I’m happy to welcome author Naomi Laeuchli. Today, Naomi shares her creative journey and new release, The Schoolmaster’s Daughter.

Here’s Naomi!

What was your inspiration for this book?

I love historical romances, but I also love stories that are centered around deception: people lying about themselves and forced into absurd situations due to the stories they have told. The deeper the hole they dig, the happier I am!

What is the best part of being an author? The worst?

The best part is the stories. You can never be bored so long as you have stories in your head.

The worst part: the sense of failure you can feel when you realize you haven’t written anything on your main project in over a month.

Describe your writing space.

My main writing space is my bedroom. My computer is set up by my window with a lovely view out towards a hill that you’ll occasionally see horses or deer crossing. My keyboard is my favorite part of my writing setup: it was a Christmas gift from my sister and brother-in-law and features rabbits on the keys as well as a 3D rabbit as the escape key.

Which authors have inspired you?

Georgette Heyer! Her historical romances are sheer delight. If I can make just one person as happy reading my book as hers have made me, then all the words I’ve used up writing over all the years will be well worth it.

What is your favorite quote?

I’m going to cheat and select two.

“Have courage and be kind.”

And:

“Agnes Repplier, an astute observer of life and writer of elegant essays, once observed that whereas the dark and unpleasant side of this world is often portrayed as the profound one, it really is just the obvious one. The individual who can look into the world and find the lovely, the beautiful and the joyful is the one who has looked into life deeply, truly and well. Discovering happiness and sharing it with others is a gift.”

If you had a superpower, what would it be?

I have three siblings living on three different continents, and dozens of places I’d love to visit. So, the answer is easy: teleportation.

Besides writing and reading, what are some of your hobbies?

I love riding my horse Peshitta (even when she’s not so sure about the whole endeavor), hiking (I hiked 270 miles of the Florida trail this past January), and caving (caves are secret gardens underground).

Any advice for aspiring writers?

Loving writing for writing. Be it for the story or the characters or the very process of writing. Even if no one ever reads another word you write, you need to be able to still find joy in it, or else writing will likely only make you unhappy.

What are you working on next?

I am writing a murder mystery thriller (which is a bit of a pivot from historical romance, but I love all the genres!).

Blurb

Deep in debt and desperate for a solution, Julius Claydon knows that marrying a wealthy woman is his only hope. When he meets the beautiful and rich Clara Haughton in Bath, he believes she could be his salvation, but there’s one obstacle in his path: Lydia Cray, Clara’s sharp-witted and penniless companion.

When Lydia quickly sees through his fortune-hunting motives, Julius proposes an alliance. He will help secure her future if she helps him secure Clara’s heart.

But Lydia is not all she appears to be, and she has a plan of her own: to teach him a lesson he won’t soon forget. But her scheming soon leads to unforeseen consequences for them both.

Can love spring from deception?

Excerpt

He had reached them now and was smiling down at her. “Miss Cray. You look lovely tonight.”

“Thank you.”

She was dimly aware that he was bowing to Clara and greeting her as well. But while he must, in the interests of politeness, have looked away from herself at some point, it didn’t feel like it. It felt as if his eyes never truly left hers. Which made it unmistakable who he was addressing when he asked, “Might I have the pleasure of this dance?”

Later that night she would look back and think it strange that he had asked her to dance before Clara, that he had barely paid Clara more attention than what was demanded by common civility. But now she simply held out her hand to him, beaming at him and nodded, finding words curiously difficult to form.

The music had changed to a waltz as he led her out onto the dance floor. She felt a curious sensation somewhere north of her stomach as his arm wrapped around her waist and he began to lead her.

He truly was graceful, as he smiled down at her and the pair twirled through the steps and the music.

This close, she could see the individual flecks of grey hairs in amongst the dark, which she found strangely endearing. The lines on his face seemed a little deeper under the candlelight and she felt a strange impulse to reach up and run her fingers across them.

His eyes, though, were a clear deep blue, and she suspected they held the exact same youthfulness and brightness that they had had on the day he was born. In some mysterious way, her instincts told her they always would. Those same eyes were smiling down warmly into her own, and she blushed a little but held the gaze steady.

Author Bio and Links

Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Naomi Laeuchli has lived overseas in nine different countries on three different continents where her family was posted with the American Foreign Service. In November 2012 she moved from the Democratic Republic of the Congo back to the states and currently lives in Arizona with five horses. She works as a freelance writer and part time at the local library. She has written several interactive stories for Choice of Games, Tales, and Dorian.

Website | Amazon Buy Link

Giveaway

The author will be awarding a $10 Amazon/Barnes & Noble gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Find out more here.

Follow Naomi on the rest of her Goddess Fish tour here.