Life is good!

We have new books to celebrate. While I have been absent from this blog, Duke in Name Only went live and got some much deserved attention on Facebook. The early reviews are terrific. This is an exciting story filled with adventure, danger, discovery, and romance…that holds your attention start to finish with a happy ending […]

Joining the Army in Portugal

This week I took ship and rambled to Portugal with Dorothea O’Toole who has recently wed to a colonel. The lives of the camp followers were, well, appalling in some ways. Yet those women are as cheerful as they are tough. They contribute heroically to the well-being of the troops without compensation and little respect. […]

Plain Speaking.

A scandal finds the Honorable Gemma Burke betrothed to a man she would have considered unsuitable just a day before. He is a commoner, a merchant, and of questionable background. Her older sister is a marchioness. Her younger is being courted by a viscount, the heir of an earl. Can she settle for less? Jeffrey […]

Emerging from Hibernation

Bears do it. Bees do it. Even little brown bats do it. Why shouldn’t people? Alas it just feels like I’m emerging from hibernation. It was a difficult winter marred by Beloved’s hospitalization and some forced lifestyle changes. (We are doing ***much*** better. Thanks to all who have expressed concern.)   In the meantime, Duke […]

Clocks and Curios

Highlighting the facts behind the history with my fellow Bluestocking Belle, Elizabeth Ellen Carter. A special clock features front and center in my new novel, A Curio for the Count, which comes out on 19 January. It’s a statuette clock with a fancy pendulum. In my research for the novel (twenty minutes research for every […]

Off to Leicestershire

I I travel. Sometimes I travel by boat, plane, or automobile. Sometimes I travel by book. Sometimes I explore the real world. This week I flew back and forth between three country estates with Alina K. Field and The Impetuous Heiress. Luckily we had comfortable carriages and delightful company, because we sped between two houses […]

Glasgow and Beyond

I travel. Sometimes I travel by boat, plane, or automobile. Sometimes I travel by book. Sometimes I explore the real world. This week I rambled to a small estate and textile mills in and around Glasgow and then on to London and the stifling townhouse of the vile Duke of Auchen with my fellow bluestocking, […]

Forced Marriage in Regency England

Highlighting the facts behind historical romance with Jude Knight and thoughts on marriage in the Regency era. 1140 was a watershed year in the Western understanding of the institution of marriage. In that year, the Benedictine monk Gratian published his canon law textbook, Decretum Gratiani, ruling that the consent of the couple was essential for […]

Sheriffs in England

Highlighting the facts behind Susan Varno’s newest novel. Thank you for this opportunity to share my research. In my newest release, Posing as a Princess, (The Shady Side of the Law, Book 2). Sheriff Weston Chandler is ordered to escort a German princess to a ceremony with the King. However, the woman who announces she’s […]

Revolution in the Regency

Highlighting the facts behind the fiction with Elizabeth Ellen Carter The late Georgian period is known for its revolutions – most strikingly the American and French Revolutions. It was also the beginning a social revolution known today as the Enlightenment period. The turn of the 19th century marked the beginning of another revolution – the […]