I’ve decided that once every month or so I’ll post about my work(s) in progress. Don’t ask me which Wednesday it will be, or even if it will be every month. I can’t commit to being that organized or consistent with this blog (or much else in my life, it seems), but I am trying!

And I am very excited about all of the great romances I’ve got in progress right now. These past two years have been the most fun I’ve ever had, in terms of really enjoying the writing and editing process. It is great to be at a point where some of those stories I’ve been working on are starting to be published. It is wonderful to hear from readers and know others are enjoying them too.

To those of you who have taken the time to leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads, and/or who have posted a review of Saving Grace on your blogs or websites–a heartfelt thank you! Aside from the additional readers that reviews generate, it is the most gratifying reward for an author to learn that someone loved her story. It’s the motivation to keep plugging away, when a current work-in-progress has one pulling out her hair or otherwise feeling frustrated.

Next up for publication is a novella ( a longish one–very rarely do I write anything short) titled Loving Helen. It’s a companion to Saving Grace, and is the story of Grace’s younger sister Helen.

Helen’s story has been particularly enjoyable to work on because it takes place during the same time as Grace’s and includes some of the same scenes from Saving Grace, from a different (before unseen) point of view. The novella continues to the end of Grace’s story–and beyond. Already knowing the characters and bringing back favorites for their happy endings has been such a fun process, much like revisiting old friends and discovering new secrets about them.

I can’t wait for readers to enjoy it as well. To that end, here is the gorgeous cover and a few paragraphs from the very beginning of the story. Hope you enjoy.                 Publication date: February 9, 2015.

Chapter One                                                                                                               Yorkshire England, October 1827

Helen Thatcher gathered the voluminous skirts of her satin gown and tiptoed across the small foyer. Stopping outside the double doors that led to the sitting room of Mr. Preston’s guesthouse, she peered through the crack between the doors and spied her lady’s maid, Miranda, busily folding linens at the table. Like this room that filled so many purposes—they visited, dined, read, and sewed here—her maid had taken to doing many tasks outside her usual duties as well. Helen wished it might be otherwise, though it did seem that both her servants, Miranda and Harrison, were happier here than they had been since her grandfather, the late Duke of Salisbury, had died and the new duke summarily dismissed them from his residence.

We might all have stayed and continued on in comfort. The guilty thought plagued Helen, as it had every day the past several months. Had she only accepted the new duke’s proposal, she and her siblings, Grace and Christopher, along with Miranda and Harrison would still be at the grand estate, with everything they needed, even everything they desired, at their disposal.

Yet because I did not desire it, we’ve become little more than penniless outcasts.

Because of her cowardice and refusal to marry her distant cousin, Grandfather’s heir, her sister had been forced to meet with suitors of their father’s choosing, each of whom proved to be wretched, lecherous men. Until the last, Mr. Samuel Preston, had surprised Grace with genuine friendship and a concern that extended beyond her welfare to that of her siblings and servants. But by then Grace had taken drastic action, and her reputation had been ruined, by a most unfortunate middle-of-the-night mix up in the bedroom of Lord Nicholas Sutherland, Mr. Preston’s closest neighbor and former brother-in-law.

Even then, amidst the worst of circumstances, Grace had been concerned for her siblings. And so Mr. Preston had arranged for the four of them—Christopher and Helen, and their servants Miranda and Harrison—to reside at his guest house, until the matter of their inheritance was favorably settled.

Would that I had a shred of Grace’s courage or selflessness, Helen thought, frustrated with herself yet again. She smoothed the front of her gown, knowing that what she was about to undertake, while a small step, was going to require at least one of those valiant qualities. She desperately hoped she possessed courage somewhere.