Forged in Fire

by

Tea with a tohunga

Tuhoto Ariki, Tohunga who predicted disaster before the Tarawera eruption

The old  man waiting in Eleanor’s parlour was unlike anyone she had seen. Old? The man was ancient. He had ignored the chairs scattered around the room, and sat on the hearth rug before the fire, but he looked around as she entered the room.

“Tuhoto Ariki?” she asked, unsure of how to pronounce the unfamiliar name that had appeared in her appointment diary.

He gave a smile of considerable sweetness, distorted though it was by the tattoos that covered his face. His return greeting was in a fluid and musical language that she did not know, but whatever alchemy presented people from other times and places in her parlour also translated their words, so that her ears heard a foreign tongue, but her brain understood the meaning.

“Greetings,” he said. “I am he, and this is a strange dream. Am I in the land of Queen Victoria? Perhaps you are she?”

Eleanor took a seat on the chair closest to the old man. “Our queen is Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George. I am the Duchess of Haverford. May I ask where you come from, and what year?”

She could make nothing of his answer. He spoke of a canoe, a mountain, a river. He talked about the generations since that ancestral canoe first arrived, but none of the names he mentioned translated into anything Eleanor could understand. In return, she told him a little of the United Kingdom in her time, but that got them no further.

They were interrupted by the procession of maids, bringing the makings for tea and plates of refreshment. Tuhoto Ariki accepted tea, asking for sugar but refusing the milk.

“I am trapped in my house by the ash from the taniwha’s fire,” he explained. “My throat is parched, back in my life. I like your pretty room better, though it is cold, Duchess of Haverford.”

“Trapped in your house?” Eleanor queried.

“I warned them, the foolish young men. You are greedy, I told them, and the gods are angry. You take too many visitors to the sacred places. ‘The visitors make us rich,’ they said. ‘The carvings in Hinemihi, our meeting house, have gold coins for eyes.'” He shook his head. “They did not listen. Even when the phantom canoe came, they did not listen.”

Eleanor leaned forward. “Tell me about the phantom canoe.”

“They appeared out of nowhere. A canoe the like of which has not been seen on the lake in half of my lifetime. They were dressed for a funeral, chiefly spirits who paddled a short distance and faded away like mist. ‘We shall be overwhelmed’, I warned the villages, but no one listened to me. Then the taniwha under the mountain awoke and the sky split apart with its fire. Who knows how many will survive? Te Wairoa, the village of the meeting house with the golden eyes, is buried and me with it.” He took another great gulp of his tea, and then faded away like the phantom canoe, leaving nothing behind but a cup and saucer tumbling from the air to land on the hearth rug.

Tuhoto Ariki is an historical figure. The events of which he speaks, culminating in the eruption of Mount Tarawera, form the background for my story Forged in Fire, in the Belles’ collection Never Too Late and my own collection of New Zealand based stories, Hearts in the Land of Ferns, Love Tales from New Zealand.

by

Tea with heroes and heroines from the Land of Ferns

Rosa held tight to Thomas’s arm, peeking around him at the other couples who waited in the Duchess’s parlour. They had all introduced themselves, and all expressed wonder at how they had arrived, concluding that somehow it was all a dream.

That must be true, for how else could people from different centuries be here together? Yet she could have sworn she had been wide awake, the gentle quiet pony Thomas had purchased so she could learn to ride following his along the trail that led beside the river to the next mining camp they planned to visit. Of a sudden, without warning, the scene changed to a street in a bustling city, and the ornate gates of a mansion larger than any building she had ever seen.

Another couple on horseback arrived at the same time, and appeared just as startled. The bemusement and the horses were all they had in common; the clothes they wore — especially the trousers that hugged the lady’s thighs and calves — beyond shocking. Kirilee and Trevor came from the 21st century, or so they claimed, where such clothes were proper for ladies.

She supposed she believed them, for the other two couples from the 21st century were also scandalously clothed, and their means of transportation left no doubt in her mind that they had stepped her from another time. Nikki and Zee arrived in a horseless carriage: a monstrous machine that nonetheless purred like a large cat and gleamed the red of a priceless ruby. Claudia and Ethan’s steed was far louder and somehow more shocking. With only two wheels, it resembled nothing she had ever seen.

The conveyance carrying the fifth couple really was a carriage; a one-horse buggy similar to that used for travelling around town or to near neighbours in town. If she understood them correctly, they came here from a New Zealand twenty years or more later than her own time. Perhaps her children would meet them in that future — they would be a similar age. She choked back a laugh.

At that moment, the door opened, and they all stood as their hostess arrived.

“Good morning,” said the Duchess of Haverford. “I am so pleased to meet you all.”

Meet the heroes and heroines of my new story collection, Hearts in the Land of Ferns: Love Stories from New Zealand. It’s available on 23 April for only 99c.

by

Spotlight on Hearts in the Land of Ferns

Hearts in the Land of Ferns is on preorder, and will be out on 23 April. It’s a collection of my New Zealand based novellas — two historical romance and three contemporary romantic suspense. All of them have been published in other collections, but never together.

Here are the covers for the five stories. I made the one for A Family Christmas, and the others are by the talented Mari Christie.

The historicals

Step into the 1860s in All That Glisters, set in Dunedin at the time of the first gold rushes. It was first published in Hand-Turned Tales.

Rose is unhappy in the household of her fanatical uncle. Thomas, a young merchant from Canada, offers a glimpse of another possible life. If she is brave enough to reach for it.

 

 

Forged in Fire is set in geothermal country just outside of Rotorua in 1886, and was first published in the Bluestocking Belles’ collection Never Too Late.

Forged in fire, their love will create them anew.

Burned in their youth, neither Tad nor Lottie expected to feel the fires of love. The years have soothed the pain, and each has built a comfortable, if not fully satisfying, life, on paths that intersect and then diverge again.

But then the inferno of a volcanic eruption sears away the lies of the past and frees them to forge a future together.

The contemporaries

These were all previously published in collections by Authors of Main Street.

A Family Christmas: She’s hiding out. He’s coming home. And there’ll be storms for Christmas.

Kirilee is on the run, in disguise, out of touch, and eating for two. Rural New Zealand has taken this Boston girl some getting used to, but her husband’s family and her new community have accepted her into their hearts. Just as well, since she’s facing Christmas and the birth of her baby without the man who wed her and sent her into hiding. What will he think when he comes home and discovers he’s a father?

Trevor is heading home for Christmas, after three years undercover, investigating a global criminal organization. He hasn’t spoken to his sister and grandfather since the case began. He hasn’t spoken to Kirilee, his target’s sister, since the day nearly nine months ago he married her and helped her escape. Will she want to stay married? And if so, will he?

In the heart of a storm, two people from different worlds question what divides and what unites them.

 

 

Abbie’s Wish: Abbie’s Christmas wish draws three men to her mother. One of them is a monster.

After too many horrifying experiences, Claudia Westerson has given up on men. She’s done everything possible to exorcise the men in her life, short of changing her name and appearance. They’re unpredictable, controlling and, worst of all, dangerous. Besides, all her energies are devoted to therapy for her daughter, Abbie, who is recovering from a brain injury.

But after Abbie is photographed making a wish for Christmas, Claudia begins receiving anonymous threats, proving her quiet refuge is not nearly hidden enough.

Who can she trust? Three men hope to make her theirs:

  • Jack, the driver from her daughter’s accident
  • Ethan, her daughter’s biological father
  • Rhys, a local school teacher and widower.

They all sound sincere, but which one isn’t?

 

 

Beached: The truth will wash away her coastal paradise…

Grieving for the grandparents who raised her and still bruised from betrayals in New York City, Nikki Watson returns to her childhood home in Valentine Bay.

Zee Henderson has built a new life in New Zealand: friends, a job he enjoys and respect he earned for himself, without the family name and money he left behind.

The attraction between Nikki and Zee flames into passion, until Zee’s past arrives on their doorstep and washes away their coastal paradise.

Buy links:

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Hearts-Land-Ferns-Tales-Zealand-ebook/dp/B07NDT826B

Amazon Aus: https://www.amazon.com.au/Hearts-Land-Ferns-Tales-Zealand-ebook/dp/B07NDT826B/

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hearts-Land-Ferns-Tales-Zealand-ebook/dp/B07NDT826B

Apple iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/au/book/hearts-in-the-land-of-ferns-love-tales-in-new-zealand/id1451855017?mt=11

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ww/en/ebook/hearts-in-the-land-of-ferns-love-tales-in-new-zealand

Barnes & Noble Nook: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1130533818?ean=2940155970781

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/921843

by

Nurturing a physical connection to history

A few weeks ago, Caroline Warfield and I, and our husbands, revisited the Buried Village, the location of Forged in Fire, my story in last year’s Bluestocking Belles’ anthology. Long ago, it was Te Wairoa, a thriving farming community set up by an enthusiastic

missionary. When Spencer set up his ideal community in 1852, he divided each allotment by fencing, and he used poplar poles, as his posts, pounded into the ground.

Later, after European farming methods depleted the soil, the Maori inhabitants found a more lucrative crop than wheat: tourists. Te Wairoa was the starting point for a visit to the Pink and White Terraces, acres of thermal ponds cascading down hillsides above a lake that could be reached only by a boat journey across Lake Tarawera.

That all ended on the night of the Tarawera eruption. By the end of the four-hour eruption, the Pink and White terraces were gone, and six villages around Lake Tarawera were wiped off the face of the earth with all their inhabitants. Te Wairoa, slightly sheltered behind a hill,  was still buried 1.5 metres deep in volcanic ash, and survivors needed to dig themselves, or be dug, out.

Over the next 126 years, those buried fence posts grew into magnificent 40 foot poplar trees. In 2010, however, they began to fall. The owners decided they were a health risk, and removed them all.

When we visited last year, we were impressed to see the mighty trunks sprouting again, and this year, we asked if we could take cuttings.

They’re on the shady side of our house: nine small cuttings in pots we are keeping damp, as poplars prefer. I hope one or more grows, a clone of the tree that was initially cut to make fence posts, that survived a volcanic eruption, that grew to shelter an archaeological dig, that was cut down when its size and age made it unsafe, and that grew again. Life is resilient.

by

Throughout time, it has never been too late for love

Welcome, Time Travellers, to 1886.

CONTEST CLOSED: SEE THE COMMENTS FOR WINNERS

You have arrived in the year of my novella, Forged in Fire, which appears in the Bluestocking Belles’ box set Never Too Late. Have you come from the last stop on our blog tour, Jess’s 1645 page on the Bluestocking Belles’ site? If not, you can back up that way, or at the end of the post, I’ll link you to the next stop and to the Belles’ time travel page.

In 1886, Queen Victoria was the revered mother-queen of the British Empire, on which the sun never set, and New Zealand was her furthest possession.

This was the year in which Robert Louis Stevenson published The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Karl Benz patented the world’s first successful gasoline powered car. The Apache chief Geronimo surrendered in this year, ending the last major US-Indian war, and Spain abolished slavery in Cuba.

A strange mix of long ago and very near.

I was startled when I realised that my grandfather — whom I remember from when I was four — would have been a young apprentice builder in 1886, working with his master builder fathers and uncles to build the home my mother grew up in, and after which I would one day name my publishing imprint, Titchfield Press.

Lovers of 1886

In 1886, Grover Cleveland became the first and only sitting President of the United States to marry while in office. He and his bride, Frances Folsom, remain the only president and first lady ever to marry in the White House.

The ceremony was a small affair performed at 7pm in the evening. The new first lady took over the hostess duties formerly performed by the president’s sister, and became very popular. She managed another first for a first lady, giving birth to the second of the couple’s two daughters during the president’s second term. In all, they had three daughters and two sons.

The lives of lovers in 1886

In the British Empire in 1886, your lifestyle would have very much depended on who you were and where you lived. My own ancestors were almost all in New Zealand by then — all hard working people, tradesmen and shopkeepers, determined to make a better life for their descendants. (One grandmother was yet to be born in London — she came out as a war bride in 1819.)

In 1886, New Zealand reached a milestone, when the census showed that, for the first time, more non-Maori residents had been born in New Zealand than had immigrated from overseas.

What they wore

The bustle returned in 1886. Fashionable ladies wore theirs straight out from the back waist, and decorated them with bows, frills, and swags of drapery. My own family photographs don’t show anything as extreme, but still Sunday best had a decided bustle.

Most men wore full-length trousers even for formal occasions, often with knee-length top coats in the colder weather.

Hats of all kinds covered heads then as they would for the next seventy years, right through into my childhood.

What they ate

The 1880s were hungry years for some in New Zealand, with an economic depression leading to poor working conditions and exploitation of the labour of women and children.

Those with money or a bit of land of their own ate food they were familiar with, mostly British-Isles cuisine. One innovation not found in the old country was meat. Meat was rare on the tables of Britain’s labourers. In New Zealand, all but the very poor ate meat at every meal.

And New Zealanders retained the sweet tooth of their countries of origin, with baked goods made to imported and newly invented recipes becoming a great staple of every social occasion. With no shortage of milk and butter from the family cow, and eggs from hens, the ‘ladies a plate’ entry fee was born. No need to pay for a ticket, just bring food for the supper.

Where they lived

According to the 1886 census, 95% of the population lived in one of New Zealand’s 108,000 houses made with good materials. By which, the statistician meant mostly wood, since fewer than 5% of the houses, he informed the government, were made of brick, stone, or concrete.

New Zealand had a lot of wood, though they were felling the forests at an enormous rate. Even our Parliament Buildings were made from wood, worked to look like stone.

Most houses had three or more rooms, which was just as well, since the average house had five people living in it. Titchfield was built with eight rooms (four upstairs and four down), for my great-grandfather and his family (a wife and eight children). Later alterations added a lean to kitchen at the back and other improvements.

Health and wellbeing

By 1886, the Maori population was reeling under the effects of the loss of their land and the diseases brought in by pakeha (the settlers). Lack of resources, overcrowding and poor diet let disease take hold. Just over 50% of Maori who died in 1886 were children. Significantly fewer Maori girls lived to child bearing age, which meant far fewer Maori were born.

For the settlers, better food and living conditions than they’d had in Britain meant better health, more children surviving the diseases of childhood, and a longer life expectancy.

New Zealand had its own risks, though. Not just the rare but devastating earthquake or the volcanic eruption that I write about in Forged in Fire, but the ever-present risk (in a land formed by water) of flooding. By 1886, the main roads had bridges, but many journeys still required fording a river. In the nineteenth century, drowning was known as ‘the New Zealand death’.

The rights of women

Reading the lives of colonial women, I am in awe. They set up house in the most primitive of conditions and built homes in the wilderness, working shoulder to shoulder with their men to clear the bush, at the same time raising and educating large tribes of children.

By 1886, most New Zealanders lived and worked in or around one of the towns rather than out in the country, but there were still cows to milk, pigs and hens to feed, vegetable gardens to tend, butter to churn, bread and other baking to make, and a myriad of other tasks to keep the family fed. Not to mention clothes and linen to boil and wash in kettles under an outside shelter or in a shed, and then to dry, with mending and the making of new items of clothing also high on the list. And childcare. Did I mention large tribes of children?

Male drunkenness was an abiding problem, and the Women’s temperance movement a response. That, in turn, led to a bid for women’s suffrage. The theory was that women who voted would be able to exert pressure on the liquor laws, to improve the lives of women and children who suffered from unbridled drinking.

Two suffrage bills narrowly failed to pass Parliament in the late 1870s. In 1885, a group of women led by Kate Sheppard founded the New Zealand version of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. So as a time-traveller, you might see them rallying for the vote, or collecting signatures on one of the huge petitions presented to parliament.

Barriers to Love for my 1886 couple

Tad and Lottie are both running from scandal when they meet on the other side of the world. It’s a bad time. Lottie is resigned to her fate, and untrusting of charm. Tad is being summoned back to England to a life he doesn’t want. And Lottie’s cousin is determined to keep her unpaid lackey, even if it means lying.

Tad has had many more choices than Lottie. As a man, he has been able to travel and find work. Lottie has been living as a dependent, physically safe and well cared for but emotionally abused.

Facing the power of the volcano gives them pause. Do they want to die before they have lived? And if they survive, will they have the courage to step into a whole different life?

Comment to win

All comments on this blog will go into the draw to win a mug with an 1886 map of the British empire, drawn seven days from the date the blog was published.

Comment on all eight blogs in the tour, and be in to win a $25 gift voucher from Amazon and a print copy of Never Too Late.

Farewell from 1886

Thank you for dropping in. Your next stop should be on Elizabeth Ellen Carter’s blog on 28th November. Or return to the time machine page on our Bluestocking Belle’s website and pick a year as they are posted over the next few weeks.

I wish you safe travels. Good luck. Try not to land in the midst of the Black Plague or Paris during the Terror of the French Revolution.

by

Tea with Ottilie

Ottilie Smith smoothed the skirt of her best dress and once again checked the wording of the invitation that appeared mysteriously on the desk that filled one corner of the dining room of the little cottage she shared with her husband and child in the booming New Zealand town of Christchurch.

The Duchess of Haverford requests the pleasure of the company of Mrs Thaddeus Smith for afternoon tea.

She and Tad had giggled over it, sure it was a joke. A duchess sending an invitation to the wife of a bookshop keeper? And the address given was on the far side of the world, in far away England: a castle in Kent. One of Tad’s friends was playing a trick on them, certainly. But she had returned from her women’s suffrage meeting, picking up the invitation from the hall table as she passed through into her sitting room, and found herself here, on a sunny terrace in what could only be England, with the grey stone walls of a castle looming behind her.

“Ah! Mrs Smith. I am so glad you could come.”

The lady, elegantly dressed in the fashions of nearly a century ago, was walking towards her from the french doors that let into the house, her hands held out in greeting.

Lottie stood and curtsied. “Your Grace.” Tad had joked about her knowing the proper forms of address, and she was glad he had, for dream or not, she would not wish to be discourteous.

“Please, Mrs Smith. Do take a seat. May I pour you a tea? Or would you prefer coffee or chocolate?” For a few minutes, the duchess fussed over the pot and the plates of delicate pastries and cakes that a silent maid passed at her command.

But when Lottie was served and the maid waved away, the duchess said, “Now. I understand you survived a volcanic eruption, though you were buried in the ash. Tell me about it, if you please. What happened?”

Forged in Fire is my story in the Never Too Late collection. Every Monday for the next little while, one of my fellow Bluestocking Belles will bring their hero or their heroine along to meet the Duchess of Haverford. I hope you’ll join us to learn more about them and their stories.

Never Too Late has its own page on the Bluestocking Belles website, where you can learn more about each story and find preorder links while they are being added. (It’s 99c while in preorder, so buy now.)

If you’re an Amazon US purchaser, buy it here.

by

Sunday Spotlight on Never Too Late

Yesterday, the Bluestocking Belles announced the name of our 2017 box set, out in time for holiday reading on November 1. You’ve heard me talking about my story for the set: Forged in Fire. Here’s the description of the book as a whole, and of each story in it.

Eight authors and eight different takes on four dramatic elements selected by our readers—an older heroine, a wise man, a Bible, and a compromising situation that isn’t.

Set in a variety of locations around the world over eight centuries, welcome to the romance of the Bluestocking Belles’ 2017 Holiday Anthology.

It’s Never Too Late to find love.

25% of proceeds benefit the Malala Fund.

(Read on below the buy links for individual story blurbs.)

Preorder Links (will add other eretailers as the links go live):

US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075VDCLCB
AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B075VDCLCB
BR: https://www.amazon.com.br/dp/B075VDCLCB
CA: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B075VDCLCB
DE: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B075VDCLCB
ES: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B075VDCLCB
FR: https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B075VDCLCB
IN: https://www.amazon.in/dp/B075VDCLCB
IT: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B075VDCLCB
JP: https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B075VDCLCB
MX: https://www.amazon.com.mx/dp/B075VDCLCB
NL: https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B075VDCLCB
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B075VDCLCB

The Piper’s Lady

By Sherry Ewing

True love binds them. Deceit divides them. Will they choose love?
Coira does not regret traveling with her grandfather until she is too old to wed. But perhaps it is not too late? At Berwyck Castle, a dashing knight runs to her rescue. How can she resist?

Garrick can hold his own with the trained Knights of Berwyck, but they think of him as a piper, not a fighter. When his heart sings for the new resident of the castle, he dares to wish he is something he is not. Will failure to clear her misunderstanding doom their love before it begins?

Her Wounded Heart

By Nicole Zoltak

An injured knight trespassing on Mary Bennett’s land is a threat to the widow’s
already frail refuge. Even so, she cannot turn away a man in need and tells him he has her husband’s leave to stay until Christmas.

Doran Ward wishes only to survive for one more day. However, as he begins to
heal and to pay for his lodgings by fixing the rundown manor, the wounds to Mistress Bennett’s heart intrigue him.

Can two desperate souls find hope in time for Christmas?

A Year Without Christmas

By Jessica Cale

London, 1645
Edward Rothschild returns home from war defeated in more ways than one. His friends killed and his property seized, he is an earl in name only. His family and his servants have all deserted him– all except his housekeeper, Lillian Virtue.

Lillian feels like home in a way that nothing else does, but as his servant and a recent widow, it would be impossible for them to be together. Then again, Christmas has been banned and the social order fractured; can one more impossible thing happen this year?

The Night of the Feast

By Elizabeth Ellen Carter

As a spy deep in the heart of Revolutionary France, Michael St. John hopes to make amends for a wasted life his by helping the citizens of the Vendée stage a counter-revolution.

Jacqueline Archambeau, tavern owner and cook, accepts that life and love have passed her by. She never dreamed she would fight her own countrymen for the right to keep her customs and traditions.

When they plot together to steal plans at a regimental dinner will they risk their lives—and their hearts?

The Umbrella Chronicles

George & Dorothea’s Story

By Amy Quinton

Lord George St. Vincent doesn’t realize it, but his days as a bachelor in good standing are numbered.

He has a fortnight, to be precise—the duration of the Marquess of Dansbury’s house party.

For I, Lady Harriett Ross, have committed to parting with several items of sentimental worth should I fail to orchestrate his downfall—er, betrothal—to Miss Dorothea Wythe, who is delightful, brilliant, and interested (or will be).

If I have anything to say about matters, and I always have something to say about matters, they’re both doomed.

Did I say doomed? I mean, destined—for a life filled with love.

I’m just an old woman with opinions. On everything.

A Malicious Rumor

By Susana Ellis

Vauxhall gardener Alice Crocker has had to defend herself from encroaching males all her life, but the new violinist is a different sort. So when she discovers that he is the victim of a malicious rumor, she naturally wants to help.

Peter de Luca greatly admires the lady gardener, but this is his problem to resolve.

What will it take to prove to this pair that they would be stronger together as a harmonious duo than two lonely solos?

Forged in Fire

By Jude Knight

Burned in their youth, neither Tad nor Lottie expected to feel the fires of love. The years have soothed the pain, and each has built a comfortable, if not fully satisfying, life, on paths that intersect and then diverge again.

But then the inferno of a volcanic eruption sears away the lies of the past and frees them to forge a future together.

Roses in Picardy

By Caroline Warfield

After two years at war, Harry is out of metaphors for death, synonyms for brown, and images for darkness. Color among the floating islands of Amiens and life in the form of a widow and her little son surprise him with hope.

Rosemarie Legrand’s husband died, leaving her a tiny son, no money, and a savaged reputation. She struggles to simply feed the boy and has little to offer a lonely soldier.

by

Descriptions in WIP Wednesday

One of my beta readers on my contemporary novella pointed out that I described two secondary characters, but not the hero and heroine. Which was true. In fact, sometimes I barely describe my characters at all, though I almost always work from photographs and paintings so that I can see the person in my mind’s eye as I watch them act the dramas I document.

How about you? Do you see your characters? Do you describe them, and if so, is it eye of God or in another character’s viewpoint or the old ‘in a mirror’ trick?

This week, please share a description of someone in your work in progress. My excerpt describes, Ottilie, the heroine of Forged in Fire, which will appear in the box set for the Bluestocking Belles. We announce the title and reveal the cover this coming weekend.

She wasn’t as meek as she pretended. He’d seen the steel in her, the fire in those pretty hazel eyes.

The word ‘pretty’ put a check in his stride, but it was true. She had lovely eyes. Not a pretty face, precisely. Her cheeks were too thin, her jaw too square, her nose too straight for merely ‘pretty’. But in her own way, she was magnificent. She was not as comfortably curved or as young as the females he used to chase when he was a wild youth, the sort he always thought he preferred. Not as gaudy as them, with their bright dresses and their brighter face paint. But considerably less drab than he had thought at first sight. She was a little brown hen that showed to disadvantage beside the showier feathers of the parrot, but whose feathers were a subtle symphony of shades and patterns. Besides, parrots, in his experience, were selfish, demanding creatures.

by

Chapter hooks on WIP Wednesday

McRae’s hotel after the eruption my hero and heroine are hiding from in the following scene.

I’ve evolved the tactic of not putting in chapter breaks in first draft. I just tell the story, and then I use the initial edit to reshape it, putting in breaks, baiting hooks at the end of chapters, and setting hooks at the beginning of the next.

I’ve spent a couple of hours today doing just that with a novella, so I thought chapter hooks might be quite fun. Please give me an excerpt from the start or end of a chapter, in which you intrigue your readers and pull them in. Mine is from Forged in Fire, my story for the Belle’s 2017 box set.

And the uncle and aunt abandoned her, ruined by their daughter’s lies and a conscienceless scoundrel, bereaved, poverty stricken. “I have been content, on the whole.” Tad was moved beyond words, her gracious acceptance casting sharp relief on his anger at the players in his own tragedy. And his break with his family had given him freedom, not enslavement to the whims of a cantankerous widow.

He rubbed his cheek gently on the soft hair that tickled his chin. She was wrong about her appeal. She might not have the kind of spectacular beauty that attracted fawning courtiers, but she was pretty. If she was his, he would dress her in colours that better became her. Green, perhaps, to bring out the green flecks in her eyes.

But she could not be his. So foolish to even think of it, when he was leaving New Zealand, heading back to the very Society that had wronged her fifteen years ago. He had no right to be holding her tenderly, caressing her, thinking about kissing her and more. He was no wild boy to act on this inconvenient attraction, this protective tenderness. But he didn’t let her go.

by

Transport on WIP Wednesday

Boat, carriage, horse, train, rocketship or shanks pony, our characters need to get around. In today’s WIP Wednesday, I’d love to see your excerpts about travel. Mine is from Forged in Fire, my Bluestocking Belles’ box set story for 2017. My characters are tourists in New Zealand’s Rotorua in 1886.

Lottie was pleased to be on the road again. The morning had been a trial with Myrtle determined to exact vengeance for Lottie’s avoidance of her trap. She might calm down a bit now they were once more with the rest of the party, since Mr. Farthingale was avoiding Lottie’s gaze and speaking to her as seldom as politeness allowed, though a gleam in Mr. Farthingale’s eye suggested she should be careful not to let him catch her alone.

The Pritchard family normally took one carriage, while Mr. Farthingale joined Myrtle’s party in the other. How could Lottie avoid the horrid man? Fortunately, her interests and Myrtle’s aligned, and when Myrtle suggested that the two Misses Pritchard might like to join her carriage to discuss London fashions ‘to while away another boring bush trip’, Lottie eagerly seconded her, but lowered her lids to veil her eyes when Mr. Berry climbed up to take the seat opposite her. If Myrtle caught a hint of how Mr. Berry affected her, Lottie would never hear the end of it.

The road wound around the shores of the lake, and then struck up into the hills. They would spend two nights at Te Wairoa, since the trip to the famed terraces of Rotomohana would consume the day in between.

Mr. Berry was distant today, too, but he smiled when he caught her looking at him, so she acquitted him of prejudice and just wondered what had him out of sorts. No. Sad. Something had happened to distress him, though he hid it well.

She left him to his brooding and Myrtle and the young ladies to their discussion, all but pressing her nose to the window. Boring? By no means. Lottie could not see enough of the ever-changing textures and the unending variety of greens in the passing scenery.