'City Nights: One Night in Edinburgh' by Charlotte Howard (@Shy_Tiger)

Blurb:

Chloe Shard has traveled to Edinburgh to meet up with a potential client, and has just twenty-four hours to convince them to sign her contract. But when she meets the delicious Ethan, he proves to be so much more than an enticing distraction. It’s not long before Chloe has some life changing decisions to make, and less than a day to make them in.

Buy Links:

http://tirgearrpublishing.com/authors/Howard_Charlotte/one-night-in-edinburgh.htm

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00P9RTNC0/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=B00P9RTNC0&linkCode=as2&tag=lucyfelthouse-21&linkId=2CDX6PQLLDVUNISD

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00P9RTNC0/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00P9RTNC0&linkCode=as2&tag=lucyfelt-20&linkId=AZV4J6VLHC277D6B

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/490676?ref=cw1985

Excerpt:

Chloe squeezed her eyes shut as the plane’s wheels bumped along the tarmac, and her stomach lurched into her chest as the brakes were applied. Her ears flooded with the sound of her own heart beating louder than the squealing and screeching of the landing gear. Pressure built in her cheeks as she clenched her teeth together.

The worst hour in her life was almost over.

“Welcome to Edinburgh,” said the captain over the speaker system. “We hope you had a pleasant journey and enjoyed the flight. Please remain seated with your seat belts fastened until the light is turned off.”

A chuckle emanated from nearby. Chloe opened one eye and peered at the man in the seat across the aisle from her.

“You can breathe again,” he said in an American accent, flashing her a grin.

“I think I’ll wait until my feet are actually on the ground if it’s all the same to you,” she replied, leaning back into the headrest.

A loud ping was followed by a Mexican wave of clicking as the passengers released their seat belts and fought to get their bags and rush off the plane. Chloe undid her own belt then hurriedly squished herself into the seat as an oversized belly, violently stretching at a pale green shirt, began its invasion of her breathing space. Her shoulder was nudged as the impatient woman beside her stood up, hunching under the overhead compartment.

She waited for the plane to empty. The impatient woman started huffing and tutting. Chloe looked up apologetically, but was met with a hardened glare.

“Here,” said the man from opposite. She turned her gaze towards him and was grateful to see him holding back a herd of cattle desperate to depart. She drank him in for a second. He was broad enough to act as a barrier between her and the crowd. A very attractive barrier. From the way his T-shirt stretched over his biceps, she could tell that his width was certainly not due to being overweight. Ink spiralled around his skin from beneath the short sleeve, tracing down to his elbow.

“Thank you.” She stepped into the aisle. Immediately, the woman from beside her shoved herself through the gap, knocking Chloe into the man’s chest with an oof!

“I’m so sorry!” she said, stepping back and turning to the overhead compartments, feeling her cheeks heat. Her fingers tingled with the memory of his muscular chest beneath them.

Charlotte Howard

Author Bio:

British author Charlotte Howard was born in Oman and spent much of the first part of her life flitting between Oman, Scotland, and England. Now settled in Somerset, Charlotte lives with her husband, two children, and growing menagerie of pets.

Her career as a writer began at an early age, with a poem being featured in an anthology for the East Midlands. Since then Charlotte has written many short stories and poems, and finally wrote her first full-length piece of fiction in 2010.

During what little spare time she has, Charlotte enjoys reading and writing (of course), spending time with her family, and watching action movies whilst eating curry and drinking tea.

Charlotte is an active member of Yeovil Creative Writers.

Social Media / Website links:

http://www.charlottehowardauthor.co.uk \

http://choward2614.wordpress.com

http://facebook.com/charlottehowardauthor

http://twitter.com/Shy_Tiger

Instagram: Choward_author

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/choward2614

Book Club Friday: Currently Reading...

To enter to win Switch (a dystopian romance) by Janelle Stalder, go here.

I'm currently reading Forbidden Highlander by Donna Grant. This Scottish Highlands paranormal romance is the second book in the Dark Sword series. I don't usually read historical romance novels, but I'll make an exception for a PNR. I also have a fondness for books set in the remote parts of the U.K., whether it be the Scottish Highlands, rural Wales, Cornwall, or the Isle of Man. All the Celtic parts, basically.

The blurb from Goodreads:

Fallon McLeod has gifts any warrior would covet—fierce strength, unmatched skill, even immortality. But those gifts have come at a price that puts everyone he loves at risk. Only when his brother, Quinn, is taken captive does Fallon leave the seclusion of his Highland home to seek the king's aid. And though every woman at court would gladly be his for the asking, one alone causes desire to roar to life within him: beautiful, mysterious Larena Monroe.

Rumors swirl around the castle about "The McLeod" but Larena knows the truth. Like Fallon, Larena is searching for a way to vanquish the evil Druid who wants to wreak havoc on earth. Drawn to Fallon in spite of her fear, she surrenders to a passion that shocks them both with its raw intensity. But Larena dares not hope for more—not when she holds a secret that could turn her fiery Highland love against her forever…

"Totally Captivating" (RT Book Reviews), Forbidden Highlander is a stunning historical and paranormal romance, book two in Donna Grant's bestselling Dark Sword series.

---

I read the first book, Dangerous Highlander, all the way back in 2010. You can read my review here. I kind of got sidetracked from my intentions of reading a rotation of my favorite PNR authors, which should go:

- Kate Douglas's DemonSlayer series (1 of 4 read so far)
- J.R. Wards's Fallen Angels series (1 of 5 read so far)
- Nalini Singh's Psy-Changeling series (2 of 12 read so far)
- Donna Grant's Dark Sword series (1 of 6 finished so far)

Donna Grant also writes two "spin-off" series from Dark Sword: the Dark Warrior series, an additional 9 novels with a contemporary setting; and the 4 Dark King novels. Whew! That's a lot. But they're a fairly quick read, and Forbidden Highlander is fun because the female protagonist is a warrior woman who literally has a goddess inside her. A happy ending for Larena and Fallon is almost guaranteed, since it's a romance novel. I hope to have it done by Hogmanay (that's what the New Year is called in Scotland).

According to the receipt stuck inside the cover, I purchased Forbidden Highlander at Borders on October 2, 2010.

Then, I intend to read Mitzi Szereto's erotic Oscar Wilde mash-up, The Wilde Passions of Dorian Gray. I hope it's as entertaining as Pride and Prejudice: Hidden Lusts. When I finish that, I'll read the next Kate Douglas on my list, then attempt to tackle George Eliot's thick classic (the original, not a mash-up this time!) Middlemarch. I read The Count of Monte Cristo in January 2013, so it's almost time for another brick of a classic.

Then, perhaps The Casual Vacancy. We'll see - that's getting pretty far ahead of myself.

What's a Selkie?

If you haven't already, you can still go to Kelly Walker's Jaded Stone post for a chance to win $50 in either Amazon.com gift cards or Paypal cash. You'll want to come back tomorrow (November 22) as well for another giveaway.

That giveaway will have to do with Susan Hayes' novel Riptide, a male/male/female erotic romance featuring two brothers who are selkie shape shifters. What exactly are selkies? They're similar to mermaids, but not exactly the same. For the best answer, let's turn to Barbara Sjoholm's oceanic folklore-logue The Pirate Queen: In Search of Grace O'Malley and Other Legendary Women of the Sea. 

Sjoholm writes:

"Like tales of mermaids who take off their scaly nether parts and walk on land, the better to lure unwitting men to their watery kingdoms, transformative stories of the seal folk abound in the northern islands [of Scotland, namely the Shetlands and the Orkneys]. But seals embody an old animism, when animals were regarded as powerful and numinous, and when humans would mimic them and wear their skins to take on their power. So many stories of the seal folk, selkies or silkies in the local tongue, seem to be about humans trying to capture the spirit of the selkie. One common version begins when a man spies a group of girls sunbathing naked on a beach or a rocky shore.

"When he approaches, most of the girls get away, but one doesn't, for he steals her spotted skin and hides it somewhere secret in his house. He takes her home, and she tries to be a good wife to him. But always in the story comes a time when she finds, or one of her children tells her where to find, the box or the chest with the skin inside. As soon as she finds it, she's gone. Although the tales often seem to be about love, they are never about renunciation. The choice of [Hans Christian] Andersen's Little Mermaid, to become human and to suffer, is not for the selkie wife. No, she's tricked into living in a human body for a time, but she always escapes back to her true element at the end.

"The many stories of seal folk aren't all about capturing seals for wives. Some are about seal men seducing women (an explanation for out-of-wedlock pregnancy, perhaps) and about crossing a boundary between human and animal, about understanding the connection across species. Sometimes men who are great hunters of seals are taken below and shown the wounds of their prey, after which the hunters hunt no more. But many of the stories are about shape shifting, about changing from animal to human and back. The appeal of the selkie, and indeed the seal, is its amphibious nature. That possibility of living in both worlds is what humans hold to, especially seafarers, fishers, coast dwellers. What if drowning were only a dream from which you woke into a beautiful marine world filled with lavish meals and luxurious houses? What if the fathers and brothers who never came back from fishing were safe and sound under the waves? What if the large gray seal lifting his curious head from the sea to look at you were a relative? How comforting that would be."



So the selkies are the seal men and seal women of Northern European folklore (although I'm sure such creatures exist in the folklore of many coastal dwellers, under different names). Now you're up to speed for tomorrow's post.

Hogmanay: New Year's Eve in Scotland

The Scots invented the modern-day celebration of New Year's Eve, from "Auld Lang Syne" to the big disco ball. In Scotland, New Year's Eve is called Hogmanay.

The word's origins are obscure; it may be of Celtic, Norman (French) or Anglo-Saxon origin. The nearest Gaelic term is oge maidne, or "new morning." Large Hogmanay festivals are now held in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling.

"Auld Lang Syne" is often attributed to the Scottish poet Robert Burns, but Burns was only transcribing and adding to an existing folk song. Translated from the Scots dialect into everyday modern English, "Auld Lang Syne" means "old long since." In Scottish folk tales, "In the days of auld lang syne" takes the place of "once upon a time," and "for auld lang syne" could be restated as "for old times' sake."

The big disco ball is a modern descendant of the fireballs traditionally swung on Hogmanay. This tradition has its roots in pagan bonfire nights, also observed at Samhain and Beltane. The light wards off evil spirits and encourages the days to get longer. You'll see men carrying a 20-pound fireball attached to a 5-foot pole in Aberdeen's southern neighbor, Stonehaven. The fireball's traditional name is the Clavie.

Hogmanay is also celebrated with the custom of first footing. The first person to set foot through your door on the new year should be a tall, dark male. (Blonds, associated with the Viking invaders, were bad luck.) Traditionally, he would bear gifts of coal, whisky and black bun (a really heavy Scottish fruit cake) or another kind of cake. In eastern Scotland's fishing communities, he may also bring herring. Coal meant the house would stay warm for the coming year, and food gifts meant the house would not go hungry.

(Hogmanay 2007 in Biggar - by David Hamilton, Creative Commons)

Clement A. Miles writes in Christmas Customs and Traditions, "Drinking is and was a great feature of the Scottish New Year Eve."

During the Protestant Reformation years when celebrating Christmas was discouraged, Hogmanay became the gift-exchanging day in Scottish custom. Scottish children chose Hogmanay rather than Christmas Eve to go door to door wassailing - a begging custom that will remind Americans of trick-or-treating. Welsh kids carry a gray mare, but the old Scottish wassailing custom is for the leader of each group of children to dress in a sheepskin.

Hogmanay has its own website. This one is specific to Edinburgh Hogmanay.

5 out of 5 stars for Donna Grant's Cross-Genre Romance

I recently finished Dangerous Highlander by Donna Grant, the first novel in her Dark Sword series. The book was published in paperback by St. Martin's Press in 2010.

I don't usually give five stars to romance novels (though I am a big fan of them), but this one earned my respect early on. By chapter three I was completely hooked on this series. The three MacLeod brothers--eldest Fallon, middle brother Lucan, and youngest Quinn--are simply irresistible.

It's not just that they're gorgeous Scottish Highlanders, either. Thanks to the workings of ancient Druid magic, originally used to fend off the Romans, the three brothers share an ancient god trapped inside them. A madwoman seeks to capture them because of this, and because of their secret, their clan was slaughtered. For three hundred years, the immortal brothers lived alone in the ruins of their castle with only their vengeful god for company. When an innocent young nun-in-training, Cara, ventures near their forbidden hold, she senses there's something magical about the place, but she never expects to fall in love with one of the brothers. This book was the perfect blend of romance and sword and sorcery, with moments of action but also a great heart, great chemistry, and an unforgettable band of brothers.

I took Donna Grant's Dark Sword quiz on FaceBook, and the quiz suggested "my" brother is Fallon. Okay, so Fallon does slightly resemble my husband, but so far I think I like Quinn a little better. I won't really know until I get my hands on the next book in the series, Forbidden Highlander. I plan to do that on my next trip to the bookstore.