Another eBook deal: "A Duke in Shining Armor" is $1.99

It is my pleasure to report that from now until 1 March, the e-edition of A Duke in Shining Armor, the first book in the Difficult Dukes series, is on sale in the U.S. and Canada for $1.99.

I wrote this series in a disorderly fashion. Ripley’s story came first, and that was not a problem. The problem was that, practically from the beginning, I knew that (a) one of the dukes, Blackwood, was already married to Ripley’s sister, Alice, and (b) something was amiss in the marriage.

Making things difficult for myself is nowhere on my list of favorite things to do. But my brain has its own ideas about the stories, and since that brain has been in my skull my whole life, I have to work with it. So A Duke in Shining Armor came first, as it was intended to do. Then I planned to tell the Blackwoods’ story, because, after all, I had raised questions about them. But they weren’t ready for their closeup, so it was Ashmont and Cassandra next, in Ten Things I Hate About the Duke.

This did not make the third book any easier to write. In fact, it made the process hellishly difficult, with the additional aggravation of keeping track of who did what when, because even in fiction it’s a bad idea to have a character in two different places at the same time. Unless it is science fiction or fantasy, neither of which is in my skill set. And somewhere in all this mess came the writer’s block which, if you’ve been following this blog for a few years, you know all about.

It did finally dawn on me that what I didn’t want to write was a whole book about a troubled marriage. This is what led me to go back in time, to their courtship, and the fly they didn’t realize was in the ointment. This fly, which eluded me for ages, turned out to be an issue I ought to have pinned down right away. My brain knew all along, but as you have no doubt deduced, it chose not to let me in on the secret until it was good and ready. Still, it did all come together, as a sort of combined prequel and sequel, and the result, My Inconvenient Duke, made its debut in January.

I’m telling you all of this because a reader asked me why the third book starts before the first book, and I believed hers was a not unreasonable question. But my hope is that, wherever you start in the series; you start somewhere, and wherever you start, you have an agreeable reading experience. And if you’d like to start now—or lure a friend or family member or complete stranger into starting now—you can do it for the next few weeks at a bargain price.

Guided tour of "My Inconvenient Duke" Part Two

Almack’s was THE night club for the elite. A group of aristocratic women, the patronesses, gave vouchers for entry to only a chosen few. These amounted to about 400-500 attending the Wednesday night assemblies. You’ll find many articles online, but be aware that a good deal of information, especially about the patronesses, is based on books written long after Regency (e.g., in the Victorian era) mainly by men. You’ll encounter some inaccuracies as well as some rather misogynistic gossip.

The Regent’s Park Zoo still exists although it’s quite different from the place Lady Alice would have known. The Yale Center for British Art has online a beautiful collection of watercolor images of the place in its early days.

Kensington used to be a western suburb of London. It was very much a rural area, and the northern part (which includes Notting Hill) was largely undeveloped at the time of my story. There were prosperous farms as well as the wasteland that was home to the notorious piggeries and potteries. The Bridge Inn is one of several fictional establishments I created here.

The Lovedon Arms, as explained in the notes at the end of My Inconvenient Duke, did exist, but not under this name. It was the White Horse, the White Hart, and the Holland Arms, depending on the source I consulted. It stood on the corner of the road leading to Holland House, a beautiful Jacobean mansion that was badly bombed during WWII. In Don’t Tempt Me, I’d given it to my fictional duke. But for some reason, instead of using his name, I used that of the hero the short story, “Lord Lovedon’s Duel.” Not the first mistake I’ve ever made . . .

The Colosseum, as promised in my notes, I’m giving this one its own post, but I’m including here a picture of the outside.

Blackwood’s house in Brighton is based on Marlborough House, on the Steine, Brighton. Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to find a pubic domain picture of it so far, but here’s one at Flickr.

The Haymarket Theatre still exists. Like so many other structures, it’s changed over the years.

Tollstone Academy for Girls. If you’ve read Nicholas Nickleby or Jane Eyre, you’ll be familiar with the notorious Yorkshire Schools. I modeled mine after the Cowan Bridge Clergy Daughters’ School, which the Brontes attended.

If you are trying to visualize the scene at Hatchett’s White Horse Cellar, when Jonesy vanishes, this Cruikshank image lets you stand in its doorway, to get an idea of the anarchy.

Gunter’s Tea Shop. Unfortunately, to date, nobody has turned up an illustration of this place, which is rather sad, considering how long it was in business and the role it plays in so many Regency-era stories. For this reason, though, one finds numerous articles about the confectioner’s online, like this one and this one.

The Fox and Hare is a fictional location. This illustration from Nicholas Nickleby gives a sense of the inn’s interior. “Boxes” or “box compartments” are what we in the U.S. call “booths.”

SOURCES

Illustration at top: “The Piccadilly Nuisance! Dedicated to the worthy, acting magistrates of the district”, G Cruikshank, published 29 December 1818. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence. (The same holds for the other images from the British Museum.)

Highest life in London. Tom & Jerry sporting a toe among the Corinthians at Almacks in the west NYPL. Date Issued 1821-05-01. Cruikshank, Robert; Cruikshank, George. New York Public Library.

Zoological Gardens. Regent's Park. Six Views in the Zoological Gardens, Regent's Park. George Scharf. View inside the zoo in Regent's Park, showing the aviary, with a crowd of visitors; pelicans in foreground at left, caged birds behind, enclosure with lake at right. © The Trustees of the British Museum

Portobello Farm, illustration from Old & New London Vol 5

Illustration from Mrs. Mary Bayly’s Ragged Homes and How to Mend Them (1860)

Holland Arms, from Leigh Hunt’s The Old Court Suburb; or, Memorials of Kensington, regal, critical, & anecdotical 1903 ed.

The Colosseum, Regent's Park c 1830 printed 1846. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

New Haymarket Theatre, opened July 4th, 1821 [graphic]. Folger Shakespeare Library Digital Collections.

Lowood illustration from Life and works of Charlotte Brontë and her sisters v. 1 (Jane Eyre)1875

If you’d like to listen to me talk about My Inconvenient Duke with my good friend, historical romance author Caroline Linden, our chat at the Ashland Public Library is here on YouTube. Yes, it did get recorded after all.

"My Inconvenient Duke" is ready for its closeup

The author copies of My Inconvenient Duke arrived over the weekend, in all their misty purple glory, and bearing the wonderful new-book scent. Yes, I wrote the thing, and yes, I see the cover art (and put in my 2¢ about this and that), but it’s not real to me until I have the actual book in my hand.

Today—if all goes well and all the various editions are in the right place at the right time—you’ll be able to have the book in your hand, too, or else see it on your e-reader or phone or listen to Kate Reading give my characters voices, in her own remarkable way.

I hope you’ll enjoy Alice and Blackwood’s story and the visit to London in the early 1830s. This was a very short time before photography and before trains began replacing those often overworked horses for transportation. It was a time of ebullient women’s fashion: big sleeves and big hair and layers of petticoats to make big skirts in the days before crinoline.

Normally, my blog posts are rather infrequent. Sometimes months go by, and I am silent. This is because it strikes me as intelligent to shut up when I’ve nothing to say, and because an inbox flooded with emails from the same entity gets on my nerves, and I’d rather not get on my readers’ nerves. But a new book release means a flurry of chit-chat.

In other words, in the coming weeks, you can expect a series of blog posts (and other social media posts) related to the book. My Pinterest page, which has boards for each of my books, will show you some of the people, places, and events that come up in the story. This is my way of creating a sort of glossary and illustrated version.

Then I promise to quiet down.