The story behind the story…

The mask is to protect the identity of my muse. Because some fantasies are almost real.

These books began as a private thing. A gift, written for one person, they were never meant for public consumption. I only changed my mind when my muse read them, loved them, immediately asked me for the next book, and encouraged me to publish.

Writing them became a kind of therapy. A way to understand a guarded man from the inside, to trace how someone learns to trust their own heart again after it has been broken and boarded up. What began as escape turned into something truer than I expected.

So the mask is not shame or vanity, it is simply there to protect my muse.

What it is…

The emotional intelligence of The Rosie Project with the heat turned all the way up, and none of the red flags from Fifty Shades. A story about primal desire and the quiet, dangerous power of being truly seen.

Ten years after a missed connection, Scarlett and the man who never forgot her reconnect to explore a chemistry that has been simmering for a decade. But this was never simply the one that got away. It is the slow deconstruction of two guarded hearts, each convinced the safest thing is to stay behind the wall, learning what it costs to let someone in.

It is high-heat romance told through an unusually tender lens: intelligent, primal, and far more interested in emotional safety than most stories of its kind dare to be. It respects the reader’s mind while demanding their full attention. The heat is the door. What waits on the other side is the real story.

The trilogy

Book One, The Secluded Cabin (releases 10th October). Ten years of wanting, and one weekend with nowhere left to hide from it. His control is the safest thing she has ever felt, and the most dangerous, because a man this careful is a man with something to protect.

Book Two, The Snow-Covered Lodge (releases 12th December). The armour is starting to fail him. But will it be enough to let Scarlett finally see the man beneath it, or will he leave her out in the cold?

Book Three, Fair Winds? (releases 2nd February) Everything he built was designed to keep him safe. Then the chance of a lifetime forces the one choice his armour was never meant to survive: the terror of a shared future, or the safety of letting her go.

All three books are available to pre-order on Kindle now, all three books will also be available as paperbacks the same day!

Passion into purpose

Whatever guilty pleasure these pages gave you, take this with you: your indulgence quietly did some good in the world.

For transparency, I take a fixed, modest wage, and beyond that, every penny of profit, from every book and every format, funds real social-impact projects I care about. Real help, for real people. Your support turns passion into purpose.

Some truths are best left whispered.

— Penny Kingsley