Historic Halifax, NC and Historical Romance Novel Traitor’s Legacy

Drama, adventure, intrigue! The American Revolution has long called to me. Part of my draw to this era stems from research into my early American and British ancestors who fought on both sides of that sweeping conflict. One direct forebear five generations removed, Sam Houston, uncle of the famous Sam, fought in the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, NC, and kept a diary used by historians today. Another tie to the past is my grandfather, seven greats back, Sir George Augustus Elliott, a British general and Governor of Gibraltar during the American Revolution. He was awarded the title Lord Heathfield, Baron of Gibraltar, in honor of his bravery in its defense during the attack by the Spanish and French. While Sir George was giving his all for king and country, his grandson was fighting under George Washington as a commissary officer. There must have been quite a rift in that family.

The first book to come out of this rich well of inspiration was award-winning historical romance novel Enemy of the King, published in 2009 by The Wild Rose Press. I didn’t stop there. A sequel featuring the fascinating antagonist in Enemy of the King, British dragoon Captain Jacob Vaughan, tugged at my mind. I even had a plot and title, Traitor’s Legacy. Try as I might, though, I couldn’t settle on the right location to set the story, so left it to simmer.

In late spring, 2012, North Carolinian, Ann See, a huge fan of Enemy of the King and fellow colonial American enthusiast, contacted me about writing a sequel set in the oft overlooked, but historically significant town of Halifax, NC. As Enemy of the King takes place in North and South Carolina, and I have strong ties to the Carolinas, this suggestion was appealing.

At Ann’s invitation, husband Dennis and I made a trip to Historic Halifax, and were given a royal tour of this carefully preserved glimpse into our nation’s dynamic past. The quaint town is like a mini colonial Williamsburg. Most impressive among Halifax’s claims to fame, in the spring of 1776, North Carolina’s Fourth Provincial Congress met there, and on April 12, unanimously adopted a document later called the ‘Halifax Resolves,’ the first official action by a colony proclaiming their independence from England. This made Halifax a nest of rebels and thorn in the side of the British––what I needed for my plot.

(Image of Beth and the guide touring a home in Historic Halifax)

Some people ask, ‘Why write historical romance?’ I reply, ‘Why not?’ Folks fell in love back then too, and romance adds that thrill of excitement. The attraction between British Captain Vaughan and Patriot Claire Monroe most certainly leaps off the pages in Traitor’s Legacy. They were one of my all-time favorite couples to write.

Much of the story takes place in and around Historic Halifax. Person’s Ordinary, featured in the novel, was an important stage-coach stop and is the oldest landmark in Halifax County. Located in Littleton, Person’s Ordinary is the oldest preserved structure of its kind in the East, and once served as a tavern owned by Thomas Person. The Ordinary was occupied by the British in May 1781 when they made their way through Halifax en route to Virginia. The British Legion, also known as Tarleton’s Legion, headed by the infamous Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton, were on horseback and out in front of the rest of the army under command of General Lord Cornwallis. Tarleton underestimated the harassment inflicted by the local militia, whose stubborn resistance resulted in a prolonged stay by the British and reprisals against the town. In fact, there was so much looting that when Lord Cornwallis arrived, he had to court-martial and execute one sergeant and a dragoon. Apparently, his lordship didn’t want to leave a trail of animosity everywhere his army went. (Image of Person’s Ordinary)

Thornton Hall, the plantation home featured in Traitor’s Legacy, is drawn from a run down but once outstanding old house located a mile or two from Person’s Ordinary. The original home was also built by Thomas Person. He wouldn’t recognize it now. Dusk was falling when Dennis and I, guided by Ann, drove to the overgrown site to see the derelict house. I knew at once I’d found the perfect home for the novel. Ann supplied me with descriptions of the old house in its glory days and I resurrected it, like restoring the Titanic, with some poetic license, of course. I’d love to move into Thornton Hall. The gardens are also lovely. I hope you enjoy your tour.

Mystery, intrigue, spies, a coded letter, and stirring romance fill the pages of Traitor’s Legacy. Bringing history to life.

Story Description: 1781. On opposite sides of the War of Independence, British Captain Jacob Vaughan and Claire Monroe find themselves thrust together by chance and expediency.

Captain Vaughan comes to a stately North Carolina manor to catch a spy. Instead, he finds himself in bedlam: the head of the household is an old man ravaged by madness, the one sane male of the family is the very man he is hunting, and the household is overseen by his beguiling sister Claire.

Torn between duty, love, and allegiances, yearning desperately for peace, will Captain Vaughan and Claire Monroe forge a peace of their own against the vagaries of war and the betrayal of false friends?

Back to the novel that started it all, Enemy of the King made the top ten Publisher’s Weekly BHB Reader’s Choice Best Books of 2009  and is on the 2010 Best Romance Novel List at Buzzle.

“I thoroughly enjoyed Enemy of the King…the characters are memorable, the setting beautifully described…the action riveting and the romance tender. For anyone who loves a well-crafted historical romance.” ~Reviewed by Poinsettia for Long and Short Reviews

“Beth Trissel is a skilled storyteller and scene builder. She immediately plunges the reader into action and excitement with a vivid sense of time and
place.” ~For Enemy of the King by Award-winning Romance Author Kris Kennedy

Traitor’s Legacy is coming out August 13th, 2014 by the Wild Rose Press. The third book in the Traitor’s Legacy Series is in the works. Romancing Colonial America, a growing event evolving around the book signing, will take place on Oct. 11th in Historic Halifax.

Experience the best of colonial America during this special event packed with activities, demonstrations, tours, music, dance, a book signing, and more on Saturday, October 11th, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Historic Halifax State Historic Site.Romancing Colonial America will highlight the eighteenth century from pirate days through the revolution!

A book signing and reception will be held at the Royal White Hart Masonic Lodge, No. 2 (130 Saint David Street, Halifax, NC) 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Pre-order your copy of Traitor’s Legacy, available for $15 each, call (252) 583-7191 to reserve copies, and make checks payable to Historical Halifax Restoration Association, Inc. Pre-orders can be picked up on the day of the event.

Enjoy colonial period musical performances and dances at various times throughout the historic site. Folk musicians, flutists, singers, and costumed dancers will provide eighteenth century entertainment in various locations on site. Also, throughout the day from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., colonial era living-history demonstrations performed by costumed re-enactors will take place along with tours of the site’s historic buildings which date from circa 1760 through the 1830s. Stop by the Historic Halifax State Historic Site Visitor Center to pick up a complete schedule of activities and an event map.

For more information about Romancing Colonial America and any related activities, please call Historic Halifax at (252) 583-7191 or visitwww.halifax.nchistoricsites.org. Historic Halifax is within the Division of Sate Historic Sites in the NC Department of Cultural Resources and is located at 25 Saint David Street, Halifax, NC 27839

Time Travel Romance Somewhere in the Highlands On Sale for .99

Sci-fi, Fantasy, Time Travel Romance

Time travel romance novella Somewhere in the Highlands is reduced from 2.99 to .99 through March 31st at Amazon.

Story Blurb: The MacDonalds are coming! When Elizabeth MacDonald (a.k.a Beezus Mac) thrusts a sealed gold box at Angus Fergus amid panicked requests for him to hide the stolen artifact, she has no idea the ancient cloth it contains bestows unearthly powers. Red MacDonald knows and he’s hell-bent on traveling 400 years into the future to claim the charmed relic, even kill for it. Protecting Beezus from his old nemesis is only one of Fergus’s problems. Before they can stop him, Morley MacDonald, descendant of Red MacDonald, snatches the prize and leaps through the time portal to head the MacDonald clan and kill Fergus’s MacKenzie ancestor. If he succeeds, Fergus will cease to exist.

Danger grows in the feud between the MacDonalds and the MacKenzies as the pair, along with an ingenious friend and high tech inventions, returns to 1604 Scotland to face these brawny Highlanders and reunite with kin. Will Fergus overcome his mistrust of Beezus and fan the growing spark between them before they battle Morley? If he waits, it may be too late.

Excerpt From Chapter One:

Early November 2011, a Victorian home in historic Staunton, Virginia

Footfalls pounded down the stairs from the second story. A woman cried, “They’re coming!”

Beezus? Angus Fergus lowered his leather recliner with a thump. “Who is?”

Long brown hair spilling down over her red Trekkie T-shirt dress and hoodie, Beezus Mac tore into his living room. Particularly surprising as Fergus hadn’t even realized she was in the house.

“Here!” She thrust an ornate gold box at him. “Hide this!”

He set his laptop on the end table beside the jellyfish mood lamp and ‘There is no try, only do,’ Yoda coffee mug, and sprang to his feet. Warily, he took from her hands the gilded chest, its metal cold in his grasp. The only other light in the room came from the laserpod streaming a starry blue galaxy on the ceiling making everything appear surreal, especially her find—or take.

He gaped into her frightened eyes. “What is it?”

Darting glances over a slender shoulder, she insisted, “No time to explain. They’re coming. The MacDonalds are coming.”

An old fear welled in him. “All of them?”

“Not certain. I heard shouting behind me.”

No angry bellows reverberated in the old home. Yet. “Beezus, what have you done?”

She gulped out, “I borrowed your energy field detector—”

“Absconded with it, you mean.”

“And went through the portal,” she rushed on. “Only supposed to be an in and out job, but I was seen in the crypt.”

He dropped his gaze to the shine of gold. The reliquary had a disturbingly familiar design associated with some seriously bad mojo. It came to him—Raiders of the Lost Ark!

“Cripes, Beezus. Tell me you didn’t steal the Ark of the Covenant.” According to the Old Testament, anyone who touched it was zapped by a bolt from heaven.

“The original is God knows where, and considerably larger, Fergus. This is from Persia, or some ancient place, carried to Scotland by the Knights Templar.”

That accounted for it winding up with the MacDonalds. “Any idea how many irate Scotsmen are on your tail?”

“Might only be one. Sounded like more shouting than that.”

“If it’s the fiend I’ve encountered, all it takes is one.”

Fergus raced to a corner of the room, flipped open the head on the life-sized droid, a replica of R2-D2, and stuck the jewel-like chest inside its body at a vertical angle. He snapped the head shut. Turning around, he ran into the front hall, making a mental note to find a new place to stash his stuff now that Beezus knew of his secret safe—assuming he lived that long. He grabbed the lightsaber from the Chinese urn holding canes and umbrellas in the foyer.

Beezus followed at his heels. “But that’s just a toy!”

“Actually—” He hit a switch on the end and the weapon of the Jedi came to green glowing life. “It’s a taser. I made a few alterations.”

She drew up. “Cool.” Even in her near panic, she sounded impressed.

“Grab a stout walking stick while we’re at it.”

Springing to action, she snatched a heavy knobbed cane with an impish monkey head.

“You would choose that one.” The same cane Neil had wielded in pursuit of the Red MacDonald two years ago. Fergus pivoted and made for the winding staircase. “What were you doing back in the MacDonald camp at Domhnall castle?”

She clambered behind him. “That’s where the portal leads.”

“Still? I figured the portal would’ve shifted after it closed.”

When he last passed through the wormhole connected to the mysterious door upstairs, it had been from the crypt below the castle chapel. He’d magnified the sensor in his energy field detector to pick up any activity, however slight, but not a blip or a buzz—until now. And Beezushad been the one to find it?

Annoyance and alarm melded in the flood of emotion coursing through him. “And you went through it because?”

“That reliquary should be mine. I’m the rightful MacDonald descendant.”

“How do you figure? There are hundreds of them, even got their own restaurant. You may have heard of it, Mickey D’s?”

“Not this line. And I’ve got the key to open that chest.”

She probably swiped that too. In a flash of insight he realized Beezus Mac must be short for Elizabeth MacDonald.

“Why don’t the original MacDonalds have the key?”

“Lost it during one of the raids on the castle. It turned up later in the family. Domhnall’s in ruins now.”

“And the gold box I just hid?”

She panted, “In a Scottish Museum.”

Exactly where it belonged. Fergus never should’ve told her about the wormhole linked with this house and his adventure through it two years ago. In a moment of weakness, punch-drunk from too much caffeine, lulled by those bewitching golden-brown eyes and an overpowering desire to share with someone, he’d succumbed.

She’d hung around the perimeter of his cyber circle, a geek wannabe, or so he’d thought. A recent transplant to Staunton, she’d appeared on his doorstep as though drawn to him, the fortunate chosen one. He should have realized no woman that good-looking paid him much notice without an ulterior motive. If only he wasn’t so attracted to her.

“You’re fortunate you didn’t get stranded back there. The portal’s unpredictable.”

She was practically on his heels. “This is bad enough. You’ve got to keep the MacDonalds from coming through.”

“I can’t close a fricking wormhole, Beezus. Just drive back anyone emerging through it.”  Or die trying.

In his Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock T-shirt and jeans, he wouldn’t appear much of a threat to a 17th century Highland chieftain. But it was imperative to keep the Red MacDonald out of the house and the 21st century altogether. His last appearance here had fatal consequences. The man was a murderer, vowing vengeance. And none too fond of Fergus.

Well, the feeling was mutual.

Fergus tore down the upstairs hall lit by the floral china lamp on the table along one gold print wall. A full moon shone through the windows, the old glass wavy in the light.

There!

At the end of the passage stood the intricately carved door, the oak darkened with age. The stained glass archway above it fanned out in a half circle of saffron, red, and gold like the entry to a chapel. The door to nowhere, so called as it led out onto a nonexistent balcony. But nothing could be further from the truth when the portal opened.

The aged wood swung wide.

Through the blackened archway appeared the demon Fergus dreaded ever to meet again, Red MacDonald. Shadows dulled the fiery mane blowing over his scarlet and green plaid, but Fergus spotted the great sword slung across one broad shoulder in leather back scabbard. The hilt of the claymore protruded above the giant’s shoulder blade.

One step closer and stout legs encased in full-length green trews came into view. Then those glittering blue eyes.

How he hated those eyes.

The enraged Scotsman pierced him with a glare. “You!”

A primal yowl tore from some place deep inside Fergus and he raised his lightsaber.~

***Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Time Travel Romance Somewhere in the Highlands is the sequel to Somewhere My Lass. Available in kindle at Amazon.

Two Christmas Romances for .99 through Dec. 20th

“A Warrior for Christmas took me by complete surprise. I expected the usual tale of a former Indian captive transcending his past to live the life of a gentleman, but Beth Trissel’s exquisite writing skill made me love this story…No reader of historical romance will want to miss A Warrior for Christmas, even if it isn’t Christmas.” ~Two Lips Reviews (Five Lips and A Recommended Read Rating)

Colonial American historical romance novella A Warrior for Christmas is reduced at Amazon,Barnes & Noble, The Wild Rose Pressand other online booksellers.

Blurb: Reclaimed by his wealthy uncle, former Shawnee captive Corwin Whitfield finds life with his adopted people at an end and reluctantly enters the social world of 1764. He plans to return to the colonial frontier at his first opportunity–until he meets Uncle Randolph’s ward, Dimity Scott.

Deaf since a childhood bout of Scarlet fever, Dimity Scott intends to be cherished for herself, not her guardian’s purse, even if it means risking spinsterhood. Then the rugged newcomer arrives, unlike any man she’s ever known. Dimity has learned to manage her silent world, but unaccustomed to the dangers of the frontier, can she expect love and marriage from Corwin, who longs to return to his Shawnee life?~

In A Warrior for Christmas, I sharply contrasted Corwin Whitfield’s hard-won life as an adopted Shawnee warrior in the colonial frontier (the setting for many of my books) with his new privileged life in a well-to-do estate outside of Philadelphia After wealthy Uncle Randolph reclaims Corwin following a treaty with the Indians that requires the return of white captives, he’s given a swift course in etiquette and hustled back into the fashionable world of colonial high society. Expectations that Corwin will learn to manage and ultimately inherit the family estate and undertake the care of his uncle’s ward, Dimity Scott, clash with his restless desire to return to the frontier. Any hope that he might take the unexpectedly appealing Dimity with him dissipate when he realizes the odds of her survival in such a rugged land. Dimity is deaf–risky in the frontier where every sense must be tuned to danger.

If you wonder how Dimity and Corwin communicate in an age before traditional sign language and other advances for the deaf existed, so did I. But the results are surprising and not a little bit wonderful. And then there are the charming traditions of celebrating Christmas in colonial America. A Warrior for Christmas is a story I very much enjoyed researching and writing.~

Hauntingly beautiful Christmas romance novella, Somewhere the Bells Ring, is reduced at Amazon,Barnes & Noble, The Wild Rose Press, and other online booksellers.

Blurb: 

Everything changes when a ghost requests her help.

Caught with pot in her dorm room, Bailey Randolph is exiled to a relative’s ancestral home in Virginia to straighten herself out. Banishment to Maple Hill is dismal, until a ghost appears requesting her help. Bailey is frightened but intrigued. Then her girlhood crush, Eric Burke, arrives and suddenly Maple Hill isn’t so bad.

To Eric, wounded in Vietnam, his military career shattered, this homecoming feels no less like exile. But when he finds Bailey at Maple Hill, her fairy-like beauty gives him reason to hope–until she tells him about the ghost haunting the house. Then he wonders if her one experiment with pot has made her crazy.

As Bailey and Eric draw closer, he agrees to help her find a long-forgotten Christmas gift the ghost wants. But will the magic of Christmas be enough to make Eric believe–in Bailey and the ghost–before the Christmas bells ring?~

The old Virginia home place where my father was born and raised and I grew up visiting over the holidays has inspired more than one story I’ve written.  I spent some wonderfully memorable Christmas’s in that beautiful plantation home (circa 1816) but the ones I’m most sentimental about were in the late 1960′s. Drawn to that era, I set my Christmas romance, Somewhere the Bells Ring, in 1968 during the tumultuous age of hippies, Vietnam, and some of the best darn rock music ever written.

Not only did that nostalgic time period beckon to me but also an earlier one, 1918 and the end of World War One.  Not in the way of battle scenes, but in the form of a wounded soldier recently returned from war-weary France who lives in the house. Having a Marine Corps Captain grandfather who distinguished himself during the thick of the fighting in France during The Great War and then tragically died when my father was only three definitely influenced this story–dedicated to the grandfather I never knew, but grieved all the same.

But the biggest influence was the poignant dream I had years ago about a young woman visiting this house during the Christmas holidays and the mysterious gentleman she met. That dream nagged at me every Christmas until I finally wrote their story.  If you enjoy an intriguing mystery with Gothic overtones and heart-tugging romance set in vintage America then Somewhere the Bells Ring is for you.

“An intriguing, gripping ghost story with a focus on romance rather than terror.” ~Reviewed by Stephanie E with Fallen Angels Reviews

Romancing the Book: “Ms. Trissel captivates her reader from the moment you start reading the first page. She has written a compelling love story that spans some fifty plus years and keeps you entertained every step of the way with the story within a story…I fell in love with her characters and look forward to the next delightful story ready with Kleenex box in hand. A must read for every romance fan.” ~Reviewed by Robin

Sizzling Hot Book Reviews: “As I read on, I didn’t put it down. I even went back and re read it! For all it is melancholy, it is a sweet story of past and present loves and how they parallel. The feelings of each of the main characters are written well and though only a few days pass in the story, it covered years of emotions, and glimpse of a family through the years. When I finished Somewhere the Bells Ring, I felt a sense of peace and calm, a wonderful thing at any time, but especially during the hectic Christmas season that is the setting of this story.” ~Reviewed by Beverly