This is very much the story so far. I’m already signed up for an anthology in July, as well. And all the stories on the top row are already written (except for an epilogue for Inviting the Wild, which I plan to finish before Wednesday), so I hope to have time for Concealed in Mist and an Unpitied Sacrifice. Mind you, by June I need to be started on my Roman Empire time travel series for 2025. So we’ll have to see how the year goes.
I’m taking a look back at 2023. It was my first year of publishing with Dragonblade Publishing, and the year of my first Bookbub Featured Deal. Those two factors and my massive publishing push where the great hurrahs of the year. Lots of small satisfactions, too. Some amazing reviews, some wonderful people met along the way, a few outstanding moments with friends. 2023 had its problems and its worries. I lost six weeks of writing in the last third of the year to a family bereavement followed by an illness, and the sales of certain well-reviewed books were less than inspiring. I do wonder what a writer needs to do today to get noticed. As in any industry, there are many people out there selling the one exclusive sure to work answer. How does one find out who has the snake oil and who the golden ticket?
All in all, a mixed year. Now what will 2024 bring? I’ll have a go at a partial answer to that question next Sunday!
2023 was the year I published at least one book a month. It took a bit of doing, but I made it! Of course, the first six were written before the year started. On the other hand, the first four for this year were written in 2023, plus another for a bit later in the year if I do the box set I have in mind.
24 January 2022 The Golden Redepennings: Books 1 to 4
16 February 2023 Lady Beast’s Bridegroom, book 1 in A Twist Upon a Regency Tale
22 March 2023 The Husband Gamble
29 March 2023 The Flavour of Our Deeds, book 5 in The Golden Redepennings
28 April 2023 The Talons of a Lyon, a book in the Lyon’s Den Connected World
11th May 2023 One Perfect Dance, book 2 in A Twist Upon a Regency Tale
20th June 2023 Chaos Come Again, book 1 in Lion’s Zoo
11th July 2023 Grasp the Thorn (House of Thorns revised and republished), book 2 in Lion’s Zoo
8th August 2023 Snowy and the Seven Doves, book 3 in A Twist Upon a Regency Tale
26th August 2023 Crossing the Lyon, a short story in the multi-author book Night of Lyons
7th September 2023 Perchance to Dream, book 4 in A Twist Upon a Regency Tale
10th October 2023 Love in its Season a novella in the Bluestocking Belles 2023 box set Under the Harvest Moon
15th November 2023 One Hour of Freedom, book 3 in Lion’s Zoo
26th December 2023 Christmastide Kisses, a Bluestocking Belles with friends collection
29th December 2023 The Darkness Within, book 4 in Lion’s Zoo
And best wishes from my house to yours on this dear festival. May all good things bless you, whatever festivals you celebrate.
Look for a cover reveal in the next week or so for the new Bluestocking Belles with Friends Christmastide collection. We are working on it as you read this. Six stories of hearts finding their home in the holiday season.
I made a thing.
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Gwen Hughes, is too tall and too independent to suit the bachelors of Reabridge. She has helped in her father’s farriery from the time she could toddle, and since her brother left for the wars and her father faded into second childhood, she has been the farrier.
She loves her work and is proud of the family business, but she is also tired. It’s the busiest time of the year for a farrier, when the big houses are preparing for the hunting season and the farms around Reabridge are bringing in the harvest. On top of that, she has a house to manage, meals to prepare, and an increasingly dependent father to look after.
The retired soldier who offers to help out with her father is a God-send, especially when he takes over the housework and cooking, as well. He says his motive is simply that he is at a loose end, and he enjoys helping people. Can Gwen dare to hope that she means more to him than that?
After twenty-five years in the cavalry, Jack Wrath has resigned his commission and come home to England. Or not home. An orphan who enlisted when he was fourteen, he doesn’t have a home, and he is only in Reabridge because he brought his doctor home. After all the man saved him from losing all use of his arm after he took a bullet to the shoulder. Besides, someone had to make sure the poor beggar made it home.
Meeting Gwen Hughes strikes him all of a heap. There’s no point in courting her. She is far too good for an unemployed orphan of dubious origins. But he knows something about looking after dazed old men. He can help to make her life easier.
So he volunteers his services. He can help her through this busy season, but every day he loses more and more of his heart to this brave, clever, magnificent woman. When she finally sends him away, he will leave the best part of himself behind. Can he dare hope she will allow him to stay?
As the village of Reabridge in Cheshire prepares for the first Harvest Festival following Waterloo, families are overjoyed to welcome back their loved ones from the war.
But excitement quickly turns to mystery when mere weeks before the festival, an orphaned child turns up in the town—a toddler born near Toulouse to an English mother who left clues that tie her to Reabridge.
With two prominent families feuding for generations and the central event of the Harvest Moon festival looming, tensions rise, and secrets begin to surface.
Nine award winning and bestselling authors have combined their talents to create this engaging and enchanting collection of interrelated tales. Under the Harvest Moon promises an unforgettable read for fans of Regency romance.
The Battle of Waterloo lost Jack Wrath the use of one arm and ended his career in the cavalry. With nothing better to do and nowhere else to go, he sees his doctor home to Reabridge—and stays because of Gwen, the female farrier he rescues from a lustful lord. After all his years of wandering, Gwen’s cottage feels like home.
Gwen Hughes is taller and stronger than many men, and runs her own business. Perhaps she intimidates the men of the town, but that is fine with her. She doesn’t have time for courtship. She’d be a fool to refuse Jack’s offer to help her father, who is in his second childhood, and even more of a fool to read too much into his kindness.
Under the harvest moon, two people who believe romance has passed them finally reach their season for love.
