Sweet Regency Romance – Page 2

A Fogo Island Sunset

This is a picture I took many years ago as I sat on the rocks near Joe Batt’s Arm, Fogo Island, NL, watching the sun go down.

(If you’d prefer to listen to this post in audio read by Christopher, my cloned narrator, you can do that on YouTube at this link.)

Many years ago, at the very beginning of my writing “career” (while I still had a day job as a teacher), I wanted to make writing a regular practice. This desire became a plan for a writing exercise called Thursday’s Three Hundred, which was doomed to fail. 🙂

The plan was to use a random visual prompt and write three hundred, equally as random, words of a story scene, that I would share on my blog each Thursday.

The exercise failed because I found I couldn’t just write three hundred words and move on. That very first three hundred words begged to be turned into a story called Hope at Dawn, and the next new story I started begged me to turn it into a series — what is now my Willow Hall Romance series. So, while the exercise failed in part, that failure has produced a fair number of stories, and I did develop a consistent writing practice. In that way, it was more of a success than a failure.

Today, I’m sharing the first chapter of that first failed exercise that was prompted by the image in the video graphic of a Sunset on Fogo Island. I took this picture not too far from the cottage at which I was staying in Joe Batt’s Arm. This was the first trip I had ever taken to Fogo and was when I fell in love with the remote and rugged beauty of the place.

Hope at Dawn begins on a rocky shoreline as a gentleman, who was not deemed worthy enough to marry the lady he loves, waits for her to return home after an extended period of time away.

As he sits, watching the waves while darkness fades into light, faint hope is the only thing to which he has to cling as he waits to see if the work he’s done while she’s been gone is enough to now be worthy of her hand.

Protected: OC Refresh: Oxford Cottage, Ch. 9

George James Drummond’s Room at Oxford, 1853

By George Pyne (1800 – 1884) Details on Google Art Project – UwEQxfU8YqFodA at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21907517

The scene below takes place in a sitting room that is for the private use of Charlotte and her sister Louisa. I thought this picture looked like it could be such a room. I also liked that this room is in Oxford since that is location around which His Sensible Heart takes place. The hero is still in school at Oxford. The heroine is at her father’s estate a few miles outside of Oxford.

This book is the sixth and final book (so far) in my Touches of Austen series. It’s an almost forced betrothal and marriage sort of story, a he falls first story, a she doesn’t like him (or so she says) story, and a story about how utterly sacrificial true love can be. There are nods to and mentions of Sense and Sensibility in this book, but it is a completely original story (as are all the stories in this series).

I’m including a full chapter of the story in this post to hopefully give you a good feel for who each of the main characters are.

Enjoy!

The September 2024 Saturday Broadsheet

September 14, 2024

Welcome to the September edition of the Saturday Broadsheet. If you read my SWR Tearoom post from September 2, you know all my updates. If you didn’t read it, there’s a link below so that you can (it has pictures 😉 ), but here are the highlights:

I’m still working on How to Marry…, Harriet and the Colonel, and the Oxford Cottage refresh. However, they are progressing very slowly at the moment since taking some time off and then having to do some beginning of the month stuff and catching up on emails and all after getting back to work took a bit of time to complete. I was able to start back to writing this week.

I’ve also been working on getting my backlist, non-KU books added to the collections section of Patreon for those readers who would like to subscribe to read them there, and I’ve added more books to the Leenie B Books Shop on Etsy. There is one other project that I’m working on, but I’ll leave news about that until another time when it’s ready to start sharing.

Needless to say, my writing life is busy!

As mentioned, I took some time off in August. During the last week, my husband and I took three days away from home and visited Yarmouth, NS. It was just a relaxed, no real plans sort of trip, which was lovely, except for ending up sick for a couple of days when I got home. I’m still battling the post virus issues that I’ve had for a couple of years, and it seems three days of extra activity, not eating homecooked food where I know all the ingredients, sleeping in a different bed, and all that goes with travelling was a bit too much. However, it did take three days to get to the too much part so I’m calling that a win as it’s definitely an improvement. 🙂

I think that’s it for my update. Now let’s get to the other regular entries to the newsletter. Make sure you hang around to the end if you want to read the newest installment of the Harriet and the Colonel story.

Wintery Night in the Park

Wintertime night scene in the park. Author: psychoshadow. Image sourced from Depositphotos

This image that I found on Depositphotos feels like the story that I’m sharing from today in this post. It’s lonely and quiet. It’s rimmed with shadows that hide many things. And yet, it’s got that light which is chasing away those shadows and making the scene feel a little welcoming.

I’d say this story, Frosted Windowpanes, is like that. There’s a welcome to the scene in which the main character finds himself, but is it a lasting welcome or will the shadows of the past and circumstances of the present snuff out the glimmer of home? I can’t tell you how it happens because that would be spoiling the story. But, this is a Leenie Brown story and touched with inspiration from Persuasion, so you know the ending cannot be bleak, right?

Below is the first chapter of this four-chapter novelette from my Nature’s Fury and Delights Collection. For those who are familiar with my Willow Hall series, you’ll see a few names that should be familiar since Mr. Mullins’s estate is located in Derbyshire near Willow Hall and Kympton.

One more note before I let you read the beginning of the story: Frosted Windowpanes is the free Ream and Patreon read this month, so at the end of the chapter, I will include links to find it on those platforms (you do have to sign up as a free follower to access it there) and links to where the story is available in stores and such.

Enjoy!