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.

Talking to Jenny in New Zealand

A short time ago, I spent a most enjoyable time talking to Jenny, for a Joys of Binge Reading Podcast. She was in New Zealand. I was in the U.S., in Massachusetts. As an ancient relic of the 20th century, I continue to marvel at how easy it is now to have chats like these with readers, bloggers, and podcasters around the world. Just push a couple of buttons et voilà!

In a short time, we covered quite a bit of ground, from my early career to current work, inspiration sources, research, and more. (Jenny had clearly done quite a bit of her own research—into my books and career—in advance.) We also talked about how much I choose to include or exclude in the smoochies department.

The podcast is now live at the Joys of Binge Reading site, where Jenny has also very thoughtfully provided links to the people and topics we covered. You can access it here.

Or, you can watch here on YouTube.

And here’s a two minute clip to sample.

Tecomanthe speciosa, a native plant of New Zealand

Jenny, thank you for being such a gracious host and excellent interviewer!