Saturday, October 31, 2015





1812

Foxing The Geese
Severn House
December 2015
ISBN: 9780727885821

Parson’s daughter, Vivienne Fox despairs of ever finding a man who will wed her for love alone, so when she inherits a fortune she knows it will attract the wrong type of man. She decides to keep it quiet. For her, it’s going to be a love match – or nothing.

Alex LéSayres has the title of earl and an estate in Dorset to go with it – but very little else, his deceased father having lost their cash at the gaming tables. His penny-wise brother manages to scrape up enough cash to buy Alex a new suit of clothes, and send him off to London with instructions to find himself a wealthy wife.
 

When Vivienne and Alex meet they fall in love and discover it’s a force to be reckoned with.

Sunday, September 27, 2015

The Assembly

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THE ASSEMBLY

Recently I sorted out a cupboard, mainly because I needed more room to store hardcopy manuscripts. I came across a box filled with short stories that dated back twenty- five years. Mostly they’d been print published, some in magazines designed to attract women readers. Some had ended up in anthologies, others in newsletters. They came in several styles – contemporary and historical romance, fantasy and science fiction. There was a fantasy that my daughter begged me to turn into a book, which I did, and then there was general relationship shorts or stories that I’d entered in comps. Usually they ended up in writers’ newsletters etc. Many of them had been placed, or had won various prizes . . . or had been published more than once. Gathering together the strictly romantic ones I put together a collection of electronic romance short stories with Belgrave House.

The leftover stories were oddments, contrasting as to style, subject and length rather than a theme. Yes . . . some do have traditional romantic values. For instance, Rogue of Hearts is a short romantic novella, while Kira Kira is a tribute to the Australian aboriginal people and the generation of lost children due to Australian government policy at the time. Breaking it down further: Two stories are very short romances I overlooked the first time round, and two stories border on the ridiculous. Three are otherworldly and two have no romance at all.

I have called this 2nd collection THE ASSEMBLY and it’s free to download from belgravehouse.com. To my regular readers, new readers and passers-bye I hope you’ll enjoy my stories.

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Today's trend is tomorrow's old-fashioned.










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Happy New Year 2015.

This last year has just whizzed past. Electronic publishing is beginning to find its level. It’s not all that innovative now. I think my first ebook was published about 14 years ago, when the Rocket was the reading device of the day. I do know that last year, for one publisher I sold many more print books than I did the electronic versions.

 There are many more writers on the market now, many of them doing their own publishing, so it’s getting a little crowded. Amongst all the hype of this newness, business begins to take the gloss from the newly minted masterpiece. The same enquiries pop up on the lists that did the rounds twenty-five years ago. What to do about copyright, public lending rights, writing rules, house styles. Agents, advances, royalties, percentages, tax forms. The time for these tasks must come out of the writing time. All have to be dealt with.

I must admit I prefer to see my books in print form, though they all have electronic versions. To start with the print books won’t disappear into the ether, unless you’re a magician. There are some books that I know I’ll want to read again down the track. They are on my keeper shelf. Books by Sharon Penman . . . Mary Stewart . . . the dreaded Thomas Hardy. I love his poetry because it grounds me. I get him. I get his slowness and his meandering sentences that wind like a path through the heath lands. Perhaps our souls will meet one day in the future – The return of “two natives” perhaps.

Some say print books are old-fashioned, but then, so are many of their readers. They were brought up without television and read books for entertainment. They are familiar with the words and phrasing . . . the style. What's wrong with being old-fashioned, anyway?  Today’s trend is tomorrow’s old-fashioned. We only have one life, so why rush through it?

The year has started off well for me. Two of my print books are to be part of a Mother’s Day promotion in the UK. Published by Simon & Schuster, they will be available through Sainsbury’s and Morrison stores.

That’s at the same price as an electronic book, and just the thing to wrap up with a box of chocolates. As a bonus you can tie a red ribbon round it. You can’t do that with an ebook!