BLOGGING TODAY WITH KAREN MICHELLE NUTT

I'm blogging today with good friend Karen Michelle Nutt about Ireland, my pesky muse and my book The King's Daughter.  Hope some of you can join us at www.kmnbooks.blogspot.com

CHAT TONIGHT AT LOVE ROMANCES CAFE

I will be at a 7 - 9 p.m. chat tonight Friday, March 9 at loveromancescafe@yahoogroups.com with authors Kate Hofman, Susan Blexrud and Denise Alicea.  We will have plenty of free books including my new release The King's Daughter as well as contemporary, historical, paranormal, fantasy, futuristic and YA.  I hope some of you can stop by.  If you're not currently a member of LRC, you can use the address above to join for the chat.

GIVEAWAY 3/6/12

Win a copy of my fantasy historical The King’s Daughter, digital or print, at Manic Readers today:http://manicreaders.com/blog/index.php/2012/03/the-kings-daughter-miriam-newman/comment-page-1/#comment-11285

COME BACK, LITTLE WENCHIE (PART THE THIRD)

Poor Wench.  She was gone for a really long time.  Years, in fact.  Her memory got buried under slag heaps of laundry, lofty snow-covered mountains of cleaning, metric tons of cooking.  Then there were the interminable dinner parties, entertaining, road trips, sick children, sick parents...not to mention a couple of jobs.  My husband had caught onto the fact that I had a muse and made her thoroughly unwelcome in our house.  There would be no more three a.m. pains with a poem.  Nope.  Not in his house.

Wench caught on.  When I next saw her she was a forlorn creature peeking around corners:

 I had never seen her so reduced.  All she could give me was the occasional  poem whispered in the middle of the night, sort of like two little girls hiding under the covers at a slumber party, whispering so they don't wake up parents.  Poor Wench.  There was no room for her in my house, so she went to Hell.

She finally burst into the house in the middle of the night, in flames, full of fury and spitting righteous indignation.  I recoiled in shock, because this time she was running actual streams of lava.  She was a SOUL ON FIRE and informed me in no uncertain terms that she was not Morrigan, she was certainly not The Wench, she was Persephone the Queen of Hell and I would address her as such.  Apparently Pele's patronage had given her a real jump up in life...or death...or wherever she had been.  Anyway, the most I could hope for was a truce.  I could call her Seph and, like The Terminator, SHE'D BE BACK.  And with that she stormed out, leaving me with the most awful feeling in the pit of my stomach that someday she was going to take revenge on me for banning her from the house.  It was only a matter of time.

SEASON OF THE WENCH (PART THE SECOND!)

The Wench left me alone for several years after the blackbird incident.  She was always extremely fond of birds, as you see from her picture, so I wasn't quite clear about why she was so miffed.  It seemed she couldn't stay away, though.  She put in another appearance about the time I hit high school, though she was a little changed.  The crow was gone and so was the crescent moon on the forehead.  Her fingernails were bright red and sometimes dripped.  I thought she seemed a little smoky somehow, faintly singed around the edges, sort of like an overbaked cookie.  But she was being sweet and had brought a book of poetry, so I chalked it up to imagination.

Poetry it was then...then and for many years afterwards.  My mother had unintentionally abetted my muse's efforts by reading me such classics as Longfellow's "The Skeleton in Armor," about a ghostly knight in chain mail.  Having fallen on his sword for love of Lady Fair (I think she jilted him), the poor guy was doomed to spend eternity clanking around in his chain mail, trying to find her.  If Mom thought his spectre would frighten me, she was sadly mistaken.  I just developed a thing for guys in chain mail.  I'm still afflicted..

The Wench (I stopped calling her Morrigan when the crow left) helped me write sonnets, couplets, quatrains.  I was a talented classical poet, which of course wouldn't help much when that free verse thing took over, but for a time I did really well.  She was proud of my 100% publication rate and of course claimed all the credit.  But we were getting along, so I didn't dispute it or point out that I was the one up at 3 a.m. in pain with a poem while The Wench smoked a joint and got the munchies.  Or was that me?  I forget.  Well, if it was I never inhaled, anyway.

Then I began to notice...oh, dear...nothing was supposed to rhyme any more.  Other people were writing free verse. I was still hearing echoes of Edna St. Vincent Millay and Dorothy Parker, with quite a bit of Yeats thrown in since I was, after all, half Irish.  I was passe.  When I complained, my muse shrieked, scored up my bright, shiny pages of poetry with her drippy fingernails, thumbed her nose at me and vanished.

This time I felt her absence.  I was bereft.  So I got married.  Well, there were other reasons too, of course.  But the fact was that without The Wench hanging over my shoulder and shoving a pen in my hand, I finally had time to notice men and I married one of them.

That was all it took.  She came roaring back, proprietary as hell, and it suddenly occurred to me maybe Hell was where she had been.  That stuff dripping from her nails appeared to be...lava.  Her eyes weren't just smoky this time, they were burning coals.  She positively reeked of sulphur and there were holes burned in the bottom of her knee-high patent leather boots.  I had the temerity to question her (you could tell I was gaining confidence with a husband in the picture) and she peered haughtily down her aristocratic nose, informing me that she had been spending time with another goddess.  Specifically, Pele.  You know, the one for whom they used to throw virgins down volcanoes.  In Hawaii.  But I was in Pennsylvania, where there aren't any volcanoes, and marriage had taken care of that virginity thing, so I wasn't afraid for myself.  I just told The Wench, formerly Morrigan, that I thought she should be careful.  I didn't want her incinerated.  But she was  pretty much bowled over by Pele and didn't listen.

Silly Wench.

SOMETHING WICKED THAT WAY WENT - OR - "HAVE YOU SEEN MY MUSE?" - PART THE FIRST

This morning I had one of those chat loop/Facebook conversations authors sometimes have, in this case with Celtic author Maeve Greyson, who is having a book release.  I'll leave it to Maeve to disclose that here if she cares to (did'ja get that, Maeve-me-girl?), but in the course of the conversation it evolved that the heroine of her latest book just gives her fits.  The girl gives everyone fits, apparently.  It's part of her charm.

The more Maeve talked about her heroine, Ciara, the more she reminded me of my muse.

My muse, otherwise known as "The Wench," appeared when I was five year old and trying to write my first book on my mother's shopping list.  Tall, slender, with a crescent moon tattoed on her forehead and a crow perched on her shoulder, she scared the daylights out of me.  She looked an awful lot like the Celtic Queen, Morrigan, and I knew this how?  Well, because my Nana had read Irish myths and legends to me from the time I gave any indication that I could hear, of course.  "You can never start 'em too young" was her motto and so I learned that Morrigan was the Great Queen - a Mothergoddess of the Irish Celtoi - the goddess of war, death, prophecy and passionate love.

War, death, prophecy and passionate love:  did Nana have any inkling she was creating a romance writer?  Yeah, probably.

Eventually I got used to The Wench hanging around, whispering sweet nothings in my ear.  She was the one who helped me finish my first "book," which I recall was about a Hollywood stunt horse outrunning a brush fire in California, saving the life of the handsome actor who rode him in all his films.  I think that was around the time I was in love with cowboy actors.  The Wench humored me.  She seemed to see promise of some sort in me.  Sometimes she was even kind...until the day I tried to copy her by picking up a fallen baby blackbird which I named Downy.  I fed Downy hamburger and hard-boiled egg yolk on the end of an eyedropper filled with milk, which I cleverly shot down her throat in between bites.  I hauled her to Girl Scout camp in a carton so she didn't die of neglect.  I let her ride around on my shoulder just like Morrigan's crow, though I took the precaution of wearing a length of shower curtain beneath her.  I was obsessed with her, teaching her how to pick through grass for seed in preparation for leaving me someday to make her way in the wild.  My mother was convinced I was going to become a veterinarian.

The Wench was pissed.  I was envisioning myself as Dr. Doolittle instead of a romance writer.  She split.

That was the first time my muse left me.  It wouldn't be the last.

TOMORROW:  Evolution of The Muse   

 

NEW RELEASE - THE KING'S DAUGHTER BY MIRIAM NEWMAN

I was the King's daughter once, so many years ago that sometimes now it is hard to remember. Before the tide of time carried away so many things, so many people, it was worth something to be the daughter of a King.
Our little island nation of Alcinia was not rich, except for tin mines honeycombing the south. It wasn't even hospitable. Summer was a brief affair and fall was only a short time of muted colors on the northernmost coast where my father sat his throne at the ancient Keep of Landsfel. Winter was the killing time and spring was hardly better, with frosts that could last into Fifth-Month. But from the south, where men cut thatch in a pattern like the bones of fish, to the north where rock roses spilled down cliffs to the sea, it was my own.
One thinks such things will never change, yet all things do.
* * *
Thus begins the narrative memoir of Tarabenthia, born a princess in the land of Alcinia.  When the idyll of her childhood ends, she will defy her father, tipping the balance in a world poised on the brink of destruction and leaving history to judge her as heroine or harlot.

In a time of war, what would you surrender in the name of love?
***
Just released, available in pdf or on Kindle, coming in print:

All digital formats and Print 2/27/12:  http://rebeccajvickery.com/online-store.php

KINDLE: http://www.amazon.com/Kings-Daughter-Chronicles-Alcinia-ebook/dp/B0079JHX28  

SMASHWORDS:  https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/132900

LULU: www.lulu.com/product/ebook/the-kings-daughter/18892069

A multiple award winner, top ten finisher in Preditors & Editors poll for Best Romance Novel of 2008, re-releasing in print 2/27/12.

If you're a fan of fantasy historical romance, do not miss this one. 

FOR VALENTINE'S DAY - DANCER DOG

There is romance and then there's love.  Just plain old love.  And among the creatures I have loved most in my life, one stands out--Dancer Dog.  Here is her story, with love on Valentine's Day.

JUST IN TIME FOR VALENTINE'S DAY - STUPID CUPID

COMING FEBRUARY 15, 2012 - THE KING'S DAUGHTER

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?

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)

MY CABLE WENT OUT!!!

O-M-G.  Today my cable went out.  Totally out.  All day.  All day long!  It isn't right; it isn't fair.  I paid!  On time, even.  But it was....OUT!  No internet.  No cable TV.  Is this what drug withdrawal is like?  I've had flu that hurt less!
 

Really, it was terrible.  It was out when I left for work and then it was out when I came home for lunch.  I toyed with the idea of driving my laptop 19 miles to the nearest place I could plug it in but...I had to go back to work.  I passed two cable service trucks on my road on the way back to work.  Yes, I did stop and rolled down my window and asked them how soon I could have my cable back.  THEY DIDN'T KNOW!!!

It was torture.  All afternoon at work I worried whether I would have internet access when I got home.  I just knew it had to be fixed.  After all, at $88 a month, how could the cable company let me down like that???  ARGH.  Then I got home, clicked and entered and it said MY CONNECTIVITY HAD BEEN LOST!!!   I freaking knew my connectivity had been lost, all I wanted to know was when it was coming back.  I had a meltdown.  I screamed.  Really, really loud.  My dogs ran to the basement and I still haven't found the cats.  Oh, it was brutal.  You wouldn't have known me (well, maybe a couple of you would have. )

Obviously I got it back.  I punched and clicked, beat up the mouse, unplugged and re-plugged every plug, DUSTED the plugs on my hands and knees, threatened, implored, kicked, screamed and whined and eventually it came back.  My-connectivity-had-been-lost.  HOW DARE THEY?

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY - FEBRUARY 14!!!

It's the last day for my offer of a free PDF of my Valentine's Day book, Stupid Cupid.  If you would like a copy, just leave a comment and your email address.

This little novella is a quick read set in Ireland, where the arrival of both Cupid and a pugilistic couple in need of his services disrupts the life of the faerie band first met in my novel Confessions of the Cleaning Lady.  If you like paranormal with an Irish twist, don't miss Stupid Cupid with its adorable cover by DCL cover artist Annie Marshall!

Miriam Newman
www.miriamnewman.com
www.thedarkcastlelords.com