Planning a present – a free read alert

Writing Life, , , ,

In all the whirl of preparing for Christmas, I fear I’ve been neglecting my poor blog. The holidays, however you spend them, are usually fairly hectic for us all.

So here’s what I’m going to do – on Christmas morning you will be able to read an excerpt from The Wolf’s Destiny right here.

If you haven’t read the first two stories, The Wolf’s Sister and The Wolf’s Mate, you might like to track them down first – they’re available as ebooks from Samhain or sites such as Book Depository and for Kindle on Amazon, or in the print volume Songs of the Wolf. You can find out more here – Tales of the Holtlands.

So are you ready for adventrue, romance and a magical Christmas read? And what are your holiday plans? Once I’ve tackled that turkey, I’ll probably be barricading myself into the sitting room to watch Dr. Who and Downton Abbey.

Out now: The Wolf’s Destiny

Cover Love, New Books, New releases, , , ,

Or… Ok, so you didn’t have to wait as long as my paranoia anticipated!

The Wolf’s Destiny: a tale of the Holtlands Book 3 is now available on Smashwords.

Over the next while it will be available in other places too, but if you want it now (and if you’ve read The Wolf’s Sister and The Wolf’s Mate you want to know how it all turns out don’t you?) it’s available right now on Smashwords.

Self publishing the book was both stressful and really enjoyable as it turned out. Kind of appealed to the perfectionist in me, especially when it came to the formatting.

So please have a look, let people know it’s out there and help spread the word.

In truth this is a way to make the conclusion to Jeren & Shan’s story available to everyone who enjoyed the first two and wanted to find out the rest. So there you go. 🙂

Two lives, one love, one destiny.

In the wild north of Sheninglas, Jeren and Shan have finally made a home together. But the Holtlands are not finished with them yet. When an assassination attempt claims innocent lives, Jeren can stand it no longer. She must make a stand against the tyranny of her brother Gilliad before it is too late. Shan meanwhile struggles against the seed of darkness planted in him by the Fell’na sorceress and the growing knowledge that no matter what he does, he is losing his beloved wife. All their efforts to stay together just seem to tear them further apart, underlining the differences between them. When Jeren declares her intention to go to war, Shan makes one terrible mistake which changes everything.

Their destiny is written. How can it be changed again?

 

 

Coming Soon: The Wolf’s Destiny – cover reveal

Cover Love, New Books, New releases, , , ,

The Wolf’s Destiny is the final part of my series featuring Jeren and Shan (The Wolf’s Sister and The Wolf’s Mate, which were collected in the print edition Songs of the Wolf).  In order to get this one out, I had to light the gnat-signal and my writing friends came through for me yet again. The fabulous Dayna Hart has designed the most beautiful cover.

This time it’s novel length (how else was I going to pack everything in?) and will be available very soon. It’s going to be ebook only for now, and I’m handling this myself. No not at all terrifying.  More news on the way.

~~oOo~~

Two lives, one love, one destiny.

In the wild north of Sheninglas, Jeren and Shan have finally made a home together. But the Holtlands are not finished with them yet. When an assassination attempt claims innocent lives, Jeren can stand it no longer. She must make a stand against the tyranny of her brother Gilliad before it is too late. Shan meanwhile struggles against the seed of darkness planted in him by the Fell’na sorceress and the growing knowledge that no matter what he does, he is losing his beloved wife. All their efforts to stay together just seem to tear them further apart, underlining the differences between them. When Jeren declares her intention to go to war, Shan makes one terrible mistake which changes everything.

Their destiny is written. How can it be changed again?

Proofs–it exists!

Cover Love, New Books, New releases, Photo Moments, , ,

It’s almost a real book! I now have 5 whole copies to play with. Most of them are spoken for, alas.

But they are sooooo pretty. I believe that copies may be available for review from the Penguin Young Readers group though, but I can’t swear to that.

This is the official bit:

If you would like to request a copy of THE TREACHERY OF BEAUTIFUL THINGS to review on your blog, email Penguin Young Readers Group at yrmarketing (at) us.penguingroup (dot) com. Be sure to include your name, the name and URL of your blog, an address to which a possible review copy can be sent, plus any statistics and/or sample reviews. Please understand that galley quantities are limited and that not all requests can be filled.

Loughcrew – the research trip that wasn’t

Life Happens, links and stuff, Out and About, Photo Moments, WIP

So I promised to post about Loughcrew, or the stop off on our journey home from Ashford Castle where we did this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A rather important scene in my WIP is set in the Hag’s Cairn on Slieve na Cailleach (Loughcrew), and so I kindly suggested, as it was a lovely day and we were travelling along a completely different road, wouldn’t it be nice to take a detour and visit it. For fun. Because I’m like that. All about fun. And not about research at all. OH NO. NO RESEARCH INVOLVED HERE. *ahem*

Continue reading Loughcrew – the research trip that wasn’t →

A May Tree in November

Life Happens, Out and About, Photo Moments, Writing Life, ,

The May Tree, or Hawthorn, or the Fairy Tree features in my novel THE TREACHERY OF BEAUTIFUL THINGS. The tradition is to tie a rag or ribbon to the tree and make a wish. It’s a gnarled, thorny little tree, with the most beautiful white flowers in springtime and bright red berries in autumn. It is the Thorn in the saying Oak, Ash and Thorn, and grows in the most exposed areas, clinging to the sides of hills and the rocky earth.

We’ve been away for a couple of days, back to Ashford Castle in Mayo. I’ll have more photos and a post about it soon.

On the way back, we stopped off at Loughcrew, or Slieve na Cailleach (your spelling may vary). Slieve na Cailleach means Mountain of the Witch and is topped by a stone cairn called The Hag’s Cairn, which is about 6000 years old. It’s a fantastic place, really atmospheric and not a little creepy. I’ll have more on that too, including some compass related weirdness. But for this morning, here’s a photo I took on the way up there.

It’s a May Tree in November, with it’s rags and ribbons clearly displayed to the world as offerings to the fairies and the wishes of mankind. We added our own. I sort of felt I had to.May Tree in November 🙂

 

Treachery blurb

Uncategorized

The trees swallowed her brother whole. And Jenny was there to see it. Years later, when she returns to the woods where Tom was taken to say good-bye at last, she finds herself lured into a world where stunning beauty masks the most treacherous of evils, and strange and dangerous creatures await—creatures who seem to consider her the threat. Among them is Jack, mercurial and magnetic, with allegiances that shift as much as his moods. Determined to find her brother, with or without Jack’s help, Jenny struggles to navigate a faerie world where nothing is what it seems, no one is who they say, and she’s faced with a choice between salvation or sacrifice—and not just her own.

😀