Author Interview: Beverley Eikli

Beverley Eikli is another Choc Lit author that I was fortunate to find out more about. Her latest release is the Maid of Milan which releases on March 7th and I will be reviewing sometime soon. In the meantime sit back and get to know Beverley a little better.

Hi Beverley, welcome to Beauty and Lace and thank you for talking to us.
When did you know you wanted to pursue a writing career?

Hi Michelle. Thank you so much for having me. Well, I was already passionate about story-telling at the age of seven. As the eldest of three sisters I used to entertain my siblings with tales of my School for Witches during our long holidays at our South Australian beach cottage where we had no television.

It wasn’t until I was seventeen, though, that I wrote my first romance, but I made the mistake of drowning the heroine on the last page, and romance editors just weren’t interested. (Can’t imagine why) It took me 23 years before all the pieces fell into place and I got my first publishing contract with Robert Hale in 2009.

How did you come to be a Choc Lit author?

Choc Lit advertised their Search for an Australian Star competition in the Romance Writers of Australia newsletter, so I entered The Reluctant Bride which had recently won the New Zealand Romance Writers competition. After I won Search for an Australian Star I signed with Choc Lit. They’ve been an amazing publisher and I’m really looking forward to catching up with some of them in May at the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention in New Orleans.

Your latest release is The Maid of Milan, can you tell us a little about it?

It’s a psychological historical drama as much as a romance with a redemptive ending, about a once-vibrant debutante who made a terrible error of judgement four years before I take up the story. Unfortunately, she’s been condemned by her morally upright mother to live a lie – one which denies her the ability to forge real love with the husband she reluctantly married three years before.

Where did the inspiration for the story come from?

Redemption is a theme in all my eight romances. However to be redeemed one has to have been bad and part of the reason it took so long for me to get published was that the heroines of my earlier works were so bad or spoiled or thoughtless that I guess the reader didn’t really care whether they lived or not. Big mistake! Hopefully I’m better at subtlety so that the reader will have a nuanced experience as they follow the conflict of my hero and heroine. I want them to think: That was really bad behaviour but in certain situations I can see it possibly happening to someone as good as I am.

What drew you to write Historical Fiction?

For as long as I can remember I wanted to have been born sometime between 1750 and 1850. Don’t ask me why, though it’s very lucky I wasn’t since it was due to a world-first operation when I was seven that I was able to walk – and life as a cripple in Georgian to Victorian times doesn’t sound very appealing.

Who are your favourite authors?

I’m amazed by the enormous variety of stories by my fellow Choc Lit authors. I’ve read a dozen or so in the last few months with themes varying from revenge in a contemporary romantic suspense (The Elephant Girl), to ‘finding the right path in life’ in a Devon-set romantic drama in 1909 (To Turn Full Circle), to a wonderful psychological Edwardian mystery/romance (Dangerous Decisions) to a fun and fabulous contemporary romance (The Wedding Diary) to a heartwarming 1880s-set Wyoming romance (A Bargain Struck). I’m reading my way through them all because each Choc Lit is such a wonderful surprise as it’s so different from the one before. It really is like dipping your hand with your eyes closed into a box of chocolates.

I also love Africa-set romances with a good dose of action and am writing one at the moment.

What are you reading at the moment?

I’ve just finished another gorgeous Choc Lit book – To Turn Full Circle by Linda Mitchelmore, since I want to read the sequel which is just out, ‘Emma, there’s no turning back.’ So now I’m reading ‘My Brother but One’ by TM Clarke, an Aussie author and friend of mine whose book is set just after the bush war in Zimbabwe. I grew up in Lesotho and have family and friends in Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa so I’ve have heard many first-hand horrific stories about the terrorism surrounding the land redistribution. I’m now enjoying a ‘romance’ set during this background, and as Africa will always run in my veins I like trying new authors writing about Africa.

Can you tell us a little about why you write under two different names?

My fourth book, Rake’s Honour, was what I call a ‘Racy Regency Romp’ but it was too saucy for my publisher at the time. Another publisher wanted it, but they wanted it ‘steamier’. I thought it would be fun to try, but not under my own name. (I didn’t want to horrify my existing readers) So I took the pseudonym Beverley Oakley and have written a number of historical sensual/erotic romances, mostly with themes of physiological conflict, which I’ve set during the English Civil War or the early years of Victorian photography.

Are you working on anything new you can tell us about?

Ah yes! My ‘Lesotho Story’ – perhaps entitled Lammergeier Rock – which I hope to submit to my publisher by the end of the week. It’s very close to my heart and I’ve been working on it for a while. Three years ago I took a trip back to my hometowns of Maseru, and Mokhotlong, in the mountains African kingdom of Lesotho, where my father worked for much of his career as a District Commissioner prosecuting medicine murder and illegal diamond buying. Both of these crimes feature in my romance about a rough-and-ready but gorgeous bush pilot who falls in love with the District Commissioner’s daughter. But then my hero and heroine each make a fatal decision which pretty much means their love is doomed.

I brought in elements from all aspects of my family’s life: my own Sesotho nanny and her son who was being groomed by radical Russian elements, the pilot who’d come to South Africa from England as an evacuee (just as happened in my mother’s family in Pretoria), though my real life pilot husband, Eivind, was a gorgeous Norwegian bush pilot I met in Botswana when I was managing a safari lodge there. I therefore have been making the most of his flying expertise and psychological ‘take’ on how far an ambitious bush pilot would go to achieve his dream of flying a jet; and also my dad’s experience and views on the final years of the Colonial administration. Dad was private secretary to Chief Leabua Jonathan, Lesotho’s first democratically elected Prime Minister.

What does being a woman mean to you?

Well, we’ve recently had Valentine’s Day and my husband of twenty years bought me flowers and chocolates and wrote the most heartfelt card saying how good it was to be married to me, so if I can continue to feel that I’m an exciting wife, an interesting and interested mother and a successful writer, I couldn’t ask for much more. I like being the woman I am.

Thanks for your time and good luck with your new release.
Thank you very much, Michelle. It’s been a pleasure.

To find out more about Beverley you can visit her website at: BeverleyOakley.com, Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.