Today, I'm delighted to welcome Rachel Brimble with a guest post about the famous city of Bath, the setting for her Ladies of Carson Street Trilogy.
Over to Rachel . . .
In 2001 my husband and I moved to a small market town just a short 30-minute drive from
Bath, along with our eldest daughter who was two and our youngest daughter who was
happily whiling away the time in my belly!
Back then, writing was little more than a pipedream I’d harboured since I was eight or nine.
Yet, once we were living so close to Bath it quickly became my one of favourite places to
visit and all sorts of story ideas began to float around in my mind.
I didn’t start writing properly until my youngest started school full-time in 2005. As a
voracious reader of historical fiction and romance and a huge fan of period drama, to be so
close to where so many famous film and TV scenes have been filmed is a constant thrill. Bath has been used for BBC adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey and films such as The Duchess, Vanity Fair and Harry Potter. Most recently, it has featured in seasons one and two of super-fabulous Bridgerton.
One of my favourite places to visit is No 1 Royal Crescent, which is open to the public for
most of the year. As well as the wonderful rooms, it has a fantastic staircase, immaculately
restored kitchens and a small yard all being shown as they would have looked in the mid-late
eighteenth century. This house has been used several times in my books albeit in different
guises! Other famous Bath landmarks I have used in my books are Pulteney Bridge, Parade
Gardens, Victoria Park, the Assembly Rooms, the Pump room and many of the pubs dotted
around the city, some of which date back to early fourteenth century.
Every September, Bath hosts the Jane Austen festival which draws Janeites from all over the
world. The events list is immense and varies from tours around the city and nearby Lacock, to
balls, regency markets and book readings. It’s two weeks of Jane Austen and Regency fun
which culminates in the grand Regency Parade. Actors and the public dress up in Regency
costume, including military uniforms, day dresses, ball gowns and clerical dress to walk
thought the city. The events list is available now if you are tempted - I will definitely be there on the 10th! (https://janeausten.co.uk/pages/festival-2022-overview)
It was during the winter 2019, that I was walking along North Parade, a beautiful row of
Georgian townhouses opposite Parade Gardens, and Carson Street was ignited in my
imagination. This would be where my heroines, Louisa, Nancy and Octavia lived and worked
together. As the series unfolds amid the backstreets of Bath with only a spattering of the more
upmarket places featuring in the books’ pages, I spent a lot of time walking through the lesser
explored streets and back alleys and it really solidified the themes and characters in my mind.
The Ladies of Carson Street trilogy is extremely special to me in that its inspiration arose
from my reading of The Five by Hallie Rubenhold. An amazing non-fiction book on the lives
of Jack the Ripper’s victims. It led me to want to write about three very different women and
how they became prostitutes and also give them a story which would lead to each finding
their happy ever after.
All three books in the series are available on Amazon, but here’s the blurb and buy link for
book 1…happy reading!
A Widow's Vow
From grieving widow...
1851. After her merchant husband saved her from a life of prostitution, Louisa Hill was briefly happy as a housewife in Bristol. But then a constable arrives at her door. Her husband has been found hanged in a Bath hotel room, a note and a key to a property in Bath the only things she has left of him. And now the debt collectors will come calling.
To a new life as a madam...
Forced to leave everything she knows behind, Louisa finds more painful betrayals waiting for her in the house in Bath. Left with no means of income, Louisa knows she has nothing to turn to but her old way of life. But this time, she'll do it on her own terms – by turning her home into a brothel for upper class gentleman. And she's determined to spare the girls she saves from the street the horrors she endured in the past.
Enlisting the help of Jacob Jackson, a quiet but feared boxer, to watch over the house, Louisa is about to embark on a life she never envisaged. Can she find the courage to forge this new path?
A Widow's Vow is the first in a gripping and gritty new Victorian saga series from Rachel Brimble. You won't be able to put it down.
Buy Link: https://geni.us/sHuF
Rachel Brimble lives in a small town near Bath, England. She is the author of 29 novels including the Ladies of Carson Street trilogy, the Shop Girl series (Aria Fiction) and the Templeton Cove Stories (Harlequin). Her latest novel, Victoria & Violet, is the first book in her new Royal Maids series with the Wild Rose Press and releases 17th October 2022.
Rachel is a member of the Romantic Novelists Association as well as the Historical Novel
Society and has thousands of social media followers all over the world.
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Thank you, Rachel, for such an interesting guest post. I very much look forward to reading A Widow's Vow, and visiting Bath with your book.