Welcoming "My Inconvenient Duke" and celebrating "Lord of Scoundrels"

As has been proclaimed in various areas of my website, the third Difficult Dukes book, My Inconvenient Duke, will be released on 21 January. After all the frustration, and the fighting with characters (those strong and rather secretive personalities!) and delays and delays, Alice & Blackwood’s story will finally reach my readers.

It’s won some thumbs-up early reviews, including a starred advance review in Booklist in December, which included the following:

With the latest dazzling addition to her Difficult Dukes series (A Duke in Shining Armor, Ten Things I Hate About the Duke), readers will again revel in Chase’s buoyant yet deliciously sharp sense of wit and her ability to craft radiantly romantic love stories rendered with the meticulous attention to detail she pays to everything, from nuanced characterization to an expertly evoked historical setting. — John Charles

It’s will also get a party, at the Ashland Public Library, where we’ll celebrate the 30th anniversary of Lord of Scoundrels as well.

This is an actual, in-person event.

1-3PM ET 25 January 2025

Ashland Public Library (Schiesske Large Meeting Room)

66 Front St / Ashland Massachusetts 01721

Ph 508 881 0134 / Email: ashlandprograms@minlib.net

Further details here. Kindly register here.

Aesop’s Fable bookshop is once again providing the books, which you can pre-order here.

Also, we’re celebrating Lord of Scoundrels’ thirtieth anniversary with an eBook deal of $1.99 (through 31 January). If you haven’t yet met Jessica and Dain, this is an opportunity to do it for a couple of bucks. If you know their story already, it might make a suitable gift for somebody.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to hear me hold forth about My Inconvenient Duke as well as Lord of Scoundrels, you can listen to this podcast. Megan Zinn, Host of The Writers' Block on WHMP radio, Northampton, Massachusetts, is a superior interviewer, and the time (about 20 minutes) flew.

With a new book shortly to be released, and an older title being celebrated, you can expect a little flurry of blog posts and, very likely, an actual newsletter in the near future. Just warning you.

For readers in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand: We won't be late!

In this day and age, you would think that with a push of a button a book could be released simultaneously all over the world, in all formats. Annoyingly enough, we are not at that day and age. We’re still dealing with contracts and subsidiary rights, licenses, and a bunch of other things that would bore you witless, were I to attempt explaining—presuming I could explain in any remotely intelligible fashion.

However, in this day and age, it is possible—if one has the right team, working diligently—for the eBook to come out in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand on the same exact day (well, allowing for time zones), as it does in the US and Canada. I’m very happy to report that my absolutely right team has managed the feat. In short, my UK/AU/NZ readers will be able to read My Inconvenient Duke on their e-readers as soon as my US readers do.

It will not have the exact same cover (please see contract, etc note above), as you can see if you compare the cover here with the one on the Books page. But I think the non-US/Canadian version is quite as nicely done, and like the U.S. version, it includes the house, which I’ll talk about in a future blog post.

As to other formats, like audio: Again, please see the note about contracts & rights, etc. When/if we have an audio release for you, I’ll let you know promptly. I’m sorry we don’t have it now, but oh, it’s complicated… Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

The Mad Earl's Bride for $1.99

The Mad Earl’s Bride is a novella I wrote for a bridal anthology. It reappeared a few years later in another collection, then, eventually, all by itself as an eBook.

This story, which was originally released between Lord of Scoundrels and The Last Hellion, includes a few secondary characters readers may remember from Lord of Scoundrels. It also includes a return to Dartmoor, Devon, for some brooding atmosphere—but yes, of course there’s comic relief.

If you haven’t read it already, here’s a chance to get it at bargain price. Or you can make a gift of it.

The deal ends on 3 December.