Showing posts with label DCL Publications. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DCL Publications. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

COME BACK AGAIN TO IRELAND

In the interest of having this done so no one has to blog backwards, and giving you the HEA, I am finishing up today this spontaneous autobiography which shows one evolution of a writer.  Do you have your own story?  Feel free to leave particulars under Comments.  I think it's always fascinating to read what gave authors their drive to publish.  My muse was instrumental in mine and even though we have a love/hate relationship, I think it's worth it:


I read those books Seph left me, after all.  In the middle of the nights, when I awoke now because it was time to administer another IV, I read them to the accompaniment of the drip/drip of the IV pump.  The house was otherwise silent because my husband was only semi-conscious, being kept alive by the power of those drips, and I needed a book for company.  Nothing too heavy, mind you.  I didn't want to be too distracted in case the dripping stopped...or his heart did.
So I read away the nights:  Johanna Lindsay, Bertrice Small, Laura Kinsale.  There were too many others to name.  They consumed my time and my mind, or what was left of it.  In accordance with my husband's wishes, I had opted to pursue the euphemistically-termed "home death."  The social worker warned this would take a terrible toll on me, but I knew that.  I was a social worker, too.  I told myself I was ready for it.
Dave's heart finally stopped early one evening in March.  Dear friends sat with me as we played the classical music he loved and ate the pizza he loved, too.  We told ourselves that he would have wanted it that way, and I knew he would.  Dave wasn't into mourning.  His little dog lay on the bed with him until the end, and I did too, and then it was over. Just before spring.  Just as Seph had told me it would be.
I wondered if Seph would come to the funeral, but she didn't  She had never been welcome in that house, only sneaking down the flue or through a crack in the window whenever she could get in, and I guess she decided if she wasn't good enough for Dave in life she surely wasn't good enough for him in death.
Now that I had the time for her, I had no muse.
I stayed busy.  There were things to do, many things.  And bills to pay, many bills.  Oh, and I had surgery three times.  Yeah, I had been pretty busy while my husband was dying, too busy to take care of my own health, and I paid the price.  Big time.
Eventually things settled down.  Way down.  There was still no muse, my time was very much my own and I lost track of it.  I lost track of a lot of things.  When I looked in the mirror, I looked just like Seph the last time I had seen her.  Burned.
A strangely haunting tune began whining away in the back of my mind, never quite getting to the front but always there just like those voices my mother had heard.  Uh-oh.  Those voices had nothing to do with Second Sight.  There was a difference between The Sight and clinical depression or worse.  Jeez Louise.  Was I going to end up like my mother?
Well, apparently not if my Nana could help it.  Years before, Nana had told me I would have a hard life.  That wasn't difficult to predict, seeing that I had a mother with essentially untreated bipolar disorder.  They really weren't into calling it that in those days.  Then it was called Manic Depression and treated with Lithium, only Mom couldn't tolerate Lithium because it was hard on the kidneys and she had already damaged hers with heavy alcohol consumption.  Then the doctor recommended shock therapy, but my father said if he wanted his wife electrocuted he could just give her a fork to stick in the toaster.  No electro-shock, though from what I heard of it in later years I decided probably Dad was right.
In any case, Nana had told me when everything seemed to be lost to go to Ireland and I would find my way again.  I was just enough my mother's daughter to listen.  My father's genes protested furiously that I would be wasting my time--not to mention all that money!--but between the sage counsel of my grandmother and the psychotic delusions of my mother I was just wise enough and just crazy enough to get on a plane bound for Ireland, where I didn't know a soul.  Or at least that's what I thought.
That music in the back of my head had been Celtic music, and I knew even before the plane touched down at Shannon that I was home.
Ireland saved my sanity, though at first it didn't seem that way.  At first it was a matter of sitting in The Laurels Pub in Killarney, a wonderful place I remember with great fondness except that I nursed too-numerous mugs of Guinness stout there.  My fault entirely.  I didn't even like Guinness.  Mom had liked rye and vodka.  Oh, man, did she like vodka--which was probably why I avoided it.  But the end result would be the same.  I was avoiding mirrors again because I didn’t like the way I looked.  Unlike my mother, though, I had an innate ability to “just say no.”  So I did.  I started drinking what the Irish call fizzy water--seltzer water--with lime.  And Pepsi with lemon.  And then because my mad escapade hadn't left me with enough money to buy a laptop, I bought a bunch of yellow legal pads a la J.K. Rowling and went to find Seph.  I damn well knew she was in Ireland.  She had to be.  Why else had I come?
I found her in a peat bog.  A peat bog?  Oh, well, I guessed that was appropriate.  And oddly enough--just like me, once I just said no--she looked healed.  She looked...peaceful.  No more drippy lava, no  sparking eyeballs.  She smiled and pointed to the yellow legal pad in my hand and then to a sheep pasture overlooking the Aran Islands and the Atlantic Ocean my grandmother had crossed to get to America.  OK, maybe I would just sit there and try to write.
My pen hit the paper and I started:

"I was the King's daughter once, so many years ago that sometimes now it is hard to remember. Before the tide of time carried away so many things, so many people, it was worth something to be the daughter of a King.
"Our little island nation of Alcinia was not rich, except for tin mines honeycombing the south. It wasn't even hospitable. Summer was a brief affair and fall was only a short time of muted colors on the northernmost coast where my father sat his throne at the ancient Keep of Landsfel. Winter was the killing time and spring was hardly better, with frosts that could last into Fifth-Month. But from the south, where men cut thatch in a pattern like the bones of fish, to the north where rock roses spilled down cliffs to the sea, it was my own.
“One thinks such things will never change, yet all things do."

What the hell?  That was no poem.  I looked up, startled, and there was Persephone, black hair gleaming against her red gown.  Still no lava although her nails were still bright red.  With one of those gleaming, lacquered nails, she pointed imperiously to my paper and said one word.  "Write."
I wrote until I had 130,000 words.  And then I wrote another 103,000 words.  The first book I called, "The King's Daughter."  The second book, its sequel, I named "Heart of the Earth."  And then, like my grandmother, I crossed the Atlantic Ocean to America.
I got on a plane and flew back to America, since unlike my muse's crow and my blackbird I had no other way to get there.  Nana had come by steamer (first class, of course, with her mother's china), but those days were gone.  Now Aer Lingus took me back to New York, where I can't say I was especially glad to be.  The air pollution made my eyes as red as Wench … er … sorry … Persephone’s at her worst.  I did get to spend time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, hanging out with guys in mail, which almost made it all worthwhile.
I got a computer.  I got an email address which I had to abbreviate from my friends' whimsically-inspired "Miriam's in Ireland."  I tried to get a publisher.  Or an agent. BUWAHAHA!  We all know how easy THOSE are to get.  I didn't know diddly.  I especially didn't know if you tell them you're a poet they run screaming in the other direction.  Our reputation precedes us.
Persephone was no help.  Apparently she had stayed in Ireland.  Finally, since I had concluded writing romance took a high degree of skill and maybe I was missing something, I joined Romance Writers of America and Valley Forge Romance Writers.  Then I got online and an editor found me.  Seriously.  She read my first paragraphs, then my first chapters, then the whole bloody book--in one night--and then she wanted it.
That was The King's Daughter, presently available on my web site www.miriamnewman.com.  The sequel is there, too.
Once I signed the contract, Seph came back.  She really is a wench, but all is forgiven because she brought another nine books with her.  Ten, if you count the one I'm writing now.  It’s set in Norway.  Now do you suppose if I went to Caithness, northernmost point in Scotland, from where a ferry leaves most days for Norway, and I took a yellow legal pad and…
”SEPH!  COME ON!  WE’RE LEAVING!”

Miriam Newman


Saturday, December 24, 2011

A SEASON OF LOVE

                               www.thedarkcastlelords.com/season-of-love.htm

Wishing all our readers and contributors here at The Celtic Rose a season of peace, love and joy.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

NEW RELEASE - THE COMET

Some of you may recognize this beautiful cover by Annie Marshall for my newly-released historical romance, The Comet.  The book came out on 1/20/11 but I've been waiting for it to be available on Kindle to make it official on the blog. 

This book was a labor of love.  It has been twelve years in my mind and a full year in intensive research.  The "Celtic" part of the book comes in the last half, set in Wales in 1067 as the Welsh reeled from the death of their strong king and the invasion of England by Normans.  They knew full well that they could be next unless their men and mountains protected them.  I'm sure no Welshman lay easy in his bed during those days, including apparently some of my very remote ancestors whose surnames I have borrowed for the book!  I was fortunate, too, in having been raised in an area where Welsh place names are common, so perhaps my tongue was less badly twisted than some as I created names.  What few Welsh genes may be somewhere in my DNA are buried under an avalanche of Irish and Cornish, but all of it is Celtic.  I was reminded of that many times while growing up!  I wonder what it is that makes us of that descent STILL so die-hard about it?

Anyway, here is an outline of the book, which I hope you might try if you enjoy historicals.  I do, and this was a joy to write!


An ambitious young Norman knight, Neel, is seriously wounded at the Battle of Hastings and nursed back to health by a Saxon girl, Rowena.  For her, it is only a matter of Christian charityy and she is shocked to receive his proposal of marriage in return.  It is an offer she can’t refuse, but her land is invaded, her birthright stolen.  How can she love the enemy—her husband?

For Neel, Normandy is only a bad memory.  His future lies in Rowena’s land and her bed, but he is not welcome in either.

From pastoral Sussex to the furthest reaches of Wales, he will seek to make her his own
.
EXCERPT: 
Fumbling at the gaudy tie, she drew out a necklace of stones like the eyes of a cat.  Carefully drilled and strung on a fine wire, they slid through her fingers smoothly.
“They are called topaz,” Neel explained.  Stunned, Rowena had neither moved nor spoken.  “They are the color of your eyes.  I have given Bryna a gown for you, too.  And a head covering.”  He smiled at her.  “I think you will like ours better.  All I ask is that you wear them for Christ’s Mass.” 
She remained obdurately silent, but she could not…dared not…refuse.  No doubt the gown was Norman.  He called her “little Saxon,” yet did not wish her to appear to be one.  And perhaps, if Ralf had spoken truly, he was correct and she wasn’t one at all.
“Here,” Neel said as if her acceptance was a given.  “Sit beside me and I will put it on you.”
Still mute, she perched rigidly on the edge of the mattress she had shared with him in perfect comfort when he was unconscious.  This time he was awake and aware and so was she-- jolted by every nuance as he touched her for the first time.
He was efficient, raising her wild hair with a hand holding its weight, parting it and dropping it forward over both shoulders so that he could fix the clasp of the necklace.  She felt the cold, rich stones against her collarbones and heard the tiny snick of the clasp as he put his claim on her.
He lifted her hair back carefully, not catching it in the necklace.  But he did not take his hands from her shoulders after he had done it.
She fell back upon manners, drilled into her by Bryna.  “I have nothing for you,” she said faintly.
“Then give me a kiss.”
There it was--the trap she had sensed.  She could wrest her body from beneath his hands and bolt for the door and he couldn’t stop her, but that was only postponing the inevitable.  Slowly, she turned her head to the side, not moving towards him but not moving away.
“Come,” he said softly, inching closer.  How was he doing that…hurt as he was? 
“Be careful,” she said, ambiguously.
“It’s just a kiss.”
It would be capitulation…unspoken acknowledgement of his ownership.  But just as the needs of the body had drawn her to offered food, other needs tempted her, too.  Trapped not by his hands but by her own indecision, she made no move to resist as he turned her within their circle, now at her waist.  It was an awkward position, though, leaving her in imminent danger of falling off the side of the bed.
“Better hold on,” he said, the devil incarnate.  She did, twining her hands in his fine tunic as he spread his palm against her back to support her.  The other hand cupped the back of her head.  Infinitely gentle, he lowered his face to hers, teasing at her lips.
“Very sweet,” he murmured.  It was nothing like she had thought a kiss would be.  She had imagined Ralf plunging his tongue into her as Leofric had done…pictured him groping her breast, hurting her, gross and fetid.
It was not like that at all.  Neel’s tongue traced the outline of hers lips, slow and enticing, not a bit revolting.  When his lips nudged hers gently she opened her mouth, sighing.  He kissed her slowly and deeply, a silken invasion that set her heart pounding.  Her hold on him increased, involuntarily, and she felt his response in the strength of his hand on her back, fingers splayed, supporting her.  Guiding her.  He drew her against his chest until she could feel her breasts taut and aching against his warm flesh and started to resist.  Immediately, his grip slackened and he lifted his face from hers.
“I’m only playing, little Saxon,” he whispered.

                        KINDLE:  http://www.amazon.com/the-comet-book/dp/B004MMEG8O?tag=t0e7-20
                     Also available at Fictionwise and AllRomanceEBooks
Release Date:  1/20/11

CONTEST:  If you’d like to enter a drawing for a free PDF copy or Kindle download of The Comet, leave your name, mailing address and the name of the stones from which Rowena’s necklace is made!  I will draw a name at random five days from today.  Easy cheesy!

Miriam

Monday, February 14, 2011

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY - FEBRUARY 14!!!






It's the last day for my offer of a free PDF copy of my novella Stupid Cupid.  If you would like a copy of this little novella set in Ireland, just leave a comment and your email address.

Stupid Cupid is the story of what happens when both Cupid and a pugilistic couple in need of his services arrive in the meadow where my faerie band from Confessions of the Cleaning Lady have been living in peace--until then!

If you like paranormal with an Irish twist, enjoy this free book with its adorable cover by DCL cover artist Annie Marshall.

Miriam
www.miriamnewman.com
www.thedarkcastlelords.com