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| Photo with Kind permission of the author |
Author of The King's Mistress
As a nobleman's daughter, Jane Lane longs for a life outside the privileged walls of her family home. Her quiet world is shattered when Royalists arrive one night pleading for help.
They have been hiding the King, but Cromwell's forces are close behind them, baying for Charles II's blood -and anyone who helps him.
Putting herself in mortal danger, Jane must help the King escape by disguising him as her manservant. With the shadow of the gallows following their every step, Jane finds herself falling for the gallant young Charles, But will she surrender to the passion that could change her life- and the course of history?
Gillian has kindly taken time out of her busy schedule to answer a few questions for jaffareadstoo.
Welcome Gillian,
Can
you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I
grew up in California from the age of nine (other places in the U.S. before
that), and didn’t actually get to England until I was in my early twenties, but
I’ve always been and Anglophile and very interested in English history. A big
reason for this is probably because my mother read a lot of books to my sisters
and me when we were little, including many books set in England such as the Winnie-the-Pooh
books, Mary Poppins, The Wouldbegoods, The Wind in the Willows, etc.
Then
there were some wonderful Masterpiece Theatre productions that enthralled me – Upstairs, Downstairs; Elizabeth R, etc. Another major
contributing factor to my interest in British history is my early exposure to
and love of Shakespeare.
What
makes you want to write Historical Fiction?
I
love reading historical fiction—getting lost in an exciting story that
transports me to another time and place, so I guess it’s natural to want to
write something that I would enjoy as a reader. But my foray into writing
novels came relatively late, after many years in theatre. When I was first
pursuing an acting career, a friend of mine was getting a lot of attention for
a one-man show he was performing. I thought that was a good idea. Someone
suggested Nell Gwynn as a subject, and the more I read about her the more I
loved her. I did some work on the script but never finished it to my
satisfaction—it just wasn’t possible to do her life justice in such a short
format.
Many
years later, when I was living in London and caring for my terminally ill
mother, I decided to write Nell’s story as a novel, and began working on what
was published as The Darling Strumpet. When my agent sold that, she also made
the deal for my second book—as yet unwritten!—and so I wrote The King’s
Mistress. (It was released in the U.S.
last year under the title The September Queen.)
What
fascinates you most about Charles II?
There
is a lot to be fascinated about. He was a very complex person. People tend to
think about the years of his reign as “the Merry Monarch” and his many
mistresses, but he was only twelve when the English Civil Wars began and his
family scattered, never to be reunited. He spent much of his formative years
trying to do the job of a man, nominally being in charge of troops. When the war was slipping away from the
Royalists, he was evacuated from England, and spent years abroad. He was only
eighteen when his father was executed and only twenty-one when he made last
desperate push to defeat Cromwell and regain his throne at the Battle of
Worcester. When he was defeated, he had to run for his life and spent another
nine years in impoverished exile. I don’t think any other British monarch has
had such an experience of deprivation and difficulty, and it certainly shaped
him.
He
did a lot of good for England when he was restored to the throne in 1660,
opening the playhouses that had been closed under Cromwell, and ushering in a
very vibrant period in science as well as art and culture. He was the patron of
the Royal Society, built the Greenwich Observatory, and was keenly interested
in all kinds of scientific matters.
Why
did you choose to write about Jane Lane?
I
first read about Jane Lane in the course of researching The Darling Strumpet,
and remembered her when my agent wanted to know what I wanted to write next. I
was amazed and pleased to find that no one had written a novel about her and
her perilous and romantic odyssey traveling with Charles. Georgette Heyer wrote
a book called Royal Escape in the 1930s, but it told Charles’s story, and so
didn’t follow Jane’s story when she wasn’t with him.
There’s
something wonderful about being able to tell a story that many people don’t
know about, especially when it involves such an interesting person and
compelling adventure. Lots more exciting
for me than the prospect of trying to write about someone whose story is
already well-known.
How
much research do you do when writing a novel?
I
do lots and lots of research! For this book, I read pretty much everything that
was available about “The Royal Miracle,” as Charles’s escape after the Battle
of Worcester came to be called, and of course much else about the Civil War and
the efforts to restore Charles to the throne before it actually happened. After
Jane helped Charles escape, she eventually ended up in Paris and then at The
Hague in the court of Charles’s sister Mary, the widow of William of Orange. I
knew very little about the people and places she would have known—the other
members of the royal family; Charles’s supporters in exile; Charles’s first
love Lucy Walter, who was the mother of his first child—and some said his wife;
Anne Hyde, who later became the Duchess of York and the mother of Queen Anne
and Queen Mary—so that was another big area of research.
With
a friend, I did a little road trip following the route that Jane Lane took in
her travels with Charles and where he traveled before he met up with her.
There’s nothing quite like being able to be in the actual places where my
characters lived their adventures—getting to see the room in Trent Manor where
they stayed, the priest holes where Charles hid at Moseley Old Hall and
Boscobel, and so on.
What
can you tell us about any future writing projects?
I’m
just finishing my third novel, Venus in Winter, based on the first forty years
of the life of Bess of Hardwick. She’s a fascinating character. She began life
in a poor family of minor gentry and was married and widowed four times,
becoming more wealthy and powerful with each husband. She built Chatsworth
House and Hardwick Hall, knew all the monarchs from Henry VIII to Elizabeth,
and is the ancestor of many noble families in England, including the present
royal family.
Gillian- thank you so much for spending time with us - Jaffa and I have loved reading about your inspiration for The King's Mistress and wish you continued success with your writing career.
I am delighted to announce that the publishers of The King's Mistress have kindly offered a paperback copy of the King's Mistress to one lucky winner of this UK only giveaway.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
