Anne here, welcoming Nicola Cornick back to Word Wenchdom, as promised, to tell us about her upcoming trilogy, "The Brides of Fortune." Nicola, welcome back. Tell us about these brides.
Nicola:~ Thanks, Anne, it's lovely to be back. The trilogy – or quartet, if you include the short story! – is set in the Regency period in the fictional Yorkshire town of Fortune’s Folly. The unscrupulous Lord of the Manor, Sir Montague Fortune, discovers that by a legal oversight, all the medieval taxes have never been repealed. So he sets out to exploit this by levying as many taxes as he can find on his townsfolk! Chief amongst them is the Dames’ Tax, which entitles him to take half of the wealth of every unmarried woman resident in the town unless she weds within a year. Word goes around the Ton that this is happening and all the fortune-hunters decide that they will journey to Yorkshire to try to persuade the heiresses that it would be preferable to marry than to give their money to Sir Montague. The ladies are trapped, of course. If they wed then legally all their money becomes the property of their husbands. If they don’t, Sir Montague will take half of it anyway! Naturally enough they are not going to give in without a fight!
Anne:~ It sounds like a lot of fun.
I confess, I love finding out what the inspiration, the spark was, that gave birth to particular books. Most writers I know have no trouble coming up with new ideas, in fact most of us have more ideas than we could ever write, so I love finding out what it was that made that one particular story demand to be written. So, where did the initial idea for this trilogy come from?
Nicola:~ Although I write historical fiction I do get a lot of my ideas from modern themes and contemporary news stories. For example, I have written in the past about winning the national lottery and also about the cult of celebrity. The Fortune’s Folly trilogy was another idea that came from a modern newspaper. I read a report a couple of years ago of a man in Kent who had bought the title of Lord of the Manor of a particular village. He then discovered that as part of the deal he could tax all the villagers! No one had done it for centuries but he was a bit greedy and started to charge people to park on the village green when they went shopping, and to walk their dogs etc etc. The village was in uproar as a result. I read this and thought what a marvellous idea it would be to base a book around it. That developed into a trilogy as I went along!
Anne:~ Fascinating. And what sort of research did you do?
Nicola:~ I had great fun researching medieval taxes as background. My favourites were the childwite, which a man had to pay when he fathered an illegitimate child (and in many cases there was quite a lot of disagreement over who should be paying!) and the amober, which was the tax you had to pay the lord to waive his right to sleep with the bride on the wedding night! That one features in book 3 of the trilogy! On a more sober note I made Fortune’s Folly a spa town and I enjoyed researching the history of Harrogate and other northern spas. I particularly liked the fact that one of the spa water wells in Harrogate was called the “Stinking Spaw” because the sulphur made the water so smelly. I thought that was very descriptive! I even tried drinking the spa water myself so that I could identify with the experience of those characters who were taking the waters for their health!
Anne:~ Gosh, that's taking research to brave heights. I'm not sure I'd quaff anything called stinking spaw! LOL. And this cartoon makes the same point— look at the picture upside down for the 'before taking the waters ' view.
Tell us about the heroes in this series.
Nicola:~ The heroes of the three trilogy books are all fortune hunters but they are also government agents who are using the fact that Fortune’s Folly has become the marriage mart of England as cover to pursue their investigations into a very influential and criminal local businessman, Warren Sampson. I decided to explore the idea of what we would call “home security” in the books, because I had read a lot about spies and counter spies during the Napoleonic Wars but I wanted to look at what was happening inside the country in terms of social stability and crime and disorder. I’d started exploring this with the Glory Girls highwaywomen in my previous book, Unmasked, and the trilogy really follows on from that. So the Guardians, as they are called, all work for the Home Secretary and have the brief of keeping the peace at home whilst Britain is engaged in fighting a threat overseas as well.
Anne:~ This is by no means your first series of linked books. How do you approach the writing of a series? Do you collage? Plan it all out like a military campaign? Create a "bible" with all the details, character bios, etc. in it? Or do you make it up as you go along and note things down as they happen?
Nicola:~ I do enjoy writing linked books and have written several series. What drives me to write series is that I love creating that Regency “world,” as I hope I have done with Fortune’s Folly, and peopling it with my characters. But I must confess that I find it very difficult because I am always plotting myself into a corner! What seems a great idea in book 1 turns out to be a problem for the heroine of book 3 somewhere down the line. I used to be a great deal more organised at planning when I was writing a series. In fact I used to be a great deal more organised in my writing full stop. These days I write by the seat of my pants. I make it up as I go along. I wish I was more of a planner but just at the moment this approach doesn’t seem to work for me and you have to go with what does work so that means launching myself in and hoping for the best!
Anne:~ I think there are few "organic writers' among the word wenches, so you're in good company there. You're launching the series with an electronic "prequel" I believe. This is a bit of an innovation, isn't it -- launching a print series with an e-book? What is the prequel about?
Nicola:~ I believe Harlequin have done this once before for one of their paranormal single title series by Gena Showalter and it was a massive success, so fingers crossed! The suggestion to write a prequel came along as I was finishing book 3 of the series so I then had to go back and think what might be happening in Fortune’s Folly before Sir Montague discovered the Dames’ Tax. I decided that a bustling little market town was the perfect place for a fugitive to hide and so The Secrets of a Courtesan was born, in which my heroine, Eve Nightingale, has reinvented herself as a respectable shopkeeper in Fortune’s Folly and thinks her scandalous past has been buried. Of course it has not been buried deep enough… The e-book also sets the scene and introduces some of the characters in the series but it is a complete story in itself.
Anne:~ It sounds like a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to reading it. (Nicola's e-book, The Secrets of a Courtesan, is available from the Harlequin e-book store.)
Here is an extract from The Secrets of a Courtesan:
Suddenly Rowarth was beside her, his hand on her elbow as he helped her to her feet, his touch searing her through the material of her sleeve. He picked up the slightly squashed cheese and handed it politely to her. Their fingers touched. Eve felt heat ripple through her awakening feelings she had thought long dead. Rowarth was summoning the dairyman and the butcher with authoritative gestures now to replace the items she had lost.
Money changed hands. Eve heard the clink of coin and the men’s mumbled thanks. She felt hot and dizzy, the sun beating down on her bonnet and dazzling her eyes. She tried to steady her breathing. There was not the remotest chance of escaping a confrontation with Rowarth now. He still held her, lightly but with a touch that made her entire body thrum with awareness.
“Eve.”
She looked up and met his eyes and again felt the shock like a physical blow.
“Rowarth.” She was proud that her voice was so steady. “What an unexpected… surprise.”
His lips curved into a smile that was sinfully wicked but not remotely reassuring. “Is there any other sort?” he murmured.
“There are nice surprises,” Eve said.
“And then there is meeting me again.” His smile deepened. “Which I imagine falls into a different category given the alacrity with which you ran away from me.”
Pain twisted in Eve, bitter and sharp, not even slightly blunted with the passing of time. Yes, she had run from him. She had had no other choice in the world. And now, five years later, the mere sight of him could still affect her so profoundly that she felt faint and light-headed, her emotions stretched as taut as a wire.
But Rowarth’s measured tones had nothing but coldness in them for her now. Whatever feelings she still had for him, so deeply held that she had never quite been able to banish them, were not shared. Mistresses came and went, after all. He had been everything to her and there had never been anyone else for her since, but she could hardly expect it to be the same for him.
The crowds had melted away leaving them alone. People were still staring, though from a discreet distance. Women were staring. But then, Eve thought, women had always stared at Alasdair Rowarth. Women had always wanted him. He was handsome, he was rich and he was a duke. What more could one ask for?
Anne:~ Sounds most intriguing. Thanks so much for joining us again, Nicola. It's been a delightful visit.
Nicola:~ You're welcome, Anne. Thanks to you and the other Word Wenches for inviting me to be a guest.
Anne:~ The first print book in Nicola's Fortune’s Folly trilogy, The Confessions of a Duchess, will be out from HQN Books in June 2009 and the others will follow in consecutive months. And just look at these covers — aren't they gorrrrgeous? I'm envious.
Nicola has a question for you: What do you like about linked stories? Or dislike about them, for that matter?
She's offering a download of the e-book and a copy of the first trilogy book to two lucky commenters. (The e-book won't be available until the 20th May.)