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This book is not about perfection, or impressing strangers. It is about the power of a personal code: the standards, rituals, discernment, self-knowledge, and choices that allow you to move through a chaotic world with calm and intention.

Use this guide for a solitary reread, a conversation with friends, or an evening gathering.

Host an Elegance Code Book Club

The ideal gathering need not be elaborate.

Invite between 6 and 12 women: enough for a lively conversation, but few enough for everyone to have an opportunity to speak and be heard.

Choose a setting with comfortable chairs, lamplight, flowers, and music low enough to permit conversation. A table is lovely, but not necessary. The important thing is that people can settle in.

Send invitations one or two weeks in advance. Include the date, the chapters being discussed, and an opening question so guests arrive already thinking.

You might invite guests to wear or bring something that makes her feel especially like herself: a favorite lipstick, scarf, notebook, piece of jewelry, or pair of shoes.

The Table

Create an atmosphere of ease, not display.

Use real glasses, cloth napkins, candles, and a few flowers in a low vase.

Keep the menu simple and mostly prepared ahead: cheeses, fruit, olives, a savory tart, tea sandwiches, smoked salmon, chicken salad, or a beautiful cake.

Serve sparkling water, tea, wine, or one signature drink.

Put a notecard, pad of paper, or attractive journal and a good pen at every place.

Place one conversation prompt at each setting: What is one standard you keep, even when no one is watching?

A Sample Schedule

• Arrival, drinks, and catching up: 15–20 minutes

• Opening question: 10 minutes

• Book discussion: 45–60 minutes

• Refreshments and informal conversation: 30 minutes

• Closing reflection: 10 minutes

Begin with this question:

“What is one choice you make based on your values that improves the quality of your life?”

Close by inviting each guest to finish this sentence:

This month, my code will include…

Discussion Questions

How would you define elegance after reading The Elegance Code? What does the word mean to you now that it did not mean before?

The book distinguishes between performance and a private operating system. Where have you felt pressure to perform an identity role rather than live from your personal convictions?

Which area of your life most needs a clearer focus on your code: your time, money, appearance, work, home, friendships, romance, health, or inner life?

What values do you already maintain that help you feel grounded or self-respecting?

Which values did you inherit from family, culture, religion, or former versions of yourself? Which remain yours by conscious choice?

Is there a difference between being nice and being kind? When has kindness required clarity, restraint, or a difficult boundary?

The book argues that self-knowledge makes choice possible. What information about yourself have you resisted seeing because it did not fit your preferred self-image?

What is the difference between self-criticism and honest self-examination? Which are you more inclined toward?

How do your possessions, calendar, home, wardrobe, or routines communicate your values—accurately or inaccurately?

What does discernment look like in friendship? What does it look like in romance?

How do you recognize when others feel something is acceptable for themselves, but it is not right for you?

What has the pursuit of outward perfection cost women? What has it cost you? How do your values and vision replace perfection as an aspiration?

What part of your daily life would change first if you fully trusted your own desires and taste?

The book explores being the center of your own life. Where do you find it easy to practice this and difficult to practice it?

What does it mean to become trustworthy to yourself?

Which idea in the book challenged or irritated you? Why might it have touched a live wire?

What is one habit, purchase, relationship pattern, or obligation you might reconsider in light of your Elegance Code?

Complete the sentence: “A woman with a code knows…”

Book Club Activities

The Code Card

Give each guest a blank index card or folded notecard. Invite her to write one value of her own that she intends to keep over the next month.

Examples:

• I do not rush myself.

• I keep my home ready to receive the life I say I want.

• I do not explain my boundaries.

• I choose fewer things, and better things.

• I speak about myself with respect.

Guests may take their cards home, exchange them anonymously, or place them in a bowl for a shared reading.

The Personal Uniform Idea Exchange

Ask each woman to name something she wears, carries, uses, or keeps nearby that reminds her of her code.

It may be red lipstick, a vintage watch, a linen notebook, running shoes, a favorite pen, or a mug with inspiring words.

Then ask: What does this object support in you?

The Ordinary Day Vision Exercise

Give everyone five minutes to write a sketch of her best vision of an ordinary day. Where is she, and what is she doing? How does she wake, dress, work, eat, exercise, relate, maintain her house, and end the day?

Now ask, if she knew this vision would were absolutely guaranteed to happen, how it would change how she shows up in her life today.

The Edit

Invite each guest to write down something she will edit from her life.

It need not be thrown away. It may simply need to be revised: a standing obligation, an overfull calendar, a purchase habit, a draining relationship pattern, an unkind inner script, or an environment that no longer represents her.

A Letter Forward

Ask guests to write a brief letter dated six months ahead, from the self who is living her vision.

What has changed? What did she stop tolerating? What did she begin respecting? What became easier?

Each guest can seal and address her own letter. The host may mail it on an agreed date.

Printable Code Cards

Copy these onto individual cards, print them on heavy paper, or write them by hand.

I do not rush my own decisions.

I choose fewer things, and better things.

I protect what restores me.

I do not confuse overexplaining with kindness.

I make room for beauty.

I keep promises to myself.

I do not make myself smaller to make others comfortable.

I use my discernment without apology.

I care for my home as an expression of self-respect and self-love.

I allow my life to reflect my real values.

I can be warm without being available to everything.

I am learning to become trustworthy to myself.

A Few Lovely Details

Search your favorite streaming service for: soft jazz, bossa nova, classical piano, or favorite film scores.

Offer each guest a gift of a tea sachet, lavender packet, small notebook, or pretty pen to take home.

Place phones in a basket for the discussion, if your group would welcome an uninterrupted hour.

Let it be known that this is a “no photography event,” so everyone can relax.

A Closing Thought

May this be an evening of fun, and great conversation.

Founded in 2025, Bohème Éclat Press, LLC is an independent publisher of fiction and nonfiction for readers who would rather think than be told.

Its name joins two complementary ideals: bohème, a life of artistic freedom lived on one’s own terms, and éclat, brilliance, distinction, and style.

Together, they describe a belief at the center of the press: that originality and elegance may belong to the same enterprise.

Bohème Éclat Press is a home for work made with independence, intelligence, and flair.

There are Brigg umbrellas with Malacca handles that belong in le Carré novels, leather goods made to acquire a life rather than announce one, and the house’s two-and-a-half-century conviction that a useful object may also be stunningly beautiful. Swaine created James Bond’s briefcase and supplies the British military. Somewhere on the premises is the hatmaker behind Indiana Jones’s hat.

The associate was kind and urbane, with a patience rarer today than it should be. Nearly everything, he explained, could be adjusted: a lining color chosen, a strap shortened, pockets moved or added, a closure changed. That is the luxury of it—not excess, but attention: the consideration of what an object will carry, where it will travel, and the life it is meant to support. Someone asks how you will use the thing, then makes it accordingly.

I had thought the house label, small and discreet, was fine where it was: outside, lower center. Most companies attach labels that can be seen from space. The associate suggested, casually and with great politeness, that it be moved—the house’s own mark. I offered the back of the bag. He countered with inside. Under the flap.

Swaine knows who it is, it seems to say, and you know who you are. Anyone who does not need not be told.

This, above all, is Swaine: not insistence, not refusal, but the poised conviction that the right answer exists and will, eventually, be reached.

Here is what stands between you and a lifetime of waiting: your practice. That is the complete list. Every question you hope someone else will answer for you is answered at your easel or your desk, and nowhere else. Is it any good? Write twenty chapters and read them. Am I ready to show it? Show it and find out. Can I handle a life-size portrait? Paint it. The evidence may say no. That is still an answer, for now, and it tells you what to practice next. If you want to feel better about your art, reassurance is not a shortcut. The way is the work.

This is why practice is self-advocacy, and why self-advocacy is not arrogance. Arrogance is deciding you have arrived. Advocacy is showing up on your own behalf every day and doing the work whether or not anyone else thinks you should. Self-improvement assumes you are a problem to be fixed. Self-advocacy assumes you are a client worth representing. You are the only one who can take that job. The pay is terrible. Take it anyway.

The job does not end when you grow your team. If you are a writer who lands an agent, you had better keep thinking like an indie author. If you are a painter who gets into a big New York gallery, keep painting like you don’t have one. Agents change their minds. Galleries close. Editors are laid off three months before your book comes out. The artists who survive those events are the ones whose practice never depended on them. Being chosen is pleasant. Congratulations. It is not a plan.

Exercise: Write down one question about your work that you have been waiting for someone else to answer. Is this any good? Am I ready to publish it? Should I write a novel? Then design a week of practice that answers it. If the question is whether to go bigger, go bigger five times. You will love it, or you will have created a new curriculum for yourself. Either way, you now hold the only opinion that was ever going to matter.

Excerpted from the forthcoming anniversary edition of Be an Artist (or Just Live Like One), available next week. The first edition debuted as a No. 1 Amazon bestseller in Art Study and Teaching.

The plan was admirably ambitious: a driver, several wineries, a thoughtfully arranged route, perhaps a late lunch somewhere with a view.

Then there was Elusa. The tasting became a conversation; the conversation became another bottle; and before long my mother and I had resolved several of life’s smaller mysteries, formed firm opinions about the virtues of remaining exactly where we were, and acquired a case of wine.

The other wineries remained unvisited. They will understand.

Writer’s block is not a writing problem or an idea problem.

What you know is what you accumulate, whether or not you know at the time what it is for or when you will use it. Emily Dickinson accumulated a universe of ideas while rarely leaving her house in Amherst.

Ideas run out for one of two reasons: too little experience, or too little attention.

Firsthand

In 1956, a horse called Devon Loch, owned by the Queen Mother and ridden by Dick Francis, collapsed yards from the finish of the Grand National, with the race won. No one has ever established why. Francis retired the next year and wrote forty-odd novels about racing, and what readers say about them, still, is that they are true. Not accurate. True. He had been on the horse.

Somerset Maugham worked for British intelligence in Switzerland and then in Russia, and the Ashenden stories came out of it, flat and accurate, including the boredom. He spent the next thirty years on ships to the Far East and put what he saw into fiction more or less as he found it.

Graham Greene served with British intelligence in Sierra Leone, took assignments in Vietnam, drank in Havana, and each place got its novel.

Le Carré, of course.

Evelyn Waugh went to Abyssinia for a coronation in 1930 and wrote it up as Remote People. He used the journey again in Black Mischief. Five years later, he went back as a war correspondent and did it again: the factual book was Waugh in Abyssinia; the novel was Scoop.

Isak Dinesen had a farm in Africa. Beryl Markham flew the plane. Edith Wharton wrote Italian Villas and Their Gardens, a serious work of architectural study, before Italian villas appeared again and again in her fiction. Fleming had been in naval intelligence and gave Bond his brand of cigarettes and his breakfast, down to the eggs from French Marans hens, Tiptree Little Scarlet strawberry jam, and Cooper’s marmalade, thick, dark, and bitter.

These writers lived, then they knew things, then they wrote. The order matters.

Knowledge personally stalked and dragged home has a different texture from knowledge acquired at a desk. The traveler who ventures out for photographs is consuming. The traveler who goes to pay attention is building. She creates a private compendium of the world—hers—assembled from what she notices, joined to what was already there. That is the point of adventure.

The compendium becomes the source you write from, and it is why what you write is filled with details no one would think to invent: that the skybridge between the Petronas Towers moves under your feet, and that everyone on it pretends it doesn’t; that two porters outside Le Bristol, in the same uniform at the same hour, are both named Laurent, and it is the only thing about them that matches; that a latte at Café Antonia arrives in Raynaud’s Histoire Naturelle porcelain, and a little orange butterfly is about to alight on the rim.

You notice how a cabin steward on the Orient Express lifts a heavy case from a brass luggage rack far above both your heads. How unexpectedly small the Arnolfini Portrait is, and that the mirror at the back of the room, with the whole Passion painted round its rim, is the size of a saucer.

Aline Griffith, later Countess of Romanones, spent the war in Madrid for the OSS. The Ritz, the Balenciaga fittings, the countess at the next table whom she was certain was working for Berlin, escapades with the Duchess of Windsor. The files, where they exist, are thin, of course, but she did not defend her experiences. She did not need to. She was there, and that is evident. She said she would die with her secrets, and did. Although having been there is not the same as being provable, it is what makes you believable. Mount Rainier described from photographs rather than on foot has the right details in the right order, and no one believes a word.

The Price

There are two costs. The first is time: the years in public service, in the saddle, on the ship, on station in Freetown, are years spent not writing. Fleming wrote Casino Royale at forty-four. Francis was forty-one when Dead Cert appeared. Maugham was fifty-four when he got around to Ashenden. Wharton published her first novel at forty and The House of Mirth at forty-three. Markham was forty. Dinesen was forty-eight for Seven Gothic Tales and fifty-two for Out of Africa. Romanones was sixty-four. They were not late. They were busy.

The second cost is the one Waugh and Maugham understood. You have to give the life away. The trip stops being yours. The farm stops being yours alone. Dinesen lost hers and then wrote, “I had a farm in Africa,” and the authority of the sentence is entirely in the past tense. The melancholy underneath everything she wrote afterward comes from never having entirely got over it.

Write what you know, then. What you know is what you have accumulated from paying attention. When there is nothing to write, it is not the writing that has run out.

It is a fascinating book, full of conversation about manners, dress, music, physical grace, learning, love, wit, and conduct. Thus far, I am struck by the sustained attention given to speech: what constitutes beautiful diction, what dialect is most graceful, which authorities one ought heed, and how a cultivated person should sound.

There are intense debates between characters over whether a courtier should model his Italian on the polished Tuscan of Petrarch and Boccaccio or limit himself to the living speech of his own region; whether he ought to use esoteric Greek and Latin terms; and whether foreign or fashionable expressions are permissible. One speaker approves terms such as primor for excellence, acertare for success, attillato for a supremely well-appointed person, and the courtly phrase un cavalier senza rimproccio, “a knight without reproach,” so long as one could reasonably expect to be understood by the listener. The characters split hairs over pronunciation, elocution, and the danger of sounding too provincial, too archaic, or too eager to display one’s learning.

And, of course, all of it now sounds remote.

Not foolish. But remote.

The book was written in the early sixteenth century and published in 1528. Its English life began with Sir Thomas Hoby’s translation of 1561. Nearly five centuries later, the standards of refinement so earnestly discussed in its pages have become historical curiosities. The “best” way to speak and write has not survived unchanged. The melodious Tuscan sentence, the allusions, and what characters consider a proper learned reference belong to a world that has disappeared.

This has made me think about our writerly preoccupation with style.

We are advised to find our voice. We are urged to cut unnecessary words, avoid adverbs, vary sentence length, write plainly, write vividly, write commercially, write lyrically, write with restraint, and write with urgency. One school tells us to make our prose invisible. Another insists we cut every sentence that does not sparkle. We are warned against sentimentality, but told to beware of cliché, encouraged to sound of-the-moment, and cautioned never (ever) to sound as though we are trying too hard.

Listening to Castiglione, however, I found myself wondering whether today’s absolute certainties about “good writing” will someday sound equally quaint.

What will readers a few hundred years from now make of our clipped dialogue, our cinematic scenes, our confessional first person, our therapeutic vocabulary, our irony, our preference for accessibility? What will they think of the contemporary habit of calling every difficulty a “journey,” every private pain “trauma,” and every minor revelation “powerful”?

Future readers will regard our most admired stylistic conventions the way we regard the courtly refinements of the Renaissance: revealing, elaborate, charming perhaps, but old-fashioned.

That is inevitable.

Language changes. Words change their meanings. Syntax changes. Social expectations change. What once sounded noble, later will sound pompous, and what sounded refreshingly plain will seem bare or careless. Every age has its fashionable forms of seriousness, cleverness, delicacy, rebellion, and restraint.

This does not mean that style is meaningless. It means that, like us, style is mortal.

Nevertheless, The Book of the Courtier has survived. I am listening to it 498 years after it was published because its underlying questions are still relevant. How should an accomplished man present himself to the world? How does one show knowledge without pedantry? How does one possess sophistication without vanity? How does one travel and entertain well?

Castiglione’s answer was sprezzatura: the art of making difficult things look easy. The courtier must be skilled, smart, physically capable, musically sensitive, and socially alert, but not seem to labor at any of it. In other words—cool. An interestingly timeless idea.

Today we want everyone to know how hard we work and how busy we are, but also dislike show-offs. We want the artist, the host, the speaker, the writer, and the well-dressed person to be natural. Even now, though we want acknowledgement for our suffering, we praise results that arrive fully formed (or seem to), like magic. Writers know better.

We know that a smooth sentence is the residue of revision. A graceful paragraph has been rearranged countless times. A sentence that sounds inevitable cost an afternoon. The casual voice is carefully constructed; realistic dialogue has been pared down from pages of explanation.

Style has always been social. It is never merely technical. Style—in writing or anything else—tells people what we value. It announces our loyalties, education, ambitions, fears, worldliness and intelligence. The rules change, but the longing beneath them remains the same: we want to speak in a way that persuades others we are worth listening to.

We spend an extraordinary amount of time worrying over the machinery surrounding a book. Does she have an agent? Is he traditionally published or self-published? Who designed the cover? Did we hire a human editor, or use artificial intelligence? What methods are acceptable for research? How many em-dashes are in a work and what significant things does that tell us about the writer? Did we choose the proper platform? If we market the work are we selling out? If we don’t market the work are we clueless?

In the long view, none of that will matter—not one bit. The cover will disappear, the platform will change many, many times, credentials will lose their meaning, and even the exhaustive arguments about how a book was created will be irrelevant.

Our writing will become dated—it is unavoidable. Comfort lies in knowing that what remains is this: are the ideas worth reading after the style that shaped them has been forgotten?

I have long accepted that being an INTP woman makes me somewhat strange. Not tragic-strange or romantically misunderstood-strange, more, out of step with ordinary social machinery.

INTP is a Myers-Briggs shorthand for someone naturally inclined toward introversion, abstraction, analysis, and an almost compulsive interest in how things fit together. In less flattering terms, it is a mind that regards a loose thread not as a nuisance, but as an assignment—useful in my work as an artist, less useful at parties.

Painting allows me to remain strange in private. I observe, arrange, imply, and let the work speak in its own language. Writing brings the arrangement to the fore. It reveals the Grand Canyon-sized gaps between what I know, what I say, and what another person can reasonably be expected to understand.

Painting is easier for me than writing.

This is not because painting is easy. It is not. Painting demands discipline, technical knowledge, patience, observation, taste, and the willingness to ruin a perfectly good oil-primed linen canvas. But painting allows me to work in the language in which my mind operates.

Writing wants me to translate. That is harder.

Painting Lets Me See First

When I paint, I begin with what is visible. I look at a face and notice the degree to which one eyebrow sits higher than the other, the turn of a mouth, the coolness at the jaw, the warmer light at the temple. I look at a sleeve and understand, through a few shifts in value and edge, how to show whether the fabric is silk, wool, linen, or, not unlike myself, pretending to be something finer than it is.

I do not need to explain any of this before I begin.

A painting can hold many conflicting ideas at once. That is my natural element. A subject may be beautiful and disappointed. A room may be gracious and oppressive. A gesture may be tender, evasive, accusatory, or all three. The viewer is coaxed to come closer and make something of it.

In painting, I can imply.

In writing, implication has to be earned.

Thoughts Arrive Connected

My difficulty with writing is that, in my mind, thoughts arrive already connected. I think in patterns and pattern recognition.

I can see the structure: the premise, the exception, the irony, and the ramifications three steps beyond the obvious conclusion.

By this point, I have usually also developed an objection to the premise, though that is perhaps another problem.

Anyway, it all seems self-evident.

When I speak, I am perfectly content to hand someone the conclusion and assume she can retrace the path for herself. She often cannot. Naturally, she cannot. I have omitted the path and then been privately irritated that she failed to take it.

Writing does not permit this. Writing requires hospitality.

The Reader Cannot See My Mind

The writer has an unfair advantage over the reader: she knows what she means. She knows why a man hesitated before entering a room. She knows that the harmless remark at a dinner table will matter two hundred pages later. She knows which memory shaped the heroine’s choice, why a sentence is funny, and why a particular detail is not decorative but fatal.

The reader does not know any of this.

She may be intelligent, observant, and entirely capable of reaching the conclusion. But she cannot follow a line of reasoning I have declined to put on the page because I found it too obvious to mention.

Writing becomes an exercise in humility when I must distinguish between what is clear to me and what I have made evident.

Clarity Is Not Talking Down

For a long time, I confused clarity with over-explaining. I did not want to insult the reader’s intelligence by spelling out what she could surely understand. I called this subtlety. It was, more often, an unbuilt bridge.

I wanted room for inference, ambiguity, elegance, and restraint. I wanted the pleasure of a reader noticing something for herself.

I still do.

A good writer does not drag the reader by the wrist through every emotional or intellectual development, but she does, at a minimum, lay the necessary track. She gives the reader the detail, and the context. Then she trusts her to make the connection.

The reader should have the satisfaction of arriving at the conclusion. She should not have to manufacture the road.

Mystery Makes the Problem Obvious

A mystery depends on controlled revelation. The author knows the solution from the beginning, but the reader must be allowed to discover it at the proper pace. The clue must be visible enough to matter but not explain itself. The red herring must be plausible. The final answer must feel surprising, but inevitable.

The reader must be able to look back and see that the truth was there all along. She must think, Of course. I should have known. Not: Well, no one could have known that.

This is an elaborate act of hospitality. The author is making a promise: I will conceal things from you, but I will not cheat you. You can trust me.

Painting Permits Omission

Painting depends upon omission.

A hand vanishes into shadow. A line remains unresolved. The viewer supplies what is missing.

Writing has omission too, of course. Some of the finest writing is made of what has been withheld. I’m looking at you Patrick O’Brian. But a writer must know the difference between strategic silence and private laziness.

If I have not established the emotional stakes, the reader cannot feel the significance of the silence. If I have not shown the terms of a relationship, she cannot understand why a minor insult lands like a blade. If I have not built the sequence, the conclusion is unsatisfying and abrupt.

A painting can say, “Look.”

Writing must say, “Come with me.”

The Discipline of Making a Bridge

This may be why writing feels more exposing to me than painting.

A painting asks how well I see. A piece of writing asks whether I can make another person see what I see.

That is difficult. It is also good for me.

One duchess. One part-time spy. One German Shepherd who keeps digging up murder.

Roger is a German Shepherd with a traumatic past, a devoted heart, and a talent for digging up exactly the wrong thing at exactly the right moment. In this mystery series, that talent solves murders.

Roger belongs to Nell Ainsworth, 9th Duchess of Belward, who never expected to inherit a title, let alone a vast Cornish estate.

Nell is rich, entitled, and does exactly what she wants. What she wants, it turns out, is to solve mysteries. Rounding out the household is Henry, her valet, an MI5 officer who now manages her finances, her crises, and his own feelings about her, in roughly that order of success.

Together this unlikely trio takes on blackmailers, buried treasure, vanishing musicians, and the occasional ghost, all while Nell and Henry pretend they are not engaged to be married in three years. They are. They agreed not to discuss it. They discuss it constantly.

The Nell Ainsworth mysteries are a sparkling blend of golden-age puzzle and screwball romance: Agatha Christie’s plotting with a modern, madcap soul. Each book stands alone, but the secrets of Ainsworth Manor run deep, and the Duchess intends to dig up every last one of them. Sometimes literally. Usually in a storm. Roger helps.

Perfect for fans of Richard Osman, Rhys Bowen, and anyone who loves dog mysteries, witty heroines, and country house crime with heart.

When violinist Sebastian Vane abandons a sold-out Royal Albert Hall performance thirty-eight bars in, and walks off with a twenty-million pound Stradivarius named Lady Aurelia, London society calls it a celebrity breakdown. Nell Ainsworth, ninth Duchess of Belward, calls it a plot hole. The only one who is not baffled is a German Shepherd named Roger, who is technically not supposed to be there.

Then Nell receives a series of beautifully mannered letters at her own front door—each one more polite, and less friendly, than the last. Now she and Roger must follow a mystery which began in 1698 in Cremona, Italy, through a glittering Belgravia townhouse, a Bermondsey warehouse at midnight, an exclusive bridal salon, to an Oxfordshire lunch party where the guest list includes armed men in the delphiniums.

Investigating alongside Nell, in his official capacity as her valet and his unofficial capacity as everything else, is Henry Templeton, lately reinstated to a certain building on the Thames. Between them stands an engagement scheduled for three years hence, an arrangement both parties agreed was sensible and neither believes for a minute.

The second Nell Ainsworth mystery is a sparkling blend of golden-age puzzle and screwball romance: Agatha Christie’s plotting with Nora Ephron’s nerve, for readers who like their country-house intrigue with Camorra bosses, their love stories conducted via surveillance log, and more dogs than anyone knows what to do with. Begin with The Roses of Ainsworth Manor, or start here—the door is almost always open.

Book two in the Nell Ainsworth mystery series. Available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

Buy it on Amazon Today

When violinist Sebastian Vane abandons a sold-out Royal Albert Hall performance thirty-eight bars in and walks off with a twenty-million-pound Stradivarius named Lady Aurelia, London society calls it a celebrity breakdown. Nell Ainsworth, ninth Duchess of Belward, calls it a plot hole. The only one who is not baffled is a German Shepherd named Roger, who is technically not supposed to be there.

Now Nell and Roger must follow a trail that began in Cremona in 1698, through a glittering Belgravia townhouse, a Bermondsey warehouse at midnight, an exclusive bridal salon, and a series of beautifully mannered letters arriving at Nell’s own front door—each one more polite, and less friendly, than the last—all the way to an Oxfordshire lunch party where the guest list includes armed men in the delphiniums.

Investigating alongside Nell, in his official capacity as her valet and his unofficial capacity as everything else, is Henry Templeton, lately reinstated to a certain building on the Thames. Between them stands an engagement scheduled for three years hence, an arrangement both parties agreed was sensible and neither believes for a minute. Also in residence is a stray named Claude, of no known breed and no visible courage, whose interests include doorbells, herring, and the contents of other people's handbags.

The second Nell Ainsworth mystery is a sparkling blend of golden-age puzzle and screwball romance: Agatha Christie’s plotting with Nora Ephron’s nerve, for readers who like their country-house intrigue with gunshots and Camorra bosses, their love stories conducted via surveillance log, and more dogs than anyone knows what to do with. Begin with The Roses of Ainsworth Manor, or start here—the door is almost always open.

The Vanishing Violinist is book two in the Nell Ainsworth mystery series by Nina Gates

Buy Now on Amazon

The expanded catalog brings Gates’s fiction and nonfiction to readers in multiple formats and markets, including paperback, hardcover, and ebook editions. Gates’s fiction blends mystery, romance, history, and suspense; her nonfiction explores creativity, personal style, and the art of a well-lived life.

“Seeing these books find readers in new languages is an extraordinary privilege,” said Gates. “I am delighted to share these stories with a wider international audience.”

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Bohème Éclat Press

Ferris Bueller is a beautiful example of how an inner elegance code can make someone magnetic long before you get to clothes or looks. “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it” is not just a quip; it is his operating thesis. His vision is unusually clear for a teenager: he refuses to be a passive object moved through systems; he wants to experience his own life. Everything he does in the film bends back toward that vision: stepping out of the script to break the fourth wall, refusing to let school, schedules, or other people’s expectations dictate what this particular day will be.

Center of Balance

Ferris is relaxed on the surface, but underneath he is intensely committed to directing his own life. He does not stop at “just enough”; he keeps pushing each moment toward what he really wants. When the maître d’ questions his Abe Froman story, he doesn’t back down. When he lands on the parade float, he doesn’t stop at “Danke Schoen”; he belts out “Twist and Shout” and gets the whole city dancing.

Because he lives in his center of balance, he is rarely rattled. When things go wrong, his first move is not to collapse but to improvise. He trusts himself to think on his feet, talk his way through, and come up with something. Even when he is scared for Cameron’s relationship with his father, or for getting caught, he does not hand the wheel to fear. He keeps steering.

Inside to Outside

Ferris navigates the day with an almost choreographed lightness: borrowing the car, orchestrating the restaurant scene, the museum visit, and the parade with a sense of timing and grace. He is good‑natured, not cruel. He notices Cameron’s internal state, Sloane’s feelings, and even his sister’s deeper frustration beneath her surface hostility.

He also does not waste time worrying about whether people like him; he behaves as if that question has already been settled, which is paradoxically what makes people like him.

The Code

Most people think they want Ferris’s one‑liners and ease. What they really crave is his internal structure: a vivid vision for his life, values that favor experience, loyalty, and joy over numb compliance, and a center of balance that does not fly apart under pressure.

The usual performance of “cool” is distance and not caring; Ferris Bueller’s cool is the opposite—he cares so much about being alive in his own life that he refuses to drift. At seventeen, he is more pulled together than most of the adults in the film. The “cool” everyone remembers is the outer expression of an inner elegance code.

An Excerpt from The Elegance Code by Nina Gates on Amazon. Nina Gates is the author of The Elegance Code, and Be an Artist (or Just Live Like One), which debuted at number one on Amazon in Art Study and Teaching, and the novels, The Gilded Talisman, and The Roses of Ainsworth Manor. She holds a degree in political science and is a U.S. Army veteran. She lives in Texas.

The Elegance Code

Columbo is exquisitely courteous, patient, and almost eerily calm. He listens more than he talks. Disciplined and exact, he lets powerful people underestimate him on purpose, then uses careful observation, attention to detail, and relentless logic to pull their lies apart thread by thread.

His elegance is rooted in moral clarity, humility that is partly calculated, and a refusal to be rushed, rattled, or impressed by money. Columbo’s shabby exterior is part of his elegance, not opposed to it. He is proof that elegance is ethical and tactical, not merely decorative, social, or aristocratic.

Elegance is not about polish. It is about self-command.

An excerpt from The Elegance Code by Nina Gates now on Amazon. Nina Gates is the author of The Elegance Code, and Be an Artist (or Just Live Like One), which debuted at number one on Amazon in Art Study and Teaching, and the novels, The Gilded Talisman, and The Roses of Ainsworth Manor. She holds a degree in political science and is a U.S. Army veteran. She lives in Texas.

The Elegance Code

No one is allowed to disturb his order. He moves very little, but his mind is in constant, precise motion. Seen through The Elegance Code, Wolfe is a case study in inner values, vision, and balance. His values are clarity, order, beauty (expressed in orchids and cuisine), and intellectual honesty.

His vision for his life is pure and unwavering: to live comfortably and intelligently on his own terms, solving problems that interest him and refusing everything that violates his standards.

His balance comes from knowing exactly who he is and what he will and will not do. He does not chase clients; they come to him. He does not roam the city; he sends Archie Goodwin. He solves crimes not because he is glamorous or physically impressive, but because his mind is organized and his judgment is calm, logical, and elegant under pressure.

Nero Wolfe demonstrates that elegance is not a matter of being slim, young, or visually refined. It is the way you order your world, the integrity of your routines, the pointed nature of your attention, and the consistency with which you inhabit your own life, even if you rarely, if ever, step outside your front door.

An excerpt from The Elegance Code by Nina Gates, available on Amazon. Nina Gates is the author of The Elegance Code, and Be an Artist (or Just Live Like One), which debuted at number one on Amazon in Art Study and Teaching, and the novels, The Gilded Talisman, and The Roses of Ainsworth Manor. She holds a degree in political science and is a U.S. Army veteran. She lives in Texas.

The Elegance Code

Big dreams stall because no one tells you that losing twenty pounds, starting a business, painting a mural, or writing a book is a thousand tiny steps masquerading as one task. The secret to accomplishing anything is to break the big, daunting job into such small actions that success becomes less something you strive for and more something you trip over.

A Mentor to the Rescue

A wise mentor suggested breaking the problem into smaller steps. The idea was just unconventional enough—and I was just desperate enough—to try it. On the first day, I drove to the barn, backed the truck to the hitch, lowered the trailer onto the ball, and plugged in the lights. That’s it. Then I unhitched and went home. It took less than fifteen minutes.

I repeated only that for several days, until I felt comfortable handling the equipment.

Next, I hitched the trailer, drove around the block, and practiced backing it into its space. I was certain everyone watching was laughing at me. In reality, a few people came over to help. One showed me a simple trick: put one hand at the bottom of the steering wheel and move your hand in the direction you want the rear of the trailer to go. That small tip changed everything.

I practiced for about two weeks—hitching, backing, parking, driving—before I added a horse.

Separately, I spent ten to fifteen minutes a day on groundwork with my horse, gaining his respect and learning to direct his movement—forward, backward, left, and right.

When I finally combined the two, I started the process again: hitching, then loading and unloading, then short drives, then trips to the showgrounds. By the time I went to a show the process felt easy.

Lessons I Learned

I joke about it now, but this was one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever given myself: patience, gentleness, time, and focus. I’m also proud that I moved through something that genuinely scared me—and did it in a way that was kind to myself.

I learned that when your “why” is strong enough, it stops mattering what other people think.

I also learned that when you think people are laughing at you, they usually aren’t. Often, they’re wondering how to help.

Try This

Think of something you want to do that has felt too big, too complicated, or too overwhelming.

Write it down. Then break it into the smallest possible steps. If you get stuck, ask a friend, mentor, or coach for help. Aim for actions that take fifteen minutes or less. If a step still feels daunting, break it down again until it seems almost effortless.

When I worked on trailering with my mentor, he asked, “What can you do that doesn’t feel scary?”

“Back up to the hitch.”

“Good. Can you lower it onto the ball?”

“Yes.”

“Plug in the lights?”

“I think so.”

“Drive around the block?”

“Uh…I don't know about that.”

“Perfect. Then stop right before that.”

So I did. You can do the same thing.

If you want to start walking in the mornings, begin by waking up and putting on your workout clothes—down to your shoes. Walk around your house for a minute or two, then change and go about your day. That’s it. A dress rehearsal.

Once that feels easy, step outside, but walk for one minute, not an hour. Then walk to the end of your driveway. Then walk to the end of the block.

I once read about a marathoner who began this way: overweight, out of shape, walking to the end of her driveway. It sounds trivial, but these tiny, repeatable actions are what carry you forward.

Why It Works

Small steps create frequent wins. Wins are motivational. They make it more likely you’ll continue.

That’s what happened with my trailer experiment. Every day I tried, I succeeded. Succeeding was fun, and because the tasks were so nonsensically small, failure was unlikely. My confidence grew daily.

Weeks upon weeks of wins created evidence I could do it.

The Far Less Than One Percent

Very few people will do this. It sounds too simple. It seems like it will take too long. In some cases, it does take longer. Learning to haul my horse safely took over a month.

But longer is faster than never.

Trust the Process

This micro-method is one of the most effective, least stressful, and least used ways to accomplish almost anything.

After you do it once, you may discover you are capable of more than you assumed. I’ve used it to teach myself painting, complete large-scale oil portraits, write four books, and become a professional horse trainer.

What I know now is this: if I give myself time, patience, and sufficiently small steps, very little is out of reach. Progress looks like inches when you’re in the middle of it. But inches accumulate until one day you look up and realize you are standing inside the life you dreamed of.

Excerpt from Be an Artist (or Just Live Like One).

Read Now

A long break doesn’t have to turn into an identity story. If your mind wants to open your return with a trial like, Where have you been all this time? You can gently remind it that you are in charge now, thank you. You are not required to explain your absence to anyone: not a teacher, not a creative group, not your audience, not that one friend who “can’t believe you stopped.” You can simply walk back to the canvas, the keyboard, or the stage the way you walk back into your kitchen: naturally, without an announcement. This is your life; you are allowed to be here.

When you reenter a class, group, or collaborative project, you can orient instead of apologizing. A simple “I’m back and easing in again,” or “I took a break and I’m getting re‑acquainted,” is enough. There is no need for a detailed explanation of your schedule, your mental health, or your productivity. You are a human being with seasons; you are not an app.

Let the moment of return matter more than the length of the gap. You can mark it softly: this is the day you returned to painting, the night you reopened the novel file, the morning you picked up your guitar again. Not as a vow or a dramatic comeback, just as another turning point.

You walked away for a while, and you came back. That single decision says something beautiful about you. You do not have to earn your way into it. You are allowed, always, to begin again.

From Be an Artist (or Just Live Like One)

Manners create a buffer: they buy you space, time, and a higher vantage point from which to watch, think, and choose, instead of being pulled, pushed, or tripped by events. Used this way, manners prevent you from knotting yourself up in emotion or drifting off course every time the wind blows. They keep you aligned with your vision, so that in everyday turbulence you move with deliberation rather than disturbance.

SELF-MASTERY

For most of history, to be “civilized” did not mean to be soft; it meant to be self‑governed. A person who could master their impulses, measure their words, and restrain their temper marked themselves as safer to be near, and higher‑status. Royal courts and salons, military commands, and financial trading floors all understood this instinctively: those who could not control themselves could not be trusted with lives, information, money, or power. What we now call “good manners” began as a visible code of self‑regulation—a shared language that allowed ambitious people to signal, without speaking, that they were fit for serious roles.

Over the last century, manners came to be seen as fake, merely decorative, and a relic of hierarchies people wanted to escape. Being “real” was elevated above restraint; personal expression above discretion. The result is a culture where outbursts, oversharing, and public displays of “authenticity” are common, even rewarded. Where manners once softened the more base aspects of human nature, today those raw impulses are amplified and encouraged in everything from reality shows to politics. An anonymous 1867 manual, How to Shine in Society; or, The Art of Conversation, advises civilized men and women, when they must disagree, to begin by stating the extent to which they agree with the speaker, then by clarifying that they take no pleasure in differing; the disagreement is with the idea, not an attack on the speaker’s character.

ON EDGE

In personality research, emotional instability—what psychologists call neuroticism or negative emotionality—is one of the strongest predictors of anxiety, depression, and lower well‑being. It describes a disposition toward frequent, intense negative states such as anger, anxiety, and irritability, and it greatly increases vulnerability to stress‑related disorders. People high in this trait react more intensely to small stressors and recover more slowly, leaving their stress system “switched on” for longer and eroding their health, relationships, and life satisfaction over time.

Now place that temperament in an environment that rewards constant emotional display—especially social media, where heavier, more compulsive use is consistently linked with higher depression, anxiety, stress, and loneliness. A culture that normalizes and amplifies emotional reactivity does not merely reflect people’s inner turmoil; it manufactures chronic stress and dissatisfaction by keeping everyone’s nerves permanently on edge.

A NEW ARISTOCRACY

Every excess produces its counter‑movement. As people grow weary of escalating conflict and diminishing forward progress, the person who governs their impulses, conceals their reactions, and moves with deliberate grace will stand out. The return of manners will probably be one of the most significant status shifts of this century: toward those who can control themselves while others cannot.

In my novel The Gilded Talisman, Alexander Girard uses manners as a buffer and a tactic. By being exquisitely formal, he signals that the theater of operations is governed by his rules. If someone is rude to him and he responds with flawless politeness, he has not “lost”; he has refused to enter their mud pit. This is how he protects his balance and accomplishes so much.

Manners are a method by which we maintain our self‑sovereignty.

THE MORAL HIGH GROUND

Losing your temper is a major leak and a security breach. You may have noticed that James Bond rarely shouts. Why? Because shouting is a leak; it reveals exactly what hurts you. Maintaining your manners during a conflict isn’t about being the “better person” in a sentimental sense; it’s about being the person who cannot be rattled. When you remain polite while someone else escalates, you are the one holding the power. You are the one who is “unhackable.”

Never Make an Enemy by Accident

A core principle of intelligence work is never burn a bridge you may need to cross later. A casual insult or thoughtless lapse in manners can turn a neutral party into a permanent enemy, and enemies do not simply disappear because you forget about them. They wait, they watch, and they look for an opening to repay the slight.

There is such a thing as an enemy in life. Even Judith Martin (“Miss Manners”) writes about genuine antagonists and the need to maintain your dignity. Elegance dictates that if you must create—or defeat—an enemy, you do it intentionally, after calculating the probable cost, not carelessly because you were tired or irritable. Most people collect enemies by accident: a sharp remark here, a public humiliation there, a moment of contempt they never even register. Years later, they are blindsided by resistance they cannot trace. The elegant operator assumes that every unnecessary hostility will return against them in some form, and so treats restraint as a form of long‑range self‑defense.

NO TRACE

When my dog follows a scent, he lowers his nose and reads the air and the ground. Invisible to us, every creature sheds a trail of particles as it moves: skin cells, hair, sweat, signals that announce, “Something passed this way.” He can track a stranger long after they have vanished from sight by the residue they leave behind without realizing it.

Human beings are no different. We leave a trail of comments, glances, tones of voice, forgotten slights, and small humiliations in our wake. Many people move through the world leaking irritation and contempt, then feel surprised when resistance and resentment seem to meet them everywhere. While you cannot control every impression you make, you can control your manners.

When you are consistently courteous to everyone, from the waiter to the rival, you leave almost no “trail.” You pass through rooms and situations without creating unnecessary friction. Formal manners act as a containment field for your emotions so that what you leak is minimal and deliberate, rather than turbulent and damaging.

Nina Gates is the author of The Elegance Code, and Be an Artist (or Just Live Like One), which debuted at number one on Amazon in Art Study and Teaching, and the novels, The Gilded Talisman, and The Roses of Ainsworth Manor. She holds a degree in political science and is a U.S. Army veteran. She lives in Texas.

The Elegance Code

The words mean what they sound like they mean. Bohème, the old word for a life lived on its own terms, outside a conventional groove. Éclat is brilliance, distinction, a flash of style. They look like opposites: the garret and the salon, the artist and the aesthete. Freedom at the cost of polish, polish in lieu of freedom. One is supposed to choose.

The phrase, once it had introduced itself, kept following me around and tapping me on the shoulder. It became the name of the imprint because the books needed to live somewhere. It also reminds me of the difference between being a writer and having a writing career.

A career is a public artifact: launches, rankings, posts about launches and rankings, and a platform demanding as much maintenance as my hair color. You become a writer to write, because you have things you must say, and when you say them out loud to other humans you sound crazy, which you may very well be. Nevertheless, there it is. Simple.

The two are not enemies, but they are often put to work against each other. The career can fail while a life flourishes. The career can succeed while a life hollows out. Most of the nonsense passed off as advice about writing is about business, because that is the part someone else can monetize. Without sales, no one except the writer (and those in love with the writer) cares about a writer.

You write to live a writer’s life. The romance of it is not a marketing ploy invented to lure unsuspecting English majors into the grinding profession of exposing one’s innards to the public. The romance is the spirit of the life when the work is done for its own sake. Solitary hours, the desk, the coffee going cold because there is this one sentence arriving sideways that you have to nail before you take a sip.

Then one day you open the laptop and the voice begins.

Metrics. Feeds. An ambient sense that other writers are optimizing their careers in a way you are not. The noise is not out there. Feeds can be closed. Phones can be put in another room. The internal voice has absorbed the logic of the platforms and now repeats it back to you sounding like your own thinking. You should be posting more. Your funnel should be better. The book will do better when you do the thing you do not want to do. You are the problem holding back the work.

You cannot argue with this voice on its own terms, because its terms are reasonable. It is, in a sense, correct. The book would do better. The platform would grow. The career would benefit from more of what you decline.

Bohème Éclat, I say, more often than I would have predicted when I chose the pestering name. Not that. This. Brilliant freedom is the life we came for: the morning, the desk, the page.