Claire Hadleigh

 Drum roll, please . . . and now for what you've all been waiting for breathlessly (or not) --    Silly, I know, but I always get a thrill when I see the cover of my newest to be released!  And this one has been in the pipeline for soooo long, it's embarrassing to admit.  But 2020 has been a difficult year for so many of us.  The urge to write had almost disappeared last spring, leaving poor Julia and Ben hanging fire. Well, they're in the hands of the beta and ARC readers; release date will be coming soon, as promised.  As an indie author, I hesitate to put a firm date on the release until I hit the "submit" link to the publishing platform I use.  After all, one never knows what life is going to toss at you these days. Hope you've been enjoying my blog posts -- and there's still more to come in the weeks ahead -- including a Tuesday's Tips for Writers , which is something I've been playing with for awhile.   Until next week --  as ...

 One of the great things about writing historical fiction is that we like to thread and embellish our stories with historical facts to bring a strain of realism -- yes, even in romance!   The hero in Wicked Wagers is Benjamin Malory Burton, an ex-cavalry officer from the Heavy Cavalry -- quite different from the better known Light Cavalry. This is a painting depicting the Royal Scots Greys at Waterloo --  not sure I'd want to see this come charging at me if I was on foot . . . 😓   During the Napoleonic Wars, the Heavy Cavalry were nicknamed the "shock troops," using their height and weight and speed to attack and harass the enemy's infantry.  Charges occurred on clear ground with a rise, so they literally appeared to be hurtling down at the infantry soldiers, who were often formed in line, thus being vulnerable to a cavalry charge. Denis Dighton's painting in the Royal Collection of Sergeant Charles Ewart capturing the Eagle of the 45th Line regiment. It...

 Apologies all around for not writing more frequently on my blog -- something I'm determined to correct in the coming weeks.  Today I'm going to talk about my main character, Miss Julia Charlotte Montford, the heroine of Wicked Wagers , due to release in October of this year. Julia is a feisty one -- spoiled, often impudent, headstrong and all too often making wagers.  If she lived in today's world, she'd probably be buying lottery tickets by the yard!  But one day she makes a wager with the ex-cavalry officer, Benjamin Malory Burton, and her life will never be the same.   Oftentimes we writers scour the internet and sites like Pinterest to find an image that sparks the imagination of both the writer and the reader.  Many times it's an actress or actor, but this time I stumbled on a series of paintings by John Hoppner, who lived and painted in the late 18th century into the early years of the 19th century.   And I found Julia -- here she is -...