Every Monday until November 3rd, I’ll be posting the newest chapter of my serial novella, Darcy Darlington and The Diamond of Desire. This story has a little bit to do with my next release, The Rogue And The Rival, and a lot to do with wanting to write a story just for fun that people can read for free.

Darcy Darlington is an amateur sleuth in London’s Regency Era (Yes, I know this would probably never happen). I imagined her a bit like Nancy Drew, but a lot less perfect. She has a serious crush on a rake named Tristan Cole who never seems to notice her as more than a friend. When she gets the chance to find some potentially magical diamonds that can supposedly triumph over unrequited love, she can’t say no. Because, really, who would pass that up?

Darcy made her first appearance in my work in The Heir and The Spare. It’s a serial novella that the heroine, Emilia, is fond of reading in London Weekly, a fictitious newspaper I imagine to be a cross between People magazine and the New York Post. I was going to include snippets of the story in the novel, which would “coincidentally” mirror the drama going on between the hero and heroine. Alas, it never happened, mostly due to time constraints.

London Weekly and Darcy Darlington appear again in The Rogue And The Rival (and I’m not saying how, exactly, just yet. But it’s a fairly significant part.). Once again, I was going to do the story within the story, and yet again, it didn’t quite fit in. But it didn’t have to! I had such fun writing those little bits that I wanted to finish the story. And then I happened to have this website where I could post it, so this misfit story finally gets a home of its own.