Color of Shadows and Smoke

I've been writing for over 30 years, most of that time writing either futuristic or contemporary. All have had some level of romance in them. I just can't imagine writing a novel about people where there isn't some sort of connection. Most of my books also are usually HEA. I just can't seem to write one that isn't. Then, out of the blue, I came up with an idea for a historical novel set in Los Angeles during Prohibition. The more I researched, the more fascinated I became. I looked around for other books set in that time and found there weren't really that many. So I decided I was going to write one. There was just so much going on in the 20s. Especially when, like me, you write about crime, cops and the bad side of people. So finding out that the LAPD in those days filled the role of the Eastern gangsters. They protected the speakeasies and kept the gamblers safe. So a character came to me, a 30ish, Anglo (L.A. was very racist back then, so was the LAPD) good looking guy who acts as a thug and protector for his boss, the Chief of Police. His name was Billy, Billy Brewster. William, but he never used the name.

Already this guy was coming alive. He wasn't really a nice man. But he was the type of bad boy that some women have always been attracted to. Billy has no trouble getting a woman. Then he meets Maddy, Madeleine La Rue. There are all kinds of rumors about her, she's the illegitimate daughter or the Prince of Wales, or a Russian prince or... she was exotic, like he'd never seen in a woman. The attraction between them was instant.

Then a title. I have to have a title before I can really get to work. It might change later, but I want one. I'm calling this novel Color of Shadows and Smoke.

But now what do I do? It's not realistic that this classy, high-born lady would fall for a thug like Billy. So there had to be layers to these people. Billy was capable of becoming a better man -- in the right hands -- and Maddy couldn't be what the rumors claimed. It turned out Maddy was something else, but she was still a good woman. The finest lady Billy's ever known, and he worked at being that better man, worth Maddy.

The negative is Maddy is married. Her husband married her for political reasons -- he wants to be the Lieutenant Governor of California. And he'll do anything to get there. Include have people killed to further his goal. Billy suspects the man, so he sets out to prove it.

Since this is HEA Billy and Maddy end up together, but the road to their HEA is very rocky indeed. Since this is my first historical it will be interesting to see if my gamble that I'm not the only one who would find a romantic-suspense novel set in the 1920s fascinating. I hope so. I have other novels planned in the same time frame. The next one is about a good, upright cop called Ben Carter, who meets an wannabe actress, Anna Marie Daniels (Daniels was my mother's maiden name) who's not quite so upright as Ben. Seeing how they end up together is going to be an interesting journey.


Pat Brown

http://www.pabrown.ca/
Award winning author of the L.A. crime novels.