I am delighted that Jenny Kane has accepted to be my guest today
to talk about her latest release Romancing
Robin Hood. A very warm welcome to you, Jenny! What can you tell us about Romancing Robin Hood?
Many thanks for inviting me to visit your fabulous blog as part
of my blog tour to promote my part modern romance/part medieval mystery novel, Romancing Robin Hood.
After years of writing light hearted coffee shop reads, 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!). Yet, that is exactly what I
happened 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 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. 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 myself as a student many moons ago.
In the novella she is writing, Grace’s fourteenth century
protagonist, Mathilda of Twyford, is getting to know the Folville family rather
better than she would have liked. As well as being forced to live under their
roof, Mathilda suddenly finds herself under a very frightening type of
suspicion. (I won’t elaborate or it will spoil the story)
Blurb
When you’re in love with a man of legend, how can
anyone else match up?
Dr Grace Harper has loved the stories of Robin Hood
ever since she first saw them on TV as a teenager. Now, with her fortieth
birthday just around the corner, she’s a successful academic in Medieval
History—but Grace is stuck in a rut.
Grace is supposed to be writing a textbook on a
real-life medieval criminal gang—the Folvilles—but instead she is captivated by
a novel she’s secretly writing. A medieval mystery which entwines the story of
Folvilles with her long-time love of Robin Hood—and a feisty young woman named
Mathilda of Twyford.
Just as she is trying to work out how Mathilda can
survive being kidnapped by the Folvilles, Grace’s best friend Daisy announces
she is getting married. After a whirlwind romance with a man she loves as much
as the creatures in her animal shelter, Daisy has press-ganged Grace into being
her bridesmaid.
Witnessing Daisy’s new-found happiness, Grace 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? Grace’s life doesn’t get any easier when she meets Dr Robert Franks—a
rival academic who she is determined to dislike but finds herself being
increasingly drawn to… If only he didn’t know quite so much about Robin Hood.
***
I must confess I'm rather enjoyed weaving this darker subplot
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 for you.
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...
***
(Please note that this
is a re-released, re-edited and re-covered novel)
***
Many
thanks again, Marie.
Happy
reading everyone,
Jenny
xx
Bio
With
a background in history and archaeology, Jenny Kane should really be sat in a
dusty university library translating Medieval Latin criminal records, before
writing research documents that hardly anyone would want to read. Instead,
tucked away in the South West of England, Jenny Kane writes stories with one
hand, while designing creative writing workshops for ‘Imagine’ with the other.
Jenny
spends a large part of her time in her local Costa, where she creates her
stories, including the novels Romancing
Robin Hood (LittWizz Press, 2018), Abi’s
Neighbour (Accent Press, 2017),
Another Glass of Champagne (Accent, 2016), Abi’s House (Accent Press, June 2015), the best selling contemporary romance Another Cup of Coffee (Accent Press, 2013), and the novella length
sequels Another Cup of Christmas (Accent
Press, 2013), Christmas in the Cotswolds,
(Accent Press, 2014), and Christmas at
the Castle, (Accent Press, 2015).
Jenny
also writes medieval crime fiction as Jennifer Ash.
The Outlaw’s Ransom
and The Winter Outlaw will both be
published by Littwitz Press in early 2018
Jenny
Kane is also the author of quirky children’s picture books There’s a Cow in the Flat (Hushpuppy, 2014) and Ben’s Biscuit Tin (Hushpuppy, 2015)
Keep
your eye on Jenny’s blog at www.jennykane.co.uk
for more details.
Twitter-
@JennyKaneAuthor @JenAshHistory @Imagine_Writing
Facebook
-https://www.facebook.com/JennyKaneRomance?ref=hl
Facebook
for Jennifer Ash
-https://www.facebook.com/jenniferashhistorical/?ref=bookmarks
Facebook
for Imagine - https://www.facebook.com/ImagineCreativeWriting/?ref=settings
Jenny Kane also writes erotica as Kay
Jaybee. (www.kayjaybee.me.uk)
