New Release -- One Snowy Knight (Dragons of Challon Book 3) by Deborah Macgillivray

ONE LAST HOPE…

Beautiful Skena MacIain, Lady of Craigendan, is on the verge of losing everything she holds dear. With her husband killed at the battle of Dunbar, and the men of Craigendan slain or captured, her small holding is protected by only the women, young boys, and old men who are left. A neighboring chieftain has set his sights on Skena, and she fears that he’ll take Craigendan by force during this coming Yuletide season. Skena needs a miracle, a wish-come-true granted by Cailleach, the Lady of Winter…but things are never so easy as just making a wish…

A WISH GRANTED…

When Skena’s young son and daughter find a wounded knight in a blinding snowstorm, she fights against the hope she begins to feel. They’ve wished for a protector—but can Noel de Servian be that man? As Skena nurses the handsome warrior back to health, even she begins to believe he might be the salvation for her little keep…and more, he might hold the key to her heart.  In a season of joy, Skena soon learns he carries a dark secret that could shake her home—and her heart—to the very core...

"A sexy captive/captor romance. . .well done!" —Romantic Times on In Her Bed

"Like a bard of old, Macgillivray spins a tale of knights and ladies, myth and magic." —Romantic Times on A Restless Knight

EXCERPT

    “By the blessed lady, he must be the rider of the horse.” Was he even alive? Skena knelt beside the still body, and with her freezing hands swept the snow from his face.
     As she brushed off the slope of the second cheek, a small gasp came from her lips; she stared, transfixed by his beautiful countenance. Never had she seen a more perfect man. The wavy brown hair was not a dark shade, not light, though made a measure deeper from the wet snow. He had a beautiful chin, strong, yet not too square. Angus’s face had been pleasant, but his jaw looked as if it had been carved from a block of wood. This man’s showed strength, character, yet there was a sensual curve that caused her to run her thumb over his nearly clean-shaven cheek. No face hair. Norman? Her hand stilled as a shiver crawled up her spine, one that had naught to do with the cold. Dismissing that concern, she swept the snow from his neck and shoulders. She rather liked that she could see his features; it allowed his perfection to show clearly. Nice strong brows, not bushy like Angus. And lips…so carnal, a woman would wonder what it would feel like to taste them, crave to discover such mysteries for herself. Surely, this man was touched by the blood of the Sidhe; only one blessed by magic could be so lovely formed, a man possessed of the power to lure a woman into darkest sin, nary a thought of the risk to her soul.
     She jerked back slightly at the odd notions filling her mind, a yearning that had never come before. Still, there was no time to fritter away on such nonsense. Trembling in alarm, she feared he might be dead. Great anguish arose within her that one so beautiful would have his life cut short. As she touched his neck, she felt the throb of his blood. Faint. So very faint. Relief filled her heart at that small flicker of life. She had to get him to Craigendan and warm his blood or he might not survive. Even then, it would be a fight to save him. How long had he been lying in the snow? In the fading light it was clear his skin was grey, his lips tingeing blue.

      

NAMES. LOVE 'EM OR HATE 'EM?

By the English Rose.

Do you like your name? Or do you hate it? So many people who I know really don’t like their given names, myself included.

I was given the name Gillian, no middle name, that’s all I got and I hate it, so mostly I get called Jill or Gill depending if it’s spoken or written (except by Mum and my two sisters, who insist on giving me my Sunday name!) If I could have, I would have changed it to something I liked more. I used to wish I had a middle name so I could at least choose which one I liked best. Mum and Dan had two names and they gave my younger sisters two, so why not me? I want to have a tantrum!

I used to like the name Dawn, and when I was sending manuscripts off to publishers, on the return envelope I used to put G.D as my initials, thinking that the D would symbolise a new ‘dawn’ in my writing life! It never did. So I dropped the D.

My sister is called Viki Helen, and the Viki is just that, it’s not short for Victoria as so many people seem to think, but she has always been called Helen and she hates that, so much so that she has changed it to Helan, no idea why, as it is still pronounced the same way! I’d have wanted to be called Viki as it’s more unusual. My friend, Janice, has always wanted to be called Susan, and my friend Shirley wants to be called Marie.

My Auntie Doris had a little girl a year or so before I was born, and they named her – Doris! Which was fine when she was small, but as she grew they got called Big Doris and Little Doris!  As soon as she was old enough, she legally changed her name to Christine. I don’t blame her at all, who the heck wants to go through life being called ‘Little Doris’, it sounds very Dickensian!

As I am a huge lover of Scotland and consider it my spiritual home (it is actually my ancestral home) I once decided I wanted to be called Shona, a good old Scottish name, meaning Jane or Joan, but no-one would use Shona as they had got so used to calling me Gillian, or Jill for so many years. Darn it!

                                                           My altar ego, Shona.

What is it that makes us hate our name? Is it because we had no freedom of choice over it, because we were ‘given’ it by someone else? Maybe it’s because it isn’t strong enough, or poetic enough, or Romantic enough?

Do you think our characters like the names we give them? Do those names really ‘fit’ the characters? I know that in the days most of us at PRP are writing about, a huge amount of people changed their names on a regular basis for a variety of reasons, the only problem with it is, if we did decide to allow our characters to do that, the readers would get very confused! So would the writers probably! I’ve been lucky up to now, all my main characters seem to have liked the names I chose for them.

Have you ever written a character with one name, then changed it after the book was finished? If you have changed a character’s name part way through a story, why? And does that alter the way you write the character? My WIP has a bad guy who I am calling Mike at the moment, but I’m having some real trouble with him, every time I write about him he kicks against the name, it’s got to go soon! But what he’ll end up being called, I guess that might just depend on exactly how nasty he turns out to be!

                                                           The real me. Jill.

I chose to change my name for my books because I don’t really like my ‘real’ name, so for my traditional shoot-em-up Westerns for Hale in England, my author name is Amos Carr, and for PRP of course I am Gil McDonald. It would be hard to fit my full name on a book really!

So what do you think? Do you like or hate your name? If you had to change it what would you change it to and why? Plenty of food for thought here, I will be interested to see your comments.