Paranormal Romance – Page 3

Victorian Nurses in the British Army

The Quid Pro Quo is the second in the Bradfield trilogy, although it will stand alone. It’s set a few months after the end of The Fog of War and stars Sylvia’s friend Walter Kennett, and Simon Frost, a detective who comes to Bradfield to investigate a murder. It’s a gay, historical, paranormal, romantic murder-mystery with a m/transm couple set in rural England in 1920.

One of the things I researched when I was beginning to think about Walter’s background was exactly what training he’d have had as a nurse (or an orderly) in the British army. The answer to that question was ‘not a great deal’ in that Victorian army nurses seemed to have been expected to pick things up as they went along. Before the advent of Florence Nightingale and her cohort during the Crimean War in the mid-nineteenth century, nurses had all been men and they had been attached to individual regiments.

Outrage at the terrible conditions in the Crimea led to the development of a Medical Staff Corps in 1855, which recruited ‘Men able to read and write, of regular steady habits and good temper and of a kindly disposition’. This was renamed the Army Hospital Corps in 1857 and reverted back to being the Medical Staff Corps again in 1884*. Confusingly, the medical officers were known as the Medical Staff…and in 1898, the Medical Staff Corps and the Medical Staff were combined into Royal Army Medical Corps.

This is where Walter comes in.

In my head, he joins up as the two organisations are being merged together and he sort of slips through the gaps, staying hidden as a trans man with the help of the doctor who did his medical when he recruited him and possibly with a bit of a blind eye being turned by his army mates. He serves in the Boer War in South Africa and subsequently all over the British Empire before ending up at Sylvia’s hospital in France in World War One. By the time we meet him 1920, he’s forty and had served in the army for twenty-one years.

That brings me to a really interesting blog post about male nurses in the 1920s I found at This Intrepid Band-a blog dedicated to the history of military nursing. Nursing regulation was pretty slapdash until the end of the First World War. Hospitals trained nurses for between one and three years and gave them a certificate. But…anyone could call themselves a nurse even without that training.

After 1919, that changed. I won’t replicate all the qualifying criteria here, you can read it at This Intrepid Band if you want to…but Walter would have fallen under the ‘three years military experience’ criteria. However, as a man, he would have been singularly alone. Even in 1928, although there were forty thousand women on the new register, there were only two hundred men.

I don’t know whether there were any male nurses working at village practices in the early twenties; but I suspect it’s very unlikely. Most of the nurses in 1928 were in prisons or mental hospitals, presumably dealing with men who were considered dangerous and perhaps unsafe for women nurses to care for. Walter’s like Sylvia though, in that he feels that he’s done his bit keeping other people safe and looking after strangers. He wants to be part of a community and part of family as much as he can. So a small village, with his friends, suits him fine.

I hope you like his story!

The Quid Pro Quo

Village nurse Walter Kennett is content with his makeshift found family in tiny Bradfield. However, when a body is found floating in the village duck pond one midsummer morning, danger arrives too.

Between his attraction to detective Simon Frost, concealing Sylvia and Lucy’s relationship and not knowing how much to reveal about the paranormal possibilities of the murder, Walter is torn all ways.

The Quid Pro Quo is a 50,000 word romantic historical paranormal murder-mystery set in 1920s rural England where nearly everyone is queer and the main couple is m/transm.

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(Some of this post was published as a guest post at Addison Albright’s blog in November ’21)

Ofelia Grand and The Drunken Dog

Hello, everyone! Thank you, Ally, for letting me drop by again. I’m trying to remember when I was here last and what I talked about then.

Bragging was what I was doing 😁 (You’re always welcome anyway, Ofelia!)

I talked about how my alter ego, Holly Day, had written 12 stories in 12 months – we’re working on story number 18 in 18 months now. I submitted Holly’s May story – a story for World Naked Gardener Day, and it’s all Ally’s fault (This is actually true, sorry – Ally) – a few days ago, and I’m now working on the June story.

But just like last time I was here, I have a new story out, and it’s one of those either-or stories that JMS Books have every other month. This time the call was for either Sugar or Spice stories. I went with Spice.

In a way, I’ve messed up. Last time I was here, I talked about The Ruby Tooth, which was a Naughty or Nice story. This time I have The Drunken Dog. Both stories have shifters and fated mates, and both stories are named after pubs, but they’re not in a series. If I’d been thinking, I’d have turned them into a series, but I wasn’t thinking.

I have a super short story called Cup o’ Sugar. Cup o’ Sugar is a cafe where Sam works, and Sam happens to be Roarak’s mate. Roarak is the alpha of the Halfhide pack – a werewolf pack.

The Drunken Dog is about Zev, who also is a member of the Halfhide pack, though he’s not really a werewolf. The stories are very loosely linked, and I intend for all the stories I write about members from Roarak’s pack to be standalone.

In April, The Cake Shop will be released. It’s about York, another member of the pack, and The Cake Shop is a bakery. So, all the stories in this series are named after establishments, they’re all similar, and at a glance, you’d think The Ruby Tooth would be part of it, but it’s not.

I usually pride myself on having a plan, but… Hindsight is a bitch.

But enough about me nagging about what-ifs and regrets. Do you want to read an excerpt from The Drunken Dog?

I picked a part where Zev is at The Drunken Dog and talks to Otis, who is a vampire. I’ve thrown all kinds of monsters into these stories. Zev, for example, is a cú sídhe which is a mythological hound from Irish folklore. They’re huge moss-green beasts the size of a cow that bark three times – maybe I should’ve talked about that instead of ranting about titles LOL

Excerpt from The Drunken Dog

Zev pushed open the door to The Drunken Dog, breathing a sigh of relief when he found it mostly empty, but disappointment quickly followed. He’d hoped Otis would be here. The image of him twirling his glass and smiling at Zev had popped up in his mind more times than he could count, and he wanted to talk to him again, preferably without a crowd around. Otis wasn’t the only reason he’d come, though.
He grabbed the first stool he could find, placed his elbows on the bar, and rested his head in his hands.
It had been five days since he’d been there. It was the longest he’d been away since he’d found it, but today he needed a drink in the worst way.
He and Roarak had been building a carport when three wolves from the Bloodclaw pack who controlled the eastern part of the city had shown up. There had been taunts and posturing and when one of the Bloodclaws had threatened to take Sam—Roarak’s mate—the shit had hit the fan.
Roarak had clawed one of them, and Zev suspected there would be repercussions. When one of the Bloodclaws had gone for him, he’d flashed teeth. He hadn’t flashed teeth in years.
The way the wolf had backed away formed a knot in Zev’s gut. He shouldn’t have shown his teeth. Now he’d made their pack more of a target.
Roarak had clapped his shoulder and told him they had to go home to inform the others and set up a schedule to guard Sam. Zev always kept his distance from Sam, not because he disliked him, but Sam was a precog, and Zev feared he’d be able to tell things about him if he stayed close.
“What can I get you?”
Zev raised his head to meet Gerald’s gaze. “Whiskey.”
“Rough day?”
Zev sighed and eyed Gerald. Did he know about what went bump in the night? He most likely did. The way he’d told Zev he didn’t want any trouble made him think he did.
“The worst.”
Gerald tilted his head. “Anything I should know about?”
Ah, definitely someone aware of there being things going on in the city that didn’t show on the surface. Zev shrugged. “Nah, I think you’re fine.” He hoped.
The bar was in their area, or the area they considered theirs—the Bloodclaws didn’t agree.
“Internal or external problems?”
Zev grinned. “You surprise me, Gerald.”
Gerald raised an eyebrow, his eyes sparkling. “There’s more to me than meets the eye.”
Zev snorted. “You’re human.”
“I am, but I’ve known Otis a long time, and I’ve owned this bar for a long, long time.” He poured Zev’s whiskey. “I should retire, but I worry.”
“About?”
“Otis. This is where he comes when he starts over. I don’t know where he’d end up if I closed.”
Zev frowned. Otis had lived far longer than Gerald had. “I’m sure he’d be fine.”
Gerald shook his head. “He doesn’t have anyone. He hides from other…” He looked around. “…of his kind, and—” He shook his head.
“And?” Hides? His heart beat faster. Was Otis in danger? He should come by more often just to make sure he was okay.
“I know he can take care of himself, he’s no fool, but he’s vulnerable.”
“You’re his dayman?”
“Dayman?”
“You’re not.” Zev took a sip of the whiskey.
“I don’t think he has one.”
“Then he is vulnerable.”
“Who is?” Otis swept in through the door and leaned against the bar next to Zev. Zev turned on his stool to invite Otis to come closer. “Good morning. You’re up early.” He glanced at the clock on the wall behind the bar. The sun had set ten minutes ago.
“I woke up thirsty. Rum, please, Gerald.”
Zev narrowed his eyes. “Should you start your day with alcohol?”
“You’re willing to donate something more substantial?”
For a second, Zev considered it, but one sip and Otis would know he wasn’t a normal shifter. “I don’t think that’s wise.”
Otis pursed his lips. “But you’re not repulsed by it?”
Repulsed? “Why would I be?”
“Shifters normally are. Killing cute, innocent bunnies when running around as wolf is fine and dandy, but taking a sip from someone’s neck or elsewhere—” He wiggled his eyebrows. “—is appalling.”
Zev chuckled and shook his head. Heat shot through him as he pictured Otis’ mouth on him. “Nah, you’re fine with me.” He shouldn’t have said that. “Are you sure you should be drinking rum before breakfast? Don’t you have a donor on your payroll?” He’d believed all vampires had donors at hand.
“Are you my mother? I have no memory of her, but I find it hard to believe she’d look like you.”
Zev shrugged. “It’s your funeral.”
“No, I don’t think there ever will be one for me. We turn to ash, you know.”
Zev rubbed his forehead. He didn’t have the energy to keep up the banter.
Otis stiffened, and Zev instantly looked around the room in search of a threat.
“You smell wrong.”
“What?” Zev gave up on finding a threat by the empty tables and looked at Otis.
“You smell… Your scent is spicy or it was spicy the other day, now it’s woodsier.”
Stupidly, Zev pulled in a breath. “I’ve been working with wood.”
“No, that’s not it.” Otis’s eyes narrowed. “Have you been around wolves? Other wolves, I mean?”
“Well, yeah, I live with five of them.”

The Drunken Dog

Zev Nightfall has a secret. For two years, he’s been the beta in a loosely knitted werewolf pack, but he’s not a werewolf. He’s a crossbreed, part wolf, part fae, which is a death sentence in most packs. That’s not his only problem. One night he meets Otis, a vampire. Shifters and vampires aren’t friends, yet fighting is the last thing on Zev’s mind.

Otis Miller is in the middle of rebuilding his rockstar persona. Again. A hundred years ago, all he had to do was to move when people started noticing him not ageing. With cameras and social media, it doesn’t work anymore, and he isn’t sure he has the energy to start over. Then there is the shifter coming to the bar where he’s singing. He makes Otis want to jump off the stage and never look back.

Zev knows he shouldn’t get involved with a vampire; he has enough problems as it is. But Otis is alone and vulnerable, and it tugs at Zev’s heartstrings. Normally, Otis stays away from other supernatural beings, but something about Zev makes him want to curl up on his lap and forget about the world around them. But how would two people from enemy species make things work, and will Zev’s pack ever accept not only a crossbreed but a vampire as well?

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About Ofelia

Ofelia Gränd is Swedish, which often shines through in her stories. She likes to write about everyday people ending up in not-so-everyday situations, and hopefully also getting out of them. She writes romance, contemporary, paranormal, Sci-Fi and whatever else catches her fancy.

Her books are written for readers who want to take a break from their everyday life for an hour or two.

When Ofelia manages to tear herself from the screen and sneak away from her husband and children, she likes to take walks in the woods…if she’s lucky she finds her way back home again.

Find Ofelia on social media

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Jaymie Wagner: Interview and her debut release, Orphan’s Cry

Today we welcome debut author Jaymie Wagner to the blog. Jaymie, welcome! Thank you so much for visiting. Do you have any particular reason for popping in today?

I have my first novel, Orphan’s Cry, being published by JMS Books at the end of February! Even better, it’s the first book in a trilogy, so I’m pretty excited about going from 0 published novels to 3 by the end of this year.

More importantly – I’m doing this because I love these characters and their story, and I am hoping that you will too.

What started you writing?

I loved stories as a kid, and my parents taught me to read at a pretty early age so they could share their love of books with me.

I started writing down the stories I came up with as soon as I learned how to, and I’ve never really stopped since.

Where do you write?

I have a beautiful old wooden roll top desk that I inherited from my grandparents, who got it from my great grandfather. It’s nearly 150 years old and I have so many good memories of watching my grandmother using it when she was writing letters, or my grandfather using the computer they eventually kept in it to check his golf league scores.

Every time I sit down with it, I get a big hit of nostalgia and love, and it helps kickstart my writing.

Before I got the desk, I would keep my laptop with me and basically write wherever I was when I felt the inspiration to do so – or write notes to myself on my phone when I didn’t have it with me!

(I think the best story I can tell you was when I got the idea for a short story while hiking in Appalachia, and I literally sat down on a rock and wrote the first ~1000 words on my phone then and there because I didn’t want to lose it!)

What do you like to read?

Fantasy and Sci-fi books were my first love, and will always have a special place in my heart, but I’ve gotten fascinated by non-fiction works that dig into why people do things, and how we are shaped by our communities, environments, and intersectional factors.

I read an amazing book recently called The Alchemy of Us by Ainissa Ramierz that talks about how the things we create and shape also shape us in turn, and it was fascinating!

What are the three books you’d take to a desert island? Why would you choose them?

An omnibus edition of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga. As someone who was born disabled, Miles Vorkosigan was a hero I could see myself in when I started reading the books as a kid, and as I have gotten older they still resonate deeply. When I transitioned, I chose my new middle name (Delia) in honor of Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan, who I think is a great role model for the woman I want to be when I grow up.
The Hobbit. When my family took our first “big trip” together that didn’t involve driving to see my grandparents, my dad bought the BBC radio audio drama of the unabridged Hobbit (six tapes!) and we listened to it as we drove from our house in Ohio to a vacation in Virginia. I have a lot of good memories of listening to those tapes, and it was one of the first books I read cover to cover by myself.
Every Tool’s A Hammer, Adam Savage’s biography. I was a huge fan of Mythbusters for both the explosions and the problem solving, and I ended up following Adam on social media and his Tested video channel where he continues to share builds, tools, talks through problem solving and shows off the neat stuff he finds. I love how inspired and energetic he can be about the simplest things, and hey, if I’m stuck on a desert island, I bet he’s got some plans for a duct tape house in there…

Writing is an intrinsically solo occupation. Do you belong to any groups or associations, either online or in the ‘real’ world? How does that work for you?

I really enjoy both writing and reading fanfiction, so I’m in a few different discord servers here and there for both authors and fandoms I enjoy. It can be fun to fangirl, vent, or just sit around and bitch / brainstorm there and see what happens!

I’m friends in real life with some wonderfully talented authors (Lucy A. Snyder, Sarah Hans, Gary Braunbeck, and more) and I like getting together physically or virtually to just hang out and have fun too, but I am not part of other groups – yet.

Once the novel is released I will qualify for SFWA and RWA memberships, so I’ll apply for those as well. It never hurts to have more resources at your disposal!

What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

Oh goodness. So many things!

I paint miniatures as a hobby, particularly Battletech, and love to build Gundam models, hence my collection of tiny giant robots. I live with two cats, Mr. B and Rocket, who are respectively a massive asshole and a ginger himbo. My partners, Dee and Katherine, have their own place which they share with five cats, Dee’s support dog, Timbit, and a hedgehog named Swirl – Timbit has basically adopted me, the hedgehog enjoys climbing up into my hair while Dee’s younger spawn cleans her tank, and the cats have deemed me tolerable, which I will take. 🙂

I love to cook, even though my disability sometimes makes it more difficult than I would like, and I enjoy lots of different shows and movies on Netflix, Hulu, and other services. Dee in particular is a big fan of disaster movies, and I love watching her watching them!

As far as learning something new, my parents used to make me do violin lessons when I was a kid, which I eventually stopped as I got older. Early in 2020, a friend bought a new electric violin and I was struck with an urge to play one, so I ended up getting back into the art with a local teacher who could do video call lessons, and I performed a solo piece for a recital last November!

Tell me a little bit about your most recent release. What gave you the idea for it? How long did it take to write? What did you enjoy about writing it? What did you hate?

Orphan’s Cry is the tale of Leah, a Royal Mail letter carrier who was bitten by a werewolf a year and a half before the book begins, and has been trying to hide her condition ever since.

To her great surprise, it turns out that she’s nowhere near the only werewolf in London, and that she was hiding so well that she never realized there was a whole community out there able to help her!

I enjoy messing around with tropes and conventions, and it’s fun to tilt things on their head and see what happens from there.

(One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever got was to create a character that you love, and then figure out what the worst thing you can do to them is. Bang! Instant plot ideas!)

I brainstormed the general shape of the story with a few friends at the end of 2016 and started writing it in 2017. When I finally finished with the stories I wanted to tell at the end of 2019 it was a 200k word monster, and it took another year or so of editing and rewriting to shape it into a trilogy of books. The first one focuses on Leah, another on her friend (and eventual lover) Amélie, and the final book ties all the threads I’ve woven into them together with a focus on their pack leader and girlfriend Amy – and the prophecy that all three have a part in.

(Oops. Did I say too much there…? I guess you’ll have to read and decide what you think!)

I loved writing the dialogue in the story. Leah’s status as a fish out of water means she’s going to need to learn a lot of things over the course of the first book, and I needed to keep that interesting! Thankfully I had a lot of character voices to work with, and more than a bit of good old fashioned smartassery I can rely on in a pinch.

I think the only thing I hated during the course of taking this from an idea to a published book was the inevitable rejections when I started to put it out there. With them came a lot of useful feedback that I was able to use to make the eventual result better, but it’s never fun to pour your heart into something for several years and then be told it’s not what they’re looking for.

Orphans Cry

Six months ago Leah Corbyn was bitten by a “dog.” Two weeks later, the full moon’s rise revealed she’s now a werewolf.

After spending six months trying to hide her secret in the city of London, Leah is about to learn she isn’t alone … but that knowledge comes with new responsibilities, and new dangers.

As Leah finds solace in her girlfriend’s arms, she must find her place among the wolves of Londinium, but can she prove herself in time?

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Find Jaymie

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The Flowers of Time: Travelling in the Himalayas in 1780

I’ve been revisiting The Flowers of Time over the last week or so because I’m thinking about writing a companion novel. One of my betas described the book as ‘an eighteenth century road trip’ and that’s a good description of quite a large chunk of it. Jones, Edie and their companions travel over the Himalayas from Srinagar in Kashmir to Leh in Ladakh.

Before the two hundred and fifty mile Srinagar-Leh Highway was built in 1962, the journey between the two cities took about three weeks on two or four feet. The Highway was pre-dated by a track named the Treaty Road from about 1870. The Treaty Road in turn followed the path of the old Central Asian trade route north to Yarkand and in to China. People talk about The Silk Road as if it’s a single route…actually, there are a lot of different Silk Roads winding all over the area that have been used for thousands of years.

You can click through and see the rough route on Google Maps – there are also satellite photos and some Street Views, which give you a really good idea of the landscape. The modern highway is closed for a significant period of each year because of snowfall.

Edie and Jones’ journey is loosely based on that of Isabella Bird, a British woman who followed the same route a hundred and ten years after my story is set, in 1889. She wrote about her travels in a book called Among the Tibetans, which I drew on heavily. The route would not have changed all that much between Edie’s day and hers.

Whilst in one sense Isabella was firmly rooted in her time and her British Empire background she was also unusual in that she traveled a lot, often without the requisite-at-the-time white male company. The biography I have of her describes her as ‘the foremost travel writer of her day’. She began her travels in the 1850s as a young woman, when her doctor recommended it for her health. Between then and her death in 1904, she wrote books about her travels in the Americas, Hawaii, India, Japan, China and Persia. She has a really good turn of descriptive phrase and I’d recommend her books if you can stomach her paternalistic attitude to her servants and the people she meets. It’s a fascinating insight in to how simultaneously closed and open minded people can be.

landscape photography of snowy mountain — Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Pexels.com

The route Edie and Jones follow was only accessible on foot and it wasn’t always possible to ride. It was sometimes so narrow that if you met someone coming the other way, one of you would have to get off the track out of the way, if there was room. If there wasn’t room, sometimes people lay down so the pack animals coming from the other direction could jump over them.

Traders and travelers used mules, ponies, yaks and even sheep as pack animals. I found some really interesting descriptions of salt being brought down to Srinagar from Tibet on the backs of sheep.

There are three high passes on the trip, the tallest of which is the Zoji La, at 11,500 feet. You can start to feel odd with altitude sickness at about 4,500ft and become seriously unwell at 8,000. I wanted to talk about the potential for that and did some looking around for historical account. The earliest I could find for the Himalayas was a cautionary tale by some Chinese traders who traveled between Xian and Kabul in about 35BC, who wrote about the Great and Little Headache Mountains.

“On passing the Great Headache Mountain, the Little Headache Mountain, the Red Land, and the Fever Slope, men’s bodies become feverish, they lose colour and are attacked with headache and vomiting; the asses and cattle being all in like condition.”

Jones knows all about this, obviously, so she’s watching out for it.

dark silhouette of camping tent — Photo by Skyler Sion on Pexels.com

Edie’s snowlotus obsession encompasses about three hundred species. The one she’s particularly interested in is the Saussurea Lappae or Costus. Like all its family it likes high altitude and low temperature. I don’t know whether Edie was successful in bringing any live plants home. It seems unlikely they would have survived the journey at sea-level very well. That part of Edie’s character is loosely based on my mother, who is a very skilled plantswoman and at the time of writing this still runs her own horticultural nursery, in her eighties. She was also drawn heavily from Marianne North, a botanical illustrator of the same period of Isabella Bird, who travelled all over the world painting both plants and the landscape around her.

The most challenging thing I found to write about the journey itself was the camping kit! I couldn’t get the feel of what the characters were up to settled in my head unless I could visualize what they were drinking from or sleeping on, or using to cook with. I started off with the TV adaptation of Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe novels (Sean Bean was just a bonus) and spiralled out in to the many and varied webpages by immensely skilled re-enactors out there as well as museum inventories and lists of what soldiers on the march might carry.

Finally, I also learned a lot about yaks. Yaks only have to eat 1% of their bodyweight daily, as opposed to cows, who have to consume 3%. And they get heat exhaustion if it’s warmer than 59f. They are extremely cool creatures and I wish Mr AL was more amenable to me keeping a small herd in the garden.

The Flowers of Time is available in ebook, paperback and at Audible and Apple Books.

The Flowers of Time is available in both ebook, paperback and at Audible and Apple Books.

Trans people in history

This morning I want to talk a little bit about trans people in history. Transgender is a word that can only be traced back to 1974, but that didn’t mean trans people didn’t exist before that date! Walter, one of the main characters in The Quid Pro Quo is transgender—he’s caused me all sorts of plot issues, but has sent me off to do lots of really interesting reading, which I’m delighted to share here!

One of the things that gender studies academics all agree about is that it’s almost impossible to know how people in the past that we now see as trans would have seen themselves. The records are very sparse, often sensationalised and are usually other people’s view of the person rather than their own. Who wanted to put that sort of thing down in writing when it would get you prosecuted or put in a mental hospital? So it’s hard to tell whether past figures were transgender; or whether they were passing as a man or woman in order to access spaces and privilege they would be otherwise denied. This is particularly true of people who were assigned female at birth and lived the bulk of their lives as men.

The most famous of these cases is Dr James Barry, who after his death in the mid-nineteenth century was revealed to be AFAB (assigned female at birth). I won’t write much about him here because this is the article I would write and Rebecca Ortenberg has already done it better than I would. Suffice to say that after he began his medical education at Edinburgh, Barry never presented or referred to himself as female again. He was only discovered to be AFAB after the person laying his body out for burial spoke about him. In recent years he’s been absorbed by the ‘plucky girl breaking the glass ceiling by putting on breeches’ narrative, which I personally feel is wrong.

This article at the British Library about Transgender Identities in the Past is fascinating. It focuses on two people, Eliza Edwards, who on her death in 1833 was discovered to be AMAB. And in 1901, someone we’d now understand to be a trans man who at the age of sixty and after several marriages and a career as a cook on P&O liners was revealed to be AFAB. The newspaper article calls them by a woman’s name. It completely erases the life they lived. The article has audio clips of a 2018 discussion between E-J Scott, curator of the Museum of Transology; Dr Jay Stewart, the chief executive of Gendered Intelligence, and Annie Brown, an activist, artist and GI youth worker. It’s worth your time.

In The Flowers of Time, my story set in the late eighteenth century, Jones the non-binary character eventually decides to present as masculine because it makes their life with Edie easier. They fudge the record, more or less blackmail close family into accepting them and that’s that. However, it’s not unreasonable to suppose that as time went on, communication became quicker and easier and records of births and marriages became more common it became much more difficult to pass. British army records mention Phoebe Hassel, who was discharged in 1817 when she was flogged and discovered to be a man (bottom of page seven, you have to register, but it’s free). We don’t know whether she was a passing woman for financial or social reasons or whether she was what we’d understand today as trans. Her male name is not mentioned. However, she must have passed well enough or had enough support by her peers to have concealed her natal gender for some years.

However, The Quid Pro Quo is set a hundred and fifty years later than Phoebe’s flogging and The Flowers of Time. By the time Walter joined up in 1898, there were medicals for army recruits. This was such a sticking point for me that I bottled it and I honestly tried to write the book with him as cis. However, he just wouldn’t play…he’d been trans in my head as I was writing The Fog of War, right back as far the planning stage of the trilogy. But when I came to write it, I couldn’t make the story work with him as trans because of the army regulations; and I couldn’t make the story work with him as cis because he’s not cis.

I threw the question to some of my lovely friends at the Quiltbag Historicals facebook group (join us, we’re cool!) and they immediately began working out ways I could fudge the story. So Walter begins his army career as his twin brother and has a little help from the people around him to keep his origins concealed. And I reassured myself that if people are prepared to suspend disbelief about the paranormal aspects of my stories then they can allow me this tiny (enormous) stretch of possibility to get it off the ground!

I love Walter. He’s so very pragmatic about his life and his place in the universe. He’s just getting on and doing his thing. I wanted him to have a happy ending so badly all the time I was writing The Fog of War and I was very pleased to be able to give him one here in The Quid Pro Quo.

I like to think of my stories as realistically historical first and paranormal second. My characters are just getting on living their lives—which have greater or lesser levels of complexity—and the paranormal comes and whacks them round the back of the head with half a brick in a sock. I try and make the history as accurate and the paranormal as twisted as I can! I think I’ve done Walter justice, as he’s one of my favourite people. I hope you like him too.

Lastly, here is a brilliant collection of books about trans history and trans issues, curated by Christine Burns and available from independent bookshops.

The Quid Pro Quo

Village nurse Walter Kennett is content with his makeshift found-family in tiny Bradfield. However one midsummer morning a body is found floating in the village duck pond, dead by magical means.

Detective Simon Frost arrives in Bradfield to investigate a inexplicable murder. The evidence seems to point to Lucille Hall-Bridges, who lives with doctor Sylvia Marks and nurse Walter Kennett at Courtfield House. Simon isn’t happy—he doesn’t believe Lucy is a murderer but he’s sure the three of them are hiding something. In the meantime, the draw he feels toward Walter takes him by surprise.

Walter is in a dilemma, concealing Sylvia and Lucy’s relationship and not knowing how much to tell Frost about the paranormal possibilities of the murder. He isn’t interested in going to bed with anyone—he’s got a complicated life and has to know someone really well before he falls between the sheets. He’s taken aback by his own attraction to Detective Frost and angry when Frost appears to twist the spark between them to something transactional in nature.

Will Walter be satisfied to stay on the periphery of Lucy and Sylvia’s love affair, a welcome friend but never quite included? Or is it time for him to strike out and embark on a relationship of his own?

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