Hi everyone! I’m Roxy Harper and it’s an honour to have been asked to do a blog for Write for Harlequin to celebrate South Asian Heritage Month (SAHM). I feel very lucky to have come from a heritage that stretches across oceans—Portuguese Goan by descent, raised in Kenya and now living in England. But it’s the South Asian part of my identity that I wanted to write about here.
South Asia spans a wealth of countries made up of a myriad of languages, religions, histories, and migrations, and my Goan roots form part of that mosaic. Goa represents a cultural collision where East met West centuries ago and as such, it has a deliciously layered history: once a Portuguese colony, now a vibrant part of India, it carries a unique hybridity that’s both South Asian and Western. Indeed, it was not uncommon for Catholic prayers to be intermingled with the Konkani language, where spicy coconut Goan curries were cooked in buildings that resembled the Mediterranean villas. An “in-between”.
But that in-between space was (and still is) delightfully multi-dimensional and fluid. Being part of that history was fundamental in shaping me, and is the lens through which I see the world. To me, SAHM is not only a celebration of South Asian heritage, but also of the less-told stories which come from those colourful in-between spaces.
I feel incredibly grateful to be able to draw on this rich heritage when it comes to writing my historical romances and crafting my heroes and heroines. I’m drawn to characters who don’t quite fit the mould – people with tangled loyalties and histories which echo across borders. I loved writing The Viking’s Royal Temptation for this reason, because I found myself telling not just a love story, but a story about two worlds colliding. Although miles away from the tropics of Goa, my Varangian Viking Erik travelled to Constantinople and there, found his true love in a Greek Princess, Thea. Erik and Thea’s story features some of the things I had to navigate in the context of my cultural mix: the longing to belong; the tension between rules and traditions on the one hand and following one’s own heart on the other hand. These elements are what make my Viking warrior crave more than conquest, or my English rake stand up to stiff traditions. It’s what makes my heroines strong women – bold, complex, and unafraid to rewrite their destinies.
I’m really excited to write more stories featuring these interracial elements – in particular, the period straddling the demise of the East India Company and the birth of the British Raj. Some of the research I did on this period led me to learn about the ayahs of London – nannies who had been brought over from India to look after the children of their British employers. But many of them were eventually left to fend for themselves. Today, the building which housed these abandoned women sits on 26 King Edward’s Road in Hackney, East London, and has been honoured with a blue plaque. It’s less-told stories like these that I’d like to be able to bring into the spotlight as an author of South Asian heritage. Living in England today, I think it’s great how (by Harlequin’s publishing of this blog, for example!) we are making room for complex, layered stories from South Asian voices—not just the ones rooted in the subcontinent, but also those shaped by global movement and multicultural lives. I’m so grateful for the voices before me that kept our stories alive, and for the chance to keep telling them, one love story at a time.
Roxy Harper’s The Viking’s Royal Temptation is available now!
Duty vs. desire… Which will win?
Princess and healer Theadora doesn’t flinch at the sight of armed soldiers. Yet when another uprising threatens to disturb Constantinople’s peace, and Varangian guard Erik bursts into her sanitorium, she’s stunned by her body’s immediate reaction to the rugged Viking…
After the tragic loss of his family, Erik vowed to never love again. So he refuses to let his inconvenient attraction to Thea distract him from his duty: escorting her to marry the king of Macedonia.
If Thea doesn’t wed, her people will suffer, so can the star-crossed lovers fight their feelings, as well as their enemies?
