A sub-theme of my Revealed in Mist is illegitimacy, and the way that illegitimate children were regarded in Georgian and Regency England. I’m conscious that we see that period through the lens of the Victorian era, as I’ve comment in the article on rakehells I wrote for Dirty Sexy History. I figured I’d better do some […]
I tend to write drafts in scenes, then decide later where the chapter breaks go. This means that at edit stage I need to find page-turning line to end a chapter on, and an enticing line to begin the next. Or I need to write one. We call these hooks. They catch on the readers’ mind, […]
The headline is a quote from the man I adore: “What have you learned from this experience?” (Not, incidentally, what you want to hear when you’ve just bumped your toe or broken your heart. But I love you, darling.) Two years ago this December, I published my first historical romance, a novella. I’ve since published two […]
I’ve been summarising the scenes in A Raging Madness so that I can map them against the internal and external journey of my hero and heroine, as I did with Revealed in Mist. I came across the excerpt below, and decided to share it with you. A moment of danger for my heroine; and this is […]
‘Meet cute’ is a term from Hollywood that has crept into book publishing. It means that moment in a romantic comedy when the hero and the heroine first encounter one another. The implication is that the first meeting is amusing, entertaining, or charming. Even if you’re not writing romantic comedy, the term can apply, but […]
Eleanor, Duchess of Haverford, feels a strong sense of obligation to today’s caller. Not that she will say so. Her Grace has engineered a dozen meetings in the past five years, and not once has Miss Virtue raised the connection between them. Perhaps she is unaware of it? No, surely not. But if she wishes to […]
I’ve been updating my books, excerpts, and work-in-progress pages. It’s part of getting ready to publish Revealed in Mist, and it proved to be a bigger job than I intended. Step 1: update all my covers. I’ve changed my title font, and I’ve come up with a new font for the historical mysteries (of which Revealed in Mist […]
‘Reflection’ character is Michael Hauge’s expression. I’m still processing his full-day Story Mastery workshop from the RWNZ Conference, but have already strengthened Revealed in Mist by applying his inner and out journey methodology to the hero and heroine. The reflection is the person that shows the protagonist when they are acting according to the armour they’ve built around […]
I’m on the home stretch with Revealed in Mist, and will be announcing the release date this coming week. I’ve finished the rewrite following the developmental edit (and the workshop that so inspired me at the RWNZ conference), and received feedback from two of the three people I sent it to for a final read. […]
I’ve been neglecting you, and I am about to start doing better. I’m blaming winter, a touch of ill-health, a busy time at the paying job, and the decision to first refocus Revealed in Mist, then to rewrite large chunks of it, and then—when I got it back from the developmental editor—to rewrite it again. […]