I chose to write historical romance novels in a saga about the period over two hundred years ago in the 1790s when England became drawn into a war with France, blending the history and local setting and adventures with romantic stories of a range of characters from very different backgrounds. The novels are a mixture of adventure, intrigue and romance, with love stories pushing strongly through each of the novels, and settings that vary from towns and elegant houses in Devon to the bustling life of the naval port of Plymouth, and through the lanes and villages and old manors of rural Brittany. I live in Devon myself, which is both friendly and wild in parts, with a coastline that faces Brittany in France, and the stories span both sides of the Channel, and reach out beyond to the French colony of Saint-Domingue in the Caribbean.

I travel throughout Devon constantly, and have spent many good times in Brittany too, walking down the streets and through the squares of fascinating towns, and being attracted by the magic of the magnificent stone rows at sites like Carnac, and the grand prehistoric tombs with their massive slabs of granite. Bringing characters together from both areas that I love is an attractive idea, and I hope readers will become immersed in the scenery and the unpredictability of the action, and touched by the hopes and fears and passions of the characters. The novels have a number of significant themes that recur, such as the impact of loyalty as well as desire on the motives of characters, and how much comes down in life so often to who can be trusted, and who cannot. The intensity of true feelings, and the humour and ironies apparent in human behaviour, are constant players in the unfolding stories of young characters who are trying to find their way in turbulent times.

My own background is as a Londoner who went abroad to New Zealand for some years, and teaching theatre history and arts has been my livelihood. My mother was a writer of regency romance novels, and my father was a journalist, whose family came from Devon. So as a child, my holidays were taken on the coast.

Please take time to visit my author website at: grahamley.com (address not hyperlink), where you will find fresh blog posts on the books and other topics, including some thoughts about what I discover when I write fiction.