trueromance

Setting: 1766 Scotland and America
Subgenre: historical romance
Hero: Angus McTern Harcourt
Heroine: Edilean Elizabeth Talbot

One sentence summary: Beautiful Edilean must escape her uncle’s greed and Angus McTern reluctantly helps her.
Scene you like most and would never cut: When Edilean shoots at Angus. I like the way she is helped by the Bound Girls (the indentured servants who work for her) and the reaction of the men who witness this made me laugh. By the time this happened, Edilean was so sick of Angus that I almost wanted her shot to hit him.

Thing your heroine would never be caught dead doing/saying: “Angus, dear, I agree with what you think I should do.”
Your hero, is he a boxer or brief kind of guy: Nothing under his kilt in Scotland, long drawers under his clothes in America.
Ancillary character you had the most fun with: I felt so very sorry for the unattractive Prudence, the woman the villainous James had married just to get her title, that I gave her a happy story at the end. I had her find love with a character who started off bad but evolved into good.

Your heroine’s favorite hobby: Bossing around her children and her husband, Angus.

Your hero’s favorite hobby: Edilean. He adores her and is fascinated by her.

What you think readers will like best about this book: That it is a pure romance, no occult, no mystery. There’s sex and action and humor.

The person that readers want you to write about but you haven’t yet: Anything and everything to do with the Montgomerys. But I’ve finished with them and won’t write anymore about them — unless one of my Edilean people marry a Montgomery, that is.

What’s next: I just finished SCARLET NIGHTS, a contemporary about Sara Shaw from LAVENDER MORNING. In SCARLET NIGHTS I fell so deeply in love with the hero that I’m having a difficult time thinking of what I’m going to write next. Also, I’ve written a book, THE SCENT OF JASMINE, about Edilean and Angus’s daughter, and that was a lot of fun. Right now I’m concentrating on books for my Edilean Saga. I want to cover a lot of years and a lot of people. I like figuring out what happened to people and what caused them to do something. It’s also interesting to follow a talent down through the centuries.

When I started writing many years ago, all women wanted an Alpha Male, a man who took charge. He could be a real pain on a daily basis, but when the chips were down, he had to step in and take over. And the women wanted lots of conflict between the hero and heroine, arguments from beginning to end.
Now women seem to hate that kind of male and they don’t want ANY conflict. Readers today seem to want a man who cares about the woman’s every need, anticipates her desires, and gives them to her. Women on the Internet write that they hate it if the hero and heroine don’t like each other from the moment they meet.

All this puzzles me. Without conflict, where’s the story? What is your opinion?

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BGI EXCLUSIVE – Missing Scene from DAYS OF GOLD by Jude Deveraux, on sale 12/29/09
Williamsburg, Virginia, 1766
Tam was feeling sorry for himself. He liked to think it was a more manly emotion, but it wasn’t. It seemed that everyone in his life had paired off and knew where he or she was going, but Tam knew no more now than when he’d left Scotland.
On that cold morning when he and Malcolm and Shamus had left the McTern land, heading for the New Country, Tam had been filled with the sound of the bagpipes and the smell of the heather. He was a Scotsman through and through, and as the ship sailed away, he longed to be back in his own country.
But as the weeks passed and they traveled about, looking for Angus, he realized that America was as young as he was. It wasn’t a country that had rules that went back for centuries, it was a place that was just forming itself, and laws had yet to be made. Malcolm complained often, saying the Americans didn’t know the way things should be done. But as Tam and Shamus looked at each other across a room, they knew they shared the same feelings.
But there’s where it ended, for Shamus had found love. As soon as he and Prudence had looked at each other, they’d known they were kindred spirits. The same had happened with Malcolm and Harriet Harcourt. And everyone knew that Angus would soon return and claim his beautiful Edilean.
That left Tam as the only one who was alone. And the emptiness of his life was going to get worse. In another few weeks he’d have to return to Scotland and take on the great honor — and responsibility — of being the laird of the McTern clan. But Tam couldn’t see himself doing what Angus had so easily done. There was something about Angus that made people look up to him, follow him, trust him. But Tam knew that he didn’t have that kind of . . . well, force. Nor
did he want it. Since he was a child, Angus had never had a moment to himself. He put his clan above everyone and everything — and Tam would be expected to do the same thing.
Tam just wanted . . . He tried to think about what he did want, but he wasn’t sure. As he glanced down at the leather roll fastened behind his saddle and thought of how it was full of yellow silk he was to deliver, he knew he didn’t want to continue to run errands for people. Frowning, he looked at the street sign in Williamsburg. Edilean had given him the task of delivering a piece of fabric to some rich widow and he dreaded it. But maybe as soon as he dropped it off, he could escape.
He found the house on a side street and reluctantly dismounted his horse and knocked on the door. No answer. He walked around the side to the garden in the back, and there he saw something out of a picture book. A young, pretty woman was standing on tiptoe, reaching up to pull cherries from a tree. At her feet were two equally pretty little girls, smiling, laughing, and filling their pockets with the cherries their mother knocked down.
Tam didn’t think what he was doing as he leaped on to the bottom branch of the tree, scurried upward and gave a great shake to make the cherries fall. As he listened to the laughter and looked down at the three faces smiling up at him, he suddenly knew what he wanted in life and where he wanted to go.
He jumped to the ground and introduced himself. She was even prettier close up.
If not her — and he thought it might be — then someone else here, in this country, was what he wanted. Smiling, he took the cherries Mrs. Lester offered, and he accepted her invitation to stay for supper.

Setting: Current Day – Stretches from Virginia to Colorado to Sedona, Arizona before ending up in Scotland – with a quick detour to the Faerie homeworld, Wyddecol.

Subgenre: While the Daughters of the Glen series as a whole is time-travel, this particular book borders on paranormal romantic suspense, building the world of the Fae and introducing new characters.

Hero: JESSE CORYELL is a man adrift in life, searching for his destiny. He’s tried to lose himself in his work, taking on the worst mankind has to offer, but as a Fae descendent, what he really needs to find is his true love. When he sets out to help a mysterious woman locate her sister, what he gets is much more than he bargained for, battling an undeniable attraction to his sexy new client while fighting an ancient evil to keep her safe and rescue the missing girl.

Heroine: DESTINY NOBLE, abandoned by everyone she’s ever loved, will stop at nothing in her desperate quest to find her sister. Authorities have declared Leah a runaway, but Destiny knows better. Her prophetic dream visions have shown her the frightening truth. They’ve also shown her Jesse. But finding her Soulmate could result in the most painful loss of all when she’s forced to choose between loving Jesse and saving Leah.

One Sentence Summary: Jesse and Destiny race against time to save an innocent girl from an ancient evil but with true love as their most powerful weapon, they each risk sacrificing their own destiny in the process.

Scene you like most and would never cut: My favorite scene is in the helicopter. I can’t really say more about it except that the reason it’s my favorite is because I love surprises and poetic justice!

Thing your heroine would never be caught dead doing/saying: “I do believe in Faeries!” At least not until she has absolutely no other choice.

Your hero, is he a boxer or brief kind of guy: hmmm… boxer, definitely. Though it wouldn’t surprise me to find him going commando!

Ancillary character you had the most fun with: I love secondary characters! All of them have their own stories I’m waiting to learn and for that alone I find them fascinating. Robert MacQuarrie was probably the most fun in this book. He’s a sharp-witted Scot with an overdeveloped sense of honor who misses very little going on around him. The most interesting secondary character I worked with in A Highlander’s Destiny has to be Adira Ré Alyn. Originally I thought she was just BAD, but as she showed up for each of her scenes, I began to realize what a complicated character she really is and her part got much more interesting to write!

Your heroine’s favorite hobby: Destiny would be completely happy to spend hours on her laptop, surfing the net.

Your hero’s favorite hobby: Jesse loves nothing better than to hit the road for parts unknown on his newest, fastest motorcycle.

What do you think readers will like best about this book: The last opportunity readers had to spend time with the evil Nuadians was in Highland Guardian. In A Highlander’s Destiny, they get to catch up on what’s happened to the exiles from the Faerie Realm as the Nuadians introduce a whole new level of danger. A Highlander’s Destiny and the two books that follow it are more closely linked than others in the series and I think it will be fun for readers to be able to see what happens to some of the secondary characters in my January 26, 2010 release, A Highlander’s Homecoming.

The person that readers want you to write about but you haven’t yet: My two most requested stories are for the two remaining MacAlister brothers, Andrew and Colin.

What’s next: As I mentioned, A Highlander’s Homecoming releases on January 26. It’s Robert MacQuarrie’s story and picks up with him right where A Highlander’s Destiny leaves off, returning to time travel and thirteenth century Scotland. I’m currently working on Andrew MacAlister’s book. It should be finished by January and ready for readers sometime in late 2010. After that, it just depends on which of the characters are speaking to me most loudly!

Question: One of the things I like best about writing the Daughters of the Glen series is all the new characters who show up. In this book, I enjoyed having some old characters reappear so I could learn what had happened to them since I saw them last. What about you? Do you like catching up with older characters when you’re reading a series?

Comment for a chance to win a gift pack which includes an autographed copy of A Highlander’s Destiny, a review copy of A Highlander’s Homecoming, and a box of authentic Walker Shortbread. [The perfect accompaniment to reading books set in Scotland!]

Setting: The east coast of Scotland - December, 1829
Subgenre: Regency-set Historical
Hero: Hugh Christie, Laird Glenloch, earl of Newbury
Heroine: Brianna Munro

Thing your heroine would never be caught dead doing/saying:

Brianna would never say: “Oh, sure. Whatever you say.”

Your hero, is he a boxer or brief kind of guy: