Read Around the Rainbow: Looking Back at 2023 and Forward to 2024

In keeping with the end of the year and the start of the next, this month on Read Around the Rainbow, we’ve decided to each have a retrospective of 2023 and a peek into 2024. I’m really looking forward to reading about everyone’s achievements and their plans.

2023 has been a quietly productive year for me. I’ve carried on increasing Twelve Letters, my ongoing Regency series. Also, I’ve started and nearly completed another 3-part series, Tow Bronze. While lurking in my comfort zone of Regency, I’ve also nipped into the Elizabethan and Stuart eras for a refreshing change.

I started 2023 with Gentlemen’s Agreement, the fourth book in my Twelve Letters series. During the year, in April, May and December, I’ve added stories five, six and seven, The Misfit, May Wedding and the newly released A Festive Gathering at Chelsea. Looking forward to next year, The Way Home, book 8 in the series, will be released in March.

In February 2023, I followed up 2022’s The Spice of Life with the sequel, A Touch of Spice, as my couple Gregory and Jehan find their HEA in Elizabethan London. March was a retrospective in itself with the release of Gentlemen in Love, a box set of some of my one-off Regency stories.

Summer brought Lucky John, my story for JMS Books’ Lucky 13 submission call for the publisher’s anniversary celebrations. I thoroughly enjoyed exploring the cusp of the transition from the Commonwealth to the Restoration of Charles II in the mid-17th century for my Royalist messenger Owen and his John. I’m just starting to work on a follow-up for these two as they leave Owen’s Monmouthshire home for the decadence of the newly re-established royal court at the Palace of Whitehall. And I got a research bargain with Antonia Fraser’s iconic biography of Charles II for 50p!

For the August Silver Foxes submission call, I wrote Town Bronze, which I fondly imagined to be a one-off story. While I was writing this older/younger spanking story with rabbit-in-the-headlights Jasper and suave, considerate Sir Mortimer, it suddenly occurred to me that I had not one, but a trio of young men who needed to find their perfect partner, however unlikely! So Town Bronze Book 2, Pantaloons and Petticoats, Barney and Ross/Rose’s love story was published in November. Impeccable Credentials, Julian’s story, finishes off the trilogy. It’s currently on pre-release at JMS Books and will be published on January 6th. And to see my original couple, Jasper and Mortimer, on track for their HEA, there’s a bonus chapter for my newsletter subscribers going out on January 1st to round things off nicely.

Talking of rounding off, I have only two remaining stories from 2023 to mention. October brought The Monk’s Lair, my Regency Gothic Halloween story, with the dramatic backdrop of Tintern Abbey and hooded monks galore to haunt my couple, Christian and Sam. Finally, there’s Christmas Below Stairs, released last week and a story about a footman, Joseph and a valet, Eli, working for the same household, who find themselves virtually alone in the London townhouse over Christmas, leading to a chance for romance.

With looking backwards and forwards at once, I’m thrilled that last year’s Christmas story, A Christmas Engagement, is included in JMS Books’ 2023 Top Ten Gay Romance anthology, with plenty of representation from the RAtR bloggers! My couple in that story, Charles and Avery, will return in February for A Lasting Vow, my contribution to the multi-author Love Wins series from JMS Books.

All my published titles are currently in the Smashwords winter sale until January 1^st and most with a 50% reduction. Together with the pre-release of Impeccable Credentials, all my stories are also in the JMS Books New Year sale through Monday, January 1st.  

My post will be linked on the last Friday of every month with posts from fellow blog ring members. There are five other writers blogging in the Read Around the Rainbow Webring this month… find their posts about looking back at 2023 and forward to 2024.

Ofelia Grand : Addison Albright : K.L. Noone : Amy Spector : Holly Day : Nell Iris :