Oxford – A duck feeding expedition to the setting of some scenes in my Prophecy Trilogy

I remember back when I was writing my Prophecy Trilogy in my Vampires Realm series that I just had to include Oxford, my home city. The architecture and age of the city alone make it the perfect place for vampires. Add to that the large parks and plenty of people and what vampire wouldn’t want to live there?

If you remember rightly, Oxford was the home to Mathias in the Prophecy Trilogy, and was the place that Valentine took Prophecy to with the intent of leaving her there in relative safety while he trotted on back to his own life before that got wrecked by someone discovering his treasonous behaviour.

There’s a specific park featured in one of the scenes in the second book in the vampire romance trilogy, Prophecy: Caelestis and Aurorea, shortly after Valentine and Prophecy have returned to Oxford. Valentine is having a bad day and takes it out on a few humans, two of which happened to walk into a park. The park I wrote about in the book is the one where I like to feed ducks with my husband. Quite the contrast to the activities that Valentine gets up to in the same park. I thought you guys might like to see some pictures of it though, so I snapped some on my phone.

This is Christchurch college, which is there the park is. Such a moody contrast of sunshine and black clouds.

These are the trees where Valentine stalks the couple under the veil of night, and ends up killing them, and the weakling vampire who tries to interfere. Go Valentine.

Geese standing to attention. They really wanted the bread we had. They’re biters too.

Christchurch again, looking sunny this time.

I picture Mathias living in a building like these.

I’m sure I mention this building in the book too, which is the Radcliffe Camera.

This is our mini Bridge of Sighs, which also featured in the latest X-Men film.

Awesome sunset… which you could say is like the one Valentine describes to Prophecy in the first book.

I really love writing about places I’ve been to and including them in my stories. It’s not just because writing about somewhere you’ve been is vastly easier, and more accurate, than writing about somewhere from pictures. It’s because I know the feel of the place and can put that into words. Oxford is my home city, so I know it off by heart, and that’s probably why I feature in my favourite series. I love London too, and all the cities I write about, but Oxford makes me think about Vampires Realm and that makes me think about Valentine.

🙂

It also makes me think of Oneiric, which leads me to Eve and Lilith, and then makes me think about writing Hunger. I’ve been thinking about Hunger a lot lately. I really hope I can start writing it this year. It’s Eve and Tor’s story, and is going to be full throttle and hot too.