Australian best seller Karen Brooks' latest book The Chocolate Maker's Wife is a historical thriller set in the time of King Charles II when chocolate was regarded as "sin in a bowl" and the commercial houses that served it were hotbeds of revolution. Damnation never tasted so sweet.

Hi there, I'm you host Jenny Wheeler and today Karen talks about the lush, fascinating world of Restoration London and of a beautiful woman drawn into a world of riches, power, intrigue - and chocolate.

And we've a paperback copy of Karen's captivating story of power , intrigue and greed for listener's to win in The Chocolate Maker's Wife Giveaway. You can enter the draw here or find it on Facebook. Entries close June 30.

Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

The friendship that inspired Karen to write fictionThree overlapping careers that have blessed her lifeHow she came to move to TasmaniaThe book that inspired a family breweryThe writers she admires mostThe challenge of being a high profile woman

Where to find Karen Brooks:

Website: https://karenrbrooks.com/

Facebook: @KarenBrooksAuthor

 Twitter: @KarenBrooksAU

What

follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for

word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

Jenny: [00:00:01] But now here's Karen. Hello there Karen

and welcome to the show. It's great to have you with us.

Karen: [00:00:08] Oh hi Jenny. Thank you so much for

having me.

Dr Karen Brooks, historic fiction author and columnist

Jenny: [00:00:12] And I just wanted to start by saying very reverently; Dr. Brooks. Because indeed you have Ph.D in Humanities and you are recognized in your home country of Australia as a weekly columnist and an expert on all sorts of controversial popular topics..

But you've also a wife and mother so you've got a very busy life apart from your writing. You've published twelve books beginning with fantasy and moving into  historical fiction. The $64 million question is: Beginning at the beginning was there a Once Upon A Time moment when you thought I've really got to write fiction or I will have just not done when I'm meant to do somehow.

Inspired by a friend

Karen: [00:01:04] I wish I had a story like that to tell.

I love it when authors say that they have always wanted to be a writer and they

wrote since they were out of the cot, but no, I never saw myself ever as a

writer.

I always write. I mean I think lots of kids do and as a teenager I kept diaries. All right, terrible lovelorn poems and messages of adulation to people I admired - political figures or actors and people like that.  I think it was my girlfriend becoming quite successful in her field as an author. That was Sara Douglass, the fantasy writer. It was a really aspirational moment for me and she really encouraged me.  

I'd written a couple of plays and one of them was performed in Sydney a few years earlier. And so again dabbling, dabbling, dabbling. But I kept saying 'I really should write a book one day' or 'I think I'll write a book' and basically I think Sara got absolutely sick of me going on about it and said "Oh for God's sakes just stop saying you're gonna do it and just do it."

[00:02:05] She had a few

expletives thrown in there, I'm being polite. She was a damn good friend. She

really was. So I thought 'yeah you're right.' And I just sat down one day and

basically did it.