Romy Gemmell's Blog, page 24

The Highland Lass Launch Party!

A huge welcome to the online launch party for my new Scottish novel, The Highland Lass , which is released today by Crooked Cat Publishing and is now available in e-book first across Amazon. The launch party is also happening on Facebook today, if you're on there.


This is the 'book of my heart' as it is mainly set around my own area in the west coast of Scotland and I've rewritten and redrafted it many times over the last few years until I was happy with it. It also received a very good report from the RNA New Writers' Scheme before I was a full member, but I rather neglected it for a while. However, it's been worth the wait to see it now published by Crooked Cat!

First of all, pull up a chair, make yourself comfortable and enjoy a cup of coffee and a yummy pastry while you have look at what's coming up.


Here's the trailer I made which you might enjoy as an alternate blurb - at least it has pictures!


And if you prefer a slightly fuller blurb, here it is:

Eilidh Campbell returns to her Scottish roots from America with one main aim: to discover the identity of her real father. But her mother’s past in Inverclyde is a mystery with family secrets, a book of Robert Burns’ poems with a hidden letter and a photograph link to the Holy Loch at Dunoon when the American Navy were in residence. Was her father the American naval officer in the photo?
Staying with her childhood friend, Kirsty, while searching for answers, Eilidh begins to fall in love with handsome Scot Lewis Grant, but just how free is he? Together they trace the story of Highland Mary and Robert Burns, with its echoes to her mother’s story. In short historical chapters, Highland Mary tells her story from 1785/6 in her own fictionalised voice. From Dunoon, to Ayrshire, with a couple of scenes in Glasgow and Loch Lomond, and culminating in Greenock, Eilidh finds the past is closer than she realises.
I'm going to be giving away a few small Scottish prizes today so let's start with the first question to win a packet of Scottish wild flower seeds (two winners).



Question 1: What is the national emblem of Scotland? (Hint: it's not whisky or tartan!) leave your answer in the comments to be in with a chance.





How about a little snack? These are the famous Tunnocks Tea Cakes - delicious mallow covered in milk chocolate on a biscuit base! Have a glass of juice with it while I look out some Scottish music.






Amongst the venues Eilidh and Lewis visit during the course of the story, one of the most significant for them as their relationship progresses is Loch Lomond. This is a beautiful song to go with the beautiful scenery.


Time for another question to win a tartan pen from Glasgow or a ladies tartan handkerchief - and neither is the tartan in the question!



Question 2: What are the two main colours in the Black Watch Tartan?

For those who are ready for something stronger, how about raising your glass with a wee dram, or sparkling Champagne. And maybe some chocolate to go with it, or a piece of home made fruit cake.

 
While you imbibe, here's a short excerpt from the modern part of the The Highland Lass when Eilidh first meets Lewis Grant:

Finding the memory box had only added to her questions. Apart from the old black journal handed down through the years, and the photograph of her mother with an unknown naval man, it was the note hidden inside a small book of Robert Burns’ poems that had convinced her she must come back to Scotland. Part letter, part verse, the words were branded on her mind.To my own Highland Lass,                         
Although I loved you deeply, I never loved you wisely,And though we now must part, you are ever in my heart.
I’ll never stop thinking of you, or loving you both. It was never meant to happen this way. You are so much stronger than I am.
Yours for aye and aye,RAt first, she thought she had found a rare letter from Robert Burns. Then the flowing black script made her hesitate. It was too modern and the verse too amateurish. But there seemed little doubt that whoever wrote the letter may well have been her natural father.    “You do know we’re in the air now, don’t you?”    Hearing the amused, rich Scottish tone, Eilidh frowned and opened her eyes. She hadn’t paid much attention to her travelling companions, apart from a cursory glance to acknowledge they existed; she’d been too busy worrying about take-off. She glared at the owner of the voice, indignant at her thoughts being interrupted. For all he knew she might have been in a deep sleep.
And now for another question to win one of two Celtic bookmarks.


Question 3: Which famous Scottish writer wrote The Waverley novels?

Talking of the Waverley - this is the name of our famous paddle steamer that sails up and down the River Clyde in summer, and further afield. Lewis mentions it to Eilidh at one point as it sometimes leaves from Greenock on its way to Dunoon or Rothesay or other island. One of the other elements in the novel is the mystery surrounding Eilidh's mother and the father she has never known.

During the 1960s and 70s and beyond, the American Navy was based in the Holy Loch and the families descended on the small seaside town of Dunoon. Lots of young men and women, like Eilidh's mother, enjoyed the touch of glamour with the dances both sides of the river - and this provides an improtant strand in the story.



While you imagine sailing on The Waverley, you can listen to some rousing Scottish pipe music.


Do we need some more cakes yet? Here you go.

 

Alternate short chapters of The Highland Lass are set in 1785-6 and are told in Highland Mary's own fictionalised voice. She is one of Robert Burns' great loves, partly because their love was short-lived. I've always been fascinated by her story as she's buried in my home town, Greenock.

 
Here's a short excerpt from the historical part of the novel, when Mary is living in Argyll before she goes to Ayrshire where she will meet Burns:

They say our land is so green because of the vast amount of rainfall but that’s a small
price to pay for such perfection. Besides, I love the rain and its softness against my skin.
One of my favourite games, when I have time, is to kirtle up my long skirts and run against
a light downpour, letting it finger my hair until the strands lie flat against my scalp. Ma
thinks I am soft in the head for liking the rain so much, but it makes me feel clean inside
out.
    “You’ll be catching your death of cold one of these days, my girl. I’ve never seen such
nonsense. I’ll be finding you more work to do if you have a notion for wasting time.” That’s
what Ma says most days.
    There is always more work to be done. With milking the cows, cleaning out the byre,
feeding the pigs and hens, or helping Ma with the baking or looking after the little ones, it is
a rare thing to find a bit of peace. Is that not the trouble with families? Maybe it would be
good to escape for a while, to see what it is like somewhere else. My brother, Robert, is to
go away soon, to the town of Greenock away down on the side of the River Clyde where he
will learn his trade in the great shipyards. At least distant family members live there and
he’ll be glad to be doing men’s work in a busy town. Perhaps I’ll be able to visit him once
he is settled, and become part of the busyness for a time.
    “Mary! Where are you, lass? We have need of you in here for a moment.”
    There! I am summoned to be told my fate. What shall it be? A dairymaid or such like, I
have no doubt.
    “Yes, Ma, I’m here.”
    They are sitting at the big wooden table in the kitchen where Pa is drinking his wee dram
of whisky and Ma is sorting through her sewing cotton and needles for the never-ending
mending. We all grow so quickly that hems are always being taken up for the younger ones
or let down for Robert and me.
    “Pa has secured a post for you, Mary, at a big house in Ayrshire, where a Mr Hamilton
has need of a nursemaid for a while. It will be good for you to get away from these small
parts and mayhap you’ll make a life for yourself down there.”
    Ma’s voice is brusque, but I’m not deceived. That’s her way when she does not want to
show too much emotion, and I hear the slight wistfulness in her voice as though she wished
she could have such a chance to escape.

Each of the modern chapters in the novel is headed with a couple of verses from different Burns poems. One of the most beautiful songs with such lovely sentiments is My Luv's Like a Red, Red Rose. This video is particularly good as it shows a variety of images of Burns and some of his loves.



Time for another question to win a copy of this little book of Robert Burns poems.


Question 4: Who did Burns eventually marry?

I think I've made you work hard enough, so here's a fun quiz that even has answers. To win the final prizes of a magnetic notebook (two winners) or a fridge magnet with one of our Scottish dialect words - Dreich - tell me what the dialect word for child is. Click on the link for the easy peasy quiz!

Easy Peasy Quiz





I'm also featured on Terry Odell's Blog today - please drop by if you have time and find out which new colour I would be!

Well, I hope I've stirred your interest in The Highland Lass. If you should wish to find out what happens to all three women in the three different periods: Eilidh, her mother (Mary), and Highland Mary, you'll find the book available on Amazon UK, US, Canada and Australia and elsewhere and I'd be very grateful to hear what you think of it!

Don't forget to leave the answers to the questions in the comments along with your email address and tell me which prize you would like to win - I'll get my husband to choose the winners at random.

Thank you so much for helping me to celebrate the launch of my new novel.
Rosemary

A Touch of Spring

What a difference it makes to see the sun at last! Even though I'm mostly an autumn and winter person, my spirits lifted this morning when I woke to a bright bedroom and no sound of rain or wind. It's been awful here the past wee while and I do hope we're over the worst. I love the sense of nature wakening up and the idea of renewal, of looking forward to whatever the next few months will bring.


The first excitement is the online launch of The Highland Lass on Tuesday, March 10th. Please come along and join in the fun on Facebook, if you're on there, or on the blog here - I'm partying on both! If you've been to one of my launch parties before, you know to expect a lot of interaction, a quiz or two and prizes. Here's the selection of small Scottish gifts I'll be giving away. Details on the day!


Then on the last weekend of the month, I'm heading off to the annual Scottish Association of Writers Conference which is now held in a lovely hotel north of Glasgow, from the Friday till the Sunday. I'm looking forward to it even more than usual this year, as I'm not adjudicating a competition or running a workshop. I'm aiming to relax, enjoy listening to others, catch up with friends and come home refreshed and inspired. That's the plan anyway!

Hope you're having a good weekend.
Rosemary

Half Price Reads for eBook Week

To celebrate Read an eBook Week, my Irish publisher, Tirgearr, is offering most of their books at half price on Smashwords from now through Saturday. You can see all the available books on the Tirgearr site and they each have a link to Smashwords. For instance my Tirgearr books are here.

Use the code RAE50 when buying on Smashwords - you can download in any e-format from there.

Rosemary

Pinterest

It's a while since I mentioned Pinterest on the blog (I think!) so I thought I'd update my thoughts on using this platform. Unlike many other social media sites, Pinterest is mainly visual - and that's what appeals to me as I love looking at images, whether that's photos, film or TV. Although I have several boards, I could easily spend even longer on the site at times as it's so interesting.

Evidently, it's now becoming the third most popular site with authors, after Facebook and Twitter. It's a simple idea: once you've signed up, you create boards of images - as many as you like. These can be anything at all you have an interest in from writing and food to history, and everything in between. The idea is to follow other boards and hope that people follow you. Whenever you pin an image to your boards, it's shared on the main entry page where everyone logs in. You can also share your images to Facebook if you wish.

You can either upload your own images to your boards or re-pin from other boards, which is kind of the idea behind Pinterest. The most useful idea for authors is to create a board for each of your novels, using images that have something to do with the setting, theme or characters, or anything else you can think of. It's also excellent for creating a mood board for a work in progress as images are often the best inspiration. You can find my boards here, if you want to see what I mean.

Let me know if you're already on Pinterest and we can follow each other!

Rosemary

Newsletter and Pre-ordering Books

That's my February newsletter off to all the lovely subscribers. If anyone would like to receive it, you just need to put your email address in the box on the side of this blog and click 'submit'. As well as some interesting links to publishers or competitions, I'm running a competition just for subscribers, to win a signed print copy of my short story collection, Beneath the Treetops, which contains fourteen stories. In addition to the eight stories that are in the e-book version, I've added some from the Reshaping the Past collection and at least one other story.






My publisher, Crooked Cat, has now put The Highland Lass onto pre-order across all Amazon platforms, including the UK, USA, Canada and Australia! How exciting - and it brings March 10th even closer now. This is a new facility and one which I haven't had experience of before but I believe you just click on the pre-order button on Amazon and, lo and behold, it gets downloaded to your kindle on publication day! I expect it will be available in other e-formats by then too, and I'm hoping print will eventually follow.

Time to Read

Reading has always been one of my favourite occupations for as long as I can remember. I haunted the local library, graduating from the children's section to the wonderful world of imagination waiting for me in the adult section and devoured many different genres along the way. I still enjoy having a variety of genres on the go; lots in print which I read downstairs and over a hundred on kindle which I read in bed, or when I can't be bothered holding a heavy book.
It's a sad fact of being a writer that we sometimes don't take the same time to read for pleasure - or maybe that only applies to some of us. I make sure I read every evening, both the current print choice and kindle choice, but I often think back to the days when I liked nothing more than settling down with my book in preference to any other activity. It's especially difficult if you enjoy TV dramas and films for the visual aspect of the story as much as I do!
But this last week, I succumbed to a nasty fluish cold virus and and my gallavanting was curtailed: no writing group, shopping trips or morning coffees (though I managed to sneak one of those in with a friend by Friday, and hope she didn't mind my weird hoarse voice). I certainly watched a few films, but couldn't be bothered with the computer or Internet as much. So I really enjoyed getting stuck into reading two different novels and it reminded me how good it is to have this means of escape whenever we feel like it. From now on, I'm aiming to fill even more of my time with reading - and I'm already convinced it will make me a better writer in the end.
Rosemary

Author Inspiration: Myra Duffy

It’s a pleasure to welcome again friend and Scottish crime author, Myra Duffy, to the Reading and Writing blog. Myra writes a popular cosy crime series set on the lovely Isle of Bute where her heroine, Alison Cameron, falls into one adventure after another. Ideal reading for anyone who likes a mystery or murder to solve, without the gruesome details. Myra kindly shares her inspiration for the latest two books below. But first here’s a little about Grave Matters at St Blane’s.
Grave Matters at St Blane’s
In this latest Isle of Bute mystery series Alison Cameron agrees to write a visitor guide for a theme park planned for Kingarth, but it proves to be a dangerous assignment. There is fierce local opposition to the proposal; the manager has left suddenly with no explanation and the on-site archaeologists appear to be in no hurry to complete their survey.
There is a rumour that Alexander Crombie, who is financing the project, is about to run out of money and then, when Alison thinks things can't get any worse, the first body is found.
Grave Matters at St Blane’s and the previous books in the series are available on Amazon UK and Amazon US. The print version is available at selected book shops including the Print Point on Bute.

Inspiration behind the Story
Last year I set myself the task of writing two mystery novels set on the Isle of Bute, featuring Alison Cameron, an ordinary woman who finds herself involved in extraordinary events.
I started Grave Matters at St Blane's early in the year, inspired by the site of the ruins of the 7th Century monastery at Kingarth, a place popular with tourists and with Christians who make the climb up a fairly steep hill to greet the sunrise on Easter morning. (More about this on my latest blog post at http://myraduffy-awriterslot.blogspot.com)
With the current fashion for historical theme parks I wondered how the islanders would respond to a proposal to build such a place at Kingarth, near St Blane's. I'd recently read an article on the Monymusk Reliquary on display at the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh and as by law you must have archaeologists present in such circumstances, it was inevitable there would be something found. And one thing, as they say, led to another!

Grave Matters at St Blane's was launched in August 2014, but by then Death at the Kyles of Bute was underway. I wanted to have this one out for Christmas as it is set at that time of year and there is a decidedly ghostly element in the story. Besides, the story of the old Kyles of Bute Hydro, set high on the hill above Port Bannatyne was one that had long intrigued me. It was a huge Hydro and Spa, popular with visitors and locals alike. What would happen if it was rebuilt? That was a plot hard to resist.
At the moment Grave Matters at St Blane's has just been released on Kindle as well as print. Death at the Kyles of Bute will follow in e-book later in the year.
With this latest Isle of Bute mystery bringing the total to six (plus the prequel When Old Ghosts Meet) my intention is to take some time to concentrate on the other novels languishing in various states of completion. But Alison Cameron keeps whispering in my ear that she's not quite finished yet!


Although Myra Duffy is a well published author of non-fiction, she's been writing fiction for as long as she can remember (winning a national competition when she was thirteen), but has in recent years turned to a life of crime. A writing life, she hastens to add.                   For many years she's been a frequent visitor to the Isle of Bute, just off the West coast of Scotland and a firm favourite with visitors from Glasgow. Holidays on the island inspired her to write the first Bute novel: The House at Ettrick Bay (an archaeological mystery) and this was followed by Last Ferry to Bute (dark deeds during a college reunion), Last Dance at the Rothesay Pavilion(past events cast a long shadow as the Pavilion is refurbished), Endgame at Port Bannatyne (the world of film making hides a deadly secret), Grave Matters at St Blanes's (a proposal to build a theme park is the catalyst for violent events) and Death at the Kyles of Bute (ghostly happenings as the Kyles of Bute Hydro is re-opened).
Myra has been published in various magazines such as My Weekly and in the Ireland's Own anthology and has also won a number of awards for short stories, poetry and non-fiction, but novel writing is what she enjoys most.
You can find out more about Myra's writing on her AmazonCentral page, or at her website or on her blog and she can be found on Facebook and Twitter (@duffy_myra).

Very Inspiring Blog Award

It's been a while since I received a blog award so I'm pleased to accept this one with thanks from Melanie Robertson-King, especially since I don't have to answer too many questions!


The rules for accepting this award are:

Thank the person who nominated you, and link to their blog. Display the award logo. Nominate other blogs and provide a link where they may be found (I'm not giving a number here as it will differ between people). Go to their blog, leave a comment to let them know they have been nominated, and where to find the information they need to accept. 
Mention three things that inspired you the most during the past few weeks.

1. The beautiful scenery around where I live in the west coast of Scotland - especially during the recent snow and ice.

2. My wee granddaughter who I don't see often enough and who is such a delight to play with - they grow so fast!

3. The two most recent books I finished: one in print (The Taxidermist's Daughter by Kate Mosse) and one on kindle (The Ghostly Father by Sue Barnard).

Now I'm nominating the following blogs/bloggers, should they wish to accept - these are just some that I really enjoy reading .

Through the Looking Glass - inspiring daughter!
Carol's Corner
Frances Garrood
Rena George
Wendy's Writing Now
Patsy Collins
First Draft Cafe
Burggraf's Blog
A Likely Story

Encouragement to Persevere

Sometimes, writers need a little encouragement along the way when we're slogging away at a lengthy novel, or sending work out without success. We can either give up and find work outside the home, or get involved in another absorbing interest that sees quicker results. However, I suspect most writers cannot give up that urge to write and for many, the act of writing itself is enough reward.

I'm in both camps: I wouldn't be able to give up writing completely, and I also want to be published and earn from my work where possible. So, it's immensely encouraging to see my words in print or online every now and then, especially as a change from writing longer fiction. As many of you know, I write short stories, articles, poetry and children's fiction in addition to novels and novellas and that's unlikely to change!

Today, I'm delighted to see my article on D.H. Lawrence published in Thresholds online. I was fascinated by Lawrence's life and work when studying him in my literature degree and wanted to examine some of his short stories, as opposed to his more famous novels for a change.

At the end of last week, I was surprised and pleased to see my little flash fiction story get on the longlist of the recent Brilliant Flash Fiction contest which had a theme of 'Life is Good', as I just emailed it in at the last moment. It may not have reached higher up the list, but it's a pleasure none the less to know it's published on their website! You have to scroll right down, if you want to read it.

If we happen to be writing novels, there is another advantage of having these little bits and pieces published now and then: it brings our name to a wider audience perhaps. It's especially helpful if we're allowed an author profile or website address at the end, as with the Thresholds site.

So, don't give up, whatever stage you're at, and do try different genres and varieties of writing - you never know where it might lead!

Rosemary

Virtual Romance Festival

Harper Collins and Harlequin Mills and Boon are organising another Virtual Romance Festival weekend on Saturday and Sunday, 7th and 8th February. Last year’s was really enjoyable, interesting and informative – but mostly fun! 
It usually takes place on Facebook, Twitter and on their Website. 
You can register for free tickets here, which means they’ll let you know the complete timetable of events nearer the time.