The fascination of Capybaras with Mike Allegra

Tags

Capybaras, Mike Allegra, Rodents, Sleepy happy Capy Cuddles, Writing for children, Writing tips

“Hi, Dudes! I cannot even begin to say what a pleasure it is to finally meet you! As I think you know, I love all rodents. I am very pro rodent. I’m prodent. I might be the prodentest person in the history of ever. So to meet you at last is a dream come true…..”

QUESTION ONE. You caught the reading and writing bug young, was that what drew you to write for children?

MIKE ALLEGRA. I don’t think so. When I was young, my goal was to write stories that adults would find funny. It was easy to amuse my friends, but if I could get my parents or my teachers or my cranky Uncle Bill to laugh, well that was an achievement. When I pulled it off, I felt like a million bucks.

Now that I’m an adult with an adult sense of humor, I’ve done a 180. The challenge and the joy of my career is to make kids laugh. I love writing kid’s stories because it gives me permission to delve into the silly side of my personality.

Being silly is not only fun for me, I think it makes me a better person. The world would probably be a better place if more adults allowed themselves to get their silly on.

Could a worldwide increase in fart jokes lead to world peace? I’m not sure, but it’s a hypothesis worth exploring.

QUESTION TWO. You’ve written plays, worked as a reporter, an editor, as well as being an author, which would you say is your favorite and why? 

Mike Allegra . All of the writing gigs in my life were fun and rewarding in one way or another. My two years as a reporter, however, was, far and away, my most valuable work experience. It made me the writer I am today. The job taught me how to research and write fast, polished work on tight deadlines. It taught me how to work with editors, conduct interviews, and deal with critics. It also taught me the ins and outs of government, which may not be important from the perspective of a writing career, but is essential to anyone who wants to be a good citizen. (We should all want to be good citizens.)

I recommend a stint as a reporter to anyone who wants to do this writing thing as a career. I even wrote a blog post about it:

But my most satisfying work is my children’s book career. I love letting my imagination go wild. I love visiting schools and meeting my readers. The gig isn’t very lucrative, but it makes me terribly happy.

QUESTION THREE Which book have you had the most fun writing?

Mike Allegra . That’s a tricky one, but I think it’s my most recent picture book, Sleepy Happy Capy Cuddles. The main character is a capybara, the world’s largest rodent. (See? I told you I was prodent!) I’ve been fascinated by capybaras ever since I’ve first heard about them as a kid in the 1980s. Back then (and now!) I kept gerbils as pets, so the idea of a rodent being the size of a golden retriever captivated me in ways I can hardly explain. When I became an adult, and I learned more about these ginormous critters, I was even more captivated. Capys cuddle with other animals! They babysit each other’s children! They are excellent foster mothers to other species! They are amazing swimmers! And they are soooo cute! How could I not write a book about a cuddly capybara?

God, I love this book.

QUESTION FOUR Have you ever written a book about a hamster? 

I feared this question might come up.

My picture book, Scampers Thinks Like a Scientist, stars mice; another book of mine, Everybody’s Favorite Book, features a guinea pig; and, as I mentioned, Sleepy Happy Capy Cuddles has a capybara. But no hamsters yet. No gerbils either—much to the consternation of my beloved fur children, Dusty and Oreo. But fear not,

I have more books in me. I’m sure I can get a couple of cool dude hamsters in one of them sooner or later. I’ll write a book starring gerbils, too.

MIKE ALLEGRA Ah. Writing tips? Question five eh?

Okay……. I will give them. Aspiring writers please forgive the tough love:

Your book ideas are worthless if you don’t write them down. Don’t just talk about your ideas; don’t pass the buck by trying to collaborate with someone; don’t say, “You know, I really should write a book.” Get your tush in a chair and start writing. Writing is slow, hard work. It can sometimes be frustrating, exhausting, maddening and make you want to bang your head against the wall. But don’t get discouraged. Keep going. Because when those words of yours finally come together in just the right way, when your story makes people think, laugh, or see the world with a new point of view, well, dang, that’s the best feeling in the world.

QUESTION SIX 6. What’s next for Mike Allegra

MIKE ALLEGRA Well, in addition to running around telling everyone about Sleepy Happy Capy Cuddles, I’m also gearing up to run around to tell everyone about my next picture book, Pirate and Penguin, which will be out in May 2023. It’s the story of a penguin finding his way onto a pirate ship and being mistaken for a chubby, mute, monochromatic macaw. It’s a fun one. 

BIO:

Mike Allegra is the author of 17 books for children including the picture books Sleepy Happy Capy Cuddles (Page Street, 2022), Scampers Thinks like a Scientist (Dawn, 2019), Everybody’s Favorite Book (Macmillan, 2018), and Sarah Gives Thanks (Albert Whitman and Company, 2012). He also wrote the chapter book series Kimmie Tuttle (Abdo Books, 2021) and Prince Not-So Charming (Macmillan, 2018-19; pen name: Roy L. Hinuss). Scampers was the winner of Learning Magazine’s 2020 Teacher’s Choice Award and was selected for inclusion in the Literati Kids subscription box. His story, “Harold’s Hat,” was the winner of the 2014 Highlights fiction contest and was published in the July 2015 issue.

Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/Mike-Allegra/e/B00E5M07EI?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1663250421&sr=1-1

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mike.allegra

Where O’Roarke’s Destiny ends… the playlist for Wryson’s Eternity …

Tags

Cornwall, Music, Music to write books to, New book, Romance, Shehanne Moore, Smugglers, writing

https://t.co/h63dNJgnz5

SHEY —- BUT WHO WOULD WANT TO?

SHEHANNE–Okay dudes can I get a word in now? It’s taken a while but drumroll and fanfare–a playlist means there will soon be a new book. Book two of Cornish Rogues featuring a hero and heroine, who I think you might get the drift of from some of these song titles. There’s also a couple of classicals thrown in that feature in the book, Bach’s Goldberg Variations

and a Mozart. And the Cyrin version of Where is my Mind? is also something I play. Both leads are certainly looking for their minds. Of course it should have been ‘Where is My Hamster?’ but then ‘Gone I hope,’ might be the reply. To return to Mercury and the Architects, Mercury does indeed sing with the Architects, one of whom is the amazing LYNZI on the list in her own right with Be My Valentine.

I hate to break it to you dudes, but that is the least of your worries this week. Vodka has just been removed from the shelves of several UK supermarkets…. I say nothing about your little dance that always accompanies it. But ere you despair there’s two song titles here for you, ‘Far Far’ which is where you might want to go and ‘Creep’….. Now, I will ‘put on playlist’ and listen to it…

Carolyn Haynes, Bewitched and a Beloved Star

Tags

Bewitched, Carolyn Haynes, Lloyd Haynes, Room 222 B, Sol Saks, writing

‘Have you ever seen one of those dramatic moments in a film when two people meet, and all the noise in the room disappears?’

CAROLYN. Yes, it was at Hugh Hefner‘s party, and I was there to meet Hugh and his then-girlfriend Barbie Benton. I don’t think I ever believed in love at first sight until that evening. Even then, it took some time before I realized the thunderbolt was love. LOL During my conversation with Lloyd, I asked him what he did for a living, and he told me he was a bra salesman. Considering where we were, I thought business must be good. Besides, Lloyd was too convincing for me to laugh out loud, so I just stared quietly. LOL 

CAROLYN. Lloyd Haynes, the lead actor of the 1970s TV show Room 222. The show had premiered a month earlier, and I missed it and didn’t know who Lloyd was. Despite that evening we weren’t together right away. It was quite a long journey.

CAROLYN. I started as a child with dancing, ballet, piano, voice, and modeling lessons. Then appeared in a few children’s shows, sang with on-camera personalities. I still have newspaper clippings that my mother saved. I grew into television, films, sang in a few clubs, and Lloyd and I almost toured together as singers, but my family came first.

CAROLYN. Yes, after Lloyd died, I wasn’t ready to go back to acting, and working with Sol Saks became available.

CAROLYN. Yes! I’ve been in the process of writing a book on Bewitched for the last two years now. I’m editing at the moment and hope to find a publisher with more clout to launch the book.

CAROLYN. Over the years, people asked questions regarding Lloyd and growing up in the Hollywood area. Then, one day a dear friend suggested I write a book. I was reluctant, but she convinced me.

I prayed a lot and began the four-year adventure that I surprisingly enjoyed. With the success of my first book, I then had the honor to write a book for Sol Saks. Though he did ask me a couple of times while we worked together, I couldn’t imagine writing in those days. 

CAROLYN Thank you, dudes. I hope it’s a book that people enjoy reading. The best advice I received on writing I learned from Sol Saks. During the years we worked together, I took pages of notes on the advice he gave university students, his regime, and experiences writing for newspapers, scripts for radio, television, and books. His words explain it so much better than I can, and I believe I’ve captured the advice in this new book. 

ABOUT CAROLYN

A native of Los Angeles, California U.S.A. and born into a large fun-loving Italian family, I had the good fortune to grow up in Montrose, California and New York. I have been blessed with four wonderfully talented children, worked as an actor, assisted Mr. Sol Saks of “Bewitched” with his writing projects, continued my formal education, and traveled. Now, “Help for Angela,” my first true short story has just been published and Imy special biography, “The Lloyd Haynes Story.” Samuel Lloyd Haynes, notably known for his staring depiction of Pete Dixon on “Room 222,” is a look at an extraordinary international, multicultural, and sometimes controversial soul that I think you will enjoy.

CONNECT WITH CAROLYN HERE

https://twitter.com/carolyngrace505?lang=en

https://www.facebook.com/carolynhaynes5050

https://thelloydhaynesstory.wordpress.com/

https://amzn.eu/3oNCik6

Lloyd Haynes, the beloved star of critically acclaimed 1970s television series Room 222. A visceral story of unyielding love and epic valor, as we follow Lloyd Haynes remarkable journey from a family mortuary to stardom, military officer, and recognition from the U. S. Senate. “With all those gorgeous women around, what made his eyes seek-out yours? Or, did you seek-out his?” Alison Bogert A MUST READ- SUPERBLY WRITTEN – The Tribune

The Ball’s the Thing

Tags

writing

ANNA KARENIN   Leo Tolstoy .  The ball scene.

“The ball had just begun when Kitty and her mother stepped on to the central staircase, which was bathed in light and embellished with flowers and powdered footmen in red livery. From the interior came a steady rustle of movement which filled the rooms like bees buzzing in a hive, and while they adjusted their hair in front on a mirror between the potted plants on the landing, the delicately clear sounds of the violins in the orchestra could be heard striking up the first waltz in the ballroom.”

Shey. As Silv just said there –sorry, just let me let go of her paws–I am on my 8th book and when that’s done there will have been a ball, or dance scene in six of them. I was uncertain re this latest one whether the ball would actually take place but on reflection, I am big on what ball scenes in books can offer. You can blame the scene in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenin for that. It’s not only a case in point being the first time Vronsky and Anna really eye each other up, leaving Kitty standing. The lavish description of the ball, of Kitty descending the staircase, full of starry eyed hope was like a beacon to me when I read that book. An eternity ago now but even now, I can remember it. Before that, talking balls? Well, there was Cinderella. I used the idea of Cinderella shamelessly in Splendor. The second ball scene –yes there’s two– is the big pivotal moment where she finds out the whole truth about the hero and runs, realising there’s things she can’t manage—managing things being her biggest strength and greatest flaw– and things she can’t lay on him either, leaving her glove on the stairs. Of course I thought the shoe might be a bit much, as would hamsters pulling the coach.

I’m sure you were asked but you fell under the wheels and that is why you are crushed. Sadly.

A ball also gave scope for when he loses her in a complicated dance set, mirrorring the maze of hopelessness he then lives in for months, and the contrast between this glittering world and the one facing her, if she doesn’t ‘manage’ this evening and that of her ex fiance, now begging in the gutter outside.

But the first ball scene was ideal for the hero really noticing what’s been under his nose and that’s her, as opposed to the awkward, clumsy, accident-prone, woman who has faced him as a man across a pair of duelling pistols and a chessboard. From the liveried footmen to the shining chandeliers, balls are such glittering occasions, all kinds of magic can be at work. Especially when neither partner can dance and they don’t want anyone knowing either.

I dunno dudes, you tell me. In the Viking and the Courtesan, Malice decides to confront her husband in a similar glittering scenario, after he’s set the law on her for services unrendered re a little biz she runs– a move that backfires spectacularly when, having failed to recognise her, he then kidnaps her at fork and knife-hurriedly-nicked-from-the-kitchen-point, after she tries to insist that the pillow she’s stuffed up her skirt is far more than that; all to the tune of a Mozart minuet.

‘Since you were low enough to ask us, naturally we were low enough to come.’

Miitchell Killgower cuts his’ ball’-breaking ex sister-in-law and aunt by marriage, short at the start of the ball scene in the Writer and the Rake. A ball she’s thrown in the middle of a bitter inheritance dispute, in order to expose the fact his ‘wife’ in his sham marriage has been missing presumed vanished off the face of the earth for weeks. It’s another pivotal moment where the heroine discovers that Morte, a man roughly five years older than herself is in fact her ten times great grandson and aged a thousand, and has her revolting feet admired by Francis Dashwood,—the actual founder of the Hellfire Club. Balls are also a great place to introduce real historical figures.

Again, neither hero nor heroine can dance, except the latter on a 21st century nightclub floor. But they’ve had a lot of fun learning–a good chance to sort of get together–with the help of Mitchell’s polar opposite teenage son, who he’s finally liking. Alas, all before Brittany learns from Morte, exactly what she’s doing wrong about getting back to her time. Sob, sob as the dudes would say.

Nor do balls have to be grand society affairs as in these three books. In Loving Lady Lazuli the fact the ball was set in Assembly Rooms in a small town, and held for everyone regardless of class, on Christmas Eve, was a good excuse to delve into a more rustic affair, with children jigging on the upstairs landing and farmer’s wives unpacking pot luck suppers. And the perfect scenario

for the heroine to go for broke with an I am Spartacus moment about who she really is. Or rather an ‘I am Sapphire,’ after she’s gone round nicking every thing she can lay her hands on and dump it on the floor, because the hero intends betraying her so what does it matter? It’s also the perfect scenario for him to show exactly the man he really is and finally admit his feelings for her.

There’s no grand ball in His Judas Bride either. Not in the wilds of Scotland at that time. There’s a supper party/ dance, where the heroine learns that her drunken, womanising, horror of a husband-to-be may have other sides to him–he’s an ‘awfie guid cook, when he lays aff the nips’ apparently. But there’s still no way she can marry him, after he insists not just on dancing with her but in her showing off the fine dancing skills she’s allegedly learnt in ‘Edinboro.’ With the emphasis on the word ‘allegedly’ and every step of what she’s making up, under the nose of her betrothed’s brother, a man nothing gets past, reminding her of the abuse she suffered for years in a prison cell, she also learns it’s time to run, as in ‘now’,

thus setting up the rest of the book.

SO yes, after much debate the current WIP does have a ball scene. Why the uncertainty? Well, that it’s being held in an abandoned house, by two people on the run and even the food on the guests’ plates is of course

nicked and not a bowl matches a plate, should be answer enough. Also I didn’t want to go for another world crashing in ruins ball scene. But equally, if a world is going to crash…….

, where better to let it fall than on a ballroom floor?

So, there you go, balls in books, balls in films. From Scarlett O’Hara leaping forward to….raise money for the ‘noble’ cause., with Rhett Butler, Anna and the King of Siam, to Maria getting up close and personal with Captain Von Trapp–AND, let’s not forget one I forgot until Rene reminded me in the comments, Jezebel where Bette Davis loses her lover over a red dress. Even if there’s no ball, there’s dancing, the romance of Dirty Dancing, of Strictly Ballroom.

So come on folks, tell me your fav ball or dance scene that way?

Oh come on dudes, just crack open the voddie and get on with the cossack dance will you?

Catherine Cavendish and the Eloise Complex.

Tags

Asylums, Catherine Cavendish, Flame Tree Press, ghosts, Haunted Asylums, Horror, Michigan, New horror book, the Eloise Complex

‘The Unquiet Spirits of the Eloise Complex‘

BY CATHERINE CAVENDISH.

(Please insert pic 1)

Image: Detroit Free Press

What can be scarier than an old abandoned asylum?

Not much in my book. And if you’re looking for a place with a freakish amount of scares, then the Eloise Complex would be right up your street. A few years ago, if you had the cash, you might even have wanted to make a purchase. That’s if you had a million or so dollars lying around in your attic. Of course, that money would have bought you a place that was once big enough have its own zip code.

The complex certainly has a history. It all started in 1839 when Wayne County, Michigan established a farm and poorhouse which expanded until it eventually covered 902 acres and encompassed some 70 buildings.

In 1913, there were three divisions – The Eloise Hospital (the mental hospital), Eloise Sanitorium (TB hospital), and the Eloise Infirmary (the Poorhouse). In 1945, it was renamed the Wayne County General Hospital and Infirmary at Eloise Michigan.

Back when it was at its height, during the Great Depression, around 10,000 patients and 2000 workers lived there in a self-contained city that included a bakery, slaughterhouse, fire department, post office, amusement hall, cannery, tobacco field, cemetery and police department. It was in these days that it earned its own zip code.

Image – Edward Pevos MLive

Eloise was at the forefront of pioneering psychiatric treatment. Now, today, we might laud this as a Good Thing. At the time we are talking, back in the first half of the 20^th century, we are talking straitjackets and electroshock therapy, lobotomies that rendered the patient into a permanent vegetative state.

In Eloise’s case, there was also massive overcrowding. 10,000 patients there may well have been – maybe even more. But the facility was only built -even at its largest – to house 8.300. Patients slept on floors, were left unattended and neglected. Some inmates spent their entire adult lives there and, when they died, their burials were usually anonymous. The more disruptive patients could find themselves physically restrained – bound by hands and feet and, at one time, it has been reported, they could be chained to the roof of the asylum barn, above the pigs who dwelt beneath.

(Please insert pic 4)

Image – Bill Bresler https://eu.hometownlife.com/

By 1974 it had two divisions: the Wayne County General Hospital and the Wayne County Psychiatric Hospital (there being no further need for a TB hospital following the development of the life-saving streptomycin drug). The psychiatric division closed in 1982.

By 2019, just 5 of the buildings remained (firehouse, bakery, power plant, commissary and ‘D’ building) along with the cemetery. The complex was redeveloped into a strip mall, golf course and condominiums. ‘D’ building is now called the Kay Beard building and the old commissary is now a homeless shelter. The firehouse (which became the psychiatric facility laundry) and the power plant are still standing but the bakery was severely damaged by arson in 2016. The entire complex was sold in 2019 for the princely sum of $1, as it was at that time costing $375,000 per year simply to maintain it. Its purpose is to provide affordable housing for senior citizens in a minimum of 106 units.

But what of the ghosts?

In December 2019, members of the group Detroit Paranormal Expeditions visited the long closed-off basement of a building on the complex. It had been flooded for decades but had recently been drained.

They reported the eerie stillness, the total, unnatural quiet and the strong sense of someone else being down there with them. They heard the sound of dripping water (perhaps not so surprising) and shuffling footsteps (more disquieting). Their videos captured orange and white lights, and an orb.

The group have paid a number of visits to the Eloise complex – with terrifying results. They describe being chased out of the place by ghostly phenomena, describing it as so haunted as to have almost daily supernatural occurrences – shadows, unexplained noises, objects moving of their own accord, disembodied voices, unexplained footsteps.

 Other visitors to the complex have described a so-called ‘flying ghost’.

With so much spirit activity, we can only wish the new residents well in their brand-new homes. Given the philanthropic nature of the current enterprise, maybe that will go some way towards placating those who, as yet, cannot leave.

A few years ago, a horror film – Eloise – was shot on location in the ruined buildings, making for a highly atmospheric setting.

You’re next…

Carol and Nessa are strangers but not for much longer.

In a luxury apartment and in the walls of a modern hospital, the evil that was done continues to thrive. They are in the hands of an entity that knows no boundaries and crosses dimensions – bending and twisting time itself – and where danger waits in every shadow. The battle is on for their bodies and souls and the line between reality and nightmare is hard to define.
Through it all, the words of Lydia Warren Carmody haunt them. But who was she? And why have Carol and Nessa been chosen?

The answer lies deep in the darkness…

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Flame Tree Press

About The Author

Following a varied career in sales, advertising and career guidance, Catherine Cavendish is now the full-time author of a number of paranormal, ghostly and Gothic horror novels, novellas and short stories. In addition to In Darkness, Shadows Breathe, Cat’s novels include The Garden of Bewitchment. The Haunting of Henderson Close, the Nemesis of the Gods trilogy – Wrath of the Ancients, Waking the Ancients and Damned by the Ancients, plus The Devil’s Serenade, The Pendle Curse and Saving Grace Devine.

Her novellas include: The Malan Witch, The Darkest Veil, Linden Manor, Cold Revenge, Miss Abigail’s Room, The Demons of Cambian Street, Dark Avenging Angel, The Devil Inside Her, and The Second Wife

Her short stories have appeared in a number of anthologies including Midnight in the Pentagram, Midnight in the Graveyard and Haunted Are These Houses.

She lives by the sea in Southport, England with her long-suffering husband, and a black cat called Serafina who has never forgotten that her species used to be worshipped in ancient Egypt. She sees no reason why that practice should not continue.

You can connect with Cat here:

Catherine Cavendish

Facebook

Twitter

Goodreads

MeWe

Relevant links for this article:

Detroit Free Press: https://eu.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/wayne/2018/06/21/eloise-asylum-hospital-michigan/720896002/

https://eu.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/wayne/2019/03/19/ghost-eloise-psychiatric-hospital-westland-haunted-basement/3204379002/

The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/11/eloise-hospital-haunted-michigan-mental-asylum

Detroit Paranormal Expeditions:

Dawn Ziegler:

Hometown Life

https://eu.hometownlife.com/story/news/local/westland/2019/10/16/scary-encounters-coming-eloise-asylum/4000027002/

Kate Furnivall and the Guardian of Lies.

Tags

Arles, France, Kate Furnivall, Spies, The Camargue, The Cold War, The Guardian of lies

 

Kate. Oh Bobby Bub, I bet that grandpappy of yours was a right royal rogue in the 1950s. A damn handsome fellow of course like yourself and with the same penchant for stylish headgear, no doubt.

But to be honest, the reason I chose the year 1953 for my book was that it was a year when the future of Europe was balanced on a knife edge.

And yes, you’re right, it is the latest period I have chosen as a setting for a book – but it is a moment in history that fascinates me. The start of the Cold War. A crisis point of tension and danger when Americans and Russians were at each other’s throats as they battled for nuclear dominance. I was transfixed when I delved deeper and discovered just how close that apocalypse came to exploding into life in the beautiful marshy plains of the Camargue region in south-west France,

But there was another trigger for the inspiration behind this book – that of the bonds that hold a family together in the face of a conflict that is driving them apart. At the heart of The Guardian of Lies I explore the bond between a brother and sister. My own older brother passed away several years ago but I still think of him daily, and it is this brother-sister relationship that kept intruding into my mind each time I picked up my pen to write.

This is the story of a young French woman, Eloïse Caussade, who tries to track down the Soviet agent who attempted to murder her brother in a car crash in Paris. But nothing is as it seems, so she leaves Paris to return to her father’s bull farm in the Camargue where her brother is recuperating from his injuries. There she finds herself trapped between two worlds that are on a collision course. One is the quiet rural life that is the world she believes she has outgrown and to which her childhood friend Léon still belongs. The other is the tense and dangerous existence of those caught up in the Cold War between America and Soviet Russia, a world in which lies, spies and murder entwine to drag Eloïse into their dark web. She cannot ignore the blood in the barn or the fire in her father’s stables. Her family is being targeted and she has to find the killer. But she has a lot to learn about herself and with the help and love of her friend Léon, who is now the local police chief, she battles to discover the truth. The Guardian of Lies is a fast-paced thriller but also a powerful love story.

Kate. Who says it isn’t? I admit I didn’t actually bump into any while I was cruising Arles’ colourful market for the gorgeous local lavender soap, but I know you hamsters are cunning critters and might have been lurking in the shadows, watching my every move. After all, The Guardian of Lies is a spy thriller, right? While I was checking out the bars in the back streets of the ancient city – in the interest of research of course – and watching local artists at work at their easels, I swear I could hear the scurrying of scratchy little feet over the cobbles and tiny French voices squeaking about world domination. La domination du monde.

So don’t give me this guff about “it ain’t home to hamstahs”. I got ears.

 

Kate.  Well, yes, that’s easy. I confess that I do set my stories in countries that I’d love to visit on a research trip. So far I’ve used China, Russia, Singapore, the Bahamas, Italy, France, Germany and Egypt (which included an awesome ride in a hot-air balloon at dawn over the desert) as the backdrop for my books. Oh, how I suffer for the sake of my art! But I have a mighty hankering to see more of Africa. You know, I’ve never been on an African safari and I’ve always wanted to do so.

That would be quite some research trip, to get to view the Big Five – lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant and Cape buffalo – in their natural habitat would be truly mesmerising. Unforgettable. I’m sure I could weave a thrilling story around a moment of conflict over land and resources within the Masai Mara game reserve in Kenya. Ivory poachers. Political corruption. Loss of natural habitat. Romance and murder against a ticking clock as they fight to save the elephants. Bring it on. Maybe even a colony of hamsters endangered by the waste disposal of a local chemical plant. Hey, Bobby Bub, how about coming out to do the research with me?

 

Kate . Yes, definitely. Look at us. One of my major inspirations for The Guardian of Lies was my terror at what I see happening in the world today. We are in the grip of another Cold War between America and Russia, though now they fight their battles on the bloody land in the Middle East, not on American or Russian soil. The fingers of seeming psychopaths hover dangerously close to nuclear buttons.

The threat is ever present, so I wanted to take a look back to a time in 1953 when the world was on the brink of a nuclear war between Soviet Russia and America, when both countries were frantically trying to amass information on each other’s military secrets and nuclear developments.

Spies and counter-spies lurked in every walk of life, in government, industry, laboratories and education. They were everywhere. Sound familiar?

This atmosphere of suspicion, lies and fear only intensified in 1953 when the USA decided to construct a series of eleven nuclear air bases in France to create a formidable line of defence/attack against the Soviet threat. This struck me as a fascinating and revealing moment of brinkmanship that we should be examining closely now. I believe an important part of the job of a historical writer is to make the past more accessible to today’s readers. To offer them the chance to learn from the mistakes of those who came before us. I hope this book will encourage people of today to take a closer look at those into whose hands we place immense power. To think again. And to demand a safer world to live in.

Kate  Well, now, BB, what a humdinger of a trip this is going to be! Get your shades on and don’t forget your cute shorts, because it gets hot down there. We’d start with fancy croissants and a few laps of the pool at our beautiful old hotel, L’Hotel du Forum, in the ancient heart of the city of Arles. What? You’re not a swimmer? You don’t like getting your fur wet! I thought all hamsters could swim, but okay, I get it, you’re not a lemming. Calm down. Let’s head out instead to explore the magnificent Roman remains that are the focus of the city.

 

The massive Roman amphitheatre is the place to start. It’s breathtaking. It was built in 90 AD with seating for over 20,000 spectators to watch the chariot races and bloody hand-to-hand battles. I can picture you clashing swords with Gladiator Hamstah Dickens in the arena with blood-curdling yells. And then we’d wander down to admire the beautiful brickwork on the Roman bathhouse and take to the stage in the Roman theatre, where we could act out a romantic scene from Antony and Cleopatra.

After that let’s take a breather at the gorgeous little Van Gogh café in the shady Place du Forum. The artist Vincent van Gogh used to hang out there and made it famous by creating a wonderful night-time painting of it.. We’ll down a glass or two of vino and a platter of plump Camarguais olives, then we’ll head off on safari in an open Land Rover to explore the unspoiled marshland of the Camargue, a protected area that is stunning. Here the white horses and the scary black bulls roam wild among the tamarisk tress and the saltwater lagoons. But watch out for the mozzies – they’re nearly as big as the bulls. The area is bursting with abundant birdlife – white egrets, plovers and avocets – which we can observe through binoculars.

What’s that you say? You can’t find binoculars to fit your cute button nose?

Aw, don’t fret. Instead we’ll take a romantic stroll around the water’s edge of the étangs just as the evening sun is sinking and the pools seem to catch fire. We can watch hundreds of skinny-legged flamingos lifting into the air with unexpected grace, a ribbon of pink and black trailing across the vast sky as they leave their feeding grounds to roost for the night.

 

Ready for something to eat? Okay, it’s back to Arles for dinner at the superb Hotel Jules César – a 7^th century ex-nunnery – its décor all dolled up now in bright knock-your-eyes-out Christian Lacroix colours. (Arles was Lacroix’s home town.) Fancy a cocktail? Champers with apple brandy? Great choice. Then I recommend their fab signature dish of Risotto de Langoustines, followed by a Crêpe Soufflé au Grand Marnier. To die for! And if you fancy kicking up your heels, tossing aside your jolie French beret and dancing the rest of the night away, there’s always the Irish pub which has live music and vino till you drop. Santé!

Sleep well. Tomorrow we’ll start with a river trip on the mighty Rhône …..

It’s been great chatting with you guys today and I can’t wait to read the great opus that will one day emerge from the Master. Thanks for having me over and for not scaring the hell out of me this time. Hugs to ya, BB. xx

*** The top ten bestselling author ***
Discover a brilliant story of love, danger, courage and betrayal, from the internationally bestselling author of The Survivors.
1953, the South of France. The fragile peace between the West and Soviet Russia hangs on a knife edge. And one family has been torn apart by secrets and conflicting allegiances.

 

As one war ends, a very different one begins in this gripping thriller.

Format: Kindle Edition

A page turner I didn’t want to finish, is probably the best way to sum up this book set in France in the Cold War. A world of Communism, Capitalism, murder and espionage, both sides of the two coins presented centre stage, without preachifying, but with the rock of the Camargue standing like a magnificent bulwark, a character in its own right, untameable as the horses that roam it, a shaper of those who live on it. Eloise is such a character. Paris may have gotten into her blood, the Camargue is in her soul. As for what’s in her brother Andre’s soul? Well, that is what we are unravelling. Exactly who is he working for? And what will happen next because of it? Such is Kate Furnivall’s skill that little trails of breadcrumbs suggest things about Andre and many of the other major players, but that bit rightly waits for the finale. The skill doesn’t end there. From the street café in Arles, to the roadside trees, the prose is rich in an imagery that never swamps. Nor does the pacing flag. For me this book opened a window on a post war Europe fight I knew little about and I’m glad that it did. I consider it one of the author’s finest.

The fault, dear Brutus ….

Tags

Cornwall, Cursed families, Curses, The Brontes, The kennedys, The Romanovs

 

May everything you touch wither to dust.’ Cursed? Or just unlucky? Shehanne Moore

    ‘The question is this. I cursed you. I cursed you and your brothers –” 

   “One of whom—” 

   “Blew his brains out at midnight. Do you seriously think I didn’t trouble myself to find out?”

     “Oh, I’m sure-“
 

     “May everything you touch, turn to dust.”’ 

   Cursed? Or just unlucky? Nice to think it’s the latter but legends of curses permeate practically every culture in history. from entire families to items—jewels especially—but places too. It would be good to say we just like someone to blame misfortune on but then again, some folks don’t seem to have a lot of good fortune, do they? 

   Let’s take my new heroine, Destiny who is the victim of just such a curse…

   “But the fact was that curse uttered for nothing had killed Ennis, as surely as if Divers O’Roarke had pushed his carriage down that ravine that night.” 

   It’s very convenient to believe that all the loss and tragedy that follows Destiny about like a bad smell is the result of that curse, when it was probably on the cards anyway. Also, at the time she was cruising for the proverbial bruising, causing besotted men to shoot each other, this could just have been a wind change in her life, a what-goes-round-comes-round time. But then again, the loss of a mother, father, brother, husband and more in the space of two years, not to mention another brother becoming an alcoholic, does seem the kind of misfortune that would give the Kennedy family a run for their money in the cursed stakes. 

     And I think that is where curses have their power—superstitious–but even so. Would you really want to flout a curse by wearing the Hope diamond for example? Or indeed by then touching someone who was cursed? 

   “From Land’s End to Launceston people avoided her like she had the plague. In fact it was probably from Land’s End to John O’Groats. She couldn’t get another husband even if she wanted to.” 

     Whether it is balderdash or not, if something goes wrong after you flout a curse, well, you are probably going to blame the curse and wish you hadn’t done it, even if curses may, or may not exist. The Rhodes family aren’t alone in being cursed. Other famous families, in addition to the Kennedys, include the Hapsburgs, the Grimaldis, the Hemingways. I guess the Romanovs weren’t exactly what you might call lucky either.

     Of course big families like that, in terms of being newsworthy, of having wealth etc., are always going to find their bones being picked over by the ‘lesser mortals.’ And the Rhodes family have that local standing.

     ‘She was a Rhodes and Rhodes were all about living life to the hilt.’

     Big old house, family tree going back centuries, suggestions of links to pirates, definite links to smugglers. Legends surround them, like Raven’s Passage, said to stretch from their family seat, Doom Bar Hall, all the way to the beach, a fabulous place stuffed with golden treasures.

 

 It’s easy to say that some of these real families were cursed when you can point to the actual curse itself, how it came to be uttered and who was responsible. Rasputin, of course gets held responsible for cursing the Romanovs but as a family they had plenty of misfortune before that. Nicholas II’s father and grandfather didn’t exactly fare brilliantly either and Rasputin never cursed them. But then the times they were living in were pretty explosive. No pun intended actually. Just pointing out the possible carnage/ill heath rate which brings me to the Brontës, another family that might be construed as cursed. Equally fame eventually touched them, so we know of their lives. But their deaths were the lot of entire families especially given the unsanitary conditions of the time. 

     The thing about curses? I honestly think you pay your money you take your chances…NOW go open the voddie and do Cossack dances.

.

 “He cursed you, me, Chancery. You most of all. Think how different your life would now be if he hadn’t uttered these damnable words. When Chancery loved Rose. Wanted to marry her, for God’s sake. That Divers O’Roarke didn’t know is no damned excuse.”

     “I am thinking. And I’m thinking we are the life we live. Its graces and its pain. And while we may not always have any control over it, we can control what we do about it. But if you want to believe in a load of old gypsy mutterings and superstition and hold it responsible for the fact you can’t walk past a drink, without feeling obliged to down and then drown in it, that’s your choice. This is mine.’

O’Roarke’s Destiny Shehanne Moore.

The dudes meet Destiny.

Tags

Cornwall, Depression, heroines, O'Roarke's Destiny, Shehaanne Moore, Smugglers

Destiny Rhodes – Seriously? And I’ve nothing better to do than sit  chewing the fat with a lot of moaning skunks?

 

Destiny Rhodes- Looking at you? Well, maybe that’s cos there’s sod all else to eat in the God-forsaken place now Divers O’Roarke is running the show.  Mind you, him and that sidekick, that Gil Wryson, have never had hamsters on the menu. Yet anyhow. Otherwise you can it as read, the ceiling is a lot more interesting.

Destiny Rhodes- Won’t I what? Sorry, I wasn’t listening there. Give tips? What on? Something I don’t have? I mean you see me sat here, with a smile pasted to me face and all? Ask yourselves, why don’t you, would I be able to do that if I had what you say?

Destiny Rhodes– of course I can. And I can get on with all me tasks too. Right now these in order include, mending the bedroom footstool, sewing the dining room cushions, getting the wassail bowl out of the attic, it’s not THAT long till Christmas after all, and hopefully not having Divers O’Roarke, that Wryson man–don’t get me started on how fanatical he is–me brother, or please call me John, that Lyon creep, getting in me face. So that then I can go lie down and dream of my husband, Ennis. Anything less makes me a bad person. And while I don’t mind being thought of as that locally,  I’m sure you can appreciate that I don’t want to think of myself that way where he is concerned. But doing all that in the day, you can see how much I need that rest? And when I don’t get it, well my thoughts retreat.  My head feels panned in.

 

Destiny –When they are my life, the things I cling to in order to cling to something and assure myself that my world is set? Maybe. I don’t know. Life is an unknown journey after all. But I tell you it won’t be for want of the times Divers O’Roarke gets in my face. Breaking the best china, insulting me Grandfather Austell’s stuffed parrots, throwing out Sir Tredwynne. Oh   and other things. All manner of things actually. Messes I got myself in.

Destiny Rhodes – Damaged goods with a death wish  that one. And such a man of mystery. Do you know that’s why I’m here today without him. He’s not allowed to be interviewed because you wouldn’t know what to interview him as.  And there’s games not going to be given away here. But thank you for having me and now, if you don’t mind I’ve a new shortbread recipe to write down.  May I just say that looking at you lot has quite fired me imagination that way….  Made me feel a bit more like my old self….

Destiny Rhodes– Me? Dance? Not since my Ennis died…. That ship has sailed. Nah. I’m thinking how tasty that recipe might be….

Extract.

“Well, I’d ask you in—properly, that is–but I’m afraid, as things stand, I wouldn’t know which parts of the house are mine to ask you in to.”

”And why is that?”

“You mean Divers O’Roarke hasn’t told you?”

“He hasn’t.”

”Yes. And pigs fly all over Cornwall. High in the sky. When we all know he probably has. And if he hasn’t–got to you yet that is–he’s probably on his way as we speak. It will be to tell you what a liar I am and how he’s split the house because of it.  Obviously I didn’t come to Penvellyn sooner because I had to wait for me opportunity to do so. Anything more would have aroused his suspicions when he caught me talking to you earlier.”

“You are going on rather a lot about Divers O’Roarke, Miss Rhodes.”

“Only because he is a skunk.”

She set her coat on a chair, smoothed her hair back from her face. Actually she wasn’t going on about him half as much as she could.

“But you did have something to tell me? It’s why I’m here,” Lyon said.

Did she? When what she really wanted was to go upstairs and look out her recipe for lavender shortcake too. Maybe find some way of lighting the fire when her nose was pinched by the cold. The distance was there, spread like a long road in front of her.  But really, she wasn’t getting much chance to go it. Not with the kitchen probably barred to her now the house had been sawn in half.  In fact the way this was going, that recipe was about as much as she was going to get.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“I hope so.”

Right. Well, she didn’t. Did he have a point though? Was she perhaps going on about Divers O’Roarke instead of applying herself to what was important, like finding that recipe? She’d given him his chance. And very good of her it was too, even if she wasn’t sure what she’d have done if he’d taken it.  Some might say she’d never have gotten Doom Bar Hall for a start. And she was inclined to agree. Maybe for that matter Divers O’Roarke had banned her from half the house in order to spark a reaction in her?  In which case she’d be failing in her duty not to give him one, now she’d gone to the wire and he wouldn’t come off the fence? Lyon hadn’t come all this way to leave empty handed. Had he? He wasn’t here for a cup of tea either. And it was time to deal with that fact. Whatever she’d determined earlier, living or dying required a roof over her head. She passed her tongue over her lip.

 

 

 

Secondary characters? How many do you need?

Tags

Black Wolf Books, Cornwall, Historical romance, Newbook, O'Roarke's Destiny, Romance, Shehanne Moore, Smugglers, Wreckers

 

SHEY : Dearest Silv, may I say how very kind of you it is to ask me here today  to my blog. I just can’t get over it. The great honour it is. To answer your question about Lizzie I wrote her out because she had no further use …

SHEY. Yes, Lizzie-alas–was adding nothing to the plot.

Nor did I need her after chapter one for the main reason I use a secondary character, that is to hold a mirror to a lead in some way, their personality, their actions, perhaps show them as I did with Dainty and Mitchell Killgower in The Writer and The Rake, in a better light and also I suppose not to make the whole thing too claustrophobic –as I also partly used Susan for in The Unraveling of Lady Fury, and give Fury a sort of confidant.  Lizzie was not going to fulfil any of these things and letting her stay was going to change how I saw this book. So why have her?  There’s also a one scene appearance by a few children, but while they are contributing to the story there, they’re what you might term decorative extras. Spear-carriers in theatrical terms.

Overall I don’t work with a huge cast of speaking characters but I do generally work with more throughout.

Shey. Indeed I think we got that. The world of Doom Bar Hall itself, despite being smack bang in smuggling and wrecking country, is a tight world. Destiny is a loner, probably a high functioning depressive who bashes through her daily routine and set of tasks with tunnel vision. She’s not one for friends—she’d never been what you might call popular, except with the men she drove to distraction years previously–and she confides in nobody, the family were larger than life that way locally. She’s a product of that family.  So to have put in a single scene where she does would have been wrong for her as a character and unbalanced the book.  Divers may swagger  into that world full of confidence and control,  underneath he’s a man on the edge, holding it together and no more. I won’t give away too much of the plot by saying why he’s at this stage when the book opens. He has a sidekick, Gil,  to show there’s another side to him and to mirror some of this ‘disintegration’ but that’s it re Gil being there.

 And because he could be trusted. A hard thing to come by, not just in this world but the world he inhabited. That dancing, dark and shady place of gnarled shadows and twisted paths, haunted by the need to keep one step ahead where nothing could ever be as it seemed. Not even himself.”

  

There’s reasons for Orwell–Destiny’s brother

 face as long as a six fiddle cases, and twenty four rainy days,

and as for Lyon?

.

Shey. He has  quite an appetite.

You knew everything but nothing of what he was really thinking. Hand him a farthing out the goodness of your heart and he’d still need to know where both came from. The farthing and the goodness. Probably your heart too.

Shey I think it’ s important when you are creating a world for a book and I try with each book to create a world, to think of the things that help show it.  And for me in this book it wasn’t the wider smuggling picture which is actually central to the story, but the putting of this hero and heroine and what unfolds in this world between them, centre stage. I felt that could only happen with a small playing ensemble, so even the servants had to go.  I think it’s sometimes something to consider in terms of cementing  a setting, depending on what that setting is. This one was not the world of ball gowns and dance cards and it’s not a pretty one of smuggling either.  And now before you open the voddie and do the Cossack dance… a book trailer.

 

Once he’d have died to possess her, now he just might…

Beautiful, headstrong young widow Destiny Rhodes was every Cornish man’s dream. Until Divers O’Roarke cursed her with ruin and walked out of Cornwall without a backwards glance. Now he’s not only back, he’s just won the only thing that hasn’t fallen down about her head—her ancestral home. The home, pride demands she throw herself in with, safe in the knowledge of one thing. Everything she touches withers to dust.

He’d cursed her with ruin.

Now she’d have him live with the spoils of her misfortune.

Though well versed in his dealings with smugglers and dead men, handsome rogue Divers O’Roarke is far from sure of his standing with Destiny Rhodes. He had no desire to win her, doesn’t want her in his house, but while he’s bent on the future, is there one when a passionate and deadly game of bluff ensues with the woman he once cursed? A game where no-one and nothing are what they seem. Him most of all.

And when everything she touches turns to dust, what will be his fate as passion erupts? Will laying past ghosts come at the highest price of all?

September 13^th 2019 Black Wolf Books.

‘I know I have not won Doom Bar Hall from you.’ O’Roarke’s Destiny Chapter 1

Tags

Cornwall, New book, O'Roarke's Destiny, Regency, Shehanne Moore, Smugglers, Smuggling in Cornwall

 

I know I have not won Doom Bar Hall from you………

      CHAPTER ONE

 

   Cornwall 1801–For every smuggler, there is an exciseman who will hunt him down …

Destiny Rhodes was used to losing everything in one stroke. She’d just never thought it would be this stroke.

“A Gull Wrysen, here, you say?”

“I does, ma-am.” Lizzie’s voice tolled as befitted someone who was in the running to win the grand prize in the looking most like your surname competition at Penvellyn Fair.  So, Here Lies Lizzie Tooms, Loyal Servant of the Rhodes, Now Gone as Them, Probably unto Hell, could have been etched into her forehead.

Ignoring the rattle of the chimney pots crashing onto the lawn outside, Destiny stared harder at her reflection in the mirror above the fireplace.

“And?”

“And quoth  I, seein’ as you be a’ askin’ and me havin’ spoken to him, far worse bells could be a’tollin’ for them what are cursed.”

“Do you know, I’m very glad you think so, Lizzie? After all, here was me thinking it could well be the man who did the cursing. So why don’t we all just look on the bright side and say a prayer of joy and thankfulness? I mean, it’s not like we haven’t got anything better to do, now is it? Where’s the captain by the way?”

“Busy.”

“Lying drunk on the stable floor, you mean? Having managed to get here on his sodding horse but not off it properly? Oh, that’s busy, I suppose, if you can call such things busy.” She clasped the mantelshelf tighter in her mittened fingers, the image of Orwell meandering home beneath frozen stars, flickering through the flames. If only she was such a frozen star, instead of standing here, staring as the straw end of this place disappeared down a dark rabbit hole. Doom Bar Hall. The only thing in her life still standing. The bricks and mortar she’d poured herself into. Every flower, painting, tuck on every cushion, even her pine cone garlands that made this room a work of art at Christmas. Gone. On the turn of a card.  “Yes, a fine thing to be as busy as that.”

“I can only reports what t’es my sacred duty to report, ma-am.”

“Well, it’s something of a pity you felt it was your sacred duty to come in here and report this.”

Maybe she should just fall down now on the fender and be done with it? Then at least she might be buried along with her garlands.

“Anyways, I be sure your brother’s done his sacred best.”

“You know, for once you and I couldn’t agree more. His level best, or should that be epic, to get drunk? His very best to lose this place. As for everything in it–?”

Yet, despite what she’d thought a moment ago, was this really so unexpected when Orwell inhabited the drinks cabinet the way fish did the ocean and would be sure to win the empty cider barrel in the drinking it dry competition at Penvellyn Fair.  In fact, there was no might about it. The miracle was it had taken him this long. As for what she could do about it? Apart from winning first prize in the breaking her hand by punching a wall competition?

“Ma-am, I be sure that despite everythin’, he has this in hand.”

“Really? Well? That’s a first. A second first, I must say. You thinking and him having this in hand.”

“If he does not have it in hand, the Lord shall. You watch this. He will be our salvation, ma-am.”

“Oh, please do spare me. Truly. Unless you think a sermon to match the one on the Mount, is something I can stand tonight? Wait around for the Lord being me salvation, and first prize in the look at all them moldering bones competition is what I’ll win.”

“Then what do you require, ma-am?”

“Right now? Apart from a sodding great dose of arsenic, you mean?”

The strength to deal with this but that didn’t look like it was coming unless that sodding, great albatross that had just careered inside her velvet gown–a triple-weighted blind one at that—found some other gown to career into. Finally, ashes existed she couldn’t rise from, despite everyone always saying she should have been named Phoenix. Imagine that, when Lizzie was sure to have it broadcast all over Penvellyn by this time tomorrow, if not before, how Destiny had collapsed in the library fireplace and lain there, cursed, like all who’d passed down the long, dusty road to the charnel house before her, too?

“Ma-am, I know we have had our differences—“

“You can say that again.”

Mostly on the subject of accents. Destiny sounded like her mother who had come from up north. Yorkshire somewhere.  And Lizzie only took instructions from those who didn’t, which made it even more ridiculous she took them from Orwell who was more refined than a glass of malt whiskey. Orwell who probably reeked worse than one right now and was in no fit state to open his mouth, let alone let an order fall out of it.

As for Lizzie’s pity? Another lecture on the Lord? Lizzie producing a bible from her apron pocket in another minute or so, in all probability, and asking Destiny to read from it? Well, Destiny wouldn’t want first prize for making the heavens fall down. Now, would she? Especially not when she’d already won the one for having her head panned in with the meat mallet. After all, it was vital she at least try to raise her chin, though what she was lifting it for she’d no idea.

“No. Don’t.” Lizzie parted her lips and Destiny hurried on. “Once is quite enough. Look, just send in this … this man. Me brother may be lying on the stable floor too drunk to deal with him. I’m not. Go on.”

Yes. Let those who thrived on the pantomime of her life, say her black heart dripped something so common as blood? Over her burned and beaten body. That would be death, not this, even if all of it was death now. How could Orwell do this?

“If it is yore wish and yore command, ma’am?”

“I’d hardly put it that strongly. But what else can I do?  Still, fear not Lizzie,”  she lowered her gaze from the mirror as Lizzie nodded. “Whatever happens, I’m sure the servants’ places will be guaranteed. After all, in my humble experience, everyone needs servants. Even a death knell one like you.”

Well? Everybody did. How very lucky to be one. Suppose she said she was? Found a mob cap, claimed to be the housekeeper? Bit an arsenal of bullets, swallowed them too, suffered the laughter, the snide remarks, the fact Orwell  wasn’t the only one to drag the family through the gutter?  Endure the servants too? The ones who had so  recently been hers?

How far a falling from a heaven too high.

What? Have it round the county that she qualified for entering the best servants competition because she cleaned boots and changed beds for her new master, fetched him his pipe and slippers, dusted his ornamental vases?

No. She’d sooner starve. After all, she wasn’t exactly likely to win it.

My God, if only Chancery had lived. Actually, if everyone who had ever touched her sorry life had damn well lived, she’d not be in this mess. But Chancery’s death, over that sodding Rose O’Roarke had started an endless procession to the charnel house. All beneath the winding sheet of one certainty. The hollow toll of another death would shortly follow.

Until the moment Chancery took up with Rose O’Roarke, he’d been heir to Doom Bar Hall, not sodding Orwell and sodding Orwell’s brandy bottles. Captain Rhodes, if you pleased, seeing as he, and them, commanded the local militia. Then the curse uttered by Rose’s grey-eyed brother, Divers O’Roarke, across her marble-veined corpse had come true. They were all rotting in hell. Destiny most of all.

Her shoulders sagged. She glanced back in the gilt framed mirror, wreathed in ornamental cherubs on their way to heaven—lucky them–the mirror she’d found in the attic and spent weeks cleaning, mending and wiping dead flies off. Gull sodding Wrysen’s mirror now. Well?

Unless?

Unless she took it down, of course. Took it with her. It was heavy as an elephant. That much was obvious the second she reached forward to wrench it free. Not that she’d ever won any prizes for wrenching an elephant. No. There weren’t exactly many of them about in Cornwall. And any there were, were hardly likely to be nailed to the wall, the half of which she’d be trying to get out of the door next if any more plaster showered onto her fingers. And where would she put that?

No. This was over. Over. Over. The words ticked like the grandfather clock in the hall outside. All she could do was go with her head held high. Let the locals have their farthing’s worth. Well?

Unless?

She fingered her throat. It was an idea. Even if she wasn’t quite sure where it came from.

“Dstny … ”

The French doors banged open in the gale howling over the cliff face. Orwell, staggering in here with wet boots and slurred apologies for losing her pine cone garlands, was the last thing she needed. Certainly, if she was really considering that idea.  She slipped her gaze from her—actually, some might say, edifying as a dead viper’s–reflection.  And they would be right.  Some things had to be faced when it came to ideas.

“Goodness me. Orwell. Sit down, why don’t you? Preferably not in here, before  your wet feet take first prize for ruining the rug, when it’s no longer ours to ruin either. At least I hope that’s from your wet feet.”

The spindle chair nearly went over beneath his backside as he collapsed into it. She braced for the crash. It  would certainly be one thing less for Gull Wrysen to claim if it smashed.

Unless?

Orwell sank his head with its untidy chestnut quiff on his chest and tried pulling his coat-tails from beneath his backside. “I say, old gril, l mean girl … I’ll need … that is, I’ll nleed to … I’ll need ver’ much to …  to … ”

“What? Sober up? Stop drinking? Get Doom Bar Hall back? Likely as a chocolate doily surviving in hell that is, if you must know.”

“Mulst know? Well, I… I sullpose, I sullpose I do. I mean … Do you know, it’s the damndest thing … but I don’t knlow what I mean …”

“Oh, I think we can all see that, Orwell. Maybe we should hang a sign in Truro, saying, ‘This is Orwell Rhodes. He doesn’t know what he means but one thing’s for certain, he has lost Doom Bar Hall. Throw him a farthing someone, so he can maybe buy it back.'”

Unless?

Hearing footsteps marching along the hall, she raised her chin.

“Yes Lizzie, what is it?”

“Milord Wrysen, ma’am.” Lizzie’s bobbed curtsy was probably the lowest the man towering in the doorway had ever seen. It was certainly the lowest Destiny had ever seen it. Start as you mean to go on her father had always said. Lizzie was starting well. Destiny should take a leaf out of that book.

“Should I fetch tea, ma-am?”

A good question. But no amount of tea in the best china cups Destiny had found moldering in the stables would sort this.

Unless?

She flicked her gaze over the man opposite. About thirty? Black haired—not her preferred color–a dusting of stubble on his chin.  Eyes like gleaming black bullets. A plain, if not inelegant greatcoat, and leather boots, flecked with mud. No wedding ring. It didn’t mean he wasn’t married.

In that moment she decided.

“No. I am sure His Grace here would prefer something stronger, Lizzie.”

Like herself.

She pinched her cheeks, although this Gull Wrysen could take her as she was. So long as he did take her.

It could be worse. Orwell could have lost the wager to Divers O’Roarke. Then she’d really be in trouble. It was common knowledge he regularly gambled the fortune he’d amassed designing houses and gardens in London.

Hadn’t the sun’s rays shone on him since he’d sworn that oath? Shone to the extent his chestnut hair must be burnt black while she looked more of a corpse than his sister, Rose.

This was the hand she’d been dealt. This was the hand she’d play though.

Smiles were beyond her. Gull Wrysen would see what he was getting and what he was getting was someone young enough at twenty five, to be thought attractive, despite her cropped hair and–all right–the fact she’d give a dead viper a run for its money in the looks’ stakes. But really, some might say, that was all.

As for what she was getting? Well? Doom Bar Hall was what she was getting. Very nice it was too. When nothing else mattered, she wouldn’t be the first, or last, to  manage a few ecstatic moans where required.

Only think of the fuel for the fires of all these little effigies the locals liked to make of her. The fires that had been dying of malnutrition lately.

She settled her gaze on his face.

“Well, Your Grace? Do allow me.”

She meant a drink. Orwell was sitting there, after all. Besides Gull Wrysen was standing as if she was Medusa and he’d been turned to stone. But hopefully this was purely temporary.

“Thank you, Lizzie,” she added, seeing that only Lizzie’s jaw had moved and that was in the direction of the floor. “Yes. As you can see, I will deal with this. And please shut your mouth while you’re about it. It’s wholly bad enough you look like a tombstone. We don’t want you adding trout to the mix. Not when Mr. Wrysen and I have things to discuss, regarding the house.”

She waited for Lizzie to win every prize going in the collecting her jaw and sailing like a doom-ridden ship away competition, before setting out two glasses. Gold rimmed ones from the set that added perfection to her Christmas Eve when she  finally sat before the fire in the cavernous, leather armchair and treated herself to a measure of port. Glasses she’d be keeping now if this went her way. Why shouldn’t it? She was cursed, not incapable.

Yes. This man wasn’t so bad. Fair hair would have reminded her of Ennis, who some might say, was probably birling ten times in his coffin. Not the man to think of and face this one standing in the candlelit shadows in his mud-spattered boots and greatcoat, holding his hat beneath his arm as if he’d no idea what to do with it.

Well, she knew, she knew exactly. She slipped the top off the decanter, inhaled the rich ruby scent. If it came right down to it here, she could cook and dust, if need be. If he wanted to bring in a woman, if need be, she’d say nothing. After all, there would be nothing to say anything about on her part. No jealousy. Nothing. She wouldn’t insult Ennis’s memory with that kind of thing that betrayed low moral fiber.

“But perhaps I am being presumptuous with your drink and your servants, now Doom Bar Hall has fallen to you, Lord … Lord …?”

“Me?” He shifted uncertainly, the ghost of a smile hanging to his lips. Totally unnerved. No bad sign. “Oh, good God, no. Miss … Miss Rhodes, isn’t it?”

“Well, it’s not the devil incarnate, though there’s plenty round here certainly say so.”

“Good .. I mean … No, I mean I think there’s been some kind of mistake.”

She nearly clattered the decanter top onto the sideboard. Some kind of mistake?  My God.  Damn Orwell. And yet, Lord love him. A mistake. It was all a mistake.  Thank God she’d had enough moral fiber not to open her mouth.

“I mean … You mean you’re not Gull Wrysen? And you’re not here to take Doom Bar Hall from me? Well, I never.” Especially given how close she’d been to offering herself. ”You know, I just can’t believe how I—well, never mind, have the drink anyway.”

“Gull?” Gull Wrysen lips twitched as he reached for the glass. “I’m not Gull Wrysen. Not that I know of anyway, unless I’ve been re-christened. I’m not Wrysen either. My name, so far as I know my name anyway, is Gil. Gil Wryson. And I’m not a gentleman either. Well … again… Not that I know of.”

“I see.”

Damn Lizzie. As ever, she won first prize in the being spat on by the Fates competition. After they fell about the floor laughing at her first. Why hadn’t she known no man would be called Gull? And Wrysen was a Cornish pronounciation? Still, she could surely weather a blob or two of spittle seeing as this was all a mistake?

“Although that’s not the mistake,” he added.

Damn the Fates to hell. Still, one mercy in a drought dropping from the heavens? She hadn’t danced  about the floor waving her drawers in the air.  Whether he was a gentleman or not, was neither here, nor there, when it came to getting him to agree to this. And she would, so long as her own name was Destiny Rhodes, she would. Now. She’d have to. Just swallow what rose in her throat, forget about the fact that when everything she touched turned to dust, the pity was he didn’t drop at her feet, and do it.

“Then … let’s get straight to the point. I’ve always been a frank talking kind of girl.”

“The point, Miss Rhodes?”

“Doom Bar Hall is not just my home, as well as my brother, Orwell’s, it has been  my whole life since my husband, Ennis, died. You look surprised?”

“Only in that—”

“I seem young to be a widow? Well, I was and I am, I suppose. Of course I could have lived at Pangbury, the family home but we were guests there ourselves, him having a younger brother with family. So I put the money he left me into Doom Bar Hall, because it has been in the Rhodes family for generations. I returned to my maiden name too. I think you’ll find I’m quite a woman of the world, however.”

It was the most tactful way to put what she was about to propose, which was why she turned away. Not before she saw Gil Wryson’s gleaming black eyes were searching her face in bemusement. But perhaps he simply couldn’t believe his luck? She knew she couldn’t. Believe her luck that was. Certainly at having got this far.

“I suppose what I am trying to say to you, is that I am in this house,” she added. “Yes. It is in me even though you may have won it from my brother, Orwell.”

“I think you’re mistaken there, Miss Rhodes.”

“Really? Well I don’t. You did win it. I’m not going to argue about that, or how easy it probably was, knowing Orwell’s drinking habits, to diddle him of his left pinkie. His thumb too.”

“Perhaps. But it … ”

Must he keep interrupting her when she was doing her level best here to get up from the pit, soar to the sky and secure the roof above her head? And the desperation he might refuse, lay like a lather on her bones? She glided forward then turned to face him.

“Doom Bar Hall is too precious to me. As you will see when I show you around, I am in every scrap of this place. In fact you might even say I am this place. That is why you should also know something.”

“What?”

“I come with it.”

Start as you mean to go on. Finish too. The blank cut-out she was inside meant it was nothing for her to stand here and offer herself like this. Once. Perhaps. But now? Given the alternative? Although equally, some might say, she had risen to this with a surprising fervor.

“I’m sorry?”

“Oh, I am too, Mr. Wryson, but I honestly have no choice.”

He blinked, as if he hadn’t known what was coming, or didn’t want her, although he did have the good manners to smile. “Am I to understand?  Are you … are you suggesting … ”

Orwell’s boots scraped on the scuffed floorboards.

“Dstny. Dsny, old girl, thart’s what … you see … it’s like this … I relemmber now. …”

“Oh please, Orwell, do be quiet for once in your sorry life. Let’s just agree I’ll handle this, shall we? You can go to the devil for all I care. In fact, shall we say Truro marketplace if you don’t button up?”

Yes. Gil Wryson wasn’t the devil and he wasn’t Divers O’Roarke–not that the devil troubled her, if she’d to narrow that list down. Divers O’Roarke now? Exactly how likely was he to be here in Cornwall?

Ignoring the wind banging the shutters, the batter of incessant rain cutting a silver stream down the moonlit glass, she continued,

“Now then, Mr. Wryson, these are the terms I place honorably on the table before you. They are very simple. Doom Bar Hall is my life. I will not be separated from it. So if you take Doom Bar Hall, you take me, to do what you will with. I’ll be your queen, your housekeeper, I’ll be your whatever you desire, because no-one knows this place like me. If you can’t do that, if you have some other agenda, some other woman, for that matter, whatever you have, walk away now.  I know I have not won Doom Bar Hall from you, that in a million years I may not have done that, but then again I never lost it in a devil’s hand of cards, played against a man too drunk to know his own name, let alone the family one he’s thrown away. These are my terms. I’m not leaving here, unless it is in a box. Do you understand?”

“Miss … Lady … ?”

Ignoring him, she lifted the glass to her lips. Courage flowed into her veins, all the way to her pounding temples.  It always did when she made up her mind.

“In the circumstances, you may call me, Destiny.”

Orwell tried again to struggle to his feet. “Dstiny. Don’t. You … you don’t know … “

“Orwell, I asked you to stay out of this. What you do is up to you just as this is up to me. I am doing this. I am keeping our home.”

Her shell would anyway. What followed behind, a pallbearer at an unspeakable funeral might wince. She waited, a prisoner of the silence, the one existing in her soul, for Gil Wryson to speak. His lips cinched uncertainly, as if he didn’t know how to approach this. Gentlemanly of him, but not the point.

“Destiny?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I … I’m sure I can call you that, Miss … Miss Rhodes, if that’s acceptable … ”

“Why shouldn’t it be? We’re going to be things to each other, after all. Let’s drink a toast to it.”

“But what I was trying to explain, maybe not terribly well, that is true, and perhaps your brother—“

“Oh, him? He doesn’t count for anything where this is concerned.”

“– is too, is that I didn’t actually win the game. So really … ”

Her heart beat in such hope it almost felled her, although hope was something that had lived in the dark for the last two years. Doom Bar Hall wasn’t lost at all.

Relief washed like an ocean, ambushing her as she stood there encased in tortuous, threadbare velvet. Her cheeks pulsed. To think she’d abased herself for nothing. But what did that matter? She downed the drink in one, wiped a mittened hand across her mouth.

“Then … if you didn’t win …?”

“No. I suppose that’s what I meant when I said I wasn’t a gentleman.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Wryson, you will think me thick as a sea mist—“

“Not at all.”

“–but the truth is I really don’t understand what you being, or not being a gentleman, has to do—“

“I’m acting on behalf of my employer.”

“Your employer?”

So it was true? She’d lost Doom Bar Hall. Still, she’d made that decision before this man walked in here.  How he looked, how old he was, who he was, had made no difference then. Why should it now?

“He thought there would be difficulties, you see.”

“Apart from me brother lying drunk I can’t imagine how.”

“Well he did. And that was why he asked me to spy out the lie of the land, if you will. After all, this is quite a house to lose–”

“Do you think I don’t know that? That is why my offer is the same because I don’t intend to lose it–”

“Especially when there’s past associations.”

“Past associations.” She resisted the urge to finger her throat, which prickled as if a moth’s wing was stuck in it somewhat of a sudden. “What do you mean?”

“I mean my employer once lived—not in the house itself—but on the estate, and is known to you.”

“Known?”

She swallowed the astonishment sitting cold as marble in her mouth. There was only one man she could think of who’d done that but of that one man, she didn’t want to think. Not when the blood drained from her face, the floor loomed so perilously close she struggled to stand in her black slippers and Orwell staggered to his feet.

“Dstny … I triled to tell you. But you … you … Anyway, you’re nlot seris … ”

“Unless the name Divers O’Roarke is unfamiliar to you, Miss Rhodes?” Gil Wryson’s voice was oiled velvet.

“Divers O’Roarke?”

How did she say the name as if it was nothing to her, the name of the man who had cursed them, cursed her loudest of all?

Because she must.

“No. I believe I have vague memories of him.”

“Good, because he is waiting outside. I will be sure to pass the details of your offer to him if you still desire it.”

Before she could think whether she did or not, whether some might say this was putting it rather strongly, or she should change her mind, a footfall sounded in the doorway behind her.

“Good evening, Destiny,” clanged the sounding bell of hell and a voice she sort of recognized from there. “I see you haven’t changed.”

BLURB

Once he’d have died to possess her, now he just might…

Beautiful, headstrong young widow Destiny Rhodes was every Cornish man’s dream. Until Divers O’Roarke cursed her with ruin and walked out of Cornwall without a backwards glance. Now he’s not only back, he’s just won the only thing that hasn’t fallen down about her head—her ancestral home. The home, pride demands she throw herself in with, safe in the knowledge of one thing. Everything she touches withers to dust.

He’d cursed her with ruin.

Now she’d have him live with the spoils of her misfortune.

Though well versed in his dealings with smugglers and dead men, handsome rogue Divers O’Roarke is far from sure of his standing with Destiny Rhodes. He had no desire to win her, doesn’t want her in his house, but while he’s bent on the future, is there one when a passionate and deadly game of bluff ensues with the woman he once cursed? A game where no-one and nothing are what they seem. Him most of all.

And when everything she touches turns to dust, what will be his fate as passion erupts? Will laying past ghosts come at the highest price of all?

 

Releasing Friday September 2019 .. It is about a curse after all …Paperback and Ebook. E book can be pre-ordered here.