I’m thrilled to bits to announce that I’ve just heard that Linden Bay Press has accepted “Hard and Fast” to be one of three novellas to be published in a trilogy of m/m historical stories this year.

The other two contributors are a newly published writer (Charlie Cochrane) who has penned a lovely story about post-world war One university students, and Lee Rowan, who has written a great Victorian mystery/romance called “Gentleman’s Gentleman”

This will be my first foray with Linden Bay and I’ve heard nothing but good about them. They publish in multi-formats too, which is great for everyone, and which means that the book will be eligible for an EPPIE award. (ha ha) In fact, they have so many gay historical titles on their books (compared with other publishers) that they are probably the leading publisher in that genre as we speak.

Major Geoffrey Chaloner has returned, relatively unscathed, from the Peninsula war, and England is at peace for the first time in years. A Major’s half pay is not enough for him to set up his own establishment, so he is forced to live with his irascible father who has very clear views on just about everything-including who Geoffrey will marry.  The trouble is that Geoffrey isn’t particularly keen on the idea, and even less so when he meets Adam Heyward, the enimatic cousin of the lady his father has picked out for him…

Chapter One   

In which I meet the young lady my father has meant for me and I deflect my father from spoiling his own endeavours.   

There are certain things expected of a third son.  That one will not put oneself forward, that one will join the army, or the church, or the bar. That one will not, in an attempt to inherit, kill one’s elder brothers and that one will, if at all possible in the circumstances of being a third son, marry well.   

This is particularly important if one’s family is only wealthy, not titled and one’s brothers have married ladies who have increased the financial aspects of the line but who have disappointed one’s father in being, like him, rich but ignobly born.  One does not talk of the origin of such income. One’s ancestors may have their portraits on painted walls and may well have been forced by circumstances to work for their subsistence but that same shameful toil enables their grandsons and further scions to live in comfort without ever having to mention such endeavours.   

One is taught, from the nursery and all through one’s schooldays, that one should be a gentleman above all things.  To be a good shot, to honour one’s parents, to do well for the school and to be gallant to the fairer sex. One is schooled to deal kindly with staff, and otherwise with bullies and cads. One is equipped for life.   

But I have never been taught what I should do if I fell in love with someone of a sex that was not, as I expected it would be, opposite to my own.   

To say that I was shaken to discover this about myself, would be an understatement in the same vein as were I to airily state that the Taj Mahal was an attractive mausoleum or that Switzerland was a trifle undulating. The sight of a curving cheek, a chestnut curl, a well turned ankle and a trim waist, these are all things that I expected to wake the first stirrings of Eros and indeed they did; It is just that I did not think they would come from such a wholly unexpected direction.   

You might, were I so injudicious to write this account down, raise an eyebrow, your quizzing glass and your voice. You might order me out of the club - blacken my name and drive me out of England and on to the continent - or you might ask me how this come to be.  But would I answer you?   

I might.