Extra Type: Author Notes

In October of 2025, I decided to attend a live book signing, my first in years.

If I had realized it would turn into a four night trip–through my inability to do travel math–I might have made a different decision. As it was, I had a sixteen hour drive both ways.

The signing itself was amazing. Ten out of ten. But the real gift of the whole endeavour was the book that turned into Greek’s Dirty Little Secret.

This book downloaded itself into my head while I drove. And drove. And drove. I saw the scuba scene (!) and heard the dialogue and felt their anger at each other and their frustration with themselves as they tried to resist each other. (And failed.)

When I got home, I was in the middle of a different Harlequin book that was due in December. I finished it early, sent it off, then wrote this book in four short weeks, submitting it a full three and a half months early.

This never happens for me! But Apollo and Sonja had a story to tell and now it’s yours to enjoy. I hope you love them as much as I do!

In the chaos of Christmas 2024, I happened to be visiting with my sister’s mother-in-law. She was telling us about some interviews she had done for her town’s history, interviewing Italian brides who had been married by proxy.

You see, back in the mid-1900’s, women couldn’t travel on their own. The town had a lot of men who had come to find work, but they wanted women from the Old Country. Sometimes the marriages were arranged. In other cases, they were childhood friends or at least known from their home village. A male relative would stand in for the groom, who remained in Canada, and marry the bride ‘by proxy.’

As a romance novelist, I. WAS. FASCINATED. I immediately knew I would have to figure out a story where a couple was married by proxy.

And so I did. Poor Spiro wakes up from a coma to discover he is married–very legally married–to Alia. His brother had good intentions, but Spiro is not impressed.

From there, things go off in typical Harlequin Presents shenanigans. I hope you love it!

When I first conceived (pun intended) this story, I thought Jade would be Canadian. For various reasons, that didn’t pan out, but I knew that her backstory involved a terrible (married!) father who had only offered her financial support and very begrudgingly. For him, everything is transactional.

The other thing I knew I wanted to write was a wedding interrupted by the hero, so I had a lot of questions to answer for myself: How did Jade get pregnant by him? Why didn’t she tell him? Why is she marrying someone else? How does Luca discover that she’s pregnant, that the baby is likely his, and that she is about to marry someone else?

Answering all of those questions got me through the first third of the book. From there, I had to figure out why they don’t trust each other. See above about Jade’s horrible father, but Luca has some darkness in his past that has him convinced he doesn’t deserve happiness.

Of course they find it, but I’ll leave it to you to read the book and discover their journey to HEA for yourself. Enjoy!

After I had turned in twelve stories for this collection, we realized there wasn’t an M/M pairing. I knew immediately that this final story of *thirteen–a baker’s dozen, if you will–would have to star a baker.

Hugh appeared and he was grumpy. He’d been in the army, was barely scraping by, and had been scorned by his previous lover. Baking was a difficult business in those days, barely allowing a living. It forced a man to sweat at the ovens all day so picture Nicolas Cage in Moonstruck. Sweaty and dirty and brimming with resentment.

Kip is the youngest son of the local gentry. He’s a poet and very privileged, but tied to a family who doesn’t understand him at all. He’ll settle for an affair, but he longs to be in love–and very quickly falls for Hugh.

I adore these two and hope you do, too!

*Fun Fact: We later cut one story that wasn’t working so the final collection was only twelve. Best laid plans of mice and writers…

This is another one where I went, Welp, this might cross some lines…

I was curious about the lives of courtesans, though. Napoleon had made brothels and sex work legal so prostitutes were prevalent, but courtesans had a higher place in society. They accumulated wealth, whether it was by becoming a mistress to a rich man or blackmailing their lovers with their own love letters.

Courtesans might not be formally educated, but they were intellectual and often hosted literary salons and attended plays and operas. They were celebrities, setting fashion trends and offering beauty secrets and–this will shock you–had governance over their own lives.

Yes! This collection of erotic stories that descend, at times, into debauchery, does have a theme.

Enjoy your evening of cards.

I first wrote this story as an M/F romance and it was cute. The characters were both virgins who learn about lovemaking in a tender, but clumsy joining. Like the rest of the stories in this collection, Annabelle was taking control of her life, starting with agency over her body and molding her own future.

I liked it and so did my editor, but when I realized the collection lacked a F/F pairing, I decided to rewrite it.

It’s infinitely more interesting with a woman as a highwayman, but if you’re curious about the original version, reach out to me. I’m thinking of making it available exclusively on my shop.

Enjoy!

This one is not the most spicy or romance-heavy of the collection, but I was tasked with writing something for everyone and Octavia slowly realizes, without having a word for it, that she is asexual.

I loved the idea of exploring how a woman would make her way in the world if she had no wish to marry. She tries to fit in with society’s dictates, but it’s not for her. Fortunately, she has her wildly popular ointment, which affords her an income.

Captain Paine is struggling in his own way, without many prospects and no desire to marry, either. Not a woman, anyway. He’s gay.

The ointment idea came about when I realized that people would have used olive oil and the like for lube. What truly entertained me was having Octavia put hemp oil in her concoction. THC, to be exact. Her ointment becomes wildly popular and she is completely oblivious as to why. The whole village loves it and this sets her on a journey of independence–in partnership with Captain Paine.

If you read this one for nothing else, please please read it for the advertisements at the end. I am ridiculously proud of them.

As mentioned in the notes for One Night as a Woman, I grew enamoured with the style of writing an alternate title that was an early type of meta-data. In this case, it’s:

Or,

A True and Honest Exchange of Letters
Recounting the Night of Pleasure

Between a Nobleman
and the Woman He Employed
as His Daughter’s Chaperone

By the time I started writing this exchange of love letters, I’d read or seen referenced so many erotic works written before and during the Regency era. It’s a lovely fantasy to believe everyone was a prude back then, but the people were as debauched as any time before or since and I think that’s what I loved most about writing this collection–showing that.

Anyway, that’s what prompted this exchange of bawdy letters between a married couple. He has a secret library full of erotic literature (let’s call it what it was: a private browsing history.) She found it and reacted in the best way he could imagine.

Enjoy!

This is another one that came from a hastily brainstormed premise, one that turned into one of my favorite stories in this collection. I love how Leigh reveals herself and the tender way Ulysses treats her.

Of course, I also had to go down some rabbit holes on secret societies. The remark about frigging into collection plates came straight from one of the rumoured initiation rituals.

I reference in passing, but didn’t fully spotlight the pamphlet with the delightfully lengthy title of Onania: Or, the Heinous Sin of Self-pollution, and All Its Frightful Consequences, in Both Sexes, Considered, with Spiritual and Physical Advice to Those who Have Already Injur’d Themselves by this Abominable Practice. To which is Subjoin’d, A Letter from a Lady to the Author, (very Curious) Concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage-Bed, with the Author’s Answer.

When you get to Love Letters with a Governess, you’ll see that I lifted this style of having an alternate title with an excess of meta data. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

This idea came from my then agent when we were discussing the offer. She said something like “Play to the fantasy of an older woman with five children getting railed by a well-hung stableboy.”

So I did. I made the heroine the wife of the vicar for an added taboo element.

Winnifred does not want to get pregnant, however. The gossip alone would have killed her, but she also had five mouths to feed and her husband had humiliated her by running off to be with the mother of his second family.

I wound up doing some deep dives into early contraception, the production, use and availability of early condoms, and the dangerous use of pennyroyal. I even took a hilarious side trip through the ‘female predicament’ of menstruation how it was managed.

Mostly, however, like the rest of the stories in this collection, it’s about a woman taking her destiny into her own hands–which includes getting railed by a well-hung stableboy. I hope you enjoy it as much as she does 🙂