My Inspiration
Thank you for having me! I’m happy to talk about my background and what inspired me to write my latest historical romance, How Not to Marry a Duke. I grew up in the restaurant business and my Armenian family owned a restaurant for thirty years. I worked as a tween rolling silverware in napkins. As… Read More
A SORTA FAIRYTALE by Lydia Drake
I’m by no means the first person to ask this question, but I think it’s a question worth asking over and over again: why do we as writers keep going back to the fairy tale well when we want to tell a story? (As it’s a fairy tale, you should probably imagine the well as… Read More
The Lens of Romance
The Lord Pretender is a tale of gender, and specifically, what happens when the “glove doesn’t fit.” In the story, the misfit is the result of a body switch between a man and a woman that thrusts them unwillingly into unfamiliar genders. Many of our brothers and sisters experience a similar sense of not fitting… Read More
Michelle McLean’s Relationship Rules
In Ten Rules for Marrying a Duke, my hero and heroine—Silas Spencer, Duke of Whittsley and Miss Arabella Bromley—enter into a marriage of convenience, complete with a set of iron-clad rules to help their fake relationship run smoothly. Now, my own relationship certainly isn’t fake – I’ve been married for almost 21 years now and… Read More
Why historical romance is more important than ever:
I discovered historical romance as a teen! I fell instantly in love and devoured every Johanna Lindsay book I could get my hands on and then I discovered Julia Quinn. The rest, as they say, is history. Those books did lead me to falling in love with the whole romance genre and inspired me to… Read More
CORSETS, DUKES, & SCANDALS, OH MY!
If you’ve never tried historical romance or are already a lover of the genre, I’m giving away a $10 Amazon gift card! Historical romance is all the rage now, thanks to the runaway popularity of the Netflix adaptation of Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series. And what’s not to love? For me, apart from the extremely swoon-worthy… Read More
The Thorns of Success by Harmony Williams
In July 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, I wrote the first drafts of three books back to back. It was the first time since I’d lost the function of my wrists that I’d been able to accomplish a feat of that magnitude. It felt incredible. The obsession with my books, always thinking about… Read More
Four Life Lessons from Romance Novels
We’ve all heard the stereotype: Romance novels are poorly written mommy porn. Strange, isn’t it? We’re told that the most important things in life are the relationships we build with others—with our families, our spouses, our friends—and when in our old age we look back on our lives, what matters most is loving and being… Read More
BULLWINKLE J MOOSE READS THE TAROT
I have an author friend with a creative muse named “Boris.” When brainstorming together we often invoke the WWBD question. She is a talented author and a good friend, so the existence of Boris is an accepted given in our interactions. What she doesn’t know (shh, don’t tell her) is that every time she mentions… Read More
Using Self-guided Queries as part of the Writer’s Life
Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do. The late Dr. Benjamin Spock was, of course, speaking about child rearing. However, quiet reflection can serve to boost confidence and provide direction in writing, too. Inspired by a practice I learned about in a world religions course; I’ve adopted the habit of self-querying on… Read More
What Makes a Heroine ‘True To The Times’?
What makes a character true to their time? Does he or she adhere to a certain moral code or strictly stated socially acceptable behaviors? And who deems those behaviors acceptable: the society in which that character lives, or our interruption, as readers, of what that society would have thought of such behavior? As we consider… Read More
“I Can’t Do It Alone” – The Importance of a Support System
by Lynn Winchester When I was asked to write a blog post, I racked my brain for topics that would be of interest. There are several things I could share about my book A Lady Never Tells, but I felt that lots of authors can gush about their books, but that’s not me. I wanted… Read More