Thankful Author 2018- Jean M Grant

Filled with Gratitude… 

As we enter the holiday season of family, friends, and food, admittedly sometimes my attitude of gratitude can shift to the sad side. I miss the bright faces of loved ones no longer around the table, and I live in the tundra –err, New England – where after our resplendent autumn splendor comes the Big Freeze. However, as my sons snuggle with me on a crisp November morning and I bake yet another pumpkin pie that my husband and I will devour (hey, a gal can have her vices, right?) I am reminded that my glass is filled with gratitude. 

I’m eternally grateful for the friends I’ve met on this journey of life…be it for a few days, few years, or few decades. When I began the publication path I discovered a new world of friends: fellow writers, editors, and those scuba-diving in the publication trenches beside me. I’ve met fellow journalists, critique partners, published author friends, and readers. Some in person, some via keyboard. I also have special friends who have been by my side since the beginning of time it seems, or rather about two decades ago when I first put pen to paper (or fingertips to keys) with this crazy notion that I could be an author. Spoiler: not so crazy dream after all! 

My thanks do not end with friends. My family have been cheerleaders along the way, my husband and children the biggest supporters. 

Time has also been by my side, waiting for “just the right moment” for me to move beyond nooks and crannies writing and embrace this career full-time. Things happen when they are supposed to (hard to see when you are riding the waves). I am grateful for memories, moments, and much, much more. So, it’s time to bundle in a blanket, brew a pot of java, and embrace this opportunity to write…where my heart takes me, from craters to castles to crags of all kinds. 

Blurb

A broken past, a broken heart...and a broken curse.

1296

Two wedding nights. Two dead husbands.

Deirdre MacCoinneach wishes to understand her unusual ability to sense others' lifeblood energies...and vows to discover if her gift killed the men she married. Her father's search for a new and unsuspecting suitor for Deirdre becomes complicated when rumors of witchcraft abound.

Under the façade of a trader, Alasdair Montgomerie travels to Uist with pivotal information for a Claimant seeking the Scottish throne. A ruthless baron hunts him and a dark past haunts him, leaving little room for alliances with a Highland laird or his tempting daughter.

Awestruck when she realizes that her unlikely travel companion is the man from her visions, a man whose thickly veiled emotions are buried beneath his burning lifeblood, Deirdre wonders if he, too, will die in her bed if she follows her father's orders. Amidst magic, superstition, and ghosts of the past, Alasdair and Deirdre find themselves falling together in a web of secrets and the curse of a hundred kisses...

Excerpt

She clambered to the shoreline. Numb and shaken, she began to dress. It wasn’t easy as she fumbled with slick fingers to put dry clothes over wet skin. She instantly regretted her naked swim. She pulled on her long-sleeved white chemise first.

She faced the forest, away from her rescuer. He quietly splashed to shore. His lifeblood burned into her back. He wasn’t far behind, but he stopped. She refused to look at him until she was fully clothed, not out of embarrassment of her nudity, but for what had just happened. He released a groan and mumbled under his breath about wet boots. His voice was not one of her father’s soldiers.

When she put the last garment on, her brown wool work kirtle, she squeezed out her sopping hair and swept her hands through the knotty mess. She fastened her belt and tied the lacings up the front of the kirtle. Blood returned to her fingertips, and she regained her composure. Belated awareness struck her, and she leaned down and searched through her bag for her dagger. She spun around.

She gasped as she saw the man sitting on the stone-covered shoreline, his wet boots off. Confusion and the hint of a scowl filled his strong-featured face. She staggered back, caught her heel on a stone, and fell, dropping the dagger. Dirt and pebbles stuck to her wet hands and feet, and she instinctively scrambled away from him.

His glower, iridescent dark blue eyes, and disheveled black hair were not unfamiliar. Staring at her was the man she had seen in her dream—it was the man from the wood.

Buy links

Amazon Audible

iTunes: A Hundred Kisses (Unabridged)

Amazon Paperback/e-book

Also available as e-book from The Wild Rose Press, Google Play, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo.

Bio

Jean’s background is in science and she draws from her interests in history, nature, and her family for inspiration. She writes historical and contemporary romances and women's fiction. She also writes articles for family-oriented travel magazines. A Hundred Kisses is her first published novel. On the front for publication in early 2019: the prequel (A Hundred Breaths), a contemporary women’s fiction (Will Rise from Ashes), and a contemporary romance novella (Soul of the Storm), part of a new series by The Wild Rose Press. She’s also writing the third book in the “hundred” trilogy and has a few more romance & women fiction stories in the queue.

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