INSPIRATION - AND THREE CRACKING STORIES!

Over ten years ago I visited the battlefield at Waterloo and since then I have wanted to write a story based around the events at Waterloo in 1815. 

One of the places I visited was Hougoumont, a chateau/farmstead that was key to the defence of the Allied position and where thousands of soldiers from both sides died. It was in a parlous state then, and Project Hougoumont was set up to try and restore the site in time for the 200^th anniversary of the battle in 2015. 

To support the project the Waterloo Collection was devised, a series of paintings depicting key scenes from the battle of Waterloo.  The paintings were commissioned in pairs to show the scene from both sides and prints were published by Steve Stanton and sold to raise funds for Hougoumont.  Steve kindly gave me permission to show two of the prints here – the two that provided the inspiration for my forthcoming book, A Lady for Lord Randall.

Mercer's Battery withstanding a charge from Napoleon's Grenadier a Cheval of the Guard. Waterloo 1815

Mercer's troop was stationed in the thick of the action and fought off repeated charges by the French Cavalry. It was the norm for the artillerymen to shelter inside the nearby infantry squares when a cavalry charge took place, but Mercer realised that the squares were manned by inexperienced soldiers and he feared they would break up if they saw the artillery men running for cover, so he disobeyed orders and kept his men in place while the cavalry charged them. Despite his foreign-sounding title Mercer was actually born in Yorkshire, survived to serve many years and died in Devon in 1868.

The images are quite dark, but remember the battlefield was covered with a pall of smoke from the constant firing.  If you look closely at the painting on the left you can see an artilleryman lying wounded on the ground.  When I first saw these pictures I wanted to include this scene in my book and I imagined that this man could be my own hero, Lord Randall, blown off his feet.

So, I had the germ of an idea. I got in touch with two of Harlequin's top historical authors and we decided to write a trilogy, and thus the Brides of Waterloo was born.  We first put our proposal to Harlequin in July 2012 and now, finally, our books are ready to be published to coincide with the Bicentenary of Waterloo.

My novel, A LADY FOR LORD RANDALL,
 is the first and will be published next month.

Then Annie Burrows' A MISTRESS FOR MAJOR BARTLETT follows in June

 and Louise Allen's A ROSE FOR MAJOR FLINT completes the trilogy in July.

And finally back to Hougoumont. I am delighted to say the chateau has now been restored and I was thrilled when I discovered that our lovely cover designers have used it for the backdrop. A Lady for Lord Randall (much of which takes place before the battle) shows Hougoumont intact, A Mistress for Major Bartlett shows it in flames and A Rose for Major Flint shows the chateau as a ruin. A very poignant touch, I think.

Annie, Louise and I had great fun writing these three stories and we hope you enjoy reading them. My thanks to Steve Stanton for allowing me to show you these prints and you can find more information about Project Hougoumont and the Waterloo Collection on Facebook or at the website addresses below:-

http://www.projecthougoumont.com 

http://www.waterloo-collection.com

Sarah Mallory/Melinda Hammond

WELCOME TO THE DREAM FACTORY

As a writer I am often asked where my stories come from. Clearly they have to come from somewhere, and I call it my dream factory.  Today I thought I would show you around.  So, welcome, come on in….

First there is the Creative Section, where new stories or scenarios are dreamed up. This department has several offices, including the car or even the train, for I often think out plots or ideas while I am travelling. Then there are the lanes and moors around my home. The first picture (left) is an ancient trackway where I walk regularly. The moors are particularly spectacular at the moment, with the heather in full bloom

And I also have a helper: this Willow, a member of my creative team – he doesn't say a lot but I often use him as a sounding board for my ideas. To date he has never made one negative criticism!

 

This next picture is the sort of sky that inspired my recent book The Scarlet Gown: it is set in Yorkshire and my characters are caught in a storm on the moors, easy to imagine when you have this sort of cloud hanging over you.

Then there's the Research & Development Department, where I sort out details of the setting, the historical background, perhaps find some Regency or 18th Century costumes. And of course I have to give my characters A Life. Characters need to have a back story, perhaps a career and sometimes a home. R & D involves libraries, the internet, lots of my own reference books and also places like this,

Lyme Park (aka Pemberley, for some of us!). Wandering through an old property can be very helpful in working out the layout of a character's home, or getting the feel for just how cold and draughty these stately piles must be in winter, not to mention all the hard work involved in lighting fires or getting hot water up to a bedroom!


Then  we come to the hard work – putting it all in order and turning it into a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. This cluttered space is the assembly line, where the dreams and nebulous ideas are pulled together into a (hopefully) coherent whole. (Notice the two stars in pride of place on the top - my Rona Rose Awards from the Romantic Novelists Association. They inspire me to keep going).  I spend so many hours here, typing away, until at last I am happy enough with the result to send it off to my editor.



If we are sticking with this analogy, then Harlequin must be the production line, because they take my typescript and after a bit of judicious editing my dreams are whisked away and turned into a book, not only a digital version but a lovely printed paper version, and here's a selection of recent titles that now sit proudly on my shelf.

So, I hope you enjoyed your whistle stop tour: I am going to get back to work now, but before I go just one more picture – at the end of the day, I put my feet up and relax after a hard day being creative and my assistant needs his rest too: he likes to be covered up cosily so he can sleep, ready for another hectic day in the dream factory!

Sarah Mallory / Melinda Hammond

Never Trust a Rebel – Sarah Mallory, Harlequin Historical, pub. September 2014

A Lady at Midnight – Melinda Hammond – published as an e-book.

Revenge and Romance

Revenge has formed the basis of stories for hundreds of years, from the blood-filled Jacobean revenge tragedies to modern day films, taking in opera and stage shows along the way. I love a good revenge story, although I know some readers are not so keen.  But one person's revenge could be another's justice, and justice for a wronged woman in the brutal Georgian era was hard to come by.



In my Melinda Hammond novel, LADY VENGEANCE, Elinor is wronged by a group of very powerful men. They take their cruel pleasure and think nothing more of it, but eight years later  their deeds come back to aunt them.  This is (so far) the darkest of my Melinda Hammond novels, and it is a stirring adventure story of politics and plots, dark deeds and love, and  a mysterious, fiery ruby - the bloodstone - which is Elinor's link with a past she cannot forget.





My latest Sarah Mallory, BOUGHT FOR REVENGE (published in August) is a very different revenge story.
It is set in the "enlightened" world of the Regency, two years after Waterloo and it is the man, Lucas Blackstone, who thinks he has been wronged and is determined to exact his own kind of justice.
However, he finds that plotting his revenge against an unseen, inhuman enemy is very different from carrying out his plans to harm a gentle old man and his beautiful daughter. All too soon Lucas finds the defensive walls he has built around his heart are beginning to crumble.

Anyone who has read my books will know I am a romantic, so in both stories it is love that wins the day, but  I did enjoy exploring these two scenarios with their very different heroines. I would love to hear which you prefer.

Melinda Hammond / Sarah Mallory

Lady Vengeance - pub. in e-book format by Regency Reads, Hardback by Robert Hale Ltd
Bought for Revenge - pub. August 2013 by Harlequin Historical

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Kidnapped!

What is the enduring appeal of Scotland as a setting for the historical romance? Is it that it seems a mysterious land of legend and folklore, with a history that is dramatic, fascinating and frequently violent? Is it the beautiful, rugged landscape? And is that ruggedness reflected in the strong, passionate nature of the hero?

For me the appeal of setting a book in Scotland was to draw on the places I know and love. I set my book Kidnapped: His Innocent Mistress in Wester Ross in the Highlands at the beginning of the nineteenth century. My “version” of Kidnapped is a homage to the classic novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. A few years ago my mother-in-law gave me an ancient copy of the book as a birthday present. I had read and enjoyed Kidnapped many years before and now I picked it up again and was plunged into a world of romance and intrigue and adventure. I'm dating myself here but I also love the 1979 TV version with David McCallum as Alan Breck Stewart!

Kidnapped: His Innocent Mistress will be published by Harlequin
Historicals in the US in March and by Mills & Boon Single Titles in the UK in October. Those readers who know the original story and read my re-imagining will realise that my version only draws on half the original tale. I'd love to write a sequel! Here is an extract:

I knocked on the study door and went in, Mrs Campbell following me. The minister was seated at his desk with Mr Sinclair in a chair beside the fire. Mr Sinclair looked up when I came in. He had a thin watchful face tanned a dark brown from sea and sun, a face with character and resolution in the line of his jaw. I gave him a cool nod, which seemed to amuse him, and addressed myself to Mr Campbell.
“You wished to see me, sir?”
I spoke very politely but I saw the flash in Mr Sinclair’s eyes that suggested he thought this obedience out of character. A faint smile curled the corner of his firm mouth. I turned a shoulder to him.
“Catriona… Yes…” Mr Campbell seemed flustered, which was unusual to see. He gestured me to the long sofa. This piece of furniture was the most uncomfortable in the house and necessitated me to sit upright as though I were a bird perched on a twig. This did nothing to improve my temper, especially as Mr Sinclair seemed deliberately to lounge back indolently in his chair with a sigh of contentment as he sipped his brandy and watched me over the brim of the glass.
Mrs Campbell had followed me in and now hastened to see to her visitor’s comfort. “You have had sufficient to eat and drink, Mr Sinclair? May I fetch you anything else?”
I watched the gentleman smile his thanks and put Mrs Campbell at her ease. He had a very easy charm. I could not deny it. When Mrs Campbell went out again her face was flushed peony pink like a young girl’s.
“Well now,” Mr Campbell said, shuffling the papers on his desk, “there are matters to be settled, Catriona. Matters to do with your future. We have been thinking that now your parents have passed on, the natural place for you is with your remaining relatives.”
I thought that he meant my mother’s family, who lived far, far away on the south coast of England. My mother had made a scandalous match twenty years before when, as a young debutante, she had visited Edinburgh, fallen in love with my father, a poor schoolmaster, and eloped with him.
“Can I not stay here?” I asked. “Here in Applecross, I mean,” I added, in case poor Mr Campbell had thought I was suggesting I should live on his charity indefinitely.
“I could help the new schoolmaster, or act as companion to old Miss Blois...”
Mr Sinclair smothered what sounded suspiciously like a snort. I looked at him.
“I beg your pardon, sir?” I said frigidly.
There was laughter in his eyes. “Forgive me, Miss Balfour,” he said, “but I cannot see you as companion to an elderly lady. Nor as a schoolmistress, for that matter.”
I set me lips in a thin line. I did not see what business it was of his. “You do not know me very well, Mr Sinclair,” I said. “My father taught me himself, having no prejudice against the education of females. I can teach reading and write a very fair hand.”
“I do not quarrel with your father’s abilities as a tutor,” Mr Sinclair said lazily. “I simply have seen no evidence that you have the temperament required to do the job yourself.”
I was so cross at his presumption that I almost burst there and then. “Well, I do not see it is any concern of yours,” I began, but Mr Campbell made a slight movement and I subsided, holding fast to the fraying shreds of my temper.
“It would not serve, Catriona,” he said. “Applecross is a small place and it is time for you to go out into the world, the sooner the better. I have already had three requests from gentleman for your hand in marriage and have no desire to be turning more away from my door.”
I was astonished. Not one single gentleman had approached me with a view to marriage and I could not imagine who could have asked Mr Campbell for permission to pay their addresses to me. I stared at him in puzzlement.
“Who on earth…”
Mr Campbell ticked them off on his fingers. “McGough, who farms up beyond Loch Ailen, young Angus the shepherd and Mr Lefroy of Callanish.”
This time there was no doubt that Neil Sinclair was laughing. His shoulders were positively shaking. I tried to ignore him whilst inside me the anger seethed at his presumption.
“McGough has buried three wives already,” I said, “young Angus is kind but a mere lad, and Mr Lefroy wants a housekeeper he does not have to pay for.”
“A wife is more expensive than a housekeeper in the long run,” Mr Sinclair observed laconically.
I swung around and glared at him. “Do you know that for a fact, sir?”
His dark eyebrows went up. “Not from personal experience, madam,” he drawled, “but I do know on the strength of a few hours acquaintance that you would no more make a biddable wife than you would a suitable lady’s companion.”

Nicola Cornick

Regencies on the High Seas!

My new novella, The Pirate’s Kiss, will be published by Harlequin Historicals next month in the Regency Christmas Wedding Belles anthology, which also features stories by Margaret McPhee and Miranda Jarrett.

The Pirate’s Kiss is the sequel to my Bluestocking Brides book The Rake’s Mistress, in which the heroine’s brother was the privateer Daniel de Lancey.

Here is a sneak preview of the story…

Daniel De Lancey is a pirate - beyond the law and beyond love. He risks his life secretly in the service of his country but when he meets his childhood sweetheart again, he cannot risk his heart. Lucinda Melville bitterly regrets the youthful passion she shared with Daniel and has sworn never to fall into his arms again. But when she meets the dashing pirate again it seems that the love they shared has never died…

To celebrate the publication I have a special contest on my website at www.nicolacornick.co.uk to win some luxurious pampering perfume and pillow mist!

Happy reading!

Nicola