One of the fun things about being a writer is the way new ideas will pop into your head all the time. Most of them probably won’t go anywhere, but sometimes the little kernel of a story idea you have might be worth fleshing out.
I was chatting with a writer friend who is setting her historical romance in her home province of Alberta, Canada. When I think of historical romance, I tend to think of English aristocrats dressed in silks and velvet, sipping tea and munching scones while they discuss Lord So-And-So’s scandalous dalliance with Lady Whatsername. The idea of writing a romance set in your own back yard — turning the ordinary into something romantic — was brilliant.
However, my own back yard is Louisville, Kentucky. It’s a beautiful place filled with rolling green hills and elegant horse farms, but it’s hard to imagine what kind of historical romance could happen here. We have hundreds of beautiful Victorian mansions in Old Louisville, but we’re pretty far removed from the Victorian lords and ladies who make up a substantial part of historical romance. Where’s the drama? The intrigue?!
That’s when it hit me. Kentucky’s got horses, yes, but we’re also famous for our bourbon. And for a brief yet interminable period called prohibition, our biggest industry was outlawed. What must it have been like, to have barrels of bourbon aging for years in storehouses and then being unable to sell it legally? For these master distillers to have their entire livelihood ripped out from under them, with no alternative employment available?
This got me thinking of a Robin Hood type story, with a scrappy bootlegger standing up against the justice and strength of the dry agents of Prohibition. So if my hero is a bootlegger, I know my heroine will have to be a Prohibitionist herself — someone who staunchly believes in the evils of alcohol and doesn’t condone his actions. This immediately ramps up the tension between the two main characters and leaves the reader wondering how, exactly, they will get their happily ever after when there’s so many obstacles in their way.
But how would such opposite people even meet? In Casablanca they say, “Everybody comes to Rick’s,” but in Louisville it might be, “Everybody comes to the Seelbach.” This incredible Gilded Age hotel hosted Louisville’s most prestigious guests and was the setting of Daisy and Tom Buchanan’s wedding in The Great Gatsby. During Prohibition, famous outlaws like Al Capone and George Remus frequented the hotel, and the gorgeous Rathskeller Room in the basement hosted a speakeasy throughout the 1920s. When I found out that the hotel also had hidden passages and access to tunnels that ran under the whole city, though, I was sold!
The Seelbach Hotel hosts free weekend tours of the property filled with interesting tidbits about the hotel’s famous past. While this was a great way to get introduced to my setting and see some of the details up close, I needed more. If my hero is supplying illegal alcohol to the hotel, and my heroine finds out about this, what might that look like?
Luckily, even though Prohibition ended in 1933, there’s still quite a few speakeasies in Louisville capitalizing on the allure of the forbidden. Located in Whiskey Alley, Hell or High Water is a reservations-only speakeasy serving delicious drinks in a fabulous underground setting. Pin + Proof is hidden away in the Omni Hotel, where you can sip cocktails and enjoy a game of bowling with an old-timey vibe. Gertie’s in NuLu has jazz on Friday nights, to really make you feel like you’ve stepped a century back in time.
It was so fun to spend some time as a tourist in my own hometown as I developed the idea for this historical romance. If you ever make it to Louisville, I hope you check out some of these spots and enjoy them as much as I did. And, if you can’t travel here, I hope you’ll be transported to these spots when you read my story!
Aimee Moineaux 
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