Step Into The Story

In a fascinating post on the Romance Bandits blog last week Eloisa James commented on readers’ dislike of infidelity in historical romance and put up a great defence of why adultery need not be a deal-breaker. Hot on the heels of this came a review of my own book, The Confessions of A Duchess, which mentioned the fact that Dexter and Laura had committed adultery because when they first slept together four years before, Laura was still married to Charles. This made me think very hard because as a reader I don’t tend to like infidelity in stories myself. I shy away from them on instinct. Perhaps I’m missing some great books! And yet I went and knowingly placed this element in The Confessions of a Duchess, and I was surprised when someone didn’t like it. Inconsistent, huh?! Those people who have read Unmasked will know that Laura and Dexter were very attracted to one another from the start and that she steals a kiss from him in the persona of Glory the highwaywoman. From there it is a br...

This blog post is adapted from one of the articles I have available on my website. It’s about writing “old flame” stories. Both my new book, The Confessions of a Duchess , and the e-book prequel The Secrets of a Courtesan, are old flame stories in their different ways, from which you can probably gather that I’m keen on writing them! (And I love reading them too). There’s something very seductive about the idea of unfinished business and what might have been, of characters learning to love and trust again. But old flame books are, in my experience, very difficult to write. Firstly you have to deal with the reason why your hero and heroine parted in the first place. If it was all down to a big misunderstanding and one blunt conversation will clear everything up, it’s hard to sustain the conflict convincingly for the whole of the book. Then there is the assumption that once everything is clear between the two of them they will fall in love again. Wrong. They need to find each other ag...

The last couple of weeks have been a blitz of preparation for the launch of my new Brides of Fortune series so I thought I would stop, draw breath, and post all the exciting developments here! So first to reviews and a really, really lovely surprise! There was a wonderful review of Unmasked on The Good, The Bad and The Unread which made my day! Those of you who have read my books before will know that Unmasked is a prequel to the Brides of Fortune series and features some of the same characters. Sandy at TGTBTU said: "Nicola Cornick is a new author for me. And after this book, I'm going to definitely be reading more of her books. I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Loved the characters, the story, the emotion, everything about it." You can't get a review nicer than that! Meanwhile, The Confessions of a Duchess has been garnering some very nice reviews of its own which are on my website . Chris at RomanceJunkies said: "Nicola Cornick gives stellar pen with the first i...