I love Tudor/Elizabethan novels and adored Jane Austen's works, so too more modern classics written by Daphne du Maurier and others. The latter probably more to my liking writing-wise, in that I haven't as yet felt compelled to write within the Napoleonic era. My favourite period remains 1700s. After all, it was a truly swashbuckling era when men wore flamboyant outfits and women glorious gowns, the better-off that is.
The richness of embossed velvets, satins, silks and lace trims, literally fabulous in my mind. I quite believe I was born several hundred years too late, because these same fabrics (bar lace) I have draped around the house and, apt to hoard in abundance! In today's lifestyle such fabrics are only suitable for extremely posh functions and special occcasions, and a total no-no for pushing super-market trolleys around.
My writing often stems from images, mostly that of portraits, and the following became the catalyst to my first venture into writing historicals. I have no idea why, but the young lady in the portrait introduced herself as Anna Lady Maitcliffe: to the subconscious.
Subsequently, Anna's story and that of the one she loved above all others came to me in overnight dream movie sequence.
So taken with her - and the awfulness of the Civil War - I felt compelled to tell her story. While divided loyalties tear her family apart and hidden truths come to light, her beloved is banished from his family home and estate lands, and her life becomes one of survival at any cost. And, despite trials and tribulations faced by all the characters, and her personal sacrifice for fear of being married off to a young Cavalier rake, war comes to Axebury Hall Estate and turns her world upside down and inside out. Although death heralds a turn in the war, can past deeds and that of heartbreak and betrayal ever be put aside? The new lord wonders whether love or rejection awaits him on his return!
