Interior of the billiard room at Lupton House, Devonshire


Interior of the billiard room at Lupton House, Devonshire, designed by George Wrightwick for Sir J.B.Y. Buller. Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Ah, the billiard room. How many scenes I have I written that take place in such a room? I’m sure I don’t know. It is a favourite place to set a part of a story when a couple of characters – usually gentlemen – need to have a discussion.

Chapter 7 from Listen to Your Heart takes place, in part, in a billiard room. But it isn’t just gentlemen who are playing and having a discussion. Nope! The ladies get in on it, too. And it’s a scene were a very important discussion takes place between a gentleman and lady.

This book has a lot of games and schemes in it – some present time, some from the past, some friendly (like this game of billiards), some deadly, and all designed to share secrets and either push forward a happy ending or prevent it from happening.

Enjoy!

FYI, this book is currently available in Kindle Unlimited, and therefore, can only be purchased on Amazon.

Continue reading Interior of the billiard room at Lupton House, Devonshire

The September 2022 Saturday Broadsheet

This month’s Saturday Broadsheet, with all my writing life updates, is now available at the link below.

In this issue of the Broadsheet you will find:

  • a llama
  • a chamber horse
  • my writing news
  • and a few books that are on sale

Have a great weekend!

I hope you have time to read a book.

I’ll be back on Wednesday (hopefully) with a Story Connection, and then again, on Thursday with the final chapter of His Inconvenient Choice.


Wedding in the Photographer’s Studio (Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret)

Une noce chez le photographe, c.1879, Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Below are the final paragraphs of Listen To Your Heart. If you don’t want to see the ending before reading the rest of the book, look away now. 😉


Anne’s stomach did a little flip as she reached the bottom of the stairs, and they faced the door to the drawing room where Mr. Collins and Richard, as well as a few assembled guests, awaited her.

“Are you well?” asked Darcy, noticing her pause.

She nodded, a smile suffusing her face. “I have never been better.” She waited while her mother slipped into the room and took her place next to Mr. Cranfield. Then it was time for her to join Richard in front of the garden doors where he stood propped on his crutches with Mr. Collins. She pulled back slightly on Darcy’s arm. He looked at her, his brows furrowed.

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For helping me find my own happiness.”

“You’re welcome, but I did very little to assist you.” He looked at her face and then Richard’s. “Happiness often follows when you listen.”

“Listen?” She looked up at him in confusion.  “To what?”

He smiled at her and tipped his head toward Richard. “To your heart,” he said as he began leading her into the room. “Always, listen to your heart.”

[from Listen to Your Heart]


Listen to Your Heart can be found in Darcy And… A Pride and Prejudice Variations Collection, which is on sale for the month of June.


Morning Dress for April 1801

From The Lady’s Monthly Museum. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

She looked at the faces which stared back at her in disbelief. “I am not fit for bedlam, if that is what you are thinking. I know it is a sudden turnabout, but a turnabout it is. I have made my choice and am moving forward. How is it you said it, Richard? The past is in the past? And that is where it shall stay.”

“And you are certain of this, Catherine?” questioned Lady Matlock. “You are not just taking the role expected of you for the sake of the family?”

“Good heavens, no!” Lady Catherine shook her head. “I have spent far too many years doing as the family expects. Is not a lady in her dotage allowed to do the unexpected? In three weeks, I shall hand over the care of Rosings to the younger set and shall begin to take my ease.”

[from Listen to Your Heart]


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Music Monday Revisited (August 24, 2015)

I know I said I was only going to post Music Monday posts every other week, but I’ve been missing them. 🙂 So, I’m breaking that rule for this week and revisiting a post from five years ago.

On August 18, 2015, I published my fourth book. That book was Listen to Your Heart, which happens to be on sale at present. I thought it might be fun to look back at the Music Monday post from when that book was published. So, here it is below (with a little bit of an excerpt tacked on under the video, which is where the original post ended).


A friend had this video posted on Facebook last week (back in Aug 2015), and I thought it was just so beautiful that I had to share it here.

I love this phrase in the song,

“People fall in love in mysterious ways,”

or as Mr. Darcy says it in Pride and Prejudice,

“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”

which also made me think of Anne in Listen to Your Heart 

Continue reading Music Monday Revisited (August 24, 2015)