#BOOK CLUB FRIDAY--OOPS! HEROINE ACCIDENTALLY ELOPES WITH WRONG MAN!

Today we sit down with Katherine, niece of Earl Quamby, from author Beverley Oakley’s The Accidental Elopement.

What was your life like before your author started pulling your strings?

Believe me, I had my life all mapped out. The pinnacle of my ambition was to make the most illustrious marriage possible during my London season. I was beautiful, from a well-connected family (if you disregard my mother’s pre-marriage scandals) and I had three suitors. Then my author threw me together with my childhood friend, Jack – a boy from the foundling home – and we fell madly in love.

I was furious that she should do that to me – for about five seconds – because truly, I was prepared to cross shark-infested waters to be with Jack. In fact, I nearly did (well, not shark-infested but raging seas). Unfortunately, I got into the wrong carriage. The one that wasn’t taking me to those raging seas I was prepared to cross. And that’s when my life took a very dark turn.

Excuse me if I don’t go into the details right now. The trauma is still quite fresh in my mind.

What’s the one trait you like most about yourself?

I shouldn’t need to tell you that a well brought-up young lady doesn’t advertise her good qualities which should be evident to all her eligible suitors. However, if there’s one thing I secretly like about myself, it’s my love of adventure. I was so lucky to have been able to climb trees with Jack and join him on adventures when we were seven. This was when Jack would be brought over from the foundling home to be a playmate for my cousin, George. But it was Jack and I who found some mischief to get into – and Jack always defended me and took the blame – even if it was my fault. Sorry…I didn’t mean to get tearful but I do miss Jack. Or rather, the fact that he is lost to me and…the fact we’re doomed to be apart.

What do you like least about yourself?

My impulsiveness. Oh, yes, definitely that! If I hadn’t been so foolish and impulsive, I never would have made the biggest, most terrible mistake of my life. I never would have…I’m so embarrassed to admit it because who would do such a thing? Who would accidentally elope with the wrong person?

What is the strangest thing your author has had you do or had happen to you?

Strangest? Or do you mean most terrible? Because, there’s no getting around the fact that my author utterly ruined my life! That carriage I got into? How was I supposed to know it had been sent by someone other than whom I assumed had sent it?

But I can’t blame anyone other than myself. All this happened seven years ago and I’m not the feather-brained, impulsive debutante I was then. I’m older and wiser – lonelier, too, though I deserve it. But I have a beautiful seven-year-old daughter and she’s my treasure.

Do you argue with your author? If so, what do you argue about?

I argued about the fact that I thought it wasn’t that Jack and I couldn’t be together again after we’d been apart for seven years. After all, I was widowed and Jack was not yet married. But my author said honour had to prevail. She said it was one thing that I’d only just been widowed but quite another that Jack was honour-bound to marry the daughter of his dying mentor whom he’d promised, in the West Indies, he would protect. He’d just brought Odette back from across the seas so how could I expect he’d leave her to marry me? Even though I knew Jack loved me?

I suppose I can’t blame him. I was the impulsive one. I brought all my troubles upon myself. It’s hardly any wonder Jack thought I had forsaken him.

But I did ask my author if I couldn’t just tell him everything about what had happened and how I felt about him. She said I could but only if I wanted to put him in the impossible position of choosing between his heart and his honourable soul. I’m still trying to find a way to get around that one.

What is your greatest fear?

That Jack will never know how much I love him. And that he will never learn my secret. I want him to know it – yet I know it would destroy him.

What makes you happy?

Being with my child makes me happy. I lead a quiet life after my late husband ruined my reputation and gambled away our worldly goods so I take pleasure in simple things.

If you could rewrite a part of your story, what would it be? Why?

I would rewrite the end because I think Jack deserves to be happy but I think I do, too. And we can only be happy together. But Jack is about to marry and then he will be lost to me forever.

My author found me in tears this morning. She told me my story isn’t finished yet but I don’t believe her. Jack is marrying so soon. It’s set in stone. His bride-to-be is sweet and worthy and her father is dying. My aunt thinks she has a plan to make her fall in love with someone else, but it won’t work.

I must accept that Jack and I are doomed to be forever apart.

Of the other characters in your book, which one bugs you the most? Why?

My cousin George, for sure! He was spoiled and whiney when we were children and he hadn’t changed much when we were eighteen which is when he suddenly decided he wanted to marry me – even though he knew Jack and I were soul mates.

Of the other characters in your book, which one would you love to trade places with? Why?

Odette, Jack’s betrothed. Because she is the one who will have Jack for the rest of her dying days. But she won’t have his heart. I thought I would take comfort from that but I can’t. I don’t want her to suffer as much as I have for the truth is that she’s a good person. Better woman than I am. It’s just that Jack loves me. And I love him.

Tell us a little something about your author. Where can readers find her website/blog?

Beverley Oakley is an Australian author who grew up in the African mountain kingdom of Lesotho, married a Norwegian bush pilot she met in Botswana’s Okavango Delta, and started writing historical romances to amuse herself in the 12 countries she’s lived as a ‘trailing spouse’. She writes historical romances laced with scandal and intrigue and Africa-set romantic suspense as Beverley Eikli. You can read more at www.beverleyoakley.com.

What's next for you, the author?

She’ll be writing book three in her Fair Cyprians of London series. Each story features a courtesan at Madame Chambon’s elite Soho establishment. Keeping Faith, like the other stories in the series, is based on fictionalized versions of the interviews of the ‘fallen women’ nineteenth century journalist Henry Mayhew included in his study of Victorian vice, London’s Underworld. Sacrificing Charity is about a courtesan who’s been groomed by her protector to be her ‘beautiful weapon’. It highlights hypocrisy and has at its heart a revenge and redemption theme.

The Accidental Elopement

Today we sit down with Katherine, niece of Earl Quamby, from author Beverley Oakley’s The Accidental Elopement.

What was your life like before your author started pulling your strings?

Believe me, I had my life all mapped out. The pinnacle of my ambition was to make the most illustrious marriage possible during my London season. I was beautiful, from a well-connected family (if you disregard my mother’s pre-marriage scandals) and I had three suitors. Then my author threw me together with my childhood friend, Jack – a boy from the foundling home – and we fell madly in love.

I was furious that she should do that to me – for about five seconds – because truly, I was prepared to cross shark-infested waters to be with Jack. In fact, I nearly did (well, not shark-infested but raging seas). Unfortunately, I got into the wrong carriage. The one that wasn’t taking me to those raging seas I was prepared to cross. And that’s when my life took a very dark turn.

Excuse me if I don’t go into the details right now. The trauma is still quite fresh in my mind.

What’s the one trait you like most about yourself?

I shouldn’t need to tell you that a well brought-up young lady doesn’t advertise her good qualities which should be evident to all her eligible suitors. However, if there’s one thing I secretly like about myself, it’s my love of adventure. I was so lucky to have been able to climb trees with Jack and join him on adventures when we were seven. This was when Jack would be brought over from the foundling home to be a playmate for my cousin, George. But it was Jack and I who found some mischief to get into – and Jack always defended me and took the blame – even if it was my fault. Sorry…I didn’t mean to get tearful but I do miss Jack. Or rather, the fact that he is lost to me and…the fact we’re doomed to be apart.

What do you like least about yourself?

My impulsiveness. Oh, yes, definitely that! If I hadn’t been so foolish and impulsive, I never would have made the biggest, most terrible mistake of my life. I never would have…I’m so embarrassed to admit it because who would do such a thing? Who would accidentally elope with the wrong person?

What is the strangest thing your author has had you do or had happen to you?

Strangest? Or do you mean most terrible? Because, there’s no getting around the fact that my author utterly ruined my life! That carriage I got into? How was I supposed to know it had been sent by someone other than whom I assumed had sent it?

But I can’t blame anyone other than myself. All this happened seven years ago and I’m not the feather-brained, impulsive debutante I was then. I’m older and wiser – lonelier, too, though I deserve it. But I have a beautiful seven-year-old daughter and she’s my treasure.

Do you argue with your author? If so, what do you argue about?

I argued about the fact that I thought it wasn’t that Jack and I couldn’t be together again after we’d been apart for seven years. After all, I was widowed and Jack was not yet married. But my author said honour had to prevail. She said it was one thing that I’d only just been widowed but quite another that Jack was honour-bound to marry the daughter of his dying mentor whom he’d promised, in the West Indies, he would protect. He’d just brought Odette back from across the seas so how could I expect he’d leave her to marry me? Even though I knew Jack loved me?

I suppose I can’t blame him. I was the impulsive one. I brought all my troubles upon myself. It’s hardly any wonder Jack thought I had forsaken him.

But I did ask my author if I couldn’t just tell him everything about what had happened and how I felt about him. She said I could but only if I wanted to put him in the impossible position of choosing between his heart and his honourable soul. I’m still trying to find a way to get around that one.

What is your greatest fear?

That Jack will never know how much I love him. And that he will never learn my secret. I want him to know it – yet I know it would destroy him.

What makes you happy?

Being with my child makes me happy. I lead a quiet life after my late husband ruined my reputation and gambled away our worldly goods so I take pleasure in simple things.

If you could rewrite a part of your story, what would it be? Why?

I would rewrite the end because I think Jack deserves to be happy but I think I do, too. And we can only be happy together. But Jack is about to marry and then he will be lost to me forever.

My author found me in tears this morning. She told me my story isn’t finished yet but I don’t believe her. Jack is marrying so soon. It’s set in stone. His bride-to-be is sweet and worthy and her father is dying. My aunt thinks she has a plan to make her fall in love with someone else, but it won’t work.

I must accept that Jack and I are doomed to be forever apart.

Of the other characters in your book, which one bugs you the most? Why?

My cousin George, for sure! He was spoiled and whiney when we were children and he hadn’t changed much when we were eighteen which is when he suddenly decided he wanted to marry me – even though he knew Jack and I were soul mates.

Of the other characters in your book, which one would you love to trade places with? Why?

Odette, Jack’s betrothed. Because she is the one who will have Jack for the rest of her dying days. But she won’t have his heart. I thought I would take comfort from that but I can’t. I don’t want her to suffer as much as I have for the truth is that she’s a good person. Better woman than I am. It’s just that Jack loves me. And I love him.

Tell us a little something about your author. Where can readers find her website/blog?

Beverley Oakley is an Australian author who grew up in the African mountain kingdom of Lesotho, married a Norwegian bush pilot she met in Botswana’s Okavango Delta, and started writing historical romances to amuse herself in the 12 countries she’s lived as a ‘trailing spouse’. She writes historical romances laced with scandal and intrigue and Africa-set romantic suspense as Beverley Eikli. You can read more at her website.

What's next for you, the author?

She’ll be writing book three in her Fair Cyprians of London series. Each story features a courtesan at Madame Chambon’s elite Soho establishment. Keeping Faith, like the other stories in the series, is based on fictionalized versions of the interviews of the ‘fallen women’ nineteenth century journalist Henry Mayhew included in his study of Victorian vice, London’s Underworld. Sacrificing Charity is about a courtesan who’s been groomed by her protector to be her ‘beautiful weapon’. It highlights hypocrisy and has at its heart a revenge and redemption theme.

The Accidental Elopement

Book 4 in the Scandalous Miss Brightwell series

A seven-year secret. A tragic misunderstanding. Can love outwit fate in this tale of misadventure and thwarted dreams?

Earl Quamby’s niece, Katherine, and Jack, a foundling home lad adopted by a local family, have been loyal friends for as long as they can remember. 

As Jack is about to leave England to make his fortune and Katherine is being courted by two eligible suitors, they unexpectedly realise their friendship has blossomed into passionate love. A love, they are warned, that has no future.

Despite a brave attempt to defy the forces keeping them apart, tragedy results and the pair is separated.

When chance throws them together seven years later, Katherine, newly widowed, is being pressured into a marriage not of her choosing to avoid scandal and Jack feels he must honour his pledge to the worthy Odette whom he met in India and whose father is dying.

Katherine knows that revealing a long-held secret may win Jack to her but she also knows conflicting obligations from past and present may tear him apart.

Can master matchmakers, Fanny, Antoinette and Bertram Brightwell, outwit fate in its latest attempt to keep these star-crossed lovers apart and deliver them the happiness they deserve?

Buy Link  

FAVORITES, FAILURES & FRUSTRATIONS--GUEST AUTHOR BEVERLEY OAKLEY/BEVERLEY EIKLI

Beverley Oakley writes sensual historical romance laced with

intrigue, mystery and adventure set in Georgian and Regency England.

She also writes Colonial Africa-set romantic suspense featuring fearless aviators, and psychological romantic suspense as Beverley Eikli. Learn more about Beverley and her books at her website.

Success and Failure: When They’re the Same Thing and When They’re Not

Like so many little girls growing up in British Commonwealth countries in the early 1970s, I longed to be one of the intrepid children in Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven series. By the time I was seven, I wanted to be writing those adventure stories.

At seventeen, I realized my childhood ambition to complete a novel and in a fever of anticipation, posted off my 600-page sweeping historical saga to Zebra Books, who published many of my favourite romance authors at the time. The crushing rejection came two months later. Apparently, “Drowning [my] heroine on the last page [was] not in line with the expectation of romance readers”.

So I followed the School Careers Counselor’s advice and became a journalist.

For the next few years I wrote for magazines and newspapers. I was fulfilled in my work. My first novel wasn’t a failure for not achieving publication, but a success because I’d completed it.

When I met my true love—a Norwegian pilot—in Botswana, we explored the world doing back-to-back airborne survey contracts as the only husband/wife team in the business at that time, and I put my fiction-writing desires on the backburner. Childhood dreams weren’t so important when life was rich and full of other excitements.

After seven years of this itinerant, thrilling life, we started a family. And the definition of who I was changed—certainly in my eyes.

I adored our daughter but I found it hard to farewell my husband for two-month overseas stints and any prospect of excitement beyond changing nappies when I was the one staying behind in a new city.

For so much of our married lives we’d shared our adventures, but as a new mother, I felt lonely and lacking connections and direction. Maybe, I thought, it was time to get serious about that dream of becoming a published romance author. That would be how I’d define success, for me.

We were now based in Perth, Western Australia, and, just before the birth of our first child, I’d joined Romance Writers of Australia and entered the first three chapters of a romance in their Single Title competition.

The excitement I felt to see the self-addressed envelope that I knew contained my competition feedback sheets sticking out of the letter-box on the bustling inner-city pavement in front of our townhouse after a walk with my husband one day was a déjà vu moment. Suddenly I was seventeen again, experiencing the same churning excitement as when I was ripping open Zebra’s response. I’m a little ashamed to admit that I acted with no more maturity than I had when I was seventeen.

After a quick scan of the contents I started sobbing on my husband’s shoulder in the middle of the street. My ranking was second-to-last.

Despite the results, the feedback was immensely helpful. I rewrote my entry, submitted it to the same competition the following year, won, and received a request for the full from Avon acquiring editor, Erika Tsang. Although my rushed attempts to complete the book resulted in another rejection, I regarded the experience, overall, as a success. A year had passed since the woeful results had come in from my first competition attempt, I was enjoying motherhood, my husband was back home for a long stint, and my resubmitted entry had not only come first but had attracted a request for the full manuscript.

Three weeks before I was due to give birth to our second child my husband broke his back. He’d spent the previous five months flying in Antarctica while I looked after our toddler in a large house by the sea in Adelaide, South Australia’s capital. Once a week we would make phone contact on a crackling line so we both felt huge anticipation at the prospect of being reunited.

Our reunion was short-lived. A couple of weeks after his return, while renovating the house, he fell off a ladder and sheared off all his vertebrae on a pallet of slates.

With a newborn, a four-year-old and a husband in excruciating pain, I took the first job I could find while my husband recovered. Although he hadn’t severed his spinal cord, he was plagued with recurrences of the Golden Staff infection and a level of pain that barbiturates could not keep in check.

They were dark days with a great deal of upheaval. I was proud of my husband who never complained. Pain was his constant companion and the effort it cost him to push on was always apparent. He got work in Japan where we lived for a year before we moved to a country town north of Melbourne, and seven years later we’re still here.

A few weeks ago, I picked up my diary and read an entry from 2008. Our daughters at that time were aged two and six and I was frustrated by my inability to find work that fitted around my caring duties while living so far from the city. I’d been overseas for so long I’d lost contact with former friends and work colleagues. I was also deeply worried that what I perceived to be my husband’s unhappiness was my fault. I’d finished the entry, despairingly: “I just want him to be proud of me!”

It was the desperation of my words from this long-forgotten time that prompted me to write this blog about how we regard success and failure. At various stages of our lives, the same goals can seem more or less important. Often it’s everything else happening in our lives that can cause us to regard a particular event in either a positive or negative light. I regarded my unsuccessful publishing efforts when I was seventeen and when I was thirty-seven in a positive light because I was fulfilled in other ways. But a few years later, my vision was narrower without meaningful work, and I’d honed in on that elusive publishing contract as the only way to define success.

We can’t help what we feel, only what we do about it. Perhaps articulating my lack of self-worth, and questioning on paper how I might set it right, made me forge a more productive path.

I don’t know. I just remember that it was around this time I adopted a

laser focus toward my quest for publication – very unlike me – and made up a spreadsheet with the names of three editors and two agents I would query. Thereafter, each time I got a rejection on my first three chapters, synopsis and pitch letter, I’d refine and improve each, then send it to another agent or editor. The idea was that as long as I had five submissions on the go, I’d always have hope.

It paid off.

My first publishing contract arrived in the post a year later.

Since then, I’ve published fifteen historical romances under two names and, as of the past two months, am earning an income that’s enabled me to give up my day job. We’re in our twenty-second year of marriage and as happy as we were when we were adventuring around the world together, young and carefree. My husband adores his job flying long-haul, mostly from Melbourne to Los Angeles – though a bad motorbike accident has kept him out of the skies for fifteen months – and we have two happy, thriving children.

Would I have focused so hard on my goal of publication during those dark days ten years ago if I had felt the same overall carefree happiness I’d felt most of my life? Probably not.

I’m just glad my publishing dreams weren’t handed to me on a platter when I was a seventeen-year-old. Trying to surpass such a high benchmark for success achieved at such a young age might have set me up for a lifetime of disappointment and altered the way I differentiate between success and failure.

Instead, those twenty-six years between submitting my first novel and getting my first publishing contract were full of ample compensations when I didn’t quite reach the bar. They made me appreciate life more and define success through effort as much as results.

The Mysterious Governess

Two beautiful sisters – one illegitimate, the other nobly born – compete for love amidst the scandal and intrigue of a Regency London Season.

Lissa Hazlett lives life in the shadows. The beautiful, illegitimate daughter of Viscount Partington earns her living as an overworked governess while her vain and spoiled half sister, Araminta, enjoys London’s social whirl as its most feted debutante.

When Lissa’s rare talent as a portraitist brings her unexpectedly into the bosom of society – and into the midst of a scandal involving Araminta and suspected English traitor Lord Debenham – she finds an unlikely ally: charming and besotted Ralph Tunley, Lord Debenham’s underpaid, enterprising secretary. Ralph can’t afford to leave the employ of the villainous viscount much less keep a wife but he can help Lissa cleverly navigate a perilous web of lies that will ensure everyone gets what they deserve.

Buy Link

#CRAFTS WITH ANASTASIA--FAIR-ISLE KNITTING WITH GUEST AUTHOR BEVERLEY OAKLEY

The author wearing one of her Fair-Isle sweaters in Greenland

In 2009, Beverley Oakley published her first novel after marrying the handsome Norwegian bush pilot she met in Botswana. Since then she's written more than thirteen sizzling historical romances, mostly set in England during the Georgian, Regency and Victoria eras and more psychological historicals with less sizzle as Beverley Eikli. Learn more about her and her books at her website. 

Knitting up a Plot

There’s something mesmerizing and cathartic about the click of the needles and a strand of yarn running rhythmically over my left forefinger while I watch television or read a book.

I never took to the traditional English style of knitting when I learned it at school in Australia, but after my Norwegian mother-in-law taught me Continental knitting during the year I spent living with my in-laws, I was hooked.

My husband and I had met when I was running a safari lodge in Botswana’s Okavango Delt and he was a bush pilot, flying in the tourists and supplies. After a whirlwind courtship, he took me to live in Norway with his family while we waited to begin an airborne geophysical survey contract in Namibia.

The job was continually delayed but for the next ten months, instead of twiddling my thumbs, I put them to good use, learning to knit the country’s seemingly complicated traditional Norwegian Fair-Isle sweaters under the expert guidance of my mother-in-law Elsa, my many sisters-in-law, and even my teenage nieces. Get-togethers in Norway, I discovered, were always done over coffee and with the mandatory piece of knitting in one’s lap.

Norwegian Fair-Isle sweaters look complicated to make, yet they’re not. There are never more than two colours in a row and the right, patterned side is always facing you, as the sweater is knitted on the round and then cut up to then sew in the arms, which are also knitted on the round. If it’s a cardigan, it’ll be cut down the middle with the bands knitted on afterwards.  

At the end of more than ten months in Norway, my husband started his one-year survey flying contract in Namibia, and I joined him, operating the computer equipment in the back of the aircraft. As I was often the only woman on crew during this and subsequent three-month contracts in Greenland, Namibia, and Sweden, I found a great friend in my knitting.

Flying at 250 feet above ground on survey lines that crisscrossed the terrain at regular intervals of 50 feet gave me a wonderful bird’s eye view. I was thrilled by rare sights, like a trio of bat-eared foxes crowding onto the top of an anthill to check us out, or small village children scurrying from their thatched huts to do the same. Meanwhile I’d be monitoring the flight data, and all the while I’d have a growing sweater on my lap. I was known by my fellow crewmembers as the ‘knitting operator’.

Weaving yarn and weaving stories go hand in hand and in those days, before my first novel was published, I would construct elaborate plots in the aircraft, which, if working on a contract when my husband was flying in a different country, I’d write up when I got back to my accommodation.

They were fun days, seeing new countries, partying in nightclubs on the Arctic Circle, cracking my head on the roof struts in heavy turbulence over Greenland’s ice cap or getting locked up in French Guiana and having to spend the night, alone, guarded by a 6’4” French Guianese soldier brandishing an AK-47. That was a scary experience and worth a story on its own.

However I was fortunate to have my knitting with me. If you’ve got a ball of wool, a pair of knitting needles and a good plot brewing, you’ll never be lonely.

The Mysterious Governess, Daughters of Sin, Book 3

Two beautiful sisters – one illegitimate, the other nobly born – compete for love amidst the scandal and intrigue of a Regency London Season.

Lissa Hazlett lives life in the shadows. The beautiful, illegitimate daughter of Viscount Partington earns her living as an overworked governess while her vain and spoiled half sister Araminta enjoys London’s social whirl as its most feted debutante.

When Lissa’s rare talent as a portraitist brings her unexpectedly into the bosom of society—and into the midst of a scandal involving Araminta and suspected English traitor Lord Debenham—she finds an unlikely ally: charming and besotted Ralph tunley, Lord Debenham’s underpaid, enterprising secretary. Ralph can’t afford to leave the employ of the villainous viscount much less keep a wife but he can help Lissa cleverly navigate a perilous web of lies that will ensure everyone gets what they deserve.

Buy Link