A bouquet of gratitude

Dear Readers,

Before we take a break for the holidays, please let me acknowledge the many gifts you have given me.

Your encouraging messages cheered me while I struggled with an uncooperative book. OK, sometimes you cracked the whip a little, but very gently and kindly.

When Ten Things I Hate About the Duke finally reached booksellers on 1 December, you spent your hard-earned money for print, eBook, and/or audio.*

Then, having read the story, you sent Attagirl messages—so many that I’m still trying to answer them all, one of the nicest jobs an author can ask for.

Thank you!

And on this happy note, I shall subside for a time. I’ll be taking a break from social media until after the New Year. Then there will be more blog posts, but not quite the barrage you’ve received this month. Meanwhile, I’ll be working on Blackwood and Alice’s story.

Dear Reader, I wish you the happiest of holidays, enjoyed with abundant good spirits and good health. See you in 2021!

*And yay! Kate Reading, for the brilliant job she does, giving voice(s) to my stories.

Flower photos taken at the beautiful Atlanta Botanical Garden.

"Ten Things I Hate About the Duke" is here!

At last, at last! Ten Things I Hate About the Duke, Difficult Dukes Book # 2, has been released into the world. (Well, the North American part of it, anyway.*)

When last we saw the Duke of Ashmont, in A Duke in Shining Armor, he was doing a great job of making a hopeless case of himself. I’m not sure I’ve ever created a hero quite so out of control. But I write romance, and so I have to give the guy a way to pull himself out of the self-destructive spiral. Also, I write comedy, which means there ought to be laughs on the way to his Happily Ever After.

Enter Cassandra Pomfret, inspired by Katharina in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. And then, lucky me, another work inspired by the play, the teen film Ten Things I Hate About You, provided a title I could adapt.

Shakespeare’s treatment of Katharina always bothered me. And so, as has happened in some of my other books, I’ve done a rewrite. Yes, it takes a lot of nerve to rewrite Shakespeare—which may account for my book’s taking three years!—and I changed it so much that I can hear him saying, “Prithee, beldam, what hast thou done to mine genius work?” Or something to that effect, with amusing Elizabethan curses.

Robert Cruikshank, Chelsea Stadium Shield 1834, courtesy Lewis Walpole Library

You will find that only a few elements of Ten Things I Hate About the Duke echo elements in the Shakespeare play. The rest is turned upside down and inside out or discarded altogether. Most important, in my Fractured Fairy Tale version, the correct person is reformed.

Usually, my blog posts are sporadic. Months of silence pass. Not so this month. You can expect several, mainly on the various bits of history that turn up in the story. Also, there are illustrations of just about every element of the story on the Ten Things I Hate About the Duke board of my Pinterest page. And you can listen to an audio excerpt here. And just in case this isn’t enough, you can expect Facebook and Instagram posts. I promise that this barrage will go on for only a short time, because, after all, I need to write the Duke of Blackwood’s story.

Mainly I hope you enjoy Ashmont and Cassandra’s story—and I thank you for your patience, support, and encouragement throughout its long development. How lucky I am to have readers like you!

George Cruikshank, “The Headache” 12 February 1819, courtesy Lewis Walpole Library.

*As usually happens, unfortunately, my readers in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand will not be able to access certain editions on quite the same schedule. Due to licensing and other technicalities, there tends to be a lag time in availability. We’re doing better with this, and I hope the delay will be short this time around. Meanwhile, I apologize for the added wait.

Royal Bridesmaids has been reissued

When Prince William and Kate Middleton got hitched a few years ago, Avon Books invited three historical romance authors—Stephanie Laurens, Gaelen Foley, and me—to contribute to some royal wedding-related anthologies. The first of these was, fittingly, Royal Weddings, which included “The Jilting of Lord Northwick,” my first effort, in many years, to write a short story. I set the story on the day before Queen Victoria’s marriage to Prince Albert. That tale must have worked out all right because I was invited to join the same stellar author lineup for Royal Bridesmaids.

Avon has recently reissued this anthology with a lovely new cover. If you missed it the first time around, you might want to check it out. Then you might want to take a look at some of my forthcoming blog posts dealing with the historical background.