There’s something nice about sitting in the outdoor section of a pub under a tree chatting to a mate. We talked about nothing and everything. We talked about an upcoming drag show that RR was perfoming in and how annoyed I was that I couldn’t come along (I went to the last one and it was super fun) because I had something else on, and eventually RR wanted to know about what I’d published recently.

It’s funny how having to tell someone else about a book makes it so much easier to pull out a blurb or summary than sitting staring at a blank page trying to come up with the perfect marketing hook. Spoiler – I’m terrible at marketing hooks and blurbs. In my day job, my editor rewrites every single one that I do. I am getting better with practice but I miss that knack of knowing which thing will be click bait. My editor is brilliant at it. I’m in awe.

So the Rent A Rake series came about through a group of author collaborations that I did a few years ago. I was trying to write as much as possible and in combination with other authors to build up a backlist and do cross promotion. I’m not sure how successful this was (the writing part, yes; the cross promotion, maybe it wasn’t my audience?)

Anyway, Ebs, Catherine and I invented the Daughters Of Duke Street, which was set in an orphange and every author wrote stories based on characters who’d grown up there. I wrote a newspaper article about the orphanage and everyone just went with it. We also had the Regent’s Menagerie, based on the Tower of London zoo and the fun idea that the Prince Regent would give annoying exotic animals to people he didn’t like.

For my characters, I ended up with four queer boys who’d grown up in the orphanage (and a fifth character, a woman who is key to the final book).

Sebastian (A Duke’s Wager) was dumped there as a toddler, Earnest (An Earl’s Bet) was sent there as a ten-year-old after disappointing his father, Nobbie (A Lord’s Chance) was abandoned as a baby with only a blanket and a watch, and Adam (A Rake’s Gamble) was handed in as a five-year-old when his mother died.

A Duke’s Wager was originally in the Regent’s Menagerie, hence it being a wager between a Duke and the Prince Regent about a horse. An Earl’s Bet was going to be in a collaboration called To All The Earls We’d Love Before, but that didn’t work out, while A Lord’s Chance was in the Daughters Of Duke Street (this is why it’s already available on Amazon). A Rake’s Gamble I wrote for no reason except to finish my own series within these collaborations, with the idea that once the collabs ended, I’d have a whole series of my own.

All this rambling is basically to say – what did I tell RR about these books?

A Duke’s Wager is about a duke and his stable master and a horse. There’s angst over class differences and some silliness with donkeys, inspired by Lord Rothschild.

An Earl’s Bet is based on the Hans Christian Anderson/Charles Dickens drama plus some shenanigans around betting on whether bad things with happen if you don’t follow the rules.

A Lord’s Chance is basically an autistic watch obsessed bloke and a con artist who thinks he’s about to be conned solving the mystery of an old watch together. Oh, and bonus, in this book readers also get to meet The Colossus who features in Coming For The Champion. 

A Rake’s Gamble is a bit darker than the rest. It’s about a guy who started the Rent A Rake scheme and why and whether the son should be held responsible for the sins of the father.

These are novellas, so they are short reads that hopefully pack plenty of emotion into them.

Historical (Regency): RENT A RAKE (2026)
A Duke’s Wager (#1) – mm: How does a wager with Prinny over a horse end in kisses with a Duke?
An Earl’s Bet (#2) – mm: Was agreeing to a bet with a chaotic bisexual poet a good idea?
A Lord’s Chance (#3) – mm: Is it worth taking a chance to discover his past? Or will it risk everything?
A Rake’s Gamble (#4) – mm: Desiring your enemy might just be the greatest gamble of all.

Covers by Wolfsparrow Covers. No gen-AI was used in making these books or the covers, and all errors are mine, especially the ones that escaped both me and my editors (sneaky typos).