Regency England, January 1815. Napoleon has been captured, and the country explodes into celebration. With her family’s finances in tatters, Bethany Hathaway understands that marriage proposals this London Season are critical for both herself and her sister. The influx of visitors to the city makes this the perfect time to enter the Marriage Mart. If only Bethany had not discovered a man’s body in her home. If only the evidence did not point to her mother as the accidental murderer. To Society’s festivities Bethany must now add protecting her family and shielding her heart from a wounded, persistent Viscount--the dead man’s brother.
I adore Regency Romance, especially the classic, Jane Austen-style. There's plenty of sparks arcing between characters, plenty of deep emotion hidden behind Society's manners and strictures. Tension and wit flash off the page. Shadow Love is my first journey into that world, and I'm publishing it independently as a Chapter-by-Chapter book.
How did this novel come to be? We start with my love of this romance novel subgenre and a fascination with all things related to history and manners of the period, including the American War of 1812, which Britain was fighting while trying to throttle Napoleon on the continent, and the Duchy of Warsaw, the surviving remnant of the Kingdom of Poland after Napoleon subdued it.
Being drawn to Napoleonic topics, let's jump first to my introduction in high school to the Modern Pentathlon, an Olympic event which requires the athlete to master five sports: pistol shooting, long distance running, swimming, equestrian jumping, and fencing. These were all skills needed for a courier of the Napoleonic-era armies of both France and Britain. An aside here, the Olympic event specifies that the horse used in the jumping contest be a horse unfamiliar to the rider. Like the intrepid war couriers whose horse might get shot from under them, the Olympic rider must accept a horse chosen for him by lot and guide it over a jumping course with only a little "getting-to-know-you" time.
Then mix in the wonderful books by Bernard Cromwell and the iTV episodes presenting the career of British rifleman Richard Sharpe (love Sean Bean!) and Richard's work for the intelligence agent, Michael Hogan. Finally, add a PBS show on breaking the code of the Enigma machine during World War II and a brief mention that there was a group of code breakers who worked for Britain during the Napoleonic War.
Now I'm hooked. Who were these code breakers? How did they work? And then, as all writers will tell you, I'm off and riding the "What if...?" wave. What if my hero was a code breaker? What if he fought in the war? What if he were a courier? What if his brother was a courier? What if someone began hunting the British code breakers?
The main characters of Shadow Love, Bethany and Alex, the persistent Viscount, were part of another storyline which included twin girls, mistaken identities, and ill-conceived marriages. Take those characters and give them a different conflict, a new set of circumstances and Shadow Love is born.
Where do I get my ideas? From tugging on the line of some subject that holds my interest and let the ideas and images related to the subject bubble and simmer until they finally boil out into characters and plot. It took years before this story became clear. But it was well worth the wait!
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