I WON!

2017 e festival of words I won in two categories.

BEST ROMANCE - The Minstrel's Lady  

A novel about a pair of musicians, who come to London at the invitation of their friend, Mark Smeaton, only to arrive just a few days before he is arrested for adultery with Queen Anne Boleyn.

Fearing for their own safety, they decide to leave, go home to the country, but the bridge over which their coach is travelling collapses in heavy rain, and everyone is killed, except Rose. But she is badly injured and has no memory of the accident or her life before it.

When a nobleman claims her as his missing bride, she has no reason to doubt him.

BEST HISTORICAL - Pestilence: Once Loved

This is the third in the series, The Pestilence, but can be read alone. It concerns some of the ordinary people who emerged at the end of the black death, to find the country almost deserted.

Rebecca is a prostitute, driven out of her home town by a terrified mob, looking for someone to blame for the pestilence. After hiding with her adult son, they continue on their journey, hoping to start a new life where nobody knows about Rebecca's history or profession. What they find is evidence that Rebecca's eldest son is alive and well and living as an earl.

Rebecca's longs to tell him the truth, but will that truth destroy the very essence of who he is?

Pestilence - The Second Wife

Book one of the series tells of Charlotte, the daughter of a wealthy merchant who is thrilled when the handsome Lord Robin Eversley asks for her hand in marriage.

She suspects that her main attraction for him is her love of children and his primary reason for marrying her is to find a mother for his damaged daughter. But that means nothing to Charlotte, as she loves the child almost as much as she loves him.

Determined to build a happy life for them both, she has only just found the love of her life, when the black death threatens to tear him away.

Pestilence - The Scent of Roses

Book Two in the series tells of Lady Felice Sutton, who agrees to marry Lord Christopher Waterford, despite his fearsome reputation, to save her beloved father from penury and debtor's prison.

She is grateful and determined to make him a good wife, but his distrust of women make her efforts almost impossible and when he finds his peasant mistress dead, he is convinced that Felice has poisoned her. Felice's growing affection for her enigmatic husband is shattered when she learns just how merciless he can be.

But the black death teaches him what it means to lose the love of an honest woman.

ALL THREE BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE IN A BOXED SET

PESTILENCE: Now available in boxed set!

PESTILENCE

All three books now available in a three book set in digital format.

Individual books available in paperback as well.

NEW SERIES - Books one and two of The Pestilence - A tale of the Black Death

PESTILENCE:

Pestilence: The Second Wife

 

This series tells the tale of the people who suffered through the Black Death, the bubonic plague which swept through England in 1348 killing millions and changing the course of social history forever.

 

THE SECOND WIFE is book one. This concerns Charlotte, the daughter of one of the newly wealthy merchants whose father is thwarted in his attempts to build a house as grand as those of the nobility. But when another of those nobles, Lord Robin Eversley, comes to visit, he sees Charlotte playing with her younger siblings and is enchanted. He thinks she would make an excellent stepmother for his damaged daughter, Genevieve. He has annulled his marriage to Genevieve's mother and is looking for a new wife. The differences between their social classes are not easily overcome, but they are just beginning to adapt when the plague creeps closer.

 

When Robin's elder brother, Eric, returns to reclaim his title and property, Robin leaves to attend to his own, smaller estate before moving his family there. But when he finds his own estate almost devoid of life, he is afraid to go home and take the disease with him, leaving Charlotte to believe he is dead.

 

THE SCENT OF ROSES is Book Two, which will be published soon. This is the tale of Lady Felice Sutton, who agrees to marry Lord Christopher Waterford, despite his evil reputation, to save her father from debtors' prison. She is grateful and determined to make him a good wife, but his volatile temper and his distrust of women make that almost impossible.

 

Felice believes she is beginning to find some goodness in him, but when he finds his peasant mistress dead and is convinced Felice has poisoned her, she discovers just how merciless he can be.

 

Thoughts of the Day

I am loving BBC's new series, The Musketeers.  BBC used to be the place for costume drama, but they seem to have fallen by the wayside over the last few years.  This series is, obviously, from the book by Alexander Dumas and it is very well done.  I don't know where they found four such good looking actors of the same age group, but I could go for any one of them.  For anyone who has missed out, it is on at 9 pm on Sundays and I think we are on Episode 4.  I missed the first one myself, which I am really peed off about.

 

I am also loving Watch's new Robin Hood series, although there is a lot stolen from the Kevin Costner film, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.  It is still well worth watching if you like a good historical series.

 

So, someone told me this week that writing is all about drawing from the author's own life experiences, no imagination required.  By that token, Stephen King has a monster living in his local sewer who dresses up as a clown and steals little children.  That poor man has been through so much in his life, what with living in a town full of vampires and finding a cemetery that brings dead people and animals back to life without their souls.  It is a wonder he is not currently residing in the local funny farm!

 

I can tolerate most things, but not stupidity.

 

I have published an omnibus of The Summerville Journals which is a lot cheaper than buying them all separately.  I didn't want to part with the Summervilles, but they had to end somewhere.

 

This omnibus includes all four books in the series and will take the reader from the meeting and subsequent marriage of Lord Richard and his Countess, the succession to the throne of Mary Tudor, the persecution of the protestants all the way to 1585.  It includes the story of Rachel, Lord Summerville's beautiful mistress, and it tells of the struggle of a couple in love to put the past behind them and build a future together for themselves and their children.

 

I am leaving the family there for the time being and beginning on a new turbulent love story set during the fourteenth century when the Black Death devastated England and its way of life.