Forgetting to Remember by M.J. Rose (Blue Box Press)
Dear Reader,
I’ve always loved reading time travel but it took a 19th century tiny portrait of a man’s eye — just a man’s eye — framed in small colorful opals to inspire me to write one myself.
Who was he? Who had painted a portrait of just his eye? Why?
Forgetting to Remember is my answer to those questions.
Setting aside grief from the fallout of the second World War and putting her energy into curating an upcoming show critical to her career as the Keeper of the Metalworks at London’s renowned Victoria and Albert Museum, Jeannine Maycroft stumbles upon a unique collection of jewel-framed miniature eye portraits — a brilliant romantic device and clandestine love token of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
One piece among the assembly intrigues her more than all the others: a twilight-blue man’s eye framed by opals shimmering with enchanting flashes of fiery color. But the beauty is just the beginning. Not only is the painting a self-portrait of one of her favorite Pre-Raphaelite artists, Ashe Lloyd Lewis, but the brooch itself is a portal eight decades into the past.
Despite being cast into an era she was never meant to be in, Jeannine and Ashe develop an immediate and passionate bond, complicated by the undeniable fact that she does not belong in 1867, and the disaster about to destroy her family and reputation in her time.
Striving to live a dual life and dangerously straddling two time periods, Jeannine fights to protect her career and her father from scandal in the present while desperately trying to save her lover’s life in the past.
Happy Reading!
M.J. Rose
Where It Begins: A Pucked Novella by Helena Hunting (1001 Dark Nights Press)
Dear Reader,
Falling in love isn’t easy. But as a single mom with a teenager, falling in love with a single dad is on par with mountain climbing while wearing Crocs: Dangerous and verging on impossible.
Where It Begins is the origin story of Skye Hall and Sidney Butterson (such an unfortunate last name), the parents of the heroine in the NYT Bestseller Pucked. It’s a laugh-out-loud romantic comedy about finding love where you least expect it.
Best wishes,
Helena Hunting
