'Midsummer Maid' - out today

My sweet historical romance novella Midsummer Maid is out today. If you liked my The Lord and Eleanor, this is for you and you can buy it here: 

MuseItUp
Amazon US

Amazon UK

Bookstrand

Here's the blurb:

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Together, can their love defy the world? At Midsummer all things are possible…

He was a good man but cursed with the mark of the devil on his face and shunned by many. She was a dairy-maid, caring and brave, who feared no one.

Drawn to each other on a long and fateful Midsummer Day, can Haakon and Clare overcome the superstitions of their village and the brutal, lecherous knights to break out of their bonds of class and custom and to strive for a better life – together?

..and an excerpt:

Haakon was a woodsman, a forester. He had cared for his parents until they had both died last winter and then given away his younger sister at her wedding this spring. He was lonely in his simple hovel, but not unhappy, because Clare had returned to the village.


"Clare," Haakon said aloud, for the pleasure of speaking her name. "Clare."


Clare was the daughter of Agnes, the wet-nurse, sent back from the castle this summer by the lord's new lady, who disliked well-favored girls. With glowing brown hair and hazel eyes, Clare seemed an unlikely dairy maid, being so small and slender, but the beasts were docile with her. Who would not be, when tended by such nimble, smooth hands?


Haakon smiled and shook his head and returned to his sawing, working surely amidst the coppiced ash boles. Clare was a sweet wonder, with a ready smile and an easy laugh, even for him, but he had no illusions. He had work and a good, solid house, but she would never marry him. He had the mark of the devil on his face, a red stain stretching over half his chin. Even his beard did not cover it, for he was fair, with face hair as fine as a baby's fuzz. He went about clean-shaven now, ignoring the stares.


Clare had not stared, nor made the sign of the cross against him. Driving a cow along the track running close to the woodland, she would nod to him and raise a hand in greeting. She did this each time he met her, and he took care that they met every day.


Today he had not seen her, but reminded himself that he would not until later. He worked early, to finish this task, although it was the eve of a holy day when by custom there should be no work. The lord had wanted fresh ash poles for a bower at the castle bailey. Haakon had warned that the tree might sicken through being cut so late, but the lord had brushed the matter aside. His lady wanted a bower, filled with flowers and arched over with honeysuckle, and she would have it.


Haakon stopped to rest his aching back and straightened, raising his saw above his head as he stretched and cracked his shoulders. He disliked the lord's new lady, although he had never seen her. She had brought new things to the castle and new people, amongst them a rowdy younger brother, Edwin, a squire, who bullied all those smaller and weaker than himself. Still, he could not despise completely the lady who had returned Clare to the village.


He heard a blackbird give its alarm at the edge of the wood and knew the castle steward and his men approached.


"Soon be done," he told himself, sawing anew, "then it is a dip in the stream for me and a climb to the bonfire field.


Clare might be there already, garlanded with flowers. He thought it only right that she had been chosen as the June Lady of the village, for she was as bonny as a rose.


She will speak to me and smile, and the day will be bright. He grinned, hauling the cut poles to the waiting steward.

Romance of the Everyday

When it comes to writing romance, I am in love with the everyday. Again and again, I actively seek out fiction and romance that deals with so-called ‘ordinary’ people.

Why?

Because to me a hero or heroine is more striving and heroic if they win through after many trials and adventures with their own skills, wit and effort, not because they happen to be born into a class or position.

Because a hero is more beautiful to me if he is not massively handsome but that feeling, true emotion for the heroine, makes him ‘pretty’. (I also like this theme the other way round – I love the part in Jane Eyre where the heroine goes down to breakfast after accepting Mr Rochester’s proposal and she looks, even to herself, glowing and pretty, ‘truly pretty’ as Mr R tells her.)

Because if the hero or heroine has tons of money or special powers that they can use at the snap of their languid fingers, where is the tension?

Skill impresses me and has a poetry of its own. Watch anyone who is really good at something – a potter with a wheel, a farrier, a shepherd, a dustman dealing with wheelie bins – and there is an elegance, a romance. I love to celebrate skill in the romances I write and I always have my warrior have a gentler skill as well as their fighting. (I don’t admire a fighter who can do nothing but battle, because how can such a person create a life and a relationship if they only destroy?) A warrior as strong protector, yes, a warrior fighting for kudos, OK, but a warrior who is a glory-junkie and no more? No thanks.

We live in a complex world and I like to write romances that reflect this and celebrate whose who heal, who create, who build, who make.

So I write about knights but mainly younger sons, who have to make their own way and who don’t have everything handed to them – I do this in A Knight's Enchantment and A Knight's Captive - and knights who are scarred or grieving and must find another path to live their lives  - I do this in A Knight's Prize, A Knight's Vow and The Snow Bride.

I write about foresters and dairy maids (Midsummer Maid), slave girls and scribes (Flavia's Secret), serfs and peasants (A Knight's Prize, The Lord and Eleanor) bull-leapers and kings of small, rural kingdoms where the king helps with the harvest and is also a healer (Bronze Lightning).

In all these, I try to weave the everyday into the stories, those special everyday moments – the first kiss, the ‘I love you’ time, the recognition that this person is ‘the one’, the moment when my hero and heroine meet again, feeling a happy glow, even if they’ve only been apart for a moment. 

We all have times when the world shimmers about us and we feel apart from the hurly-burly, when we step into our own magic world with those we care about.

Everyday but special. That’s what I love to write about and read about.

Writers, do you have stories that show and feature ‘everyday’ heroes and heroines? If so, please mention them with details  in the comments section of this blog. 

Five-star review for 'The Lord and Eleanor'

TwoLips Reviews have given my 'The Lord and Eleanor' a five-star review and made it a Recommended Read, which is a pleasant way to start a Sunday morning! Read it here or on my The Lord and Eleanor page.