Author Interview: Trapped At the Altar – Jane Feather

We have Jane Feather with us today chatting about her release, TRAPPED AT THE ALTAR.  Help me in welcoming Jane to Cocktails and Books.

Tell us about yourself.

I live in DC, love cats , travel a lot, spend a few months a year in the UK, which I still think of as home. I spend a lot of time and energy when I’m not working on getting my family all in one place for a couple of weeks, they live variously in the UK, Philadelphia and Malaysia so family reunions are particularly important.  

What three things about you might surprise your readers?

I’m not in the least romantic, I don’t read romance novels, and I have a rather cynical view of life.

Is there a genre(s) that you think “I might like to write one of those.”?

One day I’d like to write a really intricate, complex thriller.

Tell us about [release associated with this interview].

It’s a historical romance set in Restoration London at the court of Charles 11. The protagonists are cousins, members of the same renegade family outlawed for political reasons after the execution of Charles 1. Childhood friends, they are forced into marriage by the elders of the family in order to achieve the family’s political rehabilitation and reinstatement at court. The heroine is in love with another man and resists all feelings of anything but friendship for the hero, until he persuades her to see the light.

Where did the idea for the storyline come from?

I’ve always wanted to use the Monmouth Rebellion, Judge Jeffries and the Bloody Assizes as background to a novel. This one started out with that in mind but got a little sidetracked. I  also have to acknowledge a debt to R.D Blackmoor’s Lorna Doone. As someone once said, there are only so many stories in the world, and they’ve all been written at least once.

What do you think readers will like/love about [hero and heroine]?

I hope they’ll find Ivor as sexy and compelling as I think he is, and I hope they’ll respond to Ariadne’s fierce independence and sympathize with her on the sometimes rough road to understanding what love and trust really mean.

What was your favorite scene from the book?

Ari’s seduction of Ivor with some unusually decadent props.

Who are some of your book boyfriends?  What draws you to them?

The Frenchman in Daphne Du Maurier’s Frenchman’s Creek. I am always drawn to competent men, who are absolutely at home in their enviroment but are also unconventional risk-takers.

If you had to pick a favorite cocktail of choice, what would it be?  (It can be non-alcoholic too)

“I dearly love a martini, but only one at the most, with two I’m under the table, with three I’m under the host.” (Courtesy of Dorothy Parker)

What’s next for you?

I’m working on a historical romance set in London at the end of the 18^th century, at the close of the French Revolution and the start of the Napoleonic Wars. It’s very fertile ground for an exciting and passionate love story with plenty of spying, intrigue and danger. 

The first in an all-new, sizzling historical romance series from New York Times bestselling author Jane Feather.

Torn between a true love and family duty…

Ariadne “Ari” Carfax has never been one to play by the rules; she’s an heiress to the Carfax family, banished from London when Oliver Cromwell seized the throne from King Charles, who has since gained notoriety for pillaging, thieving, and ruling the Carfax Valley with an iron glove. All too soon, Ari finds herself in her family’s legendary vise, forced into a marriage to Ivor Chalfont, Ari’s childhood friend and confidante, against her wishes. 

While the Carfax family has only its own interest at heart—a union between the Catholic Carfaxes and Protestant Chalfonts will guarantee the Carfaxes’ reinstatement at London court, and the rehabilitation of their noble name—Ari cannot bear the thought of being separated from her secret lover/poet, Gabriel. She vows to fight her family—and Ivor—every step of the way, even when forced into the marital ceremony at her own grandfather’s wake, in a treacherous coup de etat that leaves her wed to another, and eternally broken-hearted.

Sending Gabriel to the temporary safety of Lord Monmouth’s outpost at The Hague in Scotland, Ari resigns herself to her new life as Lady Ivor Chalfont—at least until the newlyweds travel to London, and she can escape her new husband and reunite with Gabriel. As the two make their preparations to travel, however, Ari finds herself entertaining entirely uncharacteristic thoughts about her new husband: she finds that she likes him as perhaps more than a friend, after all. Not wanting to be disloyal to Gabriel, but simultaneously more and more attracted to Ivor, Ari can’t help but give into the physical pull between her and her new husband, and the two embark on a tentative, post-marital courtship that just might hold the seeds of love…until, that is, Gabriel spots Ari in London and makes it his mission to get her back. Ari is caught between a lover who might be better left in the past, and a husband who she just might be able to love; who will win Ari’s heart?

Set in 1600s England during the tumultuous Monmouth Rebellion, this is the epic story of what happens when the one thing we think we can trust—our hearts—turns out to be the most duplicitous.

Jane Feather was born in Cairo, Egypt, and grew up in New Forest, in the south of England. She began her highly successful career after she and her family moved to Washington D.C. in 1981. She now has over ten million books in print.

Has also written under pseudonym of Claudia Bishop (books written in 1984)