This past week I began sending out Advance Review Copies of Bargaining with the Devil (Sirens & Spies #2), releasing 9th October. (If you’d like to get in on that, it’s not too late to sign up here, and I’ll email you with next steps. You can also pre-order it here.) Now I’d like to introduce you to it with a photo and a little bit of real history.
In a prior newsletter, I shared photos I used for reference while crafting the coastal Scottish setting in The Spy and the Nightingale‘s final chapters. Bargaining with the Devil picks up two years later in January 1819 in the same place.
The real-life Hestan Isle at the edge of the Solway Firth features prominently in Bargaining with the Devil. (Although I chose to use its archaic spelling, Heston, for historical accuracy.)
Hestan Isle’s existence had a direct role in shaping some of Bargaining with the Devil‘s plot. I’d already set the end of The Spy and the Nightingale along that stretch of the Solway Firth. While reading up on it for Nightingale, I ran across an account of smugglers using Hestan Isle in the late eighteenth century. As a historical romance writer who incorporates real locales into stories whenever possible, that tidbit was too great a gift to overlook.
Hestan Isle has quite the history for a small spot of land. Among other things, it was at one time owned by the monks from the nearby Dundrennan Abbey and was at one time home to Edward Balliol, a one-time king of Scotland. There’s a lovely little website devoted just to Hestan Isle that I found both valuable and fascinating as I did research.
I don’t want to spoil the plot of Bargaining with the Devil for you, but the middle stretch of the story, which is pivotal on every level, takes place on Hestan (Heston) Isle!
