Today I am handing over the blog to Jenny Kane, who celebrates the first birthday of her fantastic novel Romancing Robin Hood!
Many thanks Marie, for
letting me visit today to help celebrate the first birthday of my novel Romancing Robin Hood, which is part
modern romance, and part medieval mystery.
The last thing I
expected I'd be doing during the drafting of a romance novel was plotting
my first murder (on paper that is!), and yet, that is exactly what I did when I
wrote Romancing Robin Hood.
Perhaps, with a
legendary outlaw in the title, it isn't so surprising that I have found myself
sorting out the finer points of a murder mystery- and yet I didn't see this
coming. Whenever I begin a new novel, I have plenty of ideas, sketch out a
plotline, and cobble together a synopsis, but at the same time I very much like
my characters to take hold of the story themselves. I enjoy travelling with
them, and being as surprised (hopefully) as my readers will be when they read
my finished work.
Romancing Robin Hood – Blurb.
Dr Grace
Harper has loved the stories of Robin Hood ever since she first saw them on TV
as a girl. Now, with her fortieth birthday just around the corner, she’s a
successful academic in Medieval History, with a tenured position at a top
university.
But Grace is in a
bit of a rut. She’s supposed to be writing a textbook
on a real-life medieval gang of high-class criminals – the Folvilles – but she
keeps being drawn into the world of the novel she’s secretly writing – a novel
which entwines the Folvilles with her long-time love of Robin Hood – and a feisty
young girl named Mathilda, who is the key to a medieval mystery…
Meanwhile,
Grace’s best friend Daisy – who’s as keen on animals as Grace is on the Merry
Men – is unexpectedly getting married, and a reluctant Grace is press-ganged
into being her bridesmaid. As Grace sees Daisy’s new-found happiness, she
starts to re-evaluate her own life. Is her devotion to a man who may or may not
have lived hundreds of years ago really a substitute for a real-life hero of
her own? It doesn’t get any easier when she meets Dr Robert Franks – a rival
academic who Grace is determined to dislike but finds herself being
increasingly drawn to…
Romancing Robin Hood is a contemporary romance all about history lecturer Dr
Grace Harper, who is nuts about Robin Hood and the historical outlaws that may
have inspired him. So not only does Romancing
Robin Hood tell the story of Grace’s fight to find time for romance in her
busy work filled life, it also contains a secondary story about the
fourteenth century criminal gang Grace is researching- the Folvilles. This
family, based in Ashby-Folville in Leicestershire, were a group I researched
in-depth as a student many moons ago.
In the novella she is
writing, Grace’s fourteenth century protagonist Mathilda is getting to know the
Folville family rather better than she would have liked. As well as living with
them, she suddenly finds herself under a very frightening type of suspicion.
I must confess I'm
rather enjoyed weaving this sub plot around the main romance of the modern
part of Romancing Robin Hood.
I had no idea killing
someone off could be so much fun!! It was rather like doing a jigsaw from in
the inside out, while having no idea where the corners are!
Here’s an extract from part of the medieval tale Grace is
writing...
Mathilda thought she
was used to darkness, but the dim candlelight of the comfortable small room she
shared at home with her brothers was nothing like this. The sheer density of
this darkness seemed to envelop her, physically gliding over Mathilda’s clammy
goose-pimpled skin. This was an extreme blackness that coated her, making her
breathless, as if it was stealthfully compressing her lungs and squeezing the
life from her.
Unable
to see the floor, Mathilda presumed, as she pressed her naked foot against it
and damp oozed between her toes, that the suspiciously soft surface she was sat
on was moss, which in a room neglected for years had been allowed it to form a
cushion on the stone floor. It was a theory backed up by the smell of mould and
general filthiness which hung in the air.
Trying
not to think about how long she was going to be left in this windowless cell,
Mathilda stretched out her arms and bravely felt for the extent of the walls,
hoping she wasn’t about to touch something other than cold stone. The child’s
voice that lingered at the back of her mind, even though she was a woman of
nineteen, was telling her – screaming at her – that there
might be bodies in here, still clapped in irons, abandoned and rotting.
Mathilda battled the voice down; knowing it that would do her no good at all.
Her father had always congratulated Mathilda on her level headedness, and
now it was being put to the test. She was determined not to let him down now.
Placing
the very tips of her fingers against the wall behind her, she felt her way
around. It was wet. Trickles of water had found a way in from somewhere, giving
the walls the same slimy covering as the floor. Mathilda traced the outline of
the rough stone wall, keeping her feet exactly where they were. In seconds her
fingers came to a corner, and twisting at the waist, she managed to plot her
prison from one side of the heavy wooden door to the other, without doing more
than extending the span of her arms.
Mathilda
decided the room could be no more than five feet square, although it must be
about six foot tall. Her own five-foot frame had stumbled down a step when
she’d been pushed into the cell, and her head was at least a foot clear of the
ceiling. The bleak eerie silence was eating away at her determination to be
brave, and the cold brought her suppressed fear to the fore. Suddenly the
shivering Mathilda had stoically ignored overtook her, and there was nothing
she could do but let it invade her small slim body.
Wrapping
her thin arms around her chest, she pulled up her hood, hugged her grey woollen
surcoat tighter about her shoulders, and sent an unspoken prayer of thanks up
to Our Lady for the fact that her legs were covered.
She’d
been helping her two brothers, Matthew and Oswin, to catch fish in the deeper
water beyond the second of Twyford’s fords when the men had come. Mathilda had
been wearing an old pair of Matthew’s hose, although no stockings or shoes. She
thought of her warm footwear, discarded earlier with such merry abandon. A
forgotten, neglected pile on the river bank; thrown haphazardly beneath a tree
in her eagerness to get them off and join the boys in their work. It was one of
the only tasks their father gave them that could have been considered fun.
Mathilda
closed her eyes, angry as the tears she’d forbidden herself to shed defied her
stubborn will and came anyway. With them came weariness. It consumed her,
forcing her to sink onto the rotten floor. Water dripped into her long, lank
red hair. The tussle of capture had loosened its neatly woven plait, and now it
hung awkwardly, half in and half out of its bindings, like a badly strapped
sheaf of strawberry corn.
She
tried not to start blaming her father, but it was difficult not to. Why hadn’t
he told her he’d borrowed money from the Folvilles? It was an insane thing to
do. Only the most desperate … Mathilda stopped her thoughts in their
tracks. They were disloyal and pointless...
...Does Mathilda seem
miserable and scared enough? Grace wasn’t sure she’d laid the horror of the
situation on thick enough. On the other hand, she didn’t want to drown her
potential readers in suffering-related adjectives.
No, on reflection it was fine; certainly good
enough to leave and come back to on the next read through. She glanced at the
clock at the corner of the computer screen. How the hell had it got to eight
thirty already? Grace’s stomach rumbled, making her think of poor Mathilda in
her solitary prison.
Switching off her computer, Grace crammed all
her notes into her bag so she could read over them at home, and headed out of
her office. Walking down the Queen’s Road, which led from the university to her
small home in Leicester’s Clarendon
Park region, Grace
decided it was way too hot, even at this time of the evening, to stand in the
kitchen and attempt, and probably fail, to cook something edible, so she’d grab
a takeaway.
Grateful it wasn’t term time, so she didn’t have
to endure the banter of the students who were also waiting for associated
plastic boxes of Chinese food, Grace speedily walked home, and without bothering
to transfer her chicken chow mein to another dish, grabbed a fork, kicked off
her shoes, and settled herself down with her manuscript...
***
Buy
links
Amazon.com- http://www.amazon.com/Romancing-Robin-Hood-love-story-ebook/dp/B00M4838S2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1409936409&sr=8-1&keywords=romancing+robin+hood
Nook-
http://www.nook.com/gb/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&%5Bs%5Dkeyword=Jenny+Kane
Many
thanks for inviting me over today Marie.
Happy
reading everyone,
Jenny xxx
Bio
Jenny
Kane is the author of the bestselling novels, Abi’s House, Romancing Robin
Hood (Accent Press, 2014), and Another
Cup of Coffee (Accent Press, 2013), as well as its novella length sequels Another Cup of Christmas (Accent Press,
2013), Christmas in the Cotswolds
(Accent 2014), and the forthcoming, Christmas
in the Castle (Accent, 2015)
Jenny’s
next novel, Another Glass of Champagne,
will be published by Accent Press in April, 2016.
You
can keep up to date with Jenny’s book news via her blog - www.jennykane.co.uk
Twitter-
@JennyKaneAuthor
Facebook
-https://www.facebook.com/JennyKaneRomance?ref=hl
