Thank you for having me today Alethea.
Historical fiction opens doors into the
past. Readers are transported back to a time and place where colourful
characters await. However, writing
historical fiction requires research to provide an authentic as possible
background, warts and all. We can’t just drop our characters into the Tudor
era, for instance, and hope for the best.
About three years ago an article on smuggling
between England and France during the 18th and 19th
centuries caught my interest. Delving deeper certainly opened my eyes. It was a
huge, profitable business for both countries, not just in tea, wine spirits and
lace but escaped prisoners. Napoleon Bonaparte was also encouraging gold
smuggling from England, in the hope of weakening the English currency. That,
and a throw away remark, ‘We are not the same people we were ten years ago,’
gave me the idea for Lies of Gold.
Blurb –
Their love affair ended in anger and painful consequences. Katherine
Ashford has guarded a secret through years of abuse. Fighting wars and hard
living has numbed Julian Ashford. Then fate steps in. Gold is crossing the
Channel to Napoleon Bonaparte and Julian is ordered back to where it all began,
and Katherine. It’s her secret and the increasing danger that rekindles the
love they once shared. When a murder exposes lies, death and devastating
betrayal, they will finally face the mastermind behind this sordid smuggling operation.
Excerpt –
Ten years of hard living had
buried those deep painful scars and all it took was one look at Katherine and
that small girl’s face to peel it all away. Like peeling an onion, his eyes
were stinging like hell.
He remembered the night he
met Katherine as if it were yesterday. Charles was in France and he was in
London attending a debutante’s ball. Bored out of his head with the simpering
young females and strutting males he was looking for an excuse to depart when
his cousin’s tall, elegant wife, Katherine was introduced to him. The orchestra
began playing and he asked her to join him on the floor. It was a waltz; he
took her in his arms, her eyes met his and he knew he’d met the only woman he’d
ever love. They’d set off murmurs behind fans for dancing twice and they didn’t
leave each other for a week. They’d made intense, passionate, love, they’d laid
in each other’s arms and talked for hours, they were as one. She’d confided Charles was a hard, brutish
man but she would not leave him because she’d lose all rights to her four years
old son. He’d begged her, made promises he knew he couldn’t keep. She’d shaken
her head in despair. As soon as Charles returned to London they would go home
to Halton Hall.
He’d prayed Charles’s ship
would sink to the bottom of the Channel. She’d cried in his arms; he’d cried in
her arms. The day before Charles was due to arrive in London, they became tense
with each other and finally, distraught, he’d accused her of selling herself for
the title and privilege. She’d thrown a heavy teapot at his head. When it
struck, he’d seen stars for several seconds before shouting more insults. She’d
furiously told him he couldn’t afford to keep her on his army pay. He’d walked
out.
Julian barely remembered the
following months of heavy drinking and angry self-pity until the army knocked
his arrogance and selfishness out of him and saved his sanity. He knew damn
well his army pay wouldn’t have kept her and he knew damn well she’d have lost
all rights to her son. Knowing Charles, he would have demanded she be brought
back to him and the law and the church would have supported him. Her life would
have been worse than hell. Now this, Christ, never in a million years did he
expect this. He wanted to walk away but he couldn’t because the whole damn top-secret
investigation would crumble or blow up in his face.
He sat down by the fire and
put his head in his hands. He didn’t know it then, but that night fourteen
months ago, changed his life. Benjamin Bloomfield, aide de camp to His Royal
Highness, the Prince Regent, had ordered Brigadier Sir Ian MacDonald, Sir Henry
Whitton and himself to meet at a nondescript location on the outskirts of
London. On their arrival, they’d been momentarily lost for words to find a
sober and serious Prince Regent waiting for them. Senior government officials
had drawn the Regent’s attention to the alarming amounts of gold leaving
England. Well-placed sources in France had reported English gold was being
smuggled across the Channel to help finance Napoleon Bonaparte’s army.
Intensive investigations along the east coast had failed to find any solid
evidence but the Regent was not satisfied. He and Bloomfield were convinced
someone in the upper echelons of power and influence was behind it or
protecting the smugglers. That night the five men present decided that from now
on the Prince Regent would shrug it off as rumors and lose interest.
That night MacDonald, Whitton
and Julian agreed to begin their search for the source. The Prince Regent named
the secret investigation Spider’s Web. The three men thought the name childish,
but they dutifully indulged His Royal Highness. Not one word of the meeting was
recorded and at the conclusion the Prince Regent instructed the three men to
meet on the first day of each month and report their progress to Bloomfield the
day after. Their investigations were secret and painstaking and gradually they
began to close in on this part of the coast. They had observed from a distance,
they had moved a little closer and then, as with every other investigation, the
scent disappeared. However, they were convinced and MacDonald decreed Julian
was the only suitable person to come and go around the Ballingford estates and
the coast without raising suspicions.
Julian stretched his feet
towards the fire, remembering his furious refusal to return to this place he
despised intensely and how he nearly resigned his commission when summoned to a
private audience with the Prince Regent. High Treason was involved and as an
officer of the Crown he was expected to do his duty. He’d reluctantly bowed to
HRH’s orders and it was agreed that to be convincing he’d have to be in dire
straits to return. His debts, scandals and fistfights were carefully and
authentically orchestrated culminating in him being bawled out by Ian MacDonald
who’d conveniently forgotten the raw young corporal and scandal loving clerk in
his office. Then their one reliable informer, who’d only agreed to meet him
under strict conditions of anonymity, was found with his throat cut. He and
Baker had arrived at Halton Hall with no idea of where to start or where to
look for the needle in the haystack of boats and fishermen and identify whoever
was behind this well organized group of traitors. When he did find evidence,
his orders were to send a coded message to MacDonald and Whitton and the net
would close in.
No matter what was thrown at
him now, he could not walk away. They were so close and if the web was broken
it could not be repaired. Nor could he let down Ian MacDonald, his uncle and
mentor, to whom he owed so much.
Buy links –
Author bio –
Jan Selbourne grew up in Melbourne, Australia. Her love
of literature and history began as soon as she could read and hold a pen. Her
career started in the dusty world of ledgers and accounting then a working
holiday in the UK brought the history to life. Now retired, Jan can indulge her
love of writing and travel. She has two adult children and lives near Maitland,
New South Wales.
Author links –
2 comments:
This book absolutely deserves a medal for one of the best historical novels of the year!! It's suspenseful and compelling. And historically accurate with excellent writing, just like all of Jan's book!
Thank you very much Dee.
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