Three Determined Women, Three Damaged Hearts...

Now that The Red Cross Girls is available to be requested by NetGalley reviewers, I thought it was time for me to introduce the book and the characters to you.

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When I wrote the series proposal for my editor at Bookouture, this is how I started it:

Three determined women,

three damaged hearts.

When first love led to heartache,

is it safe to believe in second chances?

I don't mind telling you that I worked hard to get the wording exactly right! My editor loved it - and I hope you're intrigued by it too.

This is the background information I put in the proposal:

The new series takes up where The Home Front Girls series left off. A Baby for the Home Front Girls (book 5) finished in December 1942. The action now moves from Manchester to the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire (nearest city: Lancaster) and the books feature a new character OLIVIA (LIVVY) HAMPTON and two characters from the Home Front Girls series whom the readers will already be familiar with, though without knowing them closely - DULCIE GRANT and ROSALIND RUSHTON.

Dulcie is DEBORAH's sister-in-law. Deborah’s bullying brother ROD, Sally’s ex-boyfriend, was sent up to Barrow-in-Furness at the start of the war to work in shipbuilding. There, he met and married Dulcie at top speed. Dulcie has never met her in-laws, but she writes to Deborah and MRS GRANT. When Deborah wanted to leave home and move into Star House (A Wedding for the Home Front Girls, book 4), it was a letter from Deborah to Mrs Grant that swung it for her. Likewise, when Deborah and Patrick were having problems, Dulcie sent supportive letters.

Rosalind Rushton joined the Food Office as Deborah’s new colleague after Sally went to work in the salvage depot. Rosalind and Deborah rubbed along well enough in a professional sense without becoming friends socially. In A Baby for the Home Front Girls (book 5), it transpired that Rosalind was put into the Food Office to undertake a secret investigation into the theft of food coupons. Having got to the bottom of that, she was then moved to the salvage depot to fill a temporary gap. At the end of the book, she told the Star House residents that she was due to be moved into a new job elsewhere. Obviously, this being wartime, she wasn’t allowed to provide details.

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I hope I've whetted your appetite for this new series and that you're keen to meet Dulcie and Rosalind properly - especially Dulcie, whom you've been hearing about ever since book 1 in the Home Front series.

Join me next time to find out more about the war work aspect of the series.

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Link to Kindle edition     The paperback edition can't be ordered just yet - I'll let you know when it can be.