Romancing
Robin Hood by Jenny Kane (@jennykaneauthor)
BlurbDr 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
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