Work

I have just enjoyed a good three-day book promotion for the first book in my Regency series: The Duke’s Undoing, which I offered as a free e-book for the duration. It was exciting to see it rise to the following heights: #4 in the top 100 Kindle Free Books, #1 in Historical Romance, #2 in Romance. Heady feeling! There were 30,000 downloads of the Duke, so he is now well known in Regency romance circles.

Due to a decision by Amazon to actively promote it, Rescuing Rosalind has broken all of my sales records, and pulled my other Regencies with it! Thank you, Amazon!

I began writing my next Alex and Briggie mystery four weeks ago, and concluded last week that it just wasn’t going to happen. I still love my characters, but I don’t love writing mysteries. Regencies make people happy. They make me happy. They roll off my fingertips. So I am thirty pages into my newest Regency, a sequel to Rescuing Rosalind: Lord Trowbridge’s Angel. Featuring Sophie Edwards, the youngest sister in the Edwards family, it is promising to be my most substantive Regency to date. Sophie has a lovely face and form, is a talented violinist, but, alas, she is cursed with a limp. Thus, she cannot dance, horseback ride, or even go for a walk for pleasure. How is such a young woman to go about in society? We will see.

Family

While Rescuing Rosalind was in the hands of my editor, I enjoyed a great vacation in California with my daughter’s family. I saw Jack play basketball, read to Micah every children’s book about “excabators,” and got to know 6 month old Nathan.  Those grandchildren stole my heart away and now we are looking forward with great anticipation to their arrival for the whole month of July. Our newest grandchild (another boy) will be born to our eldest son and his wife that month, as well, so July will be action-packed. We are prepared! We have bought bunk beds, a crib, and a tent. If all goes well, Sophie will be  with my editor, Susan Gottfried, by then.

Play

We are also looking forward to our yearly trip to Florence in October. We can’t wait to see our dear friends, Elisabetta, Cosimo, and Adriana. David has a new camera. Tuscany and Florence eagerly await his lens. I am busily reading in my Rick Steve’s travel guide all the places we have missed on our last four trips. I wonder how anyone ever sees everything there is to see in Florence, not to mention Tuscany.