Emily Larkin's Blog

Violet and the Bow Street Runner is finally out in the world. This feels like a big milestone because it's my 25th published book and the first one post-cancer ... and then I added up all my words and realized that I've published more than 1.6 million words, and that rather boggled my mind.

Thank you to anyone who’s read and enjoyed any of those 1.6 million words. You guys are the reason I write!

Emily xx

Last month was the Romance Writers of New Zealand annual conference, which is always great fun—three wonderful days of catching up with other writers (and drinking cocktails).

Imagine my surprise when Primrose and the Dreadful Duke won both the Long Romance of the Year and the Best Overall Romance of the Year awards!

It was a very joyful surprise. I’m delighted that readers love Oliver and Primrose’s story so much. Thank you so much to everyone who has read and enjoyed this book. You guys are the best!

Emily xx

I woke up this morning to discover that Ruining Miss Wrotham won the Long Romance of the Year award at the Romance Writers of Australia conference last night!

It's just as well I've finally figured out how to do gifs, because this is the perfect time for a happy dance!

Last weekend was super exciting, because Ruining Miss Wrotham won two awards at the Romance Writers of New Zealand annual conference—Long Romance Book of the Year, and Overall Best Book of the Year.

Nell and Mordecai are two of my favorite characters and I'm so glad that readers love this book so much!

If I knew how to insert gifs, I'd insert one here of someone doing a happy dance, but I don't know how, so you'll just have to imagine it. :)

The latest Baleful Godmother novel is now on the shelves! It's called Primrose and the Dreadful Duke and features a heroine who loves to read, a hero with a dubious sense of humor ... and a murderer.

I had a lot of fun writing this story because the hero, Oliver, can't resist a joke. Even though there are some dark moments (murder, anyone?) there are plenty of lighthearted moments, too.

As a duke, Oliver is pursued by young ladies eager to marry him. In fact, there’s only one young lady who absolutely does not want to marry him: Lady Primrose Garland, his best friend's little sister.

Allow me to introduce them both to you. They’re at a ball…

“Lady Prim,” Oliver said, bowing over her hand with a flourish. “You’re a jewel that outshines all others.”

Primrose was too well-bred to roll her eyes in public, but her eyelids twitched ever so slightly, which told him she wanted to. “Still afflicted by hyperbole, I see.”

“You use such long words, Prim,” he said admiringly.

“And you use such foolish ones.”

And a little further on…

They eyed each other as they went through the steps of the dance. Oliver could tell from the glint in her eyes and the way her lips were tucked in at the corners that Primrose was trying not to laugh. He was trying not to laugh, too.

“You’re a fiddle-faddle fellow,” Primrose told him severely.

“Alliteration,” Oliver said. “Well done, Prim.”

Primrose’s lips tucked in even more tightly at the corners. If they’d been anywhere but a ballroom he was certain she’d have stamped her foot, something she’d done frequently when they were children.

“Heaven only knows why I agreed to dance with you,” she told him tartly.

“Because it increases your consequence to be seen with me. I am a duke, you know.” He puffed out his chest and danced the next few steps with a strut.

“Stop that,” she hissed under her breath.

“Stop what?” Oliver said innocently, still strutting his steps.

As you can see, Oliver is rather annoying! But that's not why someone's trying to kill him...

A few years ago I wrote a Regency romance called The Spinster’s Secret that had a pair of secondary characters who fell in love: an impoverished widow (Cecy) and a baronet (Gareth) who’d lost an arm at Waterloo.

That particular novel belonged to another couple, but I’ve always wanted to write a novella the showed Cecy and Gareth reaching their Happy Ever After, because I knew they had some hurdles to overcome.

You know that feeling when there’s something you want to do but don’t have the time because other projects keep getting in the way? That niggling something-left-undone feeling? Well, that’s the feeling I’ve had for the past couple of years.

But finally—finally—I found a window of time in which to write Gareth and Cecy’s story!

The Baronet’s Bride is a short novella about what can go wrong—and right—on a wedding night.

Here's the cover:



And here's the blurb:

Sir Gareth Locke lost an arm at Waterloo. He’s in love with his new bride—but he’s dreading their wedding night. He knows it will be an ordeal: clumsy, awkward, and mortifying.

Cecily Locke knows what to expect in the marriage bed—after all, she’s been married once before. It will be uncomfortable and a little messy, but over quickly enough.

But Cecily and Gareth are about to have a wedding night that neither of them expects…

The Baronet’s Bride concludes the Midnight Quill Trio, a collection of three linked historical romances. It’s a wonderful feeling to have finally finished it! You can be certain that I opened a bottle of bubbly to celebrate. :)

And now I can embark on my next project: a new Baleful Godmother series set in Regency England.

I'm gonna be busy this year!

Discovering Miss Dalrymple comes out today, and I’d like to share another glimpse of the hero with you.

Alexander St. Clare might be a duke, but a very un-duke-like and awful thing happened to him when he was very young. And now that he’s found his father’s diaries, he gets to witness that part of his childhood through his father’s eyes.

Alexander drained the brandy glass, put it to one side, and picked up the diaries again. There was a hard, sick knot in his stomach. He found 1789. Found May. Found June.

He turned the pages reluctantly. June 8. June 14. His throat was tight, his shoulders were tight, his chest was tight. He forced himself to inhale, to exhale, to turn the page.

June 20, 1789. An express from Kent. Alexander is missing. The nurserymaids took him into the woods for a picnic and he was abducted by gypsies.

Alexander’s heart was beating too fast. There was sweat on his upper lip. He wiped it away and turned the page and read of his father’s hasty journey to Kent, read of men searching the woods and scouring the nearby villages. I’ve dismissed the nurserymaids, his father had written. How dare they take Alexander into the woods without my permission? And then an anguished: Where is my son?

Alexander thumbed hastily through the next few months, skipping over the details: the advertisements in the newspapers, the posters and the flyers, the search widening beyond Kent into Sussex, into London, into Hampshire.

November, December, January. And there it was:

February 14, 1790. An express from Exeter. One of my men thinks he’s found Alexander in the employ of a chimney sweep.

So, yes, this duke has been a chimney sweep’s climbing boy. It's not a secret--everyone in the ton knows what happened to him--but there is a secret buried in Alexander’s past, and it will tip his world upside down.

Fortunately his childhood friend, Georgiana Dalrymple, is on hand to help him!

In my last post I showed you Alexander St. Clare, the hero of Discovering Miss Dalrymple, finding his father’s diaries hidden in a secret compartment in a desk. This time I’d like to take you a little further…

Alexander flicked through one of the diaries. There was an inscription on the first page: Leonard Aubrey St. Clare, Duke of Vickery. And underneath that: To be burned in the event of my death.

Alexander had a flash of memory so strong that he almost smelled his father’s deathbed—the camphor, the lavender, the beeswax candles. For a fleeting moment he could have sworn he felt his father’s hand in his: the cooling skin, the lifeless fingers. His throat closed. He needed to blink a few times, and then he gathered up the diaries and crossed to the hearth. A fire was laid there, but not lit.

He kindled the fire, watched the flames take hold—and found himself unable to burn the diaries. His father had been dead for two years, but this felt like a second burial; these pages held his father’s thoughts and emotions and experiences.

Alexander examined the diaries. The calfskin was scuffed in places, shiny in others, worn by his father’s hands. What could it hurt to read one entry? The day of his birth, nothing more. An entry that bound him to his father. And then he’d burn the diaries and lay the old man to rest again.

Okay, hands up everyone who thinks he’ll read more than one entry?

Here's a picture of Alexander thumbing through the diaries...



[Image courtesy of the Rijksmuseum collection of public domain images.]

I’ve been neck-deep in revisions and new software, and all of a sudden October is upon us. How the heck did the last few months pass so quickly?

The sixth book in the Baleful Godmother series, Discovering Miss Dalrymple, comes out in two weeks, so I’d like to introduce the hero to you. Here he is, blissfully unaware that his life is about to be tipped upside down…

Alexander St. Clare, seventh Duke of Vickery, found his father’s diaries by accident. He was working at the massive oak desk in the study, reading through the latest report from the bailiff on his Lincolnshire estate and jotting down notes, when the tip of the quill split.

“Drain the north paddock,” he muttered under his breath, while he opened the top drawer of the desk and searched for a penknife. The penknife was at the very back of the drawer. Alexander groped for it, banged his knuckles against wood—and then the wood yielded and the penknife skittered out of reach, deeper into the desk.

Damn. He’d broken the drawer.

Alexander carefully removed it—and discovered that the drawer wasn’t broken at all; the back was hinged, with a little catch that he must have knocked open.

What the devil?

He got down on his knees and peered into the gaping slot. Was that a secret compartment? In his father’s old oak desk?

He reached in and felt carefully. Yes, a secret compartment. The penknife was in there, and . . . books?

Alexander drew the books out. There were six of them, bound with calfskin. He opened one and saw his father’s handwriting. June 17, 1808.

I would love to find a secret drawer in a desk. Wouldn’t you? But poor Alexander is going to regret it. Well, not finding the drawer itself, but finding his father's diaries…

Here's a picture of Alexander's father—and yes, that's one of the diaries!



[Image courtesy of the Rijksmuseum collection of public domain images.]

As its title suggests, The Spinster's Secret is a novel about a spinster with a secret.

The spinster is Matilda Chapple, and her secret involves paper, ink, and imagination. Can you guess what it is?

Here's a scene from the hero's point of view. The mailbag from Soddy Morton village has fallen in the creek and Edward finds Matilda's elderly uncle, Sir Arthur Strickland, going through the waterlogged letters...

“Look at this!” Strickland thrust a wet letter at him. His thin face was flushed with outrage. “This . . . this is filth!”

Edward took the letter. It was several pages long. The ink was smeared, but still readable.

Dear reader, in answer to your request, here is a further confession from my pen.

Edward raised his eyebrows. What the hell?

Previously, I told of my first encounter with Lord S. Now, if you are willing to be the recipient of another confession, I should like to share some details of my time as Lord S.’s mistress.

“Filth!” Strickland said again, struggling to his feet. “Disgusting filth!”

Edward ignored him. His gaze skipped down the page: For some time we wandered, exchanging fond touches and kisses, until presently we came upon a little folly built in the form of a Roman temple, perfectly round, with a pantiled roof and a colonnade. A pretty wilderness of trees surrounded it, and at its marble feet ran a sparkling brook. Lord S. led me inside the folly, wherein a fine, large divan tossed with pillows stood squarely in a shaft of sunlight.

The page ended. Edward tried to peel the corner up to read the next page. He couldn’t. The sheets of paper were stuck together. He tried the next page.

. . . until finally his passion was spent. We lay entwined, sunlight warm on our skin. From outside came the sound of birdsong and the ripple of running water. After several minutes Lord S. roused himself and suggested that we refresh ourselves with a swim.

Taking me by the hand he led me outside and coaxed me into the brook. We sported in the water for some time, until Lord S.’s passion was manifestly aroused again.

Edward read swiftly to the bottom of the page. “Filth!” he heard Strickland mutter while he paced the study, his cane thudding angrily with each step. “Filth!”

Alas, the next two pages were stuck together. Edward tried to peel them apart, but the limp paper disintegrated into shreds. Only the final sentence was legible: And on that note, dear readers, I shall end this latest confession from my pen.

Chérie.

He set the pages together again, disappointed.

“Here!” A thump of the cane. “In Soddy Morton!” Another thump. “To find such filth!”

Edward nodded his agreement. Soddy Morton was the last place he’d have expected the notorious Chérie to reside. “She’s thought to live in London.”

Strickland swung around and pinned him with a fierce glare. “You’re familiar with the writer?”

“Uh . . . I have heard of her, sir.” And he’d read the last three installments of her confessions. “She claims to be a courtesan by the name of Chérie. Her confessions are quite popular in London.” That was an understatement; Chérie’s Confessions had taken London by storm. Well, half of London, Edward amended. The male half.

“She must be stopped!” Strickland shook his cane at him. His face was mottled with rage. “I won’t have such depravity in Soddy Morton!”

And thus begins a series of events that turn both Mattie's and Edward's lives upside down.