Meredith R. Stoddard's Blog, page 2

Setting Tour - Edinburgh

Scottish settings of the Once & Future series.

Although, the Once & Future Series is fantasy, there are some very real places that play an important part in the story. These are places that you as the reader can even visit. So we’re going to go on a little tour of those places and talk about their history and how they relate to Sarah and Dermot’s story.

First, we’ll talk about the settings in Scotland, Then we’ll shift to the settings from the earlier books. This post will start this series off with a tour of the Edinburgh that you read about in Thrice to Thine and Nothing Good Gets Away.

Here are the key spots in Edinburgh that you might want to know. The Old TownThe New TownThe MoundBernard TerracePolwarth TerraceDean VillageThe VaultsMoray PlaceThe Old Town

Edinburgh’s Old town is the oldest part of a truly old city. This is the part of the city that a lot of people think of when you say Edinburgh. It serves as the cultural center and is home to Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood House, Scottish Parliament, the National Museum of Scotland and some of the city’s oldest churches. Its streets are crammed with stone buildings some of which are nearly on top of each other. Unlike the deliberately laid out streets of The New Town, the Old Town’s has a few major thoroughfares that are connected and bisected by narrow closes and wynds. As the centuries have gone by, this part of town has been built up layer by layer, and some of the ancient closes and bridges were enclosed as newer buildings and streets were built over them. Visitors to Edinburgh can tour Mary King’s Close to get a picture of what some of these closes were like before they were closed off. We’ll talk about that some more when we talk about the Vaults.

The New Town

The New Town isn’t as new as it sounds. It was built in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries after the Nor Loch was drained to make way for what is now Princes Street Gardens and Waverley Train Station. Across that reclaimed land from Old Town, a new and modern town was planned with park land and an organized grid of streets. It is characterized by Georgian architecture, squares, and wide avenues. Bute House, the home of Scotland’s First minister is in the New Town as well as the National Gallery of Scotland, the Balmoral Hotel, and Moray Place.

The Mound

When the foundations were dug for the buildings of the New Town, the rubble was piled at one end of the basin that was once the Nor Loch. Eventually, the five hundred thousand tons of earth and stone formed an embankment large enough to link the Old Town with the New Town. When businesses moved into to newly created land, they weren’t the most savory. Gambling houses, black market wares and snake oil sellers abounded until the 1840’s when some of the disreputable businesses were moved out to make way for the National Gallery of Scotland. Since that change was made, more reputable businesses have moved in and The Mound has become a commercial center, including the headquarters of the Bank of Scotland. For Once & Future purposes, it’s also the location of the headquarters of Alba Petroleum.

Bernard Terrace

Near Edinburgh University between The Meadows and the Salisbury Crags is the quiet side street of Bernard Terrace. It is characterized by its apartment buildings and tightly packed row houses and its view of Arthur’s Seat rising above the skyline. The houses in this image are similar to the house that Sarah, and Dermot live in on Bernard Terrace. Their house is divided into flats.

Polwarth Terrace

Polwarth Terrace is a wide partially tree-lined avenue in Edinburgh’s Morningside ward. Much of it runs along the Union Canal across from Harrison Park. While it is not Edinburgh’s poshest neighborhood, it does boast a few multi-million pound homes, and a central location in the city. It’s a great location for an executive with political ambitions like our own James Stuart.

Dean Village

Dean village is arguably the most picturesque part of Edinburgh. Through its center runs the Water of Leith, the main river that meanders through the city. The curve where Dean Village was established was a prime location for grain mills powered by the flowing water. The river and the steep ground around the village kept it separate from the city for centuries until the Dean Bridge was opened in 1833. This opened the land to the west to expansion from Edinburgh. It also to some extent protected Dean Village from modernization. The village’s low ground in the curve of the river meant that traffic across the bridge bypassed the village, and the city grew around it. Eventually, larger grain mills downriver were too much competition for the mills in Dean Village resulting in economic decline. Much of the village fell into decay until the 1970’s when revitalization efforts began to bring it back to its former glory. Now, it is a charmingly quiet corner of a bustling city. Its old architecture and proximity to parkland make it the perfect, peaceful home base for an old Edinburgh fixture like Lyall Green.

The Southbridge Vaults

Edinburgh is built on seven natural hills, which made the ground of Castle Hill easy to defend and helped the city when building fortifications like the Flodden Wall. However, the need for defense meant that the citizens of Edinburgh over the centuries found themselves crammed into a relatively small geographic footprint. This resulted in the city growing more up than out. That is until the 18th and 19th centuries when bridges began to be built spanning the ravines between the hills and connecting the city with the land around it. The Southbridge is a prime example. Built in the late 18th century, the Southbridge spans the low ground from the Old Town to high ground in the south. Made up of nineteen stone arches constructed from the rubble of three closes that were demolished to make room, the “bridge” is more than just for traffic into and out of the city. Quickly vendors moved in building shops to cater to the passing traffic. In the way of tight crowded cities, people moved in to fill every available space. In time most of the arches were closed off and some had floors added to give them multiple stories, resulting in as many as 120 separate vaults. Tenements, shops and some less than respectable businesses moved in and so did crime, poverty, and disease. Within a hundred years of the bridge opening, the city realized that something needed to be done about the vaults and they were slowly filled with rubble, and sealed off. Roughly a century later, Scottish Rugby player Norrie Rowan stumbled onto a tunnel access to the vaults which he later used to help a Romanian Rugby player defect and seek asylum. Some say that the vaults were never completely sealed off and were used to smuggle contraband in the intervening years, which of course is why Dermot’s pal Desmond Thompson knows how to navigate them.

Rowan and his son worked to remove much of the rubble from the vaults in the 1990’s. Now some of the vaults are open to tours and others have been converted into entertainment venues.

A very good two-part documentary about Moray Place that you can watch on youtube.

Moray Place

As the New Town expanded, the upper crust of Edinburgh society felt the need to escape the close and crowded confines of the Old Town. In the early 19th century, the 10th Earl of Moray stepped into the breach. His father had acquired land between the developing New Town and the Water of Leith. Francis Stuart hired architect James Gillespie Graham to design an ambitious planned community. Made up of large townhouses, private gardens, parkland and even a small commercial street, the Moray Estate was a self contained oasis for the highest echelon of Edinburgh. Although in recent decades, more business has moved in and many of the townhouses have been divided into flats, some of the same families remain. For our purposes, that includes Walter Stuart, who would doubtless never give up such prime real estate.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my virtual tour of Once & Future sites in Edinburgh. Next time, we’ll follow the trail of the Scots Preservation Research Team that you read about in Thrice to Thine.

Thank you

I’m not going to lie, this book launch has been tough. The pandemic slowed down the process of writing and revising this book to the point that it took me a good eight to ten months longer than I intended. Before this all started, I thought we’d be celebrating the release of Book 5 right about now. But here we are, after a year of mask wearing and staying at home, away from extended family, playing the human school bell. It was hard some days to keep writing or revising. 

 There were two things that kept me going. One is the fact that through all of this these characters still talk to me. Sarah still cries on my shoulder, and Dermot still takes up space in my mind, usually brooding in a corner somewhere. They still have mountains to climb, caves to feel their way through and emotional swamps to navigate. 

 The other thing is that I knew you all were waiting for it. You’ve been emailing me and messaging me and talking to me asking about it, telling me that you can’t wait for it. It has meant so much to me. It always does. Even on the days when I’m beating myself up about not writing faster (and I do), or when I’m wondering if I’ll ever sell another book because people just aren’t reading as much as you’d think they would when they’re stuck at home, or when I can’t manage to string two words together, I know that someone is waiting for it. And that makes it worth pushing my way through the self-doubt and the recriminations.

 In the midst of all of that the week before this book launch, there was some family drama that I won’t get into. But it meant that shouting/pushing/selling books was not really at the top of my mind for the last couple of weeks. I couldn’t delay the launch, because it had already been delayed too long. I went ahead even though my mind was not as focused as I would have liked. In spite of all that, this was my best book launch yet. 

 So, thank you.

 Thank you to my alpha reader/cheerleader/therapist/husband. You know all that you do, and I couldn’t do any of this without you.

 Thank you to my reader/friends. Whether we met through my books or our love of someone else’s books, or we knew each other before you are my soul sisters. You’re the ones who always show up for signings, buy me coffee, check in, give me hugs when I need them even if they’re just virtual. You are all amazing, and it’s hard even for me to put into words how much your friendship means to me.

 Thank you to my beta readers who have given me encouragement and criticism. I’m a one-woman shop, and I need other eyes on my work before it goes to market. Your feedback makes the books better.

 Thank you to my ARC team. Your reviews have made a great start to getting the new book on the boards and helping anyone on the fence about whether they should give the series more of their time. 

 Thank you to everyone who has written a review. Just like post engagement, the more reviews and/or ratings a book has, the more book sellers’ algorithms will suggest them. 

 Thank you to anyone who preordered the book and to anyone who has bought it. Book sales are like a snowball. The most people who buy them, the more people will see them and then even more will buy them. That preorder boost on launch day helps start that snowball rolling downhill.

 Thank you to everyone who has tweeted, messaged, commented on my posts about the books. This is a lonely business, and this year it was even lonelier, but your messages and encouragement keep me going. Beyond that, the more engagement authors get on our posts, the more people the algorithms show those posts to. And that makes our books more discoverable. 

 Thank you to everyone who has retweeted, shared, told a friend to check them out. Word of mouth is the most effective way to sell books. Yeah, reviews help, ads help, but nothing works like telling a friend.

 Thank you to the designers of the apps that enabled me to schedule posts early and automate things. So that even when my mind is elsewhere because this year has been full of distractions, I’m still posting about my books, and building my platform. Also, it’s so much fun to see my husband’s face when I am sitting next to him drinking my morning coffee or out for a walk and he gets a notification that I’ve tweeted. Then he turns to me with wide eyes and asks how I can be tweeting when my phone is in my pocket. I just shrug and say, “Magic.”

 And as always, thank you to my grandmother for giving me a love of stories, and for teaching me that everyone no matter who they are has a story worth telling.

Character Interview - Dermot Sinclair

I recently asked my readers what questions they would like to ask Dermot Sinclair of the Once & Future Series if they could interview her. I have supplemented their questions with a few of my own. For our purposes this interview will take place between the end of Thrice to Thine (Book 3) and the beginning of Nothing Good Gets Away (Book 4).

You’ve had a varied career, the army, private security, academia, but you are often thwarted by someone else’s agenda. What are your professional goals?

I think my goals are a lot like Sarah’s. I want to earn my doctorate, continue working at what I’m passionate about. For Sarah, it’s music. For me, it’s stories. I’m fascinated to see how the legends that my mother spent her life studying have influenced the stories that we still tell today. It’s fascinating to see how those stories have evolved and changed. It tells the story of the Gaels through the centuries.

If you hadn’t been injured, do you think you would still be in the army?

I think academia was always calling to me. It’s sort of the family business. Still, the army taught me a lot. I met a lot of great people and traveled to places that I probably would never have gone to on my own. And I have to admit after a sort of nomadic childhood, I liked the structure of it. If I hadn’t been injured, I definitely would have stayed in longer than I did, but I don’t think I would have made a career out of it.

What has your mother told you about your father?

(Sighs, head shaking.) Nothing. Never a mention, not even to say that I have my father’s eyes, or chin, or temper. When I was a boy, I fancied that Henry Stuart was my father. He and my mum were great friends, and he was always this larger-than-life character. But neither of them ever said anything, and I doubt we would have been spent so much time with the Stuarts if Lady Anne suspected that. No, my father was probably one of my mother’s colleagues that she had a fling with.

What would you do, how would you feel if you found out Walter Stuart is your father?

That’s not possible. (Laughs) My mother doesna like Walter any more than I do. (Looks off into the distance thoughtfully.) No, not possible.

James Stuart is rich, handsome, powerful, and charming. He says he loves Sarah. Do you ever worry that she might choose him?

I did. I mean that was the plan all along. I tried to push her to choose him. (Smiles.) There are more important things to her than money or status. She’s made her choice clear, and she’s tenacious when she sets her mind on something. I don’t worry about her choices anymore.

If you and Sarah were truly free to live and be yourselves together, where do you think you would spend your life together? The Highlands, North Carolina? Somewhere else?

Wherever she is is my home. The place doesna matter.

Character Interview - Sarah MacAlpin

I recently asked my readers what questions they would like to ask Sarah MacAlpin of the Once & Future Series if they could interview her. I have supplemented their questions with a few of my own. For our purposes this interview will take place between the end of Thrice to Thine (Book 3) and the beginning of Nothing Good Gets Away (Book 4).

What do you like about living in Scotland?

There’s so much to love. I can’t get enough of the scenery whether I’m in a city, or in the wilderness. It’s all beautiful. I think my favorite thing though, is the people. There is such a sense of community here. In the States we have so much more land, and people are so spread out that we have a tendency to live in their own little bubbles. Here, I see a lot more camaraderie and generosity among people, even strangers. Most of the people I’ve met have been friendly and willing to lend a hand.

Do you dream in English or Gaelic?

Interesting question. I know language learners always think it’s a good sign when they start dreaming in their new language. I’ve been speaking both for so long, they both come naturally. I think in my dreams it depends on who and what I’m dreaming about. If it’s something from my childhood, it’s usually in Gaelic unless it’s about Duff. If it relates to more recent events, then it’s usually in English. The dream that I remember the most, the one about my mother is usually in English. Mama always spoke English when I was a little girl. She didn’t want me to start school only knowing Gaelic.

Who do you miss most of your friends in Chapel Hill?

Amy. I don’t even have to think hard about it. I know we weren’t on the greatest terms when I left, but she’s been my closest friend for years now. That’s not something I’ll let go easily. I don’t call her as often as I should because, what would I tell her? So much has happened, but would she honestly believe any of it? Would any of my friends from home? I also don’t want to get her mixed up in this again. This whole mess with the Stuarts has already caused her enough heartache.

Is there anything you miss about Kettle Holler?

Sure. I miss the morning mist on the mountains, although the mornings in the Highlands are a very much like that. I miss the smell of honeysuckle in June, and wood smoke in the winter. I miss the quiet. Still I wouldn’t trade that for the opportunities that I’ve had since leaving, or the diversity of the people I’ve met. It’s nice to be just a face in the crowd, and not the outcast daughter of the town’s favorite tragic story.

You recently discovered that you have a half-brother and half-sister. How does it feel to find out you have siblings?

It’s kind of amazing, and surprising. Growing up it was just me and Granny, and sometimes Duff. We were a pretty small family. And when Granny died, I felt very alone. Now, I have more family than I’ve ever had. I’m not surprised that Rab and Sheila have children. I am surprised that Ruaraidh seemed to take to me instantly. He says he’s always known I was out there somewhere. He knew our father regretted not knowing me or standing up for my mother. I guess seeing our father’s guilt all these years made him more sympathetic. Who knows if our sister will feel the same? I still haven’t met her. I think it would be nice to have a sister. I hope she doesn’t blame me for all the heartache our father caused them.

What would convince you that Mr. Green is who/what he says he is?

Lyall Green is certainly an enigma. It’s hard to imagine that he’s as old as he says he is, or that he’s some sort of mystic observer. I’ve met people before who claimed to be wizards or ‘pagan mystics’. They’re usually people who have read too many books on metaphysics and folk religions and adopted some sort of hodge podge of pre-Christian superstition with eastern religions. They’re usually just folks looking for something that speaks to them, or charlatans looking to fleece those people. But I’ve seen things around Lyall Green that I can’t explain. I don’t know what would convince me for sure. But I know there is something up with that guy.

Do you really think James I every truly going to believe that you care for him only as a friend?

Available Tuesday April 20th.

Oh, I think he might believe that already. He’s just not willing to accept that we will only ever be friends. James isn’t used to hearing the word ‘no’. Unfortunately, my willingness to refuse him, seems to make me more intriguing to him. I think he believes that he loves me and I think he believes that he can convince me to love him if he just charms me enough or finds the right incentive. I feel kind of bad for him. He’s not a bad person, but because of his position, every relationship he has is almost inherently mercenary. Almost everyone he meets wants something from him. The fact that I don’t, probably makes me that much more attractive.

Some of these questions will be answered or our view of some characters may change in Nothing Good Gets Away. I can’t wait for everyone to read it. It will be out on 4/20.

I'm feeling generous!

I am so excited about the release of Nothing Good Gets Away that I am feeling super generous. But I also need your help to spread the word. With literally millions of books on the market, word of mouth sells more books than any other means. So, please tell everyone you can think of.

First, The River Maiden is FREE! If you’ve ever wanted to get a friend hooked on the series. Or if you’ve been watching it, but haven’t pulled the trigger yet. Now is the time. You can get it free from most ebook retailers.

When a modern, independent woman’s plans collide with an ancient prophecy, her life hangs in the balance.

“Some of us just keep our ghosts closer to the surface.”

Sarah MacAlpin has plenty of ghosts. Her mother mental illness plagued her early years, and her grandmother who raised her died when she was just eighteen. In spite of her difficult upbringing she’s built a life for herself. One of the things that still haunts her is a song that her grandmother taught her. Growing up in the Blue Ridge mountains there were plenty of folk songs to learn, but the one Granny taught her was from her home in Scotland, in Gaelic, and unlike any other Sarah has heard.

Her fascination with that song and many others leads her to pursue a career in folklore. While researching her dissertation, she hears another version of her grandmother’s song from a woman in Nova Scotia. Thinking it is the key to her dissertation thesis and her academic future, she pursues that song with the help of a new colleague from Scotland, Dermot Sinclair. Trust doesn’t come easy for Sarah. In spite of her attraction to Dermot, she isn’t sure that he is being entirely honest with her.

But there is something more sinister than the mysterious Scot lurking around Sarah’s life. A series of near accidents and strained relationships have her on edge. She begins to worry for her own mental health as her research progresses, but her life begins to unravel. Can she keep it together long enough to find the source of the song?

Read the first in the series where Celtic legends and modern life blend into an adventure full of Celts, cauldrons, mystery and moonshine.

Next, this month’s Newsletter giveaway is a signed paperback of Nothing Good Gets Away: Once & Future Book 4. To enter this you need to be subscribed to my newsletter. You can subscribe here.

What would you sacrifice for the people you love?

Sarah and Dermot are determined to put the Stuarts' ambitious schemes behind them, and start a new life. They're even willing to give up their families and careers. But getting out of Scotland isn't going to be easy. There are obstacles all around them. The Stuarts have money, power and a private security force. More than that they have the scheming mind of Walter Stuart, who means to see his nephew leading an independent Scotland with Sarah by his side.

When their escape plan goes awry Sarah gambles their future on a theory she has. One that could upend all the Stuart plans. To test her theory the Stuarts agree to let her people decide using the way that they have done matchmaking for countless generations. The Nine are willing to oblige her, but the results raise more questions than they answer.

Dermot is desperate to declare independence from the Stuarts. Their agenda has governed too much of his life for too long. The more he tries to escape, the deeper into their web he is pulled. When the Auld Folk fail to provide the answer he and Sarah are looking for, he begins to doubt everything and everyone, even Sarah.

On her own and out of options Sarah must decide how she can protect herself and the people she loves.

For an excerpt and teasers click here.

Last and most definitely not least. I am giving away a $50 Amazon Gift Card.

This one is special, because you can amplify your chances to win by:

Sharing the giveaway with friends

Tweeting about it

Following me on Twitter

Visiting my Facebook page

Click here to enter the giveaway on Rafflecopter

Of course all of this is about getting the word out about the release of Nothing Good Gets Away: Once & Future Book 4. It will be released on April 20th, but you can preorder the Kindle edition now.

Sometimes It's a Sprint

Yeah, conventional wisdom says that this whole publishing thing is a marathon and not a sprint. But when you’re actually writing books, sprinting can be a big help.

Anyone who has done NaNoWriMo has probably done sprints. You might also have heard of this referred to as the Pomodoro Technique. This technique is designed to help you shut out distractions and get work done in short bursts of productivity. I found this especially helpful when my kids were younger. I had to cram my writing time into naptime, after bedtime, and between getting snacks. I started with 25 minute blocks, but you can start with 15 minutes, and expand as you get more productive or carve more writing time out of your schedule.

Of course, I cut my professional teeth in the corporate world of metrics and constant process improvement. I have an almost compulsive need to know how effective my sprints are. So, I track how many words I write in each sprint, and how long that sprint is. You might be thinking, ‘Wow. Meredith, that sounds borderline obsessive.’ But hear me out. If I’m tracking the productivity of my sprints, and then I think about the conditions during that sprint, I can better plan for productivity. I can figure out the best writing location by correlating where I was during my most productive sprints. I can also learn which music helps me focus best, or even which font (Yes, that can affect how productive I am.) How was I feeling on those super productive days? Did exercise before writing? How much coffee did I have that day? Was I at home, or at one of my public writing spots? There are so many factors that can affect creativity and paying attention to those things helps make me more productive.

I used to keep track of these sprints on my planner pages, but most planners don’t provide room for that. And I want to be able to review my sprints without having to filter through my old appointments and to do lists. So, I made some pages that will record the information I want when tracking my sprints and put them into a Writing Sprint Tracker.

Building Blocks

Anyone who has ever managed a project can tell you that to meet your project goal, you first start by breaking the project down into smaller goals. Writing a book is no different. This is why I outline. Writing sprints are the smallest of the building blocks toward reaching your goal of a completed book.

 

You start with your overall word goal for your book. Conventional wisdom in the publishing industry can give you some ideal word counts for the genre that you might be writing in. Then you’ll want to break your project into manageable chunks. You can do that using acts like a play, or larger topics within your work if you’re writing non-fiction. Then you’ll want to subdivide those larger chunks into smaller blocks. If you’ve read my post about my pre-writing process, you’ll know that I’m a fan of the Save the Cat beat sheets for providing a framework.

  I designed the Project Pages in my Sprint Tracker to include enough space for the story beats. You can set target word goals for each beat and record them on the page. As you progress through your project, you can color in your progress on the progress meter.  Once you have your goals set, you can get writing. Sprint Pages give you a place to record the duration and word count of your sprints. I also give you a formula for calculating your average productivity per sprint. This can help you estimate the time it will take to finish your project. You can also use the dates to get a better understanding of the factors that affect productivity for you. You can get a printable version of my Writing Sprint Tracker in my etsy store or a conveniently sized paperback version on Amazon.

Nothing Good Gets Away Now available for Preorder

Preorder has begun for Nothing Good Gets Away: Once & Future Book 4. I’m so excited for you all to get your hands on this book. I know some of you have been waiting for it. Thanks to the plague it has taken me much longer than I thought it would to get this book ready to publish, but we’re almost there.

Because I love you all so much, I’m including the first chapter of Nothing Good Get Away below. If you recall, or reread Thrice to Thine left a battered and exhausted Sarah and Dermot in a hotel in Edinburgh planning their escape from the Stuarts and Scotland. Nothing Good will pic up right where Thrice to Thine left off. I hope you enjoy.

At the bottom you’ll find some additional visual teasers.

CHAPTER 1

 

Edinburgh, Scotland

April 1996

 

Morning came too soon and not soon enough. In the blue-gray hour before dawn, Sarah drifted between sleep and self-doubt. Each time she opened her eyes in the unfamiliar hotel bed, the light filtering through the blinds grew brighter and the pressure in her chest mounted. For once the drowning feeling that had plagued her dreams since childhood now came to her when she woke. Then Dermot would shift in his sleep, pulling her closer. His embrace making her warm and languid, she would relax enough to drift off again. Her dreams in those brief bouts of sleep were filled with castles and car accidents, princes and prophecies, wizards and women lost in time.

Finally, she opened her eyes to see Dermot standing in front of the window. The rising sun struck his back sending shafts of light around him. His silhouette was rimmed with it like golden armor. Her knight, her champion. He was giving up everything to be with her, to live a life always looking over their shoulders and wondering what would happen to the friends and family they left behind. What would happen to his mother? She wondered once again how she could possibly be worthy of that sacrifice.

“Good, ye’re awake.” He offered her his hand. She took it, and he pulled her into a sitting position. Planting a kiss on her forehead. “We have time for a shower, but we’ve got to get going.”

Sarah rubbed her eyes. As sleep ebbed away, the here and now came back into focus. Her legs were sore from trekking through the Highlands followed by hours in the car. Her elbow ached where it had been dislocated in the car accident two days ago. Her brother had warned her it would hurt for a few days when he had popped it back into place. Had that really only been two days ago?

Dermot started the shower in the bathroom. He returned to rummage around in a plastic bag on the dresser retrieving a bottle of antiseptic. “Come on, sleepyhead. We need to treat those cuts again. Gorse thorns can cause terrible infections.”

Sarah looked down at the lattice of scratches that covered her arms and part of her legs. She had fallen out of their wrecked car directly into a gorse bush. Considering the recent turn her life had taken, it would be just her luck to escape the paparazzi, and the clutches of the Stuarts only to die of sepsis that she got from a gorse thorn covered in sheep poo. That thought got her out of bed and into the shower. Although it was definitely nice to find a naked and wet Dermot Sinclair waiting there to wash her back. All they had to do today was make it out of Scotland. Then they might just have a chance.

 ***

They stepped off the bus on Princes Street near North Bridge. Slinging his bag over his shoulder, Dermot surveyed the street hoping that the heavy foot traffic meant they could blend in. Sarah slipped her hand into his and their fingers laced together. The coiled tension that knotted the muscles in his shoulders eased a fraction. He marveled at the experience of actually holding her hand in a public place. After hiding his feelings for her for so long, to stand in the sun with her was indescribable. Soon they would be able to live together without any restrictions. As soon as they met up with Des, Sarah MacAlpin and Dermot Sinclair would disappear. They would start again with new identities.

He lifted their joined hands and kissed the back of hers. She rested her cheek on his arm. Turning, he found her eyes on him, crystalline green and brimming with love. Her hair was once again tucked up under a brown knit hat to hide her distinctive curls. He flashed back to the wee hours of the morning when she’d awakened him and they’d made love again, her hair brushing his chest soft and ephemeral. She squeezed his hand in reassurance.

Someone on the street bumped his other shoulder reminding him that they needed to be moving. They merged into the flow of pedestrians up North Bridge. To the High Street before turning down Cockburn. The cafe where he was to meet Des was a few doors past Fleshmarket Close. He walked Sarah to a tourist shop across the street. He didn’t like leaving her there, but after Des’s warning the day before, he wasn’t entirely sure he could trust his old friend. She could watch from a safe distance here and her American accent wouldn’t be noticeable among the tourists.

They spent a few moments browsing the souvenirs. The shop keeper fortunately seemed largely indifferent to the half dozen shopping tourists. After a few minutes, he picked a snow globe from a shelf and stepped closer to Sarah, who was combing through a rack of tartan ties.

“Amy would love this.” He spoke loud enough for the middle-aged woman a few feet away to hear.

Sarah leaned in as if to look at the snow globe. “You’re right. She would.”

In a low voice. “I’m going. If anything, anything happens across the street, or if I’m not back in ten minutes…”

“Don’t say it.” She hissed.

“…Take yer papers and go. Start a life somewhere.”

“I’m not leaving you.” She was adamant.

He appreciated her tenacity, but he hoped that she would leave if it came to that. Behind her, another tourist walked within earshot. “I think that saltire tie would be great for yer da.”

Sarah looked over her shoulder at the older man who was a few feet away looking at gold club covers. She turned back to him and lowered her voice to just above a whisper. “I wouldn’t blame you if you changed your mind. But if that’s what this is, just tell me now.”

He smoothed a hand down her arm and caught her eyes with his. “My mum told me to take care of ye. That’s what I mean to do. Nothing else matters.”

“You’re giving up so much.”

“Ye’re worth it. We are worth it. Never doubt that.” He whispered. “Dinna be here in ten minutes whether I come back or not.”

She handed him the snow globe before pressing herself against him with a devilish look in her eyes. “Have I mentioned how much I liked waking up next to you this morning?”

God, he loved her. “I mean it. Stay safe, no matter what.” He planted a kiss at her temple and deposited the snow globe on the shelf beside them. He left making his way across the street.

 ***

 Sarah left the ties and positioned herself by a rack of T-shirts where she could watch the cafe through the shop window. She saw Dermot cross the street and go inside. Naturally, the mysterious Des had not picked a table near a window for their meeting. Dermot disappeared behind the glare of the sun on the glass. Sarah forced herself to look at the shirts to keep up the pretense of souvenir shopping. She rolled her eyes at one that read ‘Kilt Inspector’ and flipped past a bright yellow one with the Stuart lion rampant. She couldn’t help feeling as if they were being stalked by that lion. There she was hiding in the tall grass hoping that she and Dermot could get to a safe place before the Stuarts could devour them.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a motion from across the street. A couple of women were coming out of the cafe laughing at something. They strode on down the street continuing their conversation. Sarah shifted her eyes back to the cafe. All she saw was a typical day on a street in the Old Town. Tourists strolled by pointing at the architecture of the stone buildings or pulling their suitcases down the steep, curving street to Waverley Station. Locals bustled by on their way to work. Nothing out of the ordinary. No stalking lions. She checked her watch. Five minutes.

Another shopper began flipping through the shirts on the opposite side of the rack, and Sarah’s pulse leapt. She hoped that tourists would be too interested in their own travels to pay attention to the local news or tabloids. It was why she had stayed at the hotel yesterday while Dermot had run about town getting cash and if all went right across the street a new identity. It had been weeks since the tabloids had first published her picture and connected her to billionaire playboy James Stuart. Weeks of cramming her hair into a hat and wearing fake glasses. Weeks of living in fear of someone recognizing her. Now that she and Dermot had disappeared after getting run off the road by an assassin in the Highlands, James himself was flashing her picture all over television. If they stayed in Scotland much longer the hat and glasses were not going to be enough of a disguise. Sarah glanced up at the woman who gave her a cordial smile and moved on to the next rack that held rugby shirts.

She felt a second of relief before checking her watch again. Seven minutes. Dermot better come back soon, or she might have to go into the cafe to get him. She had no intention of leaving without him, even if that was what he’d told her. With all that he was willing to give up for her, she rather brave the lion than be without him. She picked a shirt with some clan badge on it and held it up in front of the window. Looking past the shirt she eyed the cafe and tried not to look like a ball of nerves.

You can preorder Nothing Good Gets Away: Once & Future Book 4 here.

Cover Reveal! Nothing Good Gets Away

Conventional wisdom says that indie writers should NOT design their own covers. I understand that, but way back when I first published The River Maiden, I hired a cover designer. She did a fine job, but it still didn’t quite capture what I wanted and (the is key) it didn’t look great in thumbnail size. It’s a delicate balance of looking good in paperback size, but also being eye catching in thumbnail. Then I got hooked on Canva and designed a cover for Cauldron that I really liked. So, I went back and redesigned the cover for The River Maiden and haven’t looked back.

I mocked up several designs for the next three books. I like to design the covers in groups so that the related books look similar. This book, and the next two after it will follow a similar motif. They are different from the first trilogy in the series, but similar enough to show that they are part of the same larger series. The Once & Future series will include three trilogies. The first is all about Sarah learning about who she is and where she comes from. The next will be about Sarah coming to terms with what she has learned and preparing for her role as the “mother of the king”. That thematic change will reflect in the covers for the next three books. Starting of course with this one.

I’m really excited about what I’ve come up with. I hope you all will be as excited by this cover as I am, and the covers to come for the next two books.

Yawn and Stretch and...

This past Saturday, after the ice had thawed, I was wandering around my kitchen wiping down seemingly random spots on the counter. My husband walked in and asked, “What are your plans today?”

I could really process that question. I just sort of stared at him. “I don’t know?”

I have honestly been working on this book for way too long. And the last few weeks have been so intense, that after sending it to my beta readers, I spent several days in a daze. Between book hangover and crazy weather, my brain capacity for the last week was limited to getting my kids to their virtual classes on time. It took me a few days to muster up the energy and attention to start planning the next steps.

It’s hard to explain the feeling of sending a book out to beta readers for the first time. I’ve read it so many times, I can’t tell the difference anymore from what is on the page and what is in my head. My husband has read it, and proclaimed the last three chapters especially some of the best writing I’ve ever done. But It’s been such a hard slog to write and then revise this past year, that I have found my confidence as a writer shrinking considerably. I think anxiety brought on by everything that has gone on, has become so pervasive that I can’t remember how to approach anything with confidence anymore.

So, when I finished revising, and ran one more grammar check on the book, I just sort of sat there.

Eric: “Is it done?”

Me: “Maybe one more spell check.”

Eric: “Nope. Send it to the betas.”

Me: “But it’s…”

Eric: “Send it. Send it right now.”

So, a week ago Saturday, I sent it to my beta team, a wonderful group of series readers. After a few days of brain fog and therapeutic knitting, the feedback started rolling in.

Of course, there are things that need improvement, some that might get cut, and plenty of typos that need fixing, but so far the feedback as has been good. No one seems too angry about the ending. I confess I was a little afraid of that. It seems to be resonating, and I am as always amazed at how readers have taken to these characters. I love them so much and it makes me feel so good when others love them too.

That feedback has given me a much needed boost to move on to the next steps. A big step is attaching some dates to what’s coming up. So, here they are. I haven’t planned any launch events yet, and the ones that I have will be virtual until more people are vaccinated. I’ll let you all know of those when I’ve got them scheduled.

 

 

Great things to come

Holy cannoli what a year it has been. The pandemic threw my 2020 plans for a loop. I wrote 1.5 books in 2019 and had plans to release Book 4 and write book five last year. But as my old pal Rabbie Burns said, ‘The best laid plans of indie writers and their chihuahua familiars’. (I’m paraphrasing of course). My publishing plans were derailed by my entire family suddenly being in my workspace. All. The. Time. Add to that the general anxiety of living in a pandemic and election year, and it’s not a favorable atmosphere for the creative brain. Work never stopped, but it definitely slowed down.

But it’s a new year and like so many of us, I am hopeful and determined. I’ve got my calendar out and I’m setting goals and due dates and feeling like I’m much closer to getting done.

I’m not going to publicly state all of these goals because in my perverse brain, that’s the best way to make sure I DON’T achieve them. The next step in getting Nothing Good Gets Away to market is getting feedback from beta readers. I’m expecting to do that in February. I have opened up my beta reader list for folks who want to have a voice in making Nothing Good the best book possible. You can sign up to be a beta reader here. (Note: Because this is a series, I am looking for beta readers who have already read the first three books in the series.)

What I will say are that my 2021 plans at a high level are:

Publish - Nothing Good Gets Away

Write – Book 5

Revise – Tarheel Pie

Grow – Readers, offerings, and mailing list

On the Mailing List front, I just gave my current subscribers an exclusive Once & Future Short Story that introduces a new character that I am partial to. And I am planning some giveaways for subscribers in the future. Sometimes that will be a chance to win a book or a new short story (I may or may not have one for Grant MacDuff in mind.) Sometimes it might be something else.

For February I will be editing Nothing Good Gets Away and will be giving away a copy of Kris Spisak’s The Novel Editing Workbook: 105 Tricks & Tips for Revising Your Fiction Manuscript. So, if you’re interested in writing a book (I know some of you are.) This is a great tool for getting a handle on the editing process. For a chance to win a copy of this helpful book, all you have to do is subscribe to my newsletter (If you’re already subscribed, then you’re already eligible.) The winner will be announced in my February newsletter.

You can sign up for the newsletter in the form in the sidebar or here.

I’m feeling good about my prospects for hitting these goals this year. I hope all of you are setting your own goals and gearing up to kick ass in 2021.