Hurry, your last chance to win....

...free downloads of Brief Encounters!

Don't forget there are three free downloads of Brief Encounters to be won over at the Brief Encounters blog.  All you have to do post a comment about a brief encounter that you may have had. It might be with someone famous, a funny incident, something sad, something romantic - anything goes as long as it's memorable!  Just post before midnight GMT on 22nd May to have a chance to win :0)

Brief Encounters available now

It's here!

Brief Encounters - a sparkling new anthology of six romantic short stories - is available now.   Sweet and sexy, contemporary and historical, the collection has something for everyone.

The emphasis with these short stories is very much on FUN :0)  They were fun to develop (over coffee and cake - see below), fun to write (cue many hilarious email exchanges between the three authors!) and fun to watch come together with the help of an on-line poll to choose the cover.

My first story, Miss Pattingham Requests, opens with Gyles Beaufort receiving a request to visit Kensington, something the broodingly handsome Gyles has no desire to do because he's in the middle of a desperate search ....

In The Virtuous Courtesan, we pay another visit to that magical place for romance, Rookery End.  A prequel to the original Midsummer Eve collection, The Virtuous Courtesan is the story of just how Lord and Lady Allingham met ;0)  I got the original idea after chatting with a friend, a conversation which took place in that most beautiful of Regency settings, the Pump Room at Bath.  Very appropriate!

The other four Brief Encounters tales are by my friends, Nell Dixon, who writes warm-hearted contemporary romances, and Phillipa Ashley, who writes lively, sexy and fun romantic fiction. Together we call ourselves the Coffee Crew and we meet regularly to drink coffee, eat cakes and talk about writing.

Brief Encounters is perfect if you need a quick fix of romantic fiction during your coffee or lunch break, or to wind down with in the evening - either way, we hope you’ll love them!!

You can buy the ebook of Brief Encounters from Amazon UK or Amazon US.  Other formats and paperback coming soon.   Visit the Brief Encounters blog to find out more and for the chance to win a free copy :0)

Shugborough Estate

Recently I paid a return visit to Shugborough, ancestral seat of the Earls of Lichfield.  There was no time for looking at the Mansion House, Servants' Quarters or Farm on this occasion (I'm planning another visit later in the year), but I did manage a tour of the walled garden and parkland and thought I'd share some photos :0)

Shugborough is a rarity, a complete working historic estate.  Thomas Anson, MP for Lichfield and created Viscount Anson & Baron Soberton in 1806, was the architect of large scale developments at the estate.

Thomas had married Anne-Margaret Coke, daughter of the great agriculturist Thomas Coke of Holkham.  Coke's drive and ambition obviously rubbed off on his son-in-law and Viscount Anson recruited Samuel Wyatt to create a self-sufficient working estate to rival the best in the country.

The result was the development of a walled garden, a model farmstead, an extended and improved mansion house and a number of classically designed labourers' cottages.

The walled garden, originally designed and built in 1806, was sited half a mile from the mansion house so that it did not restrict the view from the house.

The revolutionary brick walls were hollow inside and contained intermittent furnaces which sent hot air around the garden to produce a mild micro-climate for more tender plants, vegetables and fruit. The impressive head gardener's house (see above), series of bothies (structures which provided accommodation for young unmarried gardeners), stores and workshops were constructed along the north wall.  From the head gardeners house, a large heated greenhouse extended towards the central plunge pool.  Plunge pools (seen in the centre of the picture below) were believed to have been used as dipping pools allowing gardeners to water their crops with rainwater.   Further greenhouses were erected either side of the house along the north wall and you can still see the gable markings of these greenhouses today in the photo. 

 

By 1809, there were at least twenty gardeners employed in the gardens, earning between 5 and 13 shillings a year.  It's almost certain that the Lord Anson Blue Pea was grown in the walled garden.  This lovely bluish purple variety of sweet pea was introduced to Britain by Thomas Anson's (1695-1773) sea-faring brother George.  It was found in the Straits of Magellan in 1744 and adapted well to the British climate.  I've grown it myself and it's a beautiful variety.

William Pitt (in his Topographical History of Staffordshire) described the gardens in 1817 as having:

 '...very extensive ranges of hothouse, in which pine-apples, the grape, peach, the fig and other varieties of hothouse frtuits, flowers ad plants, are cultivated in the highest perfection.  One of the hot-houses is heated with steam, in which melons and cucumbers are produced in perfection at all seasons.'



Just a little bit more on this post about one of the parkland monuments at Shugborough.

The Tower of the Winds (1765)

          

The Tower of the Winds (see left) was completed in 1765 and is based on the Temple of the Winds in Athens.  It was reached by bridges to the porches over a surrounding lake.  Downstairs was once used as a dairy and the 1st Viscount Anson supposedly used the upstairs as a gambling den!

Upper floor, looking back towards the spiral staircase

Ornate ceiling, based on Nero's Golden House in Rome

 

Midsummer Eve at Rookery End - Ebook at 50% discount

Now here's a great offer!  As part of ‘Read an E-book’ week, 6-12th March, E-scape Press are offering a 50% discount on all their E-books purchased through Smashwords.

Follow the link below to buy Midsummer Eve at Rookery End - simply add the promotion code ‘RAE50′ at the checkout during the above dates :0)

Midsummer Eve at Rookery End

Brief Encounters - Judge the Cover Poll

Vote! by Gil Elvgren

As mentioned in my previous post, a collection of short stories by me, Phillipa Ashley and Nell Dixon will be coming out later this spring.  The stories (published by E-scape Press and entitled Brief Encounters) are a fantastic mix of contemporary and historical shorts which we hope our readers will love!

At the Brief Encounters blog we are running a poll on potential covers and we'd like our readers to comment and vote for their favourite image.  The poll will be open until midnight on Saturday (GMT) and as an extra bonus, Nell will choose a random commentor to receive a PDF copy of her latest release, Making Waves. 

Please pop over to the blog and vote - we want to hear what you think! :0)

Happy Valentine's Day and Launch of Brief Encounters

Here's some very exciting news for Valentine's Day – a brand new short story collection called Brief Encounters will be published by E-scape Press this spring.

It’s a collection of six fun, romantic stories written by the members of the Coffee Crew – Nell Dixon, Phillipa Ashley and me. I hope you're going to love them.  You can read all about the new collection on the new Brief Encounters blog here - do pop over and leave a comment!

Twelfth Night

I've been unable to blog for a while so I'd like to wish a belated Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year to all :0)

 With Twelfth Night fast approaching, let's take a look at some of the old customs associated with this festival.  In the Christian calender, 6th January is Epiphany - named after the Greek word for manifestation and marking the manifestation of Christ to the Magi or wise men.  The secular name for celebrations, however,  is Twelfth Night, the origins of which are obscure but for centuries it was the culmination of a period of merrymaking which began on Christmas Eve.

In Tudor times, Twelfth Night and Day were marked by plays, pageants and masques and by the exchanging of gifts.  Twelfth Night, or What You Will by William Shakespeare was written to be performed as Twelfth Night entertainment and the comedy has many elements that are reversed (such as a woman dressing as a man and Malvolio imagining he can become a nobleman), in keeping with the revelry associated with Twelfth Night celebrations,

Two long-standing features of Twelfth Night celebrations were the games and the baking of a Twelfth Night cake.  The role of King and Queen were chosen at random from those present by whoever found the bean in their piece of cake becoming King, and whoever found the pea becoming Queen.  Once appointed, the King and Queen ruled over the rest of the entertainment.  A clove was also sometimes hidden in the cake, with its finder designated the Knave (Samuel Pepys confessed to finding a clove in his slice, but secretly putting it in his neighbour's portion!)  Thimbles, coins, rings or simple tickets were used to select characters for others present. 

One anonymous writer in the Universal Magazine of 1774 wrote:

'I went to a friend's house in the country to partake of some of those innocent pleasures that constitute a Merry Christmas; I did not return until I had been present at drawing King and Queen, and eaten a slice of the Twelfth Cake.....A noble cake was produced, and two bowls, containing the fortunate chances for the different sexes.  Our host filled up the tickets; the whole company, except for the King and Queen, were to be ministers of state, maids of honour, or ladies of the bedchamber.  Our kind host and hostess, whether by accident or design, became King and Queen.  According to Twelfth Day law, each party is to support their character until midnight.'

The tradition of cakes on Twelfth Night was so strong that it became the busiest day of the year for bakers and confectioners, as demonstrated in this 1827 extract from William Hone's Every-Day Book.

'In London, with every pastry-cook in the city, and at the west end of the town, it is 'high change' on Twelfth-Day.  From the taking down of the shutters in the morning, he, and his men, with additional assistants, male and female, are fully occupied by attending to the dressing out of the window, executing orders of the day before, receiving fresh ones, or supplying the wants of chance customers.  Before dusk the important arrangement of the window is completed.  Then the gas is turned on, with supernumerary argand-lamps and manifold wax lights to illuminate countless cakes of all prices and dimensions, that stand in rows and piles on the counters and sideboards, and in the windows.  The richest in flavour and the heaviest in weight and price are placed on large....salvers; ..... all are decorated with all imaginable images of things animate and inanimate.  Stars, castles, kings, cottages, dragons, trees, fish, palaces, cats, dogs, churches, lions, milkmaids, knights, serpents, and innumerable other forms, in snow-white confectionary, painted with varigated colours, glittering by 'excess of light' reflected from mirrors against the walls.'

But as people gathered around to admire the display, another traditional pastime took place - mischievous youths in the crowd created havoc by surreptiously nailing bystanders clothes to the window frame or tying them to their neighbours!

Here's an illustration by George Cruickshank showing the crowd surrounding a confectioner's shop displaying Twelfth Night cakes.  Look carefully and you'll see the pranksters have tied the ladies' dresses to the gentlemen's coat tails *g*

By the second half of the nineteenth century, Twelfth Night celebrations had begun to wane and the emphasis had shifted to Christmas and New Year.  Nowadays, Twelfth Night still marks the end of the Christmas period but more people know it simply as the day on which decorations should be taken down.  Speaking of which, I have some things to pack away and some cake to eat .... *g*