Kathleen Buckley
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GENRE: Sweet Historical Romance
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BLURB:
Allan Everard, an earl's illegitimate son, is dismissed from his employment at his father’s death but inherits a former coaching inn. Needing to make a new life in London, he begins by leasing the inn to a charity.
Unexpectedly orphaned, Rosabel Stanbury and her younger sister are made wards of a distant, unknown cousin. Fearing his secretive ways and his intentions for them, Rosabel and Oriana flee to London where they are taken in by a women’s charity.
Drawn into Rosabel's problems, with his inn under surveillance by criminals, Allan has only a handful of unlikely allies, including an elderly general, a burglar, and an old lady who knows criminal slang. A traditional romance.
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Despite his active night, Higgs came in with hot water as Allan opened his eyes.
“Eight o’ the clock and a fine summer’s day,” his rascal announced, “if you happen to like the country, which I do. I’d move back to the fields and hedgerows of my youth if it wasn’t so pestilent hard to make a living there. If you mean to stay more than another day, I’ll see about having your shirts and neckcloths washed,” he added inconsequentially.
“I need to speak to one of the Stanburys’ neighbours. With luck, we’ll leave tomorrow. How will you occupy yourself today?”
“I’ll have a quiet talk with Phelps. He spent yesterday listening to the folk around here. Grooms and stable-hands mostly, but a few others as well. I’ll write down what he learned. Don’t forget to lock what you don’t want to lose in your portmanteau. Countryside’s not as wicked as a town, but there are ding-boys everywhere.”
“Says the Ding-boy General.”
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FOR KENYAN POETS 10-9
Topic: Did you have a minor character who insisted on playing a larger role in the story. If so, please tell us about it. And if not, please tell me how you get the characters in your head to behave.
Get the characters in my head to behave? I’ve never been able to do that. I learned years ago that they have their own ideas of what they want to do and trying to make them do something else was about as successful as herding cats. Less, because sometimes a cat will allow itself to be herded. My characters don’t. Before I gave up on trying to force them into behaving the way I thought they should, at least two novels I’d begun stalled permanently.
I don’t plan my characters extensively in advance. I have a general idea of what the story is about and where it will end up, and I figure out the details as I write. I get to know the characters as the story develops. Sometimes they take on a life of their own and refuse to do what I intended. That’s how the evil guardian in Hidden Treasures turned into something less than evil and much more interesting, and the story took an odd twist.
In Captain Easterday’s Bargain, I did not foresee the male protagonist and the antagonist competing for the lady when the antagonist was only supposed to try to buy out her shipping business. The abduction was all Ambrose Hawkins’s idea.
Minor characters elbow their way into larger roles than I intended. Sometimes they make up their own lines, which are always better than what I’d have them say. Funnier, too. The old lady neighbor in Hidden Treasures proved to be more than merely sympathetic to Rosabel’s plight. Who would have guessed she was an expert in dialects and criminal slang, her late husband’s hobby? Not I, until she overheard two strangers.
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AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Kathleen Buckley writes traditional historical romance (i.e. no explicit sex). There are fewer ballrooms and aristocratic courting rituals in her books and more problems than does-he-love-me/does-he-not. Sometimes there’s humor. Kathleen wanted to write from the time she learned to read and pursued this passion through a Master’s Degree in English, followed by the kind of jobs one might expect: light bookkeeping, security officer, paralegal. She did sell two stories to the late Robert Bloch, author of Psycho. And no, he wasn’t late at the time.
After moving to Albuquerque, New Mexico, she wrote her first historical romance, striving for Georgette Heyer’s style, followed by nine more.
In Kathleen’s gentle romances, the characters tend to slide into love rather than fall in lust. Their stories are often set against the background of family relationships, crime, and legal issues, probably because of her work in a law firm.
When she’s not writing or reading, she enjoys cooking dishes from eighteenth-century cookbooks. Those dishes and more appear in her stories. Udder and root vegetables, anyone?
Kathleen Buckley’s current work in progress is her first historical mystery, tentatively titled A Murder of Convenience.
Linktree:
https://linktr.ee/kathleen_buckley
Website:
https://18thcenturyromance.com/
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/18thcenturyromance/
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com
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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE
Kathleen Buckley will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner.
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6 Comments
Thank you for featuring HIDDEN TREASURES today.
ReplyDeleteI'm delighted to be here and have a chance to browse other books.
ReplyDeleteThis looks really interesting. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading.
DeleteSounds like a great read.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Rita.
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