Thank you all so much for supporting me and reading Stolen. I hope you enjoyed the story as much as I loved writing it.

STOLEN began life as two different stories. One was about a duke and his two cousins who needed to find wives. I had titled this story Three for Three and had written ten thousand words. The scene where Leopold is trying to convince Samuel he needs a wife comes from this original story.

The second book was about a married squire whose wife was a complete bitch, titled, Thomas. I had nineteen thousand words of this book written.

In the original duke's story, Samuel was the main character, a man who rescues a beautiful young woman from drowning in a river, while crossing stepping stones. The female character's name was Sarah in this story. Sarah, was the wayward daughter of a country squire. The scene where Samuel drags Shay from the river is from the original Three for Three story.

The opening chapters of Stolen are taken from the original Thomas story, however, Shay is a grown woman, who Thomas falls in love with, because he is in an unhappy marriage. Thomas was a younger man and not a father in this story. Rebecca was his horrible wife.

I had written myself into a corner with both stories back in the 2010's and gave up on them. I just couldn't come up with endings.

In 2018 I was looking for inspiration and started to go through some of my old half-finished stories. I have heaps, and I keep every word I write, and I mean every... word hahaha.

As I was reading through them all, I realised that I could join Thomas and Three for Three together in the format that I have. In the original Three for Three, Samuel was never enslaved, nor had I any intention of having him enslaved, but as characters do, they led me along the path I took.

From those original thirty thousand words, Stolen, is now a one hundred and thirty-five thousand word saga. The biggest book I have ever written.

At first, I felt the title,  Stolen, was a little weak. Now that it's finished, I'm not so sure. I took the title from the few scenes where Samuel reflects on his life and that of the impish girl, whose eyes haunt him, and in particular the scene where Pasha Akbar tries to force Samuel to rape the young girl.

If you have title suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

Again, thank you all so much for reading, voting, commenting and for the amazing support you have all shown me over the years.

Sending lots of love to you all,

Kind regards, Donna. Xoxox

The photo at the top is me, my daughter and my granddaughter on the morning of my daughter's wedding day. ♥♥♥