Current and Recent Projects
PEN NAMES AND OTHER PROBLEMS
Adult Contemporary Romance
Annabel is a respectable professor at the venerable St. James’s University by day, but by night, she writes historical romances that would make her colleagues sneer in disdain. Life gets complicated when Annabel’s novel sells in a huge auction and becomes the buzz book of the season, complete with a world tour and tons of publicity.
Desperate to keep her identities separate, she cajoles her best friend into being the public face of the author for her, while she tags along as her assistant. Can Annabel keep up her dual lives, especially when her dreamy publicist falls for the “author,” and Annabel for him?
COMPS
Book Lovers
Thank You for Listening
Beach Read
Meet Me in the Margins
TROPES
Friends to lovers
Mistaken identities
Imagined love triangle
Writer MC and book nerd/
publishing LI
International setting
Slow burn
This story is a love letter to 90s rom-coms and the heroines played by Meg Ryan and Sandra Bullock. It’s a nod to the fun 90s movie The Truth about Cats and Dogs (with mine focusing on the main character’s anxiety, rather than her looks). It’s also a reflection on the types of literature we revere and the types we disdain, and the ways that society has conditioned us to look down on women’s literature and romance. It’s a celebration of best friendships, mother-daughter book bonding, and falling in love with someone’s mind and heart. And because it’s mine, it’s also a glimpse into Portuguese heritage and place and the way our culture informs who we are and what we love.
THE JEWEL OF LISBON
Adult Historical Fiction
Natália is a rising fado star, commanding drawing room audiences in Lisbon’s fashionable circles. But Natália’s world changes when Luciano, a new guitarist, replaces her father as her accompanist. Luciano’s playing pulls at Natália’s deepest emotions, and she soon learns that his fado was not honed in drawing rooms, but in the underbelly of Lisbon, the bars and brothels where fado originated. Before long, she is drawn into Luciano’s world, the fado houses where musicians, artists, and writers meet, seeking to undermine Portuguese dictator Dr. Salazar in the coming election. Here, she hears the raw fado of rebellion and resistance hinted at by Luciano’s guitar, not the sanitized lyrics sanctioned by the cultural censors. She hears the other side of the stories printed in the government-controlled newspapers and discovers a committed movement, ready for change. The very air around her crackles with the intensity of it, and she knows she can no longer hide behind the polished veneer of her previous life.
In this unsanctioned world, Natália finds her voice. With the encouragement of Luciano and Seva, a sister fadista with a questionable reputation, Natália taps into her own passion, and desires she didn’t know were inside her. Unbeknownst to her protective father, she joins the resistance. But Salazar’s secret police, the PIDE, seem to know their every move and the resistance is in danger. Moved by her newfound love and fervor for a future she hadn’t realized was in danger, Natália begins writing her own lyrics, embedding metaphors of resistance into her music, and using the songs as code for meetings with the resistance’s candidate. But the PIDE’s spies are everywhere. Natália and Luciano must ignite change in the hearts of Lisbon for the next election, before Salazar and his secret police silence them both forever.
FOUNTAIN OF TEARS
Adult Historical Fiction based on the true story of Inés de Castro and Prince Pedro I of Portugal.
Inés’s life is not her own. Despite her powerful family, her reputation as the bastard daughter of a bastard daughter has ruined her marriage prospects i. Seeing Inés’s beauty as a valuable asset, her brothers send her to Portugal as a lady-in-waiting to her cousin Constança, expecting her to marry someone who will elevate their power in the Portuguese court. Inés wants more than status, however; she wants a man who values her for more than her beauty. What she does not expect is for that man to be her cousin’s new husband, the Infante Dom Pedro, Prince of Portugal.
Inés tries to withstand the growing attraction between her and Pedro. She will not betray her kinswoman or become the wanton others accuse her of being. Avoiding him at court is impossible, however, and soon, rumors make their way back to Constança and threaten an advantageous match that would secure Inés’s reputation and status, as well as fulfill her brother’s wishes.
But Constança has also been keeping secrets, using the rumors to keep attention off her own illicit trysts. No longer bound by loyalty to her cousin, sick of being a pawn in her brother’s schemes, and with her reputation already in question, Inés decides to follow her heart to Pedro. But the court is not kind to wanton women, especially those whose powerful family could influence the prince and threaten their independence from Castile. Inés must decide if she's willing to risk everything—legitimacy, security, respectability, even her own safety—to be with the man she loves.
I've been obsessed with the story of Pedro and Inés since I first heard it many years ago. This tragic, Romeo-and-Juliet like story of star-crossed lovers snagged my imagination and never let go. As I researched though, I realized the focus of the story was almost always what happened after Inés's death, on Pedro's grief and madness, his revolt against his father the king, his brutal search for and revenge on her assassins, on the beautiful sarcophagus he had built for her, on the exhumation and transliteration of her corpse so he could crown her queen after death.
But what about Iné's life? Who was this woman who provoked such a passionate love? What were her thoughts and fears and desires? FOUNTAIN OF TEARS explores what I imagine Inés might have been like and explores the beginning, living part of this unforgettable love story.
I hope to explore Pedro's version, the aftermath, in a second book, creating a duology that shows the whole love story, with Inés as a living, breathing part of the narrative.
INTERACTIVE FICTION
Check out the interactive novels I created for Pixelberry's StoryLoom platform! If you love IF, watch this space in future to learn about my newest story game BY A LADY, a Regency romance coming soon!
Updates on each of these stories below.
ISLAND OF MYSTERIES
When Adelia Knightly receives an unexpected letter informing her she’s inherited a family manor on the island of her late mother's birth, she’s eager to connect with this unknown part of her history and feel close to Mama again. But the island is not at all as she expected ... and she soon finds herself in the middle of a haunting family mystery amid the eerie mists and sulfurous vapors of the island’s thermal pools.
1950s Gothic Mystery for fans of
Mexican Gothic
and
Rebecca.
Content warning for mentions of grief and suicide.
In process of being adapted into novel form as A VOICE IN THE MISTS.
ROMANCE 101
Annabel is a respectable professor at a venerable college by day, but by night, she writes historical romances that would make her colleagues sneer in disdain. Life gets complicated when Annabel’s novel sells in a huge auction and becomes the buzz book of the season, complete with a writer tour to London and Lisbon, and tons of publicity. Desperate to keep her identities separate, she cajoles her best friend Jess into being the face of the author for her, while she tags along as her assistant. Can Annabel keep up her dual lives, especially when her publicist falls for the author, and Annabel for him?
Contemporary rom-com with nods to Cyrano de Bergerac and the 90s rom-com The Truth About Cats and Dogs.
On submission in novel form as PEN NAMES AND OTHER PROBLEMS (see above!)
SUMMER AT THE SEASIDE
Heartbroken Isabella Barrington heads to the seaside of Lyme Regis to get away from her fickle former beau and the troubles brought on by her father's death and debts. There, she finds more to lift her spirits than the bracing sea air. But Isabella is determined to guard her heart from fortune-hunting gentlemen who only want her for the wealth she no longer has.
As the eldest son of an earl, Oliver Pemberton must marry well. What luck that his sister's new friend Isabella is both lovely and wealthy, if a little proud. But when he learns of Isabella's humbled circumstances, he must decide between his family and duty, and his blossoming affections.
Regency romance for fans of Bridgerton, as well as Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Sanditon.
