Blog Posts - Susan Leona Fisher, author of historical & contemporary romance

A taste of Victorian intrigue

3/19/2019

Someone once wrote that a happy ending is where you choose to stop the story. The implication is that it cannot be happy ever after (though don’t we all love the idea!), or certainly not for everyone.

Thinking about this led me to consider the unhappy circumstances of one of my minor characters in my Regency Master Series, Lady Elizabeth Allgreave. That turned into “Her Secret Benefactor” which has proved so popular (thank you readers!) that I’ve applied a similar approach for another new story.

If you read “A Master of Speculation” (first in the Regency Master Series) you may recall Elizabeth Morgan, former governess, then maid, then outcast, who is saved by an offer of marriage from Robert Denison, the hero’s former naval colleague and now his estate manager. He will give Elizabeth’s unborn child his name.

“Her Secret Commission” tells that child’s story. She is Joanna, who at seventeen discovers the truth of her origins and, in anger and shame, runs away from home. We meet her some years later, aged twenty-eight, caught up in the world of espionage and coming to the unwelcome attention of the police, in the form of the rather handsome Detective Inspector Matthew Harcourt.

OUT NOW FOR KINDLE AND KDP SELECT!

March 2019

3/12/2019

Jewish Book Week 2019 has just drawn to a close and I was privileged to attend the inspiring appearance of Anita Lasker-Wallfisch at King’s Place, where she repeated (in English) her address of last year to the German Bundestag describing her early life and her survival in Auschwitz and the role of her cello-playing in that story.
By chance, on the train to London that weekend (not knowing that we were due to attend that event) I read, almost at a sitting, “A Woman of War”. This is a first novel by Mandy Robotham. It seemed to me to be very well researched and the lead character, a midwife caught helping Jewish women give birth, felt very authentic. It is fiction, but so cleverly woven into the factual history of the time, one could almost believe it could have happened. Highly recommended.

February 2019: newly available books for KDP Select

1/31/2019

ROSE GLACE: Confectioner to a Duke
Now available for the first time in KDP Select. If you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited or the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library you can read for free! This popular rags-to-riches tale was a finalist in the EPIC awards 2016 and follows the fortunes of orphan Rose Turner and self-made businessman George Kemble, heir to the Duke of Fairleigh.
Also coming to KDP Select are three other titles:
*THE BARONET’S DAUGHTER, an Edwardian romance set in the Boer War
*THE ADVENTURES OF JANE WATERFORD, a Cinderella tale set in the 1890s
*THE GIRL BACK HOME, a World War 2 romance
Yours to enjoy at the press of a button. All 4 also available to buy on Kindle at the new lower price of 99p/99c each.

Author talk about Violet Douglas Pennant

1/20/2019

2pm on Wednesday 23 January 2019, Settle Community Library, Susan Leona Fisher will talk about the life and career of Violet Douglas Pennant, how she discovered and investigated this lady's dismissal from the Women's Royal Air Force in 1918 and how she came to write the biography. All welcome.

January 2019 : NEW Regency Romance

1/1/2019

NEW YEAR GREETINGS TO FELLOW READERS & AUTHORS!

Remember Lady Elizabeth Allgreave? She appeared briefly in “A Master of Industry”, when Lady Somerton paraded the young heiress before her son as a potential marriage partner. As you’ll know if you read the book, Lord Somerton had other plans. But I rather wondered about the cool and controlled Lady Elizabeth. What had made her like that? Who might thaw her out?
So here is her story for you to enjoy.
“Her Secret Benefactor”, available now on Amazon Kindle and in print from Amazon books.

December 2018

11/30/2018

Thomas Spence, the poor man’s advocate
In my latest regency romance (to be published in January 2019), the hero has become an officer and a gentleman after humble beginnings as a child worker in a coal mine. A significant factor in his transformation occurs when he runs away from home and on the road meets one Thomas Spence, who persuades him he can become whoever he wants to be. The meeting is entirely fictitious, but Thomas Spence was real and I was fascinated by what I found when researching his life of poverty and pamphlets - oh, and coins! As long ago as 1775 he wrote a paper which he delivered to the Philosophical Society in Newcastle, his home city. It was entitled “The Real Rights of Man” (he is alleged to have used the phrase long before Thomas Paine) and spoke of common ownership of land. After his death in 1814, his followers set up the Society of Spencean Philanthropists, but their activities were more revolutionary that philanthropic and it quickly became a banned organisation in that period after 1815 when Lord Liverpool as PM and Lord Sidmouth as Home Secretary steered through a number of repressive pieces of legislation.
The Philosophical Society is still open for business and well worth a visit, just along from Newcastle train station.

November 2018 - your views on Violet Douglas Pennant

11/10/2018

Thank you to readers who have taken the trouble to send me comments on “The rise and fall of Violet Douglas Pennant”, which I’m delighted to say has been well received by many.
Here are a selection:

The research is impeccable and the assessment of it is fair-minded.
I can’t put it down.
The subject matter is compelling but you have also helped with the pace in the way you have approached it all.
I found it totally absorbing, really enjoyed it, notwithstanding the feelings of outrage and frustration at what happened to Violet.
I loved how each chapter gives a sense of atmosphere and of the times, very nice domestic details which bring it to life. Not a dry old biography at all!
Impressed with the depth and detail of your research too.
I don’t usually go for historical novels but the story had enough suspense to keep me engaged and I enjoyed it. I guess it opened my eyes a bit because I’d never really taken any interest in that wealthy strata of society where everything was/is about who you know.
I had some difficulty in associating with Violet’s need to clear her name or understanding the drive with which she pursued that over such a long period. Didn’t you get frustrated when you were researching and writing that she wouldn’t let it go and put her energy into making a new life for herself?
It can’t have been an easy time in the first world war to be able, female and not allowed to do the job properly!
Her letter to Lloyd George was far too long, but I think that if these or similar events had happened today, she would have been able to employ a solicitor expert in employment law, who would have made mincemeat of Lord Weir!
Thank you for shedding so much light on what seems to have been a shambolic, chaotic and really not very nice period of history at the end of WW1. I thought the parallel with the Dreyfuss Case in France was so appropriate, and, in today’s world, there are also lessons which can and should be applied.

If you have any feedback on this or my fictional novels, there is now an email address specially for readers: SLFisher.Readers@btconnect.com
Would love to hear from you and will do my best to reply.
NB I will not use any reader email addresses so acquired for anything else, or pass them on.

September 2018 - a picture speaks 1,000 words

9/17/2018

My thanks to everyone who has responded so positively to the launch of “The rise and fall of Violet Douglas Pennant”, especially if you bought it. Now there’s a free PDF to accompany the book. Download “vdp_illustrated.pdf” to see over 100 people and 30 places mentioned in the book, set out chapter by chapter. Find it on the HOME page of this website, www.SLFisherAuthor.co.uk and click “Download File” (file size c8MB)

August 2018

8/6/2018

You know that feeling when you’ve set yourself a target and feel so great when you meet it? But what then? What’s going to get me out of bed in the morning? For the past 9 years, between writing a few novels, I’ve been eating, sleeping and breathing Violet Douglas Pennant, and so’s my husband. He’s in a state of relief while mine is more a sense of anti-climax. So, at last, here it is. Elsewhere I’ve referred to it as one centenary the RAF will not be celebrating. It is 100 years since, on August 28th 1918, the Honourable Violet Douglas Pennant was summarily dismissed from her post as Commandant of the Women’s Royal Air Force after 14 weeks in post. Instant dismissal was only used in cases of gross misconduct. What had she done? She demanded answers. Here is her story in “The rise and rall of Violet Douglas Pennant”, a political biography, written in the style of historical fiction. Available now in print on Amazon books or as e-book on Kindle. See link on home page.

June 2018

6/22/2018

Have recently returned from a walking holiday on Madeira, during which we got the chance to see round Reid’s Hotel, where Winston Churchill famously stayed. The distinctive pink walled building still stands out on the hill at the west end of Funchal’s esplanade, but as you might expect, is quite dwarfed by some of the modern hotel developments.

Writing-wise, after that refreshing break, I’ve returned to the last round of edits for my latest book, which is a biography. With historical fiction I often draw inspiration from real historical figures and events to create my fictional leads, but the story comes from my imagination, so I can take it where I want. To portray the life of a real person, the challenge has been to give a rounded picture when the source material has gaps (eg there’s often less about the person’s childhood), or major differences of opinion as to what the true facts of a situation was. Should the author give a warts and all picture? If the author sympathises with the subject will this inevitably come across (as bias, possibly?) I’m still working on it. More details next month when I’m clearer about publication date.