Flora Shaw - an inspiring (and redoubtable) Victorian

I’m delighted to welcome writing friend Antoine Vanner back to the blog!

His Victorian naval fiction series – the Dawlish Chronicles – is gathering a very fair wind and steaming to success. I recently reviewed Britannia’s Amazon featured the redoubtable Captain Nicholas Dawlish’s wife Florence. Was she typical of her time? What was a […]

Do we still like ‘Ruritania’?

Frontispiece to The Prisoner of Zenda, Charles Dana Gibson

Rudolf Rassendyll (Sigh) Princess Flavia (Aaah!) Duke Michael (Grrrr!) Rupert of Hentzau (Wow but grr!)

When I picked up The Prisoner of Zenda at age 12, I was enraptured. It was a torch under the bedclothes job. When it ended I cried, partly from […]

J J Marsh - Love me, love my character

It’s my great pleasure to welcome back crime writer J J Marsh. We met a while ago in a distanced way on Facebook – the two of us belong to the Alliance of Independent Authors – but when she and I were both selected as indie Editor’s Choices in prestigious UK publishing trade magazine ‘The […]

Jenny Harper Love me, love my character

I am utterly delighted to welcome fellow Romantic Novelists’ Association colleague Jenny Harper to my writing blog today! Jenny lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, though she was born in India and grew up in England. She has been a non-fiction editor, a journalist and a businesswoman and has written a children’s novel and several books about […]

Fenella Forster - Love me, love my character

Today is the start of a new, possibly disruptive series, ‘Love me, love my character’. I’m inviting authors and their characters to give us their separate views. Hopefully, we may get some unexpected results.

Fenella Forster (the writing name of Denise Barnes) writes sagas with a difference: all involve ‘voyages’, physical as well as emotional […]