"Five Yules" by Keena Kincaid. Excerpt from the ONE YULETIDE KNIGHT anthology

Five Yules by Keena Kincaid. A novella in the "One Yuletide Knight" Medieval Christmas Romance

Collection.

BLURB

Waleran de Marche promised he wouldn’t marry her, but it was a promise he couldn’t keep. Cateline de Armiens has the land and coin he needs to distance himself from his father and the coming war in England.

Cate is through with broken promises and betrayal. When Wal vows to keep her safe and secure, she ignores his promise and welcomes his departure on a royal errand. In his absence, she creates a home without him, and finds his return each Yule an annoyance, not a joyful homecoming.

But when the king’s enemy takes her hostage, she will learn just how far her husband will go to keep his word to protect her—but will he reach her in time to save her life and their marriage or will this be their last Yule?

EXCERPT

Clutching the bundle close, Cate walked toward the ramp. Her heart felt as if it dragged a plow. She didn’t want to go. Couldn’t go. Once she stepped onto that ship, she would be gone. Lost forever. Papa was dying, and he’d die alone if she left.

She stopped, swallowed a sob, turned back. The soldier stood in her way.

“Keep going.” His eyes were an unnaturally clear, bright blue that reminded her of a summer sky when it peaks between clouds at dusk.

“I cannot.” She looked down the road. At the end of it was her father’s donjon. There would be a warm fire in the hearth, music, and stew made from last night’s roast beef. “My father—”

“Did this for you.” He put his hands on her shoulders, turned her around. “Go.”

At first, shock stilled her tongue. He’d touched her. He had no right to lay hands on her! “Lâche-moi!”

“I will unhand you when you go.”

“I order—”

“Servants do not order me,” he said as he marched her up the ramp. “I order them. Now, move.”

She whirled to glare at him. “I am the daughter of James de Armiens, the niece of Robert of Beaumont and betrothed to Richard of Brinklow. I may be masquerading as a servant, but I am not one. Who are you to speak to me thus?”

“Move on, Wal!” someone shouted behind them. “We have horses to load.”

Wall was a good name for the man who blocked her path. He was as obtuse as he was large.

He smirked down at her. “You may be daughter and niece, as you claim, but Brinklow died last summer, so you are no one’s betrothed. Now move. You have work to do.”

Keena's Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/Keena-Kincaid/e/B008J6GRHM/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

Some places just speak to me...

...and in the case of Orkney, it said "get the hell out of here."


OK, I exaggerate. Sort of. 


See, I tend to travel alone. Not because I don't like company, but because I rarely plan trips far enough in advance for someone else to arrange his/her schedule and come with me. 


Traveling solo has its rewards. No one ever complains about tromping around yet another moldy, crumbly castle. But it's also easy to be fairy-taken in place like Ring of Brodgar because no one is there to ask if you're done and ready to visit the nearest Starbucks.


Yes, I think I was fairy-taken in Orkney. I went there on a lark. While exploring Ravenglas, I met a couple who said to skip Stonehenge and visit the standing Stone on the Orkney Isles instead. No lines. No car park. No crowd of new-age Druids.


So I went.


Getting there was a journey in itself. I went by train to Aberdeen, then onto Inverness. From there, I boarded a train to Thurso, then a bus to the ferry, then the ferry to Stamness, and another bus to Kirkwell.


Orkney was cool and weird and very, very different.


The light falls soft and strange that far north and lingers long into the night.The land is treeless, very green, mostly flat but dotted with mounds. It feels as old as it is, and after a night of storytelling around a peat fire you're thoughts are as wild as the island's history.


First, I went to Maes Howe, a 5,000-year-old 'burial' tomb on the slight rise above the Stones of Stenness. From the tomb's entrance you can see two stone circles, numerous lone standing stones, the island of Hoy and the dips in the horizon where the sun rises and sets on the solstices.


The Stones of Stenness are four standing stones, the remnants of a much larger stone circle, that sits on the south end of a causeway between the Loch of Stenness and the Loch of Harray, sea and fresh water respectively.

Crossing the causeway, I trekked over the small isthmus (ducking midges the size of butterflies), passed a lone guardian stone, and then entered the ring. The ring itself was calming, an ancient place that lingers long in the imagination. 

I spent three days on the island, absorbing the essence of the landscape and gathering stories. But the long days (I was there a few weeks before the summer solstice), super short nights and surreal, vaguely otherworldly atmosphere kept me awake the entire time.

After a few days, I fled for Aberdeen and a good night's sleep.

I may or may not go back--and I do I will definitely take a friend to keep the imagination in control--but the trip will stay with me for the rest of my life. It changed the tone of my book ANAM CARA, solidified the soul of its hero and carved a place in a memory. If you ever get a chance, take a trip without making plans. Go somewhere unusual, walk the countryside alone and let your imagination go away with the fairies.

Three Easy Steps to Transform a Secondary Character into a Hero

I love writing my Druids of Duncarnoch series because I get to play in a medieval world that I love and revisit favorite characters whenever I want to know what’s going on in their lives. But writing a series has unexpected challenges, not the least of which is taking established secondary characters and turning them into leads.

When I sat down to write TIES THAT BIND, Book II in the series, I did three things (two within the first few pages) to transform Aedan into the hero. My method:

• Step one: Go dark
• Step two: Show heroic potential
• Step three: Rip his heart out

Back story:

We meet Aedan in ANAM CARA. He’s the younger brother to that book’s hero, Bran. In the story, Aedan is newly liberated from monastic life and runs amok with magic and sex. As the young, wild brother, he is a perfect catalyst to the events that nearly destroy Bran’s relationship with Liza. But teen anger and over-indulgence aren’t so engaging as a hero—particularly as my heroes tend to be dark-souled, complicated men who commonly confuse what is right with what is expedient.

Step one: Go dark

Five years separate the books. In that time, Aedan grows up, becomes the king’s minstrel and falls into an existence of wine, women and song. He also still misuses his magic. In the opening scene, I had to establish these changes before I moved onto the plot or conflict. The story begins:

Abbey Mont St. Michel, Normandy

March 15, 1166

Pain splintered his skull. The bile taste of wine hit his throat. Aedan groaned and rolled over, careening into something soft and slightly round to the touch. Eyes closed, he moved his hand and recognized the curve of a woman’s back where it angles in, then up.

“Vae, not again,” he sighed.

“Not again? How oft do you wake to find a woman in your bed?”

Too oft. Aedan forced a smile into his voice. “I was speaking of the sunrise, lass. It comes much too early of late.”

“Lass?” Her laugh was husky, rich and full. “No one has called me lass. Ever.” She shifted and rolled over to face him as he opened his eyes.

“Nullo modo!” Aedan jumped from the bed, barely remembering to take the coverlet with him. “Your grace. I am—”

“Do not say sorry, young man, for I am not.”

The duchess sat up and purposely let the sheet pool around her waist. Her smile shifted, turning predatory. “It has been years since I have been ridden with such stamina and skill.”

“I...” For once, words failed him.

Looking as if she found his silence charming, the duchess of a rich, warm region near the Mediterranean combed her fingers through long, copper-color hair shot with fine silver threads. His insides congealed. Alais was the wife of a powerful lord, mistress to the treacherous King of Arles and half-sister to King Henry Plantagenet. He raked a hand over his mouth and turned away. By the gods high and low, what had he done?

“Impressive tattoo. Do not let the king's archbishop, Timothy, see it.”

“Thomas.” Aedan corrected her, now rattled that he’d forgotten about the mark on his back. “Thomas of Becket."

“Timothy or Thomas, he has a sour disposition.” Alais gave a dismissive gesture. “I doubt if he has laughed in the past year. I know he would not find your pagan ways amusing.”

“Pagan?”

“A Christian man would not do what you did last night.”

Step two: Show heroic potential

Showing character change isn’t enough. However dark and complicated my hero may be, his happy ending must still be realistic. Dangerous, selfish, amoral men do not (and should not) get the happy ever after in my world. So I have to make sure the reader knows that he’s redeemable.

To accomplish this, I made Aedan irresistible to dogs and children. At times, they literally trail him like he’s the Pied Piper. By showing his interaction with dogs and children—how he responds to freely given, if unearned affection—I signal his corruption isn’t complete. Ergo, the heroine (Tess) can still save him from himself. An example:

“Well met.”

He looked down to where a small boy stood, a cousin judging by the tangle of dark, curly hair.

“Well met, indeed. I am Aedan ap Owen.”

“I did not like that song.”

Aedan grinned and leaned close. “I do not think anyone else did either.”

“Play me a good song.”

“What would you like, wee one?”

The boy grinned. “A song about a dragon. A dragon that eats people!”

Glancing around the hall, Aedan tested the strings. “I know a song about such a dragon. Only he never eats more than one or two at a time.”

“Why not?”

“Too many people make his belly ache.”

Letting his mood scatter on the wave of a child’s laugh, Aedan launched into his favorite tale, the ballad of Cuinn, a knight in love with the Queen of Phris. In the tale, Cuinn dies protecting her from a dragon. This time a silver dragon rescued the knight, devoured the royal uncle and freed the queen. Cuinn lived happily ever after with his queen and a dragon named Smudge.

By the song’s end, four of the earl’s five children sat at his feet…and Tess was long gone.

Step three: Rip his heart out

I won’t give the details of how I shred Aedan’s heart (don’t want to ruin the story) but the event leaves him poised between two fates. Do right and he’s happy ever after. Follow his impulse and he becomes irredeemable.

And while the outcome is assured in a romance, my early readers half-expected him to fail. I’d sufficiently shown both sides of him, enough for them to doubt his ability to do the right thing. Which is, of course, what I wanted.

Easy peasy, right? Yeah, OK. It wasn’t so easy, but I ended up with a richer, more complex character because of these three steps. Now the big question: How do you give your secondary character the heroic makeover?

Keena Kincaid writes medieval romances, which should explain why she sometimes spends a rainy afternoon reading the Domesday Book or the Oxford English Dictionary. After careers in journalism and public relations, she set out to write a medieval murder-mystery with a minstrel sleuth. At some point, her hero opted to woo the local innkeeper, and the murder-mystery became ANAM CARA—a lucky break for the intended victims. Kincaid writes for The Wild Rose Press. TIES THAT BIND will be released Dec. 18. For more information, go to http://keenakincaid.com or contact her at keena@keenakincaid.com

Introducing Keena Kincaid

An interesting conversation arose at work this week: the dream job phenomenon. Now this wasn’t the “dream job” of writing bestsellers in a coffee shop overlooking the Seine, but the job we threaten to take when the day is too long and the hours too short.

For me, after one of “those” days (you know the type, nothing goes right, it all goes south at the same time and at 10 p.m. you still have a dozen emails waiting responses), my escapist job is to wait tables in a diner in a small Southern town on the coast or in the Keys. Slinging hash or pulling beers in a tourist trap would let me meet lots of new people, and give me plenty of writing inspiration (especially in the Keys).

And I’m not alone. When deadlines became too much, a former newspaper editor of mine used to say she was going to restock shelves overnight at Kroger. Meanwhile, my current boss has been known to wax poetic about life as a Wal-Mart greeter.
I’m sure dreaming of escaping to a no-pressure job is fairly common experience, but what I find fascinating is that our escapist jobs rarely stray far from our basic personalities.

My newspaper editor was extremely organized, planned everything to the last detail and could find story notes on anything in less than a minute. She would’ve been a great shelf stocker. And my current boss is probably the friendliest, most outgoing person I know. He’d make an excellent greeter.

In the realm of fiction, the hero of my current WIP is the chivalrous knight who adheres to the rules with fervor best reserved for martyrs. But when the pressure mounts, he fantasizes about getting drunk, kissing all the girls, and doing very unchivalrous things with the heroine.

In ART OF LOVE, my latest release, my hero is smart, cynical, and has sold his soul to Henry II of England, spying in Paris in exchange land, title and an heiress. When he wants to “escape” murder and mayhem, he dreams of fomenting rebellion. (He really wants to be in charge, rather than take orders from the king, if you ask me.)

In both cases neither William nor Alain stray out of character when dreaming of escape.

And so, readers, I must ask: What is your escapist job? And if your heroes decided to shuck it all for a new, no-pressure career, what would they chose?


Here are the blurb and an exceprt from Art of Love:

Abigail d'Alene has been sinfully in love with learning all her life. Now a widow, she has the means and freedom to indulge in her passion. Pretending to be Abelard, a fifteen-year-old boy from an outlying village, she heads to the Latin Quarter of Paris and the abbey schools that will one day change the world.

Shocked by her ineptitude at masquerading as a boy, Alain of Huntly Woods takes the young “Abelard” under his protection until she recovers her sense and goes home. But her audacity, intelligence and refusal to compromise spark enough friction between them to burn through his cold logic and carefully laid plans. In Paris as a spy for Henry II, Alain has sold his soul to the Angevin devil in exchange for the king's promise of an heiress, land and power.
As his good intentions bring him unexpected passion, he struggles to find a way to have it all. Then he discovers Abigail's uncle, confessor to King Louis VII of France, plots against the English king, and Alain must choose between protecting his king or the woman he loves beyond all reason.

ART OF LOVE is available in both print and e-book formats from The Wild Rose Press, Amazon and other booksellers. ISBN: 1-60154-381-6. To read an excerpt, go to: http://www.keenakincaid.com/artoflove.php

Excerpt:

Abigail blinked against the cold, sickly morning that invaded the room. Frost coated the broken windowpane, and a draft eased its way inside, as unwanted as the dawn. The air that bit at her cheek smelled faintly of smoke. Pulling the blanket over her face, she burrowed into the solid warmth beside her. It shifted slightly, threw an arm around her waist and pulled her against hot skin and solid muscles.

She jerked fully awake. Her stomach pitched as she remembered where she was, who she was with, and what they had done. Mon Dieu, what was I thinking? Lifting Alain’s hand from her waist, she edged away from his embrace and sat up. The frigid air rushed over her shoulders, shocking her skin. A sleepy groan sounded to her left, and the arm returned to her waist.

“Good morrow,” Alain said in a raw voice. He blinked at her with a warm, sleepy expression that invited her to repeat last night. “How did you sleep?”

“Well.”
Something in her voice erased the easy smile. Slightly more awake, he propped himself up on an elbow. The left side of his face was bruised, marred by the cut and traces of blue paste.

She looked at the wall behind the headboard, then at him. His intense silver gaze never left her face. “Abigail?”

“Nothing. Everything.” Her stomach knotted and twisted. She had a lover. She’d never had a lover before, and now she had one. She had no idea what that meant or why her thoughts kept tripping over hidden fears that this would end badly. Maybe not banished to a convent badly, but badly all the same. “We should not have done this,” she whispered, barely aware that she spoke as her mind tried to catch the supple fright that congealed her blood. “What were we thinking?”

“Thinking does not accompany passion if you do it right.”

He sat up and raked a hand through his tangles. The blanket pooled around his hips. He was naked. As was she, she realized. His gaze felt like a beam of light on her bare body, exposing legs, breasts, and belly. She reached for the blanket, still soaked with his heat.

“Really, Abigail, there is no need to blush like a virgin.” His eyes went from warm to icy. “Obviously, we have both done this before.”

Keena Kincaid is author of ANAM CARA and ART OF LOVE from The Wild Rose Press. You can learn more about the book and its author at http://www.keenakincaid.com, as well as MySpace, FaceBook and Twitter. You can find her books at The WildRose Press (http://www.thewildrosepress.com) Amazon (Art of Love here and Anam Cara here) and other booksellers.