I’m thrilled that I can finally share Billy and Crispin’s rum-fuelled adventures with you!

Out now at Amazon.

Abducted by pirates, a naval officer is torn between duty and desire.

All Crispin Merrick has ever wanted is to be a captain in the Royal Navy. But once the war ends, the navy places him on half-pay, and he’s reduced to serving on a merchant ship. When pirates board the vessel and force Crispin to join their crew, his dream has never seemed further away.

Billy loves the freedom he has as a pirate. As master gunner aboard the most beautiful ship to sail the seas, he couldn’t be happier. But then his captain tasks him with guarding the naval officer they’ve taken on board. Billy loathes the navy. He hates its officers even more.

Forced to spend time with Billy in his tiny cabin, Crispin is increasingly fascinated by the pirate. He’s still fighting the attraction he feels when disaster strikes the ship. Beset by danger, Billy and Crispin have to work together to survive. But how can they trust one another when they detest everything the other stands for?

The book contains material some readers may find upsetting. Full details are given on the contents warning page of this site.

I love autocomplete and the random paths it takes me down. When I was researching pirates, I found some excellent books on the subject, but I also – of course – used Google. I started to type in a perfectly reasonable question that autocomplete turned into Did pirates wear socks? Another I stumbled across recently was Can dragons blow out candles? The sort of thing that would never occur to me, and I love that there are people out there thinking about these important issues.

When I looked into Caribbean pirates’ footwear before writing the book, I found opinions are split. Some say they wore sandals and others say their feet remained bare. The sandals side argue that climbing the rigging in bare feet would have been very uncomfortable; the barefoot people argue that it would be safer to climb with bare feet.

Looking at various engravings of famous pirate captains from the time, they’re variously wearing shoes or boots, but there are often bare-footed pirates around them. And given that I have a bit of a horror of feet, studying them in engravings is not something I undertook lightly! I’m still not quite certain on pirates’ footwear. The one thing I am (almost) sure of is that pirates did not wear socks.

A Star to Sail By is released on 30th August and is now available for pre-order.

They really don’t make maps like they used to. I love this one from 1751 of New Providence Island in the Bahamas. As well as the aforementioned pines – were they really so much higher than ordinary pines? – there’s the cautionary ‘This part of the country is little known’. For an island that’s about twenty-one miles long and seven wide, it seems to lack something of a spirit of adventure.

I’m also not at all sure what’s happening to the ship in the top left-hand corner. Is it blowing up? On fire? Or simply firing its guns? Regardless, I think every map would be better for a little more random illustration and commentary.

The reason I’ve been thinking about New Providence is because that’s where part of A Star to Sail By is set. I’m thrilled to report that MM Bookworm Reviews has given the book a lovely 4.5 star review: “I really liked this book as I didn’t know what would happen next…I would definitely recommend this for readers who love historic adventure romance on the high seas.”

The book’s available for pre-order at Amazon. And if you’re not already familiar with MM Bookworm Reviews, it’s a site to bookmark – as well as reviews, it has a comprehensive listing of forthcoming m/m releases organised by month, and a handy reminder of each day’s releases.

Now back to persuading myself not to draw exploding ships on my ipad screen when I have my maps app open…

With Crispin and Billy’s adventures coming out on 30th August, it seems a good time to share the moment Crispin first lays eyes on Billy.

A pirate who had been examining one of the deck guns looked up at the pirate captain’s shout, long dark hair falling around his face. He was even more disgraceful than the other pirates, something Crispin had not thought possible. The man was half-naked, his chest and arms filthy with grime and soot. He wore blue knee breeches, tighter than the petticoat breeches most of the pirates favoured, and even they bore dirty stains. At least the crimson sash around his waist looked clean, though Crispin noted uneasily the two pistols thrust into it. The pirate moved towards his captain, his stride long and easy. He was leanly muscled and taller than many of the other pirates. Almost as tall as Crispin himself, he thought.

“Take this and check it against the contents in the hold,” the captain said, thrusting the manifest at him.

Disreputable as this pirate was, he could evidently read. That fact was unexpected enough for Crispin to look more closely at him as he turned away from his captain, and the world seemed to shift around Crispin. His face… He had seen that face before, worn by a marble carving of the Archangel Gabriel. It had been so perfect he had known it to be the sculptor’s attempt to express the ineffable, finding his answer in a beauty this earth could not contain. But it did. That statue’s face was here and alive, if rather dirty. The high cheekbones, clean jawline, straight nose and lips full enough to cause impure thoughts formed a face that transcended the dirt and grime. Crispin almost forgot it belonged to a pirate until the man, perhaps feeling Crispin’s scrutiny, looked at him. His grey eyes were cold and hostile, like the Atlantic before a storm.

Crispin glanced away, no longer caring if doing so was a sign of weakness. The sculptor had mistaken the angel he was carving, for the man standing on the deck of the Eurydice was Lucifer. There could be no other explanation for such beauty to be subverted in the service of evil and vice.