Bronwyn's Writing and More

Marriages of Convenience are the featured topic today at HEA, a romance blog carried by USA Today.  Bittersweet news though:  Yay! The column today features many of the current Marriage of Convenience releases, including Marriage Deal with the Viscount.  But Sadness: Dec. 31 is the last day for the blog.  I've posted the link here, so check it out and start putting together your 2019 reading list, there are some fabulous titles and authors listed here. https://bit.ly/2Ar4iJP   Bronwyn

Thanks for joining us for Day 5 of the Days Between blog post countdown to the North American release, Jan. 1, 2019 of Marriage Deal with the Viscount.  Today, I've got a fun word search based on characters, places, and events featured in the story. Marriage Deal with the Viscount B T X E O O W C M S T Q L D W A N R O T C I V I E B E I A D C O L R A C N A I G U V T N R K M T O Z I P D I N O E T E A G D F E R T D I A R R S A D R A E S U S E O M C P S L U W E M I T A R R M E R N P Z N O V M P G F L E E O N A I X T C E O S A R K T O M C O V C O C Y N O W I E F P A O V T H N O O R F O Y L Y D V I S C O U N T I I O M L I L H E L E N A A S S A L G E A C I S U T I T L G M A H S E R T E N E K U D L A F I S H I N G I C G R I V E R ALPACA BACKGAMMON CECILIA CONALL COWDEN DIVORCE DUKE EMMANUEL EVERARD FISHING FREDDIE GIANCARLO GREYLING HELENA ITALY PICNIC PIEDMONT RIVER SALT SIR SOFIA SOMERSET TAUNTON TITUS TONE TRESHAM TURIN VICTOR VISCOUNT WATERPROOF WOOL...

One of the themes in the book is divorce, so I thought it would be interesting to say something about divorce in Italy, where Sofia's marriage takes place.  The 19th century in general sees some early periods of an uptick for divorce legislation throughout Europe.  By 1806 the Codice Civile made divorce available to the European peninsula. By the 1830s, when Italy had dissolved back into independent principalities, Piedmont King, Carlos, allowed divorce among non-Catholics. Roderick Phillips writes in his book, "Untying the Knot; a  Short History of Divorce," that the Piedmont's positioning in a national movement for Italian of unification might have created a scenario where this divorce law was more widely adopted, but those hopes were quelled when his son, Victor Emmanuel II took the throne in 1852. Victor Emmanuel II abolishes divorce. These dates are important to Sofia's story line. When the book opens, it's 1854. She's been divorced and living in Lon...

Alpaca in Britain! It's a thing, really it is. The previous post focused on the heroine's situation, this post will focus on the hero and the backdrop for his story. Viscount Taunton, Conall Everard, is a man down on his luck. His father has died. He has inherited and discovered years worth of debt his father had kept from the family. Conall has to redeem the family coffers in order to afford his sister, Cecilia's Season next year, and his younger brother, Freddie's, education and of course, the estate itself. All eyes are looking to him for leadership. He is a product of a more modern upbringing than say, a Regency hero. Having come of age in the 1840s, and into his inheritance in the 1850s, he sees the times changing and with them the lifestyle of the peerage. He recognizes that a closed system will atrophy without any newness brought into it. It is no longer enough to live off rents of tenant farmers. He needs something more proactive, less dependent on the weath...

The place where it happens!  Marriage Deal with the Viscount  primarily takes place in Taunton, located in Somerset in the southwesterly part of England. Taunton is noted for its wool industry, as mentioned in the previous post, so today, I thought it would be interesting to share a little of that history.  The River Tone runs through Taunton and lent its water source to the wool industry over the centuries. Today, the River Tone is also known for its fishing. The town is chartered in 904 AD By the 13th century there is a fulling mill there for wool By the 15th century, wool is being exported to France By the late 16th century, wool is being exported to Africa In Conall's time, Taunton proved progressive in other ways too, adding gaslights, laying out gardens, and greenspaces, building an enormous amount of churches and a hospital, making it a great backdrop for Sofia's more progressive dreams of social equality. It was also a large enough town/city to have a ...

Happy 'Days Between,' (as the days between Christmas and New Year are often known).  January,  2019 celebrates the release of the first book in my 2019 4 book series, Allied at the Altar.   Each story features, (as you might guess) a marriage of convenience, but each story has a secret little twist to it that makes it slightly different than a traditional marriage of convenience (or MOC) romance. https://www.harlequin.com/shop/books/9781488047015_a-marriage-deal-with-the-viscount.html The series is set in the mid-1850's, making it a Victorian series, and that, too, adds it's own twist to things. I chose this era because of the back drop of innovation and changes in class and gender status that it offered the story lines as well as some historic changes in marriage laws not only in England but in parts of Europe as well. The first book, Marriage Deal with the Viscount, focuses on a divorced English woman who had made a 'tragic' marriage abroad and has now re...