Virginia Taylor - Author

Callie Cat is hard to write about.  She was the only female cat we ever had. Anyway, Kitty had disappeared long since and we were left with only Ozzie, the objectionable cat that no-one liked. At work, I had lots of cat conversations, as you do, and discovered that one of the nursing aides bred Burmese cats.
​
She thought they were the most wonderful breed in the world, but I had owned Kitty and knew Siamese were. We argued long and hard, but she knew I was a cat person and a sucker.

One night she rang me at home, and asked if I could take a Burmese cat that had been given to her because she was known to be a breeder of Burmese. I wasn't sure. A reject cat was sure to be a problem. She assured me I would adore this cat who was about six months old and had never been outside in her life. Our cats were adventurers. We didn't consider imprisoning them. In other words, I hated having a poo-dish inside the house.

After much household discussion we decided to take the cat who had been spayed already. She was dropped off and she sat in my lap, a tiny ball of pale cream fur. Her colour was the most beautiful of any cat ever. I couldn't move. I didn't want to reject her when her first owner had. I couldn't put her on the floor.  My youngest daughter was two at the time. I think I was having an 'I want another baby' moment. Eventually I moved. Callie spent her days on my lap or my shoulder if I was at home, or sitting on one of the window sills looking out when I wasn't. Finally I thought she could be let outside for a while.

She loved being outside, but what she loved most of all was me. She followed me like a shadow. Even when I went shopping, she insisted on coming. She adored the car and she would sit on the dashboard, her version of 'helping' me with the shopping, She also helped with the cooking by waiting and frowning at Oz who always had to get underfoot. He was such a pest and she was so perfect. 

We decided to 'show' her and she won many ribbons, including The Best in The Show. One time - cats had to be bathed before being shown - she disappeared just after she'd had her bath. I called and called and I could hear her answer, but from a distance, that loud Burmese 'mewl.' Two days passed. We asked the neighbours if we could search their yards, but we still couldn't find her. The mew became more faint.

Bob was sent on a neighbourhood excursion. One lot of people in the next street said they could hear a cat and thought she might be on their roof, though they couldn't see her. So Bob got onto the roof and there was Callie, who leapt into his arms, trying to 'splain' what had happened. I was overjoyed to see her again. She spent the next few days on my shoulder as if she was afraid to venture too far in case she did something too adventurous. However, she had plenty more adventures. She was hit by a car (I know, cats should be kept indoors) and survived.

One day she completely disappeared. We scanned all the local roofs but we didn't hear a mewl from her. Months went by and I mourned every single day. I never wanted another cat because I couldn't cope with the misery of losing her. However, the daughters insisted, and so we bought a blue Burmese male (Gemini) from my coworker perhaps to replace Callie, but she was irreplaceable. 

One fine and sunny day, I was weeding the garden around the side when something landed on my back. Callie used to do this, her way of helping with the weeding. Then she dropped beside me, mewling. I couldn't breathe. I didn't honestly believe what I was seeing. The relief was incredible. I just sat with her, howling my head off. She was a bag of bones with mucky eyes, starving and filthy. For the only time in my life,  I believed in miracles. I don't know where she had been, but she was taken instantly to the vet.

If you have read my book Perfect Scents, the cat in the story was based on this episode. She healed and she was the same gorgeous loving cat as ever.  But I need to speak more about her car addiction. If anyone left a window open in a car, she would pop inside, hoping to be taken for a drive. This was her eventual downfall and what had probably happened to her the previous time.

She disappeared again. We asked all the neighbours and one mentioned he saw her in the back of a tradies' car, or a pale cat he thought could have been her.  We tracked down the guy who had been working over the road. Bob made a phone call and drove to the other side of town to speak to him. The man hadn't noticed a cat, but he left his car windows open which is why we suspected Callie had gone with him.

Despite the fact that he lived so far away, we hoped she would somehow make her way back again. We could only assumed this is what had happened the last time. We put ads in all the papers.

About a month later, a woman saw the ad. She had found a starving cat that she took to the vet, who said she was a cream Burmese. He put her down.

I sobbed for days. Callie only had one more main road to cross and she would have been home.

For one reason or another, we didn’t have cats when I was a child. Once a stray dog followed my mother home, an ancient black bitzer. He adored her and I don’t remember what happened to him, but we didn’t have him long enough to get used to. My dream was to have a cat. 
After I had been married for six months, I graduated as a midwife and my husband finished his thesis. He took a job in far north Queensland as a deputy mine manager. It was one of those scam mines, meant to make money from selling the shares. He didn’t know that of course, which is why rookie Bob was offered the job.
I couldn’t live with him at the mine site because only cabins had been constructed for the workers. Therefore I had to live in Cairns, which was okay because my best friend had married a doctor and he had a job (coincidentally) at the Cairns Base hospital. So, I took my enforced separation from my husband as an opportunity to buy a cat. I wanted a Siamese.
​

​Orimedes Lilac Tamkara was his name. He was a sweet little kitty about eight weeks old. I adored him. We had great adventures while I was living in the motel in Cairns because he hated living there. He disappeared constantly trying to find a more interesting place to dwell. Eventually he was given his wish. My husband arranged for a caravan to be put on the site at the mining camp. Kitty (yes, he never lost that name) and I travelled to our new home in one of the single engine planes we used in those days. He settled easily into the camp. I think he mentioned he was an outdoor kind of fellow. In the first week he did nothing much but pounce on cane toads. Within a month he totally ignored them. 
He was my best and only buddy. The men left for work and I stayed in the camp with the cook and my cat, who used to follow me everywhere. Kitty wore a blue suede collar with a bell so that I could find him in the tall grass, though he did come running when I called him. The miners thought it was hilarious to meet a cat called Kitty who wore a pretty collar. They re-named him Tinkerbell, which was meant to be an insult to the cat, who didn’t care a bit.

​The guys were a pretty rough lot, who treated me like a princess. On occasion, one or another could be caught petting my cat, lil ol’ Tinks. Each had many and varied reasons to want to work in the back of beyond, mainly related to being of interest to the police. I don’t know why, but I recall one time we heard a group of police wanted to inspect the camp. That day, only Kitty, Bob, and I were to be seen. Miraculously, every bloke had disappeared. I may have known where they were but I wasn’t asked. 
Kitty was used to roaming far and wide and he was very interested in the snakes. The guys told me to watch out for him, because the snakes were the poisonous browns. He had many tussles with them and one day he brought a half dead one back to the caravan. I was blissfully unaware, being fast asleep. He put my gift on the bed with me. Eventually I woke up. I got out of bed and the snake came after me, perhaps imagining I would say “Good morning. Would you like a Kitty for breakfast?” The snake had been severely bitten and was not in a good mood. I opened the door hoping he would take the hint and leave, but he hadn’t been brought up in caravan and didn’t know what the door was. He had come in through the window in Kitty’s jaws.

​Since the brown was blocking my exit, I struggled out of the caravan through the window and dropped to the ground. Wearing tiny PJs. Bare feet. The caravan was parked in long grass. I went around to the door to see if I could encourage the snake to slither out. Kitty was very interested. He had followed me. He sat neatly to watch. I wanted to get dressed but I couldn’t get in. Eventually, very embarrassed, I had to go to the camp kitchen and ask for the cook’s help. He was thrilled, also being a blokey bloke.
He dashed to the rescue and grabbed the snake and killed it. Kitty was not pleased. He had imagined hours of fun.
He killed many snakes, walked over many cane toads, had many adventures in the far north and then South Australia. But the brown snake eventually killed him. Kitty died with lung-worm, which the vet said he would have gotten from eating snakes. Vale, beautiful Kitty.

Golden Opportunity is the last in my Romance by Design series. I wanted to write slightly older characters for a change and I wanted to mend a broken relationship. Marigold and Hagen were always perfect for each other but her  responsibilities caused her to break with him. But now is the time for her Golden Opportunity.

​Here is a little excerpt. Having spent years apart, they are experiencing for the first time a boss and employee situation... 

Hagen arrived in the staff car park directly behind Marigold, as would naturally happen when he wanted to avoid her. He took his named spot, and she drew up in the general area. She, of course, drove a small car of obscure make. He couldn’t walk off without acknowledging her and so he waited. She, of course, stared his car up and down without a word.
“I know I should drive a twenty-year-old homemade car, but I prefer speed and comfort,” he said, using his bored voice.
“I didn’t say a word, and if I had, it wouldn’t be about your beautiful car. Don’t doubt it, if I had less class and more money, I would buy one of those, too.”
He blinked at her. She didn’t smile but her whole face expressed hope. Her eyes sparkled and her mouth pursed. He eked out a reluctant laugh, possibly for the first time in a year or more. “Words you might wish had remained unspoken.”
“Oh? Was I making one of those comments that make me sound like an envious snob?”
He put his hand to the back of his neck and considered. “That sounds like something I might once have said.”
“It does, doesn’t it? And I might have said something about the high proportion of village idiots who owned fast cars. But I also might have grown up a little.”
“Since school days? I know,” he said with emphasis, staring straight into her eyes. He began to walk with her to the loading bay door.
“Though I’m still wearing hand-me-downs. Well, that might change in the near future. You will be pleased to know that for three months I will be earning more than the average wage. I might even buy something smart.”
He glanced back at her, concentrating for the first time on the clothes she wore. If they were hand-me-downs, he wouldn’t have guessed, not that she wore the type of clothes Mercia used to buy, which he knew were expensive and seen only a few times before she loaded her dressing room with her next buys. Marigold wore a plain blue shirt with a black skirt and jacket. She looked like any businesswoman of his acquaintance, except for her light golden-red hair, which she had tangled into a knot at the back of her head. As ever, the soft curly tendrils around her face had escaped. He thought she didn’t wear much makeup. Her eyelashes, long and spiky, seemed to be her own, but what would he know? 
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Between 1/14 and 1/28, all my South Landers series historical romances are being discounted. Starling will be $0.99 and the others $2.99. Although each story is set in South Australia in the 1860s each is a standalone although most of the lead characters know one another. 
​
 
Perhaps you have never read an historical romance set in SA? If not I will give you a tiny preview from Starling, here.
​
 “I’m Starling, from...” She indicated Mr. Seymour’s house. “You must be Mrs. Burdon.”
 “Yes,” the woman answered distractedly. “Jane Burdon.” She covered her quivering mouth with one gloved hand. “Do you think Mr. Seymour will get her out? He’s over there.”
 Starling narrowed her eyes at the three dirt-streaked men who were peering into another hole mounded on one side with soil, but she didn’t spot Mr. Seymour. A few minutes later, she saw him emerge from the hole, shirtless and muddy.
 “We’ll need strong shoring,” he said to the men. “The sides are beginning to move. Take the wagon to the timber yard, Derry, and tell Joe I sent you. Grab every piece of planking you can find. Don’t take more than half an hour. We can’t wait any longer than that, or the work we’ve done will be a waste of time.” He hauled a bag of dirt out of the hole and dumped the weight on the slippery verges. His big shoulders strained.
 “Need spelling yet, Seymour?” A stout man emptied the soil and handed the limp sack back to him.
 “Not until it’s safe. I’ll go on until the shoring arrives.” Mr. Seymour wiped a stained hand through his dirt-plastered hair.
 This morning, while he’d wandered around more than half-naked, Starling’s only reaction had been embarrassment. She’d never seen a bare man before him. Now she gazed at his manly form, wishing he wasn’t quite so physically attractive. She would hate to see such a fine body injured, and she was scared for him, but as he stood with the rain sluicing over his skin, he looked insoluble, like a great stone monument.
 Within moments, and not even glancing at her, he disappeared headfirst back into his hole.
 Starling held her umbrella over Mrs. Burdon. “He’ll get her out,” she said, repeating the words the servants had told her. “He never gives in once he’s made up his mind to help.”
 “I wish I could see Tammy. I can’t even hear her. Mr. Seymour says he knows how far down she’s wedged.” Mrs. Burdon’s face creased with worry.
 Starling reached out a tentative hand. Mrs. Burdon grasped her fingers. The men continued to empty the bags of soil while Mr. Seymour filled them. The hole looked tiny, not much wider than a man’s shoulders, yet the earth being removed seemed never-ending.
 When the shoring arrived, Mr. Seymour widened the hole, and then the heavy-set, older man, who Starling had identified as Mr. Burdon, took over. Mr. Seymour paced. Not wanting to be noticed by him, certain he would not be bolstered by her presence, Starling pulled the waterproof farther over her head, left the umbrella with Mrs. Burdon, and squelched in her waterlogged boots back to the house. 
* * * *
 
This part of the story was inspired by many tales of the same sort of rescue, one in Australia about the time I was writing Starling. I’m not sure who the rescuers were, but a group tunneled overnight to get a child out of a pipe. It was televised and took many hours. Like the rest of Australia, I cried when the child was pulled out alive. The strain on the faces of the men, the lack of light in the tunnel, and the sheer heroism of this act was inspiring, and of course I want my heroes to be inspiring.
 
Alasdair Seymour, the hero in Starling, made his fortune by tunneling, though for profit until he needed to help the child. In doing so, he caused Starling to see him not as her oppressor but as man whose courage she can’t deny. This way, he takes his first step in gaining her trust. However, historical accuracy is also important to me and I know old wells have been found in the vicinity of the place I used for the setting. 
 
In the early days of the colonial settlement of South Australia, (1836) aborigines lived in and around the site that Colonel Light, the city planner, had decided to use as the capital city, Adelaide. Because hills lined the coast, the new settlement was constructed in a long line in front. In those days, the River Torrens (named after the man who invented the Torrens Title, used worldwide) was the only close source of fresh water.
 
Collecting this water was a problem. Justifiably annoyed by having their land invaded, the native tribesmen kept in sight of the riverbanks, finding the desperate settlers easy targets for their spears. Not about to be defeated so easily, the settlers built tunnels to the river. They also built wells close to the banks for the same reason, using guards while the water was being drawn.
 
Thirty years later, (1863) after the city of Adelaide had been developed, and the wells and tunnels disbanded, my hero in Starling, Alasdair, built his home on one of these sites. But Alasdair is an autocratic wealthy man and he has one use only for Starling—as his fake bride. What better way to show that he has another side than to have him rescue a child from a ghastly death? What better way to have Starling see him in a different light, than as a man with character?
 
 
 
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‘Correct me if I am wrong.’ This is what a reviewer mentioned in her sparse review of one of my books - that ‘Australians don’t talk like this.’ No specifics, just in general. I don’t know how she thinks Australians speak.
 
Although I would love to correct her, for she is, of course, wrong, I know I would cause a storm if I did. I would also like to ask her if she is aware that I am Australian? And does she imagine I use a fake voice when I write? Why The Face? Or, in Victorian, in which she thinks I speak, Worse Than France.
 
Then I could tell her that quite a few people can understand me when I talk to them; taxi drivers, shop assistants, friends and relatives, and even strangers from faraway lands. I have never resorted to ‘struth, ‘stone the crows’, or ‘fair crack of the whip.’ I say 'tch', or ‘I am surprised’, or ‘be fair.’ I speak in what I think are normal sentences, often using different tones. Sometimes I am earnest, sometimes I am cross, annoyed, impatient, or laughing, and yet my words still erupt like the words of a person anywhere else in the world.
 
I don’t know what she meant. Did she mean people don’t speak so frankly? Of course they do, from every country in the world.
 
Or did she mean I didn’t have my characters speaking ocker, dropping g’s or h’s? Should I tell her that possibly she has assumed that everyone is Crocodile Dundee or Steve Irwin, or must to play up the stereotype? Is that what she expected? That normal, well educated people in Australia speak like crocodile hunters in the outback – and when I lived in North Queensland I knew a crocodile hunter (he was a local who didn’t like the crocs taking his cattle – and he had broad country accent. He ended his sentence with ‘ay?’ We don’t do that in South Australia, which is where my stories are set, every one of them so far.
 
Or should I give her a history lesson? Dear reviewer, South Australia is the only state in Australia that wasn’t settled by convicts. Our settlers came as free people to a new land. The first were the discoverers, the movers and shakers, and then the less well off who were needed to form a rounded society, to dig ditches, to build houses, to grow crops and to farm. Along with them came minor aristocracy, fortune hunters, and sons and daughters of wealthy families.
 
Then came wave after wave of people with or without money, each needing the other. Our first houses were not built in enclaves of the wealthy, leaving the poor to their own districts. The wealthy needed the poor as much as vice versa. Small cottages were built beside mansions. Land was bought and settled, mined, and crops were grown. Dear Reviewer, read my historicals to get an idea of how South Australia was formed and then accept that we are normal people who speak the same English as everyone else.
 
Dear reviewer, do you really think Australia is not like every other country? 

Fatal Evidence
Kari Lemor
 
What you don’t know can get you killed . . .
Construction company owner Scott Holland doesn’t go looking for trouble, but he’s just stumbled on plenty. The rundown mill he’s bought is plagued with mysterious incidents, and his investment partner, heiress Heather Silva, is as stubborn as she is intriguing. Dumped by his ex because of his blue-collar job, Scott is wary of Heather’s privileged background. Yet he’s drawn to her independence and strength, especially as the “accidents” grow more terrifying.
Determined to succeed without anyone’s help—especially her wealthy parents—Heather clashes with Scott again and again. But a grisly discovery makes them both targets. Someone wants Heather and Scott silenced for good. And as a killer closes in, the only option is to trust each other—or become the next victims…
​
 
Early Praise for Fatal Evidence:
“Fatal Evidence is fun and flirtatious, the characters are nicely developed and the story is engaging. Lemor has brought happily-ever-afters and laughter into the hearts of readers.” ~ RT Book Reviews
 
“Fatal Evidence has the right amount of everything I love in a book: mystery, suspense, intrigue, sexual chemistry, family drama and great friendships. Throw in an heiress turned real estate agent trying to get out from under her rich family and her entitled role and add a blue-collared construction worker with a chip on his shoulder and it's perfect. …Enjoyed all the books in this series so far and loved the hint at the next to follow.” ~ Carolyn’s Book Reviews
 
“Lemor once again incorporates humor, romance and suspense to make this novel another must read!” ~ Goodreads
 
Excerpt:
“Hold still,” he scolded and pulled her tighter to his chest. “Now listen up while I give you the run down on the condos up here.”
He walked around the space as if he wasn’t carrying a full-grown woman in his arms. Damn impressive. The pectoral muscles beneath her hand weren’t too shabby either. Continuing on with his description, he seemed to not even realize she was there. At the windows, he set her down and stood behind her looking out, pointing to certain landmarks in the small mill town that you could see from here.
He had been affected by carrying her. The erection digging into her back was evidence enough. Good to know. Not that she wanted anything to happen. They were business partners now. They had to be professional.
“Ready to go?” His gravelly voice sent goose pimples crawling across her arms, and she rubbed them.
“Cold? You should have worn a warmer coat. You’ve lived in New England all your life. You should know April can be chilly. Plus the heat hasn’t been on in this building for years.”
“I’m fine,” she lied. The cold wasn’t getting to her. It was him and his annoyingly sexy presence. She wouldn’t tell him though.
“I’ll make sure to let you know when the permit comes through. If I don’t have it by next week, I’ll call and check on it.”
“Perfect, but remember I’m in on this too. If you need me to do anything, you only need to ask.”
“I will.” His sexy smile was back as he glanced up and down her body. “Ready for your ride down.”
“You don’t have to carry me. I’m fine walking.”
“And killing yourself by falling down three flights of stairs. Then where does my funding for this project go?”
“You already have access. You don’t need me.”
“Stealing from a dead woman, though. That just seems…wrong.”
The chuckle escaped before she could stop it. He seriously had a warped sense of humor at times. Moving closer, he placed his hand on her hip.
At her indignant look, he said, “You could always ride piggyback if you don’t like me carrying you.”
Scanning her slim skirt, she scoffed. “A piggyback ride? In this?”
“You could hike up the skirt then jump on.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
His eyebrows went up and down. “Very much.”
Closing her eyes, she sighed then held out her arms. “Fine, come get me, my prince. Rescue me from the dangerous crumbling castle.”
Scott sidled closer then ran his hands down her hips. One hand continued down her leg until it slipped under. His other hand caressed her back then he scooped her up in his arms. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on as he trotted back down three flights of stairs. At the bottom he didn’t release her right away. And for some reason she didn’t tell him to.
His eyes roamed over her from head to toe and lingered on those heels. Slowly, he allowed her feet to slide to the floor, her body rubbing against his hardness, sending fluttering sensations through her blood stream. As her shoes touched the ground, he leaned in close, his manly smell assaulting her nostrils. Inhaling the scent, she waited for his next words.
His breath drifted across her cheek. “Next time, you should think about wearing a sensible pair of shoes.”
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Check out my other books in the Love on the Line series:
 
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Running Target:  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/book.aspx/34984
 
 
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As my book Perfect Scents is about to be released, I thought I might write a bit about my own garden, which once upon a time used to be huge with a swimming pool and room for a tennis court. I don't come from a family of tennis players so we made a garden in that spot instead. I have no photos to show, because when we subdivided, I gave the garden pictures to the new owners who built a lovely house on that spot.
So, without half the garden and the swimming pool, I had almost no gardening to do, and the front was scrappy to say the least.
Time passes and as a person grows older, gardens become more important. I had a single viburnum that keep sending out more plants, and as it did so, I planted them as a hedge along the front. I added roses, because who can live without roses? And that became scrappy too. With the drastic water restrictions, my garden died in places. In other places, it overgrew. Then along came a spider, oops no, a gardener who told me I could easily make the garden lovely again if I stopped being so mean about paying for extra water. Therefore I stopped being miserly, because a pretty garden is food for the soul.
He has been adding more plants every week, cutting back, and fertilising. Who knew gardens needed so much fertiliser? I'll show a 'before' photo of the worst spot, along the side of my house. 

A few months late and spring has arrived. The garden has nowhere near reached its full potential, but already it is looking happy. The leaves are beginning to grow on the crepe myrtles which should shade this very hot spot in summer. The flower photos are taken from various parts of my garden.

​“When I was One, I had just begun.
When I was Two,I was nearly new.
When I was Three, I was hardly me."

​AA Milne said that beautifully. But when I was three I was determined to be me.

​For Christmas the year I turned three (I was a January baby) my mother gave me a wonderful doll. She was made of some sort of squishy plastic and she had a series of tubes inside that you could fill with water so that she either cried or wet her nappy. I dealt with the latter so early on that I can’t remember ever changing a nappy. Perhaps I was given this doll because my mother had a new baby at the time and we had to love her.
As a matter of fact, I don’t remember my younger sister being a baby. Likely I was too absorbed in my doll. First she had a magical wonderful name. Rubber Doll. She was my only doll and my mother had spent night after secretive night making clothes for Rubber Doll’s Christmas debut.
​
Rubber Doll had knitted underpants and a singlet, a pretty crocheted dress, a knitted coat, a bib, a hat, and mittens all in white. She didn’t ever have nappies, which is lucky bearing in mind that I ripped out her leaky innards.

Until I went to school, she was my best friend, despite me having younger and older sisters. Later on, I learnt to make clothes for her on the sewing machine, one of those foot pedal things. She was the best-dressed doll on the block, but never fashionable because she was a baby doll. I don’t have a single photo of her, because in those days we didn’t have a camera. We barely had anything, as a matter of fact.

When I was barely me, my father deserted my mother for a younger woman and left his wife and three children in a two bedroom house, the lease of which he had paid for a year. The new baby meant that my mother couldn’t work, so in those early days, so that we could eat, we had a lodger who occupied the front room, which was the biggest in the house. We four females shared a tiny bedroom that had a double bed my mother and baby sister occupied and bunk bed for my big sister and me. You could barely move around the beds.

We had to be quiet because of the lodger and I don’t remember a thing about him/her. I think he/she left before the year was up but that can’t be right. It wasn’t until my little sister was about three that my sisters and I moved into that big room. I would have been six. My mother kept the small bedroom as hers.

We lived in that house until I was eleven and we shifted to Adelaide into a worse situation. My uncle’s wife had run away and left him with two small children. We lived with him in my grandmother's house so that my mother could take care of my little cousins as well. About a year later, their mother came back and took them. Not long after that my uncle remarried and moved out. 

Now, for the first time without little children to care for, my beautiful and smart mother had a chance to find a good job. After that, she found a new rich husband, and she shifted out with my little sister, leaving my big sister, now seventeen and me, thirteen, to finish our education under the supervision of our grandmother who had recently retired as a teacher and returned to Adelaide too
.
Then my sister ran off and got married and I was alone with grandma and Rubber Doll, for whom I still made new clothes. Sad to say, she was by now crippled, Rubber Doll that is. One of her arms had worn out and broken off and the man in the doll shop didn’t have a match, so her left arm was smaller and darker than her right. I did worry, but she didn’t. She accepted her disability with charm and grace.

The time came that I married and had a lovely little daughter of my own. I couldn’t part with my old confidante, Rubber Doll, but my daughter was appalled by her. She would keep leaving her in strange places, like the incinerator or the back of the garden. Then one day Rubber Doll disappeared. If you don’t like sad stories do not read on.

Months later I had been shopping and as I was walking home, I spotted something in the gutter. I moved over and picked it up. It was Rubber Doll’s crippled arm. I took it home and cried. I’m crying as I am typing.

I think the dog next door must have found her and eaten the rest of her.
The moral of the story is ... no moral. Life happens. We all love something or someone and we can’t guard them forever. Eventually the equivalent of the dog next door will get them.
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This is one of the reasons why I write romance – it keeps the dogs next door away.
 
"When I was Four,I was not much more.
When I was Five, I was just alive.
But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever,
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.”

This past couple of weeks has been incredible. My luck started when Kensington Books got me a Bookbub promotion, using Starling as a free book.
I don't have any idea how many free copies were taken but my Amazon ranking as an author went down/up to under 10,000 from in the hundred thousands. The first thing I noticed was that I began to get ratings for Starling on Kobo. Starling also began to get lots more reviews on Amazon and Goodreads as well as Google, iBooks, and B&N. Ratings too.
Lovely Starling had for some time been praised but from so few that my sales languished. I am now the delighted author of a book that many people love.
Of course you can't get lots of love without getting a little bit of hate too. I have one review that is hilarious in the explanation why the reader hated the book. Fortunately, I quite understand. I can be irritating, as many people will tell you, but I can also see the funny side when a reviewer goes to so much trouble to explain why she hated the book. She clearly read the whole thing which is flattering. When I hate a book I don't read on, which means that I can't give a rating because that wouldn't be right.
I also had one reviewer who didn't read my book but gave me a star rating based on what her bestie said. Tch tch. Amazon agreed that should come down.
Starling is no longer free but she is ranking higher and higher each day. The people who love her have bought the whole series, which was what my publisher hoped. This is very timely for me because I was going to write one more book and if that didn't take me where I wanted to be, I was going to stop writing.
Now I'm not going to stop.
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​The set I am showing here is a box set designed for the play, Washington Square. Although the story was set in Victorian USA, the room had been designed by the mother of the main character forty years previously and was therefore a Regency room.
 
I donated my time to the XXX Theatre Company, which doesn’t don’t have an extensive budget. For this set, I needed to be able to seat eight actors at one time.
 
I used up old paints because the waste I found when I was picking around was appalling and I hand mixed each colour. I made or supplied everything on the set. Most of the furniture was mine, but I drew a design for the fainting couch, which my hero built for me. He also made the fender for the fireplace. I painted every picture hanging on the walls, some on disposable plastic plates, some on old cardboard, mostly copies of paintings I had also found in books, except the big one in the background. (Shown above with an inset of a portrait of the heroine's mother that sat in a silver frame on the mantle above the fire). I sewed the curtains and upholstered the sofa.
 
Because the director, whom I very much respect, was known for the fabulous costumes she designed, I kept the set simple. It was meant as a frame for her wonderful gowns with the blue background of the hall to set them off. A reviewer had a hissy fit about the staircase merging with the walls, but that was not only deliberate because of the fade out of the heroine standing there with a single candle for the final scene, but also perfectly in keeping with regency times.
 
Unfortunately the flats weren’t put together as well as I would have liked but that was due to a demarcation dispute, the de-mark being that the construction team was accustomed to designers who used masking tape to hide construction problems and me being used to a construction team who would construct. Stalemate.
 
Even years later I still see parts of that set used for publicity flyers.
 
You can show off a beautiful set or you can use a set to show off costumes. Actually, you can even do both at the same time. As a designer, you choose.
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