Monday, April 12, 2010

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to my blog! My name is Susanna Fraser, and I'm soon to be a debut historical romance author with Carina Press. I live in the Pacific Northwest with Mr. Fraser and our daughter, Miss Fraser, a bonny and energetic lass of six years.

My first novel, The Sergeant's Lady, is a tale of star-crossed love during the Napoleonic Wars:

In the spring of 1809, Scottish heiress Anna Arrington married in haste and followed her husband to the battlefields of Portugal and Spain, hoping that life with a dashing cavalry officer would bring her the adventure and significance she always longed for. Two miserable years later, she’s had ample leisure to repent. Her husband falsely believes she has betrayed him, and he blames her for failing to give him a child.

After he dies, Anna wants nothing more than to return to the sanctuary of her ancestral home and never seek adventure again. But fate has other plans for her.

She joins a wagon convoy of wounded bound for Lisbon, where she plans to take ship for home, but along the way they are ambushed and captured by the French. When a half-mad enemy officer assaults her, she is rescued by Sergeant Will Atkins, a common soldier of uncommon intelligence and bravery. Will has always had a chivalrous streak, but little does he suspect that this time his warrior’s instinct to protect a woman in peril will change his life forever.

Will and Anna escape into the countryside to take word of the ambush to their army. On the four-day journey, after fighting off bandits and French cavalry together, they discover that they are kindred spirits and yield to the passion that has grown between them. But their world does not allow a mere sergeant to raise his eyes to a wealthy viscount’s daughter. Falling in love will challenge them to take on the greatest adventure either has known.


Check this space for the inspiration and research behind my writing, tales of the writer's life (and the writer's struggles with time management and balancing writing with a family and a full-time day job), and, since Mr. Fraser and I are about to buy our first house, quite possibly the writer's moving woes and remodeling challenges.

8 comments:

  1. Huge congratulations, Susanna! I am so excited for you, and look forward to reading The Sergeant's Lady.

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  2. Congratulations, Susanna. Regencies set outside of England are SO hard to sell these days - it must be a fabulous book. I'd love to hear what you've got planned for a follow-up.

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  3. Thanks, everyone!

    Cecilia, I get the sense Carina is more willing to take a chance on unusual settings than many of the print publishers, and I'm glad they've offered me a home for the book of my heart!

    I've got some ideas for a follow-up, but haven't settled on one yet. I've got the germ of a plot for a Hundred Days/Waterloo novel. Maybe I'll write that one and get some use out of all the Waterloo sources on my research bookshelf!

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  4. Thanks for linking this to your FB page. I look forward to your book, too.

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  5. I hopped over to say hello from the link at Slacktivist. Congratulations on the book. I'll look out for it. One of my favorite books ever was Heyer's Peninsular war book, whose name I'm blanking out at the moment. What a great setting for a novel.

    aimai

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  6. Heyer's book is The Spanish Bride, and is a fictionalization of a real couple who met and married in the aftermath of the storming of Badajoz in 1812. (Badajoz shows up in my book, but at the end rather than the beginning.)

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