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Tag Archives: New book

Influential Observation with Catherine Cavendish

11 Sunday Sep 2022

Posted by shehannemoore in blogging, book tour, writing

≈ 129 Comments

Tags

An Elford Childhood, Catherine Cavendish, Dark Observation, Doris Buttery, Elford, Flame Tree Press, Horror, New book, writing

My Greatest Influence BY Catherine Cavendish

Since I’ve been fortunate enough to be a published writer, I have met many others and once of the first things I discovered is that I wasn’t alone in having been the nerdy schoolgirl who used to inwardly cheer when our English teacher would set us an essay to write for homework. I especially hugged my inner creative embryo when we were given no clear parameters as to what that essay would centre on. Sometimes it would be a line from a poem which could be interpreted in a myriad of ways. On other occasions it would be an emotion we had to express – be it joy, sorrow or whatever. All around me, my fellow students would groan while I wanted to do that Mary Tyler Moore thing with my (ridiculously old fashioned) school hat.

For decades I believed I was the only one who ever felt like that. What a relief to discover I wasn’t.

I should have realised it really though because while there have been and still are a host of people I count as influences on me and on my writing, there is one who stands head and shoulders above the rest.

Her name was Doris May Buttery. She was born on 23rd October 1920 and passed away on 13th March 2018 – and Doris was my Mum. She loved to write.

When I was a little girl and, okay, I’ll say it first, that was a long time ago, one of my enduring memories is of Mum sitting at the dining room table, her pencil sharpened, lost in her own world as she busily transcribed memories of her childhood, growing up in a small Staffordshire village between the two world wars, onto sheets of lined foolscap paper. 

While Mum wrote, I would play with my dolls or my cat, Penny. I would make up stories, read, let my imagination run free…

And day after day, once her chores were done, Mum would write. She had a small win on the Football Pools and used to it to pay for a creative writing course where she learned the art of short story writing. I still have at least some of those stories. They were fiction but always, somewhere, there lurked a grain of truth. Invariably set in the 1920s or 1930s there would be a character in there that I would later come to identify in her memoirs. Sometimes she would write about a scandal that I would later discover had actually taken place – although the names and some identifying details had all been changed.

I can’t remember exactly when she stopped writing. But for years, maybe a decade or more, the pencils and foolscap were put aside only for her to return one day and pick up where she left off. This became a pattern. Days and weeks of daily writing followed by months and years of none. From her childhood she moved onto recollections of the war years 1939-1945 when she served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) – the British women’s army of the time. Sadly, she didn’t get too far with these but the account of being a naive eighteen-year-old office girl joining up (against her father’s wishes) immediately casts the reader back to those far off years. Mum could certainly create atmosphere and a sense of time and place in her writing.

Meanwhile, I had caught the writing bug. Watching her may have been the catalyst, or perhaps it was simply because she enjoyed it. Some of those school essays of mine grew into short stories; one eventually morphed into a novel. Mum encouraged me while my father considered my desire – at around eight or nine years old – to purchase a portable typewriter as a complete waste of time and money. I bought my typewriter, selling a number of toys in order to do so. The rest, as they say, is history.

After Mum passed away, I found the folder I knew existed and opened it. There were Mum’s childhood memories. These eventually became a published book An Elford Childhood .

Mum never ventured down the path of supernatural, ghostly or scary stories. Nor did she attempt a crime story – although in her later years especially, crime fiction was by far her preferred genre. She did, however, tell me that she had always enjoyed a good spooky book when she was younger so maybe that’s where I get it from. I also enjoy crime – real or fictional and Agatha Christie was a shared passion of ours.

Mum left me a legacy of a love of reading and writing, history and cats. Wherever she is now, I hope she is enjoying a good book, with a cat purring on her lap, a notebook and pencil by her side and a nice cup of tea.

As for my latest? Well, I hope Mum would approve. There is an awful lot of her in one of my main characters – Vi  – and then of course there’s her hero,Winston Churchill, those secret underground war rooms and…

Eligos is waiting…fulfil your destiny

1941. In the dark days of war-torn London, Violet works in Churchill’s subterranean top secret Cabinet War Rooms, where key decisions that will dictate Britain’s conduct of the war are made. Above, the people of London go about their daily business as best they can, unaware of the life that teems beneath their feet.

Night after night the bombs rain down, yet Violet has far more to fear than air raids. A mysterious man, a room only she can see, memories she can no longer trust, and a best friend who denies their shared past… Something or someone – is targeting her.

Dark Observation is available here:

Flame Tree Press

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Waterstones

Bookshop.org (where you can support your favourite local bookshop)

and at good bookshops everywhere (on the shelf or to order)

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 and novellas.

Her novels include: Dark Observation, In Darkness, Shadows Breathe, The Garden of Bewitchment. The Haunting of Henderson Close, The Devil’s Serenade, The Pendle Curse an Saving Grace Devine.

Her novellas include: 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 appeared in a number of anthologies including Tomes of Terror, One of Us 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

Instagram

Goodreads

Images:

Shutterstock

Nik Keevil and Flame Tree Studio

Author’s own

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

04 Friday Mar 2022

Posted by shehannemoore in Author Interviews, blogging, heroes, heroines, Lists of, New book, Romance, Smugglers, Uncategorized

≈ 97 Comments

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…

Interview With the Cleanser.

10 Tuesday Sep 2019

Posted by shehannemoore in book tour, Romance, Smugglers, villains, writing

≈ 52 Comments

Tags

books, Cornwall, Mystery, New book, O'Roarke's Destiny, Smugglers, Wreckers, writing, Writing tips

 

“Some say the Cleanser is an exciseman gone to the bad…..”

 

The Cleanser – That would be telling.

The Cleanser – That would be telling.

The Cleanser – That would be telling.

The Cleanser – That would be telling. Now, before I get back out there and prove even more terrifying and elusive, as I menace my way through Cornwall on dark and stormy nights, you have one more question. Do try and  make it count and not waste it on fripperies such as am I really that fearsome, am I one of the five,  or does Lyon eat hamsters? Who said what, and didn’t, how fair, or otherwise not, it is? And please do not interrupt. Have you any idea what happens to hamsters who interrupt, especially with more questions?

The Cleanser–Who, amongst you,  will be brave enough to ask this question?

The Cleanser. They are not amongst you. YOU are amongst you. Now ask or face the consequences.

The Cleanser – Dear, little hamsters, why else but to spread a bit of butter on you and have as toast.

 

But I will add that in a world of secrets and smugglers and did I mention unsavoury–not looking at anyone here, although you hamsters do smell a bit-

– wreckers, Shey rather liked the idea of  upping the anti. Who can, for example, resist having a tale of smuggling without the various ingredients? Don’t answer. You are not the ones being interviewed here.

So secret passages, treasure that is the stuff of legend, stormy nights, old houses, ghosts  and of course mythological  figures are all part of that tapestry. Shey thought about how in  Jamaica Inn the heroine does not know who the head of the wreckers is but obviously if her uncle is scared of him, then he must be fearsome because her uncle is that and more–although she used someone who is also the stuff of legend differently.

Things had begun to change for smugglers in the period O’Roarke’s Destiny is set, shall we say? 

Tom Berryman had behaved as if the devil had crossed his path and this one looked to have horns.

 

And let’s remember in this book nothing is what it seems. A little mystery does no harm sometimes.  As a figure the Cleanser does not drive the plot. There’s no need to when everything the leads do arises from the three magic writing words, where they and only they, are concerned, goal, motivation conflict.

Does the Cleanser really exist?  If they do are they one of the O’Roarke five and if so which one? That’s for me to know and you to find now. Now, if you don’t mind I believe I have some vodka to drink and a Cossack dance to  do before I get back to terrorising the locals? Oh and one last thing… my eyes are not flamingos, what they have is a flaming glow….

Releases Friday 13th…it is a book about a curse after all…..

 

 

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

23 Friday Aug 2019

Posted by shehannemoore in book tour, heroes, heroines, New book, Romance, Uncategorized, writing

≈ 61 Comments

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.

 

Meantime In Glencoe…..

29 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by shehannemoore in blogging, Glencoe, Scottish

≈ 116 Comments

Tags

Glencoe, Glencoe Lochan, Glencoe Mountains, Glencoe walks, New book, Smugglers

 

Plenty slainte in Glencoe last few days.
Games of pool played- 4
Games of pool won – 4
Miles walked—- Many
Amount of walks – 4 …
Drink consumed–no telling
Weather– pretty Baltic
Amount of laughs–tons
Bands listened to -1

Surviving in Berlin with Kate Furnivall

29 Thursday Nov 2018

Posted by shehannemoore in Author Interviews, book tour, New book, writing

≈ 64 Comments

Tags

Apple cake, Berlin, Brandenburg gate, Brliliant New Book, Europe after WW2, Kate Furnivall, Location, Location in writing, New book, Refugees, The Survivors, Word War Two

 

 

Kate. Hi there, dudes, it’s great to be with you again. Thank you for inviting me over. I heard from Cat Cavendish and from that Aussie troublemaker Noelle Clark that I should think twice before accepting the invitation because it could be … well … traumatic. But I’m not nervous. Because we have an understanding, don’t we, Bobby Bub? *wink wink*

Okay, you ask what made me pick Germany as the setting for my latest book, The Survivors.

The choice was triggered by what I saw on my television screen night after night – the desperate flight of refugees arriving frightened and exhausted in flimsy boats on the shores of Italy and Greece. It was heart-breaking to watch. It got me thinking about how Europe dealt with the problem of refugees in the past. Have we learned nothing?

It seems not.

I started to delve deeper and became totally engrossed in the story of the millions – yes, millions – of refugees who flooded across Europe at the end of World War 2. Homeless, jobless and starving, many fleeing from Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, it was the biggest mass migration in the history of mankind.

So what did the Allied Military Government do?

They set up camps throughout Germany, just like we do today, to house the refugees. Some were in disused factories or military barracks, some in vast purpose-built enclosures. All had pretty basic facilities. Too often they were dangerous places. But they held out the offer of a dream of a better future.

To me it felt SO relevant to what is happening now and I knew I had found my story – a young mother and her child in one of the Displaced Persons camps in Germany, forced to confront the shadows of her wartime past when a man she knew in Warsaw enters the camp disguised as a refugee.

 Kate : I’m sorry, Bobby Bub, but all the hamsters in the camp were tossed into the stewpot with onions and garlic. Very tasty, apparently. Note to dudes:- steer clear of refugee camps!

 

Kate.

I wish I knew. To be honest, it varies. Sometimes it’s the characters who come to me first, walking into my life as bold as brass. But at other times it is the location that spills into my mind first, seducing me with its beauty or its history. This was particularly true of my last book, The Betrayal, which was set in Paris 1938. All that glamour and decadence. Oh, those delicious hot Parisian nights that I had to research …. I’m looking at you, Bobby Bub.

Kate. – I regard the location in each of my books as a character in the story, with a voice of its own. In The Survivors it’s not just the Displaced Persons camp location, but also the bomb-damaged cities of Berlin and Hanover that play a major role in the twists and turns of the plot.

At one point my main character Klara is taken to a scary prison in East Berlin and when she escapes, all hell lets loose. I loved stalking through the blackened ruins of the city at night with her, aware of its presence looming over her, feeling its breath on her neck. Yes, location for me is a crucial part of my books.

 

Kate.  The Survivors does exactly what it says on the tin – it is about those who endured the war and now have to survive the peace. At its heart lies the question of how far a mother will go to protect her daughter. The answer is to hell and back. Klara, who lost her husband early in the war, is a strong and resourceful young woman whose love for 10 year-old Alicja is absolute and unshakeable. This is what drives the story through its many heart-stopping moments.

Klara and Alicja are incarcerated in the Displaced Persons camp with thousands of others, caught in a twilit existence somewhere between night and day. When the arrogant Oskar Scholtz walks into the camp pretending to be a refugee, she knows he is a threat to her life. But more importantly a threat to her daughter’s life. Because they both know the truth about his Nazi past. Klara decides he has to die, but they begin a dangerous game in which neither can trust the other. Klara is helped by her close friend Davide and by Hanna, the camp’s mighty laundrywoman.

But who will leave the camp alive?

It is a taut and at times tough thriller about love, loyalty and survival. I believe its themes resonate very strongly with the world around us today.

 

Kate.  Berlin is a beautiful city full of parks, bicycles and fun. We’ll have a fab weekend there, Bobby B. I’ll take you first to explore the must-see thrills of the magnificent Brandenburg Gate, the infamous Checkpoint Charlie, the historic remains of the Wall and the Reichstag parliament building, reconstructed by our own British architect Norman Foster. Then we’ll head on down to Hackescher Markt for a spot of Apfelkuchen and beer, and a breeze round its warren of exquisite shops – chocs and leather goods to die for.

But for me the place in Berlin that I love most is right in the heart of the busy city – the awesome Holocaust Memorial designed by Peter Eisenman. It is so moving, it brings me to tears without fail every time I go there. Photographs do not do it justice. It swallows you whole in a maze of tombstones. Utterly brilliant.

In the evening we will enjoy a delicious dinner in the revolving Sphere restaurant at the top of Berlin’s television tower. Not scared of heights, are you, BB? It is 680ft high. Stunning views across the city.

 

After that we’ll hit the nightspots in Friedrichsheim where the bars and clubs rock to live music all night.

I’m packing my case as we speak …

 

Kate..

I certainly do. I am a sucker for German Apfelkuchen … that’s Apple Cake. It’s always moist, spicy and deliciously moreish. Sehr lecker! Here is my fave recipe:-

3 large eggs

300g sugar

250ml vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

300g plain flour

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

600g peeled and finely chopped tart apples, I use Granny Smith

150g chopped pecans

Icing

250g cream cheese

2 tablespoons butter, softened

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon milk

250g icing sugar

 

Instructions

 

1 Preheat oven to 170c degrees. Spray a 9×13-inch pan with cooking spray.

2 In a large bowl, whisk together sugar, eggs, oil, and vanilla extract until completely combined.

3 In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda and salt.

4 Add dry ingredients to wet and stir to combine.

5 Fold in apples and pecans. Pour batter into prepared pan.

6 Bake 50 to 55 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.
Allow to cool.

7 Make frosting. Place cream cheese and butter in a large bowl. Beat with electric mixer until smooth.

8 Add vanilla extract and icing sugar. Beat until smooth.

9 Spread on top of cake. Store leftovers in refrigerator

 

Kate. My next project? I am VERY excited about it. The story is set in France in 1953 – a new era for me – during the escalating nuclear threat of the Cold War. The story takes place in the Camargue, the French region famous for its gorgeous wild white horses and black bulls. The divisions within a family lead it into a sinister web of secrets and lies. Think Soviet spies, think danger, think thrills.

Thank you, dudes, for inviting me over. I really enjoyed catching up again.

Bobby B, you got your passport ready?

*** THE TOP TEN BESTSELLING AUTHOR ***

Directly I saw him, I knew he had to die.’

Germany, 1945. Klara Janowska and her daughter Alicja have walked for weeks to get to Graufeld Displaced Persons camp. In the cramped, dirty, dangerous conditions they, along with 3,200 others, are the lucky ones. They have survived and will do anything to find a way back home.

But when Klara recognises a man in the camp from her past, a deadly game of cat and mouse begins.

He knows exactly what she did during the war to save her daughter.

She knows his real identity.

What will be the price of silence? And will either make it out of the camp alive?

Kate Furnivall had the shock proof of her life when she learned just over a decade ago that she was part Russian. Not a demure all-English rose after all then. It changed her life. Triggered those Russian genes into action. Inspired by her grandmother’s dramatic St Petersburg life-story at the time of the Soviet Revolution, Kate wrote her first historical novel, The Russian Concubine, which hit the New York Times Bestseller list and was sold in 25 countries.It hooked Kate into the thrill of setting powerful emotional stories in dramatic far-off locations. She took to travelling with a vengeance – Russia, China, Malaya, Egypt, Bahamas, Italy, France. All became backdrops for her sweeping tales set in the first half of the 20th century when the world was in turmoil.

Research trips were riddled with wonderful adventures and weird discoveries that enrich her books. She delves into dark themes as well as intense love stories, and strips her characters to the bare bones in times of crisis to see what they are made of. Her books are full of tension, twists and thrills, atmosphere and romance.

Kate was raised in Wales, went to London Uni and worked in advertising in London. She now lives in blissful Devon with her husband, snuggled up close to Agatha Christie’s house for inspiration. She has two sons and a manky cat.

Kate has written ten historical novels, two of which have been shortlisted for the RNA Historical Novel of the Year Award.

 

Do Writers Need Playlists?

29 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by shehannemoore in book tour, heroes, heroines, Romance, writing

≈ 72 Comments

Tags

Music to wrtie by, New book, Playlist, Playlist for O'Roarke's Destiny, Romance, writing

Shehanne. Well….

 

Shehanne.. Oh, you mean that one?  ‘Why I needed a playlist for this book and it is so ceaselessly whining too?

Shehanne – Well, first of  all it’s not the only whining things round here.

Shehanne – You know? I couldn’t agree more. I guess you just can’t help whining anyway even though there’s a few upbeat ones there. I mean obviously I chose Shut Up and  Dance because the heroine is called Destiny. Oh and did i say, it is something I wish you’d do?   You can get your little hamster rocks and socks off to that one. Then there’s some specially chosen, wonderfully atmospheric classical, largely because they are ones I play–Lachrymosa the Thalberg version–and I am certain it would be nothing for you to learn those.

By next week.

 

Look, this book was originally called The Lady Of Lavistock and it was a nice little rainbows and unicorns effort.  She’s in the house. He wins the house. She comes with it in a rainbows and unicorns kind of way.

It’s all fine till the day he announces he’s getting married to someone else. The problems were there even then, because to open the story at the point of change, would have meant starting with his announcement, not with her losing the house. But the real problems started, seeing as you are so kindly asking, 

 when the hero threw the book at the end of the first section in chapter two, as my heroes often do.

 he said. It was the first I knew. But hey do I ever argue?

I mean it’s not like I plot, or I might plot to get rid of you lot.

So? Where were we? Well, he also didn’t want to be called Manning Carver and he was most certainly NOT for being some fancy-ancy rich self-made Regency business-man.   ‘With a heroine called Destiny Rhodes, you need to bin the rainbows and unicorns and Lavistock shit and think far bigger and far darker,’ he said. ‘What you have in terms of motivating these characters to do what they do, has more holes than a colander. It’s wishy-washy.’

Every writer works differently but  I found a playlist helpful because, with the exception of the house premise, what I am now about to knock into shape, was kind of flown by the proverbial seat of my pants. 

is not quite what I sort of originally saw.

Maybe one of these days….

In the meantime I chose the versions I like of these songs. Songs that reflect two people who are more afraid of  clinging to the cliff face, than they are to let it go. It’s not failing to survive that scares them.

You know, sometimes that can be a lot scarier than it seems.

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interview with Kate Furnivall and some dudes

06 Monday Nov 2017

Posted by shehannemoore in Author Interviews, blogging, book tour, writing

≈ 138 Comments

Tags

Josephine Baker, Kate Furnivall, New book, Paris, The Betrayal

 

‘Hi there, Dudes, I am honoured and excited to be here.’

image2

replacement 6

 

zmed ere

zsilvrat

zmed revKate. Well, BB, you know I go weak at the knees at the sight of that handsome phizog of yours.

 

and the infamous green hat. I used to hate green, my least favourite colour, it reminded me of school cabbage. But now it reminds me of your dashing self and I insist on wearing nothing but green these days. You are of course my fave dude but don’t tell Silv, will you? She’s a touchy little madam.

Kate. Elope? What happened to the big fancy wedding you promised to that Russian wench? Olga or Polga or Smolga or some such. And the gingerbread house? I must have a beautiful gingerbread house, you know. A fancy one. No skinflint stuff, my Bobbikins.

 

Kate. You are as sharp as a tack, BB. You got it in one! I just love that enchanting city. If it’s Paris you are planning on eloping to, then that’s a whole different ballgame. I am packing my bag as we speak. It’s true I have a huge fondness for Italy – and for Italian signori – and have set two of my books there, but Paris is the place I would choose for romance every time. It is the beautiful City of Love. La Ville de l’Amour.

 

Kate. Well now, that depends on how much time we have, mon ami,

but here are some must-sees. First, Montmartre. It’s my fave place in all Paris, the old artists’ arrondissement. With narrow cobbled streets climbing up to the breathtaking icing-sugar (frosting) white Basilica of Sacré Coeur,

which always puts me in mind of the Taj Mahal. And not far down the hill lies the ooh-là-là notoriously naughty Moulin Rouge cabaret on Boulevard de Clichy.

The dancing galz and their feathers are going to knock your little green socks off, BB.

Then we’ll head south to the stunning rose windows of Notre Dame Cathedral and the Impressionist Musée D’Orsay. And after an amble along the romantic quais, we can take a trip by moonlight on the Bateau Mouche on the Seine or head over for French 75 cocktails à deux at Le Fouquet’s on the Champs Elysées. I tell you, Bobby Bub, this is the start of a beautiful friendship.

ztinerb

Kate. My new book is called The Betrayal and it does what it says on the tin. Two sisters. Conspirators. Murderers. Betrayers.

But … are they? There are so many twists and turns, and nothing is what it seems. The action takes place against the gorgeous backdrop of Paris 1938 with the nightclubs playing crazy jazz and the drums of war sounding in the distance.

Even the real-life shocking danceuse, Josephine Baker, puts in an appearance.

The city is on edge, a wildness is in the air. My story is of twin sisters, Romy and Florence, who are hiding a terrible secret that tears them apart. My desire to write about this subject came from the fact that I am a twin myself and wanted to explore how that incredibly intense relationship can draw two people together against their will, bound by blood, even when they are driven apart by violent events.

Being a twin is strange. It creates a bubble around the two of you and isolates you from the rest of the world. Yet I know from my own experience of being a twin how different your ideas and ambitions can be despite the closeness. Romaine and Florence come at the world from opposing viewpoints, just as my sister and I did. At times this creates distance between them. But always the bond holds firm and the love – that is as much a part of them as the colour of their eyes – never falters. But the terrible secret about their father’s murder stretches their loyalty to breaking point.

I have to say here and now that it was seeing all the shenanigans that go on around your gingerbread house week after week that inspired me for much of the mayhem that takes place in The Betrayal.

Broken limbs, a fire, damaged documents and even an attempt at world domination. Exactly like Dudeland. Okay, no moss monster but there’s a really nasty character who comes close. Tragically, no hamsters. They’d soon be gobbled up by the rats that creep up from the Paris sewers at night.

Kate.  Romy and Florence are very different. Romy is a daredevil, a reckless pilot who flies aircraft to the left-wing Republicans in the Spanish civil war. She fights against Fascism, but she leads a dissolute life, using drink, gambling and men to help her forget the day that she woke up in her father’s study with him dead at her feet and his blood on her hands.

She has no memory of what happened that day. In contrast, her twin sister Florence is an elegant socialite in a position of power and privilege. She is married to a diplomat who works with the Germans to destroy the very people whom Romy is fighting to help. To save Romy’s slender neck from the guillotine, the sisters put the blame for their father’s murder on an innocent gardener, but their lies come back to haunt them.

Kate. My nice French recipe is to get you in the mood. It’s for a Soixante Quinze! A French 75! This lemon-hued cocktail is insanely good and was very fashionable in the 1920s. So grab your shaker. It is named ‘French 75’ because taking a sip of it feels like getting shelled by a French 75mm field gun. Aah, la vie est belle!

Ingredients

2oz champagne

½ oz lemon juice

1oz gin

2 dashes simple syrup

Lemon twist

Method

Add gin, champagne and syrup to a cocktail shaker filled with ice, shaking as hot-hot-hot as Tom Cruise to combine. Strain into an iced champagne glass. Top with more chilled champagne and a twist of lemon. Voilà!

 

 

Kate. My next book is The Truth. It is about lies. The lies people tell and the truth that is hidden in the dark places behind them. I am very excited about this one. This time I’m in Germany 1945. What a terrible chaotic period that was. The war was over and the Allies were trying to put the country back together again. A time of desperation but also of huge hope for the future. My character Klara is trapped with her young daughter in one of the Displaced Persons camps. Needless to say, danger stalks the camp and …. My lips are sealed!

Thank you for having me, Bobby Bub. It’s been a blast. I’ve got our Eurostar tickets to Paris in my hot little hand …..

 

 

zmedbb1777

katey 1

katebooks

Kate Furnivall had the shock proof of her life when she learned just over a decade ago that she was part Russian. Not a demure all-English rose after all then. It changed her life. Triggered those Russian genes into action. Inspired by her grandmother’s dramatic St Petersburg life-story at the time of the Soviet Revolution, Kate wrote her first historical novel, The Russian Concubine, which hit the New York Times Bestseller list and was sold in 25 countries.It hooked Kate into the thrill of setting powerful emotional stories in dramatic far-off locations. She took to travelling with a vengeance – Russia, China, Malaya, Egypt, Bahamas, Italy, France. All became backdrops for her sweeping tales set in the first half of the 20th century when the world was in turmoil.

Research trips were riddled with wonderful adventures and weird discoveries that enrich her books. She delves into dark themes as well as intense love stories, and strips her characters to the bare bones in times of crisis to see what they are made of. Her books are full of tension, twists and thrills, atmosphere and romance.

Kate was raised in Wales, went to London Uni and worked in advertising in London. She now lives in blissful Devon with her husband, snuggled up close to Agatha Christie’s house for inspiration. She has two sons and a manky cat.

Kate has written ten historical novels, two of which have been shortlisted for the RNA Historical Novel of the Year Award.

http://www.facebook.com/KateFurnivallAuthor

http://bit.ly/2yzPGJk

 

Could you kill someone? Someone you love?

Paris, 1938. Twin sisters are divided by fierce loyalties and by a terrible secret. The drums of war are beating and France is poised, ready to fall. One sister is an aviatrix, the other is a socialite and they both have something to prove and something to hide.
The Betrayal is an unforgettably powerful, epic story of love, loss and the long shadow of war.

Have you ever heard of the Hellfire Club? The Lot of Women in Georgian England-reblog

21 Sunday May 2017

Posted by shehannemoore in blogging, book tour, heroes, heroines, Romance, time travel, writing

≈ 54 Comments

Tags

Barry Lyndon, Christy Birmingham, Frances Wright, Georgian England, Lady Mary Bowes, Marraige in Georgian England, New book, Poetic parfait, poetry, Shehanne Moore, The Writer and the Rake, time travellers, Women

 

Quote about Women

Have You Heard of the Hellfire Club? The Lot of Women in Georgian England (Guest Post) Shehanne Moore

155 Replies

Here with me today is historical romance author Shehanne Moore. We go back a ways, Shey and I, so when I heard about her new book The Writer and the Rake, I asked her to come visit the blog. She kindly agreed to write a guest post, and, wow, she has provided quite a read about Georgian England, women, and the writing process. Now, let’s give Shehanne Moore the stage.

►►►►►

Let’s be clear here, this is not a paean of praise to Francis Dashwood’s exclusive club for high society rakes.  When meetings often included mock rituals, items of a pornographic nature, much drinking, wenching and banqueting, what kind of a person do you think I am? And while the hero of my latest book has every selfish reason to appear enlightened about women, he has a point. Women were not able to walk into a tavern and drink in these days, the way they do now. In fact, a woman’s lot in 1765 was one to die for and not as we have come to know that term either.

Firstly, let me thank this very special woman, Christy Birmingham, for asking me, a romance author, to her blog today.  It’s a great pleasure to be here and to know Christy, one of the most supportive women I know, a tremendous poet and an intelligent advocate for us ladies.  My home town, Dundee, gave the U.S. Fanny Wright, lecturer, writer, freethinker, feminist, abolitionist, and social reformer, born here in 1795.

From Dundee to the U.S., Meet Francis Wright

Where the lot of Georgian women was concerned it’s a pity she hadn’t been born a bit earlier and hadn’t been lost to across the pond.

My idea in writing this book was to take Brittany, a young woman from today’s world and have her flit between Georgian England and the present day. You know ,I even thought how nice, gracious  and sedate that Jane Austenish world would be, that within hours of arriving, she’d be so calmed by the green-fielded pleasantry and ladies in rustic bonnets everywhere,  she’d fall totally in love with this charming world. DUH.  What is it they say about the best laid plans? The more I looked into this alien galaxy and the lot of women, the clashier, not classier, this became. And not just between my hero and heroine either. What was interesting was the things I had to go to bat for re this book.

The hero is a rake but before anyone thinks too badly of him, a lot of upper crust men from that era were because most society marriages were arranged. Sometimes affection grew but not for my hero, whose shy, awkward, naïve, young wife, he was railroaded into marrying at sixteen,  hated him on sight, so he joined the ranks of men who went elsewhere. At least he didn’t force the issue which he would have been perfectly within his rights to do.

If, as a woman, you think you would have been free to say no, or choose your spouse, think again. You and your belongings, all these nice shoes, bags, books, everything in fact you thought were yours, were, in fact,  your hubby’s. Take the case of rich heiress, Lady Mary Bowes, an ancestor of Queen Elizabeth 2nd, and the subject of The Luck of Barry Lyndon, by Thackeray. Her second husband kidnapped her, beat, gagged and carried her around the countryside  on horseback, in winter, all to stop her divorcing him and keep his hands on her fortune.

And to think my editor initially complained after my hero, at the end of his tether and really not understanding  why my heroine wouldn’t do what he asked regarding the servants, stuck her under a water pump.

Talking servants, Mary Bowes escaped only with the help of loyal ones.  The initially sympathetic public were affronted to learn of her affair with her lawyer’s brother and felt she was quite wrong not to hand her money over to her abusive, swindling, husband.

Interestingly, that was another editorial clash where no questions were raised over my hero but some shock was expressed that my heroine had  a history of getting drunk in the present day and went with random men.

So, that’s marriage. Next up? Childbirth. In Georgian England, public opinion was against contraception within marriage.  Romance writers Google all sorts –ahem—let’s face it, these things have to be looked after.

And, I understand sheep’s intestines were all the rage for prevention. Soaked in water, of course, for an hour beforehand and torture to get on. Small wonder my hero quite welcomed the contents of my heroine’s bag. Childbirth was one of the most dangerous threats to a woman’s health and life. Up to 20% of women died during or after childbirth. Small wonder too my heroine wants back to her time.

Childbirth wasn’t the only killer. Noblewomen—and we are talking noblewomen here, although the lot of a poor woman was as bad in different ways— noblewomen caught diseases passed on from their husband’s prostitutes. They suffered barbaric ‘bleedings’ during pregnancies, developed lead poisoning from their make up, indeed as my heroine  Brittany thinks–

Author Quote from The Writer and the Rake

The Lot of Georgian Women. Quote by Shehanne Moore.

And before anyone thinks their lives were frivolous in their smelly gowns—wash day once a month, baths very seldom—their powdered wigs it took hours to arrange, the lady of the house was tasked with running that same house, of getting up early to instruct the servants on their daily duties and supervise the kitchen, because the servants were mostly illiterate and couldn’t write things down, meal choices, polishing,  etc. before sitting down to breakfast at eleven. My heroine thinks the eleven bit is quite civilized but that’s it.

So I think we get the picture that a Georgian lady’s lot was anything but happy.  Live in that time? Thank you. No. As for whether Brittany finds anything to recommend it, you’d have to ask her.

►►►►►

Extract from The Writer and The Rake

“While it might not pay to underestimate this man, what if this morning was an aberration? Now that he saw how domestic she was, he’d go away again and drop this nonsense about instructing the servants. In what way? If she wrote Regency romance, she might know but she didn’t and frankly she’d other things to consider. Besides she couldn’t. If she was successful he wouldn’t need her.She slipped her gaze back, bestowed her kindest smile on the young man opposite. Mitchell Killgower took another sip of brandy.

“God-fearing, you say?”

“It is what one of us, I can’t remember if it was you, or me, or even Fleming here, told Christian. Or maybe, she told us. But, obviously it is a condition that prevents me from giving too many orders. And frankly I feel it solves everything.”

“Do you?”

“Do I what? Darling, I’m sorry I don’t know what you’re on about.”

“The fact that this condition solves everything.”

She kept her gaze firmly on the wool. Her hands winding it too. Mitchell Killgower sounded quite happy for him. Satisfied as he nursed his drink.

“Yes.”

“So as conditions go, it does not prevent you from sitting on your backside?”

“You know, I almost think you’re taken with my backside, the amount of times you mention it.”

“Sometimes your thoughts fail to come remotely close to what I’m really thinking. To do that you’d have to fully think.”

She smothered a grimace. “Oh, I think all right.”

He set the glass down as if he’d made up his mind. She hoped it was to let her win this battle.

“Good, then you’ll have no trouble coming with me, seeing as you’re so God-fearing, Brittany. After all, a God-fearing wife obeys her husband.”

“Well, they must be several sandwiches short of the proverbial picnic. Anyway.” She stopped winding the ball of wool, tilted her chin. “I didn’t think God-fearing wives were your cup of tea, or that you expected a woman to obey you? Except in certain places.”

The Writer and the Rake Book Blurb

Is having it all enough when it’s all you’ll ever have?

When it comes to doing it all, hard coated ‘wild child’ writer, Brittany Carter ticks every box. Having it all is a different thing though, what with her need to thwart an ex fiancé, and herself transported from the present to Georgian times. But then, so long as she can find her way back to her world of fame, and promised fortune, what’s there to worry about?

He saw her coming. If he’d known her effect he’d have walked away.

Georgian bad boy Mitchell Killgower is at the center of an inheritance dispute and he needs Brittany as his obedient, country mouse wife. Or rather he needs her like a hole in the head. In and out of his bed he’s never known a woman like her. A woman who can disappear and reappear like her either.

And when his coolly contained anarchist, who is anything but, learns how to return to her world and stay there, will having it all be enough, or does she underestimate him…and herself?

►►►►►

Thanks for being here today, Shehanne! I have my copy of The Writer and the Rake and hope you pick up a copy too. Get The Writer and the Rake at Amazon US | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK

You can also find Shehanne Moore on social media at Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.

Find out more at her self-titled Weebly site and follow her Smexy Historical Romance blog too!

Now back to reading and writing here,

♥ Christy

Splendor. (London Jewel Thieves.) Shehanne Moore Chapter One

19 Friday May 2017

Posted by shehannemoore in book tour, heroes, heroines, Romance

≈ 78 Comments

Tags

Etopia Press, London Jewe Thieves, New book, Regency, Romance, Shehanne Moore, Splendor, Starkadder Sisterhood

 

 

Splendor CHAPTER ONE

https://www.booksandbenches.com/single-post/2017/05/23/SPLENDOR-Shehanne-Moore

London 1810

There was nothing wrong with pistols at seven paces at dawn. Except dawn was at eight o’clock tomorrow, and Splendor had a dressmaker’s appointment then. Three thimbles and the scissors had smacked into the back of the Chinese dressing screen the last time she’d wandered in ten minutes late. Madame Renare had said these were meant for her assistant, that paying customers, even those who were behind with their bills, were sacrosanct. Splendor knew she lied, that Lady Haskins, who always had the next appointment, would depart wearing Splendor’s guts for garters if she were late again. And if she didn’t bring the money to pay her the bill.

Despite the pulse beating in her throat and her desire for the black-and-white checkered floor she stood upon to open up and swallow her, she’d promised Gabe there was nothing to this. She wouldn’t do anything to draw attention to herself, wouldn’t be found out. Yet just five minutes in this damnable tournament and look at what had happened. Every dull clod-pate in the room was looking at her, glaring holes in her loose fitting jacket—Gabe’s—as she stood there. The grandfather clock in the nearby alcove appeared to be holding its breath midtick, the potted palms to have frozen. The silence stretched from window to window, slipped between the heavy crimson drapes, wound around the yellow tassels, hung from the poles, all the way to the entry salon on the ground floor of Boodle’s Gentleman’s Club.

Worse than being found out, she was going to be shot at dawn. Or rather, eight o’clock.

Checkmate. If she’d known that one word was going to cause all this trouble, would she have said it?

The spectacles she wore, which did not belong to her, rendered her blinder than a belfry of bats. Nonetheless, she removed her gaze from the shining silver buttons on the waistcoat of the man who stood before her and looked straight at his face.

Young, handsome, divorced, the third Earl of Stillmore was a rake, a killer in every way, in the bedroom and on the chessboard. Or so her sources had said. Impatient, foul tempered, drunk, and a conniving fiddler was more accurate.

“My second, Your Grace?” she asked, speaking in carefully lowered tones as if duels were things she was challenged to fight every day of life. Challenged by the best shot in London too.

“Yes, boy,” Kendall Winterborne, the third Earl of Stillmore, snarled. “Your second. Who’s it to be?”

“Well… I… Well. You see, Your Grace… About that. I was really hoping that you and I might—”

“Oh, hang it all to hell and back. Chasens!”

His terse huff was followed by a terser finger snap. Please God, not another brandy to add to the lake the drunken earl had already drowned himself in.

The man standing behind him, a blur in black, snapped to attention. “Yes, sah.”

“You might as well fetch me some paper and ink to go along with that snifter. Then I can pen my autobiography while I’m waiting.”

Gabe’s warm breath brushed her cheek as he stepped up behind her. “Come on, Splen. Leave now while you still can. His nibs gets wind of the fact you belong next door, in the ladies tournament—”

“Where the prize money is less?” She fought the little ripple that always spun in her blood when Gabe brushed against her. “Nine-and-a-half thousand pounds less, to be precise? Gabriel, I can’t.”

“I ain’t needing to be bought into the clergy.”

“Well, I ain’t needing to go on as we are. Besides, he’s drunk.”

A voice cut across the hall. “Would someone mind telling me what the devil is going on at table number seven?”

Her heart almost sprung through the bindings around her chest. The tournament organizer, the Duke of Brampton. While she couldn’t see him for the spectacles, she instantly recognized the cultured tones of the elderly man who’d been so nice to her earlier. “Well? Kendall, why has play stopped? Surely you have not fallen out with your opponent?”

Gabe’s hand snatched at her sleeve, crushed her arm. “Splen… I mean it. Ten thousand pounds ain’t no bleedin’ good if you ain’t around to spend it. ‘Cos you know where you’re headed next, if they find you out, don’t you? And I ain’t talking the cemetery.”

She knew indeed. The place Starkadder had taken her out of. Prison. Her gaze froze behind her spectacle lenses. Even now, despite the thick fug of cigar smoke clouding the high ornate ceiling, that festering stink of prison, of centuries-old dirt, lay loose as a winding sheet on her skin. Gabe was right. Besides, the money was no good if tomorrow was the lateness to end all latenesses.

“Very well.” She caught his bony wrist. “Let’s go.”

“Excuse me.” The Duke of Brampton, blurry in purple and blue, a powdered wig on his head, squeezed between the tables. “Now then, Kendall, everyone is looking. Sufficient to say, yet again it is at you. Be a good fellow and sit down, won’t you?”

The duke pressed his be-ringed hand on Stillmore’s black-brocaded chest and pushed him down into his chair.

She hesitated. She’d thought everyone was looking at her. But if Stillmore was known for being looked at, perhaps they weren’t looking at her at all. Perhaps she could wait one more moment and see…? She didn’t just need that ten thousand pounds to get Gabe bought into the clergy. She needed it to pay off Madame Renare—without Gabe finding out. If he found out about her dressmaking bills, he’d kill her.

“Splen…”

“Shh.”

“But—”

Win the prize money. Clear her account with Madame Renare. Buy Gabe with his soft dark hair and soulful eyes into the clergy. Marry him. Benefit the poor. Live happily ever after. Stop spending money like water.

This, as her dear papa always said, wasn’t over till it was done. Stillmore could bluster all he wanted about duels. When it came to it, she’d beaten him fair and square, and that was all he could have on her.

Stillmore’s chair clattered to the checkered floor. “No, I don’t mind if I don’t. I abhor sitting down.” Crystal clinked on the silver tray floating in her vision. “Especially in the presence of cheats.”

“Well, that’s a great pity.” The Duke of Brampton’s voice was silky smooth. “But perhaps you haven’t noticed this is a chess tournament? In love, in war, challenging a man is all very well. But surely even you can see it’s not the done thing to go around shooting your opponents in a chess tournament?”

“When they cheat, I damn well will.”

“Oh, for God’s sake man, have you any idea of how unreasonable that makes you sound?”

“Not half as much as you telling me, me, who’s won this damned thing three years in a row, that I’ve just been beaten in five minutes in the first round by some nincompoop schoolboy in britches. Some…some jackass turkey just out of the nursery?”

Won this thing three years in a row? If this was the standard, she could dispense with any doubts that she’d not win. She just needed to dispose of the arrogant, drunken earl. Or rather, leave the Duke of Brampton to do it for her.

Never let it be said that this was anything her humble position in Lanthorne Street—at Starkadder’s and the Sisterhood of London Jewel Thieves’ beck and call—hadn’t prepared her  for. When she’d served as the Sisterhood’s skivvy, she’d burned holes in petticoats, cinderized the odd stocking or two, and suffered sundry pots, pans, and ladles bouncing off her temples. But she never forgot one thing: to remove the sting from the situation, even if humiliation burned in the very pit of her breast, she must always smile.lockt

She flicked a stray strand of her strawberry blonde hair back behind her ear. “And what, pray tell, would be the purpose of me cheating, exactly, Your Grace? Hmm?”

“Ten thousand bloody pounds. That’s what.”

The growl froze her smile to her teeth backs.

“Anyway, I didn’t say you cheated. I said there has been some…”

He stepped closer, and her heartbeat froze. A heady concoction of mint, brandy, and sandalwood tickled her nose.

“Some…”

She’d glanced over her spectacle rims. When she’d sworn not to. She held her breath right down in the furthest corner of her lungs. In fact, she possibly held it in her stomach. Tousled black hair, black brows knitted with perfect disdain above coal-black eyes that were coldly leveled on her, sinfully sensuous lips and a dusting of stubble on his jaw gave him a wolfish air. Her heart battered her rib cage with metal hammers, his stare was so bold.

He canted his jaw, drawing his brows together. “Some discrepancy…of play. Forgive me for saying so, but…”

His words hung in the air as he stared at her. Her jacket hadn’t burst so that her breasts hung out, had it? “Your Grace,” she said, darting her gaze back behind the safety of the thick lenses. “I don’t forgive you anything. Certainly not you looking…” Down her front? Looking more handsome than any man she’d ever seen? “Saying… Saying I’ve cheated you. It was bishop to that square, and you…well, you…”

Stillmore wrinkled his nose and sniffed deliberately.

Her soap. Essence of Violets. She froze. How, in all the preparations she’d undertaken at Mrs. Hanney’s, had she forgotten that one vital thing? Perhaps she should have kept her mouth shut and let the Duke of Brampton deal with this after all.

“For goodness’ sake, Kendall, sit down, now, before you fall. Or you’ll leave me with no choice but to throw you out.” The duke set the spindle chair back on the tiles. “Everyone here knows you’re foxed over that business with Baxby.”

“Baxby?” Crystal shattered as the stem of the snifter in Stillmore’s hand snapped in two.

Baxby, whoever he was, apparently inflamed the earl almost as much as being checkmated.

There was nothing to be done about that now. It was Gabe’s dearest dream to become a clergyman, and it was down to her to see he succeeded. Then there was the little matter of the dressmaking bill. That was down to her too. Benefiting the poor was all very well. But sometimes, to do so you had to look the part. Spend in order to receive. Papa had always said so, although he had liked to spend money he didn’t have, as well.

If the earl shot her tomorrow at Blackfield Heath, it would certainly solve her bill problems, though.

“You think this is about Baxby?” Once again, the earl’s voice held notes of the darkest modulation. “That it’s of any consequence to me that the sneaky, damn, bastard son-of-a-whore is here? Dancing on my grave?”

“We’re hardly in the cemetery. But yes. Baxby. And a certain lady with whom you are the talk of London, my boy. So if you want to continue making a damned fool of yourself…”

“I’m not your boy unless my mother was as big a whore as that certain lady. And even if I were your boy, do you think familial loyalty would stop me from calling you out for that?”

Splendor froze. Did the earl descend from wolves? Growling, trigger-happy, pistol-toting ones who thought nothing of calling half the hall out at dawn? What if he shot the Duke of Brampton? Perhaps Gabe was right, and they should leave now.

The earl drained the contents of his glass down his lace-clad throat. “If you must know, this has nothing whatsoever to do with Baxby and Lady Langley.”

“Well, then, if it isn’t, you will see that this boy here—”

“This boy? This boy? Oh, that’s a good one. This boy.”

Splendor’s heart hammered as if a boa constrictor had slithered across the polished floorboards, climbed her leg, and wrapped itself around her rib cage. At all costs she couldn’t afford to sink to the floor. Imagine the sensation it would cause if she did and someone loosened her, or rather Gabe’s shirt?

In another minute the Earl of Stillmore would succumb to the pleasant, manly smile she cast him. If he didn’t, she’d have to accuse him of cheating.

The Duke of Brampton shifted beside her and looked at the chessboard. “Kendall, from where I’m standing the last move was this bishop to that square there—”

“I don’t give a bull’s toss whether the last move was the Archbishop of Canterbury to that square there. The Archbishops of York and Durham too. Every damned archbishop in the country to that square. I know what I saw. Exactly what I saw.” The earl turned to her and pointed a finger at her chest. “Now boy, find yourself a second. And be on Blackfield Heath at eight. Don’t waste time with a physician; by the time I’ve finished with you, you’ll need an undertaker.”

BLURB

He hates to lose. Especially to a man who’s not.

One move to win ten thousand guineas in a chess competition. One move to marry her fiancé.  Another to face the most merciless man in London across a pair of duelling pistols.  For Splendor, former skivvy to the London’s premiere jewel thieves, it’s all in a day’s work. But when one wrong move leads to another, can she win and keep her heart intact, against the one man in London with the potential to bring her down? Especially in a chess game where the new wager is ten thousand guineas against one night with her.

The Endgame to end all Endgames

One move to pay back his ex-mistress. One move to show the world he doesn’t give a damn he’s been beaten in every way. The ton’s most ruthless heartbreaker, bitter, divorcee,  Kendall Winterborne, Earl of Stillmore’s, pet hates are kitchen maids, marriage and losing.  Knowing Splendor has entered a male chess competition under false pretences, he’s in the perfect position to extort her help, regardless of the fact she’s engaged to someone else.  He just doesn’t bank on having to face up to his pet hates.  Certainly not over the kind of skivvy who ruined his father and set him on this course.

As one move leads to another, one thing’s for certain though. His next move better be fast if he wants to keep the ‘Cinderella’ he’s fallen for. But the clock is ticking. When it strikes twelve, which man will she choose?

 

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