Entries by KJ Charles

It’s release day!

I’m delighted to say that The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen is out! It feels like it’s been a while…. Secret Lives is the first of my Doomsday Books duology. It stars Joss Doomsday, a professional smuggler on Romney Marsh, a remote part of Kent, and Sir Gareth Inglis, law clerk unexpectedly promoted to baronet. […]

The Ebb Tide Beach: a meditation

This is a post about…something. Not sure what yet. But in my grandfather’s wise words, “How do I know what I think till I hear what I say?” Let’s start with a haiku. Years ago—I mean years, more than two decades now, I was reading a book of haiku from a British Museum exhibition, just […]

My Best Books of 2022

Inexplicably, we’re once again trundling towards the end of the year so it’s time for my annual books post. Goodreads tells me I’ve read 248 books, although that omits the rereads: the Agatha Christies and Georgette Heyers that were all I could manage during the worst weeks of Covid, the Murderbot and Kate Griffin reread […]

Masters In This Hall: New book out now!

So I wrote a surprise book, as you do. (I didn’t announce it because I wasn’t sure I’d have time to do it. Then I realised I absolutely didn’t have time to do it. So I did it. Huge thanks to Kanaxa, who created the lovely cover in an afternoon to make this possible!) Masters […]

Seven for a secret: a covers gallery

I was overjoyed this week when I got the Japanese cover of The Magpie Lord. This is my most-translated book and one of my chat group commented it would be a good idea to do a gallery. Which, clearly, it is. Herewith the various incarnations of the Charm of Magpies series: six full versions plus […]

Law: what is it good for?

So, as is now my habit, I was soliciting on Twitter for blog post ideas and the following question was raised by @podcastled: Do you have to learn the rules (“rules”) to break them? I think a post about resisting being super rule-bound would be interesting. This is extremely interesting, especially to me because I […]

A Thief in the Night is out!

I have a release day, for the first time in a very long while. (This is basically because I’ve started going with publishers instead of self publishing. When you finish a book that you’re doing yourself you can get it out in a very short time: I had Subtle Blood out in less than a […]

Let’s talk about sex (scenes)

Sex scenes tend to loom large in romance. So let me first note that they don’t have to. Romances can be closed-door (sex happens off page) or entirely sex-free (asexual romances, books that lead up to a marriage with no shenanigans in advance) and work brilliantly. Don’t believe anyone who says you have to have […]