Welcome to Get Lost in a Story and to our special guest, Elizabeth Essex!
Elizabeth Essex is the award-winning author of the critically acclaimed Reckless Brides series of historical romances for St. Martin’s Press. She is the award-winning author of the critically acclaimed Reckless Brides series of historical romances for St. Martin’s Press. Her books have been nominated for numerous awards, including the Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence, the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, and RWA’s prestigious RITA Award, and have made Top-Ten lists from Romantic Times, The Romance Reviews and Affaire de Coeur Magazine, and Desert Isle Keeper status at All About Romance. Her fifth book, A BREATH OF SCANDAL, was awarded Best Historical in the Reader’s Crown 2013.
When not rereading Jane Austen, mucking about in her garden, or simply messing about with boats, Elizabeth writes, and has done so for over twenty years. She graduated from Hollins College with a BA in Classics and Art History, and then earned her MA in Nautical Archaeology from Texas A&M University. While she loved the life of an underwater archaeologist, she has found her true calling writing historical romance full of passion, daring and adventure.
Vicki: Hi, Ms. Essex and welcome to Get
Lost In a Story.
Elizabeth: Thanks,
Vicki. I love visiting with the whole GLIAS crew here!
Vicki: You have taken your readers on some
big adventures in your Reckless Brides series. Where are we going this time?
Elizabeth: We are going to a
deserted island in the South Pacific! How’s that for adventurous? Many readers
may already know that long before I ever put pen to paper, or fingers to
keyboard as a romance novelist, I was a nautical archaeologist—an underwater
archaeologist who studied and excavated
shipwrecks. Blame it on late night
readings of Robert Louis Stevenson’s
Treasure Island and
Kidnapped,
or on too many National Geographic Jacques Cousteau specials as a kid, but I
have long wanted to combine my archaeologist past with my romance novelist
present by writing a shipwreck story. So with A SCANDAL TO REMEMBER I got to
write a romantic adventure of shipwreck and survival. (Was their survival in
doubt? This is a romance novel, after all. :) )
Vicki: How much of your own experience and
background as an archaeologist ended up in the story?
Elizabeth: A lot! One of the
greatest pleasures in writing A SCANDAL TO REMEMBER, was that I not only got to
depict the lethal drama of the shipwreck, but I also got to strand my hero and
heroine alone together on a deserted South Pacific atoll. This was familiar
territory for me, because I had spent many field seasons much the same way, in
remote, inaccessible camps, or on uninhabited islands in various parts of the
world.
Vicki: Oh my, Ms. Essex! Being in a remote
camp sounds a tad dangerous. Your heroine, Jane Burke, must be very intrepid!
Elizabeth: Jane
is a lot more intrepid that I ever was—after all I had some modern
conveniences, like a satellite phone for emergencies, and an entire crew to
keep me safe and fed—my hero and heroine have only themselves. In A SCANDAL TO
REMEMBER, Jane Burke is a conchologist, a bluestocking scientist in a time when
women scientists were not the norm. She succeeds against the disapproval of
both her family and society because she simply does her job better than anyone
else. It was really fun to try to create a heroine who was a lot like the
archaeologist I used to be—determined and really well-prepared. I had Jane
spend hours and hours planning out the details of her field project, and
carefully packing her fragile equipment for transport, because that is exactly
what I used to do—plan excavations and purchase equipment, repair mosquito
netting and seal tarpaulins, test and ship scuba equipment for an entire camp
full of working archaeologists and students for the long May to September field
season.
But
the thing that I really have in common with Jane Burke is that I thought that
working in my chosen field on a remote island was the best job in the whole
wide world, and the most fun imaginable!
Vicki: And obviously, you translated all
your wonderful experiences into your books. Tell us about your hero. Is he another
of your Royal Navy officers?
Elizabeth: You
know me so well, Vicki. He is! Lieutenant Charles Dance is a character who made
his first appearance in the Reckless Bride’s world as a midshipman in the first
book of the series, ALMOST A SCANDAL. Now, in A SCANDAL TO REMEMBER he is in
charge of the run-down ship that will take an expedition of the Royal
Philosophical Society, including our bluestocking lady scientist, Miss Jane
Burke, to the Islands of the South Pacific. Unfortunately for our hero,
nothing, with the exception of the surprisingly lovely Miss Burke, goes right.
Storm, sabotage and shipwreck ensue!
A wee excerpt:
Dance awoke to
the terrifying feeling that he was alone. Empty and depleted.
Jane was gone.
The clawing pressure building in his chest might have felt
like panic, if he allowed it to be. He lurched to his feet, only to find
himself unsteady. He raised his hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the
watery gray sunlight.
The yellowish
cast to the western sky that had obscured the sun for days still made him feel
uneasy. He’d been at sea for more years than he liked to count, and sailed the
Pacific twice before, and he’d never seen the like.
But the truth of
the matter was that his unease was not due to the strange weather, but from the
fact that Jane Burke, who had clung to him as tenaciously as one of her
precious barnacles for uncounted nights, was gone.
She was nowhere
nearby. She was not within his sight.
“Jane.” He
staggered toward the boat, hoping that she had taken shelter within its
familiar confines. But the pinnace was empty. More than empty—items were
missing. The line that had been the main sheet, controlling the sail, was gone,
as were many of the tightly packed supplies. “Jane!” he bellowed.
That was
panic, cracking his voice wide open like a boarding ax.
“Dance!”
Dance turned a
full circle to see her running—tearing up the beach at him as if a tribe of
spinster-scientist-eating cannibals were after her.
No. There were
no cannibals.
And she was
smiling.
She was running
toward him as if she hadn’t just spent however many days it had been in a small
boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Her feet were bare in the sand. He
could see her small toes, and her white, white ankles and shins where she had
tied her skirts up to keep them out of the water. Her hair was streaming loose
on the breeze.
Everything that
had heretofore seemed so buttoned up and battened down was coming gloriously
undone. The drawn, coughing girl of the boat was gone, and left this glowing
creature in her place.
When she reached
him she held out her hand and offered him a handful of shells, as if she were
giving him rubies and pearls, or manna from heaven. Or better yet, carpentry
tools with which he might fix the broken boat.
He looked again
at the contents of her outstretched palm. Shells. But she was beaming at him as
if she were ecstatically happy.
Happy.
Shipwrecked only God knew where in the middle of the ocean.
“It’s
unbelievable.” She was breathless with her joy. “You won’t believe what I
found. Tridacna gigas. Giant bivalves. Clams as big as a breadbasket.”
She spread her arms to indicate the monstrous size. “And more than that. A
Venus comb murex, Murex pecten, and another murex, I think, but that
I’ve never seen before but it’s definitely a gastropod mollusk with a very wide
operculum. And this whelk of the Triton type that I’ve never seen
anywhere but is definitely some sort of Cabestana. Oh, Dance. It’s—”
Dance thought
her face would split in two with the width of her smile.
And then she
hurtled herself into his arms, wrapping her arms around his back, and sighing
into his chest. “Oh, Dance. It’s heaven.”
Heaven.
Impossible.
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tomorrow ANGI hosts
JODI VAUGHN
Elizabeth: What about you? Do you think you could survive on an uninhabited island with a group of people? Or how about with just your one and only? Would the two of you, and your love survive?
