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Tantalizing Secrets - Out in print!

The coach lurched to a halt and they were flung forward. Peter flung out a hand to stop Arabella hurting herself, and was rewarded by a handful of fabric and a brief contact with one soft breast. He took her arm and hauled her back on to the seat as the carriage pulled to a halt.
Breathlessly she stared at him and they both heard a gruff voice. “Stand and deliver!”
“Good Lord!” The gleam of battle sparked in him. Cautiously he settled the pistol in his pocket so it came easily to hand.
The door of the carriage was wrenched open. A heavily muffled figure stood outside. “Out,” the man commanded.

Devonshire in Print

I’m thrilled to announce that Devonshire, the second Richard and Rose book, is now out in print. I’ve popped an extract below to tempt you!
Best of the season to everyone and thank you for helping to make Richard and Rose such a success!

Now that she’s engaged to Richard, one of the most admired—and passionate—men in society, shy, awkward Rose Golightly can finally hold her head high. She never anticipated that her elevated position would make her the target of a dangerous gang of smugglers.
Behind Richard’s aloof, sophisticated facade lies a man of shrewd intelligence, fierce loyalty, and deep devotion to those he loves. He’s willing to fight fair when necessary, dirty when cornered. Rose is one of only two people he trusts. All she’s ever asked of him is that there be no secrets between them, but there are a few lingering dark corners he’s reluctant to reveal.
Now, Rose’s childhood friend has made a stand against the smugglers that rule the coast, unwittingly putting Rose in danger. With her life at stake, there’s only one way Richard can save her—even if it means his bride has to trade her wedding gown for widow’s weeds.

Princess Caraboo and other matters

I’m working on a new historical romance featuring Richard and Rose. Delving into history always provides me with new tidbits I’d never known before. From passing fashions like red-heeled shoes and cut steel jewellery (revived in the Victorian era) to the thoughts of reformers like Jethro Tull and Benjamin Franklin. Always something.
For a long time I’ve wanted to write my Princess Caraboo book. She was a cobbler’s daughter who took in a Gloucestershire village and landowner by pretending to be a foreign princess. She spoke a language she’d made up herself and dressed in an exotic fashion. Looking at it today it’s hard to believe, but haven’t we had similar hoaxes and tomfoolery? How about Borat, played by a Cambridge graduate, or his previous incarnation, Ali G? Ali G ended up in a Madonna video, and while most people were in on the joke, a few believed the whole thing, especially when Sasha Baron-Cohen first started out.
Sadly, Princess Caraboo was found out, but she went on to have a varied, if not always successful career.
Ephemera always turn out fascinating, especially for the novelist, who tends to think, “what if…?” and then can take the story in a completely new direction. The story of the murderess, Mary Blandy has proved inspirational to me, although it turned out completely different to the real thing. And reading about the development of lenses in the 1740’s led me to write “Alluring Secrets” with its short-sighted heroine. A case in the Newgate Calendar about two counterfeiters led me to part of the plot of “Tantalizing Secrets.”
My husband always claims that I’d rather read the newspapers of two hundred years ago than the ones today. He’s quite right. Who wouldn’t?

Alluring Secrets in Print!

I’m thrilled that my Alluring Secrets is now available in print! It’s a hot romance, set in the eighteenth century, and it was such fun to write!

So here’s an excerpt.

Severus didn’t speak again until they were safely behind a closed door in a small room overlooking the back of the house. The windows lay open, allowing a light summer breeze to circulate, but Penelope still felt hot. She knew what was coming, and she’d have no choice but to listen.

He stayed by the windows, and Penelope stood in the middle of the room, waiting. She didn’t know what to say. She almost recoiled when he came closer, but he stopped about a foot away. “I want you to see me properly,” he said softly.

Penelope nodded, relieved and disappointed at the same time. “That’s—considerate of you.”

Venice for Lovers

The third Richard and Rose book came out this week. I love writing about them, and when I do, they seem more real than the people around me. This one was a delight because it’s set in one of my favorite cities, Venice, and it’s the honeymoon book, so I could finally explore Richard and Rose’s sensuality.

A Tantalizing Secret

Tantalizing Secrets means a lot to me in a number of ways. It was originally intended to be the last book in the series, making it a trilogy, but so many interesting characters turned up in the course of it, that I’m thinking about maybe writing more.
For each book in the series, I had a specific house in mind, but for the third book, I had two houses, both in the city of my birth, Leicester, England. The first is the historic manor of Belgrave Hall, once in the countryside outside the city walls, now part of the city itself. The other is the house where I grew up, 10, Sanvey Gate, an old house made of a hotchpotch of at least three premises from three periods in history cobbled together to make one. Although we had a different business there, I made the house a button factory, which used the same kind of machinery my father’s business had. Some of the experiences tally with mine – the little office at the rear where Arabella and Peter have an interesting time together would have been our kitchen.
And the hero’s brother falling from the top of the tower of St. Margaret’s Church? (it’s the inciting incident, happens before the book starts). I went up that tower once, just once. The parapet was low, there was nothing between me and tumbling and I saw how easy it would be.

So, without further ado, to a little teaser from the book, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I loved writing it.

Yorkshire at Christmas

Very cold and snowy. At Hareton Abbey it must have been bleak. But Richard and Rose visit it in October – bleak enough for them, even though what they discover together heats them up fast!
There is so much I could say about this book – my first book released, now rewritten and re-edited for Samhain. It’s lovely to see it out there again, absolutely wonderful. So here’s a bit from the book.

Rose Golightly is a country girl who thinks her life will continue on its comfortable course, but a series of events changes that for good. At the ripe old age of five and twenty, Rose Golightly considers herself a dried up spinster whose only attractive quality is her considerable dowry . A penniless, ambitious curate is her best hope for marriage. Until, on a visit to the family ancestral estate of Hareton Abbey, a double tragedy brings Richard Kerre, Lord Strang, into her hopeless life. A leader of society, a man known for extravagance in dress and life, Richard is her fate. And she is his.
Richard is to marry a rich, frigid woman in a few weeks, and has deliberately closed his heart to love. Then a coach accident that leaves two people dead throws his wounded body into Rose’s arms.
With one kiss, Richard and Rose discover in each other the passion they thought they’d never have.
Together, they also discover the accident that brought them together was an act of sabotage. Somewhere , in the rotting hulk of a once beautiful stately home, among the haughty, intimidating elite of society , a murderer is hiding.
They set out to solve the mystery, and find the layers of scandal go deeper than simply determining who is guilty.
They also discover that doing the right thing could separate them—forever.
Excerpt after the jump…

YORKSHIRE
Richard and Rose are back!
http://samhainpublishing.com/romance/yorkshire
ISBN: 978-1-60504-269-5
http://www.lynneconnolly.com/Yorkshire.html

Give me more historicals to read!

I love reading historical romance, and I love writing them. But the reason I stopped reading them a few years ago was because errors started creeping in, then they swept in with a “this is fiction, so why should you care” attitude. So I just stopped reading them. Now I’m dipping my toe back in, and to some extent, errors are still there. Especially title errors. Not difficult to check, easy to correct.
One of the reasons I submitted to Samhain was because I enjoyed the historicals the publisher issued, and now I’ve entrusted them with Richard and Rose.

So here’s the quick guide to titles and the commonest errors in historical romances (naming no names!)

A Chance To Dream - now in print!

From Sept 30th, A Chance To Dream will be available in print!

I loved writing this book. I hope you enjoy reading it. The book is beautiful, thanks to Ann Cain’s stunning cover art, and receiving the box of author copies was like ten Christmases rolled into one.
So here’s what you can expect:

The Gay Eighteenth Century.

My historicals are mainly set in the mid-eighteenth century, when the Georgian era was at its height. The era has always fascinated me, from the great country houses to the hovels in the city, and the way the people at that time lived.
And my, did they live. They loved, lusted and laughed, all without the hypocrisy and the manipulation of guilt that the Victorians were so good at. I fell in love with this era when I was nine years old and it’s the longest love affair of my life.
I’ve read the books, and my husband says I read more eighteenth-century magazines and newspapers than I do modern ones! I get some of my plots from them, so outlandish though they might seem, most are based on real-life cases.

But in one respect, the eighteenth century was as moralistic as the Victorians. Gay love, or, as it was called then, sodomy. It was punishable by death.

However, at that time the law was a different thing to what it is today. Then, great sweeping laws were passed, but there were loopholes, so the magistrate or judge could take the particulars of each case into consideration. A woman, accused of stealing a loaf to feed her starving children escaped the penalty of hanging or transportation when she was brought to court, when the judge valued the goods she stole as much lower than their true worth – and the court had a collection to help her pay the fine!

That’s why the crime was “sodomy,” or the act of anal sex. Strictly, this was between males and females, or males and males, but in practice, only males were prosecuted, and it explains why women weren’t. It is based on Church law, but the offence was a criminal one, not a civil one, and subject to the direst penalties.
Gays were prosecuted throughout the century, from the spate of prosecutions in the 1720’s, possibly a cover for Jacobite activities, to the “Mother Clapp” prosecutions later in the century. And they were hanged for it (game is hung, men are hanged).

Although obvious gays, or rather bisexuals in Lord Hervey’s case, existed, most were tolerated. Hervey had lovers, male and female, and he was an important member of the government in the 1740’s, an immensely clever man and a friend of Lady Mary Wortley Montague and Alexander Pope (who may himself have been gay). But that wasn’t a crime – sodomy was. Lady Mary said of him, “There are three sexes – men, women and Herveys.” So gays existed and were tolerated, even exalted in this era when men wore pink but carried a sword by their side.

I’ve created two gay characters so far, one an honourable, intelligent man who has suffered for his sexual orientation, and one a coward, who made another person suffer. This last character was the first husband of Isobel, the heroine of “Seductive Secrets.” Isobel hasn’t been told the facts of life, she discovered them for herself. Her mother never encouraged her to talk, when it became obvious her marriage was going wrong, and she never told Isobel anything about sex when she went into marriage. So Isobel associates sex with pain and misery. Harry’s sin isn’t that he’s gay, it’s that he hasn’t the courage to face up to his responsibilities, and when he can’t ‘perform’ with Isobel, he blames her for the failure, not himself. In short, Harry is a coward.

I didn’t see why gay characters should be caricatures – either saints or the tooth-gratingly irritating “gay best friend” character, someone who has natural taste in interior design and making women laugh. Yes, I’ve known several gays. We all have. Some played up to the stereotype, others didn’t. So I wanted to make all my characters real. People, not archetypes, stereotypes or ciphers. I wanted to give the gay characters in my books permission to be bad as well as good. Just as long as they didn’t slot into a preformed character slot.

One of my friends, the collector of automata, Ken Rubin, has machines that perform in a variety of ways, all from the same penny. He has a huge collection of early bubblegum machines, all of which do ‘something’ before you get your gum. You can watch your penny chase down convoluted pipes, get your fortune read or try to hit a target. But you get your gum in the end. You can (and I did) spend hours studying them and marvelling at the ingenuity of the creators. I hope my characters are as diverse and unexpected as Ken’s machines, if not a bit more.
You don’t know what you’re getting when you put in your penny, but you always get your gum in the end.

For an excerpt from “Seductive Secrets,” read on.