Spotlight & Giveaway: The Secrets of Hartwood Hall by Katie Lumsden

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Katie Lumsden to HJ!

Hi Katie and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, The Secrets of Hartwood Hall!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

The Secrets of Hartwood Hall is a gothic historical novel set in England in 1852. It follows Margaret Lennox, a twenty-nine-year-old governess, who is returning to work after the death of her husband. She hopes that her new position at Hartwood Hall will help her forget her past, but it soon becomes clear that things are not quite what they seem at this isolated country house. There are strange figures in the dark, unexplained noises and mounting tensions within the household. Margaret must work out the truth, before it’s too late…
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

It was not my fault I was returning to work so soon. Everything else aside, I needed the money. I had spent the last four weeks in cramped lodgings, living off the sale of a necklace Richard had given me when we were first married. Even my mourning was reused; I had been forced to make
the best of the black dresses I had worn when my mother died, darning here and there, turning out a seam, unplucking tighter threads at the waist.
A bad start, perhaps, for a widow – but it was not as though I had ever been a good wife.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• I really love Victorian literature, and that’s one of the main things that inspired this novel. It’s a bit of a love letter to Victorian books, especially to Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. It’s packed with literary references.
• I love history, so I had lots of fun doing the research for The Secrets of Hartwood Hall. Amongst everything else, I read conduct books for governesses and medical handbooks from the Victorian period, which was fascinating.
• The book has changed hugely across the editing process, both when I was editing it on my own and when working with my agent and editors. I think the first chapter of the final draft is pretty similar still to the first chapter of the first draft – but basically everything else has changed!

Readers should read this book….

if they like books about books, Victorian settings, a bit of a mystery, some playing around with gothic tropes, women rebelling against the social structure, and lots of interesting (I hope!) characters.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

I’ve been working on my next novel, which is also set in the Victorian period, although with a slightly different feel. I can’t say more than that yet . . .
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: A Print copy of The Secrets of Hartwood Hall by Katie Lumsden

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Excerpt from The Secrets of Hartwood Hall:

Towards the end of my first week at Hartwood Hall, I woke abruptly in the middle of the night, breathing hard. I had been dreaming of Richard again, and the scent of him, the tone of his voice, lingered in my mind. It took me a few moments to realize what had woken me. A noise, somewhere beyond my room, loud enough to pull me from sleep.
I opened my bed curtains gingerly and fumbled on the bedside table for a match. I lit a candle and got out of bed.
As I eased the door open, I saw the candle shake and sputter in my hand. I stood in the corridor, breathing in and out, looking up and down. But it was entirely empty.
A smile came to my lips. Of course I had heard nothing. Of course it had been nothing more than a remnant of my dream.
I took one final glance down the corridor—
And stopped.
There was someone there.
I whispered, “Louis?”
No reply. I stepped forwards, my skin cold.
Whoever it was held no candle, but I saw movement in the darkness on the stairs, and I hurried after it. Was it one of the servants, wandering the corridors when they shouldn’t be? Did Louis sleepwalk?
I was four steps down the stairs and my candle was casting twisted shadows on the wall. My footsteps creaked loudly on each step.
I caught a glimpse of a white nightshirt in the darkness below.
There was definitely someone there.
I moved quickly down the staircase, nearer and nearer to where the figure had been. I felt almost that I were still dreaming, as though the figure in the dark before me was Richard, walking away from me. I was losing him. Surely I could catch him, I could save him, if only I moved faster, if only I tried.
I shook it off. I was not dreaming. I was in my new home in the dark, following a blur of light.
As I reached the foot of the stairs I said, louder than before, “Louis?”
A moment’s silence.
Then, “Mrs Lennox?”
Louis’s voice. I breathed out in relief.
“Are you all right, child? Were you sleepwalking?”
“No,” came his voice in the darkness. “I heard you on the stairs and came to see what the matter was.”
That was when I realized. The voice was not coming from in front of me but from behind. I have always struggled to tell.
I turned sharply round—and there was Louis, standing at the top of the stairs in a grey nightshirt, a candle in his hand.
I swallowed hard. I looked around the empty entrance hall, raised my candle, but I could see no one. Not a shadow.
Not a movement.
“I thought . . .”
Louis was halfway down the stairs now. “What is it, Mrs Lennox?”
“I thought I saw someone out of bed. I was following them, to check if they were all right. I thought it was you.” I tried to smile. “It was probably one of the servants.”
“They always use the back stairs,” said Louis. “It must have been Mama.”
“But she’s away.”
He blinked at me, and then his face cracked into a smile. “I am so sleepy I forgot,” he said. “But I suppose you were only dreaming.”
I was coming up the steps to meet him, but this gave me pause. I looked back over my shoulder, held the candle up high—but still there was nothing. What I had thought was a figure must have been a trick of the light, the white nightshirt nothing but the reflection of the moon. Only my imagination.
I reached Louis and put my hand in his. “I dare say you are right.”
“Mother says I’m always right.” He smiled. “You thought I was sleepwalking, but you were.”
“I suppose I was. Come, we ought to go back to bed.”
Louis squeezed my hand.
We parted outside my door. I watched him walk down the corridor towards his room, holding his candle aloft. When he reached his bedroom, he turned back. His face looked momentarily pained, and he said something. In the candlelight, I saw his mouth move, but the words did not reach me.
“What was that, Louis?”
He hesitated, and when he spoke again I was almost sure he did not repeat what he had said before. He said, “I’m glad you have come.”
I smiled. “I am glad, too.”
And then I blew out the candle and crept back to bed.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

It’s 1852 and Margaret Lennox, a young widow, attempts to escape the shadows of her past by taking a position as governess to an only child, Louis, at an isolated country house in the west of England.

But Margaret soon starts to feel that something isn’t quite right. There are strange figures in the dark, tensions between servants, and an abandoned east wing. Even stranger is the local gossip surrounding Mrs. Eversham, Louis’s widowed mother, who is deeply distrusted in the village.

Lonely and unsure whom to trust, Margaret finds distraction in a forbidden relationship with the gardener, Paul. But as Margaret’s history threatens to catch up with her, it isn’t long before she learns the truth behind the secrets of Hartwood Hall.
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Meet the Author:

Katie Lumsden read Jane Eyre at the age of thirteen and never looked back. She spent her teenage years devouring nineteenth century literature, reading every Dickens, Brontë, Austen and Hardy novel she could find. She has a degree in English literature and history from the University of Durham and an MA in creative writing from Bath Spa University. Her short stories have been shortlisted for the London Short Story Prize and the Bridport Prize. Katie’s YouTube channel, Books and Things, has 25,000 subscribers. She lives in London, UK, and works as an editor. The Secrets of Hartwood Hall is her debut novel.
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