has answered a few questions about her writing to and career to help us get to know her a little better. There is a giveaway at the end too!

You have written several novels – how would you characterize your writing style for someone who has never read one of your books?

I’ve been influenced by all the period material I’ve read, hopefully without driving the reader crazy. Style, book to book, owes a great deal to the main character. As I’ve written several novels in first person, identity is expressed through style. For instance, the artistic, vulnerable teen-ager of My Mozart requires more poetry and greater sentence complexity than does the clear-eyed servant who tells the story of Roan Rose.

How do you approach the historical elements in your novels – are they more of a framework/background for the story you are telling or is your story really rooted in the historical elements?

Mozart’s Wife represents twenty years of detailed research. It was particularly important to me to figure out what went on between Mozart and his “Best Beloved Little Wife”. Sometimes, certainly, you have to intuit events from one-sided information. (18^th Century wives who survived their great men frequently burned and/or bowdlerized personal correspondence.) On the other hand, Genesse and Nightingale have fictional characters, but actual events provide the framework. Roan Rose is roughly a 50/50 mix, although I do stick carefully to timelines. If a character died in real life, then he/she dies in my fiction, too.

A couple of your novels are set during the American Revolution (Genesse and Angel’s Flight) and a couple center around Mozart (Mozart’s Wife and My Mozart). What has drawn you to these topics in particular?

The Revolution in New York was familiar to me, both from school days and as an exciting story of family history. It always thrilled me to look around our peaceful country home and imagine when it was The Wild, Wild East, complete with Indians, settlers and marauding armies.

Mozart represents crazy time. He moved into my life in the early ‘80’s and didn’t leave until recently. His music is drop-dead beautiful, and he’s a powerful, telepathic personality. As I’m more than slightly OCD, that made a fateful combination. It was All Mozart All the Time around here for years.

Do you like to read the same style of books that you write? Or are your personal tastes very different?

When it comes to historical fiction, I’m open to any writer who can whisk me away to another place and time. However, I spend more time reading non-fiction, which means history, articles on material culture and archeology.

What do we have to look forward to see coming from your pen in the future?

I’m working on Black Magic (sequel to Red Magic), a historical fantasy with shape-shifters of a peculiarly local kind. This story is set in the Alps just after the Napoleonic wars, about the same time Mary Shelley was at work.

“Not all who wander are lost.” Juliet Waldron earned a B. A. in English, but has worked at jobs ranging from artist’s model to brokerage. Thirty years ago, after the boys left home, she dropped out of 9-5 and began to write, hoping to create a genuine time travel experience for herself–and for her readers. She loves her grand-girls and her kitties, likes to take long hikes, and reads historical/archeological non-fiction as well as reviewing for the Historical Novel Society. For summer adventure, she rides behind her husband of 50 years on his “bucket list” (black, and ridiculously fast) Hyabusa motorcycle.

You can find Juliet at the following locations: website and Facebook.

Here are some choices for purchasing the books: Amazon, B&N, RJ Julia (my fav indie bookstore).