Tea Cooper, best selling author of The Horse Thief
Your new book, The Currency Lass, is out soon. What was the inspiration for the story?
The Currency Lass is a jigsaw of fact and fiction held together with a serious does of imagination.I stumbled across a non fiction book in the library Circus – The Australian Story by Mark St Leon. I was captivated. Couple that with a long standing passion for the circus and that was it!
What is the one era you would love to visit and why?
Absolutely the 1850s in Australia. I live in a town which has physically changed very little since then but the people … I’d love to meet the people who lived here back then.
What misconceptions do you think most people have about writers?
It’s been captured perfectly in everyone of those memes … This is what my mother thinks I do, this is what my girlfriend thinks … etc … Seriously, people believe the words simply flow, every day, always. They don’t for me. And no one but a writer can understand a writer’s insecurities. No matter how many books, the latest is never good enough!
Which five people would you invite to a dinner party and why?
Now that’s tricky. Baron Charles von Hugel (I’m reading his diary at the moment. He travelled throughout ‘New Holland’ and Kashmir in the 1830s), Lachlan Macquarie and his architect Francis Greenway, Eliza Hamilton Dunlop (She was somewhat outspoken, married to the Chief Magistrate and ‘Protector of Aborigines’ in Wollombi – and didn’t agree with him.) and of course, Sir Joseph Banks.
You’ve written 12 published novels. Out of all your books, which one is closest to your heart, and why?
Probably my latest release. I’ve had a ‘thing’ about the circus for as long as I can remember so The Currency Lass really is a dream come true!
About The Currency Lass
Sometimes running away leads you right back where you started
As her father’s only heir, Catherine Cottingham expects to inherit their sprawling property in the Hunter Valley. What she doesn’t understand is why her father is trying to push her into a marriage to the pompous and repulsive Sydney businessman Henry W. Bartholomew.
When the will is read it becomes clear money, or the lack of it, lay behind her father’s plans. Catherine is mortified — as a married woman all her possessions will pass to her husband, the overbearing Bartholomew. Her only alternative is to wait until her twenty-first birthday and inherit the property in her own right, but can she elude such a determined man until then?
A chance encounter with a travelling circus and its fiery lead performer, Sergey Petrov, offers the perfect solution and Catherine escapes to the goldfields. But there is more to the circus than spangles and sawdust and Catherine finds herself drawn into a far-reaching web of fraud and forgery…
A stunning new novel from the bestselling author of The Horse Thief and The Cedar Cutter.
The Currency Lass comes out on February 20, 2017. You can pre-order it here:
Thanks so much for the invitation to visit!