March 1 signals the end of an (book) era for me. A finale for this Regency romance series, and another step on this self-publishing journey. It has been about seven years that I’ve been thinking about these characters, this family–this world. It all started because of Lydia, my lady boxer from A Lady’s Revenge. In that book, there’s a clash between mother and daughter. At the time I wrote it, I was a thirty-something without kids. But as I wrote, I realized there was more to that relationship. That a mother would have to be very understanding to deal with Lydia’s rebellions.

By the time I wrote The Boxer and the Blacksmith, I was a new mother, fighting with myself and incredibly powerful emotions of love and need with my baby. Now? I’m the mother of a six-year-old, and I’m starting to tell the lore of our family, watching as my kid takes the parts he can understand, and creating a story surrounding himself. His place in the world. How he came to be. And I’ve also buried the last of a generation on my father’s side, and unearthing the stories of how I came to be. All the small histories that no one ever bothered to mention to me as a child–or, that I was unable to hear or understand.

A Lady’s Resilience is the story of Lydia and James’s mothers. Two sisters, both beautiful in their own ways, enough to catch the eye of a powerful man. But they are both strong enough to resist and recover from a world that wishes to crush them. Emma, Lydia’s mother, goes to New York during the American Revolution. Jane, James’s mother, is forced to stay with an abusive man in London, without the support of her sister.

In the Seinfeldian tradition, what part is the “yadda yadda yadda?”

What makes this the hardest book I’ve ever written was trying to encompass decades of life. At the start of the novel, Jane is sixteen years old, wide-eyed, strong-willed, and cosseted. By the end of the novel, she is in her fifties, powerful in her own right. Showing this transition, and the life and heartache that happens in between, was a challenge. Which parts do you show? Which parts are summarized?

I hope you enjoy this finale. It is both a prequel and an explanation and its own standalone historical romance. It’s the reason for so much strife in the previous books, despite Jane and Emma’s best efforts. Without further ado…A Lady’s Resilience. Out March 1st.

Love Makes Us Desperate

In 1780, the young Queen Charlotte hosts a ball for her birthday. Jane Laurent has not been to a ball because at age sixteen, she isn’t ready. Raised in the country, Jane appointed herself apprentice to a midwife—a calling she wants to pursue. But the family traipses into London so Jane’s older sister Emma can land herself a lord. The family celebrates when lovely Emma catches the eye of the handsome viscount Andrepont. But the night of the engagement ball, dependable Emma runs away with a soldier instead. The family panics and pushes Jane forward to fulfill the marriage contract with the older and oddly unsettling Lord Andrepont. How bad could he be that pragmatic, reliable Emma ran away?

Vasily Nikolaevich Kuznetsov is a man with a past, but at least its far away. Meeting up with Gareth Somerset in a seedy gambling hell outside of Paris was the best thing that could have ever happened to him. Aimless, he follows Gareth to London where he helps his friend win the girl of his dreams, and vows to keep an eye on her while Gareth is deployed to the colonies. But when Gareth’s wife joins her husband in the colonies, and Vasya hears the younger sister is marrying Andrepont, a monster well-known to the seedy underbelly of London, Vasya takes a position as a groom in the lord’s household to protect the sister-in-law of his friend.

Years pass, and Vasya watches Jane grow into the formidable and beautiful Lady Andrepont. He can only love from afar, but there isn’t anything he wouldn’t do for her. And when it comes to murder, Vasya has the experience and the moral flexibility to help…

Available at your favorite retailers:

Edie Cay (my own store, digital only)

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