Victoria: A Tale of Spain, my 17th-century lower YA adventure story, wouldn’t have come about without a European trip I took about 9 years ago. The concept for the trip wasn't mine--I hadn’t even thought about going to Europe--and none of the locations and itinerary were chosen by me. In particular, I’d never thought of visiting Spain and I ended up staying there about 7 weeks one summer. If I had considered a trip of my own, it would probably have been focused on the British Isles because that’s the Europe I’m most familiar with from books and movies.

But sometimes things in life just JUMP out at you. They fly in your face and you seem surrounded by a milling blur of impressions, people surrounding you, loud voices, and confusing activities launched at you. Sometimes a story is hiding somewhere in that blur. A story that is launching itself directly into your face. And when anyone is coming straight towards you, let alone a story, you might as well say, “Well, Hello There” and accept it.

At first I didn’t get a lot out of that trip. Secretly, I’d always assumed it couldn’t have the slightest usefulness to my storytelling and to me, writing stories is absolute as a grade for whether I care about it. As a trip it was fun, yes, and had memorable moments. But I didn’t feel they were USEFUL moments. I didn’t see any incidents or places that I wanted to write about after months spent abroad. And when I’m not getting an idea for a story, I feel like moving on. But several years later, I wrote a small draft of a story set in Spain. It wasn’t much good—very angsty and melodramatic, with tense and unhappy family relationships and symbolic action sequences. Later I merged it into a light-hearted little novella that had used some of the El Escorial palace setting as an influence, though not much else in Spain.

I didn’t want to work on the merge of the two because it was a lot of effort for a setting and type of story that was so unusual I couldn’t see much of a real market for the completed book. But the story continued to call my name and Boom, Fly in My Face until I worked on it. And in the end, I’m glad I did. Victoria is a more interesting story than I believed it was and it definitely occupies a place in my books. After all, I like to do unusual ideas once I realize they DO have an audience.

And there will be more updates.

I had to rewrite these stories about 3 times last year in order to complete a merge of them. I wanted to discard “Alyce” altogether, but I just felt a lingering presence in it that wouldn’t go away. However, I didn’t add much new material, like new characters. This means there are now at least 5 things that could be improved and you only notice these when the two stories are combined. 

Not that this makes the book low-quality—I mean, no book is PERFECT. (Except I know many people will vouch for their currently favorite historical romance or YA fantasy author. But aside from that, no book is ever perfect.)

• 1 Prince Roderick needs more friends. I didn’t give him any in "Alyce" because it was a really short story, but now it looks like he’s kind of unpopular. He only knows one silent man who helps him in his work, and he breezes in and rescues Victoria all on his own like a sort of anomaly.
• 2 Mrs. Corkum and the English travelers are a blip. This was an area where Victoria saw a parallel family to hers and learned how they looked. Now that Victoria isn’t such a brat, she just travels with these people for a couple of really odd chapters.
• 3 Ignacio was meant to be a hero, but he got more and more sinister and we aren’t told why. One of the few things I added was a small scene where Ignacio runs into Victoria later. Bella has run away from him, but they end up back together and Victoria doesn’t ask about it. WHY NOT?
• 4 The Hirado. Now that he’s helping her instead of out to get her, it’s not clear what his character is about. I tied him into the “Alyce” part of the story by saying he’s warning her about what’s to come with the king. That’s interesting, but it’s still hazy what he represents in the story.
• 5 King Felipe is now absolutely boring. The whole story builds towards him inviting Victoria to set her up, but his personality disappeared somewhere between the time "Alyce" was published and the current story. I didn’t iron him out on purpose, it just happened. This area is still pretty funny (when she’s chased around the castle by the thugs) but Felipe contributes nothing at all.

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And there will be more updates.

Victoria: A Tale of Spain (which I now call informally “Victoria/Alyce” because it is a merge of both stories) is an updated version of two stories that used to be in a series. But you can ignore that because now it is one middle-grade novel set in Spain in the 1600s. In fact, I made a new listing for Victoria/Alyce—Victoria: A Tale of Spain (New Edition.) One issue with “Alyce” was that it really plunked down in the middle of the story and didn’t give a lot of background on the characters. Putting Victoria on the front end of it helps to explain how “Alyce” happened and what motivates the characters.

And the first part of this new story is set in The Alcazar, a real castle in central Spain. I visited it about three times, years ago. I’m grateful for being able to stand in a real building of this sort and not have to rely on my imagination. Being there multiple times, especially, helped me emulate the feeling of living in this castle. It’s actually someone’s home—home of the family of Duke Carlos with his many daughters—and it might be difficult for us to imagine, with our very different houses and conveniences, that it was a place to live. Not a historical set, with historical costumes—I wanted an unselfconsciousness about it that is a major part of being authentic if you describe any type of family life. Those little details like experiencing the climate of central Spain (it gets really chilly at night!) flesh out the world in a concrete way that I’m glad about.

Victoria has to run away at midnight after learning her older sister has disappeared. Although I always saw this castle during the day, it wasn’t hard to think it could be very spooky at night. And when you’ve got an intruder stalking her—who she doesn’t know yet is a friend in disguise—Victoria is going to be pretty upset and it makes for the kind of unsettling atmosphere that is a big part of the journey. She learns there are things she needs to know as she gets ready for the King’s ball.

And there will be more updates.