Author Spotlight: Victoria Janssen

Please welcome my good friend, talented author Victoria Janssen, who's here today talking about her Harlequin Spice release, The Moonlight Mistress, which includes an m/m love story.

Blurb for The Moonlight Mistress: As World War One begins, English chemist Lucilla Daglish finds herself trapped on German soil. She and a French scientist, Pascal Fournier, escape and share a brief, intense affair.

They are reunited as Pascal investigates rumors of werewolves and the rogue scientist who abducts and tortures them. Meanwhile, a group of soldiers, including Lucilla's brother, deal with forbidden relationships, little knowing that one of their own is also a werewolf.

What gave you the idea for this story?

I have a longstanding interest in World War One, and a large research collection, so it made sense to me to set a novel during that period. The m/m subplot came about when I was first creating the characters; I'd had a discussion about homosexuality during World War One with a scholar friend, and decided I wanted to have a character who was gay, and deciding how he was going to deal with it in a repressive society.  For added complexity, the man on whom he has a crush is actually bisexual, but is still in the process of realizing this; he thinks his youthful affair with a close male friend was an anomaly.

I'm not sure why I wanted to also have werewolves.  I know what I did with them afterwards, because it all made perfect sense to me then, but I'm not sure why I thought of them originally.

What do you like to read?

At the moment, I read mostly historical romance and fantasy novels.  I love science fiction, but there are only a few in my to-be-read piles at the moment; I've been wishing for some space opera, lately.  I've got a stash of mysteries, mostly set during historical periods, and a lot of young adult fantasy and science fiction.  I also read a lot of nonfiction, most of it related to whatever novel I'm writing at the time, or the novel I plan to write. 

What do you like about m/m?

I enjoyed including a male/male relationship in my story because it's not something you often get to read about in this historical time period.   

I wanted to remind people that not everyone is straight, that romance shouldn't be limited to straight people, and that this is true for the past as well as the present.  The fact that their relationship is forbidden by law added extra conflict, and made it more poignant when they acted on their attraction.
Plus, I just loved these characters, and I wanted them to be happy.  (Yeah, I know they aren't real, but…happy in my head, I guess.)
 
To what/whom do you credit your success?

I am persistent.  I allocate time to write and then I use that time to write.  I think the only way to learn to write is to actually do it, so if I'd waited for inspiration to rain down upon me, I am pretty sure I would never have published anything.

Also, I like meeting people, and that has helped me to make contacts in the publishing world, which are always helpful.

What was one of your favorite books as a kid?

I absolutely adored Kim by Rudyard Kipling, in which a young boy has a whole series of adventures; I also loved Robert Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy, which had a very similar plot, now that I think about it.

What kind of impact do you hope your work will have on readers?

I mostly want my readers to have a really great time while reading my stories, and to enjoy my characters as much as I do.  I would love to have some sort of literary impact on the erotica or romance genres, but to me that's a lot less important than making people happy.

Kirk, or Spock?

Spock!  I like Kirk, but the Spock crush dates from before I knew what a crush actually was.  Such a great voice he has!  And those hands! 


Here's an excerpt from The Moonlight Mistress by Victoria Janssen

The train stopped briefly for a sanitary break and he met up with Ashby, who slipped him a fat packet of roast beef sandwiches, two boiled eggs, and a bottle of wine.  "Your rations," he explained.

Gabriel studied the bottle's label, which bore hand painted floral designs in gold ink.  "You stole this from Major Harvey, didn't you?"

Ashby grinned.  "Captain Wilks provided a distraction, and I took advantage of it.  Harvey was complaining his port was agitated on the crossing.  I simply spared him additional discomfort.  And he can't blame you, you're riding with the men."

"He'll find a way," Gabriel said, and sighed.  He didn't normally deal with the Major directly, so perhaps things would improve later, when he found someone else upon whom to express his displeasure.  "All's well?"

"We've had some pretty mademoiselles trading kisses for badges.  A couple of them tried to pluck Daglish's buttons at the last stop.  I didn't hear what he said to them, but their faces were a picture!  Watch none of your boys get left behind, accidentally-a-purpose."

"Watch you don't get left behind," he said.  "I seem to recall you can be counted on to take advantage of free kisses, yourself."

Ashby wiggled his eyebrows.  "Ah, but you know I won't stay behind with them.  They all lack that certain something."

"That's never stopped you before.  Hold on to your badge."  Like the rest of his family, Ashby had always been free with his physical affection, though with Ashby, it went a bit farther than that.  Gabriel had a disconcerting mental flash of an afternoon, a decade past, they'd spent together in a gazebo on the Ashby lands, their last summer together before Gabriel went abroad to stay with his uncle and attend conservatory.  Their kisses had been practiced by then, and once they'd finished their first urgent coupling, they'd teased each other for hours, kissing, caressing, and talking about girls, in particular strategies for meeting girls they could marry, a subject on which Ashby obsessed, as he was the last male of his line, and never allowed to forget it.  Gabriel had never told Ashby that he'd been perfectly happy at the time, without thinking of girls at all.

Sometimes he thought Ashby suspected what he'd felt, but neither of them ever brought it up.  Perhaps he'd grown out of the feelings he'd had for his friend. He liked women, after all.  He'd been with three different women, and it wasn't as if he hadn't been attracted to Jemima, even if he'd lusted more for her body than for her mind.

He and Ashby had been two against the world once, the only two families in the district who didn't belong to the Church of England, and Ashby with that other difference as well, the secret Gabriel had kept for him since they'd been children.  He'd thought, back then, that Ashby's future chances at marriage were more limited even than his own, but he'd failed to account for his friend growing into even more charm than he'd possessed as a boy.  Ashby never lacked for sex, and surely he would find the right woman someday.

Ashby lifted a heavily calloused finger and reverently touched the lacquered wolf courant adorning his field service cap.  "No fear I'll be led astray.  The Germans will have to carve this off my corpse," he said, and waved cheerfully as he loped back up the line to the first class carriages.

Gabriel wasn't devout, but he said a prayer anyway, hoping Ashby hadn't been tempting fate.  Tucking the wine beneath his arm and the boiled eggs in his pockets, he carried the sandwiches and returned to his platoon.  Sergeant Pittfield had awakened at last, and was leading the men in a singsong: The Bells of Hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling, for you but not for me.

And the little devils have a sing-a-ling-a-ling, for you but not for me.  Oh death where is they sting-a-ling-a-ling, oh grave thy victory?  The Bells of Hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling, for you but not for me.

Gabriel guiltily glanced down at his sandwiches as the train's whistle blew again.  He was hungry, but he ought to share; he had a feeling rations were going to be somewhat irregular until they arrived at their destination.  He stopped at the boxcar's door, juggling his packages.  Woods stuck his head out.  "Sir!  Grab on, sir!"

"Essentials first," Gabriel said, tossing up the sandwiches, then handed up the bottle of wine.  Woods hauled him up into the car just as the steam whistle blew a third time and the train jolted into ponderous movement.

"Here's your rations, sir," Woods said, giving him his sandwiches.

"There's plenty to share," he said.  "Ashby seems to think I need fattening up."

"Oh, no, sir.  Skuce trotted up to the engine and got us a dixie of hot water so we've even got proper tea.  Look, we've given you that corner over there, so you can have a kip after."

The corner in question was now clearly officer's country, in that it boasted a folded tarp for a seat and another, rolled up, for a pillow.  Clearly, he was not allowed to fraternize with his subordinates.  Gabriel hoped to God he wouldn't spend the entire war in glorified isolation.  At least in England, he'd had the constant supervision of the boy trumpeters.  He found himself missing their mischief, though he was glad they hadn't been allowed to accompany the regiment and wouldn't be in danger.

As the train picked up momentum, Skuce leaned halfway out the door and shouted.  Gabriel cast a glance around the car, the headcount as automatic as breathing.  No one was missing.  Some other platoon's soldier, then.  Evans joined Skuce, then Pittfield as well, laughing and encouraging.  "Help him in," Gabriel called.  "We can't leave anyone behind."

"Jump!" yelled Evans.  "Be quick about it!"

Gabriel stepped away from the surge of movement around the doorway as the runner hurtled inside, sending his rescuers careening into their fellows, just as the train picked up speed.  The newcomer stood and brushed himself off.  "Thanks," he said, a cheerful grin on his round face.  His dark curls had fallen onto his forehead; he pulled his field service cap from a pocket and slapped it on.  "Meyer," he said.

It was Lieutenant Daglish.  He was lucky he'd ended up with Gabriel and not a more rigid officer.  "Found yourself a mademoiselle back there?" Gabriel asked.

Daglish looked puzzled, then flushed.  "Looking for you, actually.  I brought you some sandwiches."

Gabriel held up the package Ashby had given him.

"Oh," Daglish said, looking at the floor.  "I was worried you might not--"

It had been a foolish act, but kindly meant.  "We'll need them sooner or later," Gabriel said.  "Come on, sit over here with me.  Now if only we had some coffee!"

He and Daglish talked easily, wandering from subject to subject in a way that reminded him a bit of his conversations with Ashby.  By the end of the train journey, Gabriel had decided Daglish would make a good friend.  Daglish understood music; he'd collected folk songs all over Britain, taught theory and directed the choirs at the girls' school where he'd worked before being called up from the army reserves, and sung in the choir himself at King's.  Gabriel had never been able to avoid the extensive repertoire of the Anglican church, and eventually had arrived at an appreciation that his family found inexplicable.

After Gabriel requested, and the men begged, Daglish sang snatches of his favorites, Joseph Barnby and Charles Villiers Stanford and even the Roman Catholic composer Edward Elgar, in a tenor voice that rended the heart with its clarity.  Daglish must have been the most cherubic boy soprano ever to grace a church, all the more so because he sang without self-consciousness; but Daglish assured him that no, his singing voice as a child had been unremarkable, and it was lucky he'd grown into a tenor, as every choir he'd ever sung in was short of them.  One might expect such a voice to emanate from an androgynous pale wisp of a creature, not a man as sturdy and muscular as Daglish, though the more he thought about it, the more Daglish and his voice fit together.  Daglish seemed to take joy in singing, be lost in a rich physical pleasure that reminded Gabriel, inappropriately, of moments of sexual transcendence.

Deliberately, he set to opening the bottle of wine, which put an end to the singing.

#

Just when Gabriel thought he might crumple to the side of the road, Daglish appeared and took his arm.  "I'll teach you a song," he said.

Gabriel groaned.  "And someone will shoot us when they hear us singing."  He wasn't sure he could take listening to Daglish sing right now.  It affected him too strongly.  Though they marched amid hundreds of other men, the darkness and quiet lent a strange intimacy to their conversation.

"You can carry a tune, so at least I won't die in agony," Daglish quipped.  "Here, listen."

"Quietly," Gabriel insisted.

Daglish leaned close to Gabriel's ear as they walked, his breath stirring the fine hairs at the back of Gabriel's neck, his mouth close enough to nearly brush his skin.  Gabriel shuddered inwardly with the unexpected sensuality of it, then Daglish sang, softly, "'Twas on the good ship Venus, By Christ you should have seen us:  the Figurehead was a whore in bed and the mast a throbbing penis."  The words grew more obscene immediately after that.

Gabriel choked and stopped.  "What the hell kind of song is that?"

Daglish stopped, too, and chortled.  "Sea chanty, very historical.  It gets filthier.  You can share it with your tune-murdering platoon tomorrow."

Gabriel was overcome with a sudden urge to press his lips to Daglish's smiling mouth.  Shaken, he looked away and started walking again.  Daglish caught him up and proceeded to teach him the rest of the song.  "The captain of that lugger, he was a dirty bugger..."  Gabriel tried not to think of the implications of the words, and managed it by concentrating on memorization, though one verse shook him out of his distance:  "Each sailor lad's a brother to each and every other; we take great pains at our daisy chains, whilst writing home to mother."  He'd never been to public school, but he'd certainly heard the rumors of what went on among the boys there.

Had Daglish--was he trying to say--no.  Of course not.  Another thought chilled him:  did Daglish suspect?

No, that wasn't right, either.  Not after how friendly Daglish had been.  Not when he held Gabriel's arm so snugly.

The men would definitely appreciate the song

Comments

[Jessica Freely]

LOL Emily! Was this the first of Victoria's books you've read?

[Emily Ryan-Davis]

Great interview! And, well, you know me - I had trouble getting to the end of MOONLIGHT MISTRESS because I kept re-reading the scenes between Daglish and Gabriel. :)