Alison Stuart, Gather The Bones and Giveaway!

Today we have Australian lawyer, Alison Stuart, who just released her latest Paranormal Historical Romance- Gather The Bones. 

MYSTERY, HISTORY, ROMANCE AND GHOSTS – Alison Stuart on writing GATHER THE BONES

Thanks for having me here, Nas and crew.

I am often asked where I get the inspiration for my stories and it’s not an easy question to answer. Sometimes it comes from a passing reference in a book (as it did for THE KING’S MAN) but more often it is buildings. I love old buildings and on my trips to England I could spend my entire time poking around old houses and ruined castles.

When I visited Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire, a medieval moated manor house, it just begged for a story to be set in its crooked corridors. 

I started off wanting to write a ghost story. I’ve always liked ghost stories and have written a couple of short stories with a supernatural bent but never turned my hand to a full length novel. I thought a change from my beloved seventeenth century was called for and a recent tour of the battlefields of the First World War gave me the major plot for the story.  A story about the aftermath of the Great War.

Setting a book in 1923 allowed me to write an Australian character (my heroine, Helen) and I love archaeology so my hero is an archaeologist.  Finally I wanted to try my hand at a mystery.  Like the witches in Macbeth, I threw the whole lot in and stirred.

The result is GATHER THE BONES…mystery, history, romance and ghosts…or as one young friend called it “Downton Abbey with ghosts”.

Or as my editor would prefer…

The horrors of the Great War are not the only ghosts that haunt Helen Morrow and her late husband's reclusive cousin, Paul. Unquiet spirits from another time and another conflict touch them.

A coded diary gives them clues to the mysterious disappearance of Paul's great-grandmother in 1812, and the desperate voice of a young woman reaches  out to them from the pages. Together Helen and Paul must search for answers, not only for the old mystery, but also the circumstances surrounding the death of Helen's husband at Passchandaele in 1917.

As the mysteries entwine, their relationship is bound by the search for truth, in the present and the past.

Mystery, history, romance or ghosts…what is your favourite read?

Stop by and leave a comment and go in the draw to win a Gather the Bones related prize.

Please add to your Goodreads. And there is a Goodreads Giveaway going at the moment.


Alison around the web:

 Facebook                   Website

Donna Shields & Secrets of Jenkins Bridge GIVEAWAY!

We have author Donna Shields at RBH and she is sharing about her latest release Secrets of Jenkins Bridge and she will be giving away a copy to one commenter!

Have you read Donna Shield's The Swan Cove Murders- Where the dead speak to her, danger finds her, and love saves her.

COMING JUNE 6TH: Secrets of Jenkins Bridge from Soul Mate Publishing

Donna Shields around the web:

Blog Website Soul Mate Authors Group Blog

Facebook Twitter

SECRETS OF JENKINS BRIDGE

Blurb

Hunting down a dangerous mob boss has brought FBI agent Mitchell Donovan home, reawakening an old flame, resurrecting a dead best friend, and discovering fatherhood. As if those aren’t enough, his new case will push everything else aside: finding the kidnappers who took the daughter he never knew he had.

Katherine Delaney never forgot the heartbreak Mitchell had caused with his abrupt departure all those years ago. With her dead ex-husband accused of murder and her daughter kidnapped, she will place her trust in the one man who could trample her heart again if she gets too close. But, will the resurrection of Katherine’s ex-husband and Mitchell’s chase for a killer destroy their second chance at love and happiness?


So over to Donna now...

I’m here today at RBH to talk about my new release, Secrets of Jenkins Bridge. All romance books have one or more themes. Marriage of convenience, amnesia, opposite sides of the tracks, pregnancies, protector/protected, and the list goes on.

Secrets of Jenkins Bridge has several romantic themes:

Long Lost Loves: My hero, Detective (FBI Agent) Mitchell Donovan and my heroine, Katherine Delaney were high school sweethearts fifteen years earlier until one tragedy and several misunderstandings led Mitchell to leave town.

Kidnapping: Katherine’s teenaged daughter, Aly, is kidnapped which raises the stakes for Katherine.

Secret Babies: Aly is Mitchell’s daughter. He didn’t know as he left town before Katherine could tell him, and no one could track him down.

And, of course, there’s embezzlement, betrayals, and murder. All of this is enough to keep and raise the stakes throughout Katherine and Mitchell’s story.

What are your favorite themes? I will be giving away a copy of SECRETS OF JENKINS BRIDGE to one commenter!

Liz Fielding, ELOPING WITH EMMY, and Giveaways!

Romance writer and multi published UK based novelist Liz Fielding when asked about....

WHERE DO YOU GET IDEAS?

 This is the universal question – the one thing every author is asked over and over again. It’s not often I can be absolutely sure. Usually stories evolve slowly. A photograph will spark something in the brain, characters will walk onto the stage that is waiting for them, a line of dialogue will hum in the imagination… And so it begins.  But occasionally you can pinpoint the exact moment a story began.

 That’s how it is with Eloping With Emmy.

 It was a Saturday afternoon. I was on my own – unusual – and I picked up the Radio Times (the magazine listing the television and radio programmes for the week) and that afternoon, buried amongst the sport, was an old movie that I’d never seen. It Happened One Night with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. I read the blurb, reached for the remote and grabbed a notebook.

 I had a great afternoon watching a fabulous movie – it won the entire sweep of major Oscars that year – Best Film, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director. Runaway heiress, down at heel hero… I made some notes, but mostly I just watched and over the next few days my writing brain began to play with ideas.

 Scenes ran through my head, made some more notes. Some ideas were discarded (I seem to remember one in a hayloft that that never made it onto the page), some jelled, none were anything like the scenes in the movie, but that’s not how inspiration works. It’s like the sparkplug in your car. It fires the engine, but after that you’re the one applying the fuel.

I sent the first three chapters to my editor and asked her what she thought and then got on with writing Wild Fire.

It was a while before she came back to me – on the day I delivered Wild Fire. And she wanted the rest of the book by the end of the month. Gulp. I had twenty-six days to finish Eloping With Emmy; I delivered the manuscript on the last day of the month.

My book isn’t anything like It Happened One Night. Emmy isn’t running away from marriage to a boring millionaire (!) and Tom isn’t down at heel in any way, although he is from a completely different social strata. They are, however, forced to stick together on their journey across England and France, even though their objectives are at odds. She is determined to reach the man she’s vowed to marry. His assignment is to stop the wedding, whatever it takes.

What I learned from It Happened One Night was the value of the journey as a crucible. According to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary a crucible is – “A vessel, usually of earthenware, made to endure great heat, used for fusing metals. A melting pot. Fig. Used of any severe test or trial.”

And that – according to my very first editor - is what every great romance needs.

Leave a comment telling me what romantic movie you’ve loved and if there was a crucible, how it held the hero and heroine together.

I’ll draw a winner from the comments for an eBook download of Eloping With Emmy, a signed copy of my new Harlequin Romance, The Last WomanHe’d Ever Date and an eBook download of Liz Fielding’sLittle Book of Writing Romance.

Eloping With Emmy

Back Blurb


Hot shot legal eagle, Tom Brodie, has been landed with an assignment to test any man to his limits - do whatever it takes to prevent headstrong heiress Emerald Carlisle from marrying a fortune-hunter. He is not happy about it, and when Emmy stows away in his car, his day goes from bad to worse, but since she's the only one who knows where to find the man in question he has no choice but take her along for the ride.

It's a bumpy one!

Emmy is not a woman to sit back and let things fall as they will. She has a plan and she keeps Brodie on his toes in a rollercoaster chase across the UK and France. He's more than up to the challenge, but falling in love with Emmy along the way is always going to end with his heart in pieces.

THE LAST WOMAN HE'D EVER DATE

Back Blurb

Claire Thackeray: Hardworking single mom and gossip columnist. Hoping for the inside scoop on sexy billionaire Hal North, aka her teen crush!

Most wary of: Gorgeous men who set her heart racing. (Been there, got the T-shirt—and the baby!)

Hal North: Bad boy made good. Back in his hometown as new owner of the Cranbrook Park estate. Determined to put his troubled past behind him.

Most wary of: Journalists—especially pretty ones, like new neighbor and tenant Claire Thackeray.


Liz Fielding around the web:

Website         Blog        Twitter        Facebook