Do you abdicate after trying to poison yourself?

Front entrance to Fontainebleau

Travel is a wonderful way to do historical research for novels. Time-consuming, it is an intriguing way to put drama into your day...as you eat and drink you way around your chosen paths!

   My biggest kicks come from standing in the very spots that others infinitely more interesting than I have stood. Reflecting on how they must have felt at certain points in their lives—or seeing what has become of those places long after they have passed sends ripples of ennui down my spine.

Napoleon abdicating in Fontainebleau

The room where he took poison the night before he abdicated!

The Golden Courtyard where Napoleon's troops would have heard his farewell in April 1814 before he departed for Elba. Here you have the view Napoleon had as he addressed his troops. My picture.

Greeting many of his generals and troops who were gathered in the courtyard below, he bid them farewell from the main steps. He boarded a coach, escorted by a small French retinue and a few Englishmen to assure his departure, and left for Elba. He arrived there May 30, 1814.

To read a fast-paced romance about two lovers who must escape Napoleon’s return, do read BECAUSE OF YOU and my SCARLETT AFFAIRS series!

BECAUSE OF YOU, Book 2, Matrimony! 

BUY LINK: https://books2read.com/BecauseofYou

SCARLETT AFFAIRS series.

BUY LINK: https://amzn.to/4clTGvi

Spying can be dangerous when you are also falling in love! Who would do it?

Book 4 Releases 10.24.25

Spies!

THIS ENTIRE SERIES STARS SPIES! Women. Men. Disappearing. Returning. 

And falling in love.

PLUS, each story is rich in historical accuracy.

How?

1802: British go to Paris because of the truce. A great time to establish a spy network!

1803: Tensions between French and British rise! Bonaparte is getting ambitious and argues with the British envoy!

1804: Bony abducts the heir to the Bourbon throne. Yeah. The Last heir.

1805: Bony puts 200,000 soldiers on coast to invade southern England.

How do you get romances about of those headlines????

1802: You send a team of spies to Paris. One must help a lady whose friend has fled because…yeah, Bony thinks she’s a spy!

1803: One agent’s job is to find that lady who went missing in Book #1. Guess what? They fall in love and she cannot stay with him. Why?

Ah.

Book 6 Coming soon!

1803-4: An agent is dumbfounded when he sees a lady he loved impersonating another. Go away, she says. She has a mystery to solve!

1804: Bony absorbs other countries! A Crown Princess must save her family and flee!

BUY LINK: https://amzn.to/4clTGvi

Napoleon, food, REST, ideas in the shower and love! A collection of ideas on ideas!

Do you truly rest on Sundays?

I do give it a go. I cook. I sit and stare into space, usually on my patio when the sun is shining. But often, I get my best rest in the shower!

My life is driven by research and writing with deadlines ever present in my thinking. So my shower is an intriguing break from it all.

But my characters follow me in there.

You see, I have my next novel to plan so love is on my mind.

Who are these people? What is the heroine's challenge? His? How do they intersect to become a functioning unit for ever and ever? (And there they are—in my shower! I am naked. They are not yet fully formed so it is rather okay.)

My current series, SCARLETT AFFAIRS, addresses the conflict between France from the peace of Amiens in 1802 when Napoleon was one of three Consuls to the Second Restoration in 1816, after he had lost, gone to St. Helena, and the Allies occupied France.

I do take one issue, one tidbit of history and build around it the attempts of France to rule the world—and British and Allied attempts to defeat that.

But ideas come slowly...and when light bulbs go off, the result is a Happy Camper. Me!

Rest ensures I come up with good stuff. But REST is tough to find when you are driven to have that plot right now, please!

REST is a wonderful book which has been my friend for years after hubbie gave it to me for Christmas. Full of stories of writers, inventors and government officials and more who took time to allow their brains to think of nothing. And yet, what they discovered were the answers to their challenges!

A man who steals kisses is a poor girl's ruin and rich one's prize! LOVE'S PERILOUS ROAD, box set in continuity by Bluestocking Belles!

A highwayman is attacking travelers on a dark deserted road!

Who is he? Does he really want what he steals? If so, why does he seem to give it away...or take things he can never return?

And what happens when one robber waylays one special carriage and insists that one woman step down...only to steal a kiss?

What dastardly, delicious creature would do that, eh?

Love's road is surely perilous this autumn in LOVE'S PERILOUS ROAD, a box set by the incomparable Bluestocking Belles!

BUY LINK: https://www.amazon.com/Merry-Belles-Bluestocking-Collection-Friends-ebook/dp/B0FTQVYSKG

***

And what of that fellow who steals only kisses?

In Cerise DeLand's STOLEN KISSES, he is a charmer.

***

When Lance Winters first kissed Emma Tomkins pretending to be a highwayman years ago, she was ruined. Retiring to the country for succumbing to one delightful embrace, she endured society’s sting. 

But things have changed. Now she has money—a fortune of 8,000 pounds a year, and she’s determined to live a rich and full life. Alone. 

But men know of her new status, and seek her out like lemmings to the sea.

As a lowly cousin of a viscount and a captain in the Army Engineers, Lancelot Winters never had anything to his name. No right to claim a lady. Only a future fighting in Spain and France—and sent abroad to Canada soon after. Yet now Lance has a inherited an noble title and an estate to make his life comfortable. But he can’t and won’t do it alone. One woman is his answer.

When he appears in London to begin to court her, she refuses him. But he is not one to be put off. Not by society’s rules and not by her. So he disguises himself as the same highwayman of years ago and tracks Emma in her carriage one day on her way to Brighton. He grabs her off the coach—and in front of amused passengers and her niece, he kisses her.

Oh, yes. She remembers his lips. His voice. His rakish charm. But he ruined her once and she’s determined it won’t happen again. After all, she has rehabilitated herself…plus she intends to be a respectable wealthy grumpy spinster.

But the man is persistent. He shows up at the Old Ship Hotel on the Marine Parade in Brighton and makes a point to be everywhere! In The Lanes, in Aria Rocatti’s modiste shop, at the sea bathing rental post along the coast, and finally at the ball hosted by Lord Peter Summerville at his home at the conclusion of his house party. 

Each time they meet, they befall a few…um…mishaps. Lance thinks Emma’s his angel. She thinks he’s a delightful, star-struck fool. If only Emma’s niece weren’t trying to become his lady love too!

Lancelot might be his first name, but chivalry is his middle. He can’t live without her. And she can’t imagine marrying anyone else.

Their biggest problem?

A Bow Street Runner shows up at the Summerville Ball to arrest Lance as the highwayman who’s plagued the south shore of England.

What’s a woman to do if she now is in love with a highwayman?

D-Day Invasion, Bonaparte's style! He tried to invade Britain...and here's what happened!

Society for Nautical Research, Napoleon's armada

The D-Day invasion of Normandy was a valiant endeavor by a combined force of allies to defeat an enemy.

But that event—made up of convoys of ships, submarines, air defense and airmen, soliders and marines—was not the first such invasion concieved by one country. 

Napoleon ordered an invasion of England’s southern coast in the summer of 1805. Preparing for air, land and sea assault, he had all kinds of weaponry made. Hot air balloons, tunnnel digging machinery and a flotilla of amphibious landing gear similar to what you see in film of D-Day soldiers on flat-bottom boats evacuating into the open waves.

The French emperor had wanted such an invasion for many years. He encouraged his admirals to strike British shipping, naval and commercial. But he was met with defeat many times. 

Bemoaning his admirals’ “whining and delays”, he pushed them into conflicts they could not win. For a show of strength, he assembled 200,000 soldiers of his Grand Army in Boulogne along the Normandy coast and held maneuvers with soldiers shouting and chanting, taunting their enemy across the waves. 

The noise carried across the Channel and sent thousands of English residents fleeing with their possessions.

Against this reality, my next release (coming in September), LORD CARLISLE’S ENTICING LURE in my SCARLETT AFFAIRS series highlights this threatened invasion—amidst a romance that will thrill you with its charm and torment.

Widow Madame Giselle Laurant has fled France and the police who would throw her in La Force for her arrogance. She has a talent, a rare one. She draws landscapes to scale—and she draws them in such a way that a trained naval expert can make calculations from them.

Giselle is about to finish her set of drawings of English coastal seascapes when she meets a man she cannot resist. Clive Davenport, Marquess of Carlisle, is an advisor to the Foreign Office for naval affairs—and his desire for the lady who draws so well enflames him with a need to make her his. When he discovers that her drawings bear a certain odd characteristic, he questions if Giselle is friend or foe. 

Her drawings tell him she lies. Her kisses declare she truly

loves him. Can he find proof she is a French agent? If he has Giselle arrested, can he live with himself? Worse, can he live without her?

I hope you are reading my series, all of which feature hot-to the-touch romantic suspense action-adventure love stories with guaranteed happily-ever-afters. 

FIND THEM HERE: https://amzn.to/4clTGvi

The truth behind the scenes in LORD CARLISLE'S ENTICING LURE!

When writing historical romance, the key to success lies in giving the reader a hearty slice of yesterday.

I do that every time.

Here in LURE, you will see the reasons the British feared the invasion of Napoleon's Grand Army! 

You will meet that very famous artist, Elizabeth Le Brun who painted, among others, Marie Antoinette.

You will stroll on the beach in Brighton...and realize what problems you may have!

You will fall in love with a man who catches spies and who has every reason to suspect that the lady he is falling in love with is one!

Pre-order is up now. Remember it is 99 cents for only 2 weeks!

BUY LINK: https://amzn.to/3KkQCa7

Lord Carlisle's Enticing Lure, Book 5, stars a heroine who is on a mission...and a hero who suspects she may be one of the spies he searches for!

I hope you are reading my series, all of which feature hot-to the-touch romantic suspense action-adventure love stories with guaranteed happily-ever-afters. 

FIND THEM HERE: https://amzn.to/4clTGvi

Spicy romance and real history! Eloquence, too, say my readers! Book 5 on pre-order!

In the summer of 1805, Napoleon's Grand Army of 200,000 stood on the coast of France, ready to invade Britain.

The French had the largest, most well equipped army in the world...and their leader was willing to use it to conquer his long-term foe.

He sent agents into England, especially along the southern coast to spy on English defenses, their militias, their leaders and their people.

They wanted a glimpse of what they would need to land on the beaches and take the British within hours.

The British knew all of this. But they had their own plans. Many of them as devious as their enemy. They had to be creative to win against such a well-armed foe.

In ENTICING LURE, you will read of a few such British plans...and one in particular that sounds ever-so-familiar, rather like the D-Day Invasion of Normandy!

I hope you are reading my series, all of which feature hot-to the-touch romantic suspense action-adventure love stories with guaranteed happily-ever-afters. 

FIND THEM HERE: https://amzn.to/4clTGvi

Why Read Historical Fiction? Fun? Reality? Understanding of how and why we are where we are.

Roman Baths in Bath, England

WHY READ HISTORICAL FICTION? So much is being said about the demise of the popularity of historical fiction. Authors notice the sales numbers! Readers may not feel it, other than totaling up their current purchases and noticing what they tend to buy lately.

While all genres are subject to flux and change within, so too do readers respond to their own current psychological and cultural currents. 

The one we currently live in the USA has brought us a recognition of the extraordinary. Romantsy in all its new forms seems to be the new new kid on the block that is driving out romance in all its forms. I recently went to my local Barnes & Noble where fully 1/3 of the first floor was nothing but this new new thang! The romance section that was for years 1/2 of the floor? Now 3 stacks.

Shocking to one who has seen the rise of historical romance in the late 80s and 90s, its top of market ascendance and now, many who call it ailing.

I don't. 

Ostia Public Toilets, Rome

I know that this is exactly the time when we need to read good solidly fact-based historical fiction. Not just the gay, light-hearted ones. But all of them that bring us the real goods about a past that was not necessarily glorious. 

Would you like to live in a world without (pardon me here for the real life question) a vaccine for smallpox?

Would you like to live in a world where you feared drinking the water?

Would you live in a town ransacked by the nearby king's guard?

How about no toilets. No tv. No printed books at all.

I will have more to say later on this subject. 

Please tell me your point of view!

Pictures: both in Public Domain!

#1: Roman Bath in Bath, England

#2: Ostia latrinae: public toilets in Ostia