My next Kickstarter campaign will feature new hardcover editions of the four Blood Brothers medieval Scottish romances. The current hardcover editions are large print. These will be regular print. The campaign will launch on February 13 and run through the 24th.
These special hardcover editions will have new covers. The new dust jackets are done, and today’s post is to show them off. Here they are!
Aren’t they pretty? I think they’ll look gorgeous with a matte finish.
Next up, the couples for the case laminates. I’ll show you those images when they’re done.
There will be postcards of the new images, bookmarks, coloring pages, stickers and a MAP, as well as a Blood Brothers world guide in ebook, all available in this upcoming Kickstarter campaign.
The preview page is live at Kickstarter now, and you can follow it to be notified when the campaign launches.
My next Kickstarter campaign will feature new hardcover editions of the four Blood Brothers medieval Scottish romances. It will launch on February 13 and run through the 24th.
As you know, the books are all available in ebook, in trade paperback and in large print hardcovers right now – plus the first two are available in audio. I’ve been able to simplify this campaign since I have a better idea what you all like. 🙂 We’ll focus on the signed books this time.
I’ll show you the new covers when they’re done – they’ll have couples on the case laminate and no people on the dust jacket. There will be postcards of the new images, coloring pages, stickers and a MAP, as well as a Blood Brothers world guide in ebook. The Early Bird special is a set of four vellum inserts, one for each book, that go along with the set of signed copies of all four new hardcovers. The vellum images will be the cover art from the current trade paperbacks.
The preview page is live at Kickstarter now, and you can follow it to be notified when the campaign launches.
Links are live for the print editions of The Scot & the Sorceress! Murdoch and Nyssa’s story is available in both a trade paperback edition and a large print hardcover edition. Some links are still populating, but the most popular ones are live.
Remember that there will be collectors’ hard cover editions of all four Blood Brothers books, coming to Kickstarter in February 2024.
Taking a character who has been a villain in one book, then making him the hero in his own book is a challenge I enjoy. It only makes sense to me that if love can conquer all, it can also reveal the hidden goodness in a character and redeem him. (I’ve never done this for a heroine, though. Hmm.) The thing is that these books, which are tough to write, invariably turn out to be among my favorites of my own books.
My first decision to do this was with Gawain, the wicked brother of Merlyn in The Rogue. Gawain was trouble but he also had a certain charm, along with his disregard for anyone other than himself. He was a clever character, raised to be the thief he was, and very good at his so-called profession. I thought of him as kind of a James Bond character, which prompted me to look deeper, since James Bond has a history that drives his choices.
I also thought Gawain was due for a surprise. He was accustomed to things going exactly the way he planned them. What would unexpected challenges do to this confident thief? What about being bested by someone else? Enter Evangeline, an unhappy heiress determined to change her future, and prepared to do whatever is necessary to make it so—including seducing a thief and stealing a prize from him. Repeatedly. Their book is The Scoundrel. I loved these two together and how Evangeline compelled Gawain to discover his lost honor. Here’s the moment that Gawain realizes what’s happened:
It was remarkable, for I could have spent a pleasant night betwixt the lady’s thighs, but had denied my own pleasure to protect her heart.
Chivalry, which I had long believed to be dead and gone from this world unlamented, had proven to be hidden in the most unlikely of places—it had been nestled in my very marrow, and had revealed itself at a most inconvenient time.
I saw now why I had always avoided noble deeds—I had slept alone, awakened alone, been relieved of my valuables, and all because of my own misguided urge to warn the lady away from me. Gallantry, in my opinion this morn, was of less merit than most men believed.
—from The Scoundrel
I redeemed a couple of heroes on my Cooke brand next, including the happy-go-lucky and indulged youngest son in the Coxwell family, in All or Nothing. Zach has the ability to make Jen laugh, something she’s forgotten in her battle with breast cancer. She’s learned her lesson about handsome guys with easy charm, though—and how quickly they jump ship when things get tough—so Zach digs in to prove her assumptions wrong. Along the way, he learns that there’s something (or someone) he cares about after all, though Jen isn’t easy to convince. I love their story, too. 🙂
My next “villain” to be redeemed was really an outsider. Lorenzo in the Dragonfire Novels has no interest in being a dragon shifter, so doesn’t want anything to do with his kind. He’s built a life as an illusionist and he doesn’t need the distraction of the Pyr war against the Slayers. Of course, no one can deny what or who they are, and Lorenzo is faced to accept his nature when he experiences his firestorm. He has even less desire for a destined mate than to be part of the Pyr team, but when Cassie is targeted and he’s outnumbered, Lorenzo changes his mind. Their story is Flashfire.
Back to my historicals, my next villain to reform his ways was Rafael in The Warrior’s Prize. In the previous book, The Frost Maiden’s Kiss, Rafael is Malcolm’s companion and fellow mercenary, a man concerned solely with his own advantage—until he sees Elizabeth, Malcolm’s sister, and loses his heart with one glimpse. She recognizes the kind of man he is, so Rafael has to change to win her hand (and convince Malcolm of his good intentions).
Rafael is prepared to win Elizabeth’s freedom from a Fae curse, regardless of the price to himself, and independent of whether Elizabeth accepts him afterward. That’s the stuff of a real hero.
The Crusader’s Heart
Wulfe in The Crusader’s Heart was the next hero to learn the power of love. Wulfe isn’t a villain, exactly, but he is very duty-oriented in The Crusader’s Bride and becomes impatient with Gaston for being sentimental. Wulfe’s world is very black-and-white, and he’s practical to a fault. Who better to complicate his perceptions than a widow who has disguised herself as a courtesan, a beauty in need of a warrior’s aid to escape captivity and return home? Even better, Christina is clever and she surprises Wulfe with her perceptiveness. Once these two agree to combine forces, they’re unstoppable.
I love that Wulfe abandons everything he knows to seek a future he can share with Christina, and that he’s the one to surprise her in the end.
It could be argued that three of the Blood Brothers are villains redeemed by love—a former mercenary, Maximilian is no angel when he comes to Kilderrick in The Wolf & the Witch. His half-brother and fellow mercenary, Rafael, is certainly not nobly inclined before he falls in love with Ceara in The Dragon & the Damsel. But I think the greatest villain in the series is Murdoch—until Nyssa sees his truth in The Scot & the Sorceress. Nyssa, a healer, realizes that Murdoch is driven by his grief, and that his sense of honor demands that he keep his word. She not only shows him another way to keep his pledge, but asks for his help with her own quest for vengeance—along the way, we see Murdoch’s protectiveness awakened. I really love this story of the healer and the warrior, since Nyssa and Murdoch heal each other in the end.
I have another villain coming due for his redemption in The Stolen Bride, publishing in December. (Writing these stories is a bit addictive, given how much I like the results!) Ramsay, the hero of this upcoming story, was the villain in The Runaway Bride, the previous book in the Brides of Inverfyre series. In that story, Evangeline, (named for her grandmother, the heroine of The Scoundrel, which brings us nicely full circle) is fascinated by the rebels in the forest who would challenge her father’s claim to Inverfyre. When Ramsay is imprisoned at Inverfyre, she boldly (and secretly) enters the dungeon to bargain with him. You can believe that he will never forget this regal beauty. The Stolen Bride begins when Evangeline leaves Inverfyre for her arranged marriage to a distant lord. Ramsay is disinclined to let her go. Evangeline has no interest in living in a forest hovel. I’m really looking forward to writing this battle of wills, and watching Ramsay change to win his deepest desire—the love of Evangeline.
There’s a little summary of my villains-turned-to-heroes, which also includes many of my favorites of my own books. Have you read them all? Do you like bad boy or troublemakers made heroes? What about villains redeemed by the power of love?
In The Scot & the Sorceress, Nyssa has blue marks on her skin. What are they? They sound like they might be tattoos, but I never call them that.
The word “tattoo” is much more recent than the Middle Ages. There are several different attributions, but let’s go with the most popular: that it comes from the Samoan word ‘tatau’, meaning ‘to strike’—because a tool was struck against the skin to make the holes that would subsequently be filled with color. The word is not noted in English until the 18th century, introduced after Captain Cook’s travels to the south Pacific—where he noted the beautiful art adorning people’s bodies in Tahiti. His account of his voyage is the first use of the word in an English source.
The art of marking the skin, though, goes back much further than this. The oldest figurative tattoos were found in 2018 on the bodies of two mummies from Ancient Egypt, dated between 3351 and 3017 BCE. I couldn’t find any pictures of them, but there are many images online of Otzi, a mummified corpse discovered in the Alps with over 60 tattoos, dated to 3250 BCE. Here’s an article at the Smithsonian showing Otzi’s tattoos and telling more about him.
My favorite ancient tattoos are those of the Princess of Ukok, a woman discovered in Siberia and sometimes called the Siberian Ice Maiden. She was buried in the 5th century BC and discovered in 1993 – she was of the Pazyryk tribe, who lives on the Eurasian Steppe, and was buried in what is now the autonomous Republic of Altai. She was between 20 and 30 years of age, and was buried with six horses, an elaborate headdress, ornaments and offerings, indications that she was a priestess and/or shaman. She had gorgeous tattoos. You can read the Wiki about her here.
A second tomb was found in the same vicinity for a man who also had beautiful tattoos. This article is about both of thembut the first illustration shows the man’s tattoos. Scroll down to see her tattoos. The most remarkable one, for me, is the creature on her left shoulder. Here’s a drawing of it from Wiki.
There are many other peoples who have marked their skin in the past five thousand years, but we’ll look finally at the Picts, who resided in the area Fortrui—now Inverness and Moray—before the 8th century. We don’t know what they called themselves, but the Romans called them Picti from the 3rd century, which means ‘painted ones’. Some interpret this as meaning that the Picts tattooed themselves; others suggested that they painted their bodies. Blue is a common color associated with this ornamentation.
For the imagery of Nyssa’s tattoos, I took inspiration from the many carved stones created by the Picts. Although these peoples left no written records, they did leave a number of these stones, and there are common elements in their imagery. (The Aberlemno I stone is a good example.) These include serpents, the double disk and Z-rod (you can see one of these on a silver plaque in the Norrie’s Law Hoard), the mirror and comb, the so-called Pictish Beast, and insular interlace similar to what we see in other Celtic images and depictions of animals. The St. Ninian’s Isle treasure is considered the best collection of Pictish items and includes many ornamental penannular silver broaches. I chose a serpent for one of her tattoos, although there are many many possibilities here.
How did ancient people make tattoos? Presumably, they also pierced the skin then rubbed pigment into the holes. What did they use for color? It’s possible that they used woad, a blue dye derived from the plant Isatis tinctoria which was a popular dye for cloth in the Middle Ages. (Although indigo has been known as a blue dye for millennia, it was rare in Europe in the Middle Ages, as it had to be imported from much warmer climates.)
Nyssa’s tattoos are a fictional invention of my own, but they’re not that implausible. It only makes sense to me that such marks would be indicative of achievements for a seer or shaman, but that too, is part of my fictional world of The Scot & the Sorceress.
Claire Delacroix 