The Inspiration for Kindred Spirits at Harling Hall

The Inspiration for Kindred Spirits at Harling Hall

Almost two years ago, a visit to the beautiful village of Cockington in Devon, with its old forge and thatched cottages, made me wonder what it would be like to live in a place thatseemed to belong to another time. The idea for my new series, set in a living history...
Lavender marriages in the Hollywood Golden Age

Lavender marriages in the Hollywood Golden Age

In the 1930s, Cary Grant lived with actor, Randolph Scott. Initially they shared a small home in Beverly Hills and later, they moved to a beachside house in Santa Monica where guests including Noel Coward and Errol Flynn. Grant and Scott lived together, on and off,...
The inspiration behind The Last Mrs Sinclair

The inspiration behind The Last Mrs Sinclair

The idea for The Last Mrs Sinclair came, as novels often do, from a combination of different inspirations. In early 2024, I was reading articles about how some younger women, disillusioned with the promises of feminism, had decided to abandon their careers and their...
Your Guide to Regency Slang with Emma Orchard

Your Guide to Regency Slang with Emma Orchard

One of the most enjoyable things, for me, about writing Regency romance is the dialogue. It’s so incredible rich and flexible, and conveys such a lot. A character can easily use several different registers in the same chapter – my hero will speak in one way to his friends, another to his servants, and yet another to the heroine. Women and men employ different words; British English isn’t like that any more, though other languages are. There are strict rules and social conventions governing vocabulary, and who can say what to whom, but the great thing about rules is the pleasure to be had in breaking them. And they can be surprisingly useful in advancing the plot. In one of my novels, the heroine reveals that she’s involved in a scandalous relationship with the hero just by using his first name carelessly, even though what she actually says is completely innocent.