| There's
a fun interview with Nat Brook, the hero
of this novel, on the In Their Own
Words website. You can
also see what both Nat & Richie look
like by visiting the Casting
Couch at the same site,
where writers post pictures of the actors
they would like to play their characters'
parts. Roses in December
was featured in Ecataromance's Smooch of
the Day on 11 November 2006.
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Roses in
December
Torquere Press
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The soldier, his lover and
the mysterious garden they discover together....
Recovering from an injury,
British soldier Nat goes to Partington Towers, a
quiet place in the country where his body and
soul can heal. Fascinated by the elaborate
Victorian gardens there, Nat goes exploring,
finding some of the gardens' former glory still
intact, and finding something even more
interesting in Richie, a young man Nat can't help
falling in love with.
The gardens are more special
than even Nat realizes, and soon he finds himself
outed to his unit, fighting to stay on as the
gardens are sold to a conservation society, and
in love with a man that died before he was born.
Can Nat use the strange magic the gardens possess
to find he and Richie a happy ending?
See the Torquere Press webpage for more
information, or to buy your copy for only $5.95.
"...as I got to about
three quarters of the way through I put it down
for days and rationed my reading to a couple of
pages a time because I simply didn't want it to
end."
Night Owl Romance
"I had not read anything
by Fiona Glass before, and thank god I got the
opportunity to."
Paranormal Romance
Reviews
"...anyone who wants a book that
draws them into another world and keeps them
there for the duration, this is it."
DearAuthor.com
"Roses in December...
is a unique, original novel with wonderful
characters and a setting steeped in history. I
found myself so drawn in by it that it was like
being spellbound. This isn't just a story, it's
fine literature, with delicately crafted writing
shaped by the hand of a true master."
Alexa Snow, author
"There is so much going
on... that every single page is interesting. I
read it in one sitting, unable to tear myself
away. Roses in December is a fascinating story,
one that will potter through my mind for the rest
of my life."
Wild Child
Publishing
"The garden is described
in a dizzying array of beautiful detail, letting
it span out and become familiar in the
reader’s mind. With the mystifying
Richie and the sympathetic Nat, strong writing
full of precise detail, Roses in December, is a
creative romance of love overcoming the greatest
of obstacles."
TCM Reviews
The first kiss between Nat
and Richie featured in Ecataromance's Smooch of the Day.
The
journey to the new hospital seemed to take
forever. Nat, hunched in the back of a taxi and
wincing every time they hit a bump, watched in
despair as mile after mile of countryside sped
past, without the smallest hint they were getting
closer to their goal. An hour out of the station
at Crewe, he chucked his paperback to one side
and began to fidget. After two, he rapped on the
glass between himself and the driver and said,
''You sure this is the right way? They told me
the place was isolated, but I didn't think it was
at the North Pole.''
The
driver, a pudgy, unshaven man in a grey U2
T-shirt with sweat stains under the arms, spat
out the cigar stub he'd been messily chewing
since Crewe, and scowled at Nat in the rearview
mirror without turning round. ''Okay, mate, keep
yer hair on. I'm doing me best. I don't usually
come this far out of town.''
Nat
eyed the meter, ticking round at a rate of knots.
''Don't tell me you're lost?''
''Karl's
Kabs don't get lost -- it says so in our advert.
It's got to be somewhere 'round here.''
Glimpsed
through a handy gate, the pattern of fields,
hedgerows, and russet-tinged trees stretched to
the far horizon, or at least as far as the dim
brown smudge that marked the start of the moors.
The Staffordshire moors -- high tracts of heath
and hill and rock that he'd explored on family
holidays years before; long before all this, when
they'd still been a family, when his parents
still spoke to him and acknowledged his existence
beyond a single terse card at Christmas. He shook
himself. All this buggering about was ridiculous
-- at this rate he'd be renewing his acquaintance
with the moors a lot sooner than he wanted, and
quite possibly be found wandering in circles in
the days to come. ''Well it doesn't look to me
like it's anywhere near here. Why don't you turn
round and ask for directions at that last
village? Least that way you'll save a lot of
pissing about.''
In the
mirror, the driver gave him the evil eye. ''You
don't like my driving, I can always pull over and
let you out,'' he said, with what seemed like
unnecessary relish.
Nat
opened his mouth, drew breath, and closed it
again. Time was when he wouldn't have let that
past, when he'd have insisted the driver stopped
so he could teach him some manners, preferably at
the wrong end of a fist. Not now, though, not
with this bloody knee, not to mention all his
other problems. Now he was an invalid, helpless,
too dependent by far on the goodwill (or
otherwise) of those around him.
''Don't
be daft, where would I go with this leg?'' he
said, but it was a lot less forceful than it
might have been, and afterwards he subsided
against the vinyl seat back and sighed again.
The
driver shrugged and whistled along to something
cheerful from the charts that was burbling away
on his radio. Nat didn't even recognise the song
-- yet another reminder that he'd been cooped up
in hospital for far too long, and was in danger
of becoming institutionalised. The last time he'd
even seen a newspaper had been over two months
ago, when the headlines had been full of the new
IRA ceasefire. The irony of that hadn't been lost
on him, and he'd been so depressed afterwards
that the doctors forbade any further interaction
with the outside world until he was strong enough
to take it. Now, after nine never-ending months,
he just hoped the new place would be different.
That's what his last doctor had said -- that
Partington was more of a convalescent home than a
hospital, and that once he'd spent a few weeks
there he'd be on his way home.
Home!
It was a distant and unreal memory, like a scene
viewed through the wrong end of a telescope. Hard
to remember his home, hard even to remember what
having a home felt like after all the traipsing
about from one hospital to another, one
specialist centre to another. Besides, he'd be
lucky to arrive anywhere the way this driver was
mucking about....
Ten
minutes later he wondered if he'd misjudged the
bloke, as the taxi slowed marginally and veered
across the road into a side turning. Tall
gateposts loomed to either side of a gravelled
drive that plunged like a tunnel between avenues
of trees and shrubs, overhanging and very dark. A
few hundred yards further on, their way was
blocked by an electronic gate, and Nat reckoned
he'd never been so glad to see signs of army
security -- at least it proved they were getting
somewhere.
The
driver wound his window down and carried on a
one-sided conversation into an intercom, and then
with a buzz and a click, the gate swung open and
they were through. Even now there was no sign of
the hospital, just more trees and more drive,
looping up to the brow of a hill and back down
into a valley where it crossed a tiny stream by
means of a massive and castellated bridge.
Finally, after several more minutes of driving,
they came out of the woods and scrunched to a
halt on a wide gravel turning circle, and Nat got
his first glimpse of the house that was to be his
new home. And almost told the driver to turn
round and go straight back.
''This
it?'' he asked, his tone wavering from dubious to
downright horrified. ''It doesn't look anything
like a hospital. Where's all the nurses, and the
porters, and the ambulances?''
''Search
me, mate,'' said the driver, scratching an
armpit. ''But you saw the gates as well as I did.
And there's nowhere else for miles.''
Well,
that was true enough -- they must have covered
half the county by now. This must be Partington
Towers. And it lived up to its name, at least,
with an ivy-clad tower protruding from the
collection of gables and chimneys that made up
its roofline. It was just that it was so bleak,
so completely uninviting. Sooty grey walls,
staring windows filled with yards of grimy glass,
weeds poking up from the drive and festooning the
gutters -- it was more like a Victorian lunatic
asylum, or a film set from Psycho, than a place
you came to rest and heal. Still, his orders were
to report to Partington Towers, and if this was
Partington Towers, then report he would. Sighing,
he set about manoeuvring his leg out of the taxi
without damaging anything, and limped round to
haul his holdall out of the boot. He knew without
asking that the driver wouldn't do it for him.
That
gentleman stuck a pudgy hand out of the window,
palm uppermost. ''That'll be twenty three-fifty,
mate. I'm knocking the last couple of mile off,
as a favour, like.''
''Twenty
three quid? Christ, no wonder you lot all drive
Mercs in your spare time,'' said Nat, dumping the
holdall to rummage for his wallet. ''Here --
that's twenty five. Keep the change,'' he added,
trying and failing to keep the sarcasm out of his
voice.
The
driver's fist closed over the money and shot back
inside the car at half the speed of sound. ''Ta,
mate,'' he said, spat perilously close to Nat's
left boot, wound the window back up, and trundled
the cab off down the drive. Nat watched it all
the way to the first bend until he couldn't see
it any more, and a tractor in a nearby field
drowned out the drone of its engine. Depression
oozed over him like spilled coffee on a priceless
rug. True, the driver had been about as charming
as dung, but the taxi represented his last link
with normality and his old life, and he still
wasn't too good at coping with change. Added to
that, he was knackered, his leg was giving him
hell, and he'd have been quite pleased if the
building in front of him had metamorphosed
quietly into his old bed in his old hospital
ward, and he could have measured his length on
the covers and gone to sleep.
He
stared at it hopefully for a minute or two, but
it remained, stubbornly, a grey stone wall
pierced here and there by tall sash windows in
urgent need of a lick of paint. It didn't help
that the weather had changed -- the sun vanishing
behind a pall of dark cloud and the breeze that
had chased cloud-shadows over the surrounding
hills falling away. With the wind had gone all
the usual sounds -- so much so that he could hear
the rustle of a falling leaf in the trees behind,
and the faint snap as it landed on the ground.
The tractor had gone, the jets from Manchester
that usually buzzed the chimney-tops in this part
of the world were strangely absent, and no birds
sang. There was just him, and the occasional
scuttering leaf, and that was all. He could quite
easily have been the last person left on earth.
He
shook his head, not wanting to follow that line
of thought at all. It was a ridiculous idea,
anyway -- this was a hospital of sorts; there
must be somebody about. Bending stiff-legged, he
retrieved his holdall and peered at the house
again. It was a sorry sight and no mistake -- if
he'd had to guess he'd have said it was
uninhabited, or even derelict. Hardly the best
place to house a load of nutters and
has-beens.... But that was the Army for you.
He took
a step towards the front door, and as he did, the
sun came out again, a dull red glare escaping
through a chink in the clouds. It washed the
walls in blood and reflected from the windows in
a blazing glory of fire. Taking that as an omen,
although whether for good or ill he couldn't have
said, he hefted his bag over one shoulder, limped
up the steps to the front door, and rang the
bell.
© 2006
Fiona Glass
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