Guest Post & Giveaway: The Echoes of Love ‘Legendary’ Blog Tour

Hi guys,

Today I welcome the esteemed Hannah Fielding to my blog, one of her stops in the book tour of her latest novel The Echoes of Love. Please give her a huge welcome and don’t forget, there are goodies to be won. Just scroll down the post or better yet, take a look at what Hannah has to say on her book!

And as always thank you so much for stopping by! Cheers!

Guest Post: For the love of legends

For me, researching a book is just as enjoyable as writing it. I set each of my novels in a passionate,romantic country, and so that I can really transport my readers there, I immerse myself in the setting: its history, its scenery, its cuisine, its culture. Top of my research list are local legends – I love colourful, age-old stories; the more fantastical, the better!

Since I was a young girl, tucked up in bed and listening avidly to my governess weaving bedtime tales, I have loved legends. Fairytales too, of course – they sowed the seeds for my romantic nature – but legends fascinated me most: those that have stood the test of time, that offer intriguing explanations for the modern world, that are at once fantastical and yet, somehow, believable.

My novel The Echoes of Love, set in Venice, Tuscany and Sardinia, incorporates various Italian legends – told by the hero, Paolo, who is a raconteur extraordinaire, to my heroine, Venetia – and in my research files I collected many more. What better way to share some of these most romantic, magical and atmospheric tales but in this Echoes of Love ‘Legendary’ Blog Tour!

Today, I’m taking you to the peaceful island of Torcello at the northern end of the Venetian lagoon, famous for its spectacular Byzantine mosaics and a large stone throne…

Atilla’s Throne

In The Echoes of Love, Venetia, is taking a moment for herself on Torcello when her calm is interrupted:

The sun was high when Venetia emerged into the courtyard. The old trees cast shadows upon the ground; the light was tinged with gold. Flanking the lawn, the pink church of Santa Fosca looked impressively lonely with its arcades of stilted arches and its slim, elegant columns of Greek marble with Byzantine-style capitals. Pigeons were circling about the columns, perching on the fragile cornices, cooing to each other in their soft, enchanting voices. The ancient little town was her own; she could pause and admire its beauties and its spell to her heart’s content. Impossible to dwell upon a secret grief for long in a place like this, she told herself as she made for Attila’s throne.

She settled herself on the white seat formed by a single piece of rough-hewn stone, which stood on the patch of grass opposite Santa Fosca. As she was taking out the ham sandwich from her bag, a voice from behind startled her.

‘Leggenda locale vule che chi si trova in questa sede si sposerà entro un anno, local legend has it that anyone sitting in this seat will be married within a year.’

How unsettling to discover she has unwittingly changed her destiny through the selection of a picnic perch! All the more so given that the man telling Venetia of the legend here is the handsome and charismatic Paolo.

A romantic at heart, Paolo is in fact only telling Venetia of one of the legends associated with the stone seat. The other is that it was built by Attila the Hun as a monument to his power because he was unable to establish a castle nearby. It is telling of Paolo’s character that his choice is to define the seat as representing the promise of love and commitment, rather than might.

But what truth lies in these legends? Historians argue that Attila never visited Torcello, making this story’s origins likely fiction, not fact. As for the power of the seat in shaping destiny for the heart, well, I am an incurable romantic, and I adore such magical ideas. You’ll have to read for yourself, though, if you want to know what becomes of Venetia. My lips are sealed!

Book Blurb: The Echoes of Love

Seduction, passion and the chance for new love.  A terrible truth that will change two lives forever.

Venetia Aston-Montagu has escaped to Italy’s most captivating city to work in her godmother’s architectural practice, putting a lost love behind her. For the past ten years she has built a fortress around her heart, only to find the walls tumbling down one night of the carnival when she is rescued from masked assailants by an enigmatic stranger, Paolo Barone.

Drawn to the powerfully seductive Paolo, despite warnings of his Don Juan reputation and rumours that he keeps a mistress, Venetia can’t help being caught up in the smouldering passion that ignites between them.

When she finds herself assigned to a project at his magnificent home deep in the Tuscan countryside, Venetia must not only contend with a beautiful young rival, but also come face to face with the dark shadows of Paolo’s past that threaten to come between them.

Can Venetia trust that love will triumph, even over her own demons? Or will Paolo’s carefully guarded, devastating secret tear them apart forever?

Excerpt

The clock struck midnight just as Venetia went past the grand eighteenth-century mirror hanging over the mantelpiece in the hall. Instinctively she looked into it and her heart skipped a beat. In the firelight she noticed that he was there again, an almost illusory figure, leaning against the wall at the far end of the shadowy room, steady eyes intense, watching her from behind his black mask. An illusory figure indeed, because when Venetia turned around he was gone.

Venetia shivered. Nanny Horren’s voice resounded through her head, reminding her of the strange Celtic superstitions that the Scottish governess used to tell her. One in particular came to mind. ‘Turn off the light and look into the mirror by firelight at midnight on Shrove Tuesday,’ the old woman would whisper to the impressionable and imaginative teenage Venetia, ‘and if you see a face reflected behind your own, it’ll be the face of the love of your life, the man you will marry someday.’

Was this what had just happened to Venetia? Was this stranger the love of her life?

Rubbish, she remonstrated, laughing uneasily into her own eyes, you’re mad! Haven’t you learnt your lesson? Venetia had indulged in such fantasies several years ago and had only managed to get hurt. Now, she knew better. Still, she did not move away. Venetia leant closer to the mirror that reflected her pale, startled face in the flickering light, as tremors of the warm feelings of yester love suddenly flooded her being. For a few moments she seemed to lose all sense of where she was and felt as though she stood inside a globe, watching the wheel of time turning back ten years.

Gareth Jordan Carter. ‘Judd’. It was a diminutive of Jordan, chosen by Venetia who hated the name Gareth and didn’t care much for the name Jordan either. Judd had been her first love, and as far as Venetia was concerned, her last. She had been young and innocent then; only eighteen. Today, at twenty-eight, she liked to think she was a woman of the world, who would not allow herself to be trapped by the treacherous illusions of passion, however appealing they might seem. She had paid a high price for her naivety and impetuosity.

Venetia tried to shake herself clear of those haunting phantasms and her thoughts ambled back to the masked stranger – well, almost a stranger.

Their brief encounter had occurred the evening of the first night of Il Carnevale di Venezia, ten days before Shrove Tuesday …

Purchase Links: AmazonUK | Amazon | B&N

About Hannah

Hannah Fielding is a novelist, a dreamer, a traveller, a mother, a wife and an incurable romantic. The seeds for her writing career were sown in early childhood, spent in Egypt, when she came to an agreement with her governess Zula: for each fairy story Zula told, Hannah would invent and relate one of her own. Years later – following a degree in French literature, several years of travelling in Europe, falling in love with an Englishman, the arrival of two beautiful children and a career in property development – Hannah decided after so many years of yearning to write that the time was now. Today, she lives the dream: she writes full time, splitting her time between her homes in Kent, England, and the South of France, where she dreams up romances overlooking breathtaking views of the Mediterranean.

Her first novel, Burning Embers, is a vivid, evocative love story set against the backdrop of tempestuous and wild Kenya of the 1970s, reviewed by one newspaper as ‘romance like Hollywood used to make’. Her new novel, The Echoes of Love, is a story of passion, betrayal and intrigue set in the romantic and mysterious city of Venice and the beautiful landscape of Tuscany. It was picked by The Sun newspaper as one of the most romantic books ever written.

Links: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

Giveaway!

prizes

At least one reader commenting on this post will WIN in the Very Venetian giveaway, with prizes totalling more than $600:

5 signed hardback copies of The Echoes of Love
10 signed paperback copies of The Echoes of Love
3 romantic Venetian masks
Lots of fabulously colourful Murano glass goodies: 16 pendants, 2 bracelets, 2 paperweights and a vase

Anyone who comments on a blog tour stop post will be entered in the giveaway. Simply comment below, including your email address so that Hannah can contact the winners. Good luck!

Follow the Tour!

If you’d like to read more Italian legends like this, and keep up with the accompanying Very Venetian giveaway in which lots of romantic goodies are up for grabs, follow the Echoes of Love ‘Legendary’ Blog Tour this month:

1 May: Oh My Books!

3 May: Maldivian Book Reviewer

4 May: Krystal Clear Book Reviews

5 May: Romance Junkies

7 May: Book Briefs

8 May: Words I Write Crazy

9 May: Luxury Reading

10 May: The Little Reader Library

11 May: Kristy Centeno

13 May: Love Romance Passion

14 May: MamaKitty Reviews

15 May: Books & Other Spells