Welcome, Cornelia Amiri and the Druid Bride

Cheers everyone, I’m passing (virtual) heather mead around, please grab a goblet and drink down the heady brew as I tell you about my latest release Druid Bride. It is my ninth Celtic/Romance as I love history and have an unquenchable passion for all things Celtic. I believe it began when I saw the Disney movie, The Sword and the Stone at age five. Speaking of movies, Druid Bride is set against the same historical backdrop of 1^st century AD Scotland as the new movie, Centurion. 

Here’s the Blurb for Druid Bride: She carried the seed of rebirth, so what had fallen would rise again. The ghost of her ancestor sent Druidess Tanwen from Britannia to the strange foreign tribe of the Caledonii to wed Brude, son of the chief. But Brude is not about to marry a druidess, even though she has the most beautiful body he’s ever seen. Never mind if his blood boils and he can’t stop thinking of her. He will not wed her. Yet the fate of Caledonia rests in the hands of the Warrior and the Druidess. Will they put their differences aside to fulfill their destiny?

I think the best way to describe a historical time period or events is to just bring the reader into it. Here are some tidbit excerpts and character quotes to take you to the wild world of the Pictish tribes in first century AD, Scotland.

Excerpt:

The tattoos covering his arms and legs were similar to the sacred images engraved on the long stones which stood all over Caledonia. The largest swirl began small and curved into a larger loop, with a little one for wings, and long, thin lines as legs. So his patron goddess was Corra—the crane goddess—which revealed his closeness to the otherworld and his gift of prophecy

2^nd Excerpt:

Together they gulped down the golden mead. Never, not once, did they tear their eyes away from each other.

“As the mead flows through you, let the spirit fill you.”Tanwen walked over to the cauldron and dipped her hand in the dark, gooey, blue dye.

Her finger slinked down his face, streaking both cheeks blue. The woad was warm, her touch hotter. His tinted checks burned. After dipping her hands into the dye again, her ring-bedecked fingers danced over the muscles rippling down his arms, tracing each of his tattoos, following the lines as she painted them blue. He quivered. The gods shielded him through these symbols. The first was a wolf, with an open mouth drawn as a curve. Then the boar with tusk made from a circle, with a line drawn though it and two knots on each end. His flesh tingled as she painted the lines of a swirling snake.

3^rd Excerpt:

There she was, standing on the hill, enveloped in a flowing, speckled, white cloak held with a gold brooch, and wearing gold clasps on her ears and a thick gold torque around her neck. Brude watched as the villagers took the nine sacred woods and built the great fire. He felt like he didn’t know her. He didn’t think of her as Tanwen while watching her there, but simply as a druidess, a human personification of a war goddess. A woman yes, but one who spoke for the gods, and therefore had more power than the mightiest chief of the land. Not the woman he longed for when the Smertae captured her in that botched cattle raid. Not the fiery lady he’d slept with, who filled his dreams.

4^th Excerpt:

Tanwen walked through the wheat field. Half willow tree, half fey was the only description that fit. Tall but lithe, her red hair waving in the wind, streaming down her slender body. Her skin was still pale blue from the woad, giving her the appearance of an enchantress, summoned from the other world to bless the crops. Everyone gazed at her as she walked forward and halted at a stalk. She plucked an ear of wheat and rolled the grain between her finger and thumb as Lossio had done. “It is plump and yielding.” She stared at Brude with an intense gaze that set his insides on fire. “Yes, it is time.”

A cheer went up from everyone, but Brude was captured by her gaze and couldn’t look away. He didn’t want to. He wanted to step forward, scoop her up into his arms, and carry her off to his bed. By the gods, the druidess had enchanted him.

He did not say a word to Tanwen, nor she to him, but she turned her head and flipped her red hair across her back as she walked off.

That’s the final excerpt for the day but please enter the Blogging Contest today, just post a comment or question and I'll draw a winner. The prize is an autographed trade size paperback of Druid Bride. So post a question or comment and you could win.

The book trailer is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWYm04F6_aU

My website is http://www.CelticRomanceQueen.com

My facebook is http://www.facebook.com/CelticRomanceQueen and my twitter is http://twitter.com/CelticRomanzqEn