It's release day for Stephanie Laurens latest addition to the Cynster Family Series.....Check out the interview with the author below and make sure to check this addition to this acclaimed series out. It's a great read!
THE
TEMPTING OF THOMAS CARRICK INTERVIEW:
Thomas and Lucilla
are both especially strong and stubborn characters, as so many of your heroes
and heroines are. Is there a particular reason for this a) in general, and b)
in this particular case?
In the
general sense, I’ve always used strong characters because the scale and
intensity of emotional clashes between such characters is more powerful, has
the potential to be more wide-ranging, and is also likely to strike brighter
sparks. A strong character doesn’t give way when someone opposes them or gets
in the way of their will and drive—they immediately push back, and that refusal
to back away is one of the key elements that leads such a pair of characters
deeper and deeper into Cupid’s snare as they are forced to adjust and adapt to
each other--a critical element of establishing an emotional partnership.
There’s a
general assumption that strong and confident characters will have an easier
time dealing with love, however, in reality I think it’s the opposite, and such
characters find the existence of an emotion strong enough to make them change
difficult to accept.
Which
brings me rather neatly to Thomas and Lucilla. He is the ultimate strong
character with a very powerful, emotional, and deeply personal reason to shut
himself off from love. Against that, Lucilla, an equally strong character, is
unswervingly convinced that they are fated to love and marry—but she, too, has
a few lessons to learn in what love—even a fated love—will demand.
In short,
my motivation for using strong characters can be summed up as: the stronger
they are, the more they resist and, ultimately, the harder they fall.
Readers first met
Thomas Carrick in the Cynster holiday special By Winter’s Light. Did his
earlier meeting with Lucilla described in that book affect the pair’s actions
in this book?
That earlier meeting in By Winter’s
Light sets the stage for Thomas and Lucilla’s romance. Both of them leave that
first encounter with the knowledge that the other could be their future spouse.
Lucilla is ready to accept that Thomas is her fated future husband, lover, and
consort, but Thomas, having experienced a complementary visceral connection to
Lucilla, concludes that, as he wishes to avoid love, then she is someone he
would be wise to avoid.
So from the instant they part after
that first encounter, they are set on opposing tracks—Lucilla expecting and
waiting for Thomas to return to her side and claim her hand, and Thomas doing
his level best to stay far away.
It’s a standoff, until the actions
at the start of The Tempting of Thomas Carrick force—literally force—them
together again.
Deerhounds feature
in By Winter’s Light and also in The Tempting of Thomas Carrick. Why
deerhounds?
I needed a large dog to accompany
Thomas through the snowstorm in By Winter’s Light, a dog big enough to
physically assist, and also the sort of dog that might have been in such a
community—a gentry family in the Scottish uplands of the period. So I went
searching for breeds of dogs, and stumbled upon Scottish deerhounds. The more I
read about them, the more perfect they seemed, and so Hesta padded onto my
stage, and from there, the addition of Artemis and Apollo was an obvious
extrapolation.
The dogs are fascinating—a shaggy,
curly-coated, quite large breed built for speed and with superb eyesight. They
are sight-hounds, and also track on the ground by scent, and as their name
suggests, were specifically bred to hunt deer in the rugged terrain.
However, the real impact of the
deerhounds, story-wise, doesn’t occur until the next book, A Match for Marcus
Cynster, in which the packs we learn about through The Tempting of Thomas
Carrick, come into their own and play an active role in Marcus and his lady’s
adventures.
Both By
Winter’s Light and The Tempting of Thomas Carrick are set in Scotland
By Winter’s Light and The Tempting
of Thomas Carrick are both centered on the Vale of Casphairn, which was a
setting first introduced in Scandal’s Bride, the story of Richard and Catriona,
Lucilla and Marcus’s parents (more on that below). Thus the settings for the
recent books were not a matter of choice, but rather mandated, a necessary return
to a previous place.
Such a
wild country setting is very useful on the one hand, and a drawback on the
other. The rugged beauty and landscape is a plus, while the isolation and the
distance from any larger town or place of social congregation severely limits
the opportunities for social events, even country house dinners. Consequently,
the action in the story remains at all times strongly focused on the
interaction between the two principal characters, with little to no distraction
from external events. That puts a heavier burden on the romance plot than would
be the case in a more urban setting, but that does mean the romance dominates
and is always front and center. So there’s positives and negatives in using
such a setting, but, overall, such settings definitely have their place when
writing romances.
In this book, you
also take readers to Glasgow
I admit that my first mental vision
of Glasgow Clyde . While the importance of shipping on the Clyde was correct, in the mid-1800s, Glasgow Boston Glasgow
Readers are familiar
with Casphairn Manor, and the Vale of Casphairn, but the nearby village is
Carsphairn. Was there a reason for the difference?
This is one of those tales of things
that “would not happen now.” I wrote the first novel featuring the Vale of
Casphairn and Casphairn Manor back in the days before Google Maps. Or any sort
of satellite imagery, or even ready access to detailed maps via the internet.
At the time, I had several detailed maps of England village of Carsphairn
Years later, when I was writing
Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue, where the characters spend time in the
Vale and at the manor, I was using Google Maps to study the areas to the east
of where I had positioned the Vale, and when I zoomed in…I saw that the village
name was really Carsphairn! Horrors! Luckily, I don’t think I’ve ever actually
said the village itself was called Casphairn, only the Vale and the manor, but
it was too late to change those—they’d already been written into history. So
the Vale and the manor, both of which are fictitious, remain as Casphairn,
while the village is correctly named Carsphairn.
Out of curiosity, I did go back to
the original map. To the naked eye, it still looks like Casphairn—only with the
help of a strong magnifying glass can you see that extra r.
Lucilla’s position
as healer to the Vale community, and, indeed, all people under The Lady’s
protection, features strongly in this book. How common were such healers?
Despite the rise of more formal
medicine and the doctors who practiced it, traditional folk healers—those we
might now term homeopathic healers or herbalists—were not uncommon into the
late 1800s in England British Isles , and the more isolated the community, the greater the
distance from a major town, the more likely that the people would turn first to
the local “healer.” Midwifery and the treatment of common ailments remained
largely the province of such healers even into the 1900s.
That said, as mentioned in this book
and the next, in this period, when it came to interacting with the apparatus of
law and order, for instance in formally reporting a death, the “doctor”—meaning
a man formally trained in the western medical tradition—would be the one sent
for.
This book is the
first of the Cynster Next Generation Novels, and will be followed by Lucilla’s
twin brother, Marcus’s story in June. Are there more Cynster Next Generation
Novels to come?
Yes, indeed! As By Winter’s Light
was in essence a pivotal volume, shifting focus from the original Bar Cynster
generation to the lives of their near-adult children, and within the tale of By
Winter’s Light were the seeds of Lucilla’s romance, then her book had to come
first, in The Tempting of Thomas Carrick. And within Lucilla’s story lie the
seeds of Marcus’s story, and as he is her twin, his book, A Match for Marcus
Cynster, had to come next. It will be released on May 26,
2015 .
But at the end of The Tempting of
Thomas Carrick, and even more definitely at the end of A Match for Marcus
Cynster, we catch up with the other Cynsters now facing up to the challenge of
marriage and finding a suitable spouse. We see and appreciate that all is not
going to be smooth sailing for such very robust individuals, neither the males
nor the females. There are at least 6 more Cynster Next Generation novels to
come—the romances of Devil’s three children, Sebastian, Michael, and Louisa,
and those of the remaining “older group”—Prudence, Christopher, and Antonia
Rawlings. After that…well, I’m sure that by the time I finish Louisa’s tale,
we’ll know a lot more about Annabelle, Juliet, and Therese. And I already know
what Calvin and Carter get up to, which should prove a lot of fun. Lots more to
enjoy!
The Tempting of
Thomas Carrick (A Cynster Novel)
Release Date: February 24th, 2015
Blurb:
Thomas
Carrick is determined to make his own life in the bustling port city of Glasgow
Strong-willed
and passionate, Lucilla knows Thomas is hers—her fated lover, husband,
protector, mate. He is the only man for her, just as she is his one true love.
How can he ignore a bond stronger than reason and choose a different path?
She's determined to fight for their future, and while she cannot command him,
she has enticements of her own to wield when it comes to tempting Thomas Carrick.
Goodreads:
Buy links:
Barnes & Noble Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-tempting-of-thomas-carrick-stephanie-laurens/1120055052?ean=9780778317821
iTunes/iBooks : https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/tempting-thomas-carrick/id911657570?mt=11&uo=4
GooglePlay:
https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Stephanie_Laurens_The_Tempting_of_Thomas_Carrick?id=ltyaBQAAQBAJ
About the Cynster Series
Devil’s Bride (Cynster #1)
When Devil, the most infamous member of the Cynster family, is caught in a compromising position with plucky governess Honoria Wetherby, he astonishes the entire town by offering his hand in marriage. No one dreamed this scandalous rake would ever take a bride. And as society mamas swooned at the loss of England′s most eligible bachelor, Devil′s infamous Cynster cousins began to place wagers on the wedding date.
But
Honoria wasn′t about to bend society′s demands and marry a man "just"
because they′d been found together virtually unchaperoned. No, she craved
adventure, and while solving the murder of a young Cynster cousin fit the bill
for a while, she decided that once the crime was solved she′d go off to see the
world. But the scalding heat of her unsated desire for Devil soon had Honoria
craving a very different sort of excitement. Could her passion for Devil cause
her to embrace the enchanting peril of a lifelong adventure of the heart?
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/363499.Devil_s_Bride
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/363499.Devil_s_Bride
Buy
Links:
Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Devils-Bride-Cynster-Book-1-ebook/dp/B000FC11EM/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1422576523&sr=1-1&keywords=stephanie+laurens+devils+bride
Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Devils-Bride-Cynster-Book-1-ebook/dp/B000FC11EM/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1422576523&sr=1-1&keywords=stephanie+laurens+devils+bride
Barnes
& Noble Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/devils-bride-stephanie-laurens/1103371022?ean=9780380794560
Google
Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Stephanie_Laurens_Devil_s_Bride?id=P5Kd3XWBNCUC
#1 New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Laurens began writing romances as an escape from the dry world of professional science. Her hobby quickly became a career when her first novel was accepted for publication, and with entirely becoming alacrity, she gave up writing about facts in favor of writing fiction.
Laurens's
novels are set in the time period of the British Regency, and her settings
range from Scotland India
Her
continuing novels featuring the Cynster family are widely regarded as classics
of the genre. Other series include the Bastion Club Novels and the Black Cobra
Quartet. For information on upcoming releases and updates on novels yet to
come, visit Stephanie's website.
Website: http://www.stephanielaurens.com/
Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/9241.Stephanie_Laurens
Release Promotion
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