Step Into The Story

Happy September, everyone! Whilst I have enjoyed the hot summer days we've occasionally had here in the UK this year, I do love autumn very much. Living out in the country I can feel the seasons turning. It's darker earlier in the evening when I take the dog for his bedtime walk and as we go round the fields I can feel the cool nip in the air. The young owls, born this year, are calling in the willows by the stream and the September full moon is waxing. The dew is heavier on the grass in the mornings. The swallows are starting to fly South and the leaves are starting to fall. It's beautiful! I've had an incredibly busy but exciting summer of work that focussed on my Brides of Fortune Trilogy and I am so happy and grateful to my readers for the lovely response the books have had. Not only did all three books hit the Bookscan bestseller charts in the US, The Scandals of an Innocent reached Number 10 in the Borders romance chart as well. I hope UK readers will be pleased

I'm a huge fan of the Happy Ever After. It doesn't matter which genre I'm reading, I still want to feel warm and satisfied and, yes reassured, when I get to the end of a book. Of course this doesn't work out well for me sometimes. My favourite reads include crime and thrillers and although the ending may satisfy in the sense that the mystery is solved and the bad guys caught, there's an unhappy ending for someone, usually the corpse. If the victim wasn't very pleasant then that's fine. That's why I enjoy watching Midsomer Murders. Maybe that's also why I don't read much gritty crime with random violence in it. I hear enough about that on the news. And then there's non-fiction. I love reading historical biographies but frankly I know that if I'm reading about Anne Boleyn, for example, then there's an appointment with the executioner waiting and history isn't going to change. So even as I read the book I'm preparing myself. Wh

I have a thing about voices. I think they can be incredibly seductive. In the second of my trilogy books, The Scandals of an Innocent, Alice reflects on the fact that Miles was almost able to seduce her with his voice alone, he was so smooth! Discovering the Carte Noir coffee adverts online was always going to be a treat for me. This is the next best thing to watching Dominic West play Darcy in Pride and Prejudice and the perfect displacement activity for my Friday morning when I should be revising my Arctic manuscript. I don't drink much coffee, but that's beside the point. I love both Dominic West and Pride and Prejudice in just about equal measure so that's my tea break sorted. Here's the link: http://www.cartenoire.co.uk/pride-and-prejudice Oh, and you can also experience Greg Wise and Dan Stevens reading to you simply for your pleasure and gratification. Thank goodness I was sitting comfortably - I almost melted! Enjoy!

I'm just back from a research trip to England's smallest county, Rutland. It's an area of the country that I love but that I haven't visited in a very long time so it was great to re-acquaint myself with the beautiful stretch of Rutland Water, the historic town of Oakham and lots of tea shops along the way! My next couple of blogs are going to be all about the historic houses that I visited because I had such a lovely time that I want to share! I chose places that were smaller than stately home size, with different and unusual histories, because although I love grand houses, these other places so often get overlooked and they have so much fascinating history to offer. There wasn't a particular theme to the houses that I chose. They don't all date from the Georgian or Regency periods, for example. I picked them because they sounded interesting. But as it turned out, two of the houses were linked - by debt, ruin and ambitious owners living beyond their means. Al