Candace Camp finds real-life places for 'Marrying Season' settings

Best-selling author Candace Camp shares the real-life places that stand in for the fictional ones in her new historical, The Marrying Season (out now).

Candace: The Marrying Season is the final book in the Legend of St. Dwynwen series, and in each of the three books, a small village church in the Cotswolds plays a significant role. When I was in England last summer, I took photographs of little churches all over the country, thinking that I could use a feature of the various places — the square tower of this one, the gravestones clustered against the walls of that one — for parts of the church.

Then, in the Cotswolds (I should have known), I came upon a church sitting on a slight rise at the edge of a town. It looked out over the green countryside, a small, rather plain stone structure with a square tower, surrounded by a grassy yard of leaning, lichen-spotted tombstones, the perimeter marked by a low stone wall. I knew at once that this was "my" St. Margaret's. It's hard to describe the feeling I had upon coming across something that was so much what I had imagined for the past two years and so dear to me. The closest I can reach is that it's like the sudden knowledge you get every now and then when you meet someone and immediately things just click with them. You sense that this person will be your good friend or you feel that Some Enchanted Evening sensation and think, "Wow, I'm going to marry this guy."

This is the garden I envisioned for the remote Castle Cleyre in Northumberland where Genevieve, the heroine of The Marrying Season, grew up. At the top, at the level of the house, there would be a formal garden, with neat rows and squares of flowers and trimmed hedges, but then, when you walk to the back, the garden sweeps down the hill in a jumbled profusion of flowers and greenery, wild and beautiful.

I couldn't help but think how much this suited Genevieve, who appears rather aloof and very proper, a woman who lives by the rules, but her tidy surface conceals a vibrant and loving soul that only Myles can bring out.

I visited England immediately after I finished writing The Marrying Season, before any editing or revisions. I had considered placing Sir Myles' estate, where part of the book takes place, in Devon, but I wanted it to be nearer to London, as I didn't want to require the characters to make a long carriage trip.

However, when I was in Devon and saw the River Dart flowing over the rocks beside the lush landscape of trees and wildly growing ferns and spikes of purple foxglove, I knew that this was where that part of the book had to take place. So when I returned home and started on the revisions suggested by my editor (Abby Zidle, who always turns out to be spot-on in her remarks), I lengthened the trip a bit and gave Myles his proper home in Devon.

Here's the blurb about The Marrying Season (courtesy of publisher Pocket Books):

Her brother Alec, Earl of Rawdon, has joyously wed his true love, but Genevieve Stafford anticipates no such unabashed emotion on her wedding day. The icily beautiful aristocrat is to marry Lord Dursbury, and love is not part of the bargain.

But when someone frames Genevieve in a cruel scheme, the scandal shatters her engagement and her respectability. So why has Sir Myles Thorwood gallantly offered to marry her?

Handsome, flirtatious Myles is her opposite in many ways, yet he understands her the way no other man ever has. Trumping her expectations of a loveless marriage, Myles shows Genevieve just what it means to be man and wife ... but are his attentions mere kindness or true devotion? Will their passion endure for more than a passing season?

To find out more about Candace and her books, you can visit her website, www.candace-camp.com.