Today I am delighted to be having a slice of cake with author Jenny Brown.
Jenny studied history in graduate school. Her first professional sale as a writer was a biographical piece about Louisa May Alcott's childhood. Years later, her favourite hobby continues to be reading biographies of people who lived in the 18th and 19th centuries. She has earned her living in many different ways: performing as a singer-songwriter in Western Massachusetts and Nashville, writing nonfiction, and, for the past twenty-four years, running a successful small press.
Jenny's characters are often outcasts or rebels. Her heroes have a long way to go before they become the loving men her heroines deserve. Her heroines are strong, adventurous women who take control of their own fate but must do so within the limitations of the society they were born into. Readers of mainstream historical fiction appreciate that her books are written with respect for the language, history, and culture of the Georgian era in England where they are set.
What kind of books do you write?
I write historical novels that explore how men and women with difficult childhoods or past histories find their way to a satisfying love relationship. I do my best to respect the realities of the time period they are set in, which is the 19th century up until the advent of the railroad.
My characters are always outsiders, no matter what their rank in society. They struggle to love and it is by surmounting that struggle that they become fully heroic. My heroines are strong, independent women whose ideal mate is a man whose hunger for adventure matches their own. They don’t yearn for a rich husband and a nursery full of babies. When they find the man they want to spend their life with, they want to keep on living the kind of adventure that brought them together. My dark and dangerous heroes are truly dangerous. My rakes are real rakes who have done things in the past they bitterly regret. Even my most kind and light-hearted hero, who stars in An Unexpected Heir, is a survivor whose warmth and confidence result from his having created a satisfying life for himself against the odds.
Can you describe your writing why?
I grew up loving historical fiction, starting with Mara Daughter of the Nile when I was old enough to read chapter books by myself and moving on to everything every written by Rosemary Sutcliffe. When I was older, I fell in love with the works of Susan Howatch, Dorothy Dunnett, Sharon Kay Penman, Judith Merkle Riley, Gillian Bradshaw and the other great authors of my time. I always wanted to write novels that could stand on the shelf beside theirs.
But I am far more interested in people’s psychology than I am in historical events, so when I discovered the great Historical Romances of the 1990s, including those written by the likes of Laura Kinsale, Judith Ivory, Patricia Gaffney and several others, I felt like I had finally found my niche.
I pretty much write the books that come to me begging to be written, and I rarely know where the story is going to end up when I begin it. I start with a premise. For Undisciplined Ardor, it was to explore what it would have been like to be gender non-conforming in the early 1800s. I knew I wanted a girl raised as if she were a boy to be the heroine. I was planning to set the story on a ship because I actually have some experience sailing in 19th-century wooden vessels, but the story stalled out until I had an intense dream where I saw a woman standing on the saddle of a beautiful horse at Astley’s Amphitheatre. Once I made the hero a man who has mastered very difficult feats of horsemanship, the story just blossomed. An Unexpected Heir originally began when I thought about that standard plot where someone humble discovers they are the heir to something important—in this case, an earldom—and gave it a twist. I asked what if you found your long-lost parents and they were awful people? The story blossomed into a cultural clash between a self-made American-raised man and his snobby, class-conscious, possibly real parents who mercilessly bully the chamber pot heiress they need to marry their heir—whoever he turns out to be because they need her fortune to pay off their erstwhile heir’s ruinous gambling debts.
What keeps me writing is the excitement of having these stories unfold and learning what the characters have to teach me. For Lord Lightning I learned all about how the traditional Astrology was practised in the Georgian period, going to the source, William Lilly’s Christian Astrology.
For Undisciplined Ardor, I learned a great deal about the British cavalry in the Napoleonic wars, trick riding, how acrobats train, and the way duelling was actually practised in the early 1800s, which turned out to be quite different from what you read in most novels.
For An Unexpected Heir, whose hero has been raised on the American frontier of the 1820s, I researched the early expeditions across the American Great Plains in the 1830s and travelling “medicine” shows. I read quite a few small-town American newspapers of the time and ran across a wonderful account of a mountain man who kept a baby beaver in his cabin as a pet. That led me to an English magazine article describing how an American beaver was being exhibited in rooms in London in this period, and voila! I had the beginnings of a plot.
Share with us your favourite passage from the book you enjoyed writing the most
Many of my favourite passages only work in the context of the story leading up to them, but I think readers might enjoy this scene. Ned Prentice, the hero, has just been hailed as the long lost eldest son of an earl who was supposedly kidnapped by his nurse and spirited away to America. But the earl will only acknowledge him if he proposes on the spot to the heiress who was already about to marry Ethelred, the earl’s previous heir.
He sat back in his chair, and when he spoke again he was no longer whispering. “I have to say, the customs of you English beat out anything I’ve ever run into, and I saw me some pretty strange things when I traveled across the Great Plains with the Prince of Wied-Neuwied’s expedition. We lived with the tribes and got to know their ways of doing things. But even though your people call them savages, no father in Indian Country would sell a son like your people do. I reckon, it’ll take me some time to get used to that particular custom. ’Specially since I’m the son whose supposed to be getting sold here.”
She gritted her teeth. “I’m sure when you become more aware of the benefits of being a viscount, the oddness of our customs may seem less jarring.”
“Could be. Which is why I haven’t hightailed it out of here. I’m an adaptable man, Miss Haddock. I’ve lived with plenty of strange folks and gotten used to their strange practices. The Osage, now there’s a people I wouldn’t want to have to marry into. They hang their bachelors on metal hooks, pierced through their backs, to test their courage before they let them wed. Good thing my father didn’t turn out to be one of their big men.”
She did not let herself smile. “I’m sure that being the son of an earl offers far less hardship.”
“Perhaps.” He smiled. “Though it’s not without its inconveniences. This suit they made me put on is powerful uncomfortable. This starched-up collar’s like to strangle me. That Ethelred of yours must have a neck as slender as a chicken’s. And these pants!”
“He’s not my Ethelred anymore. You’ve put paid to that.” She tried to sound disappointed, but in truth, the showman’s neck did compare favorably with Ethelred’s, as did his thighs. A life of dissipation in London did not put much muscle on a man.
”Did you really want to marry him?” he asked, again looking serious. “Were you secretly in love with him, whatever the arrangement might have been?”
“Of course not. I married him to do my duty to my father.”
His eyebrows rose. “So he forced you into it.”
“Of course not! I did it willingly. I love my father more than anyone on earth. For years he has labored to earn enough money so I could marry a peer. How could I not gratify his wish?”
He thought about that for a moment. “So if I could prove I was the real heir, you’d be perfectly happy to marry me, just to make your daddy proud? Without me having to win your heart?”
“My heart has nothing to do with it.”
“No, it’s clear it that it don’t.” The look he gave her could have soured milk. She knew right then that whatever respect he might have still retained for her after that interlude in the caravan had vanished.
It hurt. Worse, it made her feel ashamed.
But really, he was being too unfair. Plenty of wealthy fathers bought titles for their daughters. It was only his American ignorance that made him judge her so harshly. A people without a nobility of their own would never understand the importance of rank.
Having paused for a moment for his contempt to sink in, Mr. Prentice asked in a tone of idle curiosity, “Do your people have some special form they use when declaring their heartlessness before entering into the married state? I mean, am I supposed to reply in kind and assure you that I’m taking you solely for the money your pa has laid down and my expectations of more of the same?”
She could feel her face reddening.
He was smiling that deceptively charming smile, but his eyes had lost their warmth. “Help me out here,” he demanded. “I’m trying to get this right. I need to know the details of your customs, just like I did when I was living with the Tribes out on the plains. Do I get down on my knees when I say it, or is there some other way this reassurance should be delivered?”
She snapped. “If that was supposed to be an example of American humor, it was in very poor taste. The marriage of convenience of sophisticated aristocrats bears no comparison to the peculiar customs of painted savages.”
“It’s still a very peculiar custom. Here I’m supposed to go proposing to a woman who’s made it clear she don’t like me, but that it’s okay with her. Am I also supposed to assure her that if she accepts me I’ll return the favor and not like her either? That’s very strange to my way of thinking. But if that’s what I have to do to stick around for long enough to get to know my new pa, I just might have to do it.”
He favored her with that serious look for only a moment longer, then a mischievous smile lit up his treacherous blue eyes. “I’ve done worse. Why, when I spent some time with those Omeeomi Indians, up in Michigan Territory, their chief wanted me to propose to his daughter. Well, the custom there is that the man must pull out his private parts when making his proposal, and if the lady accepts—”
But whatever the Omeeomi ladies be might do, she was never to learn, for she’d had enough. “You go too far, Mr. Prentice. A gentleman here in England would never expect a well-bred young lady to listen to something so improper!”
“Where I come from, Miss Haddock, we don’t expect well-bred young ladies to barter themselves off to prodigal sons who suddenly find themselves in need of money.”
He tugged at Ethelred’s constricting collar. “I’m a firm believer that a man should follow the customs of the people with whom he’s visiting as much as possible. But there are some things a decent man can’t do. When I was with the Sioux, I didn’t eat that dog meat that they served me, though it was rude to refuse what they believe to be a delicacy. I don’t see as how the situation here is much different. A decent man can’t bargain away his independence for money. Not if he’s to retain his respect for himself.”
He stood up, and fixed her with a severe look. It was odd how dignified he looked even in those ridiculous clothes. “You see, I didn’t get a lot of respect growing up. The woman I called ma since I was knee high to a grasshopper had her struggles with the bottle. Besides that, there were plenty of folks who looked down on us because I didn’t have a pa. I had no man’s name and no man’s money. All I had to work with was my self-respect. It made me into what I am today.” He paused. “You might not think much of me, but I can tell you there isn’t a man in the whole United States or in the Territories, who doesn’t respect me. William Clark never sent out a better man to bring back specimens. I know where to find those ancient bones and can tell the difference between a fake Indian trinket and the genuine article. But it all started with my self-respect and I’m not about to give that up for anything.”
“Not even to become the lord of all this?” she motioned towards the richly appointed chamber.
He locked eyes with her. “Not even for all this.”
He dropped back into the chair and leaned towards her again, speaking so only she could hear him. “We have a little ditty they sing in my neck of the woods:
Silver chains and golden handcuffs don’t improve a prison’s walls.
Better you should wander homeless than be caged in palace halls.
“You may be thinking that it’s the simple song of a simple people, and maybe you’re right. But that’s how I feel. And feeling that way, I just can’t do it. I can’t make you a proposal right now, whatever that earl fellow might want.”
He stood and stuck out one hand as if waiting to shake hers. “It’s been a pleasure, Miss Haddock, and I thank you kindly, but we’ll have to continue our conversation later. I’ve left poor old Jackson alone in the wagon too long as it is.”
He was almost to the door when Lady Edith intercepted him.
“Have you settled it then?” she demanded. “Has Miss Haddock accepted your proposal?”
He shook his head, “The only thing I proposed to her was to go and feed a very hungry beaver.”
“I beg your pardon?” her eyebrows rose. “Did you say you were going to feed a beaver? Is that an American figure of speech? I beg you to explain it to me.”
“It’s simple English, ma’am. I left my pet beaver in my wagon this morning before I hiked up here and he’s got to be feeling pretty neglected by now.”
“And this—animal—takes precedence over your responsibility to propose to Miss Haddock?”
“I’m afraid so. After all, the beaver treats me with considerably more affection.”
Tell us about your latest project
The most recent novel I finished is Undisciplined Ardor. As I mentioned earlier, the heroine has been allowed to grow up living as if she were a boy. Because of this, she has taken to heart the way that men of her time think of women—that they are weak, frivolous, obsessed with their clothing and a love of gossip. Understandably she totally rejects anything in herself that seems “womanly.” When her father dies, she finds herself forced to behave like a woman and is put under serious pressure to marry so as to avoid shaming the rest of the family. So she has every motivation to keep living the much freer life of a male, even though, as it becomes clear as the story evolves, she is not a man trapped in a woman’s body. She is a woman trapped in a society that doesn’t respect women or grant them the freedom to run their own lives.
She turns to a hyper-masculine man for help. A cavalry officer whose overly pretty looks have led him to prove his masculinity obsessively, in ways that have hurt not only himself but the people he has been closest to. When my heroine turns to him for help, his attraction to this risk-taking, very boyish woman terrifies him, because underneath the manly facade and the years of rugged military achievement there lurks a man who for reasons of his own wonders about his sexual orientation.
There’s a lot going on in this story, and I feel like it may be the most interesting of all the stories I’ve written because of the way I explored these issues, while managing to bring this couple together in a way that produces a successful relationship that doesn’t sugarcoat the issues they will be confronting for the rest of their lives.
It is different enough that beta readers either love it or hate it, but those who get it tell me they found the ending very moving and that it made them think more deeply about what it meant to be a woman during before the advent of birth control.
What is your favourite cake?
This is the one my daughter baked me for my 70th birthday. It was a cheesecake with a nut crust.
That is so cute! If you want to find out more about Jenny and her books, visit her Amazon page
here.
Join me next week when I'll be having a slice of cake with Richard Dee.
If you would like to take part in A Slice of Cake With... please fill in the form found
here. I'd be delighted to have you.
You can also support my writing endeavours and
buy me tea & cake - it's what makes the world go round!
