As people whose anger and frustration can really move a needle. The series idea was conceived during a time when I was thinking a lot about the power that women have - in politics and in the domestic arena and in the world at large, as voices and as bodies and as active members of a society. I had to field a lot of angry emails from readers for a few years, but I think people are going to be happy in the long run. So the novella got put away as a concept. It seemed logical pretty quickly that Sesily would be a Belle. I knew I wanted to write a girl-gang series, where it was women who took no prisoners and lived out loud and fought for what they believed in and fell in love with excitement and power and passion and all the things that love should have in it. That's when I started to noodle the idea of Hell's Belles. Sesily and Caleb were in Wicked and the Wallflower, which was the first book in Bareknuckle Bastards. These are these characters are still all here.

The tavern from Day of the Duchess is in Covent Garden. Bareknuckle Bastards is set in Covent Garden. When I have some extra time, I'll work on it and then we'll put it out.' I had gone immediately from Day of the Duchess, which was the last book in that series into a new series, The Bareknuckle Bastards. I knew Sesily and Caleb had more to their love story, and I was like, 'Oh, I'm going to just button them all up with a with a fun little romance, like a Christmas novella, and it'll be a treat for readers.

SARAH MACLEAN: I had an idea for Hell's Belles.

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