Welcome back, fellow readers!
Today's BOOK SPOTLIGHT is shining on a Historical Romance currently touring with Rachel's Random Resources. We're lucky enough to have the author today sharing a bit of behind the scenes work in a special GUEST POST following just after the official introduction, so get to know the title, and then see where it all came from!
The Warriors' Prize
by
Jennifer C. Wilson
About the book...
Stirling Castle, 1498
Visiting court for the first time since her father's death, Lady Avelina Gordon finds herself drawn to the handsome warrior, Sir Lachlan MacNair. But as a woman who has seen too many of her friends lose everything for 'love', she keeps her heart guarded.
Castle Berradane, 1502
Lady Avelina is unceremoniously told to expect her new husband within the month. The man in question: Sir Lachlan.
Lachlan arrives in Berradane carrying his own secret, and a determination to control his heart. As attraction builds between the couple, they find themselves under attack and fearful of a traitor in their midst.
Can the teamwork they've shown in adversity so far pull them through one final test, and will they find the strength to risk their hearts, as well as their lives?
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~~~ GUEST POST with Author Jennifer Wilson ~~~
Settings for The Warriors’ Prize
Whenever I’m writing, I love to visualise my settings. Whether I’m writing about events taking place in a real venue, or creating a composite of my own design, it’s important for me to be able to picture how everything fits together. For my Kindred Spirits series, I’m lucky enough that they’re contemporary in nature, so I can physically wander along to wherever I want my characters to be visiting, but that’s not always the case in historical fiction.
In The Warriors’ Prize, things start straightforwardly enough, at Stirling Castle, and a ball being held in the great hall. I love that the hall at Stirling is mostly kept empty, so you can get a real sense of the place, imagining whatever you want to be happening there. It’s where Avelina and Lachlan have their first meeting in the book, and I did enjoy flicking back through my old photos for inspiration.
When the action moves to my fictional Berradane Estate though, things are a little more complex. In my historical fiction, I prefer to use combinations of places, but locate them near real places, so the geography is broadly relatable for readers, but I can’t accidentally have a road going the wrong way, or a river flowing somewhere it goes nowhere near in real life. It also means I can pick and choose my favourite castles / bits of castles, and put them all together to give me (and my characters) what’s needed.
The main inspiration behind Berradane Castle though, is Castle Kennedy, near Dumfries. Although it’s a ruin today, and oddly doesn’t have the overall layout I describe for Berradane, Castle Kennedy was in my mind as soon as I began writing scenes for Lachlan and Avelina.
It isn’t a decorative castle, but it’s one which could withstand an attack, and in the borders, that’s what really mattered. It’s also a lot more substantial than many homes in the region. For most families along the Anglo-Scottish border, the bastle house was home. These are essentially fortified farmhouses, mostly with only a ground and first floor. The lower floor was used to keep animals safe from reivers, bringing them in at night, or the most valuable livestock at least, with the family living on the floor above (sometimes two floors above, in rarer or richer cases). Access to the ground floor would be by standard barn-style doors, but to reach the upper levels you would need to use a ladder, which could be pulled up at night, reducing the risk of harm to the family, even if the doors were broken down and animals stolen. It’s the bastle house that I can ‘see’ when thinking of the villagers of Berradane and beyond, in small clusters, surrounded by farmland and pasture fields.
The lands of the borders are not generally flourishing; it was a hard life, and certainly on the Scottish side, where Avelina and Lachlan live, there was a roughness to the landscape, all heather moorlands and windswept valleys. Difficult terrain for the best of riders, and perfect for mounting raids and ambushes, as happens more than once in The Warriors’ Prize.
Happily, living in the north-east of England, and heading up to Scotland a couple of times a year, getting out into the world of my reiver heroes is relatively easy, and there are already stories in my mind for at least one of the other characters featured in The Warriors’ Prize – this time, I’m getting a feel for Cardoness Castle, not too far from Castle Kennedy, and with a stunning vantage point over the Solway Firth. As a marine ecologist for my day-job, it’s about time I got some water into one of my books!
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About the author...
Jennifer has been stalking dead monarchs since she was a child. It started with Mary, Queen of Scots, then moved onto Richard III. At least now it results in a story!
She won North Tyneside Libraries' Story Tyne short story competition in 2014 (no dead monarchs, but still not a cheerful read), and has been filling notebooks and hard-drives ever since. Her Kindred Spirits series, following the 'lives' of some very interesting ghostly communities, is published by Darkstroke, and her historical romances by Ocelot Press.
Jennifer is currently exploring some new ideas for historical romance, and hoping to visit Kindred Spirit friends old and new, north of the border...
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Special thanks to Rachel of Rachel’s Random Resources for the chance to bring this tour to you as well as to the author for the special guest post. (THANKS!) For more information on this title, the author, this tour, or those on the horizon, feel free to click through the links provided above. This title is available now, so click on over to your favorite online retailer to snag your copy today.
Until next time, remember...if it looks good, READ IT!
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