There are some books which open easily. The characters go along with whatever the initial premise is and the pieces fall into place– at least for a time. (Don’t worry; if they’re easy earlier they get tough later. It’s the way it goes.) Others just won’t start. There’s something just… off about the opening sequence.…

The twelfth and final Pink Carnation novel, The Lure of the Moonflower, has a cover! That fort in the background? That’s an actual fort in Portugal that plays a significant role in the book. There’s something a little bittersweet about having the cover of the final Pink book in hand. I began writing the first…

It’s the little details that make a writer’s day. I won’t be telling you too much if I let you know that a crucial piece of Pink XII is slotted to take place around the coastal city of Peniche, in Portugal. As I was doing my crash course on Portugal and Portuguese culture in 1807…

Sometimes, the eighteenth (and early nineteenth) century can feel like a very small place. Right now, I’m doing a crash course of research for Pink XII, aka The Lure of the Moonflower. In 1807, the Portuguese royal family flees Lisbon for their colony of Brazil, just steps ahead of General Junot’s rag-tag army, the mad…