In the course of my research for my novel The Echoes of Love I researched Venetian history in detail. I was especially interested in the people of Venice – and given the city’s respected artistic and academic tradition, there are so many impressive figures to learn about. One that really
As the O’Jays eloquently put it in their 1970s disco song: ‘I love music.’ And though I’m not sure I can stretch so far as to agree that I love ‘any kind of music’, I certainly love many types! Which makes interweaving music into the books I write an essential
A must-read for anyone who loves The Phantom of the Opera… Having been a keen ballerina in my youth, and ever since a regular visitor to the ballet, I was at once attracted to a romance in which the heroine is a dancer. And as soon as I began reading,
Authors are often, by nature, solitary sorts. We have to be in order to carry out the work of writing – many hours alone in our own fantasy world. Recently, I blogged on ‘The lonely writer’, and I included the opinion of writer Isaac Asimov: Writing is a lonely job.
Music is a great source of inspiration to me, whether classical or modern, and in any language. I have a huge repertoire of songs from all over the world that I listen to while doing my research and it helps me create the initial atmosphere for my story. For Burning
Here are the answers to the coffee quiz. How did you do? 1. What is the origin of the word ‘mocha’? c) A seaport in Yemen from which coffee is shipped. 2. What is espresso? c) A way of preparing coffee. 3. What are the ingredients of an Americano? a)
Italians love coffee: fact. Most drink it as if it were water, and to be an Italian who does not partake is to be something of an outsider. I am a coffee lover – what writer isn’t! We need it to feed and energise the muse. So when researching and
Back when I published my first novel, Burning Embers, I wrote a post in which I analysed how the manuscript broke down in terms of word and phrase frequency. I was keen to do the same for my new novel, The Echoes of Love, to see how the two compare.
I’m delighted to share a clipping from today’s Sun newspaper, in which The Echoes of Love is featured alongside some great romantic reads as a top romance novel.
No doubt you’ve come across biscotti in your local coffee house – crunchy, dry almond Italian biscuits that are ideal for dunking into a cappuccino. Indeed, I so love the combination that I gave the heroine of my novel The Echoes of Love, Venetia, a daily habit: each morning she
The perfect film for me because it includes: a) Beautiful scenery – this is the kind of film you’ll watch over and over for the escapism factor. b) Writing – I love creative heroines, and I identify with Frances’s need to get away in order to find her muse again.
When I first visited Tuscany I fell in love. So much so that when I was writing The Echoes of Love, whose action opens in Venice, Italy, I knew there was only one place I could situate the hero’s country retreat: Tuscany, the perfect backdrop for romance. The Tuscan landscape
From the blurb: A wedding guest from her past… After a rocky year, Casey Caravetta pulls herself together and puts on a smile for her best friend’s Christmas Eve wedding. However, she hadn’t expected to see Turner Kennedy, the first man to break her heart. Special Forces commando Turner is
When I say ‘a writer writing’ to you, what image flits into your mind? You may see a person bashing away at a typewriter, or scrawling frenetically in a notebook, or staring vacantly into space surrounded by balled-up sheets of paper, or glaring at a blinking cursor on an empty
John Ruskin (1819–1900) was a man of many passions: an art critic, a patron, a draughtsman, a painter, a philanthropist and a reformer. And he was a man who loved, loved Venice. He channeled all his admiration into a three-volume collection of essays on Venetian art and architecture entitled The
Here’s a wonderful book for anyone who, like me, is fascinated by Venice’s rich literary history. I especially loved the walking tours outlined in the book – a wonderful way to explore the city. From the blurb: Venice has always attracted an extraordinary range of writers – pious and impious,
My latest novel, Legacy, is set in Cadiz, a city in Andalucía that is almost entirely surrounded by sea. This is the view from my heroine Luna’s home at dusk: The port of Puerto de Santa María glowed in the distance, accompanied by the steadfast wink of the lighthouse. Fishing
This month, I’m having a FAN-tastic Fiesta, to celebrate the launch of my Andalucían Nights trilogy in a special, all-in-one edition. The award-winning epic Andalucían Nights Trilogy sweeps the reader from the wild landscapes of Spain in the 1950s, through a history of dangerous liaisons and revenge dramas, to a
Back in the nineteenth century, readers – men and women alike – began to discover and enjoy fiction by new novelists Currer Bell, Ellis Bell, Acton Bell and George Eliot. Male writers, you may well have assumed, but in fact these were the pen names of the Brontë sisters and
Earlier this week, I was hunting in my files for a photograph when it struck me just how many images I was browsing through. Since I began blogging here back in September 2011, I have built quite the picture library! When I write on this blog about the settings for
In my latest novel, Legacy, the love story begins when the hero and heroine cross paths in Barcelona. I very much enjoyed setting the scene in this colourful, lively city, especially because it is chock-full of works by one of my favourite architects, Antoni Gaudí. Gaudí was a Spanish architect
There is so much that drew me to the Spanish region of Andalucía when it came time to choose a setting for my romantic trilogy. But given that core themes in the trilogy are roots and legacies, the rich history of the Andalucía was a big attraction. Andalucía is steeped
She’s the one: Five reasons I write in the third person ‘I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously revived, great and
Here’s a little quiz question for you: Which bird features in my novel Burning Embers, set in Kenya, and my novel Indiscretion, set in Spain? No doubt the photograph has given away the answer! Yes, it is the flamingo. In Burning Embers, the heroine Coral takes a balloon ride over
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