It's always a pleasure to host Maggie Robinson. I've followed her writing journey since her pre-publication days and am delighted by the success she's achieved. This time around, Maggie has not one, but two new books to tell us about. Double the pleasure, double the fun!
You can find more information about Maggie and her books at her website and connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.
Welcome back, Maggie!
Making Believe
Thanks so much to PJ for having me back at the
Romance Dish! I’m here a few days early to talk about my upcoming release. I’ve
got two back-to-back books in July—whee!
My parents and grandmother used to get so mad at me.
We lived in a house with one bathroom, and I would lock myself in there and
“pretend.” How inconvenient, and how they’d yell at me to get out, LOL. But the
acoustics were great if I talked or sang aloud, and I liked the way the sunlight
diffused through the frosted glass window. I imagined myself older, married, an
actress—someone altogether different. Someone glamorous. Mysterious.
Many years later, my “pretending” is now on paper,
and I found a way to channel my lonely, only child self in my writing. The
heroine of my first mass-market paperback In
the Arms of the Heiress is
Louisa Stratton, a young woman who also makes up things as she goes along. Her
imagination is just much more fun than her reality—she’s a “poor little rich
girl” stuck under the thumb of her domineering aunt. When Louisa finally gets
access to her fortune, she runs off (or I should say drives off) to the
Continent, free at last. But still she’s pestered to come home and marry her awful
cousin. What’s an imaginative girl to do but lock herself in her fancy hotel
suite and make up a husband? A perfect man…and we all know how rare they are,
LOL.
Louisa uses the masterful Evensong Agency to find
her a man as close to perfect as they can get to pretend to be her imaginary
Maximillian Norwich. At first glance, Charles Cooper does not fit the bill.
He’s been wounded in the Boer Wars, is jaded and haunted by things he’d much
rather forget. But somehow he winds up being the perfect man for Louisa, and
she is the answer to every prayer he had stopped asking.
In
the Arms of the Heiress is the first of the Edwardian-set
Ladies Unlaced series. I can’t tell you how much fun it’s been to write about
the early twentieth century. That same grandmother who yelled at me was a
teenager in 1903, and I have lots of memories of her life with her six sisters
at the turn of the century. I think they would have liked Louisa!
Did you have an imaginary friend growing up? Did you
make up a fantasy world with your dolls and teddy bears? How many bathrooms did
YOUR childhood home have, LOL?
One commenter will get a copy of In the Arms of the Heiress, which comes
out July 2!
IN THE ARMS OF THE HEIRESS
It’s all fun and games until someone falls in love…
Independent heiress Louisa Stratton is going home to Rosemont for the holidays, and at the family’s request, she’s bringing her new husband—Maximillian Norwich, art connoisseur and artful lover, the man she’s written of so glowingly. There’s one hitch—he doesn’t exist. Louisa needs a fake husband, and fast, to make the proper impression.
Charles Cooper, captain of the Boer War and far from silver spoons or gilded cages, is so hard up that even this crazy scheme appeals to him. It’s only thirty days, not till death do them part. What’s so difficult about impersonating a husband, even if he doesn’t know a Rembrandt from a Rousseau?
The true difficulty is keeping his hands off Louisa once there’s nobody around to see their ruse. And then there’s the small problem of someone at Rosemont trying to kill him. Keeping his wits about him and protecting Louisa brings out the honor he thought he’d left on the battlefield. But when Louisa tries to protect him, Charles knows he’s found a way to face his future—in the arms of his heiress.
