At last, at last! Ten Things I Hate About the Duke, Difficult Dukes Book # 2, has been released into the world. (Well, the North American part of it, anyway.*)
When last we saw the Duke of Ashmont, in A Duke in Shining Armor, he was doing a great job of making a hopeless case of himself. I’m not sure I’ve ever created a hero quite so out of control. But I write romance, and so I have to give the guy a way to pull himself out of the self-destructive spiral. Also, I write comedy, which means there ought to be laughs on the way to his Happily Ever After.
Enter Cassandra Pomfret, inspired by Katharina in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. And then, lucky me, another work inspired by the play, the teen film Ten Things I Hate About You, provided a title I could adapt.
Shakespeare’s treatment of Katharina always bothered me. And so, as has happened in some of my other books, I’ve done a rewrite. Yes, it takes a lot of nerve to rewrite Shakespeare—which may account for my book’s taking three years!—and I changed it so much that I can hear him saying, “Prithee, beldam, what hast thou done to mine genius work?” Or something to that effect, with amusing Elizabethan curses.
Robert Cruikshank, Chelsea Stadium Shield 1834, courtesy Lewis Walpole Library
You will find that only a few elements of Ten Things I Hate About the Duke echo elements in the Shakespeare play. The rest is turned upside down and inside out or discarded altogether. Most important, in my Fractured Fairy Tale version, the correct person is reformed.
Usually, my blog posts are sporadic. Months of silence pass. Not so this month. You can expect several, mainly on the various bits of history that turn up in the story. Also, there are illustrations of just about every element of the story on the Ten Things I Hate About the Duke board of my Pinterest page. And you can listen to an audio excerpt here. And just in case this isn’t enough, you can expect Facebook and Instagram posts. I promise that this barrage will go on for only a short time, because, after all, I need to write the Duke of Blackwood’s story.
Mainly I hope you enjoy Ashmont and Cassandra’s story—and I thank you for your patience, support, and encouragement throughout its long development. How lucky I am to have readers like you!
George Cruikshank, “The Headache” 12 February 1819, courtesy Lewis Walpole Library.
*As usually happens, unfortunately, my readers in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand will not be able to access certain editions on quite the same schedule. Due to licensing and other technicalities, there tends to be a lag time in availability. We’re doing better with this, and I hope the delay will be short this time around. Meanwhile, I apologize for the added wait.