Once upon a time, authors might devote pages to descriptions of the setting. Even back in the day, did readers peruse every detail? I’m not sure that they did, and I’m certain they wouldn’t today. The trick is to establish setting and background in as few words as possible. Do you have a bit you’d like to share in the comments? Mine is from To Claim the Long-Lost Lover, and introduces the reader to the home of my villainess.

In the half light just before dawn, the last of the club’s patrons stumbled out of the front door, those employees who did not reside in their place of work left through the back door, and the building slipped into its usual early morning slumber.

The club comprised two houses thrown into one in a street of four-story terraced houses. Behind, the areas that serviced the public rooms had spread to include the building’s neighbours in the parallel street, but that was not obvious from the front. There, apart from its double width, little set the building apart from its neighbours. Perhaps it was a little tidier; its window-sills and doors newly painted, its bricks scrubbed and firmly set in newly pointed mortar. Only the discreet brass sign beside the door identified it as very different from the family homes and boarding houses that surrounded it.

Heaven and Hell, the sign whispered, engraved into the brass in discrete italics, only an inch tall. To read it at all, even in the light of the lamp that had hung just above it all night, one needed to climb the steps from the street. No one came to the building without a personal referral, but occasionally, first-time visitors needed reassurance that they were in the right place before they were emboldened to knock on the door.

A glimpse through the open door as the porter allowed entry  would leave a passerby with an impression of light and gilt. Members, or those referred by members, were surrounded by opulence as soon as they stepped inside. Opulence and decadence. In Heaven and Hell, nothing was forbidden. Everything was available for a price.

The woman known as La Reine, the ruler of the brothel Heaven that occupied the two upper floors of the main house, retired to her personal sitting room in a penthouse suite above the mean street behind the club. It had been a profitable night, at least upstairs. Supper was laid ready, and when her business partner joined her, she would find out how things went in Hell, the gambling establishment on the lower two floors.