We have a winner for Beth Trissel's RED BIRD'S SONG guest blog. A free copy goes to:
How could someone not looking for trouble stumble upon it so easily? Susan Kent wonders this exact thing when she finds the man of her dreams, only to discover that he lives in a nightmare of his own making.***
Jake Kelley thought he found the peace and simplicity he'd been looking for all his life. But in bringing Susan into his world, is he only dragging her down instead of pulling himself up?
The dark underworld of gangland Chicago throbs with intrigue, thrills and danger--those who venture there seldom leave intact…if they leave at all.
How could someone not looking for trouble stumble upon it so easily? Susan Kent wonders this exact thing when she finds the man of her dreams, only to discover that he lives in a nightmare of his own making.***
Jake Kelley thought he found the peace and simplicity he'd been looking for all his life. But in bringing Susan into his world, is he only dragging her down instead of pulling himself up?
The dark underworld of gangland Chicago throbs with intrigue, thrills and danger--those who venture there seldom leave intact…if they leave at all.
By Blythe Gifford
When King Charles I assumed the throne in 1625, he authorized minting of a wide variety of Scottish and English coins. (Banknotes were not issued as legal tender until later.) Shown here is a silver, Scottish 20 pence piece, featuring the King on one side and the crowned thistle, symbol of Scotland, on the other. It was minted somewhere between 1337 and 1642.
Blythe Gifford has written five 14th century medieval romances for Harlequin Historicals, featuring characters born on the wrong side of the royal blanket, most recently HIS BORDER BRIDE in May 2010. The Chicago Tribune called her work "the perfect balance between history and romance." Her 2011 release will be set in the 17th century Scottish Borders.
By Amanda McIntyre
The "dowry" is different from "bride price" in that it is what the woman brings to the marriage. Bride price, in contrast, is the amount of wealth paid to the family of the bride by the groom's family upon marriage. In terms of marketability, "bride price" means the perceived value of the bride to the groom and his family. A custom still practiced, though often despised, in some countries today.
Dowries served many different purposes, depending on the culture and in some cases, if a woman's family could not produce a suitable dowry for the groom's family, it was possible that she would be forbidden to marry and forced to become a concubine in the household of a wealthy man. Dowries were also seen as a sign of gratitude for accepting another mouth to feed in a household and in most circumstances, the dowry of the bride would be returned if the marriage ended. Very rarely, did the dowry improve or empower the bride other than to ensure her protection from ill treatment by her husband, who would forfeit his newly found wealth if found committing such a crime.
While doing research for my medieval tales for both "WINTER AWAKENING" (in WINTER'S DESIRE) and "SACRED VOWS" (in THE PLEASURE GARDEN), I discovered that the Gaelic countries were one of the few cultures where the daughter was the heir to her father's property as well as his army. Therefore, a marriage to a Gaelic woman was advantageous in terms of her husband receiving the benefit of her inheritance at her father's death. This made marriages between clans a political move in strengthening territories against warring clans.
Even into the American movement west, dowries had a place in cultures, but became more of a preparation of the inevitability of marriage with mothers teaching their daughters to quilt and sew, making things to be placed in keeping until the day of their wedding. This custom later turned to the advent of Hope Chests, which for a time was popular, but died out in the late sixties.
Researching history, listening to all types of music from classical to Kamelot, spending time with family & friends, and appeasing her strange infatuation with the Great Lakes, Amanda McIntyre to challenge her characters and her readers to look beyond the ordinary to the extraordinary, where anything is possible! Til next time, be well.
By Stephanie Dray
The true color cannot be accurately identified now; the best we can do is reconstruct it based on the surviving description of the ancients, but we do know that redder shades of purple were considered to be inferior. It was the darkest, richest purple that they prized, and this may have been achieved by dipping the fabric twice in two slightly different shades, one redder, one bluer.
Stephanie Dray's debut historical fiction novel, LILY OF THE NILE, will release January 2011 from Berkley Books. The sequel is expected to release at the end of 2011. Both novels are set in the Augustan Age and feature Cleopatra's daughter.
We have a winner for Renee Ryan's DANGEROUS ALLIES guest blog. A free copy goes to:
Taken captive by a Shawnee war party wasn't how Charity Edmonson hoped to escape an unwanted marriage. Nor did Shawnee warrior Wicomechee expect to find the treasure promised by his grandfather's vision in the unpredictable red-headed girl.***
George III's English Red-Coats, unprincipled colonial militia, prejudice and jealousy are not the only enemies Charity and Wicomechee will face before they can hope for a peaceful life. The greatest obstacle to happiness is in their own hearts.
As they struggle through bleak mountains and cold weather, facing wild nature and wilder men, Wicomechee and Charity must learn to trust each other.
Native American historical romance novel RED BIRD'S SONG is the story of my heart for many reasons. The initial encounter between Charity and Wicomechee was inspired by a dream I had on New Year's Eve--a highly propitious time for dreams--about a young warrior taking an equally young woman captive at a river and the unexpected attraction between them. That dream had such a profound impact on me that I took the leap from writing non-fiction essays to historical novels and embarked on the most amazing journey of my life. That was years ago and the saga continues. I also met the prophetic warrior, Eyes of the Wolf, in another dream at the advent of this adventure, so when I describe him in the book I'm envisioning a character I feel I know.
The setting for much of RED BIRD'S SONG is the same as my other strongly Native American novel, THROUGH THE FIRE, the spectacular Alleghenies. Much of the history depicted in the story was inspired by accounts I came across while researching my early American English/Scots-Irish roots and the Border Wars. The French and Indian War is the most well known, but there were others. Life in the frontier was unsettled even after The American Revolution had drawn to a close and warfare a reality. The boundaries of the frontier just keep shifting farther west. In the early-mid 18th century, the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia was the colonial frontier and only hardy souls dared to settle here. The bulk of these were the tough Scots-Irish. If the Indians had only had to fight regular British troops they might ultimately have won because they scared the s--out of men trained for conventional warfare, but the long knives were another matter. They weren't easily intimidated and soon learned from their cunning enemy.
Although Hawk Eye in The Last of the Mohicans is an adopted Mohican, his lifestyle and behavior is that of a colonial frontiersman. The more rugged of these men dressed as he did, much in the Indian way. They hunted & fought with muskets, tomahawks, and their famous knives. Indians acquired these knives as well. They blended traditional weapons and ways of living with newfound tools and weapons of Western man. A highly adaptable people.
The attack at the opening of RED BIRD'S SONG in the Shenandoah Valley is based on one that occurred to my ancestors and is recorded by Historian Joseph A. Waddell in The Annals of Augusta County. A renegade Englishman by the last name of Dickson led the war party that attacked them. Initially I'd intended to make the Colin Dickson in RED BIRD'S SONG a villain but as soon as he galloped onto the scene I knew differently. 
Wicomechee, the hero in RED BIRD'S SONG, is based on the Shawnee warrior by that name who lived early in the nineteenth century and to whom I have ties. The Moffett's, an early Valley family I'm related to, include a reference to him in their genealogy. Wicomechee's father, John Moffett, was captured in Kentucky by the Shawnee at the age of eight and adopted into the tribe. It's said he was a boyhood companion to the great chief Tecumseh, a chief for whom I have enormous admiration. The accounts of John Moffett and Wicomechee are recorded by Waddell. It's also noted that during the Black Hawk Wars Wicomechee recovered the captive daughters of a Dr. Hull and brought them safely into camp, which reminds me of Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans. I've included more on this amazing warrior at the end of the novel as a bonus for those who read it.
***
Taken captive by a Shawnee war party wasn't how Charity Edmonson hoped to escape an unwanted marriage. Nor did Shawnee warrior Wicomechee expect to find the treasure promised by his grandfather's vision in the unpredictable red-headed girl.***
George III's English Red-Coats, unprincipled colonial militia, prejudice and jealousy are not the only enemies Charity and Wicomechee will face before they can hope for a peaceful life. The greatest obstacle to happiness is in their own hearts.
As they struggle through bleak mountains and cold weather, facing wild nature and wilder men, Wicomechee and Charity must learn to trust each other.
By Jacquie Rogers
Since the 1849 California Gold Rush, prospectors scoured the western half of North America obsessed with gold fever. In 1859, Pat McLaughlin and Peter O'Reilly found gold at the head of Six-Mile Canyon. Henry Comstock, good fellow that he was, told McLaughline and O'Reilly that the discovery was on his pasture land and, well, they believed him. Same old story--the discoverers weren't the ones who made the money. But then neither did Henry Comstock.Frame shanties pitched together as if by accident--tents of canvas, of blankets of brush, of potato-sacks, and old shirts, with empty whiskey barrels for chimneys--coyote holes in the mountain-side forcibly seized and held by men--pits and shafts with smoke issuing from every crevice--piles of goods and rubbish in the hollows, on the rocks, in the mud, in the snow everywhere, scattered broadcast in pell-mell confusion.
Lots of men who are household names today made their fortunes from the Comstock Lode, among them are: George Hearst, father of William Randolf Hearst; Leland Stanford (right), founder of Stanford University; William Ralston, founder of the Bank of California; and of course the most famous was an unsuccessful prospector who took up the pen, Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain.
Jacquie Rogers writes quirky, magical romances. Available now are her contemporary western, DOWN HOME EVER LOVIN' MULE BLUES, a multi-era faery story, FAERY SPECIAL ROMANCES, and a Christmas story, FAERY MERRY CHRISTMAS. She's co-founder of 1st Turning Point, a pay-it-forward website where authors teach, share and learn promotion and marketing.
By Michelle Styles
Their five sons--Amschel Mayer, Saloman, Nathan Mayer, Kalman and Jakob--became the most famous bankers in Europe, but it was Mayer Amschel who oversaw it all. He rapidly realised that there were fortunes to be made by wheeling and dealing in foreign, if one could get reliable information. One by one the brothers were sent out into the world to found businesses for their father. Nathan Rothschild first went to Manchester for the cotton but later went into banking in London. He specialised in transferring large sums of money legally or illegally to those in need of hard cash and no one needed it more than the British His brother Jakob went to France, Saloman to Vienna and Kalman to Naples. 
Michelle Styles is passionate about history and passionate romance. An author over 16 books for Harlequin Historical, she writes in a variety of time periods from Roman and Viking through to early Victorian. A QUESTION OF IMPROPRIETY will be a December 2010 Harlequin Historical release.
By Lisa Marie Wilkinson
It is generally believed that the tally record originated as a recording or counting device for tasks such as tracking menstrual cycles via a lunar phase calendar. One of the oldest examples of a tally record dating back to 30,000 BC was found in a cave in the Lebombo mountains of South Africa. The artifact consists of 29 distinct notches on the leg bone of a baboon. 
In England, tallies took on the characteristics of today's credit card system as lenders carved out the details of the loan using a system of notches to signify denominations on the surface of a small squared willow, pine, r hazel-wood stick. At the top of the tally, a cut the thickness of the palm of a man's hand was made, representing one thousand pounds, then subsequent cuts were made to designate other values. The breadth of a thumb meant one hundred pounds, the width of a little finger represented twenty pounds, the width of a barleycorn translated to one pound, and so on. The stick was then split in half lengthwise through the center of the carving, creating a "split tally," which prevented either user from adding notches to his half of the tally stick.
A century later, the sticks were still in use, but the tally stick system was eventually abolished in 1826, when the sticks were removed from circulation and stored in the Houses of Parliament. In 1834, Parliament ordered all sticks destroyed, and two cartloads of the tallies were scheduled to be burned. Rather than give the sticks away to be used as firewood, or burning them in an outdoor fire, a decision was made to burn them in two furnaces in the House of Lords. The resulting conflagration set fire to the wood paneling and both Houses of Parliament were destroyed.
Lisa Marie Wilkinson is an IPPY Gold Medal winning author of historical adventure-romance. Her latest novel, STOLEN PROMISE, featuring vibrant Gypsy characters and breath-taking romance, is available now.
We have a winner for Jeannie Lin's BUTTERFLY SWORDS guest blog. A free copy goes to:
In Nazi Germany, British agent Jack Anderson risks his life working undercover as an SS officer. And his latest mission--to uncover intelligence about a Nazi secret weapon--is his most perilous yet. Especially since he'll have to work with Katarina Kerensky. The famous actress is too dangerous to trust--and too beautiful to ignore.***
Desperate to save her mother from the Gestapo, Katia reluctantly agrees to work with the coolly handsome Jack. But can she trust a man whose sense of honor is tangled in a web of lies? In a race against time, Jack and Katia forge an alliance to take down the enemy...and learn whether love can survive in a world gone wrong.
Are you finished with the WWII time period?
An excerpt of Jean Adams' Egyptian time travel romance, ETERNAL HEARTS, is available here, along with her guest blog "Write Like An Egyptian."
From The Season: "The world of Tang Dynasty China Lin creates is far different from the ballrooms of Regency England or the Scottish cliffs of a highlander novel. But this historical romance is as unique and spellbinding for its meticulously researched and sweeping setting as for its suspenseful danger, and its themes of love, family, and honor. Not to mention the hero is hands down a Hero To Die For!"
Margaret Mallory's KNIGHT OF PLEASURE won the Georgia RWA's prestigious Maggie award in the historical category.
The second of Zoe Archer's "Blades of the Rose" series, SCOUNDREL, has been making big news. It received an in-depth review from Dear Author, a fantastic 88 from Mrs. Giggles, and was selected as Smart Bitch Sarah's Sizzling Book Club Selection for October. 
Michelle Styles' THE VIKING'S CAPTIVE PRINCESS has been translated into Italian as IL SEGNO DEL PECCATO, available here.
Join us Sunday when RENEE RYAN will be here to chat about her WWII-set romance, DANGEROUS ALLIES. She'll also be giving away a copy to one lucky commenter! Be sure to join us then.
In Nazi Germany, British agent Jack Anderson risks his life working undercover as an SS officer. And his latest mission--to uncover intelligence about a Nazi secret weapon--is his most perilous yet. Especially since he'll have to work with Katarina Kerensky. The famous actress is too dangerous to trust--and too beautiful to ignore.***
Desperate to save her mother from the Gestapo, Katia reluctantly agrees to work with the coolly handsome Jack. But can she trust a man whose sense of honor is tangled in a web of lies? In a race against time, Jack and Katia forge an alliance to take down the enemy...and learn whether love can survive in a world gone wrong.
By Lisa Yarde
The wergild helped define varying classes of society. A higher social status meant the victim's family could demand a larger payment. Everyone, except slaves, had an assigned worth that determined the value of clergymen and kings to the lowliest freemen. The varying Anglo-Saxon kingdoms established amounts of wergild. In eighth century Kent, a nobleman was worth 300 shillings, while the wergild of a freeman was 100 shillings. Kentish law defined a shilling as the worth of a cow. 
Lisa J. Yarde is a historical fiction author. Her ON FALCON'S WINGS, an epic medieval novel chronicling the starstruck romance between Norman and Saxon lovers, is available now.