Stocking Your E-Reader Sale! Dec. 29-Jan. 2

I'm really excited to be part of two great sales going on this week. The Stocking Your E-Reader Sale starts today, and features more than 100 books by over 60 authors, 99 cents or less, plus prizes! Urdaisunia is on sale at Amazon all week for 99 cents (also on sale at the international stores). Click the image or the name of the sale to go to the sale page, to discover tons of books 99 cents or less!

And coming up on New Year's Day, the Science Fiction and Fantasy MAD January Sale - watch for details!

Update: in addition to being on sale at Amazon, Urdaisunia is also on sale at Apple, OmniLit, DriveThruFiction, and Smashwords! I'm waiting to see if the sale price also goes through to Barnes&Noble and Kobo; I'll post here if/when it does.

Author Spotlight: Daniel Casey

Introducing multi-faceted author Daniel Casey and his fantasy novel, Adversaries Together (Ascendant Realms, Book 1):

1. Tell us a little about yourself.
I’ve lived in several states over the last fifteen years, but consider myself a Minnesotan, adopting the state where my wife grew up and still has family. I’ve run for US Congress, founded and edited a literary magazine, been a college English professor, published poetry and criticism in several small magazines, covered professional soccer in North America, and am currently a house spouse.

2. When did you start writing, and why?
I started taking writing seriously in college. My focus for a long time was on poetry. I eventually went on to earn my MFA in creative writing-poetry from the University of Notre Dame. Poetry, especially lyric poetry, appealed to me because it became a medium that allowed me to blend my love of language, metaphor, and philosophy.

3. What do you write, and why? What do you enjoy about what you write?
For the last few years, I’ve written mostly nonfiction and of that it has mostly been articles on North American soccer. I still write poetry but have come to keep that work rather to myself. With the novel, Adversaries Together, that I self-published late this year (2014), I am making my first foray into regularly writing fiction.

4. What is your latest book or series? Any forthcoming books?
Adversaries Together is my first book and the first book in a long series I have in mind. Right now I envision a seven book series, called Ascendant Realms. It’s an epic fantasy story—swords & sorcery—where I’ve taken away magic and imaginary beasts, sex and violence, and replaced them with politics and wrangling of would-be nations, religions, and commerce.

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5. "Welcome To My Worlds": Tell us a little about the world of your latest book or series.
In the world of Syr Nebra, there is no such thing as magic, yet every human clings to their faith and country. The nation of The Seven Spires has imperial ambitions while the seat of the world's great religion, The Cathedral, plots its own crusade to control the world. The once prosperous city of Rikonen has been under siege for more than a thousand days and is crumbling. All the while, deep to the south the city of Lappala, the only source of the most precious substance in the world, is a sleeping giant.

6. Introduce us to some of your characters. What do you like about them?
In this opening book, I introduce seven heroes who will appear throughout the series: Avery Roth, a secretive wanderer; Kira Ambrose, a young priestess; Goshen Staad, a chivalric paladin; Wynne Landis and his daughter Fery, two nobles responsible for saving their city; Jena Char, a woman ranger who is as tough as nails and kinder than most; and Declan Rainway, a world weary mercenary. What I like about these characters is the chance they afford me to show how every individual truly needs others in order to become what they are.

7. A fun fact you would like your readers to know about you or your book.
This first book was written during National Novel Writing Month; I wrote every day over thirty days. The manuscript, warts and all, is the product of that event. After writing the novel, I decided to pull the trigger and self-publish. I’m now planning on completing the series over this next year.

Adversaries Together:In the world of Syr Nebra, there is no such thing as magic, yet every human clings to their faith and country. Avery Roth is a wanderer scratching out a living in the hinterlands trying to avoid the religious zealots of The Cathedral and the imperial ambitions of The Seven Spires. But when a young woman and her paladin guardian literally run into him in the wild as they are fleeing bandits, he is entangled in a political web that tightens the more he struggles to free himself and others. Roth aids the duo on their way but in so doing is drawn into the duplicitous schemes of the elites from rival realms.

Adversaries Together is available at:
Amazon (Kindle and paperback) | CreateSpace (paperback)

Where to find Daniel Casey:
I frequently post supplemental information about the series on my personal blog, https://misanthropester.wordpress.com/
Goodreads | Twitter

Author Spotlight: Lydia Rodriguez-Clement

Today I'm happy to welcome paranormal-romance author Lydia Rodriguez-Clement to the blog:

1. Tell us a little about yourself.
Let’s see. What can I say? Well, just like my main character Sarah, I live in San Antonio, Texas. I also come from a large Hispanic family, and I have a wonderful supportive husband, five children, and a dog. Yep, I said five children. Large families run in my family.

2. When did you start writing, and why?
I started writing back in high school. My English teacher really encouraged me to write after a poetry assignment. She had liked my poetry so much that she entered a couple of them into the Pegasus Poetry Competition. Unfortunately I didn’t win. I know, I know. My heart has mended since then. But that was when I started writing my short stories, which she read aloud to the class every other Friday. From then on I was hooked. I loved the way I could express myself through the stories, give out a message, and have people really understand and like them.

3. What do you write, and why? What do you enjoy about what you write?
My primary genre is Paranormal Romance, but I would like to give Contemporary Romance a shot in the near future. I LOVE writing Paranormal Romance, because you can do absolutely anything in them. You are only hindered by your imagination.

4. What is your latest book or series? Any forthcoming books?
My book THE GUARDIAN is the first installment of what I hope to be a series. It is actually a revised version of Angelus, so DON’T read that one. My progress for the second one is slow, but I do have three chapters done already. And like I mentioned earlier, I would like to start on my Contemporary Romance somewhere in between.

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5. "Welcome To My Worlds": Tell us a little about the world of your latest book or series.
This contemporary story takes place around the beautiful Riverwalk in downtown San Antonio, Texas where we have people that are born with a special gift - the ability to see Angels. They are called ‘Seers’, and they are pretty much a secret society. The dark veil between our world and the Angels’ is thick, and many events happen without us even knowing. Some events take place in dark shadows, in out of the way places, or kept hidden by Angels who stay invisible. But these Angels are no ordinary Angels that people usually think about. These Angels are soldiers…warriors. They engage in epic battles with demons and Fallen Angels. The primordial battle between good and evil in this story is one that goes back three hundred years. They fight with swords, spears and battle axes like ancient armies, but with one major difference, powers. They have been given powers beyond imagining. Teleportation, power over the elements and the ability to stop time, to name a few. All of these are shown in this story when one Angel dares to love a human woman.

6. Introduce us to some of your characters. What do you like about them?
Jacob is my hero. He is a Guardian Angel who gets abruptly reassigned to a new post. I really like him, because he is so relatable. He fights and loves with every fiber of his being. Sarah is the heroine who has lived a very sheltered life. I like her, because throughout the story you can actually see her grow as a person. Caleb is Jacob’s best friend that is also his Captain. That is a really hard relationship, but somehow they always seem to work things out. Now the bad guys are Seth and Samuel. They are Fallen Angels who focus their hatred on Jacob. Samuel wants to rule Jacob, while Seth wants to overpower him. I like Seth, because he showes that evil can come in sweet and handsome forms.

7. A fun fact you would like your readers to know about you or your book.
Hmm? A fun fact about me or my book? I’m not sure if this is fun, but I do LOVE to eat peanuts while I write. I ate while I wrote this book and I eat peanuts while I’m writing the second book. What kinds? All kinds! Chocolate covered, salted, roasted, spicy, and limon.

Where to find Lydia:
Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon

The Guardian:THE GUARDIAN is a story about how Sarah's spiritual beliefs are reaffirmed when the existence of Angels and Demons are horrifically revealed. Never had she dreamt that her mundane life would be caught in not only a struggle to stay alive in this clash of worlds, but also in a sadistic plan by the Dark Angels to lure Jacob, her own Guardian, to fall.

The Guardian is available at:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble

About the Author: Lydia Rodriguez-Clement, a native Texan, grew up in the beautiful city of San Antonio where this story takes place, and where she attended a local college and university. It was in high school, however, where she was told she had a flare for writing, and decided many years later to persue this noble art. She has been married for 19 years, and has five children and two dogs. Her family life keeps her very busy, but after surviving Leukemia, with the help of God, family and friends, she followed her life long dream to write a book.

Read on for an excerpt from The Guardian:

Guest Post: Derek Alan Siddoway on Medieval Westerns

Hi everyone, Derek here with a guest post for all you Kyra Halland readers. Below, I’ve painted a small picture of what you’ll find in my novel, Teutevar Saga: Out of Exile and how the genre I call “medieval western” came about. If you like what read, I’ve made Out of Exile free today [Wed. Dec. 17] on Amazon just for you guys. You can also get a free short story by signing up for my newsletter here. Thanks and enjoy!

Imagine it: wide, sweeping plains as far as the eye can see. In the distance, a herd of buffalo roams through the tall prairie grass. On the edge of a watering hole, a pack of coyotes hunker down, watching a group of mule deer as they drink. The wild mustangs surrounding the edge of the pond discourage them from attacking, for now.

It seems like a peaceful morning on the range but then, the buffalo alert. Their dark, woolly heads shoot up, their tails rise like flagpoles and the herd circles. An ominous thundering noise fills the distance. The mustangs and the deer are looking now as well, their ears pricked toward the coming thunder. It sounds as if the buffalo are stampeding, but they’re still huddled and alert.

In the calm morning air, a series of yips and whoops fill their air, but it’s not from the coyote pack. Were you on the Great Plains, you might expect a war party of Native American horsemen to crest the ridge. But you’re not in America, you’re in Peldrin.
Horsemen indeed ride over the hills and their ponies and shields are painted for war. Their hair is dark and braided. Tomahawks, bows and quivers of arrows are close at hand, but these aren’t Sioux. These are Simarru warriors from the Sube Lowlands, the northwestern edge of the Simarron Plain. In addition to tomahawks, the riders carry thick lances and sabers and wear leather and mail armor. They pull their horses to a stop and grow quiet. The valley below is empty now, the bison and other wildlife have fled.

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Over the opposite rise to the north, another line of horses appear. These, however, aren’t agile Simarru ponies. These are war horses, seventeen hands tall, and on them, Skaldean knights in plate armor. Behind them ride buckaroos, lighter horsemen in the service of the Cattle Barons to the east. Before the Republic brought peace, the Cattle Barons and their buckaroos waged endless war against the nomadic Simarru — their longhorn cattle against the endless buffalo herds.

The Skaldean knights form a wedge and sound their battle horns. The Simarru horse archers ride down the ridge and ready their bows. Behind them, the lancers shout war cries into the endless skies above. For a moment, neither side moves. And then the peace is shattered by the thundering of charging horses and whirr of arrow fire.

What do you think? Snag a free copy of Out of Exile to read more.
You get a powerful thing mixing epic fantasy, medieval historical fiction, mythology, American folktales and westerns all together in a book. The result, what I’ve coined as the medieval western genre, is a compilation of everything I love in a story. It’s my debut series: Teutevar Saga.

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Even as I devoured the works of Tolkien, George R. R. Martin, Lloyd Alexander, C.S. Lewis and more, part of me wanted something different, something closer to home. That part of me was fostered from countless John Wayne movies, L’Amour books and the landscape and culture of the American West where I call home. Much like Kyra, I appreciate the rich mythology we have here in the west and want to share it with the world. Why, I thought, can’t a book have all of these things: the power and awe of a traditional epic fantasy, steeped with the rugged, action-packed grit of a western?

Most authors get into writing because they’ve got a story they want to read that exists only in the realm of their imagination. I was no different. I grew up reading the greats, but when I came across books like S.M. Stirling’s Dies the Fire and Joe Abercrombie’s Red Country, I saw a glimpse of what was possible, what was brewing in my writer’s mind.

Although it took me over a decade to write, rewrite, revise and publish, Out of Exile was a realization of that dream. With each book of the Teutevar Saga, I hope I continue to build and expand the rich world of Peldrin, a world, I hope to be unlike any other. If you’re a fan of western fantasy, you’ll feel right at home in one of my medieval westerns.

Happy reading,
Derek Alan Siddoway, author of Teutevar Saga
P.S. Don’t forget, Out of Exile is free for you on Amazon. You can also get a complimentary, award-winning short story by joining my newsletter.
Out of Exile:
War is brewing. The hunt begins. Exile is over.
Revan Teutevar is the exiled heir of an extinct country fed up with a life in hiding. He’s also a boy on a manhunt with blood on his hands, tracking his mother’s kidnappers. Aided by a renegade leprechaun and a smooth-talking minstrel, the young Teutevar pursues his foes across a land on the brink of war. Faced with trials at every step, Revan learns quickly that, out of exile, the line between right and wrong is blurred in the best of times…and nonexistent in the worst.

Visit Derek at his website: http://derekalansiddoway.com/

Goodreads | Twitter | Facebook | Google+

Kyra sez: Thanks, Derek! It was great meeting you and finding out about your medieval westerns.
Click here to read my post on western fantasy on Derek's site.

Author Spotlight: Sue Perry

Introducing author Sue Perry and her latest novel, Nica of Los Angeles (Frames #1):

1). Tell us a little about yourself.
I am a seasoned yet new writer. I published a novel in hardcover with Bantam-Doubleday-Dell some 20 years ago, then stopped writing until recently. In that hiatus, I was a low-budget TV producer, a disaster scientist, a college professor, and more, until I finally acknowledged that writing is the only work that matters to me.

2). When did you start writing, and why?
When I was growing up, teachers always told me I was a writer, and at some point I came to believe them. However, for a long time, I had little to say. So I would start writing then stop, pick up again then set down. Nowadays, however, the "stopping" is over and I feel considerable urgency to write.

3). What do you write, and why? What do you enjoy about what you write?
I write novels, and the occasional novella, about whatever most preoccupies me at the time - I have many interests! To date I have written a psychological thriller involving split brain research, animal rights, and a love quadrangle ("Was It A Rat I Saw"); a novella about an oddball group of scientists and techies who solve crimes ("C.R.I.M.E. Science"); literary fiction about a family with secrets ("Scar Jewelry"); and a fantasy detective adventure ("Nica of Los Angeles"). Although my books span many genres and perspectives, they share key features. They all have smartass dialog, strong female characters, and stories that unfold like mysteries. There will always be a cat, and there will usually be a musician.

4). What is your latest book or series? Any forthcoming books?
"Nica of Los Angeles" is my latest novel, the first in a quartet of novels that will make up the speculative detective series FRAMES. Book 2 in the series, "Nica of XXX" (location currently embargoed), will be out in the first half of 2015.

5). "Welcome To My Worlds": Tell us a little about the world of your latest book or series.
Frames are dimensions, and there are an infinite number. No one has been to them all. Landscapes are similar from Frame to Frame, but structures and beings vary. What seem to be inanimate objects in one Frame may in fact be animate and/or sentient beings in other Frames. You just never know. For example, a lawn chair, a volcano, and a building - among other non-human characters - are all sentient in "Nica of Los Angeles".

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6). Introduce us to some of your characters. What do you like about them?
Narrator Nica S.T.A.T.Ic. (Sheridan Taggart Ambrose Taggart Ickovic) has recently appointed herself as a private detective. She is an upbeat person in a very noir world. She never loses her wits, her wit, or her enthusiasm for life, and she never lets details like fear or inexperience slow her down.

Miles and Monk are siblings. In our Frame, they are known as the tallest of the Watts Towers, inanimate folk art sculptures. In other Frames they are animate as well as sentient. Monk is a quiet philosopher given to inscrutable remarks; Miles is a lively gadabout and a flirt.

7). A fun fact you would like your readers to know about you or your book.
I'm adopted and as an adult, met my birth family, who (luckily!) turn out to be awesome people with amazingly similar attitudes and senses of humor. Turns out that, after I was adopted, my parents got together and had five more kids. I wrote about some of this in my novel "Scar Jewelry" (Btw, that wasn't a spoiler - that isn't the secret the characters grapple with in SJ.)

Nica of Los Angeles (Frames #1):When rookie private eye Nica takes on a mysterious case, she enters a world of multiple dimensions called Frames, where buildings and lawn chairs can be sentient, a stray cat has great powers, books can be killers, and clouds can be spies. At home, Nica tackles missing person cases, while in the larger reality of the Frames she is swept into an escalating battle with stakes that could not be higher.

Read a three-chapter excerpt from Nica of Los Angeles here.

Nica of Los Angeles is available at:
Amazon | Smashwords | Barnes&Noble | Kobo | Apple

Where to find Sue Perry:
Blog | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon author page | Smashwords author page
I rarely post to my Facebook fan page, but it does exist: https://www.facebook.com/SuePerryAuthor

Music is crucial in the shaping of my novels. As user "scperryz" I have playlists on Spotify for "Scar Jewelry" and "Nica of Los Angeles".
Nica of Los Angeles: http://open.spotify.com/user/scperryz/playlist/61lXhpNJCeYEcAVwOXvnyO
Scar Jewelry: http://open.spotify.com/user/scperryz/playlist/5515fvDrOfhpwBqYye4atP

Calibre for Readers - A Useful Post

Busy busy with editing Bad Hunting and getting ready to write another Estelend novel, and oh yeah Christmas and stuff, but I wanted to take a minute to link to this very useful post on Indies Unlimited: Calibre for Readers, part 1. Calibre is a free ebook management program, which a lot of authors use for doing ebook conversions. It's also designed as an ebook library, where you can list all the ebooks on your computer, group them by authors, series, and tags, transfer them on and off of your ereader, and other cool stuff. If you buy ebooks from a variety of stores such as Amazon and allRomance and Smashwords, it's a great way to aggregate them all in one place. If the book doesn't have DRM, Calibre can also be used to convert ebooks from one format to another (for example, if you find yourself with a book in Kindle format and want to convert it for your Nook).

You can also use it to convert personal documents in various formats, such as DOCX, PDF, RTF, and TXT, into an ebook file for easy reading on your ereader. I've done this with fanfictions I've written, just for fun :)

Anyway, Calibre is a very cool and useful program, and it's free (though they welcome donations), so check out the blog post for more information!

November 2014 Wrap-up and Look Ahead at December

So, I won NaNoWriMo (or as I like to think of it, successfully completed the challenge, since everyone who validates 50,000 words or more "wins") for the 6th year in a row :-D The result is the rough draft of The Source-Fixer (working title, or possibly the permanent title if I can't think of anything better) and three accompanying short stories giving the backstory on the main characters. Like a lot of my books, this was based on yet another old unfinished story fragment I was stuck on. I decided to go a different direction with the characters, which I'll write about another time, and, as so often happens when I take a fresh look at the characters, this is what got me un-stuck.

I also printed out my very first novel ever, Prince of the Trozdozh (another meh working title, I suck at thinking of titles) and its sequel (untitled, the one with Travarac and Kilahra). I think there's hope for them, I started reading the sequel while I was printing it out and couldn't stop.

So the pile of manuscripts awaiting revision grows even bigger.

Also in November, Beneath the Canyons had a fantastic release. Thank you, everyone, for your support! Book 2, Bad Hunting, is now under revision.

On the A-Z reading challenge, I'm still on D (Darkmage, by M.L. Spencer). It's very long, and I'm also dividing my reading time with The Plains of Kallanash by Pauline M. Ross, a lovely author I've gotten to know on Goodreads and Google+.

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Besides Christmas, the main focus in December will be on continuing with the revision and editing of Bad Hunting, aiming for a release hopefully in the first part of January. Between NaNoWriMo and Thanksgiving, I didn't get as far with this as I wanted to in November, so it doesn't look like I'll be able to get it out this month. I'm writing a lot of new material for the book, filling out some things that needed to be filled out, and so far I've added over 5,000 words.

I've also started revising the fanfiction I wrote for NaNoWriMo 2013. Now that the big, heavy first revision on Daughter of the Wildings is done, I have time for a side-project, and some of my fanfic readers have been asking about it. So it's time to get it finished and posted.

Which leads into the big dilemma I'm having right now. I've got lots of stories I want to write, and lots of things awaiting revision (including but not limited to books 2-6 of Daughter of the Wildings). The more time I spend writing new stuff the less time I have to spend on revising, but, as always happens during a NaNo event, I'm reminded again of the importance of writing every day, to improve my craft and stay in practice. So it's a matter of trying to figure out how to allocate my time and, more importantly, mental and physical energy. Right now I'm thinking maybe 30 minutes a day of planning (if the project is still in the planning stage) or a daily writing target of 1000 words (which takes me about 30 minutes to do) will fit into my schedule and energy limitations, with the remaining 2-3 hours of writing time spent on revisions.

Also on the to-do list is to finish the paperback edition of Beneath the Canyons and do some work on the website. My list of books is getting too long to display them all individually in the sidebar (not that I'm complaining!), so I'm looking at some other ways of letting website visitors know about my books. Weebly (my site hosting service) has a nifty slideshow widget, so I'm thinking I'll put my first six books into that and have the Daughter of the Wildings books separately as the current and upcoming releases. (I started my first website in Jan. 2001, and I've been a happy website-fiddler ever since).

For the A-Z reading challenge, I think I need to start choosing shorter books. Will not finish by the end of the year.

Finally, there's another special blog hop event coming up Dec. 19-22, the Winter Warm-Up romance blog hop.

This should be enough to keep me out of trouble for another month.

Author Spotlight: Dawn Marie Hamilton

Introducing Dawn Marie Hamilton, author of Scottish fantasy-romance:

1. Tell us a little about yourself.
Here is the official bio: Dawn Marie Hamilton dares you to dream. She is a 2013 RWA® Golden Heart® Finalist who pens Scottish-inspired fantasy and paranormal romance. Some of her tales are rife with mischief-making faeries, brownies, and other fae creatures. More tormented souls—shape shifters, vampires, and maybe a zombie or two—stalk across the pages of other stories. She is a member of several chapters of Romance Writers of America. When not writing, she’s cooking, gardening, or paddling the local creeks of Southern Maryland with her husband.

2. When did you start writing, and why?
As with many young girls, I kept a journal as a teenager. In high school, I wrote dark short stories. During my corporate career, I wrote computer software manuals and training material. Not very fanciful. While on a business trip in Brussels, I saw a billboard with a hot Highlander advertising whisky. I decided I wanted to write stories featuring smexy Scots.

3. What do you write, and why? What do you enjoy about what you write?
Scottish fantasy and paranormal romance with time travel elements. I enjoy taking readers to another place. A place of magic. A place of faeries and brownies and other fae creatures. A place of vampires and shifters and other dark creatures. A place where love spans centuries and is ever-lasting.

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4. What is your latest book or series? Any forthcoming books?
Just in Time for a Highland Christmas, a holiday novella, recently released as part of my Highland Gardens time travel series fraught with meddling fae. Just Wait For Me (A Highland Gardens Novel – Book 3) is scheduled for release Spring 2015. I’m also working on the second novel in the Crimson Storm vampire-shifter series, Raven’s Revenge.

5. "Welcome To My Worlds": Tell us a little about the world of your latest book or series.
In the Highland Gardens series the Queen of the Fae challenges a banished faerie to craft three nearly impossible matches. The characters journey through time either from the lush gardens of the present day Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina and the fictitious Village of Anderson Creek—a place over-run by Scottish ex-pats—to 16th century Scotland and vice versa.

6. Introduce us to some of your characters. What do you like about them?
The Highland Gardens cast of characters stroll through multiple books. Robert and Archibald are twins. Smexy Highlanders. Archibald is the hero in Just in Time for a Highland Christmas and is the chief of Clan MacLaclan in 16th century Scotland. He’s gorgeous and proud and everything swoon-worthy. Lies have turned his betrothed (previously his twins betrothed), the raven-haired Isobell against him. She seeks revenge against him and his clan. Her pride matches Archibald’s. Caitrina is an auburn-haired beauty, a halfling faerie disguised as a gardener in the present, but releases her fae power in the past. Often at odds with Caitrina, Munn is the three foot tall bumbling clan brownie who’s trying to bring the couple together. As in all romances, by the end of the story, Archibald and Isobell find an everlasting love.

7. A fun fact you would like your readers to know about you or your book.
Having previously been a Master Gardener, garden themes are included in most of my tales.

8. Where can we find you?
Website | Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads | email

Just in Time for a Highland Christmas:
Can a determined brownie craft a perfect match in time for Christmas?

When the Chief of Clan MacLachlan travels to the stronghold of his feuding neighbors to fetch his betrothed, she is gone. A year later, she is still missing. Making life more vexing, a band of reivers are stealing clan cattle, leaving behind destruction. Archibald MacLachlan determines to capture them and administer harsh punishment.

Though once in love with the man, Isobell Lamont refuses to wed her clan's enemy. After running away, she joins the band of reivers set on revenge.

Can Archibald forgive the raven-haired beauty? Will a journey through time bring them together for a Highland Christmas?

Here's a sneak peek inside:

“Let us not harbor thoughts of troubling events from our past, even if only for this night.” He clasped her hand and held it over his heart.

She tilted her head to the side and her brow wrinkled, as if trying to understand. Then her lips curved into a smile filled with, could he hope, love. “If that is your wish, then ’tis my desire also.”

[Dawn Marie: Of course, you can guess her being amenable will be short-lived.]
Just in Time for a Highland Christmas is available at Amazon.