The Australian Romance Readers Association blog recently featured Steam eReads' November titles. They include my first historical romance, The Persuasion of Miss Jane Brody, set in Regency England.

My inspiration for this story was the life and writings of Mary Wollstonecraft (1757-1797). She
was associated with intellectuals such as liberal publisher Joseph Johnson, radical pamphleteer Thomas Paine and philosopher William Godwin. Wollstonecraft wrote The Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792. It was poo-poohed as ridiculous by most people aware of its content. Even other intellectual women in Society at the time were not supporters of her views. The term ‘bluestocking’, used to label an educated woman, was a term of derision for most of the nineteenth century.

The Persuasion of Miss Jane Brody arose from asking ‘how would a supporter of Mary Wollstonecraft’s views cope with falling in love?’ That someone, for me, was Jane Brody, a member of an educated family, who not only absorbed Wollstonecraft’s views but advocated them as well. Like Wollstonecraft, she fell in love and in doing so tried to find a way to retain her principles while committing to her lover.

If you're interested in reading more go to: http://australianromancereaders.wordpress.com/2013/10/22/publisher-pitch-steam-ereads-nov-2013/

Recently my favourite author, Mary Balogh, confessed that she doesn’t
read much in her writing genre because she wants ‘to spend my leisure time at
something different’, does ‘not want to unconsciously plagiarize’ and because ‘I
find myself most critical as a reader when I read romances, especially
historicals like my own’. Instead she reads ‘a great deal of
mystery’. [Mary Balogh, ‘What do authors read’, 27 August 2013 http://www.marybalogh.com/].

After 20 odds years of being a historical romance fan and now a
writer, I still find myself reading that genre, but I must say, I’m fussy. I’m
looking for that elusive thing – a book that I want to read more than once – a
story that reverberates in my mind for days afterwards – that makes me keen to
read more from the same author to test whether I’ve found someone whose stories are guaranteed to be enjoyable and worth spending precious hours of my life reading. Now and then I find one. I’m sure you know what I mean and do the same. Which authors satisfy your reading thirst?