July News

A month that started slow and picked up speed!

Lots of things happening, a new release and some new contracts. You heard it first here!

Personally, at home we’ve had a new shower, and oh boy, is this one good! Of course we still have to put the bathroom to rights, since half of it was ripped up to install the new shower, but it’s so worth it. All that sitting in for workmen and deliveries, and the constant hammer and drill sounds.

My new release is the brand new Regency I told you about. “Counterfeit Countess” is about the widow of an officer in Wellington’s army. Except Faith isn’t a widow, as she discovers when her husband returns home from a prolonged sojourn in Canada. And she isn’t a wife, either, because she was pretending to be his widow. Why she did that, and how she and John reconcile that and counter the threat facing them both is the subject of the book.

I loved writing this one, and it was prompted by the recent success of my recently reissued backlist, including three Regency romances. I do prefer the slightly earlier period, but sometimes there are stories that can only be told properly in the Regency era. This book is set in 1817, around two thirds of the way through the Regency.

It was really enjoyable to revisit old haunts, so to speak, and I even managed to get Wellington into the story! I recently visited Apsley House, otherwise known as Number One, London, Wellington’s London residence. He bought it from his brother in 1817, so I was able to build that into the story. Every year Wellington invited thirty of his officers from Waterloo to a special dinner, and there was great excitement and kudos for the people invited. Wellington greatly expanded the house, and now it’s a positive mansion. The china and porcelain dinner services took my breath away and I spent hours studying the designs. Some depict the places he won battles, some another aspect of the campaign, but giving the Duke of Wellington a dinner service seemed to be the thing to do for quite a while.

I’ve been offered some new contracts, and of course I’m thrilled, not least because they are for projects that are dear to my heart. The first is for the last Nightstar book, about the band’s manager, Chick Fontaine. I never thought I’d be writing about Chick until the series was half over, and then I realised he needed his own story. He was just too interesting to leave alone.

I also have a contract for a new trilogy, set in the STORM universe. It is set in Washington, and while each book can be read as a stand-alone, the series concerns the struggle to get Talents recognised as people, and therefore entitled to the same privileges and rights as people, rather than animals or a separate species. Biologically they are another type of human, not a separate species, but that is only part of the problem they face. This series won’t be out for a while, since there are four more Nightstar books and a stand-alone STORM book in the works first.

The last contract is for a new concept and a new series. It’s something I’ve toyed with before, but it took some tinkering to get it right. What if the Greek Olympiad were reborn in Georgian times? Many of the Georgian aristocracy considered themselves almost godlike, so it seemed like a natural match. The pairing worked really well, and I’m delighted that Samhain have offered me a contract for the first in what I’d like to become a series.

Exciting, eh?