Julia Madeleine Stops Today on Tour--To Read My Review!

Scarlet rose. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Truth
  About
    Scarlet Rose




By Julia Madeleine




In spotlighting Julia during her blog tour and on my blog this month, I read somewhere that as she was writing this book, Scarlet Rose, one of her characters, took over...

Although I can never figure out what a writer means when she says this, I must admit that this novel "proves" that it is possible. Else, why did I enjoy reading this novel about such a hateful woman?!? I keep using the picture of a scarlet rose--such a beautiful image. And, if you read Scarlet Sins, you will find that Sylvia became Scarlet Rose when she started to dance at a local club... But, like a rose, when the season is over, she dies... Sylvia was now dead to everything good in the world...

She had already killed one man...

The Truth of the matter is that, Sylvia married Charlie at one point and they later divorced. She then forced her daughter, who was now just as beautiful as Sylvia once was, to begin bringing in money working as a stripper as well. Fiona was a teenager at the time...

The Truth of the matter was that Sylvia was never meant to be a mother and Fiona was never meant to be a burlesque dancer. In fact, Fiona had stayed closer to her stepfather Charlie than her mother. As the daughter she was, Charlie was generous with his money. Sylvia knew that she had to be Charlie's lover--why else would a man financially support a young girl. In fact, in her mind now, Fiona had seduced Charlie and had been the cause of the divorce!

You can't help but begin to feel sympathy for Fiona...

Fiona truly loved her stepfather and spent as much time with him as possible. He was supporting her and did buy her presents; but they were never involved in any way. But then Charlie was murdered...

And all eyes turned toward Fiona...

Fortunately, Fiona was open and honest with the police and they soon were using her as more of an informant, bouncing ideas off her related to the remainder of the family as well as with what else Charlie had been involved. But while Fiona was struggling with her personal loss, she also discovered memories from her past when a young man turned up claiming to be Charlie's son and heir!

Like the Tattoo artist that she is, Julia Madeleine was confronted with a bitter, angry woman, a sociopath who never cared for anyone other than herself. Madeleine let her run with her life's desires for as long as possible, but, like a bad tattoo, she had to go... But not before Scarlet Rose had entered a new life, with new seductions to be made...

Wow! I could almost feel how Scarlet Rose had taken over this novel--she was a woman, committed to get everything she deserved...and in the end, no big climax, no major...Oh Yeah, you think this woman would quietly go away?

This is soooo unique that I loved it! Enter into the Burlesque world of the beautiful and watch Scarlet Rose dance through her deadly life... Drama at its highest!


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Julia Madeleine's Shares on Blog Tour!

Scarlet rose. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Writers Are Such Thieves

Fiction writers can be like Dr. Frankenstein when it comes to creating characters. Although not exactly grave robbers, we find the bits and pieces we need in the people we know; friends, relatives and even strangers. We might take their childhood memories, the stories about their grandmother, their first love, their first broken heart We will steal their mannerisms, the way they laugh, that striking raise of an eyebrow, that special little tilt of their head they aren’t even aware that they do, and amalgamate them with our imagination. Secrets told in confidence can even work their way into our stories, such thieves we are, us fiction writers. At least, that's how it usually works for me.

Then it all gets sifted through the imagination and molded into a new person that becomes a character. These new imaginary people take their first delicate steps across the page, and as the chapters progress, they will grow into their own individual people, doing and saying things that surprise even their creator. Sometimes these new characters, these Frankenstein monsters we construct, even take over the story. This is precisely what happened in my new psychological thriller, The Truth About Scarlet Rose.

Originally Scarlet Rose, the washed-up burlesque queen from the 1960s, was a secondary character, a mere supporting cast member. But her personality became so huge, and she demanded so much attention, that she somehow managed to bully her way into becoming the main character of the story, even going so far as to get her name in the title.

Scarlet Rose, who’s real name is Sylvia, is based on a friend’s mother from when I was a teen. My friend “Debbie” at the tender age of fourteen was responsible for the care of her two younger sisters and brother. Her mother was a single parent supporting her family on social assistance and went out to the bar with her girlfriends nearly every night. She was a stereotype. Often she’d come home angry and drunk and scream at Debbie like a drill sergeant. She was a tyrant and Debbie feared her. Yet she was desperate to please her mother and win her love and approval which always seemed to elude her. It was this mother and daughter dynamic that fascinated me. The perversion of the parent-child relationship, that I found so curious in my friend’s relationship with her mother, plays out in my novel between Scarlet Rose and her daughter. Scarlet has my friend’s mother’s beautiful red hair, her dark piercing eyes that can shred you to pieces, reduce your very being to tatters with a single look. She has elements from other people too. Like how she throws back her head and releases her throaty booming laugh. I stole that from my sister-in-law. Her scoliosis, the result from a crushed disc in her spine from being hit by a car at age five, was taken from an ex-coworker.

Plenty of bits and pieces of other people went into the creation of the monster that Scarlet Rose is in the story. When her black little heart began to beat, dripping it's venom all over the page, like the narcissistic psychopath that she is, she went and stole the entire story.

“Let us not forget that the greatest composers were also the greatest thieves. They stole from everyone and everywhere.” - Pablo Casals