Can love spring from deception? The Schoolmaster’s Daughter a Clean Regency Romance by Naomi Laeuchli Book Tour with Guest Post & Giveaway

 THE SCHOOLMASTER'S DAUGHTER

Naomi Laeuchli

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GENRE: Regency Romance

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BLURB:

Deep in debt and desperate for a solution, Julius Claydon knows that marrying a wealthy woman is his only hope. When he meets the beautiful and rich Clara Haughton in Bath, he believes she could be his salvation, but there's one obstacle in his path: Lydia Cray, Clara's sharp-witted and penniless companion.

When Lydia quickly sees through his fortune-hunting motives, Julius proposes an alliance. He will help secure her future if she helps him secure Clara's heart.

But Lydia is not all she appears to be, and she has a plan of her own: to teach him a lesson he won't soon forget. But her scheming soon leads to unforeseen consequences for them both.

Can love spring from deception?

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EXCERPT

He had reached them now and was smiling down at her. “Miss Cray. You look lovely tonight.”

“Thank you.”

She was dimly aware that he was bowing to Clara and greeting her as well. But while he must, in the interests of politeness, have looked away from herself at some point, it didn’t feel like it. It felt as if his eyes never truly left hers. Which made it unmistakable who he was addressing when he asked, “Might I have the pleasure of this dance?”

Later that night she would look back and think it strange that he had asked her to dance before Clara, that he had barely paid Clara more attention than what was demanded by common civility. But now she simply held out her hand to him, beaming at him and nodded, finding words curiously difficult to form.

The music had changed to a waltz as he led her out onto the dance floor. She felt a curious sensation somewhere north of her stomach as his arm wrapped around her waist and he began to lead her.

He truly was graceful, as he smiled down at her and the pair twirled through the steps and the music.

This close, she could see the individual flecks of grey hairs in amongst the dark, which she found strangely endearing. The lines on his face seemed a little deeper under the candlelight and she felt a strange impulse to reach up and run her fingers across them.

His eyes, though, were a clear deep blue, and she suspected they held the exact same youthfulness and brightness that they had had on the day he was born. In some mysterious way, her instincts told her they always would. Those same eyes were smiling down warmly into her own, and she blushed a little but held the gaze steady.

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Guest Post:

Five Pros and Cons to Writing in the Regency Romance Genre 

 

Pro: No cell phones! No internet! No pesky Google for characters to look each other up on and put an end to the plot before it’s even started. 

Con: The eternal question of: ‘Did they have that in the regency era?’ 

 

Pro: The many, many social occasions you can tap into when you want characters to interact. The world is also smaller. It doesn’t feel as much like a coincidence when two characters run into each other in the park, as it might if two characters encounter one another on the streets of New York City. 

Con: Trying not to make characters, or the narration, sound too modern. I don’t always succeed. But it’s not just in the language and the way they talk that you have to keep an eye out for, but also in the way they think. I don’t want to just write modern characters and plop them into a historical setting. 

Pro: Balls! I cannot tell you how much I love a good ball scene in a regency romance. Character dancing, being taken down to supper, the music, the candlelight, the dresses! The hero and heroine dancing, exchanging conversation when the steps bring them close together… It’s intimate, elegant, and mesmerizing. 

 Con: Readers won’t always know what you’re talking about. Not everyone picking up the book will be as equally familiar with the era, language, and setting. It can be hard sometimes to know what you have to explain, and how to do so in a way that feels natural, and what can be understood in context. 

 

Pro: I never have to write a door answering scene if I don’t want to. I hate having to write the doorbell ringing or someone knocking, then going through the whole rigmarole of the door being answered and the caller being led into the house. Here: the butler can just step into the parlor to announce someone. 

Con: You have to name that butler and remember that name or you’ll be scrolling back a 100 pages looking for the last time he announced someone. 

 

Pro: The tropes that come with this genre from the rake or fortune hunter to the penniless dependent or reluctant wallflower. The tropes of the genre are so fun to play with. They often put characters in challenging situations right off the bat, with situations harder to resolve because of their stations in life. I love that drama but I also love moments when characters stand against society or choose with their hearts rather than their heads, and regency romance offers so many opportunities for that. 

Con: There is some prejudice against the genre. There can be a preconceived notion that books in this genre are inferior and less worthy of time 

 

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Naomi Laeuchli has lived overseas in nine different countries on three different continents where her family was posted with the American Foreign Service. In November 2012 she moved from the Democratic Republic of the Congo back to the states and currently lives in Arizona with five horses. She works as a freelance writer and part time at the local library. She has written several interactive stories for Choice of Games, Tales, and Dorian.

https://www.amazon.com/Schoolmasters-Daughter-Naomi-Laeuchli/dp/B0D9SKC3D7 

ON KINDLE UNLIMITED

https://nplwrites.wordpress.com/

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GIVEAWAY

The author will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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