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Meg Mardell: The Time Before Christmas

Meg Mardell is visiting today to talk about her new release A Highland Hogmany and the time before Christmas was widely celebrated in Scotland. Welcome, Meg!

‘For weeks before the great morning, confectioners display stacks of Scotch bun — a dense, black substance, inimical to life — and full moons of shortbread adorned with mottoes of peel or sugar-plum, in honour of the season and the family affections.”

Robert Louis Stevenson only lets us press our faces to the glass of the sweet shop for a moment on his whirlwind tour of Victorian Edinburgh. But, for me, one glance was enough. I could practically smell the holiday scents wafting out the bakery doors and mingling with the hint-of-snow December air. Add in the long Northern nights brightened by gas-lamps and I was salivating to set a holiday romance in late nineteenth century Scotland. After all, there are few places in the world I’d prefer to celebrate the season!

Inspired by the Highland castle romance tradition, I quickly sketched out a mistaken identity romp: English heiress Sharda follows feisty Scotswoman Fin back to her Highland castle – only to discover she’s not the owner. And then they’re stuck for Christmas! One slight problem: “the great morning” Stevenson describes? Turns out it wasn’t Christmas morning! What were the mottos Edinburgh’s confectioners spelled out in candied peel? “‘Frae Auld Reekie,’ ‘A guid New Year to ye a’,’ ‘For the Auld Folk at Hame’.”

Yep. Happy New Year. Not Happy Christmas. Because, for around 400 years, Christmas wasn’t popularly celebrated in Scotland. The Scottish Parliament abolished the festivities in 1640, which in the 17^th century would have been the Twelve Days of Christmas, as part of their clean sweep of the Catholic Church. “The kirke within this kingdome is now purged of all superstitious observatione of dayes.” The Puritans in England also banned Christmas at the same time, but the feasting and dancing of the Twelve Days came roaring back when the Monarchy was restored in 1660. You have to wonder if Christmas would have stayed cancelled in Scotland if they hadn’t had New Years to fall back on. Instead, all the holiday baking and bustle in December neatly lead up to Hogmanay, the traditional Scottish celebration of the New Year.

As an historian, I find this all fascinating. But, as a fiction writer, I had a dilemma: how was I going to add Sharda and Fin’s story to my queer Victorian Christmas series? Could I still do it? To answer that question, I sat down and made two lists. First, what makes a great holiday Romance for me? Next, could I still tick all these boxes in Sharda and Fin’s queer castle romance with Hogmanay at the centre of the celebrations?

Home for the holidays – Hogmanay was absolutely a time when all Fin’s family would descend on the castle. So Sharda gets all the awkwardness of meeting her not-quite girlfriend’s family for the holidays. Yes.

Eating everything – Those shortbread full moons of Stevenson’s definitely make an appearance! And I updated the traditional haggis dinner to some tasty fish pie with all the trimmings because I wanted something on the table I would eat.

Roaring fires – One of most memorable features of Hogmanay is the torchlight processions. Why couldn’t my book have its very own parade right up to the castle gates?

Surprise snow – What Highland castle would be complete without a sugar-sweet dusting of snow? One of Sharda’s requirements for her holiday visit is seeing the hills of North-East Scotland transformed by the first snowfall. No prizes for guessing if she gets her wish.

Poignant presents – Gifts are an essential ingredient of Hogmanay. Particularly the ceremonial presents carried by the first person over the threshold at midnight: bread for plenty, coal for warmth, and whiskey for cheer. But obviously I wanted something a bit more sentimental and schemed for ways for our lovers to make a private exchange.

Finding family – This one might seem like a gimme at the holidays. Find your family? You’re practically tripping over them! But I’m taking about the ‘gets a family for the holidays’ trope. It’s one of my absolute favourites. Could I deliver it without a Christmas tree? I figured, as long was I’d got all the other holiday romance ingredients at my fingertips, I’d give it a go.

This checklist was a real confidence boost that I could give Sharda and Fin the holiday romance they deserve at Hogmanay. I also discovered the Scottish new year is simply awesome. I love its emphasis on clearing old debts and starting the new year with a clean slate. It almost made me sorry not to live somewhere that Christmas got cancelled. The 25^th of December became a public holiday in Scotland in 1958, but it’s still overshadowed by the pageantry of Hogmanay. Now I understand why!

A Highland Hogmanay

The daughter of an Indian raja and renegade Englishwoman, Sharda Holkar, was gifted with a magnificent dowry but little say in her future. Until now. She must endure one more depressing holiday season with her controlling cousins, then she will be free to begin her emancipated life. But her discovery of a plot to marry her off to the preening son of the house has Sharda wondering if her new start should begin at once. When Sharda meets the intriguing owner of a Highland castle at a Christmas Eve masquerade, she wastes no time in forming a plan—she will escape across the Scottish border!

Finella Forbes cannot imagine why a sophisticated heiress like Sharda would even associate with someone who manages a castle for a living, let alone accompany her all the way back to the Highlands in time for the raucous celebration of Hogmanay. But a wealthy buyer is just what Balintore Castle needs. Fin is determined to prove she is just as good an estate manager as her father, but with the negligent lordly owner refusing to do his duty, she needs help fast. When mistaken assumptions jeopardise their initial attraction, Sharda and Fin will need all the mischief and magic of a Highland holiday to discover the true nature of their feelings.

NineStar Press | Books2Read

About Meg

Meg moved from the US to England because she fell in love with the Victorians’ peculiar blend of glamour and grime. After a decade of exploring historical excesses in a prim scholarly fashion, she realized that fiction is the best way to delve into that period’s great female-focused and LGBT+ stories. Weaned on the high-seas romances of the 1990s, Meg’s lost none of her love for cross-dressing cabin boys but any tolerance for boorish heroes. She’s delighted to now have a whole raft of quirky and queer characters to cheer for on their quest for Happily Ever After. She frequently breaks off writing for an Earl Grey tea (milk not lemon). She’s trying to learn Polish and Portuguese at the same time. She plans to escape Brexit Britain.

Website | Twitter

Why Paranormal?

Why do I set a lot of my stories in a paranormal universe, you ask? It’s a question I often grumble about to myself.

I am slightly resentful of my writing-subconscious, because it doesn’t want to make things easy for me. I love writing historical stories, the research, the social history, getting into how people thought at the time. I suppose I could be writing these stories without the paranormal element…and indeed, I have! But quite often I start off thinking that’s what I’m going to do and then boink, there we are with mysterious howling and people dissolving and what-not.

Obviously, I had to have some sort of ooops, we’ve slipped through time element at the very beginning of the Border Magic series to get Lew back to 1919 in Lost in Time. But initially that wasn’t really the focus of the book. I wanted to contrast the experiences and expectations of a man born in the 1880s with one born in the 1980s, and time-travel just seemed a really cool way to do that.

And the whole Border Magic Universe has snowballed a bit from there.

I am aiming less for Narnia—a world you can easily pop through a wardrobe door to get to that is magical of itself—and more for Lovecraft, where the magic is dangerous and inexplicable and has consequences for the humans who’s lives it touches. Each of the people in my books discovers and reacts to the magic in different ways and readers aren’t meant to have a whole picture of how it works, because the characters don’t. Sometimes they’ll know a bit more about what’s going on than the characters if they’ve read other books; but it shouldn’t make any difference to their enjoyment of the story if they haven’t.

Readers seem to either like the drip-drip of more information about the magical world or loathe it. As a writer it’s a bit of a cop-out because I don’t have a series-bible with all the rules and regulations of the magic written down in advance. This means I can whip a thing out of the hat to make the story more gruesome or coherent if I want to. My rule to myself is that I can’t change things I’ve already written about—so the magic is internally consistent from book to book and the magic system grows all the time. I know what the rules are, pretty much, but I don’t’ have them written down anywhere in a very formal sense. I should also admit I do subcontract out some of my gothic horror…Talking Child came up with the idea of the hollows in The Flowers of Time and is still smug about it however many years later.

Will I write a story set in the Outlands, so people can find out more about what’s going on behind the scenes? Honestly, I don’t know. At the moment I’d say no, I wouldn’t. But three years ago I’d have told you I’d never write contemporary stories or short stories; and I’m quite happily writing my Reworked Celtic Myths in just that format!

Here’s a deleted scene I posted earlier, Fenn in the Outlands with a bit more about the world.

Nell Iris: So Far Away

Hi everyone, I hope you’re having a good day! I’m Nell Iris, and I’m here to talk about my latest release, So Far Away. But first I’d like to extend my warmest and most sincere gratitude to Ally, who’s invited me here today. Thank you so much, you’re the best! 😊

The idea for So Far Away came to me some months ago back when I read about an old married couple in the news, a couple who were separated because of the pandemic. One of them lived in a nursing home, but the other didn’t, and because of restrictions to stop the spread, they could only see each other through a window. That story tugged on my heartstrings, but also, it made my head spin with “what if?” questions and the seed of this story was sowed.

I was hesitant at first; writing about a pandemic amidst a pandemic is a delicate business. I didn’t want to accidentally hurt anyone who’s lost a loved one, and then there’s the fact that the restrictions taken to prevent the spread look different in every country which would also be a minefield to navigate.

But the idea was persistent and wouldn’t let me go, so I put pen to paper and started to write, deciding I’d at least see where it took me. And it soon became clear that the story I wanted to tell was exploring that helpless feeling I’m sure many of us have felt over this past year. That feeling that we’re not in control of our own lives, that what we can and cannot do is decided by outside factors and governments. And even if we understand why it has to be this way and do our best to abide by the restrictions, it doesn’t make the situation less frustrating. It doesn’t the feeling of powerlessness.

When I realized that’s where the story was headed, I decided to invent a virus. I didn’t name it and I’ve kept the symptoms deliberately vague, symptoms I borrowed from several different viruses, because it’s not the virus itself that’s the focus of this story, it’s the circumstances the virus creates. That’s the story I wanted to tell.

Nell Iris: So Close, Yet So Far Away. I lay my hand back on the window, and with my other hand, I tap over my heart three times. That make shim smile: it's just a slight upsturn by the corners of his mouth, but for a second I see him. My Julian. He repeats the gesture back at me, I love you, too, then the waves and turns to leave.

Excerpt:

When we’d just bought it, we spent many long evenings making plans and discussing options. We’d share a bottle of wine and make long lists of things we wanted, things we deemed necessary in what was going to be our forever home. The lists started outrageously—a wine cellar bigger than the actual house with an employee who turns the bottles? Really, Zakarias?—but distilled into a few reasonable items. So Julian’s dream of the biggest bathroom in the northern hemisphere—a Bath Palace, Zakarias, not a bathroom—complete with a pool, a jacuzzi, a sauna, and every other imaginable luxury, turned into a more feasible sized room with a fancy walk-in shower and a separate bathtub with jets—both of them big enough to accommodate the two of us. It also has a heated floor and double sinks. And my favorite feature; the tiny lights over the bathtub, sprinkled in the ceiling like a starry sky.

We both love the house; it’s our sanctuary. Every design element is chosen for comfort and to make it feel like a real home. Like someplace we can be ourselves. Someplace we can grow old together.

There are things left to do on the house before we’re happy with it, and we still spend evenings on the couch, sipping wine and making lists. Evenings that more often than not turn into heavy make-out sessions on the couch, with clothes being torn off and strewn about. Evenings that end with us panting in a sticky mess and blissed-out grins on our faces, but without deciding what to do with whatever room we’re considering remodeling at the time. “The discussion is half the fun,” he’ll say with sparkling eyes, and my mouth agrees, while I’m thinking the discussion is all the fun, because I could live in a tiny shack in the forest and be happy as long as he lived there with me.

But this house…it’s not just a house, it’s a home. Our home and I miss it.

I miss coming home from work and finding Julian sprawled on the couch in only his underwear, watching some horrid reality show or other on the big screen TV. I miss waking up early on weekends and preparing luxury breakfasts for him, miss how the scent of freshly baked bread never fails to wake him and lure him out of bed. I miss the adorable sight of him stumbling into the kitchen, bleary-eyed, hair in disarray with pillow creases on his cheek and dried drool on his chin. I miss how he beelines for me like a heat-seeking missile and winds himself around me, burying his face in my neck, snaking his arms around me, and tapping three times over my heart.

His family came up with that code when he was little; his younger sister was born with a genetic developmental disorder and never learned to speak, so three taps to the heart meant “I love you.” She died when she was only five, but the family keeps her memory alive with that gesture. It was how Julian told me he loved me for the first time. I didn’t understand it at the time, but when he told me the story, I realized he’d been telling me he loved me long before the words were spoken out loud.

I straighten my spine. Shake my head at my moment of weakness before marching back to the guesthouse and pulling a sweater over my head. I pour out the cold forgotten contents of my mug and pour fresh, steaming coffee into it.

Then I sit, take a sip, and breathe.

So Far Away

Engaged couple Zakarias and Julian are convinced nothing can separate them…until a global pandemic hits. Zakarias catches the virus with mild symptoms and isolates in the couple’s guest house. The few meters dividing them might as well be the moon as he watches Julian, an ICU nurse, work himself to the bone, unable to support him the way he needs. Frustration and worry build as the weeks pass. Will Zakarias be declared healthy before Julian burns out?

M/M Contemporary / 14 567 words

Buy links: JMS Books:: Amazon :: Books2Read

About Nell

Nell Iris is a romantic at heart who believes everyone deserves a happy ending. She’s a bonafide bookworm (learned to read long before she started school), wouldn’t dream of going anywhere without something to read (not even the ladies room), loves music (and singing along at the top of her voice but she’s no Celine Dion), and is a real Star Trek nerd (Make it so). She loves words, bullet journals, poetry, wine, coffee-flavored kisses, and fika (a Swedish cultural thing involving coffee and pastry!)

Nell believes passionately in equality for all regardless of race, gender or sexuality, and wants to make the world a better, less hateful, place.

Nell is a bisexual Swedish woman married to the love of her life, a proud mama of a grown daughter, and is approaching 50 faster than she’d like. She lives in the south of Sweden where she spends her days thinking up stories about people falling in love. After dreaming about being a writer for most of her life, she finally was in a place where she could pursue her dream and released her first book in 2017.

Nell Iris writes gay romance, prefers sweet over angsty, short over long, and quirky characters over alpha males.

Find Nell

Newsletter :: Webpage/blog :: Twitter :: Instagram :: Facebook Page :: Facebook Profile :: Goodreads :: Bookbub :: Pinterest :: Ko-Fi

Interview: Skye Kilaen

Skye has come today to talk about her new release, The Home I Find With You. It’s a a queer polyamorous post-collapse romance and as such is right up my jigger. Welcome Skye! Thanks so much for coming along!

Firstly, tell us in your own words why you’re doing this interview?

My first full-length romance novel, The Home I Find With You, is out March 3rd. It’s a hopepunk post-collapse polyamorous small town romance with a suspense sub-plot, and yes, that’s a lot of descriptors!

It’s my first M/M title (after two published F/F stories) and my first polyamorous romance. A lot of firsts!

The Home I Find With You. How you you build a new life after the world falls apart? A queer polyamorous post-collapse romance.

What started you writing?

Like many romance writers, I found the romance genre when I really needed something to get me though a rough point in my life. I’d written fiction passionately from when I was six or seven through college and then just fell away from it, but I didn’t start reading romance intending to pick up writing again.

When I did, I went through this somewhat ridiculous process of denial. First I told myself I just wanted to scribble some notes down for myself. Then I said maybe I’d have friends read those scribbles at some point. Then I said maybe I’d put them up for free somewhere and see if anyone else happened along. It took a while before I was willing to admit I wanted to get published. Maybe that’s what I had to do to work up the courage, haha.

Where do you write?

In a house built in 1964 that was not soundproofed against the possibility that in 2020 and 2021 there would be two adults trying to work here and one child trying to attend virtual school here. I have gotten way more familiar with YouTube white noise coffeeshop type videos than I ever expected to! 🙂

Writing is an intrinsically solo occupation. Do you belong to any groups or associations, either online or in the ‘real’ world? How does that work for you?

Finding writing again gave me a fresh creative hobby, but I’m definitely one of those people who loves being in a team rather than on my own… and you’re right, aside from co-writing situations, writing is a solo gig. But I need other people to cheerlead for or I’m a sad daisy! So I’ve engaged with other writers on Twitter and in Discord servers. I’ve made some great writer friends and found amazing critique partners.

It can be super intimidating to reach out when you don’t already know anyone, though. I started with some of the hashtag games on Twitter, and one day I also just held my breath and tweeted that I wanted to connect with other queer authors of queer romance for beta reading and whatnot, and it worked.

If anybody reading this doesn’t already have a queer romance writer crew and wants one, come sit by me, we’ll chat!

Tell me a little bit about your most recent release. What gave you the idea for it?

Aesthetic for The Home I Find With You. Hammer and tool belt. Small wooden cabin. Person shooting a rifle. Empty bed. Heart on a fence. A rucked up duvet with someone's leg showing. Rainbow coloured night sky. People riding horses in a forest. Another rainbow striped night sky.

The Home I Find With You is a romance set in a rural town fifteen years after a future U.S. Civil War. It’s an M/M love story, but also polyamorous. One lead character, Van, is pansexual and has a girlfriend. They have an open relationship. He’s actually dating someone else too as the story begins, but that other relationship coincidentally ends as the attraction between Van and the other lead character, Clark, is heating up.

Many polyamorous romance novels end in a closed triad: three people, all involved with each other romantically and sexually, and not involved with anyone else outside the triad. I wanted to do something a little different, to present a romance between Van and Clark that is very intense and real—actually life-changing for Clark, and maybe even life-saving—without it being exclusive or meaning that Van’s relationship with his girlfriend has to end. I also wanted to show how one person might have different relationships that bring different things into their lives, but that doesn’t mean one relationship is better or worse than the other.

I love post-apocalyptic movies, comics, and games, so the post-collapse setting of this book was a natural for me. But I have to admit that I’m often frustrated by the lack of attention to supply lines and salvage in those works. I find myself yelling “Where is the food coming from? Why haven’t you gotten all the usable stuff out of that abandoned house and brought it back to your stronghold?” So it was also fun to base the suspense part of the story around exactly those questions, how resources are being salvaged out of the environment, how this small town is making it, what types of technology they’re able to bring back into town from the nearest big city and what’s kind of faded out of people’s lives.

The Home I Find With You

A polyamorous romance about building a new life after the world falls apart.

Life in rural Colorado fifteen years after the second U.S. Civil War is perilous. Van and his girlfriend Hadas only recovered from the attack that killed Van’s wife because their community helped them heal. The warmth Van and Hadas share isn’t the love he lost, but it’s precious. He’s content.

Clark survived the war, but his family fractured and now his relationships are in ruins… which must be his fault, or everyone wouldn’t say so. Figuring he can’t destroy ties he doesn’t create, he relocates to start over, zero interpersonal complications welcome.

When Van and Clark meet, though, it’s nothing but complicated. Clark can’t stop wanting quiet, loyal Van no matter how the electricity between them misfires, and Van craves more than hookups from the charismatic newcomer. Hadas and others start coaxing Clark out of his emotional isolation, but when violence threatens the town, Van and Hadas must leave him behind to defend it.

To bring them safely home, Clark must decide whether Van’s love, Hadas’s friendship, and the belonging he’s found are enough to overcome his fear of once again letting down those he cares about.

A high heat, hurt-comfort post-collapse M/M romance novel with D/s elements, polyamory, open relationships, and a guaranteed HEA.

Detailed content warnings are available on my website for those who need them.

Buy The Home I Find With You

Find Skye: Website : Goodreads : Twitter

Am Reading

A bit of a catch up this week, with books by Isabelle Adler, Iona Datt Sharma, Jordan L. Hawk and Gregory Ashe.

In the Winter Woods by Isabelle Adler

Cover, In the Winter Woods, Isabelle Adler

This was such a lovely story. I read it in the gap between Christmas and New Year and it captures the spirit of the season perfectly. Crisp snow, cosy fires and very unpleasant murder. It’s an engaging story with a nice, complicated plot and a slow-burn love affair that’s really believable. It’s Adler’s first mystery and she’s pulled it off perfectly. If you like Josh Lanyon, try this.

Division Bells by Iona Datt Sharma

I read this in one sitting because I couldn’t put it down. It’s rich in both description and emotion and the characters, even the minor ones, leap off the page. It’s a contemporary romance set in the UK House of Lords, between a special advisor and civil servant. They get off on the wrong foot and over the cold winter and a really stressful period at work they get to know each other a great deal better and fall in love in the process. I can’t think why I missed this when it first came out and it’s definitely on my re-read list now.

Unhallowed by Jordan L. Hawk

Wonderful starter to a what I hope is a long new series, set in the world of Widdershins. In the library! You don’t need to have read the Wybourne and Griffin series to thoroughly enjoy this…if fact I confess I’d only read the first three and then went back and read the rest before re-reading Unhallowed. There’s magic, books and mystery. The protaganists are lovely and I particularly liked Sebastian’s confusion at Vesper’s tales of working as a librarian in Boston and his conclusion that it’s a very strange place, lacking all the things he takes for granted. I look forward to finding out more about the mysterious Mr Quinn. Five stars!

The Clockwork Heart by Gregory Ashe

This is a weird little novella that I thoroughly enjoyed. It’s set in the First World War — my jam, obviously — and the MC is a young French nun. And there are men with clockwork hearts. She has a crush on one. That’s it. That’s the story. I can’t say too much more than that without spoiling the whole thing, but…it’s not a romance. Lots happens and not much happens and it’s perfectly satisfying. It’s not quite steampunk and not quite romance and not quite historical and not quite horror. I’m not sure what it is…but I’ll definitely read it again. It’s also only 99c!

That’s it for this time, thanks for reading!