Hobby Hoedown Features Author Anne Stenhouse and her Foray into Belly Dancing

Holler a loud YEE-HAW for British author, Anne Stenhouse. She is fessing up to her foray into belly dancing today. Curious? Read on!

My Belly Dancing Foray

Before I get deeper into the mire, I should 'fess up.
I'm not a belly-dancer, but given different circumstances, I might have been. I am a writer, that's why JQ invited me on here, and I know the benefit of a good title.
The belly-dancing I have done was a lesson. I was at a charity ball and one of the other ladies on the table decided we would group our resources and bid in a silent auction for a belly-dancing lesson. We didn't win, but the donor was so impressed by my friend's enthusiasm she took us on too.
Like all the other dancing I've tried - Scottish Country, Highland, Ballroom, Line, Latin American, Ceildh, the Twist, Disco - it was good fun. It's always interesting if you are a regular dancer as I am, to learn the basic step behind the dramatic performance.
I might not have been able to shake the beautiful belt of jangling discs like an Eastern beauty, but I could lead with my left foot and take the group gracefully round the floor until handing it over to the next lady. It was a great experience.
I'm not signing up for anybody's harem anytime soon!

The picture of me turning under my friend's arm was taken during the dance following my marriage. We're probably dancing a Scottish dance called The Pride of Erin Waltz. It was and remains one of my favourite dances.

About Anne:

ANNE STENHOUSE has always loved words. Reading them and using them greedily, she can’t truly remember a time when she couldn’t escape into the pages of a book and certainly can’t remember when she couldn’t talk and ask

questions. Anne is a published and performed playwright. She studied both English and History at University in Edinburgh, and finds it a great joy to combine these two disciplines in her novels. Being a playwright means Anne loves dialogue and knows a piece is going well when she ‘begins to hear the characters talking to each other’. She has been a civil servant, full-time Mum, and for a while, a worker in an Addictions’ rehabilitation unit. Anne lives in Scotland with her husband and dancing partner of over thirty years. Their children and a grandchild are close by.

 MARIAH'S MARRIAGE

The worlds of teachers and aristocrats collide and fuse
when a pig charges Mariah Fox in nineteenth century London

 Synopsis:

Leaving the chapel in London’s 19^th century Thames’ side where she teaches the alphabet to a raggle-taggle of urchins, Mariah Fox is charged by a stray pig. The quick intervention of Tobias Longreach saves her from certain injury. Mariah has always believed her destiny to be teaching. After the early death of her mother, she was brought up by her papa, Jerome, to believe that she could learn anything a boy could. She shares his vision of a future in which everyone, rich or poor, boy or girl, will be taught at least the rudiments of reading, writing, and counting.

Tobias was brought up a second son, but following his elder brother’s premature death, inherits an Earldom and the need to provide it with an heir. He comes to believe that Mariah will make a perfect countess and enrolls her papa’s help in securing her hand.

However, Sir Lucas Wellwood, whose debts have made him urge his sister to attempt to trap Tobias into marriage, has sinister intentions. Mariah suspects Wellwood has been mistreating his sister and she heads off impetuously to rescue her. Will Tobias and his friends reach Wellwood’s home before he can exact revenge on Mariah?

 Buy Links:

Muse It Up Publishing  

Amazon  

Barnes and Noble  

 Author's Blog: