Blurb:
There
are terrors worse than stage fright. Like falling in love.
Violinist
Stephen Ashbrook is passionate about three things—his music, the excitement of
life in London, and his lover, Evander Cade. It’s too bad that Evander only
loves himself. A house party at their patron’s beautiful country estate seems
like a chance for Stephen to remember who he is, when he’s not trying to live
up to someone else’s harsh expectations.
Joshua
Beaufort, a painter whose works are very much in demand among the right sort of
people, has no expectations about this party at all. Until, that is, he finds
out who else is on the guest list. Joshua swore off love long ago, but has been
infatuated with Stephen since seeing his brilliant performance at Vauxhall. Now
he has the chance to meet the object of his lust face to face—and more.
But
changing an open relationship to a triad is a lot more complicated than it
seems, and while Evander’s trying to climb the social ladder, Stephen’s trying
to climb Joshua. When the dust settles, only two will remain standing...
Excerpt:
The
man in the portrait was not classically handsome. His mouth was too full and
his hair too red for that, his jawline perhaps a little too soft. But his eyes
crinkled at the corners with secret mirth, as though sharing a very private
joke with the viewer, and those lush and generous lips curled up at one corner.
He sat in a smock and his shirtsleeves, a palette on the table behind him. His
head tilted very slightly to the side, like he was listening to some secret,
lively song. His eyes caught and held Stephen, grey as stormclouds over the
cliffs, a hint of blue that was the clear sky breaking through, and a knowing
look that struck some chord deep within that Stephen could not immediately
name.
He
wanted-
Well,
he wanted a great many things. But never before had a portrait been responsible
for a curl of longing or desire twisting its way up from the center of his
being, some vague and wistful sense of thwarted desire focused on that
arresting stare.
I
wonder if he would look at me that way in life.
I
wonder who he is.
A
faint scuff of feet behind was all that gave Stephen warning before someone
spoke, and he managed neither to whip around in surprise, nor jump like a child
caught where he shouldn’t be. “He’s not a particularly good-looking fellow, to
deserve such lengthy scrutiny.”
The
voice was an unfamiliar one, a warm rich tenor that verged on a deeper range, a
faint northern accent coloring the tone.
“I
suppose not,” Stephen replied, pausing to allow his heart to slow before he
introduced himself. “If you value men solely based on looks. But there is more
life in his expression than in all the other portraits put together. Either the
sitter was a man of uncommon vivacity, or the painter was exceptionally fond of
him.”
He
turned and looked at the man standing behind him.
His
hair was shorter now, and he was dressed for dinner, his cravat impeccably tied
and tucked into a cream waistcoat. The man from the portrait stepped in to the
gallery, framed by a shaft of light that fell across the floor from the hall.
His eyes had not been exaggerated. They had been perhaps underplayed, and that
grey-blue gaze regarded Stephen with a peculiar intensity. He was a little
taller than Stephen, his frame of very pleasing proportions, and had a
controlled energy to his walk that suggested strength lying beneath the layers
of wool and linen.
“Or
he was his own painter,” the newcomer said, his lip quirking up in that
selfsame knowing smile, “and both irredeemably prone to vanity and in desperate
need of an honest friend to check him in his fancy.”
Tess, thanks so much for stopping
by. So, why don’t you tell us a little about yourself?
Thanks so much for having me! This is my first book blog tour
and my debut novel, so every aspect of this is thrilling.
I’ve always been in love with history, and I especially adore
transitional periods like the Regency, or the Tudor era. There’s always so much
going on in the background! I have a Masters degree in history, a day job that
has odd and unpredictable hours and involves a lot of running about, and a
wonderful 15-year relationship that’s singlehandedly responsible for my honest
joy in stories that end with ‘happily ever after.’ (And two cats, which I understand came with
my ‘introductory romance author kit,’ along with the caffeine IV and bottle of
white-out.)
I live in a mid-sized town on the Atlantic coast and love it to
bits, though the winter was brutal this year. For a while I was considering
packing it all in and moving somewhere warm, and more importantly, dry.
One really nice thing about living where I do is that there are
tons of outdoor activities for the summer. I geocache quite a bit, and there’s
not much that’s as satisfying as finally tracking down a hidden cache that’s
been eluding you for days. I want to write something with letterboxing as a
main plot thread someday – letterboxing was the Victorian equivalent of
geocaching and is just the perfect setup for some kind of romantic mystery –
but it wasn’t a hobby yet in the Regency, which is the time frame for my current
series. I’ll have to save that one for later!
What else? I grew up reading mountains of science fiction and
fantasy, and always assumed that if I ever wrote something, it would be in one
of those genres – but that’s another question!
How did you get started writing?
I’ve been writing since I was a kid, primarily fanfic and
original short stories, but I hadn’t seriously considered publishing at first.
A friend of mine read a couple of pieces and strongly recommended that I look
into writing something that would be publishable. I poo-pooed it at first, for
that age old reason of self-confidence. There are so many amazing authors
writing in Romance right now; how could I ever hope to sneak in? (Honestly I’m
still not convinced, but it’s wonderful to have amazing writers like Tessa Dare
and Katherine Cross to look up to for inspiration.)
It’s not the done thing to talk about fanfic as a stepping stone
for writing professionally, I know! I do have some writing credits under
another name from before I really got into romance fiction, but I do have to
credit the fanfic community for a good part of my growth as a writer. There’s
something intoxicating about the instant feedback you receive on stories, and
the kinds of critiques on offer can vary from purely emotional reactions (which
are so satisfying!) to fascinating structural analyses that you’d have to pay a
professional editor big bucks to receive elsewhere.
I didn’t start out thinking about publishing professionally, and
fanfic itself is a different beast, with different goals and internal tropes. I
would never consider ‘filing the serial numbers off’ one of my fics and trying
to get that in print; those stories are so intrinsically bound up in the
communities they were written for that it wouldn’t work well. But for me, at
least, starting off writing for fandom gave me the kind of writing workshop
incubation that I needed in order to get off the ground as a pro. I love my
guys and their amazing passion for storytelling, and I wouldn’t be here without
them.
What was the inspiration for your book?
A book I stumbled on while doing research for my Masters. Called
Mother Clap’s Molly House, it’s a collection of articles by Dr. Rictor Norton
about the vibrant gay community in London, primarily in the 18th and early 19th
centuries. I had no idea at the time that the social life back then was so
similar to what I’d perceived as a late 20th century phenomenon – they had gay
bars (‘molly houses’), their own slang, standard cruising areas, long-term
relationships and (non-legally binding) marriages.
Since then I’ve been doing more research and digging on my own,
but I always come back to Dr. Norton’s books and essays for the groundwork.
Some of the love letters he’s found are unbearably heartbreaking – and just as
many are ribald, goofy, gleeful and erotic. Once I had this window into that
era, there was no turning back!
What’s the one genre you haven’t written
in yet that you’d like to?
I’d love to try my hand at a proper mystery one day. Or maybe
mystery with a touch of horror. I’ve dabbled a little bit in police
procedurals, but it’s never been anything publishable, and I think I’d like to
go the other direction and do something more supernatural, not in the romance
genre. I absolutely adore Tanya Huff’s ‘Blood’ series of vampire-crime-fighter
novels, and the balance she struck between supernatural mystery and police work
was just fantastic. But then, I’m also a big, big fan of classic suspenseful
horror, and I’ve had an idea for a proper ghost story sitting on my list of
‘to-do-somedays’ for a long time.
Let’s say ‘horror-suspense,’ and we’ll see if I get there!
Are there any genres you won’t read or
write in? Why?
I can’t see myself writing hard SF any time
soon. I love science fiction and read it all the time, but I don’t have the
math and science background necessary to be able to write a clean,
physics-consistent, science fiction story without stopping every paragraph to
check all my data. I’m all for space opera, though, and anything that will let
me get away with liberal applications of handwavium to smooth over the science
bits.
As far as reading goes, the only fiction categories I don’t read
are religiously-based sweet romances, and the other end of the spectrum,
weapon-heavy military or political thrillers – the sort where every gun’s
caliber and ammo count are listed off like a centerfold’s measurements. Not
that there’s anything wrong with either of those genres, they’re just not to my
taste, and generally so far out of the realm of my experience that I don’t have
a hook on which to hang sympathetic engagement with the characters. My favorite
romances always include some kind of physical connection, and I tend to get a
little foamy at the mouth when female virginity is held up as some kind of pure
and enviable state.
Oh! On that note, I should add – rape fantasy in romance or
erotica. Unless the characters
themselves are explicitly playing out a scene and have safewords involved, I
have a very visceral reaction to forced sex narratives. I won’t ever write
rape, and I seriously dislike reading it. Your Kink Mileage May Vary.
So, what are you working on right now?
Got any releases planned, or still writing?
I’m always still writing! I have a manuscript out
to my beta-readers now that I’ll be submitting to Samhain soon, and that’s a
follow-on to Rite of Summer. The working title is She Whom I Love, and it
follows Sophie – a secondary character from RoS – and her romantic
(mis)adventures.
It’s a bit of a departure from RoS in that the main relationship
is a triad with two women and one man, but the setting is still among the
artists of London. Sophie is a struggling amateur playwright, Meg is the
ingénue who dreams of serious roles, and James is a staymaker and patron of the
arts. The romance is very much queer rather than love triangle or
man-with-two-partners, and the heat level is about the same explicitly sensual
level as RoS.
(If Rite of Summer is a look at the troubles that can come with
triads and open relationships, She Whom I Love is the reverse of that, very
much a love letter to healthy polyamory and ménage.)
I haven’t sold it yet, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that
my editor will love it as much as I do.
And along with that, I’ve started working another book for Treading
the Boards, with the working title That Potent Alchemy. There’s a single hero
and heroine in this one, and she is a secondary character who I absolutely fell
in love with while writing She Whom I Love. Grace is a dancer and actress
approaching her thirties, aging out of the ingénue roles, flexible in her
gender identity, and unsure where to go from there. Isaac is a stage hand, and
amateur pyrotechnician with a knack for finding himself in the wrong place at the
right time. I’ve been looking forward to writing this one since I introduced
Grace in She Whom I Love, and I hope I’ll be able to craft a story that readers
will enjoy just as much as I’ve enjoyed the planning.
Alright, now for some totally random, fun
questions. Favorite color?
Green! Though for a long time, I insisted it was blue. There was
a quiz that went around my junior high, about ‘what your favorite color says
about you.’ All I remember was that having green for your favorite meant you
were naïve and innocent, and I desperately wanted to be anything but that! Blue
meant elegance, I seem to recall (though as anyone who knows me well will tell
you, that doesn’t exactly fit either).
It took me something like 15 years to stop automatically saying
‘green and blue’ to answer this question. It’s amazing how little things can
stick with you for so long.
Favorite movie?
What day of the week is it? I have so many, depending on my
mood; I can’t choose! I’m going to do it by genre.
Favourite horror: The Woman in Black (Dan Radcliffe’s version).
Favourite sci-fi: Pacific Rim!
Favourite animated: Big Hero 6.
Best comfort movie of all time: Center Stage.
You have one superpower. What is
it?
The ability to reach things on a high shelf! I’m only 5’2, and
this world isn’t built for short people. I’ll take ‘flight’ if ‘leg stretching’
isn’t on offer.
You can have dinner with any 3
people, dead, alive, fictitious, etc. Who are they?
Dinner party questions always tie me up in overthinking. I turn
into a Regency hostess, trying to balance out conversational styles and choose
people who would be interesting to see all together and who wouldn’t try to
murder each other on sight, or have nothing to talk about…
Right. Okay. My ideal dinner party, with three guests. Amye
Robsart (first wife of Lord Robert Dudley), Dana Scully, and Joan Watson.
Not much is known about the first Lady Dudley as a person,
except in a handful of letters that she wrote to her property manager and to
her husband, but her story has always fascinated me. The most current theory
about her death is that she was afflicted with breast cancer which had
metastasized and made her bones brittle, making it possible for her to break
her neck just from falling down a short flight of stairs. The rumors about
Queen Elizabeth I’s or Cecil’s hand in her death are hard to shake. I’d like to
hear her story from her own lips.
Dana Scully and Joan Watson are there to be awesome and help us
solve the mystery and win justice for the abandoned (and possibly murdered)
wife of the Queen’s favorite, obviously. That’s a teamup I’d kill to see
happen. Someone needs to write that fic, stat.
Last question: Which of your characters are you most like and how/why?
There’s a little bit of me in each of them, I think; at least
just enough for me to empathize with their choices. I wish I had Stephen’s
exuberance or Evander’s easy charm, but that’s not happening any time soon.
If I had to choose, I’d say it would be Joshua. He’s not a glib
charmer, and he’s happiest without the trappings of nobility – just a room of
his own, his art, and someone to love him until the end of his days. (Not that
a wealthy patron wouldn’t be lovely!)
At the same time, though, he’s struggling between his urges to
save and help, and his need to protect himself from being hurt again. He and I
both have that same unfortunate tendency towards being ‘fixers’ in our private
lives, which can turn into co-dependence so easily. I do think Joshua’s a lot stronger
and more stubborn than I am, however, and more self-defeatist. Not to mention I
couldn’t draw a straight line without a ruler!
Come by www.tessbowery.com on June 2nd, 7 pm Eastern Time, to join
me in the chatroom for the release party! I’ll have giveaways and prizes as
well as interviews and a social hour. I look forward to seeing everyone!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Author Bio and Links:
Tess
has been a fan of historical fiction since learning the Greek and Roman myths
at her mother's knee. Now let loose on a computer, she's spinning her own tales
of romance and passion in a slightly more modern setting. Her work in the
performing arts has led to a passion for the theatre and dance in all its
forms, and been the inspiration for her current books. Tess lives on the east
coast, with her partner of fifteen years and two cats who should have been
named 'Writer's Block' and 'Get Off the Keyboard, Dammit.'
Tess
can be found reblogging over on tessbowery.tumblr.com, twittering at
@TessBowery, and talking about writing in general and her books specifically
over at www.tessbowery.com.
So today, I’m going to start with
my review for The Violet and the Tom by Ocotillo.
