Dear Julia Launch Wave - Stop Six

It’s launch day for my friend, Rae Summers’ new historical novella, Dear Julia!

To celebrate she’s having a Launch Wave of excerpts! You can keep up with the wave’s progress on the Twitter hashtag #DearJulia. If you enjoy the story, feel free to tweet your comments and chat to other wave surfers.

 By clicking on the links below each excerpt, you’ll be able to follow the wave across 8 blogs to read the entire first chapter - or you can click on the buy links below to get your own copy!

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Dear Julia is set in the English countryside in the early 1920s, and is part of the Love Letters series from The Wild Rose Press.

Read the opening extract here.

Extract Six

I remember Julia Fortescue well, Aunt Frances wrote. A pretty girl, but flighty, with dozens of suitors to choose from.

No wonder Mrs. Wallace and the vicar thought she resembled Julia. She’d been accused of being flighty often enough. Usually by people who didn’t know her well enough to have met her stubborn streak.

I remember she surprised us all by settling for a rather serious young man she’d grown up with. Can’t remember his name, but he was in the navy. That was before the Great War and seems so terribly long ago now.

Then her aunt moved on to more current news; parties and fashion advice, and the scandalous gossip that Frances had seen the Prince of Wales out dining with Freda Ward. With my very own eyes! In public, and she a married woman with two children!!

Rosalie set the letter down and stared unseeing at the garden before her.

So Julia had been betrothed to a local Somerset man. A marriage that clearly hadn’t happened, if she’d ended up married to an American not many years later. Had the war intervened, as it had for far too many?

No. Rosalie shook her head. He had survived the war, of that she was certain. She knew without a doubt now who that mysterious “he” was. All she needed was a name. And the answer to the burning question of why Julia hadn’t, after all, married the man she’d grown up with.

Rosalie popped her head into her father’s study. “I’m off to the Women’s Institute meeting. Is there anything I can get for you from the village?”

He looked up from his newfangled typewriter. “No, thanks, love. Do take care.”

Rosalie laughed. “You are aware that we are now in the depths of the country? What harm could possibly come to me here?”

His blue eyes, mirrors of hers, twinkled. “I meant that you should take care not to disturb the peace of the village too much.”

“Really, Father, I don’t create disturbances! Between you and Anna, you make me out to be the most tiresome, meddling person. You know I’m not. I just want to help people.”

His eyes softened. “I know you have the best intentions, love, but you’re also as single-minded as a bloodhound with your nose to the scent.”

She could hardly deny it, since cracking the mystery of the letter had been at the forefront of her thoughts all week. She laughed instead. “Don’t work too hard, and try to get outdoors for a little. This sunshine isn’t going to last forever.”

Before she shut the door he’d already returned to tapping at the typewriter keys.

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For the next instalment, click here to go to the blog of Suzanne Jones, short story writer extraordinaire and one of the Minxes of Romance.

 Here is the full list of participating blogs:

Stop 1 – Minxes of Romance

Stop 2 – Sally Clements

Stop 3 – Rachel Bailey

Stop 4 – Scarlet Wilson

Stop 5 – Olivia Miles

Stop 6 – Me :)

Stop 7 – Suzanne Jones

Stop 8 – Romy Sommer

Dear Julia is on sale through Amazon, Amazon UK, Barnes &Noble, AllRomance eBooks, and The Wild Rose Press. You can find out more about this novella here - and don’t forget to tweet your feedback using the hashtag #DearJulia.

Thanks! And I hope you get a chance to check out her book!

Have a great weekend!