The month of January is all about character interviews. Today, I’m firing questions at Glory, the adorable doggie in A Kiss in the Dark, book one in the Tanqueray series by author Lark Westerly, a fantasy romance.
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1. First off, tell us who you are and what role you play in the novel.
Glory: My name is Glory. In this story I live at Tanqueray Manor with Ancella, who is my best beloved person, and her parents and four brothers. I love them all, but a dog is allowed to have a best-beloved, and I chose Ancella to be mine. I play an important part in the story, because Ancella loves me as much as I love her. Her sweetheart, Pom, gave her a New Year gift of a locket with a painting of me inside.
2. Share with us your hobbies and interests, and why you enjoy them.
Glory: I love doing lots of things. I go on picnics with Ancella and Pom. Sometimes, if they’re busy, I go in a skiff called Blue Skies with two of Ancella’s brothers. I like riding in the terrier basket on Ancella’s horse, Gladius, and talking to Lis who is Horry’s pony and who is wonderfully old and wise. Running about the ballroom while people dance is fun too, but I don’t often get the chance. I love it when people notice me.
3. Tell us how you feel about being in a novel, and if you are happy with how your author presented you to readers.
Glory: I’m ever so happy to be in a story. My author did say I was ill-favoured, but then, we can’t all be beautiful. Ancella likes the way I look. She sees past the scruffy hair and crooked nose and ears to the windows of my soul.
4. If your author was to create another novel with you in mind, give us a quick blurb of what it would be about. And be sure to give the title.
Glory: I think a story about me would have to be called Glory-ous, after me. It might be about the things I do in secret, when dear Ancella is looking the other way. I’m not nearly as silly as I pretend to be. I like pretending though. It makes Ancella laugh.
5. Which character in the novel do you like the most, and why?
Glory: I love Ancella best. She’s my world.
6. Which character in the novel do you dislike the most, and why?
Glory: I never met anyone I disliked. Sometimes Mistress Tanqueray, Ancella’s maman, gets a bit cross when I shed hair in the parlour, but I don’t dislike her for that. In my experience, if you give love you get love in return, but I know I am a fortunate dog
7. Tell us why we should read the featured novel and what we will find most intriguing about you.
Glory: A Kiss in the Dark is about love, life, taking risks and making the best choices. It’s about the memory of a slightly scandalous old lady and how her family honour her wishes. It’s about obtaining cheese in her memory, and pink things in the conservatory, and dealing with younger brothers and an old love and a new one and change… and, it’s also about me!
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Title: A Kiss in the Dark
Series: Tanqueray, book one
Author: Lark Westerly
Genre: Fantasy Romance
Heat Rating: 2 Flames (kissing, hugging, etc.)
Length: 20,000 words/79 pages
Release Date: December 29, 2023
Publisher: Extasy Books
Ancella Tanqueray and Pomeroy Harcourt had been sweethearting ever since Ancella’s first braid ball. They never said so, but everyone knew. Why, then, was Ancella so reluctant to open Pomeroy’s New Year gift?
Blurb: Ancella and Emelie are best friends. Together, they played games in the ash-key wing of Tanqueray Manor. This was where ancient Aunt Zerenity told them about the dance called Kiss-in-the-Dark. It sounded romantic and not at all proper, but Ancella and Emelie never expected to dance it themselves.
Years later, Ancella is being courted by Pomeroy Harcourt. After his amazing New Year gift to her, she has almost decided to accept his proposal if he ever gets around to making it. Why not? Her family likes him. So does her dog, Glory. Emelie seems less than impressed, but at the New Year ball Emelie arrives with a handsome beau of her own. The scene is set for a night of romance, music, annoying brothers, misunderstandings and the late Aunt Zerenity’s desire that the young folk should dance Kiss-in-the-Dark.
Ancella Tanqueray gazed at the gift hanging from the highest horizontal bough of the family December Tree.
Her mother, Célène, who was always correct, called it the Arbre de Décembre, but Ancella preferred the name old Aunt Zerenity used.
The gift had Ancella’s name on the dangling tag. She’d been trying not to look at it for what seemed a bit like forever.
At least it’s small.
She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Her brothers were waiting patiently, lined up like four overgrown calves staring at a rosebush and wishing the prickles away. They had opened their gifts, and they had less interest in their sister’s gift than calves had in roses for anything other than sustenance.
That was an unkind thought, but the mental image wouldn’t go. Nor would her brothers.
The boys were all fair-haired in some degree, and they all had blue eyes. Ancella thought they would be good-looking men once they got over the stage of eating anything that wasn’t tied down and, in the case of the younger two at least, bringing unsuitable things into the manor in their pockets or stuffed inside their shirts. Some aunt or other had bullied, persuaded, or bribed them into tidy breeches or short pants and maize-coloured linen shirts for the upcoming ball. Ancella wished whoever had done it had thought to pick different colours. That way no one would think she—or he—was seeing in quadruplicate.
Horry, for example, would do better in dark red. That would absorb the cherry-stains he would no doubt acquire during his engagement with the supper table. Guy might look good in plaid. She frowned, wondering why she thought so, then shrugged it off.
Just one of those peculiar notions.
The other two…Ancella mentally threw up her hands. Her brothers’ sartorial choices had nothing to do with her.
Next year would bring differences in any case. Rupert and Robert, the unfortunately named twins—what had Maman and Papa been thinking?—would be stepping out in men’s attire, having tipped over the edge into adulthood. For now, they were dressed just like their younger-by-three-years brother, Guy.
Horry, the youngest, not yet into his teen years, had short pants that cleared his unusually clean knees. He shuffled his boots.
Ancella noted they were his everyday ones. Even authoritative aunts had their limitations. Pity help the poor young maiden who agreed to dance with Horry in those clodhoppers. He would dance. It was a family ball, and it would look odd if he didn’t. Besides, he enjoyed it.
Guy, the next brother up, caught like his twin brothers between boyhood and almost-a-man, tried an elbow to Horry’s ribs. “Shush.”
Rupert and Robert, at the top of the pack, looked bored. No doubt they wanted to be somewhere else, in someone else’s company.
Well, Ancella did, too.
“Just open the thing, Cella!” Guy muttered.
Don’t call me Cella!
The diminutive was all right on its own, but her brothers were too likely to add a salt in front or a door behind.
Ancella still stared, mesmerised, at the dangling gift. It was wrapped in—what? She couldn’t tell, but it must be a substance the donor had made, or found, or invented, or converted.
“Ancella, please do open your gift,” her mother said with the slightest edge to her voice. “The rest have been tidied away and the guests will be here soon.”
“I don’t think I can reach it,” Ancella said, crossing her ankles and folding her hands in her lap.
Her mother gave her a look. It spoke volumes. Don’t you try that on, my girl… Of age you might be—three years past—but while you’re under our roof…besides, you’ve been able to conjure these ten years past…
Horry bounced forward like an over-excited puppy and sprang at the tree. He caught the package in one hand, snapping the ribbon that suspended it and making the horizontal bough swing wildly. Three delicate blown glass nouvelle année ornaments lost their grip and pinged off into space.
Célène Tanqueray rescued them before any damage was done.
Bringing up five children born over the span of a decade had made her reactions faster than seemed possible.
“Thank you, Horatio,” she said pleasantly to her youngest. “Hand the gift to your sister.”
Horry turned to Ancella with his most disarming grin. “Here, Salt Cellar.”
“Must you?”
“Salt Pig then. Papa says that’s a viable alternative.”
You little horror.
Ancella rose from the settle. She grinned back at him with as much menace as she could muster. She took the gift with a curtsy and thanked him mendaciously.
“It’s not from me, Cella,” he said. He rolled his forget-me-not blue eyes. “It’s from Pomeroy.” He drawled the name. He was being annoying for the sake of it, Ancella thought. He liked Pom. They all did. He was like an extra brother who fitted in above the twins. Sometimes, in fact, Ancella suspected Horry liked Pom more than he liked her.
“I know who it’s from,” Ancella said.
Rupert, the elder twin by ten minutes, said quietly, “Why don’t you just get it over with? And what’s the grand to-do about anyway? Everyone knows he’s been courting you forever.”
So he had, in an absent-minded fashion, though not exactly forever.
Three years is not forever. Not nearly.
“It’s because it’s going to be peculiar,” she said, surprised into truth.
“So? Pom’s a peculiar chap.” Rupert paused.
The words, Must be, since he wants you for a sweetheart boomed in the silence. Visibly, Rupert held them back. He said instead, “Peculiarity is interesting and unexpected. And it’d be peculiar if he didn’t give you a peculiar gift.”
“Very true.”
“You’re expecting it, so you won’t be too much shocked.”
“I hope it’s a beetle,” Horry piped up.
Ancella hoped it wasn’t. She liked beetles well enough, but she considered their place was in the garden, doing whatever they did among the flowers, not in a package in the drawing room.
Something brushed her heavy skirt up against her calf, and she looked down into the most beautiful eyes in the world.
Ancella shoved the gift into the pocket of her gown, bent, and lifted her best friend into her arms.
She kissed the messy dome of Glory’s head and got a quick lick on the cheek in return.
“Supper time, sweet?” she asked.
Glory aimed another lick at her.
Célène sighed. “Robert, would you please take your sister’s dog to the kitchen and see to her supper?”
“I’ll do it,” Ancella said quickly.
“You will not. You will open that gift immediately and stop being so foolish.”
Robert, the second twin, wordlessly held out his hands and Ancella bundled the dog into them.
Glory licked him as well. She was the best natured dog the Tanqueray family had ever known. She exuded affection, contentment, and general wellbeing and she loved everybody.
Some less than tactful callers were inclined to say it was just as well she had this to recommend her. Pomeroy didn’t say that sort of thing. That was one reason Ancella was inclined to take him on if he ever got around to asking for her. He would never, even in the heat of a quarrel, comment on any deficiencies of her face, features, or dress, or say any derogatory word about what she admired, because he wouldn’t see such flaws.
She wondered what he did see. His eyes always lit up into a shimmering flax blue when he perceived her, but she’d seen the same effect when he admired a contorted piece of bog oak at Creeping Jenny Marsh or a delightfully knobbled piece of porridge stone.
He also had the interesting habit of seeing through his fingertips, touching and stroking whatever he thought had an interesting texture. This included Glory, which was one more reason Ancella was disposed to love him.
He would be an affectionate husband. Any lady who married him would never want for caresses, even if he was simply testing the texture of her hair or the curve of her shoulder.
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Lark Westerly has been inventing worlds for over half a century. She loves making stories that touch and twine with one another, where a character from one might wander into someone else’s story.
Lark lives on the island of Tasmania, where she spins tales, walks dogs, cooks her own creations, and dreams up complications. She has a husband, two grown children, two grandchildren and a host of interesting ancestors. Some of their exploits are less believable than Lark’s romances.
If you’d like to know more about Lark’s world, you can visit her virtually at https://larksinger.weebly.com, https://beingtamzin.weebly.com or https://ashkeywing.weebly.com.
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Maggie Blackbird 