On the Wings of Love... but all is not what you might assume

Off-subject, I know, but you might like it all the same

Like everyone else I have been mega-busy and because everyone is mega-busy I’ll be as brief as I can. My manuscript about Marguerite the Murderer (tentatively titled 13 Park Lane) is with an editor in the crime business, who will give me her opinion, hopefully before Christmas. I’ll let you know the verdict…

And…

I have started to write a historical crime mystery based in the streets built over the site of Vauxhall Gardens in Lambeth. Early days - but I am loving the research.

And…

In other news

This week Caret Press published On the Wings of Love: Georgian Elopement Stories, an exploration of some of the many stories of fugitive marriage I came across as part of a project I started some years ago.

All the stories within can be described as nonfiction but that does not necessarily mean they’re true. At stake was not eternal happiness but reputation, status and income so some heavy media management would come into play if your daughter disappeared from her bed overnight.

Elopement was hardly ever a romantic enterprise. The well-worn tropes of carriages at midnight, complicit maids, trusted best men, and mad dashes to Gretna Green with Dad in hot pursuit – don’t spare the horses! – had a dark side.

On the Wings of Love has 14 chapters telling tales of intrigue, betrayal, coercion, desperation, greed and, very occasionally, love, including…

The Shrigley Abduction in which a 15-year-old schoolgirl is terrified by lies that her father is financially ruined and the only way to save him is to marry a 31-year-old chancer on his uppers

The abduction clubs of Ireland – the rapacious younger sons of genteel Catholic families excluded from inheritance, the Army and just about any chance of advancement, who plot to abduct heiresses and force them into marriage

A clever hoax carried out in Stockwell – yards from my house. Who or what was behind it?

The long game played by Jemima Neate and her target, a naïve young Oxford student

The youthful elopement of playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan and multi-talented Elizabeth Linley

With contributions from Sarah Murden and Joanne Major

Plus 200 tales gleaned verbatim from the newspaper archives

Perfect for Christmas – but do order soon!
Or you could just download the Kindle/epub edition and get stuck in

Available from Amazon (print and kindle) – just search for Naomi Clifford –
and to order from bookshops

And finally…

Wishing one and all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.