A Prelude to a Kiss

 

As you likely know by now, I adore first kisses. One of my favorites to write was the first kiss shared by Lilith and Jasper in Taming Beauty.  It was an unexpected and unanticipated kiss that took Lilith by surprise and changed her fate forever.

And for a limited time you can enjoy that delicious moment, and many more besides, for free!

Taming Beauty Free on Amazon thru November 13

 

I hope you enjoy this prelude to a kiss…

Then he stalked her, prowling across the space separating them, slowly and purposefully.

Lilith lifted her chin and eyed him, enjoying the fluid grace of his movements, so rare in a man of his size, while she waited for him to commence with the lecture on propriety and children and dirty laundry strung about and flapping on the breeze for all to witness.

Malleville did not halt a proper distance from her, nor did he halt an improper distance from her, but kept coming until he was almost upon her.

Then he was upon her, his strong arms lashing out and winding around her, lifting her clear off the ground. In the next moment they were falling, tumbling into the tall grass. Malleville twisted to take the brunt of the fall, landing with Lilith splayed along all those hard muscles, her legs tangling with his, her breasts flattened to the hard wall of his chest, her fingers clutching his shoulders.

Before Lilith could offer up a single word in protestation or entreaty, he rolled, taking her with him and tucking her under him with his elbows resting beside her pinned arms and his legs clamped along the length of hers.

He was going to kiss her. Lilith knew the prelude to a kiss when it knocked her to ground, even if it was unfamiliar ground, soft and springy and faintly prickly.

It wasn’t until his lips touched hers that she realized she knew precious little about kissing.

Malleville’s lips were cool, blessedly cool and firm. And unbelievably soft.

He didn’t plunder but took his time, pressing tender kisses along her upper lip before exploring the lower with little nips and nudges that had her mouth falling open on a gasp of surprised delight.

His tongue swept from one corner of her lips to the other, as if he must discover every texture and taste before accepting the invitation she offered.

Cradling her head, he sifted his fingers through the wayward curls unleashed from the bun atop her head, exploring the tangled locks with the same gentle diligence and patience.

Lilith sighed, awed and undone by the tenderness she hadn’t anticipated, hadn’t realized had been missing from her life for years, for eons. Forever.

Taming Beauty Free thru November 13

 

Congratulations to my latest Corset Winner: Joanna Davis.

 

A Free Western Historical Romance

My Darling Gunslinger is Free October 26-30th.

 

Bounty hunter Tyler Morgan has nothing to his name but a horse named Pocahontas, a dog-eared dictionary and a pair of six-shooters he dreams of hanging up forever. When luck smiles upon him and he wins a ranch on a single hand of cards, he doesn’t gamble on finding a proper English lady, her son and a motley assortment of misfits living on his land.

Fall in love with this lonely, rough-around-the-edges, tough-as-nails, tender-hearted gunman today! 

My Darling Gunslinger Free on Amazon

If Books Were Princes

Am I the only reader out there who thinks finding a truly great Historical Romance novel is rather like trying to find a good man on a dating website?

Before my husband and I finally decided to get married, we split up for almost a year. About half-way through this break up, I joined a few dating sites and spent hours looking at the pictures and biographies posted by hundreds of men with the potential to be just my type: funny, kind, intelligent blue-collar hunks of a certain age living within 30 miles of my little city by the sea. I sent a few of them a wink or nudge or whatever it was that led to flirting by way of instant messages and emails. Alas, I did not go out on a date with any of them.

It’s probably a good thing, as clearly I cannot judge a book by its cover, blurb or sample.

With the advent of digital ebooks, and the ease of self publishing, there are so many books to choose from now. So how is it possible that in recent months, I’ve picked the wrong ones more often than not? I read the blurbs and samples, perused both the positive and negative reviews and still somehow ended up with far too many books I simply could not finish. Even a few new releases by some of my favorite authors left me feeling unsatisfied after I’d loyally trudged my way to the last page.

I know I can be picky, even persnickety on occasion, but I swear I’m not impossible to please. I’ll happily ignore a few typos and misplaced commas, skip over a bit of repetitious inner angst and suspend disbelief a time or two if the writing is solid and the premise of the story is engaging. While I admit that I am always on the lookout for books featuring complicated characters who are true to themselves and unique plots that wander, skip or even dance a jig off the beaten path, I also enjoy tried-and-true scenarios and trite plot devices. I read and write Historical Romance, after all. But give me a twist to go with the timeworn, I beg you. Something fresh and fun out of left field. A tired tale revamped with a dash of the unexpected. A seemingly cookie-cutter hero or heroine who turns out to be a lopsided, three-tiered spice cake.

What’s a reader to do? Well, this reader became so disheartened, so afraid to risk wasting her time only to be disappointed yet again, that she spent hours, days, weeks, browsing covers, reading blurbs, samples and reviews until eventually they all blurred into the same story. All without one-clicking a single book. Rather like my time on the dating website circuit.

And then I went back to the truly tried-and-true. I scrolled through my library and re-read some of my all-time favorite romance novels, many of which I’d already read repeatedly. And I realized two very important things.

Firstly, my tastes have evolved and become a tad more refined. So maybe those new releases by favorite authors left me unsatisfied simply because they are no longer my cup of tea. And those books that went unfinished? Well, we all know we have to kiss a lot of frogs before we find a prince. And, yes, I do realize I’m playing fast and loose with the cliches and idioms in this blog post, but surely by now you know that’s how I roll.

Secondly, there is a reason some Historical Romance novels become classics. They are beautifully written, the plots intricately woven, the characters so vibrant they leap off the pages, the emotions evoked so real and true and pure that the stores themselves are timeless. My tastes may change, broaden and expand in unanticipated directions, but I cannot imagine I will ever be disappointed when I curl up on the couch to read them from the first page to the last.

So, if you find yourself wallowing in the Historical Romance doldrums, here are a few books I suggest to put some wind in your sails:

Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels

Judith Ivory’s Untie My Heart

Meredith Duran’s Duke of Shadows

Lisa Kleypas’s The Devil in Winter

****

When I’m not frantically searching for a fabulous book to read, or getting lost in a classic that will never go out of style, I am feverishly working on book 4 in the Idyllwild Series. If you haven’t reads the first three books in the series, now would be a good time to find out why readers are devouring them and craving more.

****

Congratulations April’s Corset Winner: Charlene Whitehouse.

 

 

Inspiration for Courting Chaos

When I began Taming Beauty I had no intention of embarking upon an entirely new series. After all, I still have Gilroy’s tale to tell as book 4 of my Idyllwild Series, and books 2 and 3 of what will one day be a series featuring Veronica and Bernice from Pretty Poison.

Alas, in the course of writing Taming Beauty, I introduced Lilith’s sisters, Harry and Kate – honestly they were only meant to be minor secondary characters with no responsibilities beyond moving the plot forward – and they simply demanded more page time. More and more and more, until I had no choice but to give them their very own stories.

I knew little of Harry beyond the fact that she was another of Lord Dunaway’s illegitimate daughters, as well as the granddaughter of the Duke of Montclaire and the Scandalous Bathsheba Sinclair. She’d proven herself to be particularly prickly, surprisingly cynical and exceedingly clever. Her father, the debauched and dissolute Dunaway, described her as a woman destined to carve out her own fate. Harry proudly proclaimed herself determined to lay waste to all the Earl of Dunaway held dear. I suspected Harry needed a charming rake to smooth her jagged edges and introduce her to the softer, sweeter side of life with a liberal application of laughter and love.

But who was Miss Hesperia O’Connell? While creating teasers for Taming Beauty I came across this lovely painting that just captured my imagination…

Victorian Lady, Green Dress by John O’Brien

I recognized Harry in the woman standing alone before a window, quietly surveying her domain. But as Harry isn’t a country girl, her domain would hardly feature a pond with swans gliding over its placid surface. Nor would we find her in Mayfair, Fitzrovia or even Bloomsbury. No, Harry’s stubborn desire to control her own future would put her in the heart of London, where her curiously calculating mind and mercenary tendencies would allow her to bloom and thrive.

Thus, I transformed the luxurious parlor into a spacious flat that had previously housed a dance academy, and situated it atop a book shop in a working class neighborhood in the East End of London.                                             

In exploring various neighborhoods suitable to Harry’s needs, I discovered Wellclose Square. Dubbed one of the East End’s “Lost Squares” and possibly the site of one of London’s “Lost Rivers”, Wellclose Square was once part of the Precinct of Well Close and has a rich history dating back the dissolution of the monasteries. With its close proximity to the River Thames, Wellclose Square was inhabited by working and middle-class men and women whose businesses were local to the area or connected to the river or the sea.

           Corner of Stable Yard, Wellclose Square    

The neighborhood had a sordid side as well. At one time, the Neptune Street Gaol, the Court House and the Cock and Neptune pub were connected to the extent that the publican acted as gaoler. Philanthropist John Howard visited in 1777 and described the gaol (mostly utilized as a debtor’s prison) as a “resort of idle and dissolute persons, who came there to drink and play, and were encouraged to do so by the keepers in order to increase the profits of their office.”

 

Grace’s Alley, Wellclose Square

 

With the neighborhood possessing that sort of seamy reputation, is it any wonder that Phineas believes Harry to be running numbers and rigging boxing matches for Wellclose Square’s version of a crime lord?

Courting Chaos is available now at Amazon.

Read an Excerpt

Dukes, Eligible and Otherwise

Have you read the one about the lady of little fortune and less-than-illustrious lineage who married the dashing  duke?

It’s a common theme in historical romance novels set in the Regency era, and one of my personal favorites. Alas, through no fault of her own, the average woman was more likely to be run over by a carriage while crossing Oxford Street than to marry a handsome, young duke.

I’m no mathematician, but by my calculations there were approximately thirty dukes in Great Britain at the turn of the nineteenth century. Subtract the royal princes who could not marry without The Mad King’s consent, along with those already married or still in the nursery, and London’s marriage-minded misses had this motley assortment to choose from:

The Duke of Dorset was out of the nursery, though only just barely, when he passed away unmarried at the age of 22 in 1815.

The Duke of Bedford was available for bringing up to scratch, but only during the narrow window of opportunity from 1801 to 1803 when he was between wives.

The Duke of Devonshire  was known as the Bachelor Duke for good reason as he managed to avoid marriage entirely.

The Duke of Marlborough became eligible (depending upon one’s notion of eligible) when he was widowed at 68.

The Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry was ripe for the picking when he was widowed at 42.

The Duke of Argyll is my favorite I think. He inherited the dukedom in 1806 when only 38, and was snatched off the market four years later.

The Duke of Roxburghe was clearly some woman’s idea of the perfect husband, seeing as he was widowed at 71 and remarried at 72. 

The Duke of Newcastle was available only until 1807 when he married at 22.

*****

My newest release features the granddaughter of a duke, though you’d never guess it by the company she keeps or the neighborhood she calls home.  

Courting Chaos is available for pre-order for only $0.99.

What happens when London’s longest-reigning rake decides to make mischief?

Born of scandal and raised in squalor, Miss Harry O’Connell turned her back on her feckless, frivolous father and carved out a life for herself in the working-class neighborhood of Wellclose Square. She’s a creature of habit, a stickler for schedules, a keeper of secrets, and a woman adamantly opposed to wasting so much a single minute – let alone a spare shilling – on useless endeavors, sentimental nonsense or impossible expectations.

Opposites attract…

With three men standing between Phineas Griffith and the nearest title, he was perfectly content to float through life on a wave of mistakes, mishaps, coincidences and luck. Two unfortunate accidents and an apoplectic fit later, the new Viscount Knighton finds himself saddled with a decimated estate, a mountain of debt and two sisters in need of launching into Society in tandem. There’s really nothing for it but to woo and wed an heiress post haste.

Orbits align…

An unwelcome visit from the Earl of Dunaway sets in motion a convoluted chain of events that put Harry on a collision course with the handsome fortune-hunter. And wreak havoc with her meticulously managed, precisely timed and exactingly organized life.

Worlds collide…

Phineas cannot afford the luxury of falling in love with a prickly, pragmatic and penniless woman. Harry hasn’t the time or inclination to dally with a charming rake when all her considerable talents are aimed at laying waste to all the Earl of Dunaway holds dear.

And chaos ensues.

Some forces are greater than gravity and some risks worth taking. Can these two star crossed lovers find the wherewithal to risk it all for a happily-ever-after that defies all odds?

Available for Pre-Order

Read an Excerpt

January’s Corset is a lovely cream paisley print, just the sort of surprisingly sweet bit of fluff Miss Harry O’Connell would hide beneath her outrageous gowns.