It's publication day! My new book, an anthology of sixteen short stories,  is now available to buy as Kindle ebook and paperback.
     It's been a fascinating project for me, revisiting all of my writing career. The title of the book, Red Roses, comes from my first ever success as a writer. I entered it for a romantic short story competition in the Sunderland Echo newspaper many years ago. To my surprise, it won! I was delighted to discover that my writing was worthy of publication, even more so as the judge was the renowned author and tv agony aunt, Denise Robertson.
     Some of the stories have been published before. Others have been extensively revised, and there are some new ones as well. There's a mix of ages of heroines, and eras. I included contemporary stories and also some based in various decades of the twentieth century, from Edwardian times, World War I, the sixties, and later years. Each story has a brief introduction giving some background about how I came to write it. The stories also vary in length, from short to long, and they all contain threads of love, loss, family and friendship.
     I have dedicated the book to my late aunt, Dorothy Macnab Ramsay, who had short stories published in magazines, and won the Constable Trophy for her historical novel, Honey in the Mead, the first in a trilogy about Scottish Pictish queens. She always gave me great encouragement in my writing and was able to enjoy my earlier successes.
     If Red Roses sounds like your kind of reading, you can find links on my Fiction page to Amazon to purchase a copy, either in ebook or paperback. 

These are my three choice books from my September reading:

Judith Lennox - One Last Dance
An intriguing family novel covering the years of the early twentieth century, this book grips the reader with its strong characters and vivid story line. The heroine, Esme, has been in love with Devlin since she was a child. But her elder sister Camilla has stolen his heart. Devlin returns from World War I damaged physically and emotionally, but determined to rebuild his family home, Rosindell. He finds Camilla engaged to another man. He marries Esme who has no idea that she is second choice to her sister. As time goes by, family secrets come out of the shadows, bringing heartbreak that can only be resolved after years of searching for the truth.

Freda Lightfoot - The Amber Keeper
This enjoyable read follows the stories of two women in different eras - Abigail in the 1960s, and her adoptive grandmother in pre-revolutionary Russia. Abigail has returned to her family home in the Lake District following her mother's untimely death. Not only is she trying to come to terms with her grief for her mother, but also the break up of her relationship to her child's French father. Finding a wall of blame from her father and brother, she throws herself into reviving her mother's jewellery business. Her only consolation is her young daughter and the loving care of her elderly grandmother, Millie, who adopted Abigail's mother when she was a baby.. Discovering Millie's surprising past fills her with fascination, never realising that this holds the key to the present. Both eras are brought to life expertly, and the tales of love, loss and intrigue are worked with believable characters.

Isabel Wolff - Forget me Not
A modern romance, this book keeps the reader turning the pages as we follow the ups and downs of heroine Anna's life. Starting a new career as a garden designer, she also finds herself pregnant with boyfriend Xan's child. But he is not ready for fatherhood, on the brink of his own life-changing move to the other side of the world. Anna learns to live without him and brings up her child alone. She looks for romance elsewhere, but is constantly drawn back to Xan. It is a long and bumpy road for her as she searches for her own fulfillment. A warm-hearted and satisfying read.