What to do, what to do,what to do?

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I’ve been taking a break from writing for a week while we had friends to stay. However, we drove them down to Munich Airport on Saturday, said a very sad farewell and now I’ve got to get down to work again.

The problem is what to do? I’ve got a lovely new naughty Regency ‘Merry Masquerade’ all ready to load but as always I tell myself I’ll give it one last edit before sending it out into cyberspace. It came burbling out of me like a tinkling, splashing mountain stream out of a highland tarn. I won’t say how quickly because no one would believe it was any good. But it is! I’ve put everything I know about comedy into it and I love my hero and heroine so much it’s no wonder they fell in love with each other.

On the other hand, I have almost finished another Regency, a clean, Jane Austenish one with a hero based on Beau Brummel and a heroine who would be very much at home in Kellynch Hall. I love the tone of this one but I’ve got stuck.  I usually end with an elopement, kidnapping, fistfight or mayhem of some kind but it just doesn’t suit the rather lovely romance I’ve created.  I could go back to Austen for inspiration but would anyone these days accept a letter from the hero proposing to his ‘too good, too excellent creature’ as the climax to a novel?

Alternatively, I could leave the Regency altogether and work on the second novel of my fantasy trilogy. I’ve got about half of it and I keep having lovely intriguing glimpses of where it’s going. I freewheel with the fantasy much more than the Regencies and although I have an outline, I love to deviate from it.

And lastly I’ve got a marvellous idea for a daring-do, Dornford Yates style ripping yarn set in Bavaria around the turn of the last century. My hero has been invalided out of the army after the Boer War and turns his hand to espionage at the suggestion of a chum in the Foreign Office. Should I get this down while it’s fresh?

Picture me with my head in my hands, bowed over my keyboard. Actually I’ll be sitting on the balcony trying to get some sun and reading Elizabeth Peters.

 

Paperback Cover and New Blurb

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BookCoverPreviewThis is how my paperback cover for Tides of Fire will look. Everlasting thanks to Howard David Johnson for the amazing cover art, and to Lee Wright at www.halostudios.co.uk for the design.

Following advice from the sages on the Kindle pages I’ve updated my blurb. It seemed a good opportunity since I’m getting the paperback proof ready anyway. The theory seems to be that a refresh of the blurb attracts new readers as anyone likely to be attracted by the old blurb has already bought the book.

The text is a bit small in the image so FYI this is the new blurb:

“Even the Wiseones cannot tell how it began or why, for countless tides, the Clanfolk have waged a bloody war beneath the ocean. The origin of their enmity is lost in the drifts of time. But, for Leelee, a young pod-cadet of the Leahtu Clan Guardians, the ancient feud will bring a beloved enemy, a desperate choice, and a terrible price to be paid.

From the stern and icy stronghold of the Kiakhu Clan to the peaceful reefs of the Leahtu, Tides of Fire follows a small band of black-tailed rebels who risk torture and death to rid the Clan of a vicious tyrant; and tells the poignant love story of Leelee, the warrior maiden who faces death at the hands of her own priests if she should give herself to Makhulu, her enemy and her love.

These merfolk have no magic, inhabit no fairytale. They are hot-blooded sea creatures full of passion and poetry, fighting for love and freedom and a chance of happiness in their mysterious under-water world.”

Gamble With Hearts

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Gamble with Hearts 5.5x8.5inch2

Published in 1980, Gamble with Hearts is without doubt everyone’s favourite of all my Regencies. It does not have one bad reader review (and some of my others have doozies) and has outsold all my other books on Kindle. I wrote it very quickly, and did very little rewriting. Perhaps, after all, first thoughts are best. I think however, the real secret is that I wrote this book floating upon a cloud of happiness. I had just become engaged, I was in love, and life was good. Perhaps this comes across to the reader in ways I don’t understand and cannot see for myself.

My heroine, Charlotte, is a sensible girl. She calculates the value of her own lovely face and decides she deserves to marry a fortune. So far, so very Jane Austen. Unfortunately, our hero, Charles, Viscount Carlington, has no fortune, but he does have a wicked trustee who causes all kinds of trouble for Charles and Charlotte.

There is a second love story concerning Charlotte’s mother and yet another concerning a pair of would-be star-crossed young lovers. How did I find the energy for three plots, let alone keep them straight in my head? I didn’t even have a typewriter back then, let alone a PC (they hadn’t been invented yet).

The Cautious Heart

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The Cautious Heart 5.5x8.5inches2

Ah, The Cautious Heart, my big bestseller. This one got me on the New York Times bestseller list in 1981. 65,000 copies sold! Was I impressed with myself? Of course.

It took me a while to realise I’d made it however because my publisher neglected to inform me that they had changed my title. Originally this book went under the name of Late Blooms the Rose. So naturally that’s what I was looking for. Not that I blame them for changing it, I agree The Cautious Heart is a much better title, but I do wish they had made a pretence of consulting me.

The Cautious Heart was part of Jove Books Second Chance at Love line and this is the only one of my books written to order. I had six weeks to produce 70,000 words on the theme. Interestingly, I noticed that most of the other writers in the series interpreted second chance to mean a second chance with the same man. I don’t think I’m spoiling anyone if I say I took a different view.

So there I was with a best-seller, a New York publisher, a London publisher and a hotshot New York literary agent. So I did the only sensible thing, I quit writing! (I need an irony emoticon.) In justice to myself, circumstances had made me the principal breadwinner for the family and I had two children under four. I thought it would be easy enough to pick up my writing career again when I had more time. Wrong! In the meantime the romance world was awash with Regencies. You couldn’t give the things away. The only advantage I had was that publishers and agents were always willing to read my submissions. But I’m not complaining. I’ve had a wonderful time anyway and publishing once more is just the icing on the cake.

Dangerous Escapade

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Dangerous Escapade 5.5x8.5inch2This book was first published in 1979 by Robert Hale Ltd. in London. It was then called Dangerous Masquerade but when I got back the author rights and republished on Kindle I changed the title to avoid confusion with my Regency Masquerade series.

Although I write Regencies, this one takes place in what is actually my favourite historical period. Why? Well mostly, I’m afraid, because I just love the clothes. And also, it seems to me to be the last truly romantic age. The Regency, although it is the setting for so much romance is not really all that romantic. In fact it is the beginning of the modern age. As Henry Tilney says in Northanger Abbey: Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open?

Well I suppose Henry is right about the Regency but in 1745 there were still pirates, highwaymen, escaped Jacobites and Bonnie Prince Charlie hiding in the heather. Men wore velvet and ruffles, ladies wore panniered gowns and patches. Swashes were buckled and villains were run-through. I know that in reality the Georgian world was dirty, smelly and gin-sodden but if I was going to write about reality I wouldn’t be writing romance at all now would I?

Mysterious Masquerade

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mysterious masq 5.5x8.5inch2Everyone loves a rogue and Mysterious Masquerade has more loveable rogues than you can shake a stick at! My hero, Tristan, Duke of Staynes, is Darcy with a dash of James Bond; but my heroine, Angel Graham, is no Miss Moneypenny. She is more than capable of holding her own in the murky world of espionage, just as she can adorn a ton party and play a nifty game of Vingt-et-Un.

Angel is one of my favourite heroines. As a reader on Amazon has said: I particularly liked Angelica, as she was strong and definitely no damsel in distress. Even Tristan recognized that she was strong when one of the bad characters attempted to use Angelica as a shield and Tristan just looked over and knew that Angelica had things under control.

Mysterious Masquerade is another novel that started life many years ago. I began it in California in 1993 if memory serves. I finished about half of it but life issues intruded. We moved house, then country and by the time I picked it up again I was involved with other projects. I always promised myself I would finish it someday and when I embarked on my Masquerade series I realised this one, with a little adjustment, would fit perfectly.

Moonlight Masquerade

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moonlight masquerade 5.5x8.5inches2Moonlight Masquerade is not just the first in the Regency Masquerade series, it is also the first book I ever wrote. It began life in 1976 as The Silk Purse. Since then it has been, variously, The Master of Hawkwood, The Cat’s Cradle, and finally Moonlight Masquerade. The names of the character’s have also changed several times as has the nature of my heroine. To quote myself in one of my Delia Darling monologues ‘When I first began to write the heroine was of course a virgin and remained so throughout the book. Now editors just demand sex, sex and more sex. How they expect one to find the time to write I really don’t know!

So the innocent, submissive little heroine, Arabella, of The Silk Purse transformed over a period of nearly 40 years into strong, sensual, and far from submissive Amarylis Trent. She is still a girl wooed for her fortune by the handsome hero, who naturally falls deeply in love with her, but she is playing her own game with the dashing Marquis and Merry Trent is nobody’s fool.

I’m so  glad now that The Silk Purse never saw the light of day. It was, quite frankly, rotten. Most writers should probaly trash their first efforts. Georgette Heyer, indeed, successfully supressed several of her early works. I found them all in the UCLA Graduate School library and I think she overreacted. They aren’t bad, they’re just not as brilliant as her later works when she had found her wonderful, distinctive voice.

Merry Masquerade

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Merry Masquarade 5.5x8.5inch2I’ve written and performed sketch comedy for a number of years and there is no thrill like listening to an audience laughing at your own jokes. So I decided to put everything I know about comedy into Merry Masquerade. The result, I hope, is what it says on the tin.

I am particularly fond of the scene where my hero, Robin, saves our heroine, Clarissa, who is masquerading as a rustic maidservant, from an irritable swan. I’d had the idea for a swan attack for some time but I had never actually seen a swan in attack mode and I always try to do my research. So I searched YouTube for ‘swan attack’ and found a short video of a just married young couple having their wedding photographs taken by a lake. A swan in the background suddenly launches itself at the bride, taking the hem of her bridal gown it its beak and tugging hard. She runs around in circles with the swan attached to her dress. Frankly, all I had to do was add some dialogue.

I also had fun with Clarissa’s vocabulary. She is in fact a well-born heiress but, in order to escape her step-brother’s odious plan to marry her to his dissolute friend, she passes herself off as a maidservant. The scene is set in Devonshire and when searching the internet I found a wonderful glossary of old Devonshire words and phrases. For example when her mistress, Lady Alderley comes up with a scheme to pass Clarissa off as her niece: ‘Lor!’ cried Clarissa, yielding to the promptings of her baser self once more. ‘I do be comin’ up in the world! Cruel full o’ condudle, I’ll be!’ Other good words are: fitty, bloggy and barra.

Tides of Fire Paperback Edition

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tides of fire 5.5x8.5inchesThe paperback of Tides of Fire will soon be available and I can’t wait to reach the e-reader-free audience.

Every fantasy writer knows the seduction of creating a universe, giving it laws, language, and history. As empire builders go I’ve tried to be a little restrained, not everything has to be explained. Much can be left to the reader’s imagination. I hope the reader will be too caught up in the epic tale of warring merfolk to wonder about certain aspects of daily life under the ocean – except, of course, for merfolk mating practices, upon which I dwell in glorious detail.

This book contains one of my favourite characters, Kahlutu, the bad boy of the Kiakhu Clan. Beautiful as a maiden, wickedly funny, tortured, always alone, and driven by desperation to rid the ocean of ‘the disease that calls itself my father.’ Finding a friend in Leelee, a warrior maiden from the enemy clan he blurts out, ‘He’s a monster and he loves me. What does that make me….I’ve killed too, Leelee, just as casually, killed and tortured. If I’ve never raped it’s only because Vahtu’s son is never refused. He has made me as much a monster as he is!’ Kahlutu is not the hero of the book but I’m proud of him and his story of redemption.

Magical Masquerade

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Magical Masquerade cover

A magical Regency re-telling of Beauty and the Beast

Beauty is Minette de Saint Saze, a lovely innocent who must save her twin sister’s honour at the cost of her own virtue. The Beast is His Grace the Duke of Rochford, a bitter man with a heart as scarred as his own, once handsome, face.

Minette reluctantly takes her sister’s place in Camer Castle, the lair of the Beast, where she learns to know the real man behind the cynical mask Rochford presents to the world. She longs to heal his terrible hurt, yet she knows that, for her sister’s sake, he must never suspect that the girl who is falling in love with him is not the society Beauty who accepted his fortune and scorned his passion.

As love flames into desire, Minette comes to understand that the only true happiness she will ever know is in the arms of this damaged man who does not, and never can, belong to her.

Introducing Hilary and Delia

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Hilary Gilman Lester is a nice English lady who, along with several other expatriates in Germany, I have dinner with once a week. She updates us on her family and life in a Franconian village, and her husband confesses what mischief he’s beenup to.In a few short months, they’ve become a vital part of the Nuremberg expatriate scene.

Delia Darling is her alter-ego who shares anecdotes about pervy landlords and Hong Kong bargirls that make the rest of us fight not to spew our drinks.

I’ve helped her set up this site because she’s hilarious, and her books really do deserve a wider audience.

Enjoy the wit of Hilary and the wisdom of Delia… or is that the wisdom of Hilary and the wit of Delia… well, you’ll see.

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