Good afternoon ,

Back in 2012 I stumbled upon the fact that Cervantes, the write of Don Quixote, was taken by pirates and spent time as a slave at the oar of a ship before being rescued by his parents paying ransom. What?!? This guy's face is carved into the side of the Plaza Mayor in Salamanca. He's a renowned Spanish author. What happened that he would spend years in some of the worse conditions as a slave chained to the belly of a boat? (I looked further into it and many times the owners of the ships wouldn't let the slaves OFF the boat. EVER. The slaves that rowed the oars ate and slept and worked chained to the wooden benches. They didn't live very long.)

This little tidbit had me looking more into pirates and European slavery and the trade between Europe and North Africa and eventually led to the seed of a story in my head. Rowena.

What if the daughter of a rich English merchant is sold by her maid to a North African merchant, without the father knowing? What if she spends five years stuck because of the war between Algeria and France and finds her way back to England by traveling with an Englishman, but she never tells him that she's English?

And then what if they meet again in England?

These were the seeds of Stepping Across the Desert. From there I worked for years on the story. Since it's my second full novel, I was still learning a lot and it took me much longer than I hoped it would, but it's a story I'm proud of.

This summer I'm putting together a sequel that will follow Philip Daucer who is told to find a wife, but comes home with the wrong kind of woman: a Catholic! (this is 1835 in England).

You can get the Kindle, Nook or Kobo of Stepping Across the Desert for Free this weekend only! Please leave a review if you read it. A review is the best way for me and other readers to know what you thought of the book!

Happy reading,

Kat