We’re so pleased to have author Alex Beecroft joining us today on the tour for her latest release, Contraband Hearts, the newest addition to the Porthkennack universe and the profits from which are being donated to Black Trans Advocacy. Alex is here to chat a bit about the Age of Sail, and there’s also a giveaway so be sure to check out those details below.

Welcome, Alex!

What’s the Most Interesting Thing About the Age of Sail?

I was asked this question by Sandra Lindsey, author of Under Leaden Skies, a long-term friend of mine since we were both on Livejournal together. More specifically, she asked “What’s the most interesting (to you) thing you’ve learned from all the Age of Sail research you’ve done?”

I thought that was a great question, because in my opinion the 18^th Century is one of the most fascinating times I’ve read about. It’s the point where people are beginning to almost sound modern, until you trip and land face down into a pit of ancient savagery, like their enjoyment of public executions or their practice of making prisoners in debtors’ prison pay for their own food and comforts—so you could go into prison in debt for a shilling and never come out or pay it back because the prison itself was making you more and more in debt.

Mind you, with all the loan sharks around at the moment, I suppose that’s not so strange after all.

I personally found all the little details about the British Royal Navy and its culture fascinating. It delighted me to learn that—for example—the stopper that is put on the end of a cannon when it’s not in use is called a ‘tompion.’ Or that the part of the anchor rope that is closest to the ship is known as the ‘bitter end.’ I loved learning about the precautions they had to take when storing barrels of gunpowder on a wooden ship whose only lighting source was candles. Oh, and the lengths they went to to discover how to prevent scurvy…

Did you know that when scurvy is quite advanced, any old wounds the sufferer might have once had reopen, because scurvy undoes scar tissue. That’s pretty wild. And it’s fascinating to think that Captain Cook, for example, prevented his crew from getting scurvy by forcing them to eat absolutely anything they came across that they could keep down. No one knew about vitamin C in those days, but simply choking down a wide variety of foods, no matter how disgusting, made sure that they got enough of it to thrive.

The culture of the Navy still makes me smile with a kind of “wow, they were so weird,” delight. But they don’t appear in Contraband Hearts. In the research I did for Contraband Hearts, I learned from Black and British: A Forgotten History by David Olusoga that there was a large Black British community in London. I learned that it was entirely unfair that William Wilberforce seems to have got all the credit for the abolition of slavery, when Olaudah Equiano and the Sons of Africa society were just as active. Perry, as a classically educated, ambitious young gentleman would not have been out of place.

I learned about newspaper clubs—where people would pool the expense of a subscription to a newspaper and then pass it on among themselves. Which—in a time of Revolution across the channel—meant that the British population was eagerly awaiting/awaiting in dread the time when the poor rose up over here and brought down their rich overlords. It sounded a lot like politics today, to be honest. A salutary warning that corruption can only go so far before the people revolt.

None of which has really answered the question, has it? I suppose the answer is that there’s just too much to choose from. I haven’t even got into the information on mining or smuggling that I read, but most of what I really loved about that ended up in the book. This is why I write books, in fact; I’m way too long winded to express myself properly anywhere else.

About the Book

His future depends on bringing the smuggler to justice. His heart demands to join him.

Customs officer Peregrine Dean is sent by his patron to investigate rumors of corruption in the Porthkennack customs house. There he is tasked by the local magistrate to bring down the villainous Tomas Quick, a smuggler with fingers in every pie in town. Fired with zeal and ambition, and struck to the core by his first glimpse of Tomas, Perry determines to stop at nothing until he has succeeded.

Tomas Quick is an honest thief—a criminal regarded by the town as their local Robin Hood. He’s also an arrogant man who relishes the challenge posed by someone as determined and intelligent as Perry. Both of them come to enjoy their cat-and-mouse rivalry a little too much.

But the eighteenth century is a perilous time for someone like Perry: a black man in England. Two have already disappeared from the wrecks of ships. Tomas and Perry must forsake their competition and learn to trust each other if they are to rescue them, or Perry may become the third victim.

NOTE: All profits from the sales of this book are donated to Black Trans Advocacy.

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About the Porthkennack Universe

Welcome to Porthkennack, a charming Cornish seaside town with a long and sometimes sinister history. Legend says King Arthur’s Black Knight built the fort on the headland here, and it’s a certainty that the town was founded on the proceeds of smuggling, piracy on the high seas, and the deliberate wrecking of cargo ships on the rocky shore. Nowadays it draws in the tourists with sunshine and surfing, but locals know that the ghosts of its Gothic past are never far below the surface.

This collaborative story world is brought to you by five award-winning, best-selling British LGBTQ romance authors: Alex Beecroft, Joanna Chambers, Charlie Cochrane, Garrett Leigh, and JL Merrow. Follow Porthkennack and its inhabitants through the centuries and through the full rainbow spectrum with historical and contemporary stand-alone titles.

About the Author

Alex Beecroft is an English author best known for historical fiction, notably Age of Sail, featuring gay characters and romantic storylines. Her novels and shorter works include paranormal, fantasy, and contemporary fiction.

Beecroft won Linden Bay Romance’s (now Samhain Publishing) Starlight Writing Competition in 2007 with her first novel, Captain’s Surrender, making it her first published book. On the subject of writing gay romance, Beecroft has appeared in the Charleston City Paper, LA Weekly, the New Haven Advocate, the Baltimore City Paper, and The Other Paper. She is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association of the UK and an occasional reviewer for the blog Speak Its Name, which highlights historical gay fiction.

Alex was born in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and grew up in the wild countryside of the English Peak District. She lives with her husband and two children in a little village near Cambridge and tries to avoid being mistaken for a tourist.

Alex is only intermittently present in the real world. She has led a Saxon shield wall into battle, toiled as a Georgian kitchen maid, and recently taken up an 800-year-old form of English folk dance, but she still hasn’t learned to operate a mobile phone.

She is represented by Louise Fury of the L. Perkins Literary Agency.

Connect with Alex: Website || Blog || Facebook || Twitter: @Alex_Beecroft || Goodreads

The Giveaway

To celebrate the release of Contraband Hearts, Alex is giving away a $10 Amazon gift card and an ebook from her backlist, your choice! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on May 5, 2018. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following along, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!