She kissed him then she reappeared

Tags

Antonia Van Zandt, Etopia Press, Glencoe, Incy Black, Loving Lady Lazuli, Noelle Clark, Shehanne Moore

No. That’s not her, hugging an inn sign. That is me. But you can see that after sticking the Wentworth emeralds on Dev, Saff’s been appearing all kinds of places… With the fabulous Antonia Van Zandt..

http://antoniavanzandt.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/loving-lady-lazuli-sensational.html

the fabuloustotally to be recommended by the way. She’s now with the equally and marvellous……

and there’s an amazon card giveaway. First stop today is here.http://bookstolightyourfire.blogspot.com/  The fire being books that are hot…. not books you might use to stoke yir hearth up with cos they are minging.

On release day she was here

a very stupid place actually

But may I say the hypothermia is much better now? And wasn’t the Lochan pretty as always?

I also think I may have set a record time for getting off a mountain top.   Saff needs to stop kissing Dev… But she won’t.  Anyway she was also here…

and yes I am reblogging. Noelle Clark author of Rosamanti and Let Angels Fly  did such a great Q and A job of this piece about the Sisterhood, , I gotta share it!! Unlike when Incy Black reblogged her homecoming post recently  and called it Blatant Duplication, this is

Absolute Duplication…..

                                NOELLE CLARK

Loving Lady Lazuli is Book 1 in the new series: The Starkadder Sisterhood. London Jewel Thieves, and focuses on Sapphire, one of the eight members of the Sisterhood.

As you’ll see, the sisterhood are not part of a religious order, however they certainly lay claim to some odd, and even dirty, habits.

Shehanne, can you tell us a little about Sapphire, and why you chose to write her story first?

Firstly Noelle, thank you so much for asking me here today to your lovely blog. It’s a great pleasure  for me to be here. I value it and I value your friendship too. Okay Sapphire, well, Sapphire has been stealing since she was five years old. There’s mysteries about the years before that, before she and her brother Matthew, wound up in London with ‘Uncle’ Starkadder.

These are mysteries she wants to solve. She’s the number one jewel thief. The woman who can pull off any heist. The mistress of disguise.  But this gang is like Fagin’s in a way. The girls don’t gain anything from their efforts. They are forced to steal. Every time Sapphire refused  she was beaten till she agreed. So she and Ruby determined to escape. They’ve spent ten years planning it and they’ve faked their own deaths to do it.

I never meant to write about her first or indeed write a series. I only ever start with a spark of an idea. In this instance I saw Christmas Eve and this beautiful sixteen year old girl walking along the highway in distress so this young man offers her a lift in his coach. She plants a stolen necklace on him and he goes down for it. Lol! I’m sure you know what it’s like. If I had written this twenty years ago that scene would have been chapter one and all the action would have taken place after it, with them ending up as convicts in Australia or something. But now, Regency romance is so popular, that’s not how you’d write it. So that scene became the backstory.

When I got to chapter two and the idea of her past, and the girls coming into her thoughts, I found I was naming them after jewels, and I saw I could make up stories  about their lives after the gang breaks up,

This sounds to me like it will be your most powerful book yet. You always have extremely strong heroines, and they get into some tough situations, but do you consider Sapphire to be your grittiest girl yet?

Hmm. I don’t know. Fury bolted over her emotions and Kara was fairly tough, although she bubbled away underneath. Sapphire has her emotions in control. Being  gritty without making that special effort is second nature to her because she’s been getting out of tight corners since she was five years old. In some ways she doesn’t know any better that way. It’s what makes her so confident about dealing with Devorlane Hawley, when the sensible thing to do would be to bolt. That’s  her undoing–greatest strength, greatest flaw thing– as I am sure you can guess.

There are eight girls in the Sisterhood – Sapphire, Amber, Diamond, Emerald, Splendor, Ruby, Jade, and Pearl. Can you share with us which of the sisters will feature in Book 2?
Splendor features in Book 2. She’s actually not a thief. She’s Dora-Do-It-All, their general skivvy. But she would like to be like them, so she has all these airs and graces. That’s why she calls herself Splendor.

On your Pinterest board, I notice that Pearl looks totally out of place among the strong, sassy, sisterhood. You even describe her as “Pearl – plain as milk”. Does that mean that Pearl won’t get to star in her own book? Is she really too plain? Or does she have a dark side?

Pearl does look out of place and that is deliberate. She is only fifteen in Loving Lady Lazuli and she actually isn’t a ‘proper’ thief like the other girls. She was being trained. Anyway when Sapphire and Ruby made their plans to escape from the gang they cut in Pearl in as they couldn’t stand to see her having the kind of lives they’ve had. She’s not the brightest spark. All the stories are set over a period of years after the gang has broken up, because Diamond has murdered Starkadder, so cutting forward, Pearl might get her own story.

 And that’s it…after Splendor, I want to tell Diamond’s story after all, she’s for the drop isn’t she? AS for Pearl….well…hmmm. I just might.

You  cans e more of Noelle’ blog here.

http://www.noelleclark.net/