WELCOME TO RACHEL’S FICTION WRITING AND REVIEWS BLOG
This is where Rachel keeps you up to date with her novels and stories and also shares reviews, highlights and extracts from other authors.
LADY OF THE CASTLE WINS ANOTHER AWARD!
I’m thrilled to share that Lady of the Castle has won first place in Historical Fiction at the Firebird Book Awards!
Book two of the Nicola de la Haye series follows Nicola through marriage, power struggles, and the long shadow of the Third Crusade, as she fights to hold Lincoln Castle in a world that expects a woman to step aside.
When I set out to tell the story of the woman Sharon Bennett Connolly names “the woman who saved England,” I hoped readers would come to love her as much as I do.
In only a month since publication, it’s already won several awards and reached #1 bestseller status on Amazon.
To see the second book recognised like this, after Lady of Lincoln also won many awards, really is humbling. But Nicola deserves to be recognised!
Big News: Lady of the Castle Shortlisted for the HNS First Chapter Competition
Lady of the Castle has been shortlisted for the Historical Novel Society's First Chapter Competition before it’s even been published, and and I'm still doing a happy dance about it! 🥳
This is my second Nicola de la Haye novel, still unpublished, still being polished, but somehow its opening chapter caught the attention of the HNS judges in the competitive 11th–16th Century Category. 😀
The competition honours exactly what makes historical fiction electric: that first page that drops you into another century and refuses to let go. Nicola de la Haye - castellan, survivor, one of medieval England's most remarkable women - has a story worth telling, and it’s wonderful that Lady of Lincoln has already won so many awards, but also that Lady of the Castle is being credited even before the book even exists in final form!
Lady of the Castle continues where Lady of Lincoln left off, following Nicola through the treacherous politics and passions of the late 12th century. I'm deep in final revisions. You can track my writing and publishing progress here.
Stay tuned!