Books Are Made From Books
I recently came across an interesting quote – Books are made from books – by the writer Cormac McCarthy (No Country For Old Men ,The Road, Child Of God and others).
Never a truer word, I thought.
My first Regency Romance is a good example. The story was ‘suggested’ by one of my favourite books, Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys. Rhys’s novel was in turn ‘suggested’ byCharlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. It’s the storyofRochester’s mad wife lockedup in the attic.
My novel, Marrying The Reluctant Lord, follows the story of a young woman who goes to London from the West Indies in search of a husband. Her plantation-owner father has died, leaving her the heiress to a great fortune, but only if she marries an English lord.
But the lord who is tricked into proposing to her is reluctant to marry for money alone. He’s penniless, but the idea of becoming a ‘petticoat pensioner’ does not appeal to him. So the story of Juliet and her memories of her turbulent and often violent life in the West Indies is interwoven with the developing romance between the two main characters.
Marrying The Reluctant Lord is currently on sale for US 0.99c or available in Kindle Unlimited.
My latest novel, Alias Lord John, has echoes of Daphne du Maurier’s The Scapegoat, another book that I really admire. Du Maurier’s hero is nothing like mine, he’s practically suicidal and considering how he might end it all when he meets his double, a French count, who wants nothing more than to escape from his family andpressing commitments. So the exchange of identities is made.
The Scapegoat is a heavy story with the main character making mistakes that inevitably lead to disaster. My storyis lighter, as my hero manages his new identityby neatly side-stepping deeper involvement with the family, except for the lord’s half-sister, to whom he becomes increasingly attracted. But wait! He’s supposed to be her brother, so where will it all end?Alias Lord John is currently available in Kindle Unlimited.
