I’m already seeing Christmas decorations for sale in stores, next to Halloween pumpkins on nearby shelves. Following that trend, I’m here to announce that my 3-novella anthology, Regency Glad Tidings, will be available on Amazon October 8.

Confession: I don’t write traditional “Regencies.” Dukes and earls don’t interest me. I’d rather write about surgeons, and shipwrights, and the occasional American, all of whom inhabited that Regency period. They’re ordinary; you know, people like us.

Digging around in the plain world of commoners involves much more research than writing about lords and ladies. Example: I looked for years to find out the actual name of those ship-to-shore vessels carrying messages to and from the Royal Navy blockade of Europe. I found it after five years – Fast Dispatch Vessels.

Maybe this only matters to me, except that my many readers have informed me that it matters to them, as well. I like that. I know my readers are intelligent.

So here you have Regency Glad Tidings, three Christmas stories that I wrote last year in summer’s heat, when most Christmas fiction is written. May your days be merry and bright!

Holly and Ivy

The battle of Waterloo [June 18, 1815] has been over for five months. Like other long-serving veterans, Surgeon Jacob Frost has been tending the seriously wounded in Brussels, Belgium. That effort is nearly done, but there is another battle ahead. It is Surgeon Frost’s duty to escort useless, malingering, hypochondriac Captain Baldwin home to the family estate in Yorkshire. Baldwin’s wound was even less than superficial, but Jake is stuck. Baldwin’s father commands the regiment, and orders are orders.

Jake is tired down to his toenails. That is the calm observation of Ivy Pritchard, the unwilling fiancée of Captain Baldwin. She is quiet, lovely, but with a visible flaw. She is also resourceful. She also discovers that she loves this weary, worn-out surgeon.

Now what? Jake is resourceful, too. He is also in love.

Yours, Sincerely

Life has never been easy for Madeline Tifton and her mother, Maude. Married to a ne’er-do-well from a good family who died and left them destitute, Maude has done her best to raise Maddie in rented rooms over the library in Ashfield, Hampshire. Mother and daughter exist on dressmaking and a tiny pittance given grudgingly by the toplofty Tiftons.

Enter Captain Amos Foster, a Connecticut Yankee with his own ties to the Tiftons. After the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, he is finally able to fit his ship with American goods to sell in England. It’s do or die for Amos. The War of 1812 ruined American shipping. This cargo is his last chance to restore a seagoing business he knows well.

There is also the matter of Walter Ince’s will. Amos never knew Grandfather Ince in Ashfield, because of distance and war, but who seemed to enjoy corresponding with a younger Amos Foster. This means Amos is also related to Tiftons, who have an equal interest in the Ince will.

And here is Maddie Tifton, who during every winter since the death of Grandfather Ince, has swept the sidewalk in front of his modest house close to the circulating library. She also wrote from Ince’s dictation when he could no longer manage it. And here is Captain Foster, recipient of those letters.

Amos Foster is a busy man with much on his mind. He’s far too focused on restoring his shipping business to be swept off his feet by little Maddie. Maybe, maybe not.

Picture a Christmas

It’s 1809, and the Peninsular War in Spain has begun, with French troops everywhere and battle intensifying. Back in Devonport, England, this means the shipbuilders are working overtime, buildings more warships to patrol the coasts of France and Spain.

Widower Luke Wainwright, shipwright, has no time for anything besides work. He’s confident that his daughter is well cared for by a nanny, and his cook and housekeeper seem efficient. Still, little Sally cries when he leaves for the shipyards.

If Luke Wainwright is overworked, Mary Cooper is desperate. Her father is dead, and there is no employment for Mary on the estate where Coopers have labored for years. She had no home on the estate now, and goes to nearby Liddiard. She sees a “Help wanted” sign in the window of a rundown notions shop run by Luella Wainwright, Luke Wainwright’s elderly aunt, and firmly tells the astonished owner that she has just hired Mary Cooper.

When Luke finds out what is going on, he’s concerned that a bully is coercing his aunt into employment to cheat her. When he and little Sally arrive to check out matters, be finds a very different story. He also is introduced to someone as determined as he is to survive and thrive in a hard world. Picture that.