If you ask someone to think of historical romance, most people think of Regency bodice rippers, young ladies with names like Georgette or Isabella, who meet a Duke (typically in disguise) who they hate, then fall in love with.

And yet there are plenty of historical romances that are set hundreds of years before the Regency ton decided how sleeves were to be worn that season. Historical romances brimming full of knights, conquests, gowns and swords, with arranged marriages and plenty of titles apiece.

I’m talking medieval romance, and I’m a little bit obsessed with it.

The medieval world was what I chose to lose myself in when I was at university. After taking a degree in History and English, I chose my Masters: Medieval Studies. It’s a heady time period, packed full of powerful men but just as powerful women. Women that owned property, organised treaties, held forts, and betrayed their own sons.

Why wouldn’t you want to write a historical romance based in that time?

It’s why one of my bestselling romance boxsets, Conquered Hearts, is beloved by so many. Set just after the Norman invasion of 1066, it has all the great medieval romance tropes – brooding knights, arranged marriage, marriage of convenience, hated overlords, clash of cultures, and beautiful jewels.

I always wanted to be a writer, and it was a medieval romance that I penned first. As a medieval romance author I wanted to give my readers the same passion and thrill reading about the medieval world as I did writing it.

Let me know if you did, and treat yourself to Conquered Hearts!