Well, it made sense for Sophie’s father, as a member of the office that provided war matériel for the British army, to be on the ground in Brussels to consult with Wellington…and I desperately wanted to include Brussels in the early summer of 1815 in the book, just because it was soooo interesting a place-definitely Party Central of Europe at the time.

I so enjoyed the characters traveling to Brussels! (I’m a huge Belgium fan.) Was it merely done to put them near the Duke of Wellington or were there other reasons? For research on the whole, I was quite delighted to add substantially to my library of early 19th century research materials (thank you, Abebooks!) I did lots of reading on London society, of course, but also on French and Napoleonic history as well, with forays into things like 19th century amateur botany and parakeet species.ģ. 🙂 As to where I got it…I have no idea! My head is stuffed full of weird things and factoids like that. But as he’d been imbibing freely while hiding in his library when Parthenope’s mother was in labor, there might be a clue there. The twins’ father James, himself a classicist, wanted the girls to have classical names like their mother…where poor Parthenope got it from, she was never able to ascertain as her father wouldn’t explain why he’d chosen it. Isn’t it just a wonderfully dreadful name? It’s from Greek mythology, specifically the Odyssey-she was one of the sirens Odysseus encountered on his long journey home. Where did you find it and what kind of research did you do?

Parthenope is not a name I’ve ever run across before your books. As I say in the author’s note in Courtship and Curses, we had a dear family friend who’d had polio as a child I based Sophie’s difficulties on a lot of what I remember about her physical issues.Ģ. Sophie’s character popped into my head while I was taking a shower, which is where a lot of good book ideas are hatched and plot problems solved…and as I was drying off, the fact of Sophie’s illness and disability was just “there” in my head. Based on the timing (Persy and Pen were born in 1819), I knew I could set it at the tail end of the Napoleonic Wars…and it just sort of sprouted from there.

I knew I wanted to write a story set in the Regency, with Lady Parthenope, the mother of Persy and Pen in Bewitching Season, as one of the characters. Sophie has every reason to want to shy away from the uneducated views and comments that society has of her disability, yet she’s quite the feisty character at times.

Welcome to Damsels in Regress, Marissa!ġ. Please join me in welcoming Marissa Doyle, author of Bewitching Season, Betraying Season, and the just released Courtship & Curses.

Betraying Season by Marissa Doyle