So, what's the deal with the Victorian thing?

A few people have asked me (probably more in an effort to be polite than out of any genuine interest) why I set The Camelot Shadow when/where I did (namely, somewhere in the middle of Queen Victoria's reign, circa 1870 or so).

I've had a thing for Victorian-set stories since discovering Dracula in second grade (in retrospect, probably not the most age-appropriate material, but it made a nice change of pace from Benny, Benny Baseball Nut and Chicken Trek). That flame was further fanned when Sherlock Holmes came into my life, and then Charles Dickens sealed the deal (and not just because he gave us a legitimate reason to say "Master Bates" repeatedly in 9th grade, though that certainly didn't hurt his cause).

(Incidentally, overuse of parenthentical asides continues throughout this post, so if that's a thing for you, I'd suggest bailing now.)

Since then, I've devoured everything from legit Victorian lit (hello, Thomas Hardy and George Eliot) to schlocky Victorian-set pseudo-literary thrillers not unlike, say, The Camelot Shadow. But what exactly is the appeal, asks the modern reader as he/she Instagrams a tweet of a selfie? Well, I guess it's the fact that you can't Instagram a tweet of a selfie when you're cruising through the foggy, gaslit alleyways of London in the back of a hansom cab.

Don't get me wrong--modern hygiene is swell (I'm a particularly big fan of toilets that flush and trips to the doctor that don't involve leeches), and, frankly, a world without Slurpees is probably one in which I don't want to live. But, as a storytelling environment, I find it much easier to create tension and mystery when my characters can't turn to the giant series of tubes that comprise the interwebs to find the answers they seek, or when they can't whip out a cell phone and send a message to avert disaster, or when they can't point to science as a satisfactory explanation for something that seems supernatural. In a world where data travels almost instantaneously, it's difficult to have a true race against time without some eye-rolling contrivance. (Oh no--the cell phone is dead! We're trapped underground with no signal! Our hero is Amish!) Choosing a setting that's not so far removed from our world that it's unrecognizable (that is, no one's running around in togas, or tithing the local lord with eight bushels of wheat) but that lacks some of our technological marvels creates infinite possibilities for intrigue and excitement and allows for the characters to evince a sincere belief in the possibility that magic exists.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that Queen Vic was smoking hot, the undersexed minx.