Lively St. Lemeston: State of the Borough

Last updated: 6 Feb 2021

So. The current Lively St. Lemeston series is over, BUT I will be writing more books set in that world! They will just be new series with new series names. Some will be set in the town itself, and some will be linked in other ways.

My plans change regularly! I’m going to try to keep this page updated but you are always welcome to leave a comment or email me if you have questions.

The Wife in the Attic (which comes out Tuesday!) is the first book in an f/f Gothic duology, the Rye Bay series, in which Lady Tassell finds jobs for Mrs. Humphrey’s boarders among her neighbors on the windswept, isolated Sussex Coast. (You might remember that Toogood’s parents went to work at the Rye Bay house at the end of Listen to the Moon—and they have a cameo in The Wife in the Attic!)

Learn more about The Wife in the Attic…

Now, I’m working on Rye Bay #2, about Iphigenia Lemmon (who also appears in Listen to the Moon). Iphigenia is far too beautiful to work in a house with men, but Lady Tassell has the perfect job for her: companion to a troubled gentlewoman recently separated from her husband and exiled to (you guessed it) an isolated farmhouse on the Sussex Coast…

My plan is that once Iffy’s book is done, I’ll start Falsely, Madly, Deeply, which is Rafe Cohen’s book. You might remember Rafe as Ash’s little brother from True Pretenses. His heroine is the star actress of a traveling theater company who has agreed to do a command performance at a duke’s country house party. There’s just one problem…she told the flirtatious duke she was married and he expects her husband to accompany her.

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Other books I want to write

• Stephen Dymond’s book, set at the Congress of Vienna. (Stephen is Nick’s older brother and Toogood’s former boss. He appears briefly in Listen to the Moon.)
• Imogen Makepeace’s book, set during the last Frost Fair on the Thames (I think! Maybe someone else will get the Frost Fair. It depends what Imogen ends up doing.) Her hero is a sailor seeking revenge. (Research note to self: the big Customs House fire was just after the thaw.)
• Noor Khaleel’s book. I can’t tell you anything about her book because it would be a SPOILER!
• I really want to write about British-occupied Paris after Waterloo. Not sure whose book this is! I’ll know once I read up on Paris, I guess.
• Jamie Wheatcroft’s book. Involves a handsome Puerto Rican orchid collector/dealer who looks suspiciously like Lin-Manuel Miranda.
• A young borough-mongering Duke wants to buy the Wheatcroft political interest in the town. I don’t know who his heroine is yet!
• Ada, Tony’s wife. (Probably.) (May be a novella.)
• Maybe Lydia and Jamie’s third cousin who will one day inherit Wheatcroft.
• ???? If you have requests let me know! Who knows, it may spark an idea.

I would also love to do a series themed around, like, civic infrastructure: the Whigs are trying to bring in gaslighting (engineer protagonist!), a new parish with a new church and new vicar (the church is getting overcrowded)…and someday they’ll build that theater, right? What’s going on with Mr. Fairclough’s powder mill once the war is over? So much story potential in all those things! I’ve also got the first three chapters of a story I wrote a long time ago, about a girl that wants a marriage that is Just A Political Partnership and her guy best friend who is madly in love with her, and they’re part of a circle of radical bluestockings, that I’d like to finish and that would tie in nicely with the Lively St. Lemeston world…

tl;dr: I am making this up as I go along. Please don’t be disappointed when these plans change! 🙂