Scottish Time Travel Romance Somewhere My Lass Free in Kindle

From Sunday August 18th through Tuesday the 20th, Somewhere My Lass is a free kindle.

Story Description:

Will Mora and Neil be too late to save a love that began centuries before?

'‘The MacDonald comes’ warns Mora Campbell when Neil MacKenzie finds the young Scotswoman lying unconscious at the top of his stairs after he discovers his murdered housekeeper slumped at the bottom. Mora’s claim that she’s his fiancé from 1602 and was chased to the future by clan chieftain, Red MacDonald, through ‘the door to nowhere’ seems utter nonsense. Neil thinks she’s addled from the blow to her head until his life spirals into chaos and the avenging Highlander shows up wanting blood. Mora knows the Neil of the future is truly her beloved Niall who disappeared from the past, but he must also remember. And fast.

Although Niall’s kinsmen believe he’s dead, and Mora is now destined to marry his brother, she’s convinced that if she and Neil return to the past, all will be right. The balance of the present and future are in peril if she marries another, and the Neil of the present will cease to exist. The only problem is how to get back to 1602. An ancient relic, the ultimate geek friend, and a little Celtic magic help pave the way back to the enormous challenge that awaits them. If they’re in time.~

Yes, it’s time travel with a twist. Somewhere My Lass is book two in my Somewhere in Time series. Somewhere My Love is the first, and the sequel to Somewhere My Lass, Somewhere in the Highlands is out now in Kindle. The stories in this series adhere to a theme, not necessarily a continuation of the characters themselves. Though Somewhere in the Highlands picks up two years after Somewhere My Lass left off.

Somewhere My Lass was an intriguing tale to weave and quite an adventure. It’s also one I had no intention of undertaking until the vivid dream that led to the startling intro: the hero, Neil MacKenzie, returns home to find his elderly housekeeper lying murdered at the bottom of the winding staircase and a young woman in full Scottish dress slumped at the top. She, however, isn’t dead.

And that’s all I had to go on at the start of this venture, but was so intrigued I had to learn Neil and Mora’s story and pondered all the clues given in the dream. An old Victorian house, check, I’m very familiar with those; man wearing modern suit, so the story opens in present day, got it, but the young woman came from the past. Scotland’s past. That would take some doing, I concluded, and did my usual obsessive research. I love gleaning more about the past and used an actual feud in 1602 between the MacKenzies and MacDonalds as a jumping off place.

Doors play a big role in my ‘Somewhere in Time’ series. Behind every door lies a secret, an intriguing puzzle to be solved, so these romances are also suspenseful mysteries. There will be more stories in this series. Somewhere the Bells Ring is a ghostly Christmas romance that flashes back in time.

The True Story Behind The Bearwalker's Daughter

The Bearwalker’s Daughter is a historical romance novel interwoven with an intriguing paranormal thread, set among the clannish Scots in the mist-shrouded Alleghenies. The story is similar to others of mine with a colonial frontier flavor and also features Native American characters. My passion for the past, and some of the accounts I’ve come across while researching my early American ancestors and the Shawnee Indians, is at the heart of my inspiration.

A particularly tragic account is the driving force behind this story, one I discovered while researching my early American  ancestors, the ill-fated romance of a captive woman who fell in love with the son of a chief. As the result of a treaty, she was taken from her warrior husband and forced back to her white family where she gave birth to a girl. 

Then the young woman’s husband did the unthinkable and left the tribe to go live among the whites, but such was their hatred of Indians that before he reached his beloved her brothers killed him. 

Inconsolable and weak from the birth, she grieved herself to death.

Heart-wrenching, that tale haunts me to this day. And I wondered, was there some way those young lovers could have been spared such anguish, and what happened to their infant daughter when she grew up?

Not only did The Bearwalker’s Daughter spring from that sad account, but it also had a profound influence on my historical romance Red Bird’s Song.  Now that I’ve threaded it through two novels, perhaps I can let go…

Perhaps….

Recently, I came across a short review of The Bearwalker’s Daughter that referred to the story as ‘mind candy’.  If this is your idea of mind candy, so be it. I put my heart into it, as I do all my work.  But The Bearwalker’s Daughter cut especially deep. Red Bird’s Song even deeper, and I poured my soul into my historical romance Through the Fire. 

The history these novels draw from is raw, real, drama filled, and pounds with adventure. A passionate era where only the strong survive. Superstition ran high among both the Scots settlers and Native Americans, and far more–vision that transcends what is to reach what can be. We think we have gained much in our modern era, and so we have. But we’ve also lost. 

In my writing, I try to recapture what shouldn’t be forgotten.  Read and judge for yourself.

Blurb for The Bearwalker’s Daughter:

Timid by nature—or so she thinks—Karin McNeal hasn’t grasped who she really is or her fierce birthright. A tragic secret from the past haunts the young Scots-Irish woman longing to learn more of her mother’s death and the mysterious father no one will name. The elusive voices she hears in the wind hint at the dramatic changes soon to unfold in the mist-shrouded Alleghenies in Autumn, 1784.

 
Jack McCray, the wounded stranger who staggers through the door on the eve of her twentieth birthday and anniversary of her mother’s death, holds the key to unlock the past. Will Karin let this handsome frontiersman lead her to the truth and into his arms, or seek the shelter of her fiercely possessive kinsmen? Is it only her imagination or does someone, or something, wait beyond the brooding ridges—for her?

“Ms. Trissel’s alluring style of writing invites the reader into a world of fantasy and makes it so believable it is spellbinding.” –Long and Short Reviews

*The Bearwalker’s Daughter is a revised version of Daughter of the Wind.

*Cover by my talented daughter Elise Trissel

*Image of old family musket, powder horn, and shot pouch by my mom Pat Churchman

If You Love the Country and Even If You Don't

Written in a month by month journal style, my award-winning nonfiction book, Shenandoah Watercolors, follows a year in my life on our farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

Excerpt from May:

“The quality of mercy is not strained,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,

Upon the place beneath; it is twice blessed;

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes…”

~William Shakespeare

The heavy rain has given way to a misting drizzle, but streams of water pour down from the hills and make new ponds and creeks. It’s chilly with that raw wet feel. This spring is awash in moisture and amazing after last summer’s searing drought. I’m struck by the intense beauty around me, and I thought I was already seeing it, but it’s so much more somehow. The grass seems to shimmer, yet there’s no sun out today, and the meadow is so richly green it’s like seeing heaven.

Our barnyard geese are enraptured, as much as geese can be, with all the grass. If there’s a lovelier place to revel in spring than the Shenandoah Valley and the mountains, I don’t know it. Narnia, maybe.

I’ve been thinking about my favorite places. The pool I like best lies in the woods near a place called Rip Rap Hollow in the Blue Ridge Mountains. A splendid falls cascades up above, but I like the pool far more. We always meant to go back, but never have. The cold water ripped through me like liquid ice and is as clear as melted crystal.

I could see the rocks on the bottom, some slick with moss, others brown-gold in the light where the sun broke through the leafy canopy overhead. Trout hid beneath big rounded stones or ones that formed a cleft, but the men tickled them out to flash over the flat rocks strewn across the bottom like a path. Drifts of hay-scented fern rose around the edges of the pool, warming the air with the fragrance of new-mown hay, and made the shady places a rich green.

Now, that’s a good place to go in my mind when I’m troubled. The problem with cities is that people don’t learn what really matters. Don’t really feel or know the rhythms of the earth. When we are separated from that vital center place, we grow lost. Sadly, most people will never know what they are lost from, or where they can be found.~

Only .99 in kindle at Amazon, Shenandoah Watercolors is also out in print with lovely photographs taken by my talented family.

"This is perhaps the most beautifully written memoir I've ever read. Its lovely and languid descriptions of the picturesque valley, the farm and gardens are equaled only by the charming and funny descriptions of the antics (and conversations!) of the farm animals. What a joy this is to read..." Amazon Reviewer C. G. King

New Historical Romance--The Lady and the Warrior!

Hot off the presses, Amazon Kindle rather, my new short historical romance,The Lady and the Warrior.  My talented art major graduate daughter, Elise, did the gorgeous cover–her first.  Mom’s proud.  So is her father.  And other friends and relations.

A tender adventure romance with a The Last of the Mohican’s flavor,  The Lady and the Warrior gives readers  a taste of my full-length American historical romance novels.  If you like The Lady and the Warrior, chances are you will enjoy Red Bird’s Song, Through the Fire and Daughter of the Wind...all have a Native American theme interwoven with the plot.

Blurb: An abused young wife stranded in the Alleghenies in 1783 is rescued from drowning by a rugged frontiersman who shows her kindness and passion. But is he more than he seems? And can they ever be together?

Pop over to Amazon and find out. FREE for Amazon Prime and .99 for others.