Introducing Frederick
I can’t believe that RIPE FOR SCANDAL is almost here! As I gear up for its releas
e, I thought I’d talk about the non-dog animal that features in this book: a pig. I can hear my friends laughing from here. In general, I am not a great fan of pigs (I most commonly refer to them as “bacon waiting to happen”). There was a sow near where I stabled my horse as a teen that would regularly escape and go viciously marauding across the countryside. Anyone who’s had to use a buggy whip to deter a charging 600lb animal with teeth that go through bone like butter has good to distrust the creatures.
But I knew that my elegant, city-beau hero was going to end up on an estate that was, essentially, a large working farm. Nearly all great estates had home farms, and my hero needed something to get him invested in the idea of owning such a place (especially as the one in question is all the way down by the channel in Kent, a long ways away from friends and family for both characters). My heroine is smart enough know that love of home is a necessity for happiness, and thus gifts her new husband with a pig as part of the process of restoring their long dormant estate to prosperity.
Because I’m a a great proponent of heritage breeds, I did a little research and found the perfect one: the Gloucestershire Old Spot. It’s a large black and white pig, noted for its docility and intelligence, and examples of them date back in art to at least
the Georgian era. As a bonus, the book features a Newfoundland (also black and white), so that added a layer of further interest and fun (at least for me) by allowing black and white to be a theme for the estate.
Frederick, of course, is not for eating. Hence he has a name. I imagine a long life of grazing and eating fallen fruit and siring hordes of little piglets who will not get names, but will provide bacon and ham for the table and perhaps help keep the estate in the black.
IMAGES: Top: GOS piglets; BOTTOM: The wolf and the sow, 1810.
e, I thought I’d talk about the non-dog animal that features in this book: a pig. I can hear my friends laughing from here. In general, I am not a great fan of pigs (I most commonly refer to them as “bacon waiting to happen”). There was a sow near where I stabled my horse as a teen that would regularly escape and go viciously marauding across the countryside. Anyone who’s had to use a buggy whip to deter a charging 600lb animal with teeth that go through bone like butter has good to distrust the creatures.But I knew that my elegant, city-beau hero was going to end up on an estate that was, essentially, a large working farm. Nearly all great estates had home farms, and my hero needed something to get him invested in the idea of owning such a place (especially as the one in question is all the way down by the channel in Kent, a long ways away from friends and family for both characters). My heroine is smart enough know that love of home is a necessity for happiness, and thus gifts her new husband with a pig as part of the process of restoring their long dormant estate to prosperity.Because I’m a a great proponent of heritage breeds, I did a little research and found the perfect one: the Gloucestershire Old Spot. It’s a large black and white pig, noted for its docility and intelligence, and examples of them date back in art to at least
the Georgian era. As a bonus, the book features a Newfoundland (also black and white), so that added a layer of further interest and fun (at least for me) by allowing black and white to be a theme for the estate.Frederick, of course, is not for eating. Hence he has a name. I imagine a long life of grazing and eating fallen fruit and siring hordes of little piglets who will not get names, but will provide bacon and ham for the table and perhaps help keep the estate in the black.
IMAGES: Top: GOS piglets; BOTTOM: The wolf and the sow, 1810.
.jpg)
Comments
Post a Comment