Turning it up to 11. When a scene needs as much as you can give it. #parodies #competition .@HeideGoody .@IainMGrant #wip #writingworld #writertips .@rararesources

Scene Writing

By

Heide Goody and Iain M Grant

On a scale of one to ten, how extreme do you want your scene to be?

If it’s comedy or horror then you should consider dialling it up to eleven.

So, what exactly do we mean by that? Let’s imagine a comedy scene where we want the comedy to come from our main character suffering social embarrassment when they’re on a first date.

What might we think of doing to our character?

– they lose all of their money somehow and cannot pay for anything.

– they dye their hair for the occasion and it goes wrong, so they CANNOT remove their hat.

Either could work. What would we score them: maybe eight out of ten?

How might we turn them up to eleven?

– they lose all of their money somehow and cannot pay for anything — they work out a deal with the restaurant where they will do some waiting in lieu of payment. The downside is that the restaurant wants them to do it NOW as there is a rush on, so our hero must keep disappearing from the date to go and secretly wait on other tables, all the while attempting to keep things “normal”.

– they dye their hair for the occasion and it goes wrong, so they CANNOT remove their hat. Every possible reason for removing a hat must subsequently be encountered, from minor etiquette reasons to an animal getting inside the hat. It should culminate in someone important demanding the removal of the hat.

This is where it can be very useful to write in a partnership, or find some other way to stretch your ideas. It is a muscle that you can develop yourself, if you routinely make the assumption that your first idea might be pedestrian or cliched. What does your second or third idea look like? Keep going until you have the idea that feels as though you have really maxed out the concept you were aiming for.

What about horror?

If you’re going for any kind of gross-out horror, then the concept is very similar.

Here’s an example from our novel A Heart in the Right Place:

Nick has broken into his neighbour’s house to retrieve something of his, and we wanted him to be incriminated by finding a body. The person could have been poisoned or stabbed, but we wanted something spectacularly horrible, so we came up with the idea of using a power tool. In our version of turning it up to eleven, we decided to use all of the power tools.

“In the middle of the hallway was a Black and Decker workbench. He recognised it because his dad owned one just like it. There were several power tools clamped to the workbench. Nick wasn’t sure what they all were, but knew his dad would not only know what each was called, he’d also know how to operate them and what sort of job they’d be used for. Nick was pretty sure the scenario in front of him was not one recommended by any of the manufacturers. Each of the tools had its gouging, drilling, sawing bits turned upwards, and the mutilated remains of a man’s body lay face down on them. The whirring sound Nick heard from outside was made by several tools which were running. Some of them stuck out from the back and side of the man’s body. There was even a lengthy drill bit, still spinning, poking out through the skull.

“Oz?” asked Nick. He felt like an idiot. He felt sick.

Oz was in no state to confirm or deny his identity. Chunks of his body had splattered the walls. Blood had pooled on the hall rug, seeping through and spreading to the skirting boards. The parts left on the bench juddered with the tools’ movements, as if Oz was having sex with his workbench. The dog was licking at the dead man’s dangling hand. Perversely, Nick thought this was particularly wrong.

“No. No. This isn’t right?” he heard his mouth say. 

~

Introducing…

A Heart in the Right Place

All Nick wants to do is take his dying father for a perfect father-son weekend in the Scottish Highlands. It’s not much to ask, is it? A log cabin, a roaring fire, a bottle of fine whisky and two days to paper over the cracks in their relationship.

Amazon

However, Nick didn’t plan on making the trip with a dead neighbour in the back of his car. Or the neighbour’s dog. He really didn’t plan on being pursued by a psychotic female assassin intent on collecting body parts. And he really, really didn’t plan on encountering a platoon of heavily armed mercenaries, or some very hungry boars, or a werewolf.

A Heart in the Right Place - a horror comedy about setting out with the very best intentions and then messing everything up.

Facebook | Website | Twitter Heide | Twitter Iain | Amazon

About the authors:

Heide Goody is the stupid one in the writing partnership and Iain Grant is the sensible one. Together, they are the authors of over a dozen books.

The ‘Clovenhoof’ series (in which Satan loses his job and has to move to Birmingham) has recently been optioned by a Hollywood production company.

Heide and Iain are both married, but not to each other.

And now for the competition!

Giveaway – Win a gorgeous Moleskine Passion Traveller's Journal (Open Internationally)

The Moleskine Traveller’s Journal is a structured before and after record of every journey you make, from weekends away to life-changing trips and everything in between. 

Note down your travel plans before you leave and list all the things you hope to see and do, then add maps, photos, tickets and keepsakes when you return. 

The Traveller’s Journal is a place to dream, get practical and create a unique and lasting paper archive of your travels that you’ll want to revisit again and again.

·        premium box with themed graphics related to your passion

·        hard cover with themed debossing, rounded corners, elastic closure

·        2 ribbon bookmarks

·        double expandable inner pocket

·        front endpaper with ‘in case of loss’ notice

·        ivory-coloured 70 g/m² acid-free paper

·        tabbed sections to guide your note-taking

·        themed introductory pages

·        400 pages 

·        themed stickers to customize your journal

·        Moleskine S.r.l. creates and sells FSC®-certified products "

*Terms and Conditions –Worldwide entries welcome.  Please enter using the Rafflecopter box below.  The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over.  Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will be passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data.  I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

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A sassy author interview, prizes, a fab book... what more do you want! .@jennifermacaire .@rararesources #historical #timetravel #funbooks

Jennifer Macaire is a brave author who has agreed to be interviewed in a style that many authors shy away from—derogatory. The sassier the answers to WWBB’s rude questioning method the better!

So welcome, Jennifer, and let’s get the ball rolling, shall we? In your book, the protagonist, Ashley Riveraine (what kind of name is that, Jeeze!), gets pitched back in time some 300 years BC (before chocolate) and meets Alexander the Great—her hero.

Hero? Oh, come on! Okay, I’ll go with it for now. So, is Ashley Riveraine happy now their story has been told or is there more to come (God help us!)?

The funny thing is, this was going to be a short story. I started out as a journalist writing articles for magazines, and at the same time, I wrote a few short stories and published them. One was nominated for the Push Cart Prize, and I'm afraid it went straight to my head.

I set about writing a short story about Alexander the Great not dying and going on to conquer the world (you see how things can get out of hand – one mosquito gets squashed, and we're speaking Greek instead of English and the Romans never got to build their straight roads anywhere. Much less paperwork too, and we'd still be offering sacrifices to Zeus.

We could always offer this book!

We could, but as my neighbour’s rooster wakes me up every morning at the ass-crack of dawn… anyhow, I was going to send The Road to Alexander to a Sci-fi magazine as a time travel tale and things got out of hand.

I didn't realize Alexander would kidnap Ashley – I forgot how omnipresent gods and goddesses were at that time. And I didn't realize how crazy Alexander's mother was, and, to make a long story short, there are 7 books in the series.

Seven! Jeeze… you get less for murder! Okay, so give me the best one-liner from your poor excuse of a book.  

I realized I was now over three-thousand years older than my own mother.

Do I have to elaborate?

Please don’t.

The instructions say a 'one-liner', so to go on and explain would be a clear indication of my inability to follow the simplest instructions, which is why I did so badly at school, and why my husband has given up trying to tell me what to do…)

Yawn, so basically, you're the same as all the rest of the authors on Amazon, and you’re the Next Best Thing. I don’t think so. Come on, tell me why I should spend time reading YOUR book over more well-received authors?

Oh, come on – who likes best sellers, I mean, besides the teeming masses. But you know the teeming masses yearning to be free – it says so on the Statue of Liberty (written in Gothic Script somewhere around her big toe, I think). So, feel free to try something different – the hero and heroine don't hate each other on sight! The hero is Alexander the Great, and how much more heroic can you get? There is action and adventure! It's based on real history (at least part of it is – it's time-travel, so there is a slight wobble in reality. Be prepared!).

It’s a mad, tongue-in-cheek romp across mixed genres of Sci-fi, romance, adventure, and history. It’ll make you laugh and cry. Oh, and there's lots of hot, bouncy sex. (If you like that sort of thing. Otherwise, just skip those parts!) But most of all, just relax, sit back, and enjoy your trip back in time. You can always close the book and come back to the present – but Ashley is stuck in the past!

Hang on, there, lady. Bouncy sex? Sex that’s bouncy? I may just have to read this malarkey of a book! So, spill, as an author have you ever regretted anything, i.e. written your own review (or written a bad review on a competitor's novel), argued online, copied someone else's idea? Any juicy naughtiness at all?

Mark Twain once said, ‘The kernel, the soul, let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances is plagiarism.’

In a way, he was correct. We, the people of the present, are standing on the shoulders of those who went before us. Our stories, our art, our science – it’s all based on work that our ancestors did. We simply keep it growing, expanding on it – but we invent nothing brand new. (And stop screaming, ‘The Internet!’ that's just another way of communicating, and there are more ways of doing that than stars in the sky… I exaggerate, but you get my gist).

I wrote The Road to Alexander after falling in love with ‘Outlander’, so the time travel element was copied from the fantastic Ms Gabaldon. She may have gotten it from H.G. Wells – who in turn, got it from somewhere else.

Time is an interesting subject. I'd like to say I was the only one who ever wrote about Alexander the Great, but Mary Renault did a fabulous job with her series of historical fiction novels – if you haven't read them, you've missed a rare treat.

As for arguing or regretting, or writing bad reviews, I've only written two bad reviews, and both were for novels that featured super-alpha-male-control-freaks, and I'm a staunch feminist. 

I have argued online, but that was then. Nowadays I just refer people to PubMed (peer-reviewed scientific publications) or Snopes and let them learn for themselves. I never wrote my own review, but I encouraged my daughter to read one of my children's books and write her own review. It was awful, but this proud mama didn't mind – I fixed up the spelling, changed a few words (terrible to great, boring to amazing,) and had it published…. well, not really, but it's an idea. Probably not an original idea – those are all taken!

Describe your writing style in ten words or less. I’ll begin with the first two: Crap, dull…

Pedantic springs to mind. That's what my editor kept saying. ‘Jennifer, you're being pedantic again. No one needs to know where the army's food came from, just tell them what they ate and be quick about it.’ Or, ‘Jennifer, three pages on oral hygiene in ancient times is going to put readers to sleep. I barely got through it without dozing off. Scratch that. I dozed off twice.’

Otherwise, my style has been variously described as fluid, engaging, easy-to-read (not my fault – my editor keeps correcting my spelling and grammar!), and one reviewer—who said the book had way to too much sex in it—admitted it was 'well-crafted and proficient'. Hmm. Was he talking about my writing or about the sex scenes?

Fuck knows! He certainly wasn’t my husband! All right, just for a laugh, share with us one of the WORSE reviews you’ve had.

I’ve had so many – where to begin? Let's see – one said (1 star): ‘Why, oh why must the 'heroine' of these sort of time travel books be so smug, so captivating to their target and so unreal. No-one in their right mind is like this. Go away Ms Macaire, and think real. I suppose I have been spoiled by Diana Gabaldon whose heroine at least shows some reticence towards the hero or Jodie Taylor who is constantly amusing and deep by turns.’

 I like this review on so many levels – it perfectly describes Ashley, who arrives from the future feeling smug and superior to the ancients (Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall, Ashley!). It compares the book to Outlander and the St Mary's series, both of which I adore – (thank you, terrible review, for at least hitching my book to their star for a brief instant before you demolished it).

It is confusing in that it acknowledges the book as being time travel, then beseeches me to 'get real'. That's where I'm not sure if she doesn't like the alacrity Ashley and Alexander (trying to think of another word starting with 'A' and failing here…) fell in love, or was it the improbability of Ashley being a real person?

At any rate, I enjoyed having my book in the same paragraph as my two favourite writers! (There are other, more brutal reviews, but they actually had more stars, so the readers must have liked the cover art or something.)

What qualifications do you have for writing in your genre? (Apart from waking up in the morning, that is).

I was afraid someone would ask me this one day. Can I take the fifth? No? Well, #1: The book is science fiction (I love science and work with scientists as an information researcher – I know, it doesn't count, sorry!) with a #2: time travel element (I have the worst case of left/right, before/after, letters, and numbers, dyslexia. So time has no meaning for me. It's a miracle every time I show up at work or to an appointment. #3: It's in English (I was born in the USA and grew up in the Caribbean, which accounts for that part, anyway). #4: It's set in Ancient Greece, and my mother is a history teacher. She gave me lots of hints about where to look for information on Alexander the Great. No, she didn't help me – how many of your teachers wrote your assignments?

Many authors use their qualifications to show off their so-called talents, i.e. crime writers are often coppers (or police, for the non-Brits present) and the book becomes boringly technical. How have you managed to keep your knowledge low key? Or haven’t you bothered?

When I was a kid, I was skinny, had glasses, big teeth, and was dyslexic. I was also clumsy because my glasses didn't correct my huge astigmatism, which meant I could not catch a ball, no matter how gently it was tossed to me.

I was the last to be chosen in gym for the teams, and, on one sad Valentine's day, at a party, the boy I had a gigantic crush on threw chocolate kisses at me, telling me I could only keep the ones I caught. I caught none.

Sobbing, I went into the house, collided with his father, and made him drop his finest bottle of wine that he'd been keeping for a special occasion. I stared at the mess, listening to the howls of rage, wishing I could become invisible or at least grow some sort of backbone and stop snivelling (I was nine years old at this time, so excuse the melodrama).

At dinner, the grown-ups drank their not-so-nice wine and glared at me. The other kids snickered. And I decided I'd show them – I'd become so knowledgeable about dinosaurs I'd write and illustrate a fabulous book, and they would come begging for an autograph. This has nothing to do with the question – or everything, depending on how you look at it. I'm actually quite knowledgeable about dinosaurs but have managed to keep all that info out of my books.

Sorry, I asked! Jeeze… whinge, whinge, whinge, me, me, me… If your book disappeared forever, do you think it’ll be missed?

Honestly? No, I don't think it will be missed at all unless you've somehow time-travelled to read all the series and missed the first one and decided you had to read from the beginning. Then it might be missed. Maybe. I'm not sure anything on this earth is irreplaceable except maybe chocolate. I would definitely miss that. And coffee.

Don’t forget the wine. Not expensive wine, obviously, as you drop that! Describe your perfect death (in case I must kill you. Touch my wine and I will!)

Need you ask? Death by chocolate – of course!

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and now...

The Road to Alexander

by

Jennifer Macaire

What do you do when the past becomes your future?

The year is 2089, and time-travelling journalist Ashley Riveraine gets a once in a lifetime opportunity to interview her childhood hero, Alexander the Great. She expects to come out with an award-winning article, but doesn’t count on Fate intervening.

Purchase  Link

Alexander mistakes Ashley for Persephone, goddess of the dead, and kidnaps her, stranding her in his own time. Being stuck 3000 years in the past with the man of her dreams wouldn’t be so bad if the scientists of the Time Institute hadn’t threatened to erase Ashley from existence if she changes history.

Ashley must now walk a tightrope, caught up in the cataclysmic events of the time, knowing what the future holds for the people she comes to love but powerless to do anything to influence it.

Join Ashley on her hilarious, bumpy journey into the past as she discovers where her place in history truly is…

Jennifer Macaire is an American living in Paris. She likes to read, eat chocolate, and plays a mean game of golf. She grew up in upstate New York, Samoa, and the Virgin Islands. 

She graduated from St Peter and Paul High School in St Thomas and moved to NYC where she modelled for five years for Elite. 

She went to France and met her husband at the polo club. All that is true. But she mostly likes to make up stories

Giveaway to Win a $10 Amazon gift certificate (Open INT)

*Terms and Conditions –Worldwide entries welcome.  Please enter using the Rafflecopter box below.  The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then I reserve the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over.  Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time I will delete the data.  I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

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An interview with Diane Demetre discussing Island of Secrets and the writing process in general. #womens #fiction #suspense @DianeDemetre .@rararesources

Island of Secrets

A captivating story of love, mystery and hope

Two love stories separated in time. Two women following their dreams. In a paradise littered with painful secrets, will love turn the tide?

 

Amazon

1973. Cecilia “CiCi” Freemont has a restless soul and the voice of an angel. Leaving her privileged upbringing behind, she chases her dreams to the sandy beaches of an unspoiled Hawaiian paradise, Harbor Island. But life takes an unexpected turn when she falls for the island’s young heir-apparent and her newfound adventure becomes too much to bear…

2017. Investigative journalist Tina Templeton has dedicated herself to the pursuit of truth. But when she inherits Harbor Island, her career plans take a confusing twist. Managing the sprawling island estate is tough business even with the help of aging cabaret singer, CiCi Freemont. Especially when a massive ecological disaster threatens to destroy her beautiful beaches—and the responding coast guard captain steals her heart.

As the investigation into the disaster reveals a 40-year-old mystery that could change their lives forever, will Tina find love among the secrets, or will CiCi’s painful past dash her dreams on the rocks?

Island of Secrets is an epic love story. If you like generations-spanning drama, characters with hidden pasts, heart-warming romance and intrigue, then you’ll love Diane Demetre’s powerful romantic mystery in paradise.

 

An interview with Diane Demetre discussing Island of Secrets and the writing process in general.

Does writing energize or exhaust you?

Writing always energizes and inspires me. It’s a soul connection and conduit to my creativity.

Why did you write Island of Secrets?

I remember when the idea for this book came to me. My husband and I were out in our boat on the Broadwater on the Gold Coast in Australia. It was one of those magnificent boating days—calm, sultry and cloudless. Having just completed Retribution, I’d been waiting on the inspiration for my next book. Nothing yet had beamed in. As someone who is willing to wait for inspiration rather than forcing my creativity, I was enjoying a couple weeks off from my writing schedule.

While we were relaxing on the Broadwater and lapping up the beautiful weather, an old Huon pine cruiser drove past us. Like a bolt out of the blue, Island of Secrets landed in my consciousness. The story arrived well-formed, with characters I immediately visualized.

I’d visited Hawaii a couple of years earlier, and Maui, with its volcanic geography, lush vegetation and captivating sea life lived up to its name of the Magic Isle. It was the ideal location for Island of Secrets.

What is Island of Secrets about? 

In the vein of Iona Grey and Nicholas Sparks, Island of Secrets is a contemporary multi-generational love story which transcends time and speaks to the profounder meaning of love, loss and belonging. Island of Secrets is romantic women’s mystery with the narrative woven across two time-lines—1973 and 2017. It is written in third person and told from the heroine’s POV through each timeline.

Give me the first, middle and end line from Island of Secrets.

FIRST LINE - For a day that had started out so right, she had no idea how it went so horribly wrong.

MIDDLE LINE - In contrast to the solemn reason for her visit, the magical mosaic of color tinged everything with its vibrancy.

END LINE - At last, everyone had found their home, their happy place.

Does (and how) your protagonist change/learn by the end of the book?

Though the story is told in two parts and from two female protagonist’s point of view, both women are transformed firstly, by self-love and then love for another person.

Is there an underlying theme to Island of Secrets?

At its heart, Island of Secrets examines the lives of not just Cecilia and Tina, but all the empowered women—Leilani, Victoria, Beatrice, Loretta, Silly Suzie et al. Women from different times and cultures who face similar challenges and find the courage and strength to overcome them. It is an exploration of how we view the fundamentals of life. Is it love or money that motivates us? Where does loyalty lie in the equation? What moves us to make the decisions we do? And no matter the dilemma we face, there comes a time when we must acknowledge that love is the ultimate answer.

Would you have the main character as a best friend?

 I would have both Cecilia and Tina as close friends. Both women are strong, independent, kind and intelligent.

What’s the best/saddest/funniest/shocking one-liner from Island of Secrets? 

Harbor Island V listed in the ocean in the same way she did, alone and unmanned.

Is there a dedication?

 Yes… the dedication is to all the readers who believe in the power of love. This book is more than a story about romance, it is about the how love can transcend time and space.

Can you share a few lines from your best review of Island of Secrets?

Amazon 5 Stars

I love, love, love, this book! – Tasha Thomas

This book was so good! It jumps over a span of about forty years. It has everything in it. From first love to first discovery. It has suspense, love lost, and love gained. It also has a friendship that stood the test of time, and sibling rivalry. If you read another book this year, this is the one! I highly recommend this wonderful book!

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About the author:

Diane began her career as a school teacher before moving into the entertainment industry as a choreographer, director, event manager, dancer and actress, working in television and live theatre, and managing multi-million-dollar productions.

Following her onstage career, she spent many years as a stress and life skills therapist, keynote speaker and presenter, appearing on national radio and television.

When she launched into a writing career, Diane’s debut erotic romance series, the Dance of Love was voted Luminosity Publishing Readers’ Choice Best Books and Best Covers for 2015 and 2016.

Her romantic suspense, Retribution won the Romance Writers of Australia Emerald Pro Award 2017 for Best Unpublished Manuscript. Diane loves to write genre-busting stories with a twist. Her works are packed with emotional punch and feature empowered heroines who live life to the fullest, much like the author herself.

Ebooks:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07J5CSHPS

https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B07J5CSHPS

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07J5CSHPS

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07J5CSHPS

 https://luminositypublishing.com/book/island-of-secrets/

 https://www.bookstrand.com/island-of-secrets

 https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/899908

 https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Diane_Demetre_Island_of_Secrets?id=tIhxDwAAQBAJ

https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/island-of-secrets-16

 https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/island-of-secrets-diane-demetre/1129715424?ean=2940155837329

 https://itunes.apple.com/au/book/island-of-secrets/id1438526411?mt=11

Paperback:

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1999306619        

Refresh your dialogue writing with @VirginiaHeath_ PLUS win a copy of her AMAZING book! #giveaway #regency #romance #wip #fiction @rararesources

HOW TO… Write dialogue without it being stilted

By

Virginia Heath

Dialogue is one of those things which brings characters and situations alive, but it’s a tricky skill to master. Done well, and a reader should be able to both hear and see the characters speaking; done badly, it becomes long, meandering and dull or worse, confusing.  

Bizarrely, despite writing perfect prose for a living, when that prose involves dialogue, for a writer certain rules of grammar simply have to be broken. For a start, people rarely talk in full sentences. We finish each other’s sentences, give abrupt one word answers to equally short one word questions. Often, the true meaning is all in the subtle nuances or pauses rather than the words themselves. Each character needs to have their own distinct voice, so the reader can identify them simply by the way they sound. As authors, we are always told to show not tell, however it is easy to fall into the trap of using dialogue to do this and overdoing it by attempting to get the characters to say everything. 

And then there is the tricky problem of animating your characters as they speak. This makes them feel real because humans are not static creatures. In fact, the truth is you cannot show an entire scene using conversation alone. There is a very good reason for this- as humans, 90% of our communication is non-verbal. That’s an actual statistic and something I always try to bear in mind when constructing a good dialogue scene. Body language often tells us more of the truth than the words coming out of a character’s mouth. As do the internal thoughts of the character whose head you happen to be in. Dripping those human qualities into the conversation enrich it.

Let me give you an example. In the early scenes of The Uncompromising Lord Flint, when the hero is tasked with escorting the heroine, his prisoner, to London to stand trial, I need the readers to empathise with both characters from their first conversation despite one of them apparently being a traitor and their conversation being an interrogation…

She snorted and tossed her head dismissively. “There will be no leniency nor a fair trial. Your courts will hang me regardless of what I say or do not say. I have been tried and found guilty already. Non?”

“Perhaps that is the way they do things in France, but back home…”

“Spare me your superior English lies. I am not a fool Monsieur Flint. My confession makes your job much easier, yet it will not help me. Whether it is by an English hangman or a French assassin, my life is soon to be taken from me.” Her dark eyes locked with his and held. Beneath the façade insolence he saw sadness and fear and wished he hadn’t. She was easier to hate when devoid of all human feelings. Knowing she possessed some made it difficult to offer false hope.

“Confession is good for the soul, or so I am told. You will meet your maker knowing you repented at the end.”

“My maker knows the truth already Monsieur Flint. I have nothing to prove to him.”

“Perhaps you do not understand the gravity of what you have done? Are you aware of the consequences of your actions?” He didn’t bother pausing for an answer. “This year alone, eighteen men have been murdered thanks to you. Granted, many of them had it coming. Seduced by the easy riches that come from smuggling, they were lured to participate in high treason and reaped the rewards. When you dance with the Devil, you inevitably get burned. However, ten of those men were servants of the crown whose only crime was doing their duty. They were murdered in cold blood.”

“Not by me. I am merely the messenger!”

Instantly annoyed and determined to control it, Flint stood and braced his arms to loom across the desk. “They were simply doing their duty, yet your people reacted as true cowards always do. They killed innocent men to save their own corrupt skins.” He opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a sheet of paper. He didn’t need the list. Their names were forever engraved on his heart, but he appreciated the gravitas of an official document as well as the bolster to his resolve to remain unmoved by her.

“Allow me to tell you about them. Let’s start with Customs Officer Richard Pruitt. His throat was cut when he boarded one of your ships before Christmas last. He is survived by his wife and three small daughters, none of whom are old enough to remember their brave father.” A quick glance showed that her face had blanched but she still met his gaze dead on. “Shall I continue?”

She shrugged and turned her head away from his gaze. “You will do as you please. No doubt.”

“You have blood on your hands Lady Jessamine.”

Her mouth opened as if to speak then clamped shut, her eyes now fixated on a spot on the floor. Temper had him reeling off three more names just as coldly, each was met with stoic silence. Her body was as still as a statue, and her composure just as hard. “Are you proud of yourself Lady Jessamine? Do you feel no shame for what you have done? No compassion for the lives you have destroyed? The widows and innocent children left bereft and impoverished by your greed and avarice?”

Her head whipped around and those untrustworthy eyes were swimming with unshed tears. “You know nothing about me Monsieur Flint! Nothing! And I shall tell you nothing. You can name every dead man. Every member of his family. Blame me for every travesty. And I shall reward you with my silence. My secrets are mine to take to the grave! A grave I am fully aware I might lie in soon.” One fat tear trickled over her ridiculously long and dark lower lashes and dripped down her cheek. Flint had seen enough female tears to be unaffected, but the matter of fact way she swiped it away and proudly set her shoulders got to him.

His words had hurt her. Deeply. He knew it with the same certainty that he knew his own mind. Lady Fane had a conscience. Something he didn’t want to know.

 

~

The Uncompromising Lord Flint

By

Virginia Heath

Imprisoned by her past—set free by her enemy!

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Charged with high treason, Lady Jessamine Fane is under the watchful eye of icily calm Lord Peter Flint.

It's a task this spy won’t be swayed from, no matter how alluring his prisoner! Only it’s not long before Flint realises that tenacious Jess hides a lifetime of pain.

With so much at stake, can he afford to take a chance on their powerful attraction?

~

When Virginia Heath was a little girl it took her ages to fall asleep, so she made up stories in her head to help pass the time while she was staring at the ceiling. 

As she got older, the stories became more complicated, sometimes taking weeks to get to the happy ending. Then one day, she decided to embrace the insomnia and start writing them down. 

Despite that, it still takes her forever to fall asleep.

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