I’m offering content guidance for readers who may find some content in my books triggering, or uncomfortable. I’ve chosen to include this information on my website rather than in each book, or on each book’s retail page, as some book retailers start eBooks on the first chapter or prologue; and I always include my Author’s Note at the end of a book for those who care to read it. Additionally, retailer algorithms are programmed to mine book descriptions for keywords, meaning content warnings may inadvertently include an undesired product in a reader’s search results. If you find this page helpful, please share with others who may also find it useful. Individual book content warnings are found at the bottom of this page.
SEXUAL CONTENT:
I include sex scenes in books where emotional and physical wellness and maturity, and the intensity of attraction between adults, allows for it. In short, sex is included as a natural progression of a couple’s relationship where the baring of bodies and souls adds depth and strength to their story.
I rate my stories’ heat levels as:
Low-to-No: There may be on-stage kissing, some petting and intimation of sex, but few or no details of the couple’s physical intimacy.
Steamy: One to three more-detailed scenes that include kissing, petting, oral sex and or masturbation/sexual intercourse.
Sizzling: More than three detailed (graphic) scenes involving oral sex and or masturbation/sexual intercourse.
TRIGGERS:
I write emotional stories that do not shy away from the realities of human life past or present. Though you won’t find graphic rape or abuse scenes in my novels, you may encounter scenes where such violence is intimated or assumed through character dialogue, description, recollection, and or behaviour. You will find scenes of or references to sexual activity, childbirth, pregnancy, child/adult/animal mortality, and war, and other human-to-human emotional/verbal/ and or physical violence.
HISTORICAL ACCURACY:
Shaped by our families, friends, experiences, physical and emotional strengths and challenges, skin-colour, age, gender identity, sexuality, language, religion, knowledge, education, and where and when we live/grew up in the world, we are each unique pieces of our past, present, and hopes for the future. To deny my characters the same depth and variety of shape is not something I can do; I prefer to write stories as historically accurate as possible, which means exposing how certain human misery is perpetuated through silence, violence, legislation, and or financial/mental circumstances/intimidation; and how protest, acknowledgement, honest love, good friends, and good family can empower positive change that enables an individual or group of people to learn to trust in themselves and others, and to find love, and build a life based on personal choice and self-truth, even if they never receive validation from a deceased or living family member, friend, or perpetrator. My Dear One, a riches-to-rags-to-riches story, is a classic example of this:
When her attempt to sabotage her arranged marriage to a duke of questionable morals ends in tragedy, and she is compelled into a different arranged marriage with a stubborn and forthright Texas cattle rancher, Lady Dianna Marshall embarks on an emotional, and near-fatal journey of self-discovery from which she emerges a changed woman; a confident, and purposeful woman who, like the man that raised her—and the one she married—is unwilling to compromise on matters of the heart.
For Dianna’s critical personal transformation to take place, she must lose everything she believes worthwhile, so she can discover what really matters: Her Truth. In the process she suffers greatly, physically, and emotionally, as so many of us do on our journeys to self-empowerment. To gloss over her pain (and triumphs) would be to do her—and my mother whose real-life heartbreak inspired the story—a disservice; for the truth is, unmarried and pregnant women have faced, and still face today in many parts of the world, harsh, and lonely realities at the hands of unforgiving families, and Societies.
GUIDANCE BY TITLE
DEAR ONE series:
MY DEAR ONE: intimation of child/domestic/sexual assault; verbal abuse; pregnancy; vomit and bodily fluids; reference to infertility/miscarriage; human and animal death; adoption; poverty; child and or maternal mortality; racist and or religious/imperialist attitudes expressed by some characters. Heat: Low-to-No.
MY OWN: child and adult mortality; kidnapping; intimidation; war; bodily fluids; sexism; classism; racist/imperialist/religious attitudes expressed by some characters. Heat: Low-to-No.
MY ONE TRUE LOVE: explicit sexual content; violence, including attempted murder, kidnapping, and forced captivity; maternal mortality; stillbirth; child abandonment; reference to past miscarriages; reference to infertility; marital discord and dishonesty; reference to/discussion of slavery; and racist/imperialist attitudes expressed by some characters. Heat: Steamy.
THREE WISHES: A DEAR ONE CHRISTMAS NOVELLA: divorce/separation/abandonment; spousal death/loss; grief; implied suicide. Heat: No.
HONOURABLE HEARTS series:
A DARLING FOR A DUKE: memory loss; recalled childhood trauma that includes domestic violence and sexual assault of a minor; kidnapping; violence; vomit and bodily fluids; childbirth; racist and or religious/imperialist attitudes expressed by some characters. Heat: Steamy.