Meet Author Cynthia Owens

Hello everyone! I’m so pleased to be here at the Celtic Rose. My name is Cynthia Owens, and I’m a lifelong lover of all things both Celtic and historical.

I believe I was destined to be interested in history. One of my distant ancestors, Thomas Aubert, reportedly sailed up the St. Lawrence River to discover Canada some 26 years before Jacques Cartier’s 1534 voyage. Another relative was a 17^th Century “King’s Girl,” one of a group of young unmarried girls sent to New France (now the province of  Quebec) as brides for the habitants (settlers) there.

My passion for reading made me long to write books like the ones I enjoyed, and as a child I penned many a sequel to my favorite Nancy Drew mysteries. Later, fancying myself a female Andrew Lloyd Weber, I drafted a (not-very-good) musical set in Paris during WWII called Serenade in Blue.

A former journalist, I enjoyed a previous career as a reporter/editor for a small chain of community newspapers before returning to my first love, romantic fiction. My stories usually include an Irish setting, hero or heroine, and sometimes all three. My first novel, In Sunshine or in Shadow, set in post-Famine Ireland, is available from Highland Press. Its sequel, Coming Home, will be released by Highland Press soon.

I’m a member of the Romance Writers of America, Hearts Through History Romance Writers, and Celtic Hearts Romance Writers. A lifelong resident of Montreal, Canada, I live there still with my own Celtic hero and our two school-aged children.

For more about me and my books, check out my website

And now, let me introduce to some of the people of Ballycashel, the tiny, wind-swept, west-of-Ireland village featured in In Sunshine or in Shadow:

“Take your filthy English hands off me! I’ll not be your whore, Your Honor, not if you promised me a banquet in Heaven itself.”
~Siobhan Desmond, on fighting off an attack from her landlord.

“Damn and blast this bloody Irish rain!”
~Rory O’Brien, on returning to the village of his birth.

“We’ve got to run. Glenleigh’s found out. I’ll come back for you, my love, I promise.”
~Michael Desmond to his wife, Siobhan, just before his capture by Lord Percival Glenleigh.

“A lad doesn’t forget the harm his da does to the woman that bore him.”
~Grannie Meg to Rory.

“For an American, you’ve an Irish soul.”
~Tom Flynn to Rory.

“Something for poor Biddy;
Her clothes are torn,
Her shoes are worn.
Something for poor Biddy.”
~Rhyme chanted by the Bridie Boys on the Eve of the Feast of  St. Brigid.

“They are free to go wherever they please. And if anyone comes to me wanting to emigrate, I will gladly purchase passage for them – but on a decent ship, not a floating coffin.”
~Rory to Siobhan, on his tenants.

“I’m all for an Ireland free of Britain’s yoke, but I believe that can be achieved through peaceful means. Our freedom will come, if not for me, then for my children, or their children. I’m a patient man. I can wait. So long as I can grow old here on Erin’s green shores, I’ll be the happy man.”
~Tom Flynn.

“I adore you, Siobhan O’Brien. You have made me whole in ways I never knew possible. Because of you, I have been able to forgive myself. You’ve allowed me to put my past to rest and have taught me how to love. You’ve taught me that loving someone doesn’t mean I’ll lose them.”
~Rory to Siobhan on their wedding night.

“A baby. A son, perhaps, who’ll love horses and poetry the way you do. Or a daughter you can dote on.”
~Siobhan to Rory.

Buy In Sunshine or in Shadow: