Dr. Grace Harper has loved the stories of Robin Hood ever since she first saw them on TV as a girl. Now, with her fortieth birthday just around the corner, she’s a successful academic in Medieval History, with a tenured position at a top university.
But Grace is in a bit of a rut. She’s supposed to be writing a textbook on a real-life medieval gang of high-class criminals – the Folvilles – but she keeps being drawn into the world of the novel she’s secretly writing – a novel which entwines the Folvilles with her long-time love of Robin Hood – and a feisty young girl named Mathilda, who is the key to a medieval mystery…
Meanwhile, Grace’s best friend Daisy – who’s as keen on animals as Grace is on the Merry Men – is unexpectedly getting married, and a reluctant Grace is press-ganged into being her bridesmaid. As Grace sees Daisy’s new-found happiness, she starts to re-evaluate her own life. Is her devotion to a man who may or may not have lived hundreds of years ago really a substitute for a real-life hero of her own? It doesn’t get any easier when she meets Dr Robert Franks – a rival academic who Grace is determined to dislike but finds herself being increasingly drawn to…
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Excerpt
It was all Jason Connery’s fault, or maybe it was
Michael Praed’s? As she crashed onto her worn leather desk chair Grace, after
two decades of indecision, still couldn’t decide which of the two actors she
preferred in the title role of Robin of
Sherwood.
That was how it
had all started, ‘The Robin Hood Thing’ as Daisy referred to it, with an
instant and unremitting love for a television show. Yet, for Grace, it hadn’t
been a crush in the usual way. She had only watched one episode of the hit
eighties series and, with the haunting theme tune from Clannad echoing in her
ears, had run upstairs to her piggy bank to see how much money she’d saved, and
how much more cash she’d need, before she could spend all her pocket money on
the complete video collection. After that, the young Grace had done every odd
job her parents would pay her for so she could purchase a myriad of Connery and
Praed posters with which to bedeck her room. But that was just the beginning.
Within weeks Grace had become pathologically and forensically interested in
anything and everything to do with the outlaw legend as a whole.
She’d watched
all the Robin Hood films, vintage scenes of Douglas Fairbanks Jr and Errol
Flynn, Richard Greene, Sean Connery, and Barry Ingram. As time passed, she
winced and cringed her way through Kevin Costner’s comical but endearing
attempt, and privately applauded Patrick Bergin’s darker and infinitely more
realistic approach to the tale. Daisy had quickly learnt to never ever mention
Russell Crowe’s adaption of the story – it was the only time she’d
ever heard Grace swear using words that could have been as labelled as
Technicolor as the movie had been.
The teenage
Grace had read every story, every ballad, and every academic book, paper, and
report on the subject. She’d hoarded pictures, paintings, badges, and stickers,
along with anything and everything else she could find connected with Robin
Hood, his band of outlaws, his enemies, Nottingham, Sherwood, Barnsdale,
Yorkshire – and so it went on and on. The collection, now over twenty
years in the making, had reached ridiculous proportions and had long since
overflowed from her small terraced home to her university office, where posters
lined the walls, and books about the legend, both serious and comical, crammed
the overstuffed shelves.
Her
undergraduates who’d chosen to study medieval economy and crime as a history
degree option, and her postgraduates whose interest in the intricate weavings
of English medieval society was almost as insane as her own, often commented on
how much they liked Dr Harper’s office. Apparently it was akin to sitting in a
mad museum of medievalism. Sometimes Grace was pleased with this reaction.
Other times it filled her with depression, for that office, its contents, and
the daily, non-stop flow of work was her life – her whole
life – and sometimes she felt that it was sucking her dry. Leaving
literally no time for anything else – nor anyone else. Boyfriends had come and gone, but few had any hope of
matching up to the figure she’d fallen in love with as a teenager. A man who is
quite literally a legend is a hard act to follow...
Author bio and links
Jenny Kane is
the author of the contemporary novel Romancing
Robin Hood (Accent Press, 2014), the best selling contemporary romance
novel Another Cup of Coffee (Accent
Press, 2013), and its novella length sequel Another
Cup of Christmas (Accent Press, 2013)
Jenny’s first
children’s book, There’s a Cow in the
Flat (Hush Puppy Books) will be released later this year, and her third
full length romance novel, Abi’s House (Accent
Press), will be published in Spring 2015.
Keep your eye on
her blog at http://www.jennykane.co.uk
for more details.
Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/JennyKaneAuthor
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/JennyKaneRomance
2 comments:
Many thanks Erin - Jenny (AKA Kay Jaybee) xxx
Ah - if I had known Jenny Kane was a pen name of Kay Jaybee - an author I already know and love - I would have been even happier to post this post! Jenny/Kay, thanks so much for stopping by my little blog. It's a pleasure to have you.
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