- The Seduction of Lord Stone: The Dashing Widows Book 1.
Blurb:
For this reckless widow, love is the most dangerous game of all.
Caroline, Lady Beaumont, arrives in London seeking excitement after ten dreary years of marriage and an even drearier year of mourning. That means conquering society, dancing like there’s no tomorrow, and taking a lover to provide passion without promises. Promises, in this dashing widow’s dictionary, equal prison. So what is an adventurous lady to do when she loses her heart to a notorious rake who, for the first time in his life, wants forever?
Devilish Silas Nash, Viscount Stone is in love at last—with a beautiful, headstrong widow bent on playing the field. Worse, she’s enlisted his help to set her up with his disreputable best friend. No red-blooded man takes such a challenge lying down, and Silas schemes to seduce his darling into his arms, warm, willing and besotted. But will his passionate plots come undone against a woman determined to act the mistress, but never the wife?
Over to Anna...
Hi Love
Cats! Hi in particular to my hostess today, the fabulous Sharon Archer! Thank
you for having me as your guest today to talk about my new digital novella The Seduction of Lord Stone: The Dashing
Widows Book 1.
I know a lot
of authors put together soundtracks for their books, with inspirational songs to
get them into the writing mood. I don’t do that, although I do like to work with
instrumental music playing – words put me off my game.
But every so
often a song pops up that acts as a theme for a character and I can’t get it
out of my head.
To give you
an example, in Midnight’s Wild Passion
(Avon 2011), the song that fitted the action was Muse’s Undisclosed Desires. If you’ve read that book, you’ll know that
both the hero and heroine are living a lie in many ways. Only when they fall in
love and give in to their “undisclosed desires” can they get their happy
ending.
The song
fitting the story thing happened again recently while I was writing my new digital
novella, The Seduction of Lord Stone.
This is the first in my Dashing Widows series and it’s out 1st
September from all good e-tailers at the bargain price of 99 cents.
Except, in
TSOLS’s case, it was two songs.
So here in
musical terms is a description of what my hero and heroine need to resolve
before they can walk off into the sunset together.
Beautiful,
wayward, reckless Caroline, Lady Beaumont, in London for the season after a
very dull year of mourning for a husband she didn’t love:
All I Wanna Do Is Have Some Fun – Sheryl Crow
Dashing,
rakish, clever Silas Nash, Viscount Stone (yeah, he might find himself seduced
somewhere in this story – hate to include spoilers!), patiently conducting a
subtle courtship of his skittish beloved:
When I Fall in Love, It Will Be Forever – Nat King Cole
Whatever the
case for my bewildered hero and heroine, the writer had some fun with this
story, anyway. Silas is one of those heroes who just seems to get more and more
entangled in disasters as he pursues Caroline, while she keeps dancing one step
ahead of him.
It was mean
to laugh at his dilemmas – but I DID!
Until, of
course, he turns the tables on Caroline and catches her. Which is when I can
promise you that Silas and Caroline BOTH have some fun! And yanno, there might
just be some falling in love forever going on there too. So the two songs end
up playing in perfect harmony!
 |
| Anna and Sharon |
Let’s talk favourite songs. Do you have one? Does it have any particular associations for you? I’ve got a download of The Seduction of Lord Stone (international) for one lucky commenter.
You can read an excerpt from The Seduction of Lord Stone here:
Buy links:
You can visit Anna on social
media:
- at her Website:
- on Facebook:
- and on Twitter: @AnnaCampbellOz
Woohoo Anna
ReplyDeleteHuge congrats on the release and thank you this one has just fallen onto my kindle and I can't wait to dive into it :) I do love your stories.
Oh favourite songs there are so many that bring back memories for let me see Rod Stewart's Tonight's The Night was a big hit just as we got married back in 1977'then there is To Sir With Love that was played for us girls on our last day in school many years ago LOL
Again huge congrats
Have Fun
Helen
Hey Helen! I know you'll thoroughly enjoy Anna's latest story!
DeleteTwo great songs you've listed - there's something really haunting about To Sir With Love, isn't there!
Helen, thanks for swinging by. I hope you enjoy Lord Stone! He was a really nice hero to write. I absolutely love To Sir with Love - and Lulu sings it beautifully. Great choice of songs.
DeleteWelcome, welcome to the LoveCats, Anna! I'm on the road so I'm going to be an absentee host for most of the day but I just wanted to say that it's fab to have you visit with your gorgeous new story! I'm more that a little smitten with the divine Silas!
ReplyDeleteI'll check in later in the day for a chat!
Oh and I meant to say, I have a song that really spoke to me for one of my heroes. It's a country and western and gets absolutely no air time but I still remember the first time I heard it - sent shivers up my spine! It's Terri Gibbs with Somebody's Knocking.
DeleteSharon, thanks so much for having me as your guest today. I can't complain about you travelling seeing it's bringing you up to visit me! So glad you had a crush on Silas. I sure did when I was writing it!
DeleteI remember you talking about Somebody's Knocking. It's great when that absolutely right song turns up, isn't it?
Anna! We're back in the land of connection! And I have to tell you it's been the MOST dramatic 36 hours I've had in a long long loooooong time! In fact, I predict I will:
Delete1/ be talking your ear off about it when we arrive and
2/ I think these events will be my next month's blog!
Love that premise, Anna. This book is on my list of books to download. As for favourite songs, I don't really have one in particular, though I am a sucker for Sailing by Rod Stewart. Showing my age? :)
ReplyDeleteSue, I love Sailing. I"m old enough to remember it being a theme for the Falklands War! Thanks for having me as your guest today - and thanks for saying you're looking forward reading TSOLS!
DeleteSue, Sailing is another gorgeous Rod Stewart number! Actually, Rod's doing well in our favourite song mentions!
DeleteGosh, what a fabulous cover, Anna! That dress is divine!
ReplyDeleteFavourite song...that depends on my mood, the situation, whats just played on the radio in the car.... :-) I for damn sure can't choose just one!
I'm a huge country fan so a lot of my favs come from that genre. But a recent one I loved was All About That Bass by Meghan Trainor. As a woman with significant bass I loved the positive messages!
Amy, isn't that cover gorgeous? I've got onto a great designer who does them for me and her work is brilliant! I love All About the Bass (she's got a new one that's more like a ballad and is great too). It's such an ear worm, isn't it? Hey, congrats on the RBY - so excited for you and the gorgeous Ms. West. It was a bit of a LoveCats fest!
DeleteCongrats on your ELLA! :-)
DeleteThank you. BIG thrill!
DeleteAmy, I'll have to check out that song you've mentioned. I know you've spoken about a rather smashing C&W singer before - I can't remember his name but I think I book marked one of the songs you spoke about.
DeleteCongratulations again to you on your RuBY! And Anna to you for your ELLA! So rapt for you both!
Congratulation on your new release, Anna. The book sounds fabulous!
ReplyDeleteFavourite song? Gah! So many! Anything by ABBA (of course). :-)
I do like choosing songs as soundtracks for books and the perfect song hit me the other day for a novella I've been working on: Nobody Does It Better by Carly Simon. Needless to say I've been playing that one a lot (along with Tie a Yellow Ribbon...just because ;-) ).
Michelle, isn't it great when you get the perfect song? It feels like a message from the universe, doesn't it? Love that Carly Simon song. Did you know she's the daughter/granddaughter of the Simon of Simon and Schuster? I read a great book about her, Carol King and Joni Mitchell called, I think, Some Girls. Really interesting. Ugh to Abba. The awful thing about Abba is it keeps coming back! :-)
DeleteThanks for the congrats on the book! Lovely to have another new story out.
Great songs, Michelle! And I'm an ABBA fan too - don't tell Anna! LOL
DeleteAnna and Sharon, I sat down to read a bit of Lord Stone just before starting the dinner... and hastily then put on something that sort of cooked itself so I could read on until I finished! Oh, what a terrific read, I loved it. Thankyou!
ReplyDeleteMalvina, I just saw your lovely review on Good Reads. Thank you! So glad you enjoyed it - as you say, things get really interesting after that kiss. Snerk! Had fun writing that scene - love it when a couple of so wrapped up in the passion flaring between them that they forget everything else.
DeleteLOL Malvina! I so know what you mean about something that will cook itself for dinner! Too hard to put down a great read for something so mundane! But you gotta eat so it's good to have some easy things on hand to cook!
DeleteAnna I love this web site so you picked a good on to go to!
ReplyDeleteDiana, I love it too. They have the most wonderful variety of posts. Thanks for swinging by!
DeleteAwww, thanks, Diana! We love to see you visiting to say hello!
DeleteHi, Anna! Welcome back to the Love Cats. I so enjoyed this first novella in the Dashing Widows series. Hoping lots of other readers discover it too - there's such fun to be had with this pair, along with that huge dollop of passion and seduction!
ReplyDeleteI'm in awe of you even thinking of songs as you write. Music in my head as I try to get words on the page means I don't get anything down at all. Clearly you're a multi-tasking genius!
Haha, I'm going to frame that compliment! Thank you. I watch a lot of a video channel on cable TV and they play a lot of golden oldies like the Sheryl Crow. It really does suit what Caro wants. And I've started playing Silas's song on the piano. When I sat down to write this blog, it suddenly struck me how there's an inbuilt conflict in those two songs! Thanks for saying such nice things about Lord Stone. I'm delighted you enjoyed it! And thanks for having me as your guest on Love Cats!
DeleteWaving, Annie!
DeleteAnna, I'm going to insist you give us a recital of Silas's song when we get there! Can't wait!
How a song makes me feel and the memories I associate with it are more important to me than how 'good' it is. So, yes, I definitely understand.
ReplyDelete-Aislinn
Aislinn, I have songs like that - they're not masterpieces but they take me back to a specific time and place. Amazing how powerful music can be in awakening memories, isn't it?
DeleteAislinn, I know what you mean too! The first song my hubby and I called ours was a fun little nonsense song called "If you leave me can I come too!" We still enjoy it!
DeleteThere are 2 that just completely melts the stress away but they have to be sung by a particular group - Celtic Women singing You Raise Me Up (which my niece sang beautifully at my father's funeral) & their Amazing Grace (played as the last song at Daddy's funeral as the fireman from the station is was at for 42 years lined up & saluted the casket - that's when I lost it!)
ReplyDeleteOh, Dee, what bittersweet memories and beautiful songs. We had a recording of Bryn Terfel, the Welsh bass baritone, singing Amazing Grace at my mother's funeral. Always destroys me to hear it now too. What a moving story about the firemen!
DeleteThose are both such beautiful poignant songs, Dee. Very moving.
DeleteThanks for popping in to share.
Congrats on the release of The Seduction of Lord Stone, Anna. Love the sound of this story and love the cover.
ReplyDeleteMusic - well I'm a complete disco queen. But for something slower I do love Maria McKee - Show Me Heaven.
Jen, thanks for the congrats. Lovely to have something new out and to be here sharing it with the Love Cats. Disco, huh? I hadn't picked that!
DeleteJen, I'll have to check out that Maria McKee song.
Deletemy 2 songs are "prop me up by the juke box when I'm gone " & you lift me up" congrats on the new book Anna sounds like another winner----Lyn
ReplyDeleteHi Lyn! I don't know Prop me up, etc. but I think I love it just from the title. Thanks for swinging by!
DeleteLyn, I love that title too - another song to check out!
DeleteThanks for stopping in!
My favorite song is Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen but the version sung by the group Blake. I love that song. :-) Happy release day, Anna!! xoxoxo
ReplyDeleteDeanna, what a great choice. I love, love, love that song. I think my favourite is the original - I've got it on a LC Greatest HIts album and it never fails to give me goosebumps.
DeleteDeanna, LC's Hallelujah is another beautiful song. I'll have to check out the Blake version! Thanks for sharing.
DeleteAnna, lovely to have you at the LoveCats again! A favourite song? Faaaaarrrr too many to even list. Though, I'm like you and I always have a song that works with a story I'm writing. For The Finn Factor there were a few, including Muse's Guiding Light (so snap on a Muse song for writing!), and Bruce Springsteen's Fire.
ReplyDeleteOh, that BS Fire is seriously sexy - much sexier than the Pointer Sister version. Muse are just inspirational altogether! Thanks for having me as your guest.
ReplyDeleteMy fave version of Fire is Robin Williams singing it as Elmer Fudd!! It's on You Tube if you want to check it out :)
DeleteCongratulations on the release of The Seduction of Lord Stone, Anna. I love a lot of the songs already listed. One of my absolute faves though is "Vampire Heart" by HIM. It's a rock song with really wonderful music - the chorus is "Hold me
ReplyDeleteLike you held on to life
When all fears came alive and entombed me
Love me
Like you love the sun
Scorching the blood in my Vampire heart" There's also a beautiful instrumental version by the Vitamin String Quartet.