This week I am delighted to welcome my friend Jane Cable back to my blog to talk about the cover of her forthcoming novel, The Forgotten Maid, which is the first in her Cornish Echoes series of dul timeline stories, written for Sapere. It will be published on August 3rd and can be pre-ordered on Amazon.
* * * *
There was so much that could have gone wrong with the cover of The Forgotten Maid, and being the first book of my Cornish Echoes series for Sapere Books there was a great deal at stake as it would set the tone for the rest.
The Cornish Echoes books are dual timelines set in the early nineteenth century and the present day. Each one is centred on a great house and the hidden stories of the people who lived there, blending the present and the past in haunting tales of mystery and love. |  |
The early years of the nineteenth century were at the heart of Cornwall’s economic heyday, a fascinating period when Truro rivalled Bath for style; fabulous houses and forbidding mine chimneys sprang up around the county; and smuggling was rife. An exciting time, as Winston Graham perfectly understood when he set his Poldark novels in this era. But in the world of romantic fiction the period carries the Regency tag with all the stiff formality of high society – and a very definite style of book cover.
While writing the book of course I had to become immersed in the ways of Regency society but I knew Cornish Echoes would be a million miles from Georgette Heyer or Julia Quinn. And when Sapere decided the titles of the first two books would be set firmly in their genre, I began to worry perhaps the overall impression given could be misleading.
Which is why I love the cover so very much. It’s modern. Really modern. And that balances the Regency style of the title perfectly. The girl on the beach says holiday read and Cornwall; the way she looks over the sparkling sea hints at loneliness and mystery. Is she waiting? Or has she indeed been forgotten?
In the book I describe the glorious north coast of Cornwall where the story plays out, with its cliffs and coves, its wide expanses of sand at low tide, and the changing moods and colours of the sea. And here’s a photograph of one of my locations. The fact the cover captures it perfectly is just another reason for me to fall head over heels in love with it.
* * * *
Blurb:
Two centuries apart, two lonely women seeking a place to call home....
Cornwall, 2015
Nomadic project manager Anna Pritchard has arrived in the village of Porthnevek to oversee the construction of a trendy new glamping site. But with many members of the local community strongly opposed to the development, she quickly finds herself ostracised and isolated.
Seeking to ease her loneliness, Anna begins voluneteering at a nearby National Trust house in Trelissick, once owned by the aristocratic Daniell family. Anna soon feels her attachment to both Porthnevek and Trelissick deepening, and as she spends more and more time steeped in local history, it seems that the past and the present are beginning to collide.
Belgium, 1815
After losing her brother in the Battle of Waterloo, French army seamstress Thérèse Rugel is taken to London by war artist Thomas Chalmers, becoming his reluctant muse. But Thérèse is soon sent to Cornwall as a lady's maid to Elizabeth Daniell, a kindly relative of the Chalmers family.
Able to speak only a little English - and with the other servants suspicious of her - Thérèse feels lost and alienated. And when she discovers her brother may still be alive, she must decide whether to continue with her new life in England or brave the dangerous journey back to her homeland...
What became of Thérèse? Can Anna unearth the ghosts of the past?
And has she finally found where she belongs...?
Make A Comment
Comments (4)