Crime and Punishment for Beginners - D.B. TAIT

This time last weekend I was enjoying the company of 400 of my closest friends (and I do mean that literally) at the Romance Writers of Australia Conference. Among them was today's guest D.B. Tait. 

In another life Tait is probably better known as erotic romance writer, Keziah HIll, but, like me, she is turning to a life of crime or at least, romantic suspense! Born and bred in Sydney Australia, DB Tait is a life long lover of books in all forms but crime fiction in particular. She worked for many years in the criminal justice system before deciding a tree change was need, so decamped to the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. Now she writes and works part time in the community sector. Her first full length novel, Cold Deception, was published by Momentum, the digital first line of Pan Macmillan in March 2015. Her next novel Desperate Deception will be published in October 2015. 

With her background in the criminal justice system, she is ideally placed to write crime fiction. Can't wait to read this one!

Crime and Punishment for Beginners

When writing a contemporary romantic suspense novel, world building is as important as it is for historical novels or science fiction. My second full length novel to be released in October 2015, Desperate Deception, is set in the Blue Mountains where I live and deals with themes relating to imprisonment and crime.

I worked for quite a number of years in the New South Wales prison system so I thought in writing this book, and the previous book in the series, Cold Deception, that I had already in my mind what I needed to bring the stories to life. I would just need to ransack my memories.

But memory is faulty. Parole details, sentencing details, what someone who has been arrested and denied bail might experience in the van on the way to jail, were all aspects of my story I had to re-remember and fact check. I’m lucky that I have contacts in the prison system still (no, not that kind of contact!) so some things were easier than others to get right.

I also have a couple of handy criminal lawyer friends who can ensure the legal details are correct.

But I needed to get the feel of a criminal court trial. I’m not sure if this falls into the category of a Fun Friday Fact, (since it’s a bit depressing) but an online resource that is useful for getting the flavour of a criminal court in NSW and how a Judge summarises a whole criminal case at the point of sentencing, is the Case Law site (previously Lawlink) https://www.caselaw.nsw.gov.au Here you can find Judges’ sentencing comments on a range of legal matters. These sentencing comments are often bleak and terrifying in their ordinariness - dry accounts of often awful and pathetic crimes.

They are a gold mine for a crime writer, fascinating in their detail of both the law and the circumstances of the crime. But has I read them, I feel like a voyeur into the lives, not only of the perpetrators, but of the destroyed victims, both living and dead. Some Judges, amid the dry discourse of case law, express poignant sympathy and regret for those left living, providing a glimpse of humanity in what is frequently a monolithic and cruel legal system.

These small shards of light in sentencing comments are the moments when my crime writer mind expands with possibilities for stories. I wonder about the victims, the perpetrators and what happened that brought them so disastrously together. What was going on in their minds and in the minds of those tasked with bringing the perpetrators to justice? Showing that, bring it to life, is the essence of a good crime story.

ABOUT COLD DECEPTION

Secrets, lies, deception. That’s what it takes to stay alive.

At 20, Julia Taylor went to prison for murdering a man who deserved it. Ten years later, she’s ready to put the past behind her and get on with her life. But someone won’t let her. Someone will do anything to drive Julia away, including murder.

As the body count rises, Julia is forced to accept the help of Dylan Andrews, a cop with dark secrets of his own. Unfortunately help has a cost. Dylan is digging into Julia’s past, uncovering secrets she is desperate to keep.

Julia must keep Dylan at a distance, or else risk her own safety, and the safety of everyone she loves …

Read an Excerpt from Cold Deception

Dylan Andrews led the struggling woman away from the Council building, across the square and to the wisteria covered picnic area. Grey and bare, the twisting vine hung down in a dense veil, providing minimal cover from prying eyes. Luckily few people were around on this freezing morning.

“What’re you doing? Let me go!”

Through her struggles Dylan could see she was still gasping for breath and shaking. The dark circles under her eyes stood out in stark relief against the complete whiteness of her skin.

“Sit down,” he ordered. “You’re having a panic attack. Just sit there and breathe.”

She collapsed on a bench and leaned against the stone picnic table.

“I’ll be alright in a minute,” she said in a small voice.

He stared down at her, irritated with himself and his reaction to her. Everything he knew about Julia Taylor indicated she wasn’t the run of the mill ex-crim, yet his hackles rose when he was around her. He knew he wouldn’t have to keep an eye on her like most crims first out of jail. She wasn’t a user and murderers had a low recidivism rate. Many people thought her crime was justified and there was certainly no doubt the pedophile priest was no loss to the world.

That was the problem. She didn’t have the right to make that decision. No one did except a court of law. Sure, she’d been young and foolish, but he’d seen first hand what out of control vigilantism did. Some nights the vision of Dale Rowe’s dismembered limbs still visited him ….

Her breathing returned to normal and some colour appeared in her face. No doubt about it, the Taylor women were stunners. Blossom was a carbon copy of her mother, but the woman in front of him was equally compelling. Instead of dark and petite like the other women in her family, Julia was taller with round curves, pale skin and chocolate-honeycomb hair. She pulled off her woollen beanie and strands of gold flashed in the filtered winter sun. Looking into her eyes he could get lost in all that riot of colour. What were they? Green, hazel, brown? Large eyes filled with pain and something else. Something he didn’t want to think too much about.

Yearning. That’s what it was.

Not surprising, he supposed. You don’t spend ten years in jail without yearning for freedom. But wanting was a double edged sword, as he knew only too well. What you wanted wasn’t always good for you.

He sat in on the bench opposite her, aware his size intimidated her. That was okay in some situations but not in the midst of a panic attack. He watched her scrub her hands over her face and push back her mane of hair. Pulling her scarf free from around her neck she took in a deep breath and let it out.

The skin of her neck was creamy and pale. He couldn’t help following that track of smoothness down toward her buttoned shirt. It was a little too tight and the first button pulled, stretching to open.

He gave himself a good mental slap. Of all the women in the world to lust after, this was not the one. Apart from the fact she was just out of jail; was suffering from a bad transition to the real world and he might have to arrest her sister at some stage, there was something about her he knew was dangerous. Not dangerous for others, just for him. Under that tough persona he could see she was too vulnerable, too lost.

“Do you want me to get you some water?” he said.

She shook her head.

“How often does it happen?”

She finally met his eyes and he saw wariness had replaced yearning. Good. She needed to be on guard.

“Just when I come across a crowd of people in an enclosed space. I thought I was over it. I guess I’m not.”

“You had one yesterday when I bought Blossom home. There wasn’t a crowd there.”

Hard bitterness leached into her eyes.

“I wasn’t expecting to see a cop on my doorstep so soon after getting out. You reminded me of someone.” She wounded the scarf back around her neck and stood up. “Thanks for saving me,” she said with a wry smile. “It’s a first for me.”

“Being saved?”

“Being saved by a cop.” She crammed her beanie back on her head as the wind pricked up. “I’m okay now. Time for another go. This time I’m prepared.” She turned toward the Council Chambers.

When she was half way across the square he called after her.

“Who do I remind you of?”

She stopped and turned back toward him.

“The cop who punched me in the gut then pushed me into a filthy police cell the night I was arrested. He didn’t rape me. He’d done that already to the woman in the cell next to me. I was lucky, wasn’t I?” She shrugged. “He went on to big and better things, though. Quite a business man in more ways than one.”

She lifted her hand and saluted him then went on her way. A chill, colder than the icy wind, settled into his bones as he watched her go.

Links to your favourite digital bookshop where you can buy Cold Deception are here http://momentumbooks.com.au/books/cold-deception/

You can also pre order Desperate Deception here  http://momentumbooks.com.au/books/desperate-deception-dark-mountain-2/

Find her on  her website http://dbtait.com

CONNECT WITH D.B. Tait

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/DBTaitAuthor

and Twitter https://twitter.com/DBTait

Down among the dead... Guest post E.E. Carter

I have been greatly looking forward to having Australian author Elizabeth Ellen Carter as my guest because I know her latest book, MOONSTONE CONSPIRACY, involves a scene in the Paris Catacombs... or at least the part of the catacombs that has served as an ossuary for over 200 years. I visited the catacombs on our recent trip to Paris... and it is a case of one visited - never forgotten.

DOWN AMONG THE DEAD OF PARIS

Paris has few skyscrapers unlike many modern metropolitian cities and the reason lies beneath the city streets.

For under the City of Light, is a City of Death.

They are the catacombs – miles of upon miles (some say as much as 400 miles) of tunnels that criss-cross the city.

Strictly speaking, only a little more than a mile of the underground network is an underground ossuary (correctly called a catacomb), the rest are disused mining tunnels that supplied limestone and gypsum for the people above ground.

I have to confess, that before researching Moonstone Conspiracy I hadn’t given much thought to the origin of ‘Plaster of Paris’!

Ultimately expediency helped the people of Paris solve a distasteful and potentially deadly problem – where to store the remains of the dead.

By the 17^th century Paris was a major European centre home to half a million people – a population equal  to that of London. And people have a rather inconvenient habit of dying.

Rather than establishing new cemeteries outside the city (and one very good  reasons against doing so is cemeteries ‘sterilise’ arable land otherwise use for feeding the living), Parisians keep piling more and more bodies into existing cemeteries.

Church of Les Innocentes

Sadly, not a sustainable practice, especially when the inmates decide they want to escape – literally. Following heavy rains in the spring of 1780, a wall of Paris’s largest cemetery, Les Innocents , collapsed, spilling rotten corpses onto neighbouring properties.

From 1786 and for the next 12 years, between six and seven million new ‘residents’ found their eternal resting place underground. The earliest bones moved to the catacombs are estimated to be more than 1200 years old.

The catacombs today are a major Parisian tourist attraction – officially and unofficially. Organised tours are available to savour this history of this most remarkable  place.

Supporting pillars of bones and skulls

For others, known as cataphiles, the appeal is the forbidden. Groups of modern day cavers  explore the rest of the tunnel network, dodging officials sent to ferret them out and not always successfully. One underground amphitheatre had been turned into a cinema, complete with chairs, projector and screen, a neighbouring cavern was home to a restaurant and bar!

So it’s not very surprising to learn that during World War II, both the Germans and the French Resistance used the catacombs as secret bunkers.

While I didn’t find any research to suggest that Parisians looking to escape persecution and certain death during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror used the tunnels, I think they would have done so on that basis, the Paris Catacombs and the people who inhabited them play a major role in Moonstone Conspiracy.

During the French Revolution, churches were nationalised and deconsecrated, even the magnificent 1200 year old Notre Dame Cathedral was vandalised and turned into a temple for the culte de la raison (that incident featured in Moonstone Obsession). Not only were aristocrats guillotined, but also priests and nuns – including those who were cloistered with no interest in temporal politics – others were dragged out onto the street and hung or raped, then beaten to death.

Catacombs often brings to mind the ones in Rome where, back in ancient Rome, Christians escaped persecution. So I extrapolated some historical fact to create eglise sous terre – the church underground – in Moonstone Conspiracy to draw attention to not only real historic events in Paris, but also the restive outer regions including the Vendee.

Excerpt from MOONSTONE CONSPIRACY

A single candle lay inside a small adit, just wide enough for them to walk two abreast. Daniel picked it up and handed it to Abigail. His meaning was clear—if he had to defend them, he would need both hands.

The white chalky walls reflected the light down a tunnel which turned black as it pushed further into the hill.

“Do not fear, you are among friends,” whispered a voice that echoed eerily down the passage ways.

“Who do we have the honor of calling friend?” asked Daniel.

“Come further inside to safety. The soldiers are superstitious; they won’t come any further than this entrance.”

Daniel placed his left hand on the small of Abigail’s back to gently urge her forward. She glanced up at him and he gave a nod of confirmation making sure in the candlelight that she caught of glimpse of the knife he carried.

They rounded the corner and the passage continued for about fifteen yards to where a small lamp stood, indicating another corner. They rounded it and then another. Dotted at intervals of about ten yards small lamps lit their way until they entered another passage. Abigail suppressed a scream. A skull in the wall eyed her sightlessly. She raised her candle higher and could see skulls, hundreds of them, twenty feet along and lining six feet up the walls.

Bones of other sorts too were neatly stacked in rows.

“There’s no need to fear. Our sentries will keep a look out,” the voice laughed, amused by his own jest.

MOONSTONE CONSPIRACY

For her unwitting participation in a plot to embezzle the Exchequer, Lady Abigail Houghallhas spent the last two years exiled to the city of Bath. A card sharp, sometime mistress, and target of scandalous gossip by the London Beau Monde, Lady Abigail plots to escape her gilded cage as well as the prudish society that condemns her. But the times are not easy. France is in chaos. The king has been executed, and whispers of a similar revolution are stirring in England. And because of her participation in the robbery plot, the Spymaster of England is blackmailing her into passing him information about the members of London’s upper crust. 

When the dashing English spy Daniel Ridgeway takes a seat at her card table and threatens to expose her for cheating, she has no choice but to do as he demands: seduce the leader of the revolutionaries and learn what she can about their plot. As she’s drawn deeper into Daniel’s dangerous world, from the seedy backstreets of London to the claustrophobic catacombs of a war-torn Paris, she realizes an even more dangerous fact. She’s falling in love with her seductive partner. And the stakes of this game might just be too high, even for her. 

MEET ELIZABETH ELLEN CARTER

Elizabeth Ellen Carter’s lives in Australia with her husband and two cats. A former newspaper journalist, she ran an award-winning PR agency for 12 years.

Her debut novel, Moonstone Obsession,  set in England and France during the French Revolution,was published in 2013. Her second novel, Warrior’s Surrender, was published  the following year. Set in Northumbria in 1077, it sets the relationship between a displaced Saxon noblewoman and a Norman baron against the turbulent backdrop of England in the years following the Norman invasion of 1066. 

Warrior’s Surrender (now in print as well as eBook) was named Favourite Historical Fiction at the 2015 Readers & Writers Down Under Readers Choice Awards in March this year.

A Moonstone Obsession character, the sinful Lady Abigail Houghall, features in the full length novel Moonstone Conspiracy, released in July 2015.

Carter is currently working on her fourth novel, set in ancient Rome and tentatively titled Dark Heart, which will bring together the elements for which she has become known in just a few years – in-depth historical detail woven through gripping adventure and captivating romance.

Find E.E. Carter 

Web: http://eecarter.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ElizabethEllenCarter

Twitter: https://twitter.com/EECarterAuthor

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/eecarterauthor/

Buy Moonstone Conspiracy here:
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The Wilful Colt - Guest post with Ann B. Harrison

My Friday guest this week is Australian author, Ann B. Harrison, with a horsey tale. I was one of those desperate horsey little girls who would have given my right arm to have my own horse... as it was I had to be content with an imaginary horse I kept stabled in the back yard by the incinerator. Just as well I had a vivid imagination! Consequently I love horsey tales...

Ann hails from a particularly lovely part of the country - the Hunter Valley  and her country background and environment makes her perfectly placed to write western/rural romances and romantic suspense. She tells me she is nurturing a desire to write about a man in a kilt... hmm, not a big call for kilts in rural romance! 
To find out more about Ann, visit her WEBSITE

Ann's latest book CHANCE FOR LOVE, is set a long way from the Hunter Valley - in the beautiful idyll of Colorado. Mountains and horses... and horses is what Ann will talk to us about today.

THE WILFUL COLT

Growing up as a country girl, I had come into contact with a wide variety of animals and had more than my share of orphans to look after but my world changed when our first foal was born.

He was a stunning chestnut Arab with a crooked white blaze on his nose and we called him Shilo. Our daughter lay claim to him from the beginning and she adored him.

Our old neighbour whom we’d dubbed, Uncle Tom gave us all the advice we could wish for. I mean to say, we were used to sheep and cattle, not long legged graceful if not wilful colts.

Shilo soon got too big for his boots and when I walked into the paddock he would charge me, kicking up his feet and quite rightly putting the wind up me and his young owner.

Back then, almost twenty years ago, we weren’t so lucky as to have the internet so back to Uncle Tom we went. 
It was time to break in Shilo. We herded him into a yard with his dam and called in the local farrier who as the local horse breaker, educated us too.

“Never let him boss you around.” All well and good for a strapping 6’ man like him. I was 5’ nothing! “Show him who’s boss.”

We did. Solitary confinement seemed to work for him and we had no trouble breaking him in after that.

When I wrote the following scene in Chance for Love I remembered those words. “Never let him boss you around.” Callie, my Aussie heroine takes on a rodeo bull in order to save her husband from serious harm by herding said bull into a yard. I wish I’d had her nerves when we had our fiery colt to deal with.

Excerpt from CHANCE FOR LOVE

She looked on in horror as her husband threw himself on the ground only to be picked up and thrown through the air. He landed, hitting the ground hard. Callie waited for him to attempt to get up and escape the bull but he didn’t move. Terror pawed at the ground and ducked his head down, ready to attack again.

Callie turned the horse, rode to the gate, and slipped the latch, pushing her way through. She kicked Sultan’s ribs and headed straight for the bull, waving her hat and screaming at the top of her lungs. She rode between bull and man, pushing the bull further away from the prone body lying still in the grass.'

“Move you big bastard. Move I say.” 

She herded Terror away from Chance toward the holding yard, not stopping until he was forced inside and the gate was shut behind him. She hurried back to Chance and jumped from the horse before it stilled. Callie crouched beside him. “Chance, please, please be alright.”

More about CHANCE FOR LOVE

Callie can't resist the advert for a ranch manager in Colorado. Only thing is, it also stipulates marriage. Down on her luck with more debt than she can manage after the death of her parents in a vehicle accident, she takes the plunge and commits.

Chance is sick of the high life he's led for years as a top rodeo rider. The glitz and glamour aren't what he wants. After an accident leaves him unable to return to the circuit, he decides now is the time to do what his heart has been yearning for - marry a down to earth country girl and raise bulls on his ranch, with the hope of bringing his brothers back together. Little did he know that an advert would bring him a sassy talking Australian bride to turn his world up side down.

BUY

Pitching the Pitch with Belinda Williams.

As we edge closer to the Romance Writers of Australia Conference, writers across the country are polishing their 'pitches'. This is the one time of the year when a writer gets to front an editor or an agent and sell their book.

For some people it is a mind bogglingly terrifying experience, but for some it is a way of life - marketing professionals in particular ('The PITCH' was my favourite part of The Gruen Transfer,a humorous look at how the ad men sold an often unsaleable product).

My guest this week, Belinda Williams, is a marketing communications specialist and copywriter who allowed an addiction to romance and chick-lit to get the better of her. She was named a top ten finalist in the Romance Writers of Australia Emerald Award in both 2013 and 2014 and it is interesting to see how she took her real life experience into her latest book... called THE PITCH!

Over to Belinda to explain where the lines between fact and fiction blur...

PITCHING THE PITCH

My ‘Fun Fact’ isn’t something I stumbled on, nor is it a particular piece of research I found fascinating. My Fun Fact relates to my real world experience in marketing. In my other life I work in marketing and have done for fifteen years. I guess I wanted to write a book set in this world and I felt the time had come when I could accurately portray this to my readers.

In The Pitch, Maddy runs her own marketing agency. In real life, I’ve worked for both marketing and advertising agencies. In The Pitch, Maddy is pitching for a huge piece of business that could change the trajectory of her agency. In real life I’ve pitched for business. In The Pitch, Maddy’s big potential client is a major bank. In real life I’ve worked for financial services companies.

So yes, there are a lot of parallels but I should stress that The Pitch is completely fictitious (and I’m not saying that to cover myself, it’s true. Or do I mean fiction? You get my point . . .)

I think the major motivating factor and theme for The Pitch was the desire to write about the issues around juggling work or career aspirations with relationships because it’s a challenge so many women face.

In writing The Pitch, I feel like I’ve conducted the research over a lot of years and in many different jobs. So either it’s one of the lengthiest research projects for a contemporary romance novel, or one of the easiest! I’ll leave it to my readers to decide how effective my ‘research’ proved.

About The Pitch

She’s in a long-term, committed relationship. With her business.

In three years Madeline Spencer has single-handedly grown her marketing agency, Grounded Marketing, into one of the country’s fastest growing companies. But her success has been at the expense of her social life, and her girlfriends have had enough. They’ll do whatever it takes, from speed dating to blind dates, to show her there’s more to life than work.

Only Maddy is having a hard time forgetting about her business. She’s about to pitch for her biggest client ever and the mysterious media mogul, Paul Neilsen, has volunteered to mentor her. Maddy might just be in with a shot of landing the account—if she can keep her mind on the job.

Working with Paul is not at all what she’d imagined, and Maddy finds herself torn between her ever increasing workload and her feelings for Paul. She’s discovering playing in the big league means making sacrifices…and Maddy must decide what she can’t live without.

The Pitch is the second book in the City Love series released by Momentum.

Buy now

More About the Author

Belinda's other addictions include music and cars.Her eclectic music taste forms the foundation of many of her writing ideas and her healthy appreciation for fast cars means she would not so secretly love a Lamborghini. For now she’ll have to settle with her son’s Hot Wheels collection and writing hot male leads with sports cars.

Belinda lives in Sydney and blogs regularly about writing and reading here: http://www.belindawilliamsbooks.com

@bwilliamsbooks

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MIddle Class Women in Georgian Times - Guest Elyse Huntington

And it's Friday! And another chilly week in Melbourne (Australia) - there has even been snow in Queensland (unheard of!).

To warm our hearts I have debut Australian author Elyse Huntington whose first book, MY DARK DUKE is the perfect antidote to a chilly night. Hailing from Borneo, Elyse joins the ranks of 'lawyers who write romance' (of which I am an alumni member!). The world seems to expect lawyers to write crime novels but romance is a wonderful escape from the cut and thrust of the legal world and I'm with her! Elyse has always had a fascination with Dukes and any book with Duke on the cover was an immediate draw card. Meet Elyse at her website, Facebook and Goodreads

MY DARK DUKE is set in Georgian rather than Regency times and Elyse's researches have taken her into some interesting areas. Today she focuses on the lives of middle class women of the 18th century. Welcome... Elyse!

Middle-class Women in 18^th century England

Despite having written my first novel My Dark Duke which is set in England in 1770, I find that I am still discovering new information about 18^th century England. Of course, this is hardly surprising. There are so many aspects of this century that information about it would encompass many encyclopedic volumes. There’s the politics, fashion, living conditions, architecture, medicine and social conventions, to name just a few. Today, though, I have chosen to focus on women who are considered to belong to the middle class in the Georgian era.

Childbirth was dangerous and infant mortality was high. Infants who progressed to solid food were fortunate to survive diseases such as infantile diarrhoea , which was likely caused by the preparation of food in unhygenic kitchens, from dirty bread, or from water or milk infested with bacteria. Babies who had teething problems might have their gums lanced with a sharp instrument. And if you think this sounded terrible, there is even advice that strong children should be bled from the jugular to help with teething!

Once the girls were older, they would attend day schools or boarding schools where they learnt subjects such as English, French, arithmetic, geography, needlework and dancing. Girls in more affluent households had governesses and visiting tutors and may be given lessons in languages such as Latin or Italian, and be taught how to play different musical instruments. It’s likely that part of the motive for their education, at least at some schools, was to assist them in obtaining husbands.

When it came to marriage, women found husbands from either working with them (such as domestic servants) or answering lonely-heart ads, some of which were hilariously prescriptive. I was surprised to find out that the average age of marriage was around 26 or so. And here I had thought ‘young’ ladies of this age were very much on-the-shelf.

This leads to the next interesting fact that an average family was estimated to have 2.5 children, so really, no bigger than the families you meet today. This is partially explained by the fact that the women were no longer at their most fertile by the time they married in their mid-twenties. There was also the adherence to the church’s calendar, which meant couples abstained from intercourse during Lent, Sundays and fasting days. This, in addition to menstruation and long periods of breast-feeding which could inhibit ovulation, meant that babies were not conceived very often.

The women had to supervise their servants to ensure the smooth running of their household. They also did their own food shopping at the markets (or street vendors) if they didn’t have a cook or a housekeeper, or were between cooks. Cooking in those days was very labour intensive. The cook had to ensure that the coal-fuelled fire was the perfect temperature for a roast pig or a cake, she had to maintain her cooking utensils and she had to preserve as much as she could to prevent waste. Thankfully, there were also establishments where you could buy ready-made dishes to eat in or take away, if you were to be in one of those highly inconvenient between-cooks periods.

I do admit that my preference is to write about the wealthy men and women in the aristocracy. I did find reading about this particular class of women to be quite entertaining. Who knows, one day I might even write about a duke who, against his better judgment, falls in love with such a female. She will be around 25, well-educated, independent and of course, be very impudent!

I leave you with this humorous anecdote of a marriage ceremony taken from Dr. Johnson’s London by Liza Picard which includes quotes from the Gentleman’s Magazine, September 1964. I can easily picture a heroine of mine doing exactly this!

When asked whether she would ‘take this man to be her wedded husband’, one woman said, ‘No and I have often told him so’. The parson asked the obvious question – why was she there?  ‘Only to tell you, before him, that I would not marry him’, and she left the church, and her swain.

MY DARK DUKE

Since his notorious wife died in mysterious circumstances, rumours about James, the handsome Duke of Trent, have scandalized society. Now, he must marry again – but finding an eligible woman willing to overlook his past won't be easy.

Defiantly single, Lady Alethea Sinclair has already turned down six offers of marriage. She prefers living on her own terms and refuses to answer to any man. Yet when Alethea meets the seductive and enigmatic Duke she finds herself strangely drawn to him.

Intrigued by Alethea's defiance of society's expectations, James is instantly taken with the willful beauty and soon they are enjoying a playful flirtation. And when circumstances force them into a comprising situation, he does the honourable thing and marries her.

But adjusting to the constraints of marriage doesn't come easily to the rebellious Alethea and, despite their growing feelings for each other, the Duke's troubled past keeps getting in the way. Can they learn to trust each other and give love a chance before it's too late?

A steamy Georgian romance about desire, the importance of staying true to yourself and the power of the past to cast a shadow on the present.

There is a bonus epilogue for My Dark Duke at her website so please do visit. And if you sign up for her mailing list, you will have exclusive access to a free short story when it becomes available. Click HERE

MY DARK DUKE is available at all reputable ebook stores...

The sweetest notes of all - Stradivarius violins and my guest Lee Christine

My guest on this cold, grey Melbourne winter day is fellow Escape author, Lee Christine.

Music has always played a part in Lee's life and as a teenager she loved playing the guitar and writing songs. Those lyrics were all about love so when she turned her hand to writing novels later in life romance was the obvious choice. Lee’s novels are sexy, fast-paced and contemporary. She lives on Australia’s eastern seaboard and loves snow skiing and playing the alto saxophone.

Lee writes wonderful romantic suspense and her three part 'Safe' series has received fantastic reviews.  A Dangerous Arrangement (Dangerous Arrangements Book 1) , book one in Lee’s next romantic suspense series has just been released.

In keeping with her interest in music,  she is bringing us some little known facts about the wonderful Stradivarius violins. 

WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT STRADIVARIUS VIOLINS?

Thank you Alison for having me of your blog today!

In my latest romantic suspense novel, ‘A Dangerous Arrangement’ released by Escape Publishing, my heroine plays a Stradivarius violin, an instrument constructed of a dense Croatian maple and made by Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737) an Italian luthier.

I’ve always been fascinated by the Stradivarius, primarily the violin, though Stradivari also made violas, harps, guitars and cellos. And for a long while now, I’ve wanted to write stories about classical musicians, performers at the top of their game who’ve been given access to instruments worth millions of dollars, such as the Stradivarius, though tenures with certain orchestras.

Experts don’t really know what gives the Stradivarius its superior sound though it is believed to have something to do with the density of the wood.

The Australian Chamber Orchestra own a Stradivarius violin valued at around three million dollars. It is Australia’s only Stradivarius and is played by Satu Vanska, the assistant leader of the orchestra. I partly used Satu as inspiration for my character of Marina Wentworth as well as Kirsten Williams, associate concertmaster with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

There are only 650 Stradivarius instruments left in the world and each has a unique nickname. The following is a list of famous people who have owned and/or played a Stradivarius instrument:-

·         Andre Rieu: plays a violin called ex-Captain Saville, made in 1667

·         Queen Elizabeth: owned a violin called Oistrakh, made in 1671

·         Napoleon Bonaparte: owned a violin called Molitor, made in 1697

·         The Mendelssohn Family: owned a violin called the Red Mendelssohn, made in 1721

·         Da Vinci Family: owed a violin called the Leonardo Da Vinci, made in 1725

·         Julian Lloyd-Webber: played a cello called Barjansky, made in 1690

·         Yo-Yo Ma: plays a cello called Davidov, made in 1712

Other owners include the King of Spain, US Library of Congress and some US and UK universities.  Many also owned by different musical foundations and museums.

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A DANGEROUS ARRANGEMENT

When violinist Marina Wentworth arrives in Venice en-route to a cruise ship for a short working holiday, the last thing she expects is to be confronted by a handsome stranger demanding answers. After going to great lengths to keep her real reasons for the trip a secret, Marina refuses to let her immediate attraction to Dean Logan derail her plans.

Desperate to recover his latest super yacht designs, Dean doesn’t want to believe the lovely violinist is involved in the devastating cyber-attack that threatens to destroy his yacht building empire. However his growing feelings for Marina fail to extinguish the nagging suspicion that she is hiding something.

Set against the backdrop of Italy’s Amalfi Coast, Dean and Marina must navigate the dangerous waters of secrecy, attraction, and the fusion of two very different worlds. Will their lives remain discordant, or will they take the chance at true harmony?

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