Historical Romance
Date Published: July 25, 2018
When the Duke of Murnane accepts an unofficial fact finding mission to Canton on behalf of the queen in 1838 he expects work to heal him. He certainly doesn’t expect to confront his wreck of a marriage in such an exotic locale, or to find the love of his life. Zambak Hayden follows her brother to China to escape pressure to make a suitable marriage. When she finds the brother drawn into the world of greed, smuggling, opium, and corruption she resolves to both sort out the truth and to protect her brother from becoming prey to all of it—if only she could stop yearning for the one man she can’t have. Can love survive when troubles and war explode around them?
Interview with Caroline Warfield
Can you tell us a little bit about the characters in The Unexpected
Wife?
Zambak Hayden, a duke’s daughter,
is as unusual as her name. A woman has been on the throne of England for over a
year and yet she, her father’s oldest child, will never inherit his title,
something she deeply resents. That honor falls to her feckless younger brother.
She chases the boy all the way to Canton to keep him out of trouble—if she is
being honest, she also runs from pressure to make a dynastic marriage.
Charles Hayden, Duke of Murnane,
accepts a commission from Queen Victoria. His uncle and his mentor (Zambak’s
father) hope he’ll revitalize his career in the Foreign Service and emerge from
the cloud of grief after the death of his son. The duke hopes he’ll also keep
an eye on his wayward children. The uncle hopes he finally confront his
estranged wife and do something about his wretched marriage.
Can you tell us a little bit about your next books or what you have
planned for the future?
While I love exotic settings for my
books, the bedrock of them lies in the characters. In the course of six novels
and a few novellas I’ve created a group of interrelated families. There are a
dozen or more folks who’ve been secondary characters (or who exist only in my
imagination) who are clamoring for their stories to be told.
My families are very English and
generally upper class but the characters are not all titled. (The Unexpected
Wife is the only book in the Children of Empire series to feature a titled
hero.) However, these folk have branched out into the world already and will
branch out more.
I’ve developed a geographical and
historical timeline of the 1840s and 50s, with my list of potential characters
and I’m scoping out three sets of three books each. A bit ambitious I’ll admit,
but I’m having fun. Revolution in Italy anyone? Explore the Amazon? Excavate in
Egypt? Stay tuned.
As interesting as those settings
are, I won’t write the stories until I have the characters’ needs, wants, and
conflicts deeply imbedded in my heart. Emotion is the driver of my stories;
action is secondary.
How long would
you say it takes you to write a book?
Good question. My novels aren’t
fluffy, and they lean on the history part of Historical Romance. It takes at
least three months of research and planning and six to nine months of writing.
This time I’m trying to do the background work on multiple books at once. If I
can sit down and write all three, there won’t be a wait between sequels.
In the meantime I’m writing
novellas for two box sets and a made-to-order story for the winner of a party
contest. I’ll give that to my newsletter readers at the end of the year.
What
is your favorite childhood book?
There were many. The most memorable
two are Edward Eager’s Half Magic and, of course, Little Women.
If you
could spend the day with one of the characters from The Unexpected Wife who would it be? Please tell us why you chose
this particular character, where you would go and what you would do.
I adore Charles and I would like to
spend time with him. I think I’d like to meet him in London and go for tea at a
fashionable restaurant so I can pick his brain about the state of the Empire. I
would also ask him to help me understand various other friends and family
members. He is enormously insightful and kind.
What
was the hardest scene from The Unexpected
Wife to write?
The most difficult part of the
story had to do with his marriage. He had appeared in two previous books in
which it became clear that, while he had “won the girl” when he and his cousins
were younger, he had actually been the loser. They all (and all my readers)
want him to be happy, but he’s tied to a vicious, promiscuous harpy in an era
in which divorce was difficult and ugly. I don’t want to do any spoilers, but I
think the resolution satisfied readers.
What
made you want to become a writer?
You mean it was a choice? Actually
I was raised by two great storytellers. I like telling stories about the
struggles of decent folks to overcome the challenges life throws them. I
believe in the redemptive power of love. I truly believe love is a risk, but it
is worth it.
Just
for fun
(a
Favorite song: My Girl (The
Temptations)
(b
Favorite book: The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett
(c
Favorite movie: Oh.So.Many. San
Francisco with Clark Gable. Or Casablanca. Or Adams Rib. Or…
(d
Favorite tv show: NCIS
(e
Favorite Food: Chocolate anything
(f
Favorite drink: Red wine—any variety
(g
Favorite website: Probably Wikimedia
Commons <grin>
I write for several. You can find me on
HistoryImagined.Com and The Teatime Tattler (A fictional gossip newssheet set
in the Regency) on BluesstockingBelles.net
Thanks
so much for visiting with us today!
About the Author
Award-winning author Caroline Warfield has been many things: traveler, librarian, poet, raiser of children, bird watcher, Internet and Web services manager, conference speaker, indexer, tech writer, genealogist—even a nun. She reckons she is on at least her third act, happily working in an office surrounded by windows where she lets her characters lead her to adventures in England and the far-flung corners of the British Empire. She nudges them to explore the riskiest territory of all, the human heart.
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1 comments:
Thanks for having me!
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