CELTIC ROSE WRITERS

For those of you interested in the Celtic genre, there's a new Yahoo group available:  Celtic Rose Writers.  Just go to www.yahoogroups.com, type CelticRoseWriters in the Search box and it will take you to a beautiful pic of the Cliffs of Moher.  Click on it to join.  It's an open group and promo is welcome.  We hope you'll join us.

THE ATTRACTION OF OPPOSITES

The New Year did not necessarily start off well, though it did start with a bang.  "BRRNNGGG!"  That was my phone at 6 a.m.  Either someone was still celebrating, I cursed as I dove over four sleeping animals to my telephone, or it was an emergency.  Oops...emergency.  It was a semi-tearful friend on the other end of the line.  She was away on vacation until after the holiday.  Her mother was with her, and both their house keys of course were with them.  I was the only other person with a key and...the police were at her house.  Her alarm had gone off three times, they had had to go to her house three times and they were-not-happy.  Could I please go into the house for a walk-through?  Oh, and call the security company if it was a sensor problem?  It was, I did, and then I zoomed off to...the dentist.  I had already noticed that a little sensitivity I had been feeling in the upper left hand corner of my mouth was no longer little.  The gum and roof of my mouth seemed to be turning into a growth the size of a small lemon and were oozing blood.  I've never had an abscess, but a little bell in the back of my mind said that I by golly had one now.  So off I went.  I basically had a mouth full of blood, which the dentist discovered as soon as he lanced it.  I spent quite a while hanging over the sink.  Then I went off  to check levels to be sure I wouldn't exsanguinate from a tooth extraction and get some Vitamin K to be on the safe side, since until recently I was on anti-coagulants and my clotting doesn't seem quite back to normal.  Later in the day, it was back to the dentist.  Needless to say, I never made it back to work, though I had managed to put in about a whole two hours. 

It probably wasn't bad, as such things are reckoned.  Forty-five minutes and a whole lot more bleeding later, after a caution not to drive unnecessarily because my hemoglobin might be a little low, I walked out clutching my jaw and my antibiotics, $118 poorer.  Oh, and the phony tooth to be put in two weeks later would be $680, by the way.  Apparently that's a bargain.  One of the titanium jobs that screws into your jaw bone is $3,000+ and that sounds like just way too much money for the pain, so I figured I'd settle for the cheapie.  We'll see how it works out.  I don't have many dental problems as a rule, so I'm charting unknown territory.  But I cracked that tooth years ago in a fall from my horse so hard that I whacked my jaws together with a force that probably registered on a seismograph somewhere. 

Those were the good old days.  I don't do stuff like that any more because, let's face it, I'm just too damn old.  Would I do it again?  In a heartbeat.  I was a dynamo in my younger days, all too willing to pack up the hamper and go freeze my tush off at any football game, climb a mountain or foxhunt until I was shaking with exhaustion.  This would have delighted many husbands, but did I pick one who appreciated my finer points?   Ah, well...no.  My husband would dutifully meet me at the door when I traipsed in covered with muck, kindly inquire if I had had a good time and pour me a sherry, after which I would collapse under a comforter and watch football on the TV, which is what he would have preferred me to do in the first place.  That was where he watched football, if he watched at all.  No, I married a man who could spend hours happily wandering through the grocery store.  He was a food broker, so I understood that this was professional fascination, but he could also, God help me, do it in the mall.  The Mall?  The place I passionately detested and avoided like grim death?  I bless whatever fate decreed I would be born in the age of on-line shopping, but my husband LOVED malls.

That was only one small example of the differences between us.  Our marriage lasted despite them, maybe even because of them.  And as I sit here at 5 a.m. cradling my aching jaw, I wonder how many times that works out.  Dave never learned to foxhunt and I still hate malls, but we managed.  Do marriages of flaming opposites burn themselves out or smoulder into comfortable old age?  Should we view these vast chasms as challenges to be overcome...warning signs of trouble ahead...intellectual exercises...opportunities to broaden our horizons?  My spirit was always duty-bound to make a challenge out of climbing things--or jumping a horse over them.  Are some of us marital thrill-seekers?  If so, do we ultimately enrich our lives?  What do you think?

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Wishing you a happy, healthy and prosperous 2012!!!

A BEAUTIFUL YEAR

Wishing the very happiest of holidays to all our contributors and readers here at The Blue Rose.  May your season be filled with peace and joyous memories, and the forthcoming year be bright and beautiful.

Kindle Release: Consoling Angel by Denise Alicea

Consoling Angel, a YA Short Story, Time Travel/Romance

Buy link Amazon , FictionWise , All Romance

 

Mira did not know what she had in store the day she fell asleep while wanting to escape her current situation. Overcoming the death of someone close and burying herself in school and an internship has kept her somewhat awake and alive. An admiration for the actor James Dean was all that kept the memory of her father alive. If she couldn’t be with her father, she could at least remember what they shared. She always wanted to meet James Dean. Be careful what you wish for. It may just come true.

Consoling Angel Excerpt:

My life couldn’t be more complete. As we reached the apartments, I slowly got off the bike, surprised at myself that I had done this. Ordinarily, I’d never get on a motorcycle. James leaned over and caressed my cheek. Before I could open my mouth to tell him what was to happen to him, he gave me a quick peck on the lips. I couldn’t let James walk away, not now.

         Something in me grasped his wrist; my breath caught in my throat. I no longer cared about the rain. I must have looked like a drowned rat to him. “I have to tell you something,” I blurted as I waited for his reaction.

         James smiled, then chuckled as he caressed my face.  The rain was preventing me from seeing clearly. “Sweetheart, it’s raining and you’re soaked. I hope this is important.”  Pulling him toward me, I faced him. I could change history. I could have him live out his life as he was meant to. If I couldn’t save my father, I could save him.

         “In the future, when you become famous, please be careful. Remember this: there will be a day that you are off to a race. You will not see a car until it’s too late. James, please promise me. It could mean your life.” I must have sounded like a complete and total idiot to him. Geez! I think I watched Back To The Future too many times. I sounded like Marty talking to the professor about his impending death.

         Chuckling, he shook his head, expelling the rain off his head and onto me. Laughter erupted between us as I covered my face. He then cupped my face, kissed my forehead. “Are you sure you’re not an angel? I cannot promise anything, but baby, I can promise I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll pick you up here and you can ditch your responsibilities. Ride with me.”

         Sighing, now I knew how all those girls felt when they looked at him. What an offer that would be. Ditch school to ride with the man who was loved by so many. I was determined he’d listen to me.  Gripping his hands from my face, I gazed into his eyes. “I’m serious!”

         Before I could utter another word, his lips descended on mine. My body went toward him and melted. I couldn’t help but respond as I brought him closer.  I was lost in his warm lips as they caressed mine. Lingering near my lips, he breathed, “I know you are.” Then, winking as he kissed me again, smiling that beautiful smile of his, “How else can my angel guard me if she isn’t with me?”

KINDLE RELEASE - HEART OF THE EARTH BY MIRIAM NEWMAN

BLURB:

Robbed of her husband by the arrows of assassins, Tia must flee to the Northern Prince who has always wanted her.  But the price of Hilgi’s protection is too high.  Separated from her land and her Goddess, can Tia find a way to return to them…and to a love that may redeem her?

EXCERPT:

Light flooded through the opening.  Hilgi’s tread was heavy upon the stone floor; he was a big man.  He looked just as I had seen him some months earlier.  He still wore the circlet of a Northern prince, the gold armbands of a Chieftain’s son, and his Havacian battle axe strapped to his chest.  His furious expression was the same, as well.  So he had looked the day he clove our mutual enemy King Edred of Tumagia in twain with that axe or its twin.

            “What have they done to you?” he asked in Omani.  It was the only language we had in common.  But I did not care to speak on that day and I was the Queen and could do as I liked, so I kept silence.

            “What have they not done to you?” he demanded again, wrenching open the drapes.  I flinched as he sank into a knee-bend beside my chair, taking my chin firmly inhis big hand and looking into my face.  “When did you last eat, Tia?  You look like death!”

            I made no reply and he backhanded me.  I blinked.

            “That’s the first one,” he said.  “Every time you ignore me, you’ll get another.”   I was more shocked than hurt and the hot seep of rage began to fill me like water soaking through a sponge. “Bad enough I was beaten by King Edred and a slave dealer in Omana…but you?”

            “That’s better.”  Tipping me forward to wrap the quilt from my bed around me, he lifted me, effortlessly.  The world spun when he changed my position and I clutched him in panic as he bore me from that chamber, pausing only to kick my chair across the room so hard I could hear the solid oak splinter like kindling.

            “That was a perfectly good chair,” I objected.

            “I’ll make you another.”

            In the hallway, Alcinic guards were deep in conversation with some of Hilgi’s Ancient Order fighters--men feared throughout the world for their habit of cutting out their enemies’ hearts still beating.

            “No crying, little Tia,” Hilgi said softly.  “If you want your men to live, be silent.”

            I was weak from starvation, grief and near-madness and it took me a few moments to realize that Hilgi and his men had not come from the last fighting in Tumagia to pay honor to my dead husband.  They had come for me.

            That is why the Prince of Havacia carried me like a doll into pounding surf to one of the oiled leather skiffs Havacians used for passengers.  Other craft would not attempt to come past the offshore island called Lady’s Weeping for its habit of causing wrecks, but the red and white striped sails of King Maruk’s fleet bobbed there on a fierce undertow and men took me speedily to Hilgi’s ship, the Boar’s Head.  Ships of the Ancient Order--their macabre prows carved in the shape of gods and demons--surrounded it, but only skeleton crews were aboard.  The other men who had sailed with Hilgi held my soldiers at swords’ point while their Prince absconded with me.

VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StJM550W7q4

REVIEWS: www.miriamnewman.com

BUY LINKS: .www.thedarkcastlelords.com/heart-of-the-earth.htm (PDF)                           http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006O1OHMG (Kindle)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

WISHING ALL WHO OBSERVE A WARM, WONDERFUL AND SAFE HOLIDAY FILLED WITH HAPPY MEMORIES.