Chapter 22 - Sian Ann Bessey

Hearken to the wisdom of Sian Ann Bessey, best-selling author of historical, suspense, and romance novels. 

https://www.sianannbessey.com/ 

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Sian: My name is Sian Ann Bessey, and I am originally from Wales in the UK. I came to the US as a student and married an American, and here I am. I now live in Southeast Idaho, and I have been writing for over twenty years, probably coming up on about twenty-five years, so a long time. And I've written in multiple genres. Most of the time, I write in historical romance. I also do some contemporary romantic suspense, and I've written some children's books.

Emma: And so it sounds like you have quite the romantic story yourself, coming to America and falling in love, and so that's perfect.

Sian: Well, I guess so. I've never actually ever had anybody say that to me before, but that's true, I guess. It's not a very common story, I guess.

Emma: It sounds like an adventure.

Sian: It was. It was exciting and scary and all of the emotions all rolled into one.

Emma: What is your favorite thing about writing romance?

Sian: I don't know. I think we all long to be loved. I think we all hope for that magic spark that we feel with one person, maybe more than one person. And I think that sometimes when you're reading romance in a fictional setting, it enables you to escape maybe the hard things in life a little bit and go into a world where you do feel love and you do feel honor and you do feel virtue and you do feel those things that help lift.

Emma: There's a lot of ideals, it sounds like.

Sian: Yeah. I mean, none of us have ideal lives and we're all going through hard things, but love is a really strong, maybe the strongest emotion that is in the world. And if we can tap into that, I feel like it's a good thing.

Emma: It's probably one of the things that makes it one of the most relatable forms of storytelling, I think.

Sian: Yeah. I would agree.

Emma: What do you think is the hardest thing about writing romance?

Sian: The kissing scenes (laughs). Well, I've written many books. And one of the hard things when you've written multiple books is not having things sound the same. And so when you're dealing with one emotion, you need to have characters who respond differently or feel differently or have different backgrounds or different futures so that the romance is different.

Emma: That makes a lot of sense. Because sometimes you read books and it's just, "oh, fireworks," and, you know, it falls into the same exact ways to describe feelings. But it's kind of hard to describe a feeling.

Sian: It is. It's really hard. And it's also really hard, like I said, to do it in fresh ways.

Emma: Do you have any tips for other writers for how you can portray emotion through writing?

Sian: I don't know. I'm sure many people have heard the adage "show, don't tell." That definitely is important when you're describing emotion. And I would say, too, to remember that there are five senses and to use all five senses. So as you're describing this emotion, how does the person act because of it? What do they say because of it? What are they feeling because of it? There are a lot of different ways that you can portray it using different senses.

Emma: I have to laugh because me and my sisters, we always joke about in a lot of books, it seems like all men smell the same. Like, you can tell that he's the love interest because of the way he smells.

Sian: Absolutely. And you know, you'll read a Western and reality tells you they smelled sweaty and they smelled dusty, but they always smell of leather. You know?

Emma: That's the nicest of the smells that could be used to describe them.

Sian: Exactly.

Emma: So with your historical romances, that sounds a little tricky because sometimes the way we experience relationships today might be kind of different... but then at the same time, maybe not. Sorry. This is really kind of rambling, but it's so hard to know, even with a lot of research, what it was like to live in a different time. Do you have anything to say on that subject of writing realistic characters in another setting and another time and trying to connect with your audience that way?

Sian: I think the biggest key is that you have to do your research. Anytime you write a historical book, it involves research. And I will research for at least a month for the new time period that I'm going into. And you're right. It is a little bit different, but the interesting thing is that people are people. And so a lot of our feelings, a lot of our emotions, a lot of our fears, our loves, you know, the whole spectrum, are the same. It's just that the situation, the setting is different. So if you've done your research right and you understand enough about that particular era or that particular world, it makes it a little bit easier to plug those feelings in. You have to know what the social constraints were of the time and what was expected as a lady or a gentleman and what wasn't.

It definitely makes it more challenging. I would say that of the different genres that I've written, the historicals are the most difficult to write because you're working with a timeline. You're working with portraying real events and real people in a way that is fair to them and is true to history, but at the same time, putting a unique fictional spin on it.

Emma: Where do you usually start with your research?

Sian: I usually start just with a Google search. I've written a few books that involve the Vikings. So if I was writing a book that involved the Vikings, I would start with a Google search on a specific time period and place with the Vikings. And then you get a whole... you know, it churns out a whole list of different resources. And then you have to look at these resources and assess how reliable they are. I mean, obviously, if you have an article about the Vikings that is on the British Museum's website, it's going to be more credible than something in People magazine. You know, you have to look to see what the source is.

And then I always go to the very bottom of an article or the bibliography in a book or the credits in a documentary, and I look to see what their sources were. And I write a list of those sources. And if I get any that crossover where multiple people have used a specific resource, then I can be fairly sure that I'm getting to a primary resource and one that will probably be helpful. So I start whittling it down, and then I will go to the library or I will order books. And when I find a book that is specific to the era or the event or the person that I'm studying, I'll read through it two or three times, marking it up, highlighting spots that I think will help with my particular book, and then I dive into writing.

Emma: Thank you. That's really helpful. It's hard to know sometimes when to start with research. I like that.

Sian: It can be a big rabbit hole.

Emma: Yeah. But there's kind of deepening layers, and I feel like there's just so many little tiny details and things to get right in a historical book. So that's really smart to go over it several times and really take note of what's useful information, and it's probably all somewhat useful.

Sian: Yeah. Some is more than others. It all depends on the direction your story is going.

Emma: What do you think is the trickiest part about writing suspense?

Sian: The trickiest part is probably the timing. You have to get the pacing right in a suspense book. You have to have a build up. You have to have a climax. And then, of course, you have to have the resolution. You have to drop enough hints along the way that people are kind of coming along the journey with you, but not so many that you give the story away and make it obvious, especially who the bad guy is or how they're going to escape or, you know, whatever that is.

I actually enjoy putting a little bit of suspense even in my historicals. So my historicals will have a little bit of that in it too. But my contemporary suspense, some I've written by myself. Some I have coauthored with Traci Hunter Abramson, who's a well-known name in the suspense genre. And so we have a lot of fun, actually, when we write together, tag-teaming that element of excitement and what's gonna happen next. And so a lot of it really is the pacing.

Emma: That is so fun. It does sound pretty tricky, but fun too.

Sian: You kind of... after you've done it for a little while, you—it kind of becomes a little bit instinctive. That doesn't mean that we don't make mistakes and have our editors say, "No, we've gotta fill something in here or take something out there," but it does get easier.

Emma: That's one thing that I love about suspenseful books, when you get to the reveal and you can go back and see, "oh my goodness, it was right there and it was right there!"

Sian: Yeah. The little clues.

Emma: Sometimes I watch movies and it's just... there's a huge surprise, but I'm like, okay. There was no leading up to that at all. So it's like, "good job! You fooled everyone by not having it make sense." You know?

Sian: Yeah. It is a fine line.

Emma: So writing in so many different genres, do you think that... crossing between them, do you find that writing aspects in certain genres help you in writing others?

Sian: Yes. Probably. I've never thought about it like that before. One of the reasons that I do write in different genres is because I want my writing to stay fresh. And so, you know, if I was to write ten books in a row about the Vikings, I think they would all start sounding the same. Whereas if I do a book about the Vikings and then I do a contemporary suspense and then I do one in the Georgian era, and it helps me to make sure that each story is unique and each story is different. But I do think that it can be challenging, but that it's good too.

Emma: That makes a lot of sense. Do you have any other advice for how to keep your writing from sounding the same and keep it fresh?

Sian: Some of it is the characters that you use. Some of it is the setting, if you have a different setting. Obviously, if you're in different eras, that makes it different.

But I think most authors, they have their voice. They have their way of approaching a story. And that's one of the things that readers love. You know, they love if they pick up a book by a favorite author that it's going to sound familiar, that they're going to feel like they're in a place that they love to be because they are used to hearing that voice and they enjoy it. So you don't want it to be so different that someone thinks, "wait, who wrote this? This isn't the kind of writing that I expect from this author that I've come to love." But at the same time, you want each story to be like, "oh, I don't know how this is gonna end." I mean, I guess if it's classified as a romance, you do hope and assume that there's gonna be a happily ever after. And if you're reading a suspense, you hope that the good guys will win. So there's that underlying, but you also want it to be something that maybe they haven't read before.

Emma: One thing that impressed me when I was looking at your website was just how many books you have written—and very different-looking books, too. Looking over your whole entire writing career, what do you think is something that has changed the most about your writing, either your style or your process, from your first book to the latest book that you've released?

Sian: Well, I think the biggest difference is that when I first started writing, I was just doing it as a hobby. And now it's a full-time career. And so the biggest difference with that, of course, is how much time you devote to it. And also, there's a little bit more pressure involved now because you have more deadlines, more marketing, more interaction with readers. And because I have written several books, I usually have different books at different stages of production. So I will be drafting one book and editing another book and proofreading another book. And so there's a lot of juggling that wasn't at the beginning. At the beginning, I just wrote one book, submitted it, and then maybe had a little break for a while, started another one. So it was a much slower pace. So I think that's one of the biggest differences.

And then I think the other is that as you spend time doing anything, it's just like with any skill, you learn with practice. So I feel like I've grown as an author, and I think that I hopefully am a stronger writer than I was at the beginning. I've benefited from, especially in the last, oh, I would say fifteen to eighteen years, I've had the same editor, and she is phenomenal. And rather than just telling me "this needs to change," we'll talk it through, and she'll explain why it needs to change. And so sometimes as I'm writing, I'll hear her voice in my head and think, okay, I need to do this. So I'm learning from her too. And so I think that is one of the other ways that I've changed.

Emma: It made me think—when you're writing a first book, I mean, obviously, you're probably thinking of your audience, but at the same time, it's more like you're writing it for yourself, like you said, like a hobby.

Sian: Yeah. Yes.

Emma: Whereas when you've already published a lot and you have more deadlines and things, it seems like, you know, "oh, no! I'm writing this and other people are going to read it!"

Sian: Yes. And it's terrifying. Even now, having published many books, every book that goes out, it has a little bit of part of you in it and you're putting it out for public criticism. And that's the scary thing to do.

I think the big thing was when I first started writing, I was writing for my children. My first books were set in Wales, which is where I grew up. And I just started feeling bad that my children, who were being raised in the States, didn't have that same connection to their Welsh heritage that I had had growing up there. And so I set my books in Wales in small villages based on villages that my family had lived in, and it was my way of sharing some of my heritage with them. Since then, I've written books set in lots of places, although most of them are set in the UK.

And like you said, now it's more, I need to finish this series. I need to start a new series. You know, it's a different motivation. They're both good motivations, but it has changed.

Emma: I was gonna say, sometimes it's hard for me to even let my husband read what I've written. So...

Sian: It's very hard. It's a very vulnerable place. And people think that, you know, after you've published X number of books that you become hardened to it, but you really don't because every book is new and every book is different and you don't know how well it'll be received.

Emma: What advice would you give to new writers starting out?

Sian: I would say write something that you feel passionate about, whether it's a genre or whether it's a location or whether it's a story that you feel passionate about, because it's very difficult to put emotion into a story unless you're feeling emotion for a story. I would say read work from people that you admire. And as you read it, when you come to something that you really think was well done, stop long enough to try and analyze how they did it. How did they make you feel this way? Or how did they describe something so well that you can see it in your mind's eye? Or how did they write so that you don't wanna stop turning pages? Whatever it is it triggers, see if you can figure out how they did it and then emulate it. Obviously, you won't be copying their story or their words, but you can pick up a lot on the method.

Emma: Earlier, you were talking about how kissing scenes are really difficult.

Sian: They are. They're awful.

Emma: So if you're writing a scene and it's just not working out the way you want it to, what would your advice be then?

Sian: For me, if I'm writing and I kind of hit the wall, and I can't see a way forward, and I... maybe I've spent a few hours on the same paragraph, the same page, the same chapter, whatever, you know, you're looking at, that usually means in my writing that I've taken a wrong turn. And so I will go back and I'll get to the point where the character maybe did something or said something or whatever it is and start a different direction. And very often, that's all it takes. Very often, then the story will pick up again. And if the words start flowing, then I feel like, okay, this is the way it was supposed to go. It's a really difficult thing to describe to somebody who doesn't do something that's a creative endeavor because it is so unscientific, I guess. But a lot of times, that's what it means. A lot of times, it means rethink where you are, go back a little bit, try going a different direction, and see if it works better.

Emma: As you continue to write more books and more series, do you think that it does come to you and just flow?

Sian: Oh, no.

Emma: No, not at all?

Sian: It never flows, no. Oh, I shouldn't say it never flows. Sometimes it flows. And when it does, it is like magic. It is really like magic. But very often, it's more of a grind. I know I need to get my character from A to B, and sometimes it will happen fairly easily and other times it doesn't. I don't think that I have ever written a book that was easy from start to finish. The books that have been the fastest to write are the ones that I co-write with Tracy, but that's partly because I only have to write half the book. And she, by nature, is a very... she produces very quickly, and so we work fast when we work together. But different authors will approach their writing in different ways. Some will write really fast to get the original story down, and then they go over and clean it up and clean it up and clean it up. And sometimes they'll do six to ten revisions of that manuscript before it's ready to submit. I tend to be on the other end of the spectrum where I will write a little bit more slowly, but I'm trying to get it right as I go, so that by the time I have finished my manuscript, my first draft is almost ready to be sent in. I just sweep through it to make sure that I haven't missed any holes in the plot line, but it's a very different way of approaching it, and yet there is no wrong way. It just depends on what works for you.

Emma: Yeah. It's a lot of work either way, but you just have to find the way that works.

Sian: Exactly. Exactly. And whatever it is, if it works for you, then it's the right way for you.

Emma: I had a writing professor once who said that he was at his dentist's office, and the dentist was asking questions and was like, "Oh, what do you do?" And he's like, "Oh, I write books." And the dentist said, "Oh, when I retire, I want to write a book." And he said, "Oh, when I retire, I think I'll become a dentist." I don't know. It's just kind of funny. A lot of people don't really think of writing as work because they think of it as just a hobby or something fun.

Sian: Yes.

Emma: But it really is—no matter how much you love writing, it's still work.

Sian: It is. It is a lot of work, and it can be very frustrating. It's the type of work that has highs and lows, for sure, and then also has some of the drudgery in the middle, you know, where we jokingly talk about getting through the murky middle of the book. For some people, that's the hard part. For some people, starting is the hard part. For some people, ending is the hard part. But whatever stage, it is really hard and it's very time-consuming. I know that sometimes you hear about people who dream of a story, write it down, and they're done, but that very, very rarely happens.

Emma: Do you write more sequentially, having the beginning, middle, and end in mind, or do you jump around to different scenes?

Sian: I usually write sequentially. If there's a particular scene that's in my head that is a little further on in the story, I will sometimes try and get that scene down. But ninety-nine percent of the time, I'm writing sequentially, and that's partly because I'm more of a pantser than a plotter. And so for those who may not know those terms, if you're a plotter, then you tend to plot the entire book out before you start writing. If you're a pantser, then you fly by the seat of your pants, and you are kind of creating the story as you go. I would say that before I start writing, I have to have a beginning and a middle and an end. In the middle, I need to know what the major climax or the conflict will be. But how I get from those places, I'm making up as I go. So that's one reason why I need to write sequentially is because I have to figure out how to get from A to B to C to D as I go along.

Emma: Yeah. That makes sense. You can't just jump ahead.

Sian: Unless it's a scene that I know for sure is coming. But yeah.

Emma: Would you like to introduce the book that you brought today?

Sian: Oh, sure. The book that I brought today is actually my newest release, and it's called "A Time Traveler's Masquerade." And this is the first book in a time-slip series. And it's my first time-slip series. The interesting thing about this is that it combines some of my other writing genres because it begins in contemporary, but the bulk of the book is historical. It has obviously a little bit of fantasy in it just because there's a magic system that transports the character from contemporary to historical. Each book in the series will be a standalone book. But the series name is "McQuivey's Costume Shop," and that is what will bind these books together because the magic system, or the time-slip system, in this is a costume shop. And so the character goes to the costume shop, tries on a costume, and when they come out of the changing room, they're transported to the era of the costume that they're wearing. And this first book is an era that I had never written in before. It's actually 1605, which for those people who know any British history know that that's a very pivotal year in British history. It's the time of Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot, which was a threat to the English monarchy and the government. So that's the story. And then the next one comes out in November, and that one will be called "The Maid of Sherwood Forest," and that one involves Robin Hood.

Emma: That sounds like a challenge to mix contemporary and historical together.

Sian: It was really challenging, and I had not realized what my biggest challenge would be. And that was the dialogue. Because when you write a historical, it's a little bit like if anybody has learned another language, you know that there's a cadence to French, there's a cadence to German, there's a cadence to Spanish. They're all different, but they each have their own cadence. It's the same with eras. There's a cadence to Middle English. There's a cadence to Georgian English. There's a cadence to contemporary English, and they're not the same. So you have the vocabulary differences, and then you've got the way that the words come together that are different. So when I write contemporary, I'll get into the contemporary mindset. And when I write historical, I'm in the historical mindset. In this book, I had one character who was speaking modern English on the same page as somebody who was speaking seventeenth-century English. And it was like flipping back and forth, and it was really hard to get the flow right because of the jarring in the cadence. So I would have to go back and reread and think, okay, is that how she's really say it? Is that how he'd really say it? So it was a little bit harder to write for that reason.

Emma: Is that part of your research, to figure out exactly how people spoke during the time with their dialect?

Sian: Well, it is and it isn't in the sense that, yes, it is. I look for words that would have been used. So for example, when I'm writing something that's set in the medieval era, my characters will use words like "mayhap" instead of "perhaps," and they'll say, "I thank you" instead of "thanks." So you use words like that that draw the reader into that time period, but you can't actually write it the way they really spoke, otherwise, no one would understand it. So, you know, any of you who have read Chaucer, that is how they spoke in medieval England. And if someone was to write a book, if they were capable of writing a book in that kind of English, no publisher would accept it because no reader could understand it. You walk a fine line between using vocabulary and, like I said, that cadence that ages the language without making it incomprehensible.

Emma: Yeah. You don't wanna be going like, "awesome, dude" when you're Robin Hood.

Sian: Yea, exactly. And there's a lot of words that you don't think about that we use that you can't use in the historical, like you can't have a character do something "automatically" because there is no "automatically." A lot of things that we don't even think about, you have to think about.

Emma: I was an English major, and a lot of times when we were reading older books, my teacher would have us look up words in this website that would tell the modern meaning, but then also in the different eras, the different meanings. And sometimes they're drastically different.

Sian: They are!

Emma: And so you could be saying something that would not be at all what you're trying to mean to say.

Sian: Exactly. Well, and even in modern English, if someone says something is "hot" and someone says something is "cool," they can actually mean something similar in slang, but they're opposite words.

Emma: That's true.

Sian: So as I said, this book has the heroine from contemporary London, and she goes into a costume shop. She tries on this gown, and when she steps out, she is in 1605 in Surrey, which is in Southern England. Obviously, she's completely confused. She has gone from being in a shop to being in a pouring rainstorm and doesn't know where anybody is or doesn't know what to do. But she realizes that she can't stay in the storm because there's thunder, there's lightning, and she sees a house in the distance. And so she goes to this house, and this little section is when the hero first meets her at this house. And so I'll read a little bit of that, and you'll see both characters. She is freezing and confused, and he is not quite sure what to make of it. The hero's name is Simon, and he has just arrived at his sister's house and has taken his horse to the stables. And he's now coming around in the rain to the front of the house.

The path took him around the large manor to the front of the house. Impeccably tended flower beds lined the edge of the lawn. Farther away, trees, shrubs, and narrow path cut through the vast green expanse showcasing a small portion of Simon's brother-in-law's extensive property. Normally, Simon would have paused to take in the view from this vantage point. This evening, however, he wanted nothing more than to be indoors, sitting beside a fire, wearing dry clothing.

Angling his head away from the driving rain, he took the stone stairs up to the front doors two at a time, landing on the top steps less than an arm's length from someone else. The person issued a startled cry. He staggered sideways, barely catching himself on the lip of the top step. "I beg your pardon. I did not see you."

"Oh! But you can s-see m-me?"

At the sound of a female voice, Simon's head shot up. He'd been so consumed with escaping the rain, he'd all but barreled into a young lady. Attempting to shake off his chagrin, he focused on her rather odd question. After his uncivilized approach, she deserved a reply. "Of course, I can see you now. I foolishly kept my head down because I did not expect anyone else to be here."

"Wh-where exactly is 'here'?"

"Why, on the doorstep." He studied her more carefully. If her sopping silk attire and stuttering speech were any indication, she was a young lady of some means who was in extremis. He met her blue eyes. Was it fear that shone in them?

"Wh-whose doorstep?" She was shivering with cold, and there was no hiding her desperation. "Please, can you t-tell me wh-where I am?"

"Copfield Hall," he said. A quick glance over his shoulder assured him that he'd not missed seeing a carriage in the drive. He'd just come from the stables, and there'd been no sign of any recently arrived horses beyond his own. Had she truly arrived here on foot and with no hat or cloak? Where were those who should have been attending her? Even if her carriage had broken down on the road, she should not be here alone.

"Wh-where exactly is Copfield Hall?"

"Surrey," he said. "It is the home of Lord and Lady Maidstone."

Her hands were clasped tightly before her, but whether that was due to anxiety or extreme cold, he could not tell.

"Are you... Are you Lord Maidstone?"

"I am not." Heaven help him. Had all remnants of common courtesy been washed away by this rain? First, he'd almost leveled the young lady on Maidstone's completely unforgiving stone stairs, and then he'd been so confounded by her unexpected appearance, he'd neglected to introduce himself. "I am Lord Bancroft. My sister is married to Lord Maidstone."

"Oh." Her chin trembled.

"Do you know my sister?"

She shook her head. "I d-don't..." A shudder crossed through her entire body.

Simon did not wait for more. He pounded on the door. She could add "interrupting a young lady midsentence" to his list of current faux pas if she wished. As far as he was concerned, the time for conversation was past. He was cold, but with no cloak, she must be frigid.

The Maidstone's servant had obviously been standing nearby because he opened the door straightway.

"Send for my sister, would you, Hobbes," Simon said, thankful that he knew the man well enough to bypass pleasantries. Too late, he realized that although he'd offered the mysterious young woman on the doorstep his name, he had yet to learn hers. He reached for her elbow to guide her inside. "This young lady needs immediate assistance."

If Hobbes was surprised by his request or by the young lady's appearance, he was sufficiently well-trained not to show it. He bowed politely. "Yes, my lord." And then, with barely a glance at the bedraggled stranger, he started towards the parlor.

"Come," Simon said, guiding the young lady farther into the entrance hall. "Martha will know how best to help you."

Emma: I love the dramatic irony there. Because, like, you know that she's from the future, but he definitely doesn't know. And so, like, as he's going through, "why would she be here? Where could she be from? Is she in trouble? Is—" well, obviously, she's in trouble, but, you know. The reasons that he would assume she's in trouble are very different from what we know why she's in trouble.

Sian: Right. The reader knows more than the characters.

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