An Infamous Marriage by Susanna Fraser (Guest Post/Giveaway)

Today I would like to give a warm welcome to author, Susanna Fraser, who is joining us on tour with her book, An Infamous Marriage!

For me, a big part of the Regency Era’s appeal is its overlap with the Napoleonic Era. Of the books I’ve sold so far (three published to date, another coming in 2013), all but one has had a military hero, and even in that book, A Marriage of Inconvenience, the war is never far away from the protagonists’ minds.

My new release, An Infamous Marriage, begins with my hero, Jack Armstrong, entering a marriage of convenience partly to secure a caretaker for his ailing mother in England while he serves with his regiment in Canada. It ends at Waterloo. While most of the action takes place in the brief peace before Napoleon’s return from exile, Jack always thinks of himself as a soldier, a warrior. 

So what is it about the Napoleonic Era and soldier heroes for me? Here are my Top Five reasons:

1) Sexy men in tight-fitting, blingy uniforms. ‘Nuff said.

2) Getting to write stoic, brave, honorable heroes--in uniform.

3) The wars provide an endless supply of adventure and danger, and therefore a neverending source of plots.

4) The outsized personalities of the era. I’m no admirer of Napoleon, but for better or worse there’s never been anyone quite like him. My favorite figure of the era is Wellington--cool-headed, snarky, stoic, and brilliant--but I also love Blucher, Michel Ney, and Eugene de Beauharnais, just to name a few.

5) The world went through so much upheaval between 1789 and 1815, and I can’t help wondering what it would be like to live through it all. Reading and writing about it gives me a chance to find out.

And now a question for you--what’s your favorite historical setting to read about, and why?

I’ll be giving one copy of An Infamous Marriage to a commenter on this post in your choice of e-book format, and at the end of the tour I'll be giving a one commenter on the tour as a whole grand prize of a $50 gift certificate to their choice of Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Powell's Books. You get one entry per blog tour stop you comment upon, so check out my blog for the whole schedule! If you wish to be entered in the gift certificate drawing, include your email address formatted as yourname AT yourhost DOT com.

Northumberland, 1815
At long last, Britain is at peace, and General Jack Armstrong is coming home to the wife he barely knows. Wed for mutual convenience, their union unconsummated, the couple has exchanged only cold, dutiful letters. With no more wars to fight, Jack is ready to attempt a peace treaty of his own.
Elizabeth Armstrong is on the warpath. She never expected fidelity from the husband she knew for only a week, but his scandalous exploits have made her the object of pity for years. Now that he's back, she has no intention of sharing her bed with him—or providing him with an heir—unless he can earn her forgiveness. No matter what feelings he ignites within her…
Jack is not expecting a spirited, confident woman in place of the meek girl he left behind. As his desire intensifies, he wants much more than a marriage in name only. But winning his wife's love may be the greatest battle he's faced yet.

About the Author

Susanna Fraser wrote her first novel in fourth grade. It starred a family of talking horses who ruled a magical land. In high school she started, but never finished, a succession of tales of girls who were just like her, only with long, naturally curly and often unusually colored hair, who, perhaps because of the hair, had much greater success with boys than she ever did.Along the way she read her hometown library’s entire collection of Regency romance, fell in love with the works of Jane Austen, and discovered in Patrick O’Brian’s and Bernard Cornwell’s novels another side of the opening decades of the 19th century. When she started to write again as an adult, she knew exactly where she wanted to set her books. Her writing has come a long way from her youthful efforts, but she still tends to give her heroines great hair.Susanna lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and daughter. When not writing or reading, she goes to baseball games, watches Chopped, Castle, and The Legend of Korra, and cooks her way through an ever-growing cookbook collection.