Hope Tarr is an award-winning romance fiction author who has been featured in a variety of media outlets including the NBC Today Show where she commented that romance novels “would make great how-to books for men”. Hope is an accomplished author with 15 books listed on Amazon. Before we get to our interview, here is a description of her latest book Vanquished. A devil’s bargain… “The photograph must be damning, indisputably so. I mean to see Caledonia Rivers not only ruined but vanquished. Vanquished,St. Claire, I’ll settle for nothing less.” Known as The Maid of Mayfair for her unassailable virtue, unwavering resolve, and quiet dignity, suffragette leader, Caledonia – Callie – Rivers is the perfect counter for detractors’ portrayal of the women as rabble rousers, lunatics, even whores. But a high-ranking enemy within the government will stop at nothing to ensure that the Parliamentary bill to grant the vote to females dies in the Commons – including ruining the reputation of the Movement’s chief spokeswoman. After a streak of disastrous luck at the gaming tables threatens to land him at the bottom of the Thames, photographer Hadrian St. Claire reluctantly agrees to seduce the beautiful suffragist leader and then use his camera to capture her fall from grace. Posing as the photographer commissioned to make her portrait for the upcoming march on Parliament, Hadrian infiltrates Callie’s inner circle. But lovely, soft-spoken Callie hardly fits his mental image of a dowdy, man-hating spinster. And as the passion between them flares from spark to full-on flame, Hadrian is the one in danger of being…vanquished.
Interview with Hope Tarr
Q: You write both contemporaries and historicals—your Men of Roxbury House trilogy, including Vanquished is set in 1890. What is the one era you would love to visit and why?
Hope: What a great question, particularly as I recently saw Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris.” Delightful film and such a hopeful message! I suppose we all romanticize other eras so with that in mind, I’m answering in terms of visiting, not taking up permanent residence. I’d like to travel back to Gaslight Era New York and Regency London. I’m currently working on books in those eras and reading tons of research and falling into infatuation if not permanent love.
One caveat though: even for my time traveling, I’m really going to need to be well-off. Being a servant in those eras couldn’t have been much fun. Cleaning the carpets with tea leaves and blackening the grates and sleeping under the eaves wouldn’t much suit me. 
Q: You’ve been a published novelist for coming on twelve years. What is the nicest thing a reviewer has ever said about one of your books?
Hope: That I’m always willing to take chances in my writing. The reviewer was Kathe Robin for RT BOOK Reviews and the comment was in reference to Vanquished. Regardless, it’s just about the nicest thing any writer can hear.
Q: Would you tell us a bit about The Men of Roxbury Series, especially Vanquished?
Hope: Roxbury House is a (fictional) Quaker orphanage in Kent, England where my three heroes (Hadrian, Gavin & Rourke) meet as orphaned boys, all rescued by then Prime Minister William Gladstone. Gladstone made regular sweeps of the London streets in search of prostitutes to help and reform, so my having him also rescue the occasional street boy doesn’t seem a too fantastical stretch of the historical record.
I’m a huge fan of the underdog and so having heroes, and in some cases heroines, who come from humble, even struggling circumstances, rather than being born to wealth and station is all but irresistible to me. In point, I adore writing about self made men—and women. Making those stories not only interesting but historically accurate in Victorian England, no less, is a challenge I welcome in my writing.
The particular idea for Vanquished was sparked by the 1998 film, The Governess starring Minnie Driver and Tom Wilkinson. The film focused on early photography, specifically experiments on how to permanently affix the image rather than having it fade away once exposed to light and air. (Okay, there was a passionate secret affair and hidden identities and other cool plot points as well).
In Vanquished, my hero, Hadrian St. Claire is a photographic portraitist fallen on hard times i.e., he has a tendency to drink too much and gamble poorly. It happens. To pay off his debts before his cods are claimed as repayment, he reluctantly agrees to lure women’s suffrage leader, Caledonia—Callie—Rivers to his studio and there take a risqué photograph of her. Such a photograph will discredit her and beyond her, the Women’s Suffrage Movement, ensuring that the latest Parliamentary suffrage bill will be roundly defeated. But first he must win her trust. Along the way, he grudgingly comes to like and respect and ultimately to love Callie, which is enormously inconvenient and causes all sorts of delicious…complications.
Q: Vanquished released in France in April as LA ROSE DE MAYFAIR. How exciting! The cover is very different from the original. Do you have a preference?
Hope: At the risk of sounding like a politician on the campaign trail, I like them both. Equally. I think my American publisher, Medallion Press, did a great job of branding the books as a series by using the lone female model on each of the books. My hands-down favorite of the three trilogy book covers is that for Vanquished, which is loosely based on the Sargeant portrait of Madame X, also considered quite scandalous in its time.
I also think my French publisher, J’ai lu, did a great job with the re-imagined LA ROSE DE MAYFAIR, which also features a lone heroine on the cover. I’ve since learned that they’ve also bought the French print rights to the other two trilogy books, Enslaved and Untamed. I can’t wait to see what they do with the covers for those as well.
Q: Vanquished was an Amazon Kindle Top 100 Bestseller for two weeks, ranking #3 for several consecutive days. That must have been exciting.
Hope: It was. It is. The marketing folks at my wonderful publisher, Medallion Press, and I put our heads together and decided to offer Vanquished for as a free e-book for two weeks this past September. Nearly 40,000 new readers downloaded the book and many of them have emailed since to say they’ve become so smitten with the characters they couldn’t resist buying Enslaved and Untamed as well. And I’m so very glad they have!
A past nominee for a Dorothy Parker Award of Excellence, Hope Tarr is the award-winning author of fifteen historical and contemporary romance novels, including her Victorian-set Men of Roxbury House series: Vanquished, Enslaved and Untamed. She is also a co-founder of Lady Jane’s Salon, New York City’s first—and only—monthly romance reading series. You can find Hope online at www.HopeTarr.com and www.WriterNYC.com as well as on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/HopeC.Tarr) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/#!/HopeTarr).
Hope, thank you for a wonderful interview.
The Staff at Digital Book Today
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