Extra Type: Author Notes

The descriptions for most of these short stories are unchanged from their original pitch to the editor. I sent her seventeen one-sentence ideas and she flagged the ones she liked the most.

For this one, the stand-in was meant to be a footman. By the time I wrote it, I was looking further afield (pun-intended) for my settings and trying to bring more personality to my characters than ‘an earl.’

This brought me to Cornwall and an interest in antiquities, which was prevalent at the time. I made the potential stand-in the estate manager because I wanted him to have some standing in his own right. He doesn’t have to have sex with his boss’s wife. He wants to. Very much so.

I then had to think about why a man would want to watch another man make love to his wife. That sent me down a rabbit hole of erectile disfunction throughout history. Spoiler alert: Society was not kind to men suffering impotence. It was one of the few grounds for divorce and there were public trials. Another spoiler: physicians were not very competent in treating things like mumps.

That’s why Henry and Lucretia proposition David. For his reaction, you’ll have to read the story. Enjoy!

I was given free-rein when writing Aphrodite in Bloom. The only directive was to have ‘something for everyone.’

By the time I got to this one, I had already written couples and thruples and lots of lofty society. Where could I go except a wild party in a country house?

I remember submitting this one and calling it ‘straight up bonkers.’ I was pretty sure it would be rejected, but the editor loved it.

In terms of romance, it’s pretty light, but if you like spice? Brace yourself, Bridget.

Trio of Love was originally titled Bosom Chums, because it begins with a very close friendship between two women.

When it came time to write, I decided to exclude John’s point of view to highlight the intimacy between the women, but also because juggling three points of view is difficult, especially in such a short story.

I suppose I could have cut some details around the visit to Bath, but I adored that setting. I hope you enjoy the well-researched details on how people ‘took the waters’ there.

Have fun!

One of the most intriguing parts for me in writing historical fiction is the examination of a woman’s agency.

Marriage was the primary means a woman had for survival. I found it infinitely fascinating to examine how they might settle into something that worked, but was not very fulfilling–and then how they might turn things around to ensure it was.

This story is one path, where Clara marries a very safe friend fully knowing she will likely never give him a child. If she outlives him, and doesn’t produce an heir, she’ll have nothing. Her husband is equally trying to live as full a life as current society allows, but he has his own unfulfilled desires.

They reveal themselves in small moments and the very powerful duke takes advantage of that. It’s a gamble to accept his proposition, but they do.

And, because this is historical romance, the enjoy a wonderful Happily Ever After. Enjoy!

I wrote this one in a fever-pitch–as a pitch and from a pitch.

My agent pitched me on writing historical erotic short stories, the editor provided the prompt of ‘a young virgin receives a gift’ and I ran with it.

I wish I’d kept my research notes better organized. They’re all over the place, but I learned my lesson and was more careful with the second collection.

For instance, I did not keep the attribution for the article on ‘chalking’ the dance floor, but once I’d read that detail, I was compelled to include it.

Enjoy!

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I knew this book would link to Business-deal Bride, and that it would tell the story of the thrown-over Mira finding her true love. I knew she’d had a brief encounter with her father’s sworn enemy, but I didn’t know what that entailed until I dug into this story.

I love a story about someone finding their birth family, but in Mira’s case, she didn’t even know her father wasn’t her biological father. When she finds out, it’s in the most cruel way possible. (The man who raised her is a vile piece of dirt.)

Rocco is beyond delicious. I loved that he tried not to get involved, but his attraction to Mira was impossible to resist. Then he winds up in an impossible situation–obsessed with her while locked into a promise to keep the secret that his friend and mentor happens to be her birth father. Cue all the angst!

Of course there is passion and fireworks, then more fireworks when the truth comes out, but they do find an HEA. I hope you enjoy following along on their journey to get there.

I wrote this in my pre-published days. Harlequin rejected it and so did some other publishers, so I shelved it and moved on. 

It has sat on my hard drive for so long that the characters referenced using a PDA—Personal Digital Assistant. That’s how we were referring to smartphones back then. 

When I was talking to a writer friend about resurrecting old manuscripts, I remembered this one. I dug it up,  reread it, and even though I can see why it wasn’t picked up by publishers, I still liked it. 

I gave it a light edit. My daughter said I should have left those PDA’s in there, but I turned them into phones. I tweaked a few things, but this is largely as I wrote it nearly twenty years ago. 

And, since I was preparing to open my bookshop, I thought this would be a fun snapshot for my superfans who might be interested in my earliest writing. I hope you enjoy it.

P.S. The original title was His Majesty’s Inappropriate Mistress–is there an appropriate one?–but the shorter title looked better on the cover.

Even short stories require a lot of research. Some of the topics I read up on for The Rubber Match were: 

• Balloon fetish
• History of balloons
• Chemistry of balloons 
• The international rubber market 1870-1930
• Trade in the Amazon river basin
• Rubber barons and tree theft
• Pink dolphins and manatees
• History of the condom
• History of Goa, Goan migration
• Port of Manaus
• Turtle and other food
• The aviador trading system (overcharging tappers for supplies so they were in perpetual debt)
• Para seeds
• Ethnic cultures of Rio Negro
• Why ammonia is added to liquid latex
• Seringuero vs. Seringueiro (Spanish spelling vs. Portuguese)   

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Even short stories require a lot of research. Some of the topics I read up on for That Tickles! were: 

• Auckland 1840-1920
• Bricklaying and brickmakers
• History of transgender culture in New Zealand
• Baking lime
• Women in labour (jobs, not birth)
• Femmephobia in the queer community
• Tickle play and tickling as a fetish 

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Even short stories require a lot of research. Some of the topics I read up on for Temptress With a Teapot were: 

• Cheating fetish
• Homewrecker kink
• The concept of the ‘Other Woman’
• Congress of Berlin
• Two-tier diplomacy
• The birth of modern Berlin
• The Grand Tour
• Embassy of the UK in Berlin
• Reforming fashion
• The glass ceiling in diplomacy – how women were restricted, but men with wives advanced
• History of diplomacy

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