What I'm up to . . .

For those who don't know, gas lamp is a fantasy genre that describes a paranormal story set in the 

nineteenth century. As a lover of everything Victorian, I devoured quite a few gas lamp books and 

totally loved the genre. I loved the Gothic atmosphere, the mystery, and the historical setting. So I 

decided to start a new gas lamp series set in Victorian London. I wanted to set it in Auckland, but I 

needed a more ancient place for plot reason. 

The title is The Pact of the White Blade Knights and here's the blurb:

London, 1884.

While other twenty-seven-year-old, middle-class women think about rearing children and attending dinner parties, Hazel finds herself unmarried and unemployed.

The stuffy barons of the Royal Archaeologic Society don’t believe a woman can be an archaeologist, so they gave her the sack. Having slapped the leader of the society when he groped her breasts might have something to do with losing her job. 

With bills to pay and a stomach to fill, she accepts a position as dealer in ancient artefacts. It’d be her dream job except that her new employer, Tyon Sancerre, has more secrets than an Egyptian tomb and is probably involved with the Whitechapel’s mob.

When he says he needs her to find his long-lost fellow crusader knights, she thinks he’s mad, a rich, handsome, but mad man.

Tyon claims to be a sin-eater, a human turned into an immortal to clean people’s souls from their sins. After he and the other sin-eaters—the knights of the White Blade—were cursed, they were separated and scattered around the world. Alone the sin-eaters don’t hold much power, and with their enemies—the sin-breathers—multiplying and causing wars and famine, the only way Tyon has to find his brothers is through a relic Hazel worked with at the museum.

It’s all poppycock, that’s what she says. But when sin-breathers attack them, a ghost appears to her, and she witnesses wounds healing themselves in a moment, she wonders if her beliefs need to be reconsidered.

And the worst thing? She’s falling in love with an immortal, cranky, too-many-centuries-year-old white knight.