CATCHING UP WITH OLD FRIENDS - when 5 Romantic Novelists got together......

Isn't it surprising what can develop when friends get together? You would think that five authors of Regency romances would look upon one another as rivals, competing against one another for the reader's attention, but nothing could be further from the truth, at least for the five good friends who have published the Regency Quintet, Valentine Edition.

I have known my fellow authors in the Regency Quintet for many years. We are all members of the Romantic Novelists Association and we got to know one another at various conferences and meetings, back in the days when we were all starry-eyed new authors, learning our craft.  Over the years we have gone our separate ways, but we have all continued to love Regency romances and it now seems quite natural to be working together, each contributing one of our favourite Regencies to this boxed set.

So, I thought it might be a nice idea to bring you up to date with what each of us has been doing recently.

Amanda Grange is working on two new traditional Regency romances tied to the characters in one of her earlier romances. Philip and Madeline, the hero and heroine from The Six-Month Marriage, will make an appearance in both new books. One of the new books is about Philip's sister, Emma, and the other is about his friend, Jack.

Elizabeth Bailey has been putting out old and new Georgian and Regency traditional romances over the last couple of years, and is currently writing the third in her Lady Fan Mystery Series. She is planning more books in this series and a new series of Georgian romances set around convenient and Cinderella bridals.

Wendy Soliman is currently working on the last book in the Ducal Encounters series, which centres around the marital aspirations of the duke himself. She's also to blame for a new series - Pemberley: The Next Generation. As the title implies, it features the Bennet girls' grown children and follows on from her successful Mrs. Darcy Entertains books.

2015 looks as if it will be a busy year for Fenella J Miller, too. She has just finished the final polish for the first of a two part WW2 saga and a new Regency, Lord Ilchester's Inheritance goes up next month. March will see the second of her Pemberley series - A Scandal at Pemberley - which she is writing at the moment.

And finally, there's me!  Writing as Melinda Hammond, I have been adding more of my backlist as e-books, including my Georgian romance, A Lady at Midnight, but more recently I tried something a little different: And The Stars Shine Down is a short story, a hauntingly bitter-sweet romance about a modern day journalist and a WW2 Spitfire pilot. It is a story I have wanted to write for a long time and I may well follow it up one day with a full length novel, but before that I am hoping to e-publish another Georgian romance before the end of the year, and if that wasn't enough, I also have two more Sarah Mallory novels out this year, starting with A Lady for Lord Randall, one of the Brides of Waterloo trilogy which will be published by Harlequin in May.

So you see, we are all busily at work bringing you even more great reads.

I hope you will enjoy Regency Quintet: you may know some of the authors already, but maybe you will discover some new favourites.

Happy reading

 

Melinda Hammond

And The Stars Shine Down

A Lady at Midnight