Miranda Neville Noodles on Names!

by Anna Campbell

It is with immense pleasure that I bring back a lair favorite, the fabulous Miranda Neville, who is here today to talk to us about her wonderful new historical romance just out from Avon THE DANGEROUS VISCOUNT.

I adored THE WILD MARQUIS, the first book in her Burgundy Club series about a series of aristocratic book collectors in Regency London. And Miranda had me at hello when she told me that this book featured a nerd as the hero. I love it when nerds discover their inner Tarzan!


Here's the blurb for THE DANGEROUS VISCOUNT:

She is determined to find a husband ... now!

Diana Fanshawe's impeccable bloodline doesn't stop society from laughing at the antics of her eccentric family. She knows the right marriage is her one chance to make her way in the world--which is precisely why she will Marry Lord Blakeney. But then she's kissed by the brilliant ansd unconventional Sebastian Iverley, and her well-laid plans tumble into disarray.

Sebastian wants absolutely nothing to do with love or marriage. He likes his books, his male friends in the Burgundy Club, and he avoids women. But when he arrives at his hated cousin Blakeney's house party, he's smitten by the tantalizing Diana.

Should the lady follow her heart and try to win Iverley's, though it seems hardened against her–or should she sacrifice love for respectability?

Sounds delicious, doesn't it? You can read an excerpt here.

By the way, I take no responsibility for the very disrespectful attitude taken to some great works of Western art in this blog. Although I must say I snorted a cup of tea all over my keyboard when Miranda sent me the illustrations for her visit!

Anyway, without more ado, HEEEEEERRRREEEEE'SSSS MIRANDA!!!!

MIRANDA: Hello, my dear Ms. Campbell and all you wonderful Banditas. I love partying with you guys because you are, quite simply the best. (Yes, I say that to all the blogs but I really really mean it this time). Thank you for letting me ramble.

HOSTESS WITH THE MOSTESS (UM, THAT WOULD BE ME!): Ramble away, my dear, especially if compliments are involved. Here, have a cabana boy. Make sure that when you lift him by the love handles, you raise your pinky. We're very refined here!

MIRANDA: The first time I read a blurb for Anna’s MY RECKLESS SURRENDER (damn good book – read it if you haven’t, or read it again) (HWTM: Why thank you, my dear!) I nearly fell off my chair. Now Anna and I do from time to time exchange emails, but on such important topics as the weather, classical music and what we are cooking for dinner. If we should mention our Works In Progress the conversation tends to include vocabulary unsuitable for a family audience on the subject of Work, Progress and lack thereof. We don’t get into details like our characters’ names. So imagine my shock when I read about Diana and Tarquin. I was just winding up a book with a heroine named Diana and about to start one with a Tarquin hero.

Coincidence or some sinister Aussie plot? I’ll let you be the judge. (Sinister Aussie going BWAHAHAHA here!)

Diana at least is a normal kind of name, but I don’t recall another Tarquin. My Tarquin has been with me a long time. He was the hero’s best friend in my first manuscript. When that book didn’t sell, I transferred Tarquin, whom I loved, over to a new series.

HWTM: Actually I've worked out I got Tarquin from Laurence Olivier's son - my mum had a lifelong crush on Sir Larry. I had thought he was an Etruscan King, Tarquinius Superbus, but it turns out TS was the last king of Rome. Oh, well, still like the name although in Australia, he'd be beaten up in the playground.

M: Have you noticed how sometimes there seems to be a trend for a certain name? Suddenly it will crop up in half a dozen books and you can bet the farm the writers didn’t get together and say “I know, let’s all name our heroine Joanna this year.” That first MS of mine had a hero named Marcus and I swear I couldn’t find a book that year without a Marcus. It must have been something in the air.

The hero of THE DANGEROUS VISCOUNT is Sebastian. Now there have been many, many great Sebastians. Off the top of my head I’m thinking of LORD OF SCOUNDRELS by Loretta Chase, Verlaine in Patricia Gaffney’s TO HAVE AND TO HOLD, St. Vincent in Lisa Kleypas’s THE DEVIL IN WINTER, the sinister Bastien in Anne Stuart’s BLACK ICE and Julia Quinn’s adorable Sebastian Gray in TEN THINGS I LOVE ABOUT YOU.

HWTM: Not to mention the wonderful Sebastian, the hero of Christine Wells's Golden Heart winning debut SCANDAL'S DAUGHTER.

M: My Sebastian is absolutely nothing like any of these. Frankly, he’s a nerd. He collects books, dresses badly and has no social graces. He wears glasses and he hates women --will have nothing to do with them. And I mean nothing.

HWTM: Yup, had me at hello!

M: But Sebastian takes one look at Diana (actually her leg, revealed as she adjusts her stirrup) and falls hard. In love for the first time, he gets a rude awakening when he learns she’s using him to attract his detestable cousin. To get revenge and make her fall for him, he gets an extreme makeover with the help of his friends Cain (from The WILD MARQUIS) and Tarquin (remember him?).

I must say my Sebastian cleaned up beautifully and though he has a few lessons to learn along the way (don’t they all?) he ends up an all round adorable hottie. Diana, who as a widow is the experienced one in this relationship, is charming, chic, light-hearted and determined to marry a duke. However she’s not as sophisticated as she thinks she is and she and Sebastian manage to get themselves into quite a muddle.

The naming of Diana is a story in itself. Originally she was named Marianne, after my eldest sister. Trouble is, she is nothing like my sister and as I wrote it started to bother me. I scribbled a list names on a yellow pad and Diana stuck. Her younger sister had been named Arabella but I decided to go with the goddess theme and changed her to Minerva. After I finished the book, I reread Jenny Crusie’s Bet Me, one of my favorite books. Good Lord. Min and Di. I’d never once thought of it. Had I been channeling Crusie? I shrugged and decided there are far worse people to channel.

HWTM: My Diana was originally Antonia but the hero was Ashcroft so we started to look like an ad for AAA Insurance. My next heroine is Antonia - another name I've always liked. Naming characters is one of the fun bits of writing.

M: I must admit there are names I’m not so fond off. Personally I have a hard time with heroes named Jeremy or Nigel. I think they are wimp names. Not that I haven’t enjoyed books with those names but I’d never choose them myself.

HWTM: I rather like Jeremy - I like J names! Julian, Justin, etc. Nigel, nah. Ian's the one I can't cope with! So Miranda, do you have a question for our Bandits and Buddies?

M: Can you think of any hero and/or heroine names that seem to come up a lot? Do you have any favorites or least favorites? And why?

Fascinating topic, Miranda! Get commenting, people. Miranda is offering not one, but TWO PRIZES, one each to a commenter! A signed copy of THE WILD MARQUIS (great read - I told you that already!) and THE DANGEROUS VISCOUNT. Good luck!Source URL: https://violeta-diario.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Burgundy%20Club
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The Wild Miranda!

by Anna Campbell

It is with huge pleasure (and perhaps just a little trepidation, last time she was here, the cabana boys needed a holiday to recover!) that I welcome back Avon historical author Miranda Neville to the lair.

Miranda's sparkling debut last year NEVER RESIST TEMPTATION garnered her a huge number of fans. Now we can all run out to a bookstore (or even better just click the covers on the blog and they'll take you right to Amazon) and grab her second Regency romance THE WILD MARQUIS. Even better, it's the first in a series called THE BURGUNDY CLUB.

Yum! Or perhaps I should say hic! You can find out more about Miranda and her books at her website: www.mirandaneville.com


Miranda, welcome back to the lair. We had a fabulous time when you last visited to talk about your debut historical romance for Avon, NEVER RESIST TEMPTATION. Now here we are celebrating the release of your second book THE WILD MARQUIS (hmm, love that title – works for me!). Can you tell us about this story?

A lovely reviewer called my hero “a naughty, naughty boy.” I couldn’t have put it better. Cain, as he is known, is on the young side for a hero, only 24. He has been on his own since the age of sixteen, tossed out of the house by a crazy puritanical (and thankfully deceased) father.
Living up to expectations, he's persona non grata in the eyes of society.

Things change when he discovers a family heirloom up for auction at Sotheby’s. If he can discover why his father sold the rare manuscript, he may be able to reconcile with his mother and sister and regain his reputation. He hires Juliana Merton, a widowed rare bookseller, to advise him. The marquis seems unpromising book collector material to Juliana, but she’s desperate for a rich client. At first the unlikely pair flirt and spar over books. When danger threatens Juliana, Cain appoints himself her protector and the couple set out to discover the mystery of her past.

I notice THE WILD MARQUIS is the first in a series called THE BURGUNDY CLUB. Can you tell us about this series? The inspirations behind it? What we can expect in future books?

The background to the book is a huge rare book auction, modelled after the 1812 sale of the Duke of Roxburghe’s library. After this famous sale, a group of collectors formed the Roxburghe Club, still England’s premier bibliophile society. At the end of THE WILD MARQUIS, a group of young men form the Burgundy Club.

In particular, my hero makes friends with two collectors, the heroes of my next books. Coming in October is THE DANGEROUS VISCOUNT, featuring a misogynistic book lover. I had a complete blast with his story, which can roughly be described as Regency Revenge of the Nerds. Following that, the exquisite dandy Tarquin Compton, the second coming of Beau Brummell, is going to get very, very naked. Two secondary characters from the VISCOUNT begged to be matched up so there’s going to be a fourth book too.

Among the many things I loved about NEVER RESIST TEMPTATION were the luscious and heart-attack inducing Regency recipes you included (the heroine is a pastry chef). Are you going to offer us some wonderful extra tidbits of information like this in the new series?

Rare books and the book trade are central to the story. Cain’s missing heirloom was inspired by the famous medieval manuscript Les Très Riches Heures of the Duc de Berri. An early edition of Romeo and Juliet plays a vital role in the plot. And I touched on some of my researches into the history of dirty books. It isn’t as easy to make the topic of rare books sexy as it was with pastries, but I hope I succeeded. Think leather bindings. (Not in THAT way. We’re talking about BOOKS) [By the way I just read the first of Kate Carlisle’s Bibliophile mysteries and totally adored it. Not until I went to her website did I remember that she is a Bandita!]

Can you take us through your working day?

I don’t want to send everyone to sleep.

Snort! Or perhaps I mean snore... Last time you visited, you told us a wonderful story about when you worked for Sotheby’s in London and you discovered an unknown letter by the Duke of Wellington. Any more fascinating glimpses into your past life you care to share?

Which past life are you talking about? The one when I ruled Egypt? Or when I was a small rodent? After I was born into my current (much younger) body, I grew up in an eighteenth-century bath house in England. It was one of the follies (along with a gothick temple and a classical ice house) on an aristocratic estate. A mile across the park is the Georgian mansion. The bath house is next to the “lake” (or the ”pond” as my husband insisted on calling it, since it’s tiny by American lake standards) and has a nice view of a fourteenth century castle, ruined in the English Civil War.

The bath house was converted to a farmhouse in the nineteenth century and is pretty ordinary, apart from a rusticated portico. Recently, the new owners took up the tiling in the kitchen and found the outline of the old plunge bath in the stone floor.

Wow, that's exotic! No wonder you grew up to write historical romance! It’s almost exactly a year since your first book came out. Can you take us through the highlights of your first year as a published author? Are there any things you know now that you wish you’d known before?

I wish I’d known that having a book published doesn’t change your life. Getting that book sold and then out is the culmination of such an intense process. The Big Day comes and you’re blogging, and your friends call and tell you they’ve see the book in stores, and you get reviews. Then after a couple of weeks … nothing.

I wasn’t rich and famous, people didn’t applaud when I entered a room, and life was pretty much the same as before the big day. I was actually pretty depressed for a while there. I wonder if other debut authors have suffered the same affect. Kind of post partum blues.

What finally made me snap out of it was the need to write two more books by the end of the year. When it sank in that my contract gave me exactly six months between the deadlines of books 2 and 3, I suspected I’d been drunk when I signed it. But it was all good because it concentrated the mind and I’ve got two books coming out this year.

On a more cheerful note, I went to the RWA conference for the first time and met lots of great women, including a couple of insane but curiously charming Australians. (Hmm. Wonder if you can guess who). I learned about Facebook and Twitter. My book sold to Thailand. I discovered the nasty phrase “reserve against returns.”

I promise to applaud whenever I see you entering a room, my friend! Although I'm clearly insane, so I wouldn't trust me, LOL! Is there anything you'd like to ask our Bandita Buddies?

Thanks for asking me back, Anna. I’m thrilled to be kicking off my WILD MARQUIS blog tour with the Banditas, the Golden Rooster, Sven, et al. The book hits the stores tomorrow, but you can enter to win a copy by answering this question. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a beautiful and historic place. Yet it always seemed unremarkable to me. What are the places or experiences that you take for granted, yet will seem exotic to others? Or, you can just ask me another question. Or failing that pay an outrageous compliment to me and/or Ms. Anna Campbell and we’ll still enter you for the prize.

Ooh, outrageous compliments, huh? I'm always in the market for those! Have at it, Banditas and Bandita Buddies! And good luck in the draw for Miranda's new book! It sounds absolutely fab!Source URL: https://violeta-diario.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Burgundy%20Club
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