This week, we're pleased to welcome author and the newest Unusual Historicals' contributor Piers Alexander with his debut novel, THE BITTER TRADE. The author will offer a free copy of The Bitter Trade to a lucky blog visitor. Be sure to leave your email address in the comments of today's author interview for a chance to win. Winner(s) are contacted privately by email. Here's the blurb.
“I am Calumny Spinks. Between me and the satin blue sky hangs the hempen noose. It has swung there in the faintest of breezes, waiting for me, all my life.”
In 1688, torn by rebellions, England lives under the threat of a Dutch invasion. Redheaded Calumny Spinks is the lowliest man in an Essex backwater: half-French and still unapprenticed at seventeen, yet he dreams of wealth and title.
When his father’s violent past resurfaces, Calumny’s desperation leads him to flee to London and become a coffee racketeer. He has just three months to pay off a blackmailer and save his father’s life - but his ambition and talent for mimicry pull him into a conspiracy against the King himself.
Lighting
a candle. Drinking a coffee. Taking big risks. Trying new things. Hanging out
in the London Library.
Learn more about Piers Alexander
**Q&A with Piers Alexander**
Please
tell us how you came to be a writer.
I
used to make up stories for my family when I was a kid, and I wrote story after
story until creative writing was strangled by an English teacher. I went and did a Proper Job after abandoning
a spy novel at university, until I couldn’t bear it any more, started two new
companies and began The Bitter Trade
a few years ago.
Your
style is somewhere between Flashman and Sarah Waters. What can readers expect?
A
hero who is sometimes unappealingly selfish, greedy and lusty. Secondary
characters who steal entire chapters. Actual female characters. The Civil War
rearing its ugly head forty years on.
The
protagonist in your latest novel is Calumny Spinks. What can we expect from him?
Red
hair. Mimicry, mockery and mischief. Cal is half-French and furiously
unapprenticed at seventeen – if he hadn’t been forced into action by a
blackmailer, he would have probably created trouble and revolution on his own.
Can
you remember where you saw your first book on the shelves?
It
won’t hit them until June this year, but the moment when the manager of my
local bookshop saw I’d written one and clasped it to her chest was absolutely
priceless. “Of course we’ll take them,” she said, and I could have kissed her.
What
are you working on now?
The
sequel: Cimarron. It will involve a
lengthy research trip to Jamaica, I’m pleased to say.
How
does your home and its environment influence your writing?
I
live with a singer-songwriter and author, so sometimes it is a happy humming
hive of beautiful creativity. Sometimes it is a shattering cacophony of rage
and unwashed dishes. Luckily, we have a hilarious and affectionate dog who
makes us live in the moment and laugh at our own egos.
Where
do you get your inspiration from?
The Bitter Trade is Piers' first novel. He is also a serial media entrepreneur, and lives in London with the singer-songwriter and author Rebecca Promitzer.
Twitter: @thebittertrade
Facebook: /thebittertrade
