Is there a scarier place than Rosings to have
a ghost? I mean, we already have the scary and snappish Lady Catherine at
Rosings. But what if this mischievous ghost appears only during the twelve days
of Christmas? That’s the story within a story in my Christmas novella, Twelfth-Night
Cake & the Rosings Ghost.
The novella opens
with Colonel Fitzwilliam and his eight-year-old daughter, Sofia-Elisabete,
travelling to Rosings, where they will spend a winter’s month. If you haven’t
met my plucky girl hero Sofia-Elisabete before, see I, Sofia-Elisabete, Love Child of Colonel
Fitzwilliam: A Perfect World in the Moon, a humorous and poignant novel about
an abandoned girl who is born in Portugal during the Napoleonic Wars and who turns
out to be the illegitimate child of the colonel.
I
wondered how Sofia-Elisabete feels to be half-Portuguese, Catholic and a love child
living in England during the Regency Era. She’s not getting along with Lady
Catherine, and then the ghost arrives to play its tricks. I imagined a crazy,
troubled world for Sofia-Elisabete because Lady Catherine, who doesn’t believe
in the Rosings Ghost, blames the girl for everything that goes wrong. What’s a
young eight-year-old to do?
Ever since my “perfect
moon world” novel, I’ve been immersed in writing YA historical fiction that
appeals to all ages, finishing three novellas about the lovable, strong-willed Sofia-Elisabete
and her close relationship with her father, Colonel Fitzwilliam. Twelfth-Night
Cake & the Rosings Ghost is the first novella to be released in
this series. My sincere thanks to Maria Grazia for helping me launch the
Rosings Ghost novella on her site!
