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This week I’m featuring the third book in my steamy suspense romance- ‘CROWNS’. It’s a story full of FRENCH flavor. Although I’m British, a lot of my life is in France. The English Channel is only a few miles across but it’s a huge gap in terms of tradition and attitude. France has a wild culture of street politics, strikes and direct action. They have a bloody history of revolution. My lovely neighbours like to joke about us Brits bowing and scraping our queen, princes, dukes and the like. Officially, the French have no need or affection for Royals. That’s if you just take their words at face value……
Scratch the surface and you’ll find the newspapers and mags in France are full of features on, you guessed….. the princes and princesses of Europe. They can’t get enough of the outfits/gossip/pageantry of the real life royal soap opera. I believe they’re secretly jealous. Several admit to wishing that there was still a monarchy in France. Of course, they would have no real power (just like our British royals) – but would be there as a spectacle to provide ceremony and a sense of national unity. I’ve often wondered how a country like France could go about reinstating a royal family in modern times? I mean what is a celebrity after all but an uncrowned “Special One”?
Well, a couple of years ago I let my imagination fly free and came up with CROWNS. It’s still my usual blend of female-cop action adventure and steamy passion…. but with a fantasy French finale!
Rather scarily, many of the predictions I make in the book have recently come true… a president comes to power and makes changes that enrage the people (Emmanuel Macron?). The recent ‘Gilets Jaunes’ (they wear yellow hi-viz fluorescent jackets) protesting across the country who correspond eerily with a political movement I call ‘The Patriotic Front”. Watch out for the ambiguous sexy Martine La Plume, their leader. There are several real-life living claimants to the French throne…. descendants of the original French Bourbon royals, via cousins/marriage and all sorts. A handsome guy from Maryland is the true descendant of King Charles the First of England and his French queen. When the crowd get behind him, history as always writes its own future in struggle and passion. It’s an all action romantic tale but maybe it says a lot about the way we are and just maybe points a way to bringing unity to a divided society. You’ll have to read my book to find out just how things might end up in France in the not too distant future.
‘Crowns’ available in print on Amazon worldwide and as an e-book on my website and at most e-book retailers here. (Hint: for best prices, always buy direct from the author.)
38 degrees Centigrade is 100 in good old traditional Fahrenheit. This is the not quite the mellow fruitfulness that the English poet Keats wrote about the British Autumn and I’m HOT. Here in South West France is full on Emma Calin style bursting lust. So much fruit, colour and sheer reproductive joy is just spilling and spilling out all around me. I can’t stop it or even hold it back. I’m just making jam, pickles and relish in my kitchen and hot hot love in my office as I boil up the next Passion Patrol story. I pick ripe sweet figs and tomatoes hot hot hot in the sun. It’s passion in the pot and passion on the page. Nature gets you to a point where you just can’t hold back and you just have to let go……..
Some part of me is always in Paris. I know she’s a shabby arrogant bitch who would shrug off my impudent fan mail but I just can’t stop writing them. I could tell her she’s just a heap of stones arranged around a muddy river. I could tell her she’s not as French as I am, that her cool gaze was international and more security cordon than cordon bleu. And she would shrug and rain on me, lifting her skirt above the red and grey reflecting cobbles to show a tease of petticoat.
Emma Undercover 