Author Spotlight: Susanna Fraser and "The Freedom to Love"

Please join Susanna Fraser as she tours the blogosphere with HF Virtual Book Tours for Freedom to Love, from January 5-16.

Publication Date: January 5, 2015
Carina Press eBook;
ISBN: B00MTGFABM
Genre: Historical Romance
 READ AN EXCERPT.

   

Louisiana, 1815
Thérèse Bondurant trusted her parents to provide for her and her young half-sister, though they never wed due to laws against mixed-race marriage. But when they both die of a fever, Thérèse learns her only inheritance is debt—and her father's promise that somewhere on his plantation lies a buried treasure. To save her own life—as well as that of her sister—she'll need to find it before her white cousins take possession of the land. British officer Henry Farlow, dazed from a wound received in battle outside New Orleans, stumbles onto Thérèse's property out of necessity. But he stays because he's become captivated by her intelligence and beauty. It's thanks to Thérèse's tender care that he regains his strength just in time to fend off her cousin, inadvertently killing the would-be rapist in the process. Though he risks being labeled a deserter, it's much more than a sense of duty that compels Henry to see the sisters to safety—far away from the scene of the crime. And Thérèse realizes she has come to rely on Henry for so much more than protection. On their journey to freedom in England, they must navigate a territory that's just as foreign to them both—love.

Praise for the novels of Susanna Fraser

“[Susanna Fraser is] a go-to writer for Regency romance that is actually set in the Regency rather than in that Never-Neverland mash-up that’s been dubbed ‘The Recency’ or ‘Almackistan.’” — Willaful at Karen Knows Best “This is easily one of the best historical romances I’ve read.” — Romantic Historical Reviews on An Infamous Marriage “…the romance in this story was very sweet. Sydney was immediately relatable and likeable, because she faced such a serious conflict and wanted to make an ethical decision that would preserve the lives of her loved ones.” — Dear Author on Christmas Past

Buy the eBook

Amazon US Amazon UK Amazon Canada Kindle France Kindle Germany Barnes & Noble Google Play Kobo

About the Author

Susanna Fraser wrote her first novel in fourth grade. It starred a family of talking horses who ruled a magical land. In high school she started, but never finished, a succession of tales of girls who were just like her, only with long, naturally curly and often unusually colored hair, who, perhaps because of the hair, had much greater success with boys than she ever did. Along the way she read her hometown library’s entire collection of Regency romance, fell in love with the works of Jane Austen, and discovered in Patrick O’Brian’s and Bernard Cornwell’s novels another side of the opening decades of the 19th century. When she started to write again as an adult, she knew exactly where she wanted to set her books. Her writing has come a long way from her youthful efforts, but she still gives her heroines great hair. Susanna grew up in rural Alabama. After high school she left home for the University of Pennsylvania and has been a city girl ever since. She worked in England for a year after college, using her days off to explore history from ancient stone circles to Jane Austen’s Bath. Susanna lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and daughter. When not writing or reading, she goes to baseball games, sings alto in a local choir and watches cooking competition shows. For more information please visit Susanna’s website and blog. You can also connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads. Subscribe to Susanna Fraser's Newsletter.

Freedom to Love Blog Tour Schedule

Monday, January 5 Review at Curling Up With a Good Book Tuesday, January 6 Guest Post at Let Them Read Books Wednesday, January 7 Review at Becky on Books Thursday, January 8 Spotlight at Peeking Between the Pages Saturday, January 11 Review at Carole's Ramblings Monday, January 12 Guest Post at SOS Aloha Spotlight at CelticLady's Reviews Tuesday, January 13 Review at Lusty Penguin Reviews Review at Historical Fiction Obsession Wednesday, January 14 Review at Bibliophilia, Please Interview at Historical Fiction Obsession Spotlight at Long Ago Love Thursday, January 15 Guest Post at Romantic Historical Reviews Spotlight at Caroline Wilson Writes Friday, January 16 Review at Boom Baby Reviews Interview at Books and Benches

Giveaway

To enter to win a $50 Gift Card to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Powell's, please complete the giveaway form below.

Rules

– Giveaway ends at 11:59pm on January 16th. You must be 18 or older to enter. – Giveaway is open internationally. – Only one entry per household. – All giveaway entrants agree to be honest and not cheat the systems; any suspect of fraud is decided upon by blog/site owner and the sponsor, and entrants may be disqualified at our discretion – Winner have 48 hours to claim prize or new winner is chosen. Freedom to Love

Interview with an Author: S.K. Rizzolo and "Die I Will Not"

Publication Date: November 4, 2014
Poisoned Pen Press
Formats: Hardcover, Paperback

Series: John Chase Mystery Series
Genre: Historical Mystery/Regency



I'd like to welcome S.K. Rizzolo to the blog today. Before we get to it, check out a little more info on her new book "Die I Will Not".

Unhappy wife and young mother Penelope Wolfe fears scandal for her family and worse. A Tory newspaper editor has been stabbed while writing a reply to the latest round of letters penned by a firebrand calling himself Collatinus. Twenty years before, her father, the radical Eustace Sandford, wrote as Collatinus before he fled London just ahead of accusations of treason and murder. A mysterious beauty closely connected to Sandford and known only as N.D. had been brutally slain, her killer never punished. The seditious new Collatinus letters that attack the Prince Regent in the press also seek to avenge N.D.’s death and unmask her murderer. What did the journalist know that provoked his death?

Her artist husband Jeremy is no reliable ally, so Penelope turns anew to lawyer Edward Buckler and Bow Street Runner John Chase. As she battles public notoriety, Buckler and Chase put their careers at risk to stand behind her while pursuing various lines of inquiry aimed at N.D.’s murderer, a missing memoir, Royal scandal, and the dead editor’s missing wife. As they navigate the dark underbelly of Regency London among a cast driven by dirty politics and dark passions, as well as by decency and a desire for justice, past secrets and present criminals are exposed, upending Penelope’s life and the lives of others.

Interview

CW: Tell us a bit about yourself. How did you start writing? Have your life experiences shaped the way the write (or the subject matter)?

SKR: As a child, I was always that quiet kid with her nose in a book, and I think I decided then that I would like to become a writer.  In college I majored in English and ended up as a high school English teacher of British literature.  So, yes, I think my life experiences have shaped my writing career.  I’m a huge Anglophile and British history enthusiast from way back—I think I’ve seen almost every Masterpiece Theatre production!

CW: “Die I Will Not” is set during England’s Regency period which has always been a popular time period. What drew you to this period? Was it deliberate or did your characters dictate it?

SKR: My mother introduced me to the work of Georgette Heyer, who might be said to have invented the modern Regency novel.  That was really the beginning for me, though my novels are very different.  My mystery series follows the exploits of a Bow Street Runner (a detective), an unconventional lady, and a melancholic lawyer.  My characters do not belong to the Polite World.  They do not ordinarily attend balls or visit London for the Season, and they face financial struggles as well as professional and romantic challenges.  I have enjoyed exploring Regency era criminal law, policing, radical politics, celebrity culture, and early feminism.

Hopefully, the characters spring from the period.  John Chase, my Bow Street Runner, is a man over forty, graying, with an untidy queue and an independent spirit that doesn’t sit well with his superiors.  He’s a bit gruff but has a much kinder heart than he himself realizes.  Penelope Wolfe has made an imprudent marriage, which has forced her to the fringes of Society.  Her father is a radical philosopher.  Her husband is a spendthrift artist.  Her true love Edward Buckler, my third protagonist, has the spirit of chivalry in his heart but isn’t the typical dashing romantic hero.  I try to imagine the lives of people who might actually have existed. 

CW:  How do you write? Do you create everything before hand or do you wing it?

SKR: I’m incapable of winging it.  It takes me a long time to figure out all the character motivations, clues, and twists and turns in the plot.  Usually, I write pages and pages of notes, and even then I’m still shifting the puzzle pieces around until the very end.  Plotting can be incredibly difficult in that I’m sometimes too creative.  I put my characters in a situation—and then I can’t figure out how to get them out of it when suddenly the logic doesn’t add up.   In the middle of writing an exciting scene, I say to myself, WAIT, why did John Chase look here?  I realize that I thought I knew the inner workings of the scene in question, but I really don’t.  There are also the times when I fall in love with a particular setting or plot twist, and I just have to put it in, never mind that this whim causes me days of head shaking and muttering to myself.  Muttering—sometimes even in public.

CW: Do you have any favorite books or authors?

SKR: I tend to read a lot of English mysteries by, for example, P.D. James, Josephine Tey, and Deborah Crombie.  As far as historical mysteries, I am a big fan of Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael novels and Stephanie Barron’s series with Jane Austen as the sleuth.  I’m also fond of reading 700-page “doorstop” Victorian novels by writers such as Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins, and Elizabeth Gaskell: the longer the better!

CW: Random question: If you could have a drink with any historical personage, who would it be?

SKR: Shakespeare.  I’ve always wanted to ask him why he left his wife, Anne Hathaway, “his second best bed” in his will.  Was this a sentimental gesture, a mark of tenderness, because they had shared this second-best bed?  Was this merely a custom of the time—or a rather cold dismissal?  Since Shakespeare’s marriage has long been the subject of much debate (he and Anne often lived apart while he was busy doing theater in London), it would be nice to finally know the answer to this question!  By the way, I am firmly in the camp of those who believe that Shakespeare wrote his own plays.  Maybe that’s why I’d like to learn more about Shakespeare, the human being, since his artistic genius cannot be questioned.

Thanks so much to S.K. Rizzolo for stopping in today. Make sure to pick up a copy of "Die I Will Not" at one of the venues listed below. And don't forget the other books in the John Chase Mystery Series:

Book One: The Rose in the Wheel
Book Two: Blood for Blood
Book Three: Die I Will Not

Buy the Book

Amazon US
Amazon UK
Barnes & Noble
Book Depository

About the Author

S.K. Rizzolo is a longtime Anglophile and history enthusiast. Set in Regency England, The Rose in the Wheel and Blood for Blood are the first two novels in her series about a Bow Street Runner, an unconventional lady, and a melancholic barrister. An English teacher, Rizzolo has earned an M.A. in literature and lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.

For more information please visit S.K. Rizzolo's website. You can also find her on Facebook and Goodreads.

Die I Will Not Blog Tour Schedule

Monday, November 17
Review at Back Porchervations

Tuesday, November 18
Spotlight at Passages to the Past

Wednesday, November 19
Interview at Back Porchervations
Spotlight at Flashlight Commentary

Thursday, November 20
Interview with Curling Up With a Good Book

Friday, November 21
Review at Book Nerd

Monday, November 24
Review at Oh, For the Hook of a Book

Tuesday, November 25
Interview at Oh, For the Hook of a Book

Wednesday, November 26
Review at Buried Under Books
Review at Book Babe (The Rose in the Wheel)
Spotlight at Layered Pages

Friday, November 28
Spotlight at Just One More Chapter

Monday, December 1
Review at WTF Are You Reading?

Tuesday, December 2
Spotlight at Historical Fiction Connection

Wednesday, December 3
Interview at Caroline Wilson Writes

Thursday, December 4
Review at A Chick Who Reads
Spotlight at What Is That Book About

Friday, December 5
Review at The True Book Addict

Monday, December 8
Review at CelticLady's Reviews

Tuesday, December 9
Review at A Bibliotaph's Reviews
Spotlight at Book Babe

Wednesday, December 10
Review at The Lit Bitch
Review at Griperang's Bookmarks

Thursday, December 11
Review at Jorie Loves a Story

Friday, December 12
Interview at Jorie Loves a Story

Author Spotlight: S.K. Rizzolo's John Chase Mystery Series

Please join S.K. Rizzolo as she tours the blogosphere for the John Chase Regency Mystery Series Book Blast, from November 3-16, and be entered to win all three books in the trilogy!

The Rose in the Wheel (Book One)

Publication Date: January 1, 2002
Poisoned Pen Press
Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, eBook

Series: John Chase Mystery Series (Book One)
Genre: Historical Mystery/Regency



This well imagined, carefully detailed, and cleverly plotted debut draws on actual historical events of 1811 London.

Regency London knows Constance Tyrone as the conspicuously celibate founder of the St. Catherine Society, dedicated to helping poor women. One wet November evening a carriage mows down Constance outside her office. Curiously, while her corpse's one foot is bare, the other is shod in a clean satin slipper despite the muddy road. Why was a gentlewoman abroad in the night? And if she died under the wheel, whose hands bruised her neck and stole her monogrammed crucifix?

Dismissing the idea of an accident, Bow Street Runner John Chase forms an unlikely alliance with Penelope Wolfe, wife of the chief suspect. A young mother paying the price for an imprudent marriage, Penelope is eager to clear her husband Jeremy, a feckless portrait painter whose salacious drawings of the victim suggest an erotic interest. Chase's first task is to learn the identity of the mysterious benefactor who goes bail for Wolfe while Penelope traces the victim's last movements. Barrister Edward Buckler, intrigued, shakes off his habitual lethargy and joins their investigation.

As horrifying murders on the Ratcliffe Highway claim all London's attention, the trio discovers that it won't be easy to unravel the enigma of Constance Tyrone, a woman who revives the legend of martyred St. Catherine.

Blood for Blood (Book Two)

Publication Date: April 15, 2003
Poisoned Pen Press
Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, eBook

Series: John Chase Mystery Series (Book Two)
Genre: Historical Mystery/Regency



In the spring of 1812, the Luddites are on the march, Lord Byron is taking London drawing rooms by storm, and Penelope Wolfe has become a lady's companion. When one of the footmen turns up dead with a knife to the heart, Penelope and Bow Street Runner John Chase are entangled in a web of family secrets and political conspiracy that stretches far beyond luxurious St. James's Square.

With the help of barrister Edward Buckler, Chase follows the trail of a mysterious mad woman caught peeping in the window at the corpse. Penelope struggles to fit into the fashionable world, encountering people who hide resentment and deceit under smooth smiles.

Set against a backdrop of millennial fervor with thousands awaiting the end of the world, BLOOD FOR BLOOD explores the simple truth that every drop of blood spilled will be avenged.

Die I Will Not (Book Three)

Publication Date: November 4, 2014
Poisoned Pen Press
Formats: Hardcover, Paperback

Series: John Chase Mystery Series (Book Three)
Genre: Historical Mystery/Regency



Unhappy wife and young mother Penelope Wolfe fears scandal for her family and worse. A Tory newspaper editor has been stabbed while writing a reply to the latest round of letters penned by a firebrand calling himself Collatinus. Twenty years before, her father, the radical Eustace Sandford, wrote as Collatinus before he fled London just ahead of accusations of treason and murder. A mysterious beauty closely connected to Sandford and known only as N.D. had been brutally slain, her killer never punished. The seditious new Collatinus letters that attack the Prince Regent in the press also seek to avenge N.D.’s death and unmask her murderer. What did the journalist know that provoked his death?

Her artist husband Jeremy is no reliable ally, so Penelope turns anew to lawyer Edward Buckler and Bow Street Runner John Chase. As she battles public notoriety, Buckler and Chase put their careers at risk to stand behind her while pursuing various lines of inquiry aimed at N.D.’s murderer, a missing memoir, Royal scandal, and the dead editor’s missing wife. As they navigate the dark underbelly of Regency London among a cast driven by dirty politics and dark passions, as well as by decency and a desire for justice, past secrets and present criminals are exposed, upending Penelope’s life and the lives of others.

Buy the Books

Amazon US
Amazon UK
Barnes & Noble
Book Depository

About the Author

S.K. Rizzolo is a longtime Anglophile and history enthusiast. Set in Regency England, The Rose in the Wheel and Blood for Blood are the first two novels in her series about a Bow Street Runner, an unconventional lady, and a melancholic barrister. An English teacher, Rizzolo has earned an M.A. in literature and lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.

For more information please visit S.K. Rizzolo's website. You can also find her on Facebook and Goodreads.

John Chase Mystery Series Book Blast Schedule

Monday, November 3
Bookish
Unshelfish
Back Porchervations

Tuesday, November 4
Reading Lark
Rainy Day Reviews

Wednesday, November 5
CelticLady's Reviews
A Bibliotaph's Reviews

Thursday, November 6
The Lit Bitch
Historical Tapestry

Friday, November 7
Passages to the Past
Caroline Wilson Writes

Saturday, November 8
The Maiden's Court
The True Book Addict

Sunday, November 9
Brooke Blogs
Let Them Read Books

Monday, November 10
Layered Pages
With Her Nose Stuck in a Book

Tuesday, November 11
To Read or Not to Read

Wednesday, November 12
Just One More Chapter

Thursday, November 13
A Book Geek
100 Pages a Day

Friday, November 14
Peeking Between the Pages

Saturday, November 15
Mel's Shelves
Historical Fiction Connection

Sunday, November 16
Book Nerd

Giveaway

To win all three books in S.K. Rizzolo's John Chase Regency Mystery Series please complete the Rafflecopter giveaway form below. Giveaway is open internationally.

Giveaway ends at 11:59pm on November 16th. You must be 18 or older to enter.
Winner will be chosen via Rafflecopter on November 17th and notified via email.
Winner have 48 hours to claim prize or new winner is chosen.

a Rafflecopter giveaway