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Alivia Fleur Samples Blueprints, Battlelines and Ballrooms
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Katherine Grant: Welcome to the historical romance sampler podcast. I'm your host, Katherine Grant, and each week I introduce you to another amazing historical romance author. My guest reads a little sample of their work, and then we move into a free ranging interview. If you like these episodes, don't forget to subscribe to the historical romance sampler, wherever you listen to podcasts and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Now let's get into this week's episode.
I am super excited. Today we have a returning author. Alivia Fleur is Back. We first heard from her in season one, episode 22, and now she's here today to read from blueprints, battle lines and ballrooms. And in case you didn't catch the first episode, I'll tell you a little bit about Alivia.
Alivia is an award-winning historical romance author who moved from writing short stories to [00:01:00] novels when her characters kept showing up with crates of emotional baggage, demanding that they be explored. Her love of the Victorian era led her to create her first historical romance series Tales from Honeysuckle Street.
Alivia lives in Australia on a farm a long way from anywhere. Interesting with her husband, four dogs, a smoochie cat, and her beloved if bossy pet sheep, lady Baba, which is the perfect name for a sheep.
Alivia Fleur: Thank you so much for having me back. It's very exciting.
Katherine Grant: Yeah. I'm excited to have another conversation with you. So like I mentioned, you're reading today from blueprints, battle Lines.
Ballrooms. I think I added the, and when I first started, no, no, no.
Alivia Fleur: There's an and in there. There's an and. Yeah.
Katherine Grant: Okay. So what do we need to know before we jump into the scene?
Alivia Fleur: So this is book four in the series. So this section comes from chapter three. And so this is my second Australian character who is Florence, [00:02:00] who has not long arrived back in London with her parents.
She's widowed. She desperately wants to be allowed to work with her father. Her father is an architect who has come back after not having a successful career in Australia and her father has hired an assistant, much to her disgust, who is Johan Hempel, who is one of the sons in the Hempel family who lives at number three on Honeysuckle Street.
So Book three is about his older sister Rosanna, and this is his story. So he is very excited to be an assistant to an architect. He has met her once before in this scene. So she is not at all impressed with him, and he is absolutely smitten with her because he's never met someone who is so casually comfortable and sees the world the same as him before.
So this is their dynamic in this scene, and it's from Florence's point of view.
[00:03:00] Very important thing to add. Florence lives with chronic pain. Anyway, let's go. Some days began with a whimper, others with a persistent ache that dulled over the morning. Some began with an eye watering slap of pain that shocked, radiated, and did not let go.
Today began with a slap. Florence splayed her palm against the cold and uneven wallpaper. She pushed to roll onto her back. The pain flared then faded, and with a teeth clenching effort, she rolled again and forced herself upright, unwillingly. The mantra from the early years chimed in her ears and found voice on her lips: a test, a penance, a suffering. Like her pain might have an end or set allocation she just had to withstand before it would fly from her body.
When young she'd been convinced that if only she were good enough, stoic enough, and pious enough, then it would all end. She knew better [00:04:00] now. The fogginess of a broken night leached. Florence breathed until it cleared. In the hall, the clock chased the fleeting hours of the morning to chime out 11 steady bongs. After it had finished,
she listened for a chair scrape, or a cough or muttering, but the upper floors remained as silent as dust. Her mother had a way of sensing when she needed to sleep, and had likely today spared her the tedium of errands and visits. With a wobble, she stood. Mama had laid out her wrapper, and Florence wrestled herself into her corset, then slipped it on and pulled the tie at her waist.
Today, would be an inside day, but that did not have to mean it was a wasted day. She would read the latest issue of The Builder, and in the afternoon might begin the book her father had bought or flip through some catalogs, and that meant a trip to the office. Left, right, left, right. Florence gripped the banister as she descended from the building's home layer to its work layer.[00:05:00]
In the entrance, the scents of dry paper, paint, powder and ink laced the air. She set off down the hall, her mind already bounding with thoughts of innovations and articles.
He stepped into the doorframe.
She stopped. The hallway narrowed to a rectangle of light, now partially blocked by the tall silhouette.
Only a flash of light from a buckle or a button gave any definition to the man who spent his days at the drawing table where she had once sat. He stood side on before the bookcase. One hand rested on the shelf. The other held a book in one substantial splayed hand. He licked his fingertip, then turned a page. A tingling, ran from Florence's heels along her calves right through her torso, where it spread to each point in her body.
Then it warmed and pinched in an appalling betrayal of what should have been her sustained disdain for this man who had so effortlessly taken her place. The cotton of his shirt [00:06:00] hugged his muscular biceps, and the floral embroidery on his coat sat at odds with his brute strength. His trousers sat just a little tighter over his firm buttocks before they fell in a straight line of obedience down the length of his legs, every bit of him hard and unwavering.
There was not a hint of indulgence or weakness about him. He lifted his reading spectacles to sit on top of his head as he rubbed his eyes before lowering them again, licked his fingertip, turned another page. If a man was to take her place, he may as well be a well composed man. Florence kept her hand half raised for balance as she traversed the last few feet of the hallway.
On days like today, when the cold bullied its way beneath the door and between window sashes, she would normally use her cane even around the house. But seeing him in the office filled her with a determination not to show weakness. This city would not beat her. As she stepped into the room, the assistant looked up from his book. He flicked her a [00:07:00] small smile, then lowered his head again.
When he looked up again, it was as if he was blinking his way free of a haze. "Mrs. Murray, your father isn't in. He's meeting with a client, a potential one. I mean." He snapped the book closed and took two steps back before colliding against his drawing table. A brush rolled and dropped to the floor.
"I'm not here to see my father,"
Florence said.
Probably scared at being caught while distracted, the assistant was as skittish as a new foal. He bent and grasped the brush from the floor and set it back into place. "You aren't?" That same lazy smile turned his lips. He tugged at his waistcoat. "I had been wanting to speak with you about..."
A knot of pain tightened in her shoulder and his words were lost in the flare.
"I'm here for a book," Florence snapped and then added a little more softly, "I wish to read by the hearth."
"I can suggest, I mean, might I recommend... if you are wanting a recommendation that is..."
Florence [00:08:00] had never been lost for words. How could she be when she had so few opportunities to voice them? They jostled against one another as she itched to wedge them into small spaces as egalitarian observations beneath it all, begging to be taken seriously. The imposter perhaps had space in spades for words because he erred and err some more, then strove forward and drew a weighty tone from the shelf.
He had to clasp it with two hands. She would never be able to carry it upstairs, but as she read the spine, she huffed her dismissal. She didn't want to read it anyway. "Ruskin?"
"The Seven Lamps. Have you read it?" He asked.
"Yes, and I regret every minute spent with it." Florence crossed to the shelves and scanned the spines.
Reference material, old catalogs, manuals, and guides. Where were the newer books? The latest edition of The Builder or The Architectural Magazine? What was the point of being in London if she could not read the latest news while it was the latest, not receive it months after it had crossed the seas?[00:09:00]
"You don't like Ruskin?"
Florence paused at her spine-tapping. That was interesting. When provoked, it seemed the lucky he had spirit. "My father has hired a Ruskin-ite," she said as she pivoted to face him, but too fast and pain flamed in her knee, then across her back. She bit the inside of her cheek.
"He's an eloquent writer and an excellent illustrator.
Many in Sydney used his drawings as templates for stonework of motifs, and no one summarizes a solution to free the cities from the vices of industry like him. If, like he says, industry took second place and society placed more emphasis on crafts and workmanship, on proper handmade things, again, then the poor would be able to provide for their families once more.
One of the greatest losses to the modern world is the loss of the craftsmen. The craftsman hoarded power. Everyday people could not access the teachings they needed, could not learn to improve their lives. Why would they not do so again if they returned?"[00:10:00]
"I'm not talking about guilds in the cities." He picked each word with delicate deliberateness.
"I'm talking about the skills of the village. Back when there was pride in creating something by hand, perfectly crafted and unique, instead of the same thing replicated by machines. Over again, the work of master craftsmen, the world could find its way back Craftsmen."
"No wonder Father likes you."
He lowered the book and pulled it against his chest.
Red bloomed on his cheeks, and he shook his head. "You haven't been here long and perhaps you haven't seen what I have. The old ways give us a path out of this. The workers deserve better."
"Working man, always the working man. And in your utopian world where we all discard steam and factories and embrace the old, I assume all the men are passing on their knowledge to their sons.
Where does the working woman feature in your handmade dream? I can guess. She is where she has always been in kitchens at the copper or dying [00:11:00] of childbirth as she brings a long for son or disappointing daughter into the world. Machines let a woman's hands do what men have done for decades. Did you figure that in your perfect past?"
"You play with my words, you ascribe the views of others to me." He took a breath, not just a regular one, but a passionate inhalation as if reading himself for an intellectual onslaught.
Then he softly exhaled and looked to the floor, frowned and swallowed. He was holding back. Why? Of course, she was his employer's daughter and arguing with her would do him no good. Florence turned away from his discomfort. She grasped at a book, any book, focusing only on finding a size she could carry. It no longer mattered.
She would not read now. And without a word or a look, she walked the small hall and once out of sight, let the banister take her weight. The light in the hallway, dulled with his shadow, but thankfully cleared again as he moved away. [00:12:00] Florence took the first step. Left right, then the next left, right. It was wrong to hate him, but in that moment she did.
He had everything she wanted: a strong body and a seat at the drafting table. He'd have a career and a future in a world made for him, a world she would be grateful to have just a little of. If he had to deal with a little of her ire, then so be it.
Katherine Grant: Wow. What a beautiful scene. There's so much there.
I mean, I have such a sense of Florence from this scene. Thank you so much for reading it for us.
Alivia Fleur: That's all right. Thank you. It takes a very long time to pick which one.
Katherine Grant: Well, I think you chose a great one. Thank you. Thank you. We're gonna take a quick break for our sponsors and then I have some questions for you.
Katherine Grant: So I'm back with Alivia Fleur, who just read from Blueprints, [00:13:00] Battlelines and Ballrooms, her latest Victorian romance. There was so much layered into that simple scene of Florence and Johannes interacting. I am pulled in so many different directions. One thing I'd love to start with is the architecture as a theme, because I know obviously it's important to this story, but also I.
I'm curious how you use it for your creative inspiration. So let's first begin with how did you decide that you wanted to write a whole book about architects?
Alivia Fleur: That was easy. When I, I first had the idea for doing this as a series based on the street, I knew I wanted to have a story about architects.
Like it was always about having lots of professionals rather than aristocracy. So I'm, I'm obsessed with jobs, jobs and things, and so I, I [00:14:00] have a master's in Heritage Studies. I used to work in providing advice to architects on heritage structures, so it was something that I'm very familiar with and also very interested in what
that time and place looks like. Because the book that is mentioned in that book, Ruskin's Seven Lamps of Architecture, and then some other works he did and William Morris is the birth of the Heritage Movement. And it was... all my stories are just a way to research something I'm interested in and to find out more about.
And so that was it. And so Florence is much more on the modern side of architecture and the idea of making things more efficient and cheap and using things from a factory. And Johannes sort of sits on this other side, which is. It doesn't have a name at the time this book is written, but will become the arts and crafts movement, which is very much where architects will hand make [00:15:00] things that go into the houses that they design.
So it's a very, very hands-on and beautiful movement. So it's about putting those two things against each other, which they, they were like, they really were pitted against each other in the world at the time.
Katherine Grant: And in this scene, it sounds like it's not just a stylistic choice, but there's also this connection to, for Johan anyway, this, this idea that, you know, the British culture has gone somewhere
bad and through something like this style of architecture can get back to this time that he perceives to be better. And I think nostalgia is very prevalent right now in our cultural discussions. So how did you think about approaching that theme?
Alivia Fleur: It's a common sort of idea up until fairly recently, there is this idea that comes [00:16:00] up over and again in town planning and architecture about making buildings that almost fix people.
And particularly in modernism when we're talking about the 1950s there is this idea that if you can just design better places, then all the people who live there will be better people and will be fixed people. And if you give people nice places to live, then it makes it easier for people to go about their lives, but also you can't fix people by just putting them in houses and, and that is the great failing of, modernism is that all those many, many land schemes and Pruitt-Igoe is the, the main one, but they all failed spectacularly. And so it's kind of about that. I wanted to tap into that idea at this early stage. But it is this sort of head on against, against a very, very fast changing world.
It's the start of so [00:17:00] many things happening in terms of architecture and town planning and urban design. Because out of a lot of the pressure from men like William Morris and the arts and crafts movement comes this push from wider across society to make these places better and to clean up the tenements, to put in proper drainage things which no one had ever,
you know, hadn't been done before. They're not priorities. And so it's just a really interesting time to be playing with. And also, the, the other thing about this period and this example that I was really interested in was how the, the factories create all these problems in terms of overcrowding and population and mass production.
But then as Florence points out, like women can now be responsible for things that we would equate as heavy labor, and that gives them a small income. It gives them this opportunity to be independent. So there are so many [00:18:00] conflicts and competing ideas coming out of this time and through this very, very small sort of relationship and conflict over if you like Ruskin or not, seem to be a way to explore lots and lots of those things.
Katherine Grant: That's so interesting. And just for
placing this in time. We said it's a Victorian historical romance. Victorian can mean so many things. What year is this set?
Alivia Fleur: This is 1876. So I write this series is set between 1870 is the prequel, and then most of the series starts in 1875 and then goes on chronologically from there. So in this, we're up to 76.
Katherine Grant: Awesome. And, okay. So the other part of architecture that I wanted to ask you about, the series is called Tales from Honeysuckle Street. And you also on social media, I have seen like you have sketches of each house [00:19:00] and the whole series inspiration seems to be very architecture centered. So can you talk about how your creative process comes from this architecture?
Alivia Fleur: It was. So that was the idea for having a street. And so there is the townhouses on one side, which is something that we equate as being very typically London. It's fairly established by the time that I'm writing. But is not across the board.
Definitely not to the extent that you see it now. And so it is all about the new and the modern and those types of things. And so that is contrasted with this much more slow higgledy-piggledy type of development. And so the first house that is built in this area has massive land around it. And I just like that idea of layering and because we often talk about eras and ideas and places, and here's what people bought and, and here's what they wore.
But we [00:20:00] also have layers when we live in a time. You know, we live in older houses or we people don't update their fashions. We carry past generations and movements and ideas with us as we move into each new one. And so the houses in the street were a way to acknowledge that. So the Palladian which is where Odette
Delaney lives. She's a very wealthy soprano is the first house in the street from the about 1730. And so houses are also a really nice way of reflecting character trait. So she has this beautiful house, but then Albert and his daughter Iris, who are from the first book, their house is red brick and it's earth, and it has you know, beautiful vines
growing over it. So it's a very honest looking house. So it's also a nice way to have a shortcut, to use a bit of symbolism [00:21:00] to denote a little bit about who these characters might be. So that's, that was the idea. And it also just, I mean, it let me nerd out that. The other part and I said, oh, and I need one of these and one of these.
So it was just fun. So it's part of that. Also write what you know. So in establishing what, my world would look like it was very much a world that I could draw on without too much of a challenge. But also I knew where I could find more information and I could find the floor plans. I have floor plans for the townhouses, and so that
definitely feeds into the creative process in terms of the writing, because the townhouses are on five levels and in Undercover With The Heiress that was, I sort of felt like I was writing them going up and down the stairs all the time. I was a little bit worried because they have to move between all these layers, but you also can have power structures and [00:22:00] separation once you start moving through
stairs and doors and there's a lot about thresholds and change that can be used. So the architecture, I hope it's not prominent in the writing, but in terms of my writing, it's very, very important. You know, it's significant that Florence doesn't really go into the office, that she hangs in the doorway.
And then as the story goes, she is invited in more and more for different reasons. And yeah, so that's how architecture is sort of part of what I do with this series. It's, I really enjoy doing it too.
Katherine Grant: That's so beautiful. I love that. I am not an architecture person, but I, at the beginning of this year, I opened up Sims four and I built out a model of the house that's in my current series and.
It had already been in my head, but having to build it in Sims four made me make some decisions of things like I'd never had to decide [00:23:00] where is that door and, and then, I wrote the next book, and since I had done the model, it was a richer experience for me as a writer to be to like, oh, I know I've been in this room 'cause I created it, so I know you've sketched them, but if you want, I can recommend Sims for actually building the models.
Alivia Fleur: I think I would get lost. I would get absolutely lost in something like since, but yeah, it would, I was very, I was. I had a massive nerd out when I saw you put that online. I was like, that's so cool. So
Katherine Grant: well, thank you. All right. You are a fantastic writer and you also have started a different initiative called Historical Romance Book deals.
Tell me why you were inspired to start this newsletter, which puts free books, books on sale, and new releases in readers inboxes.
Alivia Fleur: I've [00:24:00] been self-publishing for three and a half years now, and I'm a very quiet kind of person in what I do and when I remember to be online and it's. It's so hard, like visibility is so hard and watching, you know, the, the category contamination on Amazon and the author mills and all those, all these things that we compete against to just, you know, there's, there's so little competition between authors.
From, you know, what I've seen and experienced is so little competition, but what we have to compete against to be seen by the people who want to buy our books is very hard. And it's not even about finding new readers, it's just letting the people who already love this genre find us and the whole, I mean, we can, we [00:25:00] can wax lyrical about the death of historical romance and all that kind of stuff, but it just sort of was an idea I had that maybe we could not sidestep, but have another tool in the tool belt for how we could say to readers, here we are.
Like I have a newsletter magnet. I have a, you know, I have a free book or those types of things and new releases and of course discounts and sales. And so I just kind of like the idea of pulling all those things together because for me it, a book on sale is great, or a free book is great, but I actually will pay
What needs to be paid to get the book I want to read. And if that book is set in an era that is not one of the ones that ranks in the top on Amazon, it can be really hard to find that if you don't already have that kind of insight about who is writing in a story set in china, who is writing stories that [00:26:00] are, are Viking.
The amount of books and authors that have come through that I've never ever heard of before is really surprising. So I load them all onto the website and as part of that we go and check out their webpage and all those types of things. And it's just absolutely mind boggling how much is out there.
And yeah, so that was kind of the idea at the start was how can we just bring these things together and have a way for authors and readers to just see each other?
Katherine Grant: Yeah. So just so the readers in this listenership know the newsletter currently goes out Tuesdays and Thursdays and the books featured, you have verified that they are human authors.
Alivia Fleur: Yeah, I do. I do my best.
If it's a new to me author, I go and have a little bit of a, a little look and and [00:27:00] because you don't wanna discourage new authors either, right. And so I do my very best. And then authors, when they fill out the form, have to click themselves that they are, that they have written the book. It is a, a book written by a human.
And so we definitely rely on that. But, so that's that. Like, as much as I can give a guarantee that they are, are human books that's what they are. And also we don't do AI narrated. We haven't had a, a lot of audio books come through, but we also made a call early that we wouldn't do AI narrated books either.
Katherine Grant: All right. So for readers, it's a great place to get kind of a, if not curated, a verified list of historical romances on a semi-weekly basis, and also currently, including when this episode comes out, there is a giveaway going on. So if you sign up for the giveaway as a reader, you can be entered to win a raffle.
Where the winner chooses whether they get a Kindle or a Kobo, [00:28:00] and there are over 30 historical romances that are coming with. Yes, yes. Including mine, this one, and also including a whole series bundle for me. So yes. Yes. You did a big bundle, your beautiful
Alivia Fleur: bundle, so yes.
Katherine Grant: Yeah. And then for authors listening you're welcoming, authors to give this a try with a promo code HRBDFREE to list your book for free. So yeah, there's really no reason not to do it if you have a book release, a discount, a newsletter magnet that you wanna highlight.
Alivia Fleur: Yeah. And that, you know, it's not, it's not a moneymaking exercise. I would like it to break even.
That would be great. But all those little things like the coupon code and a couple of those things in the form that we ask for are there to sort of be a little bit of hurdles for bots or the rest. So the code is a way to stop spam bot basically. So [00:29:00] please use the code. I've had some people write in the comments that they feel bad or they've already used it once, but that's not what it's about.
Like it. You know, if people would like to pay the fee, then that's brilliant. And I absolutely adore the people who have done that. But for people who, you know, they, they don't quite have the money or they aren't in a place to do that, then that's okay. Like, nobody is judging any of that.
So yes, please, authors send us your beautiful books and yes, please read us, sign up. Sign up. Yes, we'd love to talk to you about this beautiful genre.
Katherine Grant: Yes. Alright, well I think it's time to play our game and you already played Love it or leave it in season one, episode 22. So today we're gonna play.
Would you rather?
Alivia Fleur: I'm ready.
Katherine Grant: Alright. Would you rather a Cinderella story or a fall from Fortune?
Alivia Fleur: Fall From Fortune. That's more fun.
Katherine Grant: Would you rather Secret Baby or amnesia trope?[00:30:00]
Alivia Fleur: Amnesia.
Katherine Grant: Would you rather a rake who needs reform or a cinnamon roll who needs to stand up for himself?
Alivia Fleur: Cinnamon roll. I like the nice guys.
Katherine Grant: Would you rather present tense narration or a story told through flashbacks?
Alivia Fleur: Present tense.
Katherine Grant: All right, and finally, would you rather have an angsty third act breakup or a bonus epilogue?
Alivia Fleur: Third act breakup.
I'm terrible at writing epilogues. I whinge about them endlessly, so, yeah.
Katherine Grant: Well, thank you so much for playing, and thank you for coming on again to read Blueprints, Battlelines and Ballrooms. Where can listeners find you and your books?
Alivia Fleur: So the [00:31:00] best place to find me is on my website, which is aliviafleurbooks.com, and they can sign up for my newsletter there and get a free story which is part of this series. I'm also on Instagram and Facebook and I'm not very good at them, but I am there. So as Alivia Fleur writes, so yeah,
Katherine Grant: and on at least your Instagram account, there are sketches from Tales of Honeysuckle Street.
So if you've heard this conversation and you're like, I need to see these sketches go to Instagram.
Alivia Fleur: Yeah. Yeah, so I've got some there. So some are, some are other ones that I've bought that are just perfect and some are really terrible ones that I've sought so
Katherine Grant: Well, thank you so much for coming on. This has really been a fantastic conversation.
Alivia Fleur: It's
all right.
Thank you for having me.
That's it for this week! Don't forget to subscribe to the Historical Romance Sampler wherever you listen, and [00:32:00] follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Until next week, happy reading!