Some of you may have noticed that many of my stories feature characters with disabilities. This is a topic close to my heart. I have lived most of my life with chronic illness, and have a brother who is blind, several relatives either permanent or temporary wheelchair users, a son with brain damage and various family members challenged by mental illness of one kind or another.

The idea for the hero in my latest newsletter subscriber story came out of my day job. I’m a consultant for a firm of plain English writers and trainers, and we did a field trip to the laboratory of a new client — a medical research organisation. Their mission is to solve unsolvable medical problems. The first of these, so the founder told us, was non-invasive treatment of strawberry birthmarks. These are disfiguring vascular tumours that mostly go away of their own accord,  but can sometimes grow in places that cause damage and can even threaten the child’s life. The treatment used to be unpleasant, invasive, and costly. And now, thanks to this research group, it is non-invasive and cheap.

Which set me wondering how a Regency family whose child had a strawberry birthmark might have coped. Eric, or Wreck as his family called him, was the result. In my story, he was the third son of an aristocratic family, sent as a baby to a remote estate, and raised by a loving Nanny, with occasional visits from his mother who was horrified by him.

Then the second son died, and Wreck needed to be retrieved in case he might one day succeed to the title. The mother sent him to Italy for surgical treatment. My story begins when he comes home. Subscribe to my newsletter if you want to know what happens next. I’m sending the newsletter out this week.