Character Showcase - Mr. Alaric Jacoby

 In A DEADLY SHADE OF NIGHT, Mr. Alaric Jacoby is a wealthy mill-owner from Harrogate. Although he’s a widower, he lives with a house full of nieces and nephews. This being the case, it might seem impossible that he leads a lonely existence; sadly, however, the residents of his house are all waiting for their share of the inheritance when he breathes his last. And he is fully aware of their impatience, as well as their concern with the way he spends his own money and the manner in which he runs his mill.

Jacoby takes pride in looking after his workers and their families, believing that happy, safe, well cared for employees make for a more efficient business. His safety precautions and the high standards he insists upon are the sort of thing that his nephews consider a waste of coin. Interested only in profit, they cannot wait to take over the reins. Jacoby knows that when he’s gone, they will undo all the good he has tried to achieve. Alas, he’s a large man who enjoys rich food and strong drink, and he's been warned that his heart could give out at any time.

But rather than dwell on this problem, he throws himself instead into an old mystery that once plagued his grandfather, William Jacoby— the founder of the mill and a good man, who believed in honesty and justice.

William had spent the last forty years of his life trying to prove the innocence of a young maid accused and convicted of murdering an entire family on Whitherward Fell. The maid, Josefina Dallet, was an orphaned girl William once took under his wing, so he felt responsible for her and never believed her guilt. Even after her execution, he continued the struggle to clear her name. Unfortunately, he never succeeded. Upon his death, he passed his diaries and his fight for Josefina’s exoneration into the hands of his grandson who, at the time, was only ten.

Now in his late forties, warned that he might not have long to live, Alaric Jacoby is determined to take up the gauntlet and prove that his grandfather was right. He pays to put the story back in the newspaper, hoping to dig up old memories.

Will he also dig up some old skeletons? Or some new corpses?

When the story falls into the hands of Detective Inspector Deverell, it stirs up more than the dust on an eighty-year-old murder case.

There are rumblings heard on Whitherward Fell, as the Beast, prodded awake, yawns, turns over, and stretches its claws.

And a music box, long silenced, begins to play again.

 

Find out more about Alaric Jacoby and his mission for justice in A DEADLY SHADE OF NIGHT. Coming soon!

(Image: Dr. Horatio Wood by Thomas Eakins 1886)

Character Showcase - Lady Carew

 The infamously scandalous divorcee known as Lady Carew has been away from England for at least a decade, so her return is causing quite a stir. Even the lady herself isn’t sure why she came back.

It all began with a lost shoe-- one of a very good pair -- and a strange, haunting dream. Although she’s been susceptible to the odd premonition all her life, this one was especially peculiar, gruesome and seemingly out of the blue. The effect is powerful enough to lure her back to England after all these years; to Yorkshire and to Whitherward Fell, where she was born in the house called Furthermore. She never thought she’d return to this wretched place of her miserable childhood, but here she is, with several mysteries for Detective Inspector Deverell to solve.

Firstly, what, exactly, is living in the cupboard under the stairs?

Lady Carew likes to tell stories and her imagination is so vivid that sometimes she loses the boundary of what’s real and what isn’t. So how much of what she tells him about her past can the detective believe? How much does the lady herself believe? She claims to have dreamed of a murder, as if she saw it with her own eyes, although she was several thousand miles away from where it happened at the time.

Secondly, Lady Carew wants to know who her mother was – not only what happened to her, but where she came from – for nobody ever knew her name.

 “She’d heard folk whispering of how, four years before she was born, a woman was found on Whitherward Fell, sat beside a rowan tree, reading a volume of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language. The fact that she was fully and respectably dressed, clean and well-spoken, was not as much grist to the rumor-mill as her claim to remember nothing of where she had been before that day, who she was, or how she got there. She had with her only a small trunk of belongings, which included a music box, a mirror, a few pieces of jewelry and her dictionary…”

 With such a mysterious provenance, it is, perhaps, no surprise that the woman now called Lady Carew has not led a conventional existence. Instead she has been drawn to life outside society's rules, going very much her own way. She might be considered an outcast and a scarlet woman, but having got this far, she swears she will go down with a roar and fighting like a tiger. And she won't go to her  grave with any regrets.

 “Wherever she went, folk called her The Mad Englishwoman. To them she was a wild creature who enjoyed swimming in the sea in rough weather, without using the discretion of a bathing machine, and where there was no lifeguard on duty. In truth, although she enjoyed cultivating the image, if all her days and nights were really conducted so recklessly, she would never have survived to be—

The age of a fine, full-bodied and fruity vintage, thank you very much.”

 The lady has her secrets and her sins-- and she enjoys every one of them-- but she’s come back to Whitherward Fell looking for answers to a great many questions.

And for a few little things, such as vengeance and justice.

Oh, and to find out who the devil she really is.

Will she get her answers with Detective Inspector Deverell's help?

Be thee warned: A DEADLY SHADE OF NIGHT is coming soon!

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 (Image: Portrait of a young lady with long dark hair, by William Breakspeare 1855-1914)

 

Character Showcase -- Cuthbert Hotchkiss

 In A DEADLY SHADE OF NIGHT, Cuthbert Hotchkiss is an unhelpful solicitor with more interest in his dinner than in upholding the law. His grandfather was a founding partner in the York firm of Cumberbatch, Hotchkiss and Clapper, and his father continued the tradition. But the old man is now “not in his right mind” and Cuthbert the younger has stepped into his shoes, his office, and acquired all his old clients.

And quite a few of his father’s old problems too.

When Detective Inspector Deverell comes asking questions about Mrs. Alma Clemmons, one of his recently deceased clients, Cuthbert is evasive – when he isn’t being obstructive, that is. Things get even stickier when Alma’s grandson goes missing and her scandalous granddaughter, who they all thought was dead, returns to stir up trouble.

Does Cuthbert Hotchkiss know what happened to Alma’s missing maid, or to her grandson?

What secrets does the solicitor hold about the house called Furthermore and the folk who have lived in it for the past eighty years, or more?

Hotchkiss is described as grey and befuddled. Half the buttons of the fellow’s waistcoat are missing and the other half hanging by a thread. It is anybody’s guess when he last brushed the wisps of hair that meander about his shiny pate and there are buttery crumbs upon his cheek, as if he’s been interrupted mid-luncheon and only just removed the napkin from his collar.    

But is his appearance merely an act that conceals a cunning mind and deadly intentions? Or is he really just waiting for his next meal?

Three generations of Hotchkiss men have now served Alma Clemmons and her family. Rumor has it that they know where all the skeletons are buried.

But the thing about old bones is that they can be dug up at any time. And some of them, as Hotchkiss will learn, come back to life with a vengeance.

Uncover the secrets and the bones in A DEADLY SHADE OF NIGHT (A Bespoke Novel iii).

(Image: An Appetising Dish by Edwin Thomas Roberts 1898)

Character Showcase -- Miss Fanny Boole

 In A DEADLY SHADE OF NIGHT, Fanny Boole arrives at a house called Furthermore, on the edge of Whitherward Fell, to live as housekeeper and caretaker for a bedridden old woman. She hopes this will be her fresh start – a new beginning in this “out of the way” place, where nobody knows her, or anything about the mistakes of her past.

But Fanny has no idea what she’s let herself in for.

Before she arrived there, she thought that “Furthermore” sounded like a fairytale place where princesses slept. Alas, it’s not long before Fanny begins to realize that there’s something very wrong about the house and everything that happens there.

Although she is hired as the only servant in the house, it’s not the workload that troubles her, but the eerie, weeping walls and the howling winds at night. Not to mention the unearthly screams of the ancient mistress of the house, as she dreams of the past and imagines a green-eyed monster trying to get at her.

“Mother,” the old lady shouts into the dark, “What have you done?”

There’s more too. The man who hired her to tend his grandmother, did so without informing the old lady, who still thinks that the new housekeeper is “Polly”, the previous maid – a young woman who vanished suddenly one day and hasn’t been seen or heard from since.

And Old Pip, the gardener who never comes indoors, stands out in all weathers, singing "Polly put the kettle on". It's the only thing he does say. He doesn't talk to Fanny at all.

There are days when she'd just like to leave, but curiosity holds her back, because there are clues she's begun to find around the house and she thinks they might have something to do with the previous maid's disappearance.

A scrap of blood-stained linen caught on a doorframe; a long hair with a tiny piece of scalp attached, trapped in some cracked glass; a broken piece of laudanum bottle, and a sinister mark on the wallpaper.

Then there is that foul odor, which seems to grow stronger when she stands at the bottom of the stairs… 

The blowflies-- ever present in the house -- are humming now, inside her head. She doesn’t know how much longer she’ll be able to stand it. Will the house drive her out, as it must have done to Polly, the previous maid? Or will she find a way to stand up for herself and fight back against the creeping evil that now comes for her too?

Fanny may be spinster in her forties; described as plain, shy, awkward and unsophisticated, but she’s a butcher’s daughter with a strong stomach, and a few dark secrets of her own. She might not know any big words or complicated mathematical sums, or anything much about the world beyond Yorkshire, but she knows when a storm is brewing and it's time to bring the washing in. She knows good from bad.

As her father liked to say, “Our girl she can wring a bird’s neck and have it plucked and stuffed before you’ve got your coat on. Something to remember, eh? She’s a butcher’s daughter, so think on! Mind you don’t get on her bad side.”

But Fanny might find herself in deadly danger, unless she gets away from that house before its too late. Before whatever it is that waits in the cupboard under the stairs breaks free.

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You can find out more about Fanny and her fate in A DEADLY SHADE OF NIGHT (A Bespoke novel iii) COMING SOON

(Image: The Maidservant by William Arthur Breakspeare 1855-1914 )

COMING on March 5th!

 Yay! Good news at last!

The arrival of A DEADY SHADE OF NIGHT - (A Bespoke Novel iii) is imminent! Thank you all for your patience in waiting so long. I expect a release date very soon. 

A DEADLY SHADE OF NIGHT

How do you take your tea?

 The Beast of Whitherward Fell has been blamed for a great many mysterious events and gruesome murders on that wildest, perilous stretch of the Yorkshire Moors. But what, or who, is the real monster? And can there be only one that has stalked this place since the beginning of time?

 Detective Inspector Ptolemy Deverell does not believe in mythical beasts or supernatural phenomena. He’s a quiet, unassuming, pragmatic fellow, who seldom falls prey to emotion. Nobody pulls the fleece over his eyes. So if anybody can shed light on the rampaging fiend behind the bloody history of this place, surely, he can.

 But when the detective embarks upon three cases at once, he has no idea how tightly they are entwined, or that this tangle will lead him into the darkest part of Whitherward Fell. To face the Beast head-on.

 With a lady in search of vengeance; a gentleman on a mission for truth, and a little girl waiting for justice, the detective already has his hands full. On top of everything, he— the most unromantic fellow in the world—is in love. Will he ever get around to proposing marriage to the very modern, bicycle-riding, baker-extraordinaire, Miss Lucy Greenwood? And, if he does, will she laugh in his face and try drowning him in raspberry jam?

 Not only that. A ghost from his own past has returned to haunt his nightmares, and he cannot get on with his life until she’s finally at rest.

 Tolly Deverell might not believe in the Beast of Whitherward Fell, but he is preyed upon by a scavenging creature that lurks in the bleakest shadows of a dream, waiting to tear him apart. The great shadow of its wingspan falls from above when he is most susceptible.

It comes to him when he’s alone in the dark.

It comes to him when all but his mind is quiet.

It comes in the deadliest shades of night.

 And with words clawed into the wall, it asks,

 How do you take your tea?

Tea by George Dunlop Leslie c. 1894

Well, it's almost over!

 

Dear Readers!

This year has been an odd one for all of us. Difficult, frustrating, disappointing and peculiar, is how we will all remember 2020. I have heard many readers say that they’ve had a hard time concentrating on books this year, with too many other things to focus on and everything being upside down. Well, unfortunately, it’s been equally challenging for most of the authors I know too!

You may have noticed that my output has diminished this year, as life has overtaken me slightly with other concerns. I know many of you have been waiting eagerly for Bespoke III (A Deadly Shade of Night), and I can promise that Lucy and Tolly’s latest adventure will soon be released. It has simply taken me longer than I hoped to get it right and I didn’t want to rush out with an inferior product, just to hit a deadline. I had hoped to get a Christmas novella out this year also, but I cannot promise that at this time. For now, I have reduced the price on last year’s release, THE SNOWDROP, so if you haven’t had the chance to purchase a copy yet, now is your moment. Grab THE SNOWDROP before it melts!

In the meantime, as we approach the holiday season and the end of this year, I decided to look on the bright side and collect a list of all my favourite things from 2020 – the things that went right for me (rather than all the things that went wrong!) and that I’d like to share with you. It’s a very random list, but all the items (and people) on it have helped me to get through this year and, without exaggerating, they have become my go-to treasures. Some I’ve only just discovered and some I’ve known for years.

So here is the First Annual List of Fresina’s Favourites. (In no particular order).

 

1. SAM, the man behind the author. He will cheerfully admit to knowing nothing about writing, but his efforts to help fix the occasional plot holes have kept me laughing for 32 years.
2. The MOTHER-IN-LAW, Kathy, who continues her tireless promotional efforts on my behalf in airports the length and breadth of the country. Also a provider of very good wine and eggplant parmigiana, without which my writing would never flow as smoothly.
3.  KELLIE, the brains AND the muscle behind TWISTED E-PUBLISHING, who continues to work with me despite my lack of focus this year and generally shocking laziness. Another fabulous friend and supporter, who often pulls me up by the collar, shakes me about and slaps my cheek when I need reinvigorating. Also a technical wizard, who patiently puts up with my luddite distrust of “computer machines”.
4. MIMI MATTHEWS. One of my all-time favourite authors put out several great books this year, especially GENTLEMAN JIM, which I can heartily recommend. And now she has a well-deserved book deal with Berkley, so there is more to look forward to! Congratulations, Mimi. A friend and an inspiration.
5. EVERYTHING HE NEVER SAID. I am very proud of this book that my siblings and I worked on together, using the memoirs our father left for us. It is a story we wanted to get done for a long time and finally, this year, it all came together. 
6. ROSES ARE BLUE, a book review site where Rose manages to read and review everything I send her. She has been a great encouragement to keep writing, giving glowing endorsements to some of my babies that almost nobody else has read (The Crollalanzas anyone?).
7.  THE CROWN. Netflix drama that I stupidly binge-watch in one afternoon, so that I have to spend a year waiting for the next season. Relaxation for the brain when not writing.
8. NOT ON THE HIGH STREET. Internet site that helps small business and little specialty boutiques get their products online for sale globally. One of the very few companies from which I can order and trust that they will deliver safely to family overseas without incident. In a year when travel was hopeless, it was good to know I could still get things delivered, even if I couldn’t see people personally.
9. CHEWY.com. Somehow, while so many others failed this year, they managed to maintain a prompt delivery service (within 24 hours of online order, even on a weekend). Their products continue to keep my fur babies, well fed, happy and occupied while “numpty mummy” is pretending she’s a writer. And I don’t even have to venture out of my house.
10. Last but not least – YOU – the readers who buy and enjoy my books, and then come here to see what I’m babbling on about now. Please don’t forget to leave reviews online, if you’ve enjoyed a story (mine or anybody else’s). It has been a challenging year for all of us, but we still need to know that you’re out there reading. You keep us eager to write new stories. Thank you! 

(Photos of Gracie, a puppy who helped me compile this list on the condition that I use her naughty/nice photos. She's quite an actress.)

Halloween Spooky Special

 SLOWLY FELL is now available at a special price for the month of October! Pick up your copy now.

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Do you believe in witches?

Adam Wyatt will tell you that he certainly doesn't believe. He's the solemn, sensible blacksmith of Slowly Fell and he keeps his distance from females entirely for his own tranquility of mind, not out of any fear of mischievous magic. In his opinion, the great number of souls lost forever to the village pond can be blamed on carelessness and unlucky accident; nothing to do with a witch's curse.

The Dowager Lady Bramley, widow of the local squire, also denies a belief in witchcraft. Or ghosts. Although she's lately enjoyed long discussions with her dear departed husband, who is intent on luring her to Slowly Fell, a place that haunts her dreams-a village with a macabre history, and a connection to her family that she would rather not remember.

Admiral Wetherby did not believe in witches either, until madness caused him to burn down his house and all his possessions, sending himself up in smoke with it. And now his daughter, practical, level-headed survivor, Sarah Wetherby, arriving in Slowly Fell to look after the vicar's sick wife, doesn't know what to think about witches. She is not a young woman prone to fanciful ideas, but she loves a good mystery, and there is certainly something going on in Slowly Fell. Sarah has begun to suspect that she's lived here before. Certain sights around the village are familiar- the house where a reclusive old woman resides in grand, but lonely splendor; the pond where a family of accused witches once met their deaths in the ducking-stool, and even the gruff manners of that handsome bachelor blacksmith seem to her familiar as old friends. Or something more.

But in Slowly Fell, nothing and nobody is quite what they seem.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!