Step Into The Story

Today I am very excited to post the new cover for my e-book The Secrets of a Courtesan which will be available from MIRA/HMB in May. I think it is beautiful and I hope you like it too. This is the style for the UK covers of my Fortune's Folly books and I really love them! Details of all the books in the series are on my website. Meanwhile in more cover news, the cover of my book The Scandals of an Innocent has been nominated in the Cover Cafe Contest as one of the best book covers of 2009! Click here to take a look. I was thrilled to see covers nominated from two of my UK colleagues, Louise Allen and Jo Beverley. For a look at the full line-up of all nominated covers, click here !

Recipe of the week this week is Tipsy Cake. This is more of a dessert than a cake and was apparently enjoyed by eighteenth century bucks (who seldom turned away anything with a whiff of alcohol). It was traditionally served at ball suppers. I chose it because I like the name and I also love the thought of young ladies meekly drinking lemonade and then becoming completely cast away on a pudding that had enough alcohol in it to sink a battleship! Ingredients 1 large sponge cake, three or four days old. Enough sweet wine or sherry to saturate it (about half a pint!) 6 tablespoons of brandy (because there isn't enough alcohol in it already!) 2 oz sweet almonds 1 pint rich custard ratafia biscuits or macaroons Cut the bottom of the cake so that it sits flat in the serving dish. Make a hole in the centre and pour in and over the cake the wine, sherry and brandy mixture. Blanch and cut the almonds into strips and stick them all over the cake once it is well soaked. Pour the custard around...

Today is St George's Day, the patron saint of England, and in celebration I am posting up a picture of the actual place where he slew the dragon. Yes, Dragon Hill, near Uffington in Oxfordshire has been identified as the site of the dragon-slaying and as "proof " there is a patch of chalk on the top of the hill where the grass never grows because this was where the dragon's blood was spilt. You can see the patch in the photograph. It's a wonderful story and a fabulously atmospheric place. According to legend, St George was a Roman soldier who killed the dragon to save a princess. In this picture the dragon appears to be smaller than St George's horse, which isn't really a fair fight, and the setting doesn't bear much resemblance to Uffington but we must allow for artistic licence. Just above Dragon Hill is Uffington Castle, an Iron Age hillfort and on the side of the hill is one of the most famous chalk figures in the country, the Uffington White Hors...

Up until about a year ago I had never had a library fine. It was something of a point of honour for me; I prided myself that I was never late taking books back and I always remembered to renew if I needed a book for longer than the date it was due. Perhaps this was because as a child I loved the library at my primary school and then as I grew older libraries became an incredibly important part of my life. We seldom bought new books in our family because of the cost, but I knew that I could find whatever I wanted in the local library and if it wasn't there already they would order it in for me. The fact that my local library was housed in an imposing Victorian building with grandiose architecture, high ceilings and huge windows was an added bonus. It was in my local library that I first discovered Mills & Boon romance books and I went back week after week to borrow my full allowance, becoming quite annoyed that the authors' output didn't seem to be able to keep up with m...

In 1990 we took a trip to Iceland, driving ourselves around the entire country in a Land Rover and camping out in some of the most remote and extraordinary places I have ever seen. As a trip it was superb. One of the places we went to was the Krafla volcano, where we walked around the explosion crater of Viti (translated as "hell"). The rock beneath our feet was warm, steam was rising from the vents and the smell of rotten eggs was strong. Every indication was that this was a volcano that was sleeping but not very deeply. I remember it as one of the occasions in my travels when I felt least safe (and that's up against some stiff competition!) but it was utterly awe-inspiring. The recent problems caused by the Icelandic Eyjafjallajoekull volcano reminded me of this trip and also made me wonder about the influence other volcanoes had had on societies in the past so I did a quick bit of research and here are the results, courtesy of the BBC, which has provided some fascinat...

I first had the idea for this post when I was reading about Big Cat sightings in the newspaper. Notwithstanding my post a few weeks ago about the extinction of various wild species in the UK, I wondered if there had been reports of big cats roaming the UK countryside in the 19th century or earlier. That led me on to thinking about Scottish Wild Cats and from there I leapt to Loch Ness, metaphorically speaking. So here is a potted history of the Loch Ness Monster. I do like quirky history. Nessie was apparently first spotted by the Vikings. Celtic and Norse folklore has stories of water horses seen in the lochs. However, we do have to acknowledge that stories of terrifying Each Uisge, water horses, are quite common in Gaelic folklore so perhaps these cannot be taken as conclusive evidence. The first written account of a meeting with the Loch Ness monster seems to be that of Adamnan in 565 A.D. He describes St. Columba's sighting of a very large monster in Loch Ness. Legend tells of...

I was in the mood for trivia today and so a piece in the paper caught my eye: Ten little known facts about gold. I'm a bit of a silver girl myself, but who can resist the lure of a few doubloons? Here are a few choice facts. Almost all the rocks and soil in the world contain traces of gold. Most of it could not be mined profitably. All the gold that has ever been mined would make a cube 20 metres on each side. This doesn't seem very much to me! Gold is a safe food additive. Edible gold and silver leaf is classified as a natural food additive. When the Wispa Bar was relaunched in 2009 a gold leaf covered special edition was produced that cost £961.48, supposedly the precise value of its weight in gold. Gold has been used by humans since the early bronze age 6000 years ago. It was particularly highly prized in ancient Egypt. Tutankhamun's inner coffin is made of 110kg of pure gold. HMS Sussex, an English warship lost off Gibraltar in 1694, contained tonnes of gold coin to fu...

I haven't thought about licorice for years and then recently I saw a TV programme about it that reminded me how much my grandfather adored it - and how much I hated the flavour of it myself. There are some foodstuffs that if anyone asked me where they came from, I would have to think hard before I replied. Licorice is one of them. Did I even know it grew on trees? (Well, in bushes). I'm not sure that I did. Yet the history of licorice growing in Pontefract, a town near where I grew up in Yorkshire, is fascinating. The precise date when licorice arrived in Britain is unrecorded. It could have been brought over by the Romans, as it grew well in Europe, or it may have been brought back from the Crusades. In medieval times it was a plant well known for its medicinal qualities (although in the programme I was watching we were told that it makes your teeth fall out and causes high blood pressure! My grandfather suffered from high blood pressure for years. Now I know why.) The first ...

This weekend I visited a fabulous little antiquarian bookshop, Evergreen Livres, in the historic market town of Stow on the Wold. It's the sort of bookshop I can easily go mad in and spend a fortune on out of print historical reference books. It has a great stock of unusual and reasonably priced books, the owners are very friendly and they have a cute dog - all recommendations as far as I'm concerned. One of the books I picked up was about fans. I have been aware of the language of fans for a while, although I knew nothing about what the different signals meant. Now I can see how you could build an entire story around this clever and complicated art. Some of my favourite gestures/ messages are: Placing the fan on the left ear - I wish to get rid of you. Drawing the fan across the forehead - You have changed. Covering the left ear with the open fan - Do not betray our secret I can see a couple of difficulties here, not least that some of these gestures seem quite odd and might ...

Kedgeree This recipe originated in India as khichri, a combination of rice, lentils and spices, and was a popular breakfast dish. As early as 1845 Eliza Acton was recommending the anglicised kedgeree in her book Modern Cookery for Private Families , suggesting serving it with fish such as haddock, brill, salmon or sole. It became a feature of Victorian and Edwardian breakfasts in Britain and no sideboard was complete without a large dish of kedgeree to start the day. Ingredients: 9oz smoked haddock 1oz butter 8oz long grain rice 1 tsp garam masala or curry powder 2 hard boiled eggs Chopped parsley Place the haddock in a pan with barely enough water to cover and gently poach for approximately ten minutes or until the opaque and flakes easily. Drain and break the fish into pieces, discarding the skin and bones. Simmer the rice until cooked and drain well. Melt the butter in a pan and add the rice, haddock, garam masala or curry powder, stirring gently until everything is mixed in and th...