Multi-published Author, Suzi Love

Please help me in welcoming my guest author today, multi-published author in several genres, including erotica Suzi Love. Suzi is giving away a copy of her latest release, Embracing Scandal to one lucky commenter. All you have to do to be eligible is to leave your email address.

Ella: Suzi, thank you so much for being here today. I rarely read erotica, but I truly enjoyed The Viscount’s Pleasure House.

Suzi: Oooh, thank you so much for your kind words, Ella. I’m glad you enjoyed my book.

Ella: Tell us a little about yourself and what prompted you to start writing.

Suzi: I’d always longed to have time to write books, yet when I was confined to home after a dental accident and the chance to fulfill my lifelong dream opened up, I was stunned. But I’ve always believed every dark cloud has a silver lining, so I grabbed hold of the opportunity, threw myself into learning everything I could about the craft of writing, and haven’t looked back. I love writing!

Ella: You write historical, erotic historical and medical contemporary. How did that happen?

Suzi: LOL! Yes, I write a crazy mix of genres, don’t I?
My medical stories happened because, as a nurse, I was involved in hundreds of dramatic medical situations in our Australian outback. But while red dust, kangaroos, and remote hospitals gave me loads of plot ideas for contemporary medicals, it was my years living in South Pacific countries that led to my fascination with adventurous characters and my obsession with history.
I discovered that the old saying… ‘truth is stranger than fiction’, is really true. People living in countries distant from their homelands ( England, France, Holland, Germany etc) battled disease, dealt with shipping disasters, traveled back and forth across the world, and against all the odds, survived and flourished.
The erotic part of my writing came through research into life in London during the very early years of Queen Victoria’s reign. Though people often think of the Victorian years as staid, formal, and morally upright, there was also another, and far more seedy, side of London. There had been huge population growth and London was bulging at the seams.

Brothels existed on every corner in many areas of the City and thousands of women were forced to work anywhere they could to earn enough money to feed their starving families. People of all social levels earned money through brothels, prostitution, theft etc so I wanted to show how a Viscount could be forced into not only owning a brothel but having to cater to the whims of his morally corrupt peers as a way of earning enough money to search for his lost family.

I have so much fun writing stories about extraordinary characters put into extraordinary situations. And being able to show readers that there were other parts to the Regency and early Victorian eras than fashion, balls, and indulgence. The best part about being an author is tossing large doses of romance into an eclectic mix of exotic places and exciting characters and ending up with, hopefully, a story full of emotion and excitement.

Ella: How do your story ideas come to you?

Suzi: As part of my history obsession, I’ve become a huge lover of museums. Each time I visit one, whether it’s a collection of early machinery in outback Australia, exquisite art in Russia, or the harshness of a child’s life being educated at one of London’s Ragged schools, I picture how people lived and invent some characters to inhabit that world and then, just because I like to stretch people to their fullest, I toss every drama I can think of at them and watch how they cope.

Ella: Your latest book Embracing Scandal is the first of a series. Tell us about it.

Suzi: I love the inventions, expansions, and steam engines around the 1840s in England so I asked myself… ‘How would five siblings from an upper class British family survive financially if they were thrown on hard times and only had their intelligence to save them?’

The answer? They’d learn about machinery, railways, and stock trading. Then, just to make life interesting, unscrupulous stock traders appear and threaten the family.

So my scientifically minded siblings clamored for their own love stories. Their own battles, their own romances. Sigh!

Embracing Scandal is Becca’s story. As the eldest sibling and the mathematical genius, she stirs the others to apply their intellects to save themselves when their self-absorbed father drifts away on yet another archeological dig.

Ella: Thank you so much for joining me today.

Suzi: Ella, thank you for having me. It’s been wonderful to visit your part of the world.

Ella: Without further to do here is the blurb and an excerpt of Embracing Scandal.

Embracing Scandal

Book Blurb
After Lady Rebecca Jamison, a mathematical genius, saves her family from financial ruin by secretly investing in railway stocks on the London stock exchange, a greedy syndicate, desperate for Becca’s calculations and predictions, murders her friend and threatens the Jamison family, forcing Becca to beg assistance from her childhood friend, Cayle St. Martin.

The newly titled Duke of Sherwyn has returned to London after five years on the continent extending his family’s shipping interests. He’s shunned his privileged London life and his father’s unbending attitudes, and becomes committed to employing the spying tactics he learned on the continent to help Becca indict the syndicate—and using his skills as a lover to seduce her into his bed.

But how will Cayle be able to convince Becca, a determinedly self-sufficient spinster, that he can be more to her than just a protector?

Book Excerpt

Lady Rebecca Jamison watched Cayle. Under the rules of etiquette, she must remember to address him as Your Grace or Sherwyn in public, despite knowing he’d abhorred the bowing and scraping expected by dukes, including his father.

Becca tried to judge his level of inebriation and his reaction to her news, though she was wise enough to stay out of arm’s reach. In the past, her knight in shining armour had constantly overreacted if he thought her adventures, or misadventures, placed her in harm’s way.

“Please, my dear.” The new duke’s fists unfurled as he flung his arms wide in a dramatic gesture. “Go ahead and clarify that terrifying statement.” His voice lifted another octave. “Before my hair turns completely white. Or my legs give out.”

Neither Cayle’s fury nor his towering size frightened Becca. But she was terrified that the city would awaken and the streets fill with people before he became calm and rational and listened to her plea for his help in collecting the final proof that would send at least a dozen of their peers to prison for illegal trading practices.

“Or even worse.” He voice was a low snarl as he pointed at the floor. “I misplace the contents of my heaving stomach all over the duchess’s prized carpet.”

Becca winced. For the tenth time she listed to herself the reasons she’d bravely bearded this particular panther in his lair.

To protect her family.

To secure the nest eggs saved by the fallen women at the shelter.

To save her own life.

As the new Duke of Sherwyn, Cayle was her best, or possibly only, chance to do all that and to keep her promise to Scotland Yard. She hoped he’d listen with an open mind. Hoped he’d comprehend how much danger her family and friends were in without realising how close she had come to also being murdered.

“I’d gone to Peggy’s cottage to collect some letters she’d written on behalf of our Women’s Society. The door was ajar. I knocked but Peggy didn’t answer so I went inside.”

Peggy had been sprawled across the floor, her sturdy legs protruding at odd angles from her yellowing nightgown. Her hair had been matted with blood and tangled in the strings of her dislodged nightcap and her plait had been a rusty red mess instead of a neat tail of plain brown.

“I can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see the murderer standing over Peggy’s battered body. But he runs towards me. Not away.” She shuddered and closed her eyes.

Fingers brushed her cheek. “Becca, I’ll not let anyone harm you.”

“If I’d only arrived at Peggy’s cottage a few minutes earlier.”

“Stop it. You mustn’t blame yourself.”

“How can I not? One life has already been destroyed because of me. My friend was killed. Her body discarded like a tattered rag doll.”

His bloodshot gaze narrowed on her face. “So, knowing how your mind works, you’ll try to focus the consortium on yourself, and thereby keep everyone else out of danger.” He raised a brow. “Am I correct?”

Damned man was still a mind reading menace. “You’re wrong. I’ve little wish to confront those men by myself. But neither will I allow anyone else to be hurt.”

“And who protects you from the current set of fire–breathing dragons?”

She raised her chin. “I’ve outgrown such childishness.” She lowered herself to the closest settee, a demonstration of ladylike maturity and a reprieve for her trembling knees.

Author Bio –

Suzi Love now lives in a sunny part of Australia after spending many years in developing countries in the South Pacific. Her greatest loves are traveling, anywhere and everywhere, meeting crazy characters, and visiting the Australian outback. She adores history, especially the many-layered society of the late Regency to early Victorian eras. In and around London, her titled heroes and heroines may live a privileged and gay life but Suzi also likes to dig deeper into the grittier and seamier levels of British life and writes about the heroes and heroines who challenge traditional manners, morals, and occupations, either through necessity or desire.

The Viscount’s Pleasure House

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