This week, I'm delighted to welcome Tania Crosse to my blog once again as part of her new blog tour celebrating the publication of The Dartmoor Girl and The Girl at Holly Cottage. Tania is here to introduce a character from The Darmoor Girl and next week she'll be back again to talk about The Girl at Holly Cottage.
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THE DARTMOOR GIRL – TWO CHARACTERS BLOG
When Susanna kindly invited me to feature on her ‘Two Characters Blog’, it put me in a bit of a quandary. I love all of Susanna’s books, no matter which pseudonym she is writing under, and I particularly appreciate her strongly natural characterisation. However, we discussed the matter and decided that rather than write about one of her own wonderful characters, I should look to one of the other authors I greatly admire.
With so many talented writers to choose from, I settled on a somewhat unusual character from the Cornish trilogy by Terri Nixon. The woman concerned is actually a con artist. You might wonder why I should want to bring your attention to a trickster, a criminal even, but that’s precisely why she’s so fascinating. The fact is that Leah Marshall – to give her her real name and not one of the many she uses – has a heart of gold. Originally drawn into the game by her criminal husband, she mainly uses her skills of disguise, not to mention her mastery of different accents, to cheat people who are themselves guilty of some kind of fraud. She is, in fact, a sort of interwar Robin Hood. She can either blend into the background or be quite outlandish so that at times, she’s highly amusing, sometimes simply using her talents to entertain friends. But much of the time, she’s righting wrongs or getting back at someone we feel deserves it – even if she makes some profit from it herself. As readers, we can understand why so many of the other characters love her so much.
In the final book in the trilogy, A Cornish Homecoming, Leah’s is the main story line. This time, her love of the chase and her excitement over a new challenge get her involved in something much bigger than she anticipated, and she finds herself fighting for her country – and her life – as she becomes knee-deep in a spy ring. I won’t say any more as I don’t want to give away the plot. But beneath her confident exterior, Leah hides a tragedy related to the First World War. To find out more about all the superbly drawn characters at the Fox Bay Hotel, I highly recommend reading the whole series, starting with A Cornish Inheritance.
I’d now like to tell you about a very different character in Book Eight of my Devonshire series. Set in the 1950s mainly on Dartmoor but partly in the nearby historic market town of Tavistock, The Dartmoor Girl has just been re-released by Joffe Books, having originally been published as Lily’s Journey by Allison and Busby back in 2009. While all the characters hold a dear place in my heart, I’d like to pick out the hero, Daniel Pencarrow, descendant of two families from earlier stories in the series.
We first see Daniel as a mysterious stranger at the annual fair in Princetown, the remote settlement around infamous Dartmoor Prison. It’s almost as if he wants to enjoy the event but can’t let himself and so shrinks into the background, not wanting to be seen. The next time we meet him, he’s a sullen, reluctant rescuer, sarcastic and scathing and ready to tease the heroine quite cruelly about her red hair. And yet there is something about him which I hope makes the reader want to know more. Why has this handsome young man turned into a virtual recluse, ill-tempered and ungracious towards everyone he comes into contact with? I’d like to think he’s an intriguing character who clearly holds a devastating secret.
Slowly, that secret is revealed. Daniel has in fact been on the receiving end of three acts of fate, one of which involved the most horrific trauma imaginable. He’s actually suffering from what we’d now diagnose as PTSD. I don’t want to reveal the exact cause, but suffice it to say that it went so deep into his psyche that it has changed his personality. Certain acts of heroism on his part only led to further suffering and torture, and now he has drawn a protective shield about himself to keep out all the hurt. He refuses to let anyone in to help heal him, making himself appear rude and unkind when in fact there is a strong, compassionate, intelligent, fun-loving person inside, desperate and yet unable to get out. But there is a chink in his armour, and as we slowly unpick the horrors of what he has witnessed and endured, so the butterfly gradually emerges from the chrysalis.
Daniel was a joy to create and develop. He is seen entirely through the eyes of the feisty young heroine. Lily has problems of her own and certainly doesn’t want to be involved with this obnoxious stranger. Unfortunately for her, fate has other plans and one way or another pushes them together. Neither of them wants the other’s company. They both fight against it. And yet in the end, each provides salvation for the other.
So, I hope that has whetted your appetite for two very different stories and a host of amazing, lovable characters. Once again, a huge thank you to Susanna for inviting me to join her blog.
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Tania's Twitter page
The Dartmoor Girl on Amazon
Tania Crosse was born in London, but at a young age, moved to Surrey where her love of the countryside took root. She wanted to be an author since childhood, but after obtaining a degree in French Literature, life took over. It wasn’t until her children were older that she began writing seriously. She has now had published nine historical novels set on her beloved Dartmoor, while The Street of Broken Dreams, the last of four Twentieth Century sagas set in London and the south east, won Best Saga in the 2020 awards of the Romantic Novelists’ Association. |  |
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