Novels

The Captain and the Baker – preorder now!

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Our seventh Captivating Captains novel is published on 25th August by Pride Publishing. Preorder from Amazon and all other ebook retailers. Available in ebook, paperback and KU.

When a hot-tempered TV chef and a mild-mannered baker meet on the rugged Cornish coast, they’ve got the perfect ingredients for a red-hot snack.

Sweary and stressed celebrity chef Jake Brantham is the captain of several floating restaurants. When he’s sent to the idyllic village of Porthavel to turn a pirate ship into the next gastronomic sensation, it’s the last place on earth he wants to be.

Locryn Trevorrow is the bakery king of Cornwall. From the humble pasty to a wedding cake fit for a mermaid queen, there’s nothing he doesn’t know about the art of baking. He lives in a cosy world of gingham and ganache, but at night he goes home to his smugglers’ cottage alone.

When he’s adopted by a lost kitten, Jake soon discovers that there’s more to Portavel than cream teas, lobster pots, and the annoyingly fastidious Locryn. As the village prepares for the wedding of its favourite young couple, Jake and Locryn find themselves as unlikely matchmakers for two locals who’d given up on love.

Torn between the call of Hollywood and the kisses of Locryn, will Jake choose a mansion in Beverly Hills or a cottage on the Cornish coast?

Excerpt

Jake, immaculate in his chef whites but his hair just ruffled enough to look careless, tried to smile into the television camera.

There wasn’t much to smile about because, although the set of Saturday Breakfast was more than familiar to him, he hadn’t had to share it with Locryn Trevorrow before.

Locryn, as sugary sweet as the cakes and delicacies he baked, was as far as it was possible to be from Jake, a chef who’d made a name for himself swearing on the telly while cooking. As he had watched Locryn across the studio that morning, all smiles and sunshine and please and thank you and how marvelous, he couldn’t imagine the man had ever sworn in his life. He’d probably draw the line at fiddlesticks.

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Podcasts

The Mermaids in Room 423

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Join us as we talk about our romantic thrillers The Colour of Mermaids and The Man in Room 423. We’ll talk, plotting, pacing and the inspiration behind our genre-hopping. And as ever, there’s something emerging from the inkwell, and a lot of fizz in our gin.

You can listen to us on Anchor.fm, iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Castbox, Overcast, Breaker, RadioPublic and Pocket Casts. Other platforms are available!

Gin & Gentlemen is now an enhanced podcast on some apps.

Be Our Guest/Interviews

Interview: Beth D. Carter

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Today, Beth D Carter is visiting the blog to tell us about her latest release, Come with Me, the first part in her new series.

How long have you been writing? Can you tell us a bit about your journey to publication?

I’ve been writing my whole life, I think. I started reading my mother’s Harlequin Presents when I was about 10 or 11, and wrote my first romance at 14…long hand in a spiral notebook. Never thought I’d actually be a published author. When ebook publishing exploded, I was able to hope and dream. I sent my first book, Black Leather Pants, to four publishers and one accepted. That was 2009 and eleven years later I have almost eighty published works.

Wow, that’s impressive! What do you enjoy about writing romance?

I love that there’s always a happy ever after. That you can come home from a hard, stressful day and relax with a good story that takes your mind off the buttholes you had to face.

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Interviews

Interview: Josie Bonham

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Today debut author Josie Bonham has called for tea, scones and a natter about her first novel, A Good Match for the Major.

Hi ladies. Thank you for inviting me.

How long have you been writing? Can you tell us a bit about your journey to publication?

I’ve always dabbled in writing. I have several part-written novels tucked away in notebooks and computer files. My sister persuaded me to do a Futurelearn creative writing course with her which set me wondering if I could write seriously. When my eldest niece sat down and wrote a fantasy novel, it spurred me on to give this itch to write some serious attention. I happened to come across the Romantic Novelist’s Association, was lucky enough to grab a place on the New Writers’ Scheme and haven’t looked back.

What do you enjoy about writing Regency romance?

My main genre is Regency romance but I also enjoy crime. I’m writing a contemporary cosy crime with my sister at the moment. Or at least I’ve left her writing a section whilst I work on my Regency series. It’s no surprise that a certain amount of romantic suspense always seems to creep into my stories,

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Be Our Guest/Interviews

Interview: Vanessa Robertson

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It’s publication day for Vanessa Robertson’s second novel, and the first in her Kate Carpenter series – Don’t Blink. Vanessa popped by the blog to tell us more.

How long have you been writing? Can you tell us a bit about your journey to publication?

I’ve written since I was a child – I had a blue Silverette portable typewriter which I loved. Took it seriously too – I might have been ten but I made carbons of my work in case I wanted to submit to publishers! As I got older, I realised that being a writer wasn’t a thing that people actually did – or so I thought – and I stopped writing. When I was in my twenties and early thirties I didn’t know what to write.

After years in the book trade, we sold our bookshop and I finally had time to write and – crucially – knew enough about the business to feel confident that there was a market for what I wanted to write. The rise of indie writers and faster-paced digital-first publishers also meant that I felt less constricted by genre.

I entered Bloody Scotland’s Pitch Perfect event—not a singing event, fortunately—and pitched the idea for what was to become my first book, Death Will Find Me, a crime novel set in 1920s Edinburgh with a heroine who was a former spy and the only suspect when her estranged husband was murdered. I was one of the winners, picked by a panel of agents and publishers, and that gave me the confidence to keep writing.

In early 2019, Death Will Find Me was published, and although that’s a world I want to get back to very soon, I was also having fun writing a series that had been brewing for years and so Don’t Blink, the first of the Kate Carpenter thrillers will be out in May. I’ve also released a short novella, Vanishing Point, to introduce Kate to readers and that’s available free via my website as well as to purchase. The second full-length book, Trace Evidence, will be out in a few months and I’m currently writing the third.

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Interviews

Interview: Angela Addams

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Say hello to author Angela Addams who’s visiting the blog today. Her latest novel, Wicked Disclosure, is out now.

How long have you been writing? Can you tell us a bit about your journey to publication?

Oh, I’ve been writing since I was a kid. I have “novels” that I wrote when I was six or seven, complete with pictures. They weren’t very good. But for some reason I was committed to writing stories and I’ve been lucky enough to have quite a few of them published. I started writing for publication when I was on maternity leave with my daughter about thirteen years ago. I spent at least eight months writing an urban fantasy, paranormal romance mashup that ended up getting me my first agent. It never got published but it was the start of my publishing journey. I ended up selling my first few books to a small micro press which was my gateway to other publishers. It’s taken a whole lot of perseverance and thick skin over the years. There’s so much rejection to tackle when you’re trying to get published for the first time and it doesn’t stop after that. You have to be okay with the let downs that happen and not let those things keep you down. I’m passionate about telling stories and I wouldn’t be able to stop writing even if I wanted to, trust me, I’ve tried over the years.

What genres do you write in, and what do you enjoy about them?

I write in a few different genres. Paranormal/Urban Fantasy Romance, Contemporary Erotic Romance and YA Thrillers and Fantasy/Magic Realism. I try to be versatile because that gives me more opportunity to explore my strengths as a writer. It helps me learn new things with each project and it keeps me from getting bored. I enjoy writing, period. Creating new worlds, developing interesting characters, getting the voice just right in a project, it’s all stuff I enjoy doing. I do not enjoy outlining, at all, but I do it because it helps hugely to know what my plot beats are before I start. I’ve learned over the years that if I don’t outline, I’ll get stuck midway through Act 2 and that’s never a good thing.

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Novels

The Man in Room 423 – out today!

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This one is all about the suspense element, it’s all about the plot with the romance between Ben and Lizzie flawlessly riding alongside, which makes for a perfect and undoubtedly epic love story with a twist. – Chicks, Rogues and Scandals

Published today by Totally Bound. Available in paperback and ebook from Amazon and other retailers.

In a heady cocktail of passion and poison, who can you really trust?

When Lizzie Aspinall and her sister meet for cocktails in a high-rise bar, the last thing she’s expecting is to spend the night in the arms of the nameless man in room 423. As a one-night stand with a stranger turns into a steamy affair with a dedicated detective, Lizzie finds herself in the sights of a stalker.

Ben Finneran has spent ten years pursuing a ruthless serial killer who poisons victims at random before disappearing into the shadows. He wants to believe that the attraction he and Lizzie share is just physical, but when they find themselves falling for each other, is Ben unwittingly leading a murderer straight to her door?

Pursued by the past and threatened by the present, who can Lizzie and Ben really trust?

Excerpt

Lizzie saw him in the light of his uncurtained hotel window. He leant one hand casually against the pane, looking back at her across the dark December street.

She watched him over the rim of her glass. Office Christmas parties were loud in the bar around her, but she was barely aware of them. All she could see was the man at the window, immaculate in a dark-coloured suit, the white of his shirt as crisp as frost.

“Earth to Lizzie. Come in, Lizzie!” Long, coral pink acrylic nails snapped in front of her eyes and Donna set down two glasses of a bright red cocktail, a cherry bobbing on the surface like a drowning man. “You need a crowbar to get served in here tonight!”

She wasn’t going to tell Donna about the man in the window. She wanted him for herself, so that she could pass through what remained of this evening with her sister in the knowledge that she and she alone had seen him.

And that he had seen her.

The interested glance of a stranger.

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Podcasts

Captivating Captains and Dishevelled Dukes

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Join Catherine and Eleanor as they welcome dashing captains and a dishevelled duke to their stable. Meet an airline captain in a tropical paradise and a former soldier with a surprising new job on Downing Street, not to mention a saucy oarsman making waves in a village  with more than its share of secrets. And if that’s not enough, there’s a magical Valentine’s in London too!

Find out what’s emerging from the inkwell this week, and discover who’s putting the fizz in the Curzon and Harkstead gin. Only on Gin & Gentlemen!

This is now an enhanced podcast, depending on your podcast app.

You can listen to us on Anchor.fm, iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Castbox, Overcast, Breaker, RadioPublic and Pocket Casts. Other platforms are available!

Interviews

Interview: Rebecca Cohen

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Rebecca Cohen dropped by the blog to tell us about her latest release, her historical m/m novel James, Earl of Crofton.

How long have you been writing? Can you tell us a bit about your journey to publication?

I wrote a lot in my teenage years, but going to university changed that as I went off to study science. A couple of degrees later, and after starting a career in my area of expertise, I was bit by the bug to write again. I felt something lacking and that was my creative storyteller wanting to get in on the action. So after several iterations I wrote what was to become my first novel (published in 2011). Servitude was a high fantasy mm romance, which is currently out of print having parted ways with my old publishers (Dreamspinner), but will return at some point. My first historical came along in 2012, what was meant to be a short novella to get a brain itch out of my system, became a full-length novel. That book was The Actor and the Earl and it spawned two more in the same series and two spin off series, with several more stories still to come.

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