I’m so excited that my romcom novel Her Time Traveling Duke is out in the world!

I hope you’ll consider buying it this week! December releases are tricky, and it could use a boost before it gets lost in the holiday chaos! Here’s the link to the book on Amazon (U.S.), or click here to see other places you can buy it!

I think you already know what the book is about, but I’ll post the description, anyway, before sharing some fun facts and behind-the-scenes info with you!

“Magic meets science and sunshine meets grumpy when a love spell whisks a Regency-era duke to modern times.

Rose Novak, a free-spirited museum employee who dabbles in magic, has had her share of disappointments. So when she tries a little spell for a romance with an “old-fashioned gentleman,” she doesn’t really expect it to work…especially literally. And yet, the duke from a painting she admired at the museum is now standing in her apartment, demanding to know who abducted him.

A man of science and truth, Henry Leighton-Lyons, the Duke of Beresford, has searched tirelessly for a way to turn back time and be with his late wife again. Instead, just as he’s about to pose for his portrait, he’s ripped centuries forward by a feckless, scantily dressed—and utterly bewitching—woman who believes in nonsense like magical crystals and astrology.

Unable to immediately reverse her spell, Rose vows to help Henry return to his own century, even though disguises and high jinks are required to get their hands on an enchanted astrolabe and master the art of time travel. But it’s hard not to fall for the irritable yet honorable duke.

Little does she know that he’s starting to wonder: did a reckless love spell get it right, after all?”

Okay, now some fun facts and secrets about Her Time Traveling Duke!

It took me six months to write the first draft.

At first, we were aiming for four months, but this book took a lot of research. Henry is an astronomer who arrives in modern-day Chicago from 1818, and I not only had to figure out all the details of what his life was like in Jane Austen times…I also had to figure out what he would know about astronomy! Additionally, I researched painting conservation, anti-security system technology, and contemporary theories of time travel (although in the book, it’s magic, not science.)

It meant a lot to me to write a character with blue-collar roots.

I have more of a working-class background, though it’s no wonder I went to college. My parents constantly read books to us from the time we were babies!

I feel like the heroines in a lot of contemporary romance books I read grew up very comfortably middle class, or upper middle class. Maybe other heroines are out there, and I’m just not finding them?

Anyway, my heroine Rose Novak was raised by parents who worked in factories. It’s just another way that she and Henry, an impossibly wealthy duke, could hardly be more different. It truly is an “opposites attract” romance.

By the way, as soon as Rose walked on the page when I was writing Her Knight at the Museum, I knew she’d be getting her own book!

Here are a few things you wouldn’t know from reading the book (though you might guess.)

Rose first began trying out magical spells because she was desperate to help her brother Ryan when he was struggling with addiction. 

My influences when writing this book weren’t only Jane Austen, Kate & Leopold, and Somewhere in Time, but also A Christmas Carol and a little-known TV show called Warehouse 13.

Rose’s description of the thoughts she had when she was little, at the top of page 111, are my personal experience.

In Chapter Seventeen, Ryan is lying to Rose. (He’s a good person, and I think you’ll understand why.)