Classic Regency Series, Book 2
 
I recently interviewed a literary agent who commented that we all need a bit of comfort-reading at the moment. Here’s a light-hearted bit of fun for you, just published: ‘Tricked by a Duke’. It’s about a duke who served in the navy, albeit 200 years ago! On completing his term, he leads a somewhat purposeless, dissipated life for a few years, until he finds himself landed with a title and estate and a message from his late uncle that he really should pull himself together and make his top priority the acquiring of a suitable wife. The trouble is, his reputation goes before him. What decent woman would even consider his suit…unless, perhaps, she thought him someone else. So the trickery begins.
Available on Kindle, KDP Select and as paperback from Amazon Books.

Something for everyone
 
This is the time of year when UK romance authors’ professional body, The Romantic Novelists’ Association, announces the category winners in their annual Romantic Novel Awards. So whether you like comedy, fantasy, historical, sagas, thrillers… there’ll be something for you, including a debut category for you to discover the rising stars of tomorrow. In total, 9 section winners were announced at the virtual award ceremony in March and novelist Mike Gayle was presented with an Outstanding Achievement Award. Congratulations to all the finalists as well as the winners.
 
For more, including a recording of the award ceremony, see:

Armoured for the ball
 
Thank you to readers for feedback via Amazon and Goodreads on the first of my new set of Classic Regency Romances, Surprised by a Duke, published a month ago. I’m now working on the second in the series which is called Tricked by a Duke. The trickery comes when said Duke pretends to be someone else as well as his real self. As usually happens, the deception cannot persist forever, but we can have some fun while it lasts.
​
My inspiration came, as it often does, from a real event of the time. In May 1819 a Lady Hyde Parker (yes, really!) held a Masquerade (a masked ball) at her grand town house in Cumberland Place. The event ran all night and about 300 families attended (a very big house!). Next day’s papers described the event and listed many notables and which costumes they wore. However there was an unidentified gent, who wore a full suit of armour in the character of Baron de Courcy, which armour weighed in at 70 lbs; the helmet alone weighing upwards of 15 lbs. The gent who wore this cumbrous load for nearly six hours apparently said he experienced the greatest ease and comfort!

What’s in a word?
 
Why say bamboozle when you can say trick?
Why say blunt instead of money?
Why say cattle in place of horses?
Why say faradiddles rather then lies?
Why say havey cavey for suspicious?
 
The answer is, if you are Georgette’s Heyer, whose traditional regency romances are liberally spattered with regency cant and slang, the meanings of some of which are not always obvious.
Interestingly Jane Austen, whose novels were published during the period in which Heyer’s stories are set, used them far less, but she did come up with several contributions to common English usage of today, such as:
 
If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times,
Brace yourself
Dinner Party,
Dirt Cheap, and
Dog Tired.
 
Available now on Kindle, KDP Select and in print from Amazon: Surprised by a Duke
Book 1 of the author’s new Classic Regency Series, written in the style of that Queen of the Regency, Georgette Heyer

​Reflections
The past year has been a strange one, most of our engagement with others being only through eye contact, often through misted glasses, trying to speak clearly through layers of face-mask, being greeted at doctors and dentists surgeries by receptionists kitted out for space travel and inevitably there has been the sadness of losing old friends.
Thank goodness for community, its practical and emotional support, fun engagements on-line for quizzes and sing-songs and learned talks from fellow U3A members and for the amazing shop staff who have kept our supply chain going for all those daily essentials.
As a reader, how great to have access to so many books in e and audio format, and as a writer to supply my own via Kindle and KDP Direct. I’m sure I’m not alone among self-published authors in appreciating the support we get from all those staff behind the scenes at Kindle Direct Publishing. Thank you!
Reflecting on 2020, I am gratified that all my titles continue to sell, the most sales being via KU and KOLL. My most selling paperback continues to be the biography of Violet Douglas Pennant. My 3 historical series (Regency Lady, Regency Master and Regency Secret) continue head my e and KDP sales, and my top seller for the year has been His Capricious Lady, about a budding young woman author crossing swords with a somewhat conventional duke and his disapproving mother.
THANK YOU READERS!

New contemporary novel coming SOON

Some months ago, I watched the powerful film A United Kingdom (2016), which relates the story of Ruth and Seretse Khama and their struggle to gain acceptance as a racially-mixed couple both in the UK (where Seretse was training as a barrister) and Bechuanaland, in the 1940s. That led me to take a closer look at colonialism and the struggle again British rule. The west African country of Ghana gained independence in 1957, the first African colony to do so, and was initially ruled by Kwame Nkrumah. Nkrumah studied in London and for a short time also undertook legal training at Gray’s Inn (Seretse was at the Inner Temple around the same time).
 
This background gave me the idea for the context of my latest novel. It’s a contemporary romance set in 1981/2 and the heroine is the daughter of a Ghanaian/British racially-mixed couple. It’s called Beatrice and is due out in December, available on Kindle, KDP Select and Amazon paperback.

Escape to nostalgia
 
The RNA defines a historical novel as one set 50 years or more ago in the past. Technically, that means a contemporary novel is set within the past 50 years. That got me thinking about the meaning of such labels. A Victorian novel could be set in the late 1830s or any year up to 1901. Yet in 1837 there was no railway, no motorcar, no bicycles, no telephone, no Origin of Species, no electricity, no sewing machine, no typewriter or camera  A lot of inventions arrived during Victoria’s reign. Then again, if the reader resided in Australia or BC, it could have an entirely different meaning, relating to geography rather than date.
 
So a contemporary novel could be set in the 1970s, before many readers were born, and also before the advent of the world wide web, emails and all the electronic communications we now take for granted. As a young adult I taught in rural central Africa on a school compound without electricity. Our refrigerator was powered by paraffin and we had to learn the vagaries of oil lamps for lighting after dark. During my 2-year contract I rang home once, on the occasion of my parent’s 25th wedding anniversary. I had to book the call and experienced the several second time delay as we took turns to speak. I wrote and received a lot of letters!
 
If you’ve been following my blog you’ll know I recently read a number of Betty Neels’ romances, many set in the 1970s/80s, and recently produced my own tribute novel (Joanne). I like being able to slow things down, so communication is not instant. It gives more time to describe the journey and the feelings along the way. In the present climate of uncertainty as the world tackles a life-threatening virus, might it be true that people want a comfort read and a bit of nostalgia. The word nostalgia in fact comes from the Greek for return to pain! Since I’m after a return to comfort, what shall we call it as a genre? How about nostfort?

Reality of the Regency
 
Regency is one of the most popular periods for romantic novels and TV dramas, but behind the glitz portrayed on page and screen, the reality was somewhat different. Here are some less palatable facts, which most of us authors choose not to mention!
 
1.Hands and faces were regularly washed but not so much bodies, not least as soap was highly taxed and beyond most purses.
2.Sanitation was non-existent and that and the poor quality of water exacerbated the spread of diseases like typhoid and cholera.
3.Sugar was an expensive luxury enjoyed by the rich, but not by their teeth, which went black and caused halitosis.
4.The best dentures were those made with healthy teeth harvested from the thousands of young men who died at the Battle of Waterloo.
5.Addiction to morphine and heroin was commonplace, including imbibing laudanum for pain control and to fuel addiction.
6.Arsenic was commonly used in face creams, remedies to increase fertility and cure baldness and in the manufacture of everyday items like candles and cloth.
7.Prostitution was commonplace and in the late 18th Century ‘gentlemen’ could purchase a copy of ‘Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies’ detailing what each lady offered.
8.A slightly different publication was produced by Mr John Penn, also for circulation amongst upper-crust gentlemen, listing the qualities of marriageable society ladies.
9.Pineapples were expensive and tended to be passed on from one household to another as gifts of status, to the extent that they were never eaten, but eventually went rotten.
 
So, next time you pick up a Regency novel, read between the lines!

And now for something completely different
 
Last month I wrote about Betty Neels, the prolific writer of medical romances published by Mills & Boon in the closing three decades of the 20th Century. They are so popular that they have been republished as e-books. I caught up with a few available online through my county library service and began to consider what gives these stories their enduring popularity. Do women secretly want to be rescued by a man who has everything and adores her? The stories are predictable (we know he’ll win her in the end and all those misunderstandings will be cleared up and he’ll turn out not to be engaged to that stunning other woman, etc) but still we read them. I’ve spoken to others about reading choices during the C-19 crisis and found some common ground—an easy comfort read for a little diversion from all the stress!
 
So I decided to have a go. Amongst her many stories, in 1980 she published one called Judith. Mine is called Joanne and is set in 1980 in a seaside resort in Devon. Joanne is the eldest daughter of a widowed clergyman and has run his household for years and brought up the rest of the children. Then a handsome Swiss architect arrives in town, bent on acquiring a run-down hotel for his family’s five-star chain. I hope you enjoy my take on the traditional contemporary sweet romance.
 
Available now on Amazon Kindle, KDP Select and in print from Amazon.