Tailored Truths eBook launches today!

Good Morning! 

It seems to have taken ages to get here but today, 12th September 2025, is the eBook LAUNCH DAY for Tailored Truths, Book 2 of the Silver Sampler Series!!

I send my sincere thanks to the readers who Pre-Ordered Tailored Truths from Amazon during the last 6 weeks, your support is much appreciated. 

I've recently been getting ready for the novel to go on a Coffee Pot Book Club Blog Tour beginning Friday the 19th of September 2025. The tour will run for four consecutive Fridays and for this I've needed to choose 4 different excerpts; write 5 different and unique blog guest posts; and I have 2 author interviews to answer questions for. 

Since the 'Coffee Pot' excerpts are now chosen, from a selection of around 18 that I've filed (It's easier to do this when your novel is a long one!) I'll be sharing some of the others on here i.e.  from those which won't appear on host blogs during the tour.

Here's an excerpt where the main character, Margaret Law, is finding life a bit tough having arrived in Dundee with no job and very little in savings. She initially shares a room with her best friend Jessie in a Dundee lodging house, but since Jessie has managed to get herself a job as a lady's maid they only spend ten days together before Jessie toddles off to Hawthorn House, the brand new mansion that Edward Baxton, a Dundee mill owner, has recently built for himself and his family. 

Enjoy!

Almost Penniless in Dundee

Margaret could barely believe that four whole weeks had passed since Jessie had confronted her father and had then left the next day to start work at Hawthorn House. So much had happened and yet, for Margaret, so little to show for it.

She creaked-open the front door of Ada Webster’s house, trying to enter unheard, but her landlady had the most acute hearing of anybody she’d ever met.

A few minutes later, having unenthusiastically handed over the rent money that was due, she cradled the now-lit candle and trudged up the narrow wooden stairs yet another time, saying to herself that it would soon be the last week she’d have to sleep under Ada Webster’s roof.

Unfortunately, unlike Jessie, Margaret had yet to find what she’d call a proper job. Nothing had come of her efforts to secure employment as a tutor, or to gain a position teaching at a school for young ladies. The reference she had from Mister Stewart Duncan in Edinburgh, though glowing enough in its own way, didn’t satisfy any of the school administrators that she could cope with more than one pupil.

She’d even asked around if anyone knew of a lady’s maid position, like Jessie’s, but to no avail.

Once inside her room, she yanked off her cloak and shook it free of rain droplets, drenching herself in the process, before she calmed down sufficiently to stretch it out across the two door pegs, both of them now available for her use. She couldn’t afford to mistreat the now very worn wool, her little supply of money dwindling surprisingly quickly. Frustrated beyond measure, she dumped the contents of her small drawstring bag on the only bed that was now in the room that she’d shared with Jessie for such a short few days. The tiny pile of coins staring up at her was horrifying. Worse still, her earnings would not be in her hands for days yet to come.

Her Uncle James, in Perth, would likely lend her money but she was resisting asking him. She was keeping that strategy as a very last resort. She’d written to him twice since she’d taken up residence in Dundee, mentioning her lack of success in finding her father William, though she’d admitted that was mostly because she didn’t really know where to ask. She’d drawn a dead end after unsuccessful attempts at the United Presbyterian Churches that were close to Ada Webster’s lodgings. There was some church, or other, on nearly every Dundee street so the asking at churches might take forever. Her father had changed church allegiances sufficient times when she was growing up in Milnathort that he might well have taken up with a completely different church sect by now.

She gathered up her meagre coin collection and dumped it back into her bag before slumping down onto the bed. Finding her own father no longer seemed any kind of priority. A confrontation with him would be very different from Jessie’s situation though reluctantly, when she thought about it, it would be traumatic in its own way. William Law had always acknowledged her as his daughter, she had to admit to that, even if no real love had come her way. But if he hadn’t treated her mother in the way he had, she wouldn’t even bother to try to see him again.

Till next time,

Slainthe!