My favourite modern HF writers are Sarah Waters, Michel Faber, Imogen Hermes Gowar, Kate Manning. I have more recently discovered less known regency authors Charlotte Dacre and Maria Edgeworth.

I also love Victorian works by Dickens, Gaskell, Emile Zola & Alcott. So many… I have always enjoyed the wit and romantic plots of Regency authors like Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer. What authors, or books have influenced you? I’m what’s know as a pantser, in author speak, and sometimes my characters and storylines come to me in dreams and on the fly and I have to speed-write the details down before they are lost to me like a fading dream. Hmmm, how would I know when they would not seem at all irregular to me? 😉 – I don’t think I have anything extraordinary to note. My series name was inspired by a very famous line by Jane Austen in P&P and seemed fitting to my protagonists character: “Diary of an obstinate, headstrong female.” The book title of my latest book within this series is: “Appetence.” The book is about longing for the forbidden, ardent desire and romance, so it seemed apt. What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it? I like to start with a valid line of enquiry and ask “what might such a past have looked like for a woman like this?” My current (debut) series seeks to consider what a lesbian lifestyle might have been like for a woman of the nineteenth century.

I love research and like to mix well researched truths in with reimagined fictions, to fill out the historical clefts. I am interested in excavating women’s pasts and reimagining the little known-untold stories of supressed histories and narratives. I’m Claire, lover all things Regency! I’m not quite sure how this fascination began, but trips to my local National Trust house at Osterley Park were certainly part of my inspiration as a young girl and naturally lead to an overconsumption of period drama and nineteenth century books from an early age. Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.

Appetence by C.C. Burns