Eleanor Maine - Worldbuilding with A Gargoyle for the Hotel Gothica

This was originally posted on 31 January 2013 on the regular Magic Thursday feature for the Dark Side Downunder blog. We asked Eleanor if she would mind repeating it here.

A Gargoyle for Hotel Gothica was my first ever romance. Until then, I had never written anything in the genre. Other genres, yes, but I couldn’t get my head around what made a romance novel work. It took me six months to learn enough of the genre basics to try writing for publication.

At first I couldn’t decide where to set my story, and then I saw, Dark Eden’s contest, Scottish Nocturnal. Stories for the contest had to feature a Scottish hero who was also a creature of the night. At the time, vampires and werewolves were very popular, as they are today, but neither inspired me as much as the idea of having a gargoyle hero.

I also wanted to write in a setting that I knew well enough to make authentic—and Scotland wasn’t it. I have cousins there, yes, and very distant relatives, but I’ve never walked the highlands or the streets of Glasgow and didn’t feel I could make them come alive for myself, let alone my readers.

I needed to set my story in Australia, in a place I knew the streets well enough to bring them to mind while writing, or accessible enough that I could go and explore them until the words painted them ‘just right’. I needed to set my story in Melbourne, with its hotel-mounted gargoyles, or Hobart, with its equally historic architecture.

During my research, I learned of the debate raging over selling one of Hobart’s oldest cathedrals because the diocese could no longer maintain it. Such a beautiful building, with all its gothic architecture, would form the perfect basis for a very special hotel. It was just the kind of gothic building traditionally protected by stone statues in the Old Country, and something a collector of gargoyles might treasure in this one.

I didn’t use that cathedral in particular, but chose to create a fictional building that had been built at around the same time, and which faced similar troubles. I decided this was the cathedral Claire bought and turned into a hotel, while doing her best to preserving its character and history. In this way the Hotel Gothica was born.

It was a nice basis, but it needed more. Who was my villain? Why was the gargoyle brought to the hotel anyway? And why was Claire, of all people, without a partner?

By answering these questions, I came up with the dissatisfied heir, who will do anything to get retrieve what he considers ‘his’ inheritance, and the treacherous ex-fiance, who broke Claire’s heart. By now I had a goodly portion of the story, but the mythology of Scotland is full of stories of elves—and not the nice cheerful ones that like to help Santa, or the mysterious-but-well-inclined elves of Tolkein. No. Scottish elves are nasty. I just had to have some appear in this tale.

I wrote, researched and wrote some more, fitting the pieces together and watching as A Gargoyle for the Hotel Gothica gradually took shape. More than that, by mapping out the different characters and describing their place in the world has given me a stack of notes and ideas that will form the basis for many more stories set in the Hotel Gothica universe. I foresee a future containing stories with more gargoyles and more elves… and many more nights in the Hotel Gothica.

Description: A Gargoyle for the Hotel Gothica

When Claire buys a gargoyle from a Scottish castle, she unwittingly buys the secret history that comes with it. A gift from the fae to the laird of the castle, four hundred years ago, the statue was a double-edge boon, until MacGregor gained control—and then his house fell. Where he went to is not Claire’s concern, although the handsome Duncan MacGregor who claims her gargoyle for himself, definitely is. And there are other complications. A statue with unsavory legends attached, might bring in the tourists, but when Claire rescues a woman from a winged attacker, she is forced to find out if the stories are true.

Distribution: Eleanor Maine, Ellie Moonwater and Madeleine Torr titles now available from AllRomance Ebooks

We have now finished up loading all the Eleanor Maine, Ellie Moonwater and Madeleine Torr titles to AllRomanceEbooks and OmniLit. Covers of the titles available from these venues as mobipocket or PDF files are as follows:

Blogging Elsewhere: Today Eleanor Maine is discussing Hunters of the Nile at the DSDU Blog

DSDU = Dark Side Down Under: A group of Australian writers of romance and other paranormal genres has kindly hosted Eleanor Maine on their regular A Bite Of… blog spot. She’ll be talking about one of her earlier works, Hunters of the Nile, the first erotic romance in The Hunters series. Feel free to head on over and join her.

New Release: Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat by Ellie Moonwater

 This month sees a NEW RELEASE by ELLIE MOONWATER.

Do you like tales with an erotic turn?

How about stories involving ancient Egypt?

Murder mysteries, albeit not cosy?

Two guys, one gal?

Then try Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat, Ellie Moonwater's latest release.

In a world where magic has only just returned, a serial killer is on the loose. Wielding a form of magic that drains the fertility and life from his victims, he stalks Australia’s southernmost capital, Hobart. Officer Catriona ‘Kitty’ Cordello and her ex-pat American partner, Charles Herbert, use their growing skill at detecting and identifying magic to try and track him down. When Special Investigator Seranefret arrives from Egypt at the behest of a seer, they meet the one man who might be able to identify their target—and steal Kitty’s heart. But Sera is on a mission from the gods, and he has been told he cannot fail. Will his dedication to the task make him blind to Kitty’s need? And what part is Charles intended to play? Having failed with Kitty once, how does he feel about the idea of Sera standing by her side?

Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat is an erotic romance set in a time when magic has returned to a mundane world, of travelling across the Fields of Time, and of an enemy ruthless enough to betray his brother and attempt to dominate an unsuspecting world. It contains elements of ménage, light bondage and explicit sex scenes set against a backdrop of the modern world and Egyptian myth.

Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat is currently available at Smashwords, Kobo, Kindle, iTunes and Nook. It is available as an e-book and print-on-demand paperback.

A Gargoyle for the Hotel Gothica Released

A Gargoyle for the Hotel Gothica has gone live on Amazon (in Kindle and Paperback formats) and Smashwords (in all Smashwords formats).

Cover finalised for A Gargoyle for Hotel Gothica

Eleanor Maine published two titles under the pen-name, Ellie Moonwater. While she retains that pen-name for some of her hotter erotica titles, she prefers to write her erotic and non-erotic paranormal titles under her own name. Originally released under the pen-name Ellie Moonwater, A Gargoyle for the Hotel Gothica is now being re-released under Eleanor Maine's name. Not as hot Hunters of the Nile, A Gargoyle for the Hotel Gothica now has the following new e- and paperback release covers:

 A Gargoyle for the Hotel Gothica is about what happens when Claire Handley wins her bid for a Scottish gargoyle and the Journal of Magick written by James Macgregor. At first, she doesn’t believe the Scotsman’s centuries-old tales, but when the legends seem to come alive, invading her home and her bed, she must decide whose side she’s on.