Coffee, Books, and a Blog with Gaelen Foley

Hi, Coffee Timers! I raise my cup of medium roast Columbian (with Half & Half) to all the ladies at Coffee Time to thank you for your kind invitation to visit with you today. Delighted to be here!

(I should warn you I am having some tech trouble today, alas, but we are going to do our best to work around it. Just…if anything weird happens to my posts, you’ll know why. The gremlins are restless today. Sorry about that.)

Well, I am Gaelen Foley, and I write darker, “adventurey” Regency Historicals for Avon. My July release is my fifteenth book. It’s called My Dangerous Duke and I’m thrilled to say it made it onto the New York Times extended list at #25 and the USA Today list at #61. With all the Big Wigs putting out their summer books in July, this seemed like a minor miracle for a medium wig like me. *g* So, that was great—as was the absolutely fabulous review that Coffee Time’s own Danielle gave my book! THANK YOU. As an author, there’s nothing better than when somebody “gets” me.

So, without further ado, let me tell you a bit about the series I’m working on and how the new book fits in.

First off, if you’ve never read one of my books, I should say that I love big, bold, sweeping stories that take you to exciting locations beyond just the drawing rooms of Mayfair and throw you into wild, life-or-death situations with incredibly high stakes, both emotionally and physically.

I particularly wanted to write My Dangerous Duke in what I think of as the “summer blockbuster” style of storytelling—big, sweeping, larger-than-life High Adventure, with spooky Gothic overtones. My Inferno Club series, and this book especially, takes the Regency world as a starting point and then goes off in an almost “Lara Croft Tomb-raider,” “National Treasure,” or “Pirates of the Caribbean” type of direction, but note there are NO paranormal elements.

The Inferno Club series, set in the Regency, involves a “band of brothers” who are lords and warriors in a secret, hereditary chivalric order formed centuries ago during the Crusades, called the Order of St. Michael the Archangel. Like their ancestors before them, they are sworn to fighting an evil, Europe-wide conspiracy similar to the Illuminati. The bad guys, known as the Prometheans, have infiltrated every court in Europe and wormed their way into positions of power, which is why aristocratic lords are needed to move in that world and take them down. To conceal their covert activities, they use the façade of a notoriously wicked gentlemen’s club of London—the Inferno Club, named after Dante’s Inferno. (Sort of like the actual Hellfire Club of Sir Francis Dashwood.)

 

Just so you know what you’re getting into, these are long, meaty, complex books with a lot going on, and because of that, I would say it is definitely better to read them in order. A lot of world-building went on in Book 1 that I did not have the space to rehash in Book 2. Read Book 1 first (My Wicked Marquess) to see the full story on how the Order and the Prometheans came to exist and to really get the rules of the road for how their secret world of this shadow-war works and where they are in their battle against the Prometheans.

The focus, of course, is always on the romance, but there are multiple subplots going on at once, scenes in different countries, and characters from several different levels of society (the Dickensian “low world” of 19th c. England, not just the drawing rooms and ballrooms of the ton). With such a broad canvas, there is a lot of intrigue, action, and adventure (and a considerable amount of sex) in these books along with the romance. So, hey, in this economy, you are going to get a lot more bang for your buck! *g*

In Book 1 of the series, My Wicked Marquess (2009) the guys’ team leader, Max, the Marquess of Rotherstone, has to choose a bride with the standing in Society to repair his family’s tainted image. Max is very shrewd and calculating, but he’s also the ultimate cynic. He’s seen it all and is extremely jaded; his smart-ass sense of humor covers up a lot of woundedness. He also happens to be something of a control freak, which makes him an effective team leader and spy, but rather a handful for any woman who has to live with him, LOL. He wants what he wants when he wants it, and what he decides he wants is Miss Daphne Starling. Boy, is she in for a chase. *g* When he decides she’s the right bride for him, that’s it. She just doesn’t know it yet.

Max thinks he just wants a bride of convenience, but what he really needs is love. Don’t they all! He’s so tired of the fight and has sort of lost his conviction about what the hell are they fighting for in the first place. For him, it has boiled down to remaining in it for the sake of his brother warriors.

What I like about Max is that he’s funny, too, with kind of an edgy attitude and a devious mind. Of course, the girl he ends up with, the earnest, no-nonsense, and proper Daphne Starling, has the pleasure of bringing him to his knees by slowly breaking through all his cynical defenses to heal the despair that’s accrued behind his callous attitude. He rediscovers his passion and remembers the point of it all when he falls hard for her, i.e. Love is the thing worth fighting for above all.

She also teaches him to relax a bit and shows him he has to respect her will, too, or there’s no deal. He’s a much happier guy by the end of the book. J

By the time Book 2 opens, Max is married off, and now it’s Rohan’s turn to fall in love in My Dangerous Duke. Rohan Kilburn, the Duke of Warrington, aka “the Beast,” is pure alpha, the toughest, hardest, coldest warrior on the team: hero most likely to open a can of Regency whup-ass, LOL, or as one reviewer described him, “Rohan is large and in charge.” (That cracks me up.) He is a no-nonsense warrior.

While Max is the team leader, (and the third guy, Jordan, Lord Falconridge, is the code expert and cool customer, the consummate gentleman spy) Rohan often functions as the top assassin to be sent in when a particularly nasty villain needs to be eliminated. Of course, “a man has to vent his tensions somehow” (as it says in Chapter 2) so Rohan likes to blow off steam in bed with pretty much any woman he can get his hands on. LOL. He looooooves sex as much as he loves a good brawl, but although half a dozen women are in love with him, which he just finds aggravating, he keeps an emotional distance and makes no promises to anyone. (All my guys have issues, lol.) He’s got too much going on to bother with a relationship, plus there’s the matter of a worrisome family curse that may be mere superstition or could be real—he’s not sure—but he’s not taking any chances, because it dooms the Warrington men to kill the women they love, and he’s already much too good at killing as it is. 

With a castle in Cornwall, one of Rohan’s main responsibilities is keeping an eye on the smugglers’ ring that runs secret communiqués for the Order. They have gotten themselves into trouble with the Coast Guard, however, and so it’s his job to go and deal with the trouble they’re in. They know he’s going to be furious at them, and they also know his, shall we say, tendencies, so they figure, what better way to sooth his fury and hopefully escape the worst of his wrath by throwing the wolf a bone.

The cowering smugglers offer him a girl as a gift when he arrives, a “fine young bed-warmer on a cold winter’s night” to appease his fury. He is highly pleased with this offering.  

But the girl, Kate, is not on board. She’s a kidnap victim who’s been drugged to make her temporarily compliant, and dressed up in tartish fashion to catch his eye. By the time the laudanum wears off the next morning, however, Rohan has got a little hellion on his hands and her only thought is escape.

Unfortunately for Kate, she’s got worse enemies to worry about than either the smugglers who were hired by Certain People to abduct her, or the formidable stranger she’s been given to as a gift. It turns out she needs his protection, so she has no choice but to remain at his castle until they can figure out who’s really after her and what is going on.

Rohan still wants to get her into bed and cannot figure out for the life of him how come this one female continues to reject him. Soon his little “present” has thrown his whole household into chaos, not too mention she’s discovered a chink in the armor that he has so long worn around his heart.

 

I just turned in my completed manuscript for Book 3 of the Inferno Club series, to be called My Irresistible Earl. It’s coming out in April, 2011.

This will be the story of Jordan Lennox, the Earl of Falconridge, who’s the cool, gentlemanly one on the team. He’s the consummate English gentleman-spy, and he’s tasked with unmasking an enemy agent who has infiltrated the Regent’s set inside Carlton House. (All those real-history eccentrics that used to hang out with the Prinny. What a hilarious bunch of nuts they were. I had a blast researching and writing about them.)

Jordan’s mission brings him into contact with “the one who got away,” Mara, his first love. They met when they were young, but life interfered and she ended up marrying someone else. Now Mara is an elegant Society widow and they have a second chance to rediscover their first love. Unfortunately, they’ve got a lot of anger toward each other they’ve got to resolve and broken trust that needs to be rebuilt. But they are intensely attracted to each other in spite of all their hurt and baggage from the past, so that’s fun. *g*

My wonderful editor at Avon is reading My Irresistible Earl now. I am keeping my fingers crossed as I await her feedback on whatever revisions need to be made. I actually like revising, because my editor gives me really good, solid feedback for how to make the book the best it can possibly be.

Before I wrap this up, I wanted to mention that I have a lot of useful Regency history and writing craft articles posted on my website at www.GaelenFoley.com. Aspiring writers often tell me they find these very useful, especially my extensive Regency Glossary. Visit anytime! I am also on Facebook and MySpace now, so look me up if you’re on there, too, and I’ll see you on the net. In the meanwhile, I hope you guys will check out my Inferno Club books and that you enjoy them!

If anyone’s going to RWA in Disneyworld in Orlando, I will be there! Please don’t hesitate to stop me or just come up to me and say hi. I love meeting my readers!

On Wed. July 28, I’ll be giving the Keynote Speech for the Beau Monde Regency Specialty Chapter at lunchtime, followed by the mega-sized annual Literacy Signing in the ballrooms of the Swan and Dolphin Disney Resort from 5:30-7:30 P.M.

I’ll also be attending the “R.A.W.” Readers’ Appreciation Weekend from Thurs Sept 9 – Sun Sept 12 at the Pullman Hotel in Huntington, West Virginia. Great weekend getaway “for the girls,” hang out with other romance fans and authors. Pajama Party, Mask Ball, camaraderie with fellow book lovers! For more info, see here. Book soon before it fills up!

Well, ladies, that’s all for now! Many thanks again to KarenneLyn, Danielle, and the whole Coffee Crew for inviting me to guest blog today. It’s been fun! 🙂