Random Guest: Mia Marlowe!

Hello lovelies! Apparently I’m part of a blog tour! Who knew?! 😉 Today we’ve got Mia Marlowe visiting with us. Obviously she wanted to end her tour on a high note. Cuz I’m so awesome. >.> *looks around gingerly for lightning strikes* … which would be especially freaky since it was almost a blizzard out there just 30 minutes ago and now it’s all sunshine and brightness. So you know, I might actually be incinerated by the time this post goes live… :X But enough about me. Let’s go ahead and see what Ms. Marlowe has to say!

Thanks for having me here today, Limecello. You’re the last stop on my Sins of the Highlander tour. Though I love writing and I adore all my stories, there’s nothing quite so tedious as writing about them. It makes me feel as if I’m some sort of stage mother, bragging about my offspring ad nauseum. I’d much rather hear what readers have to say about my work. (If you contact me through my website  I will write you back, though it may take me a while if I’m up against a deadline.)

If reading is a conversation between an author and her readers, it may seem a little one-sided. But actually, it’s not. You see, I believe we are a product of the people with whom we surround ourselves and the books we read. When we read, we take someone else’s thoughts into our minds and try them on for size. Some of it, we decide to keep. Some of it, we toss out like last night’s fish.

When I think back on the books that have really meant something to me, I realize most of them were read when I was a child. The characters were real to me. They became my friends. To this day, I still mist up when I think about Beth’s death in Little Women. I still pull for ‘Wart’ to overcome his foes and become the shining soul that was Arthur in The Once and Future King. The obstacles my literary friends went through shaped how I saw the world. And myself.

No wonder the characters live beyond the pages of the books in my imagination.

And that’s my goal for each of my characters—that you’ll believe they are off having adventures without you even once you reach “the end.”

In Sins of the Highlander, there are as many layers of conflict between “Mad Rob” MacLaren and Elspeth Stewart as an onion, but one of the most difficult for Rob is the fact that he is fighting his growing attraction to her. He’s a widower and still achingly in love with his wife when he first abducts Elspeth from the altar. His astonishment that his heart isn’t as dead as he thought is only eclipsed by his guilt over it. As you can imagine, he has some things to work through and his vivid dreams of his dead wife Fiona help him do it.

Excerpt from Sins of the Highlander,

He hadn’t seen her in so long, it took Rob a moment to realize who it was that appeared overhead in the thatch. Fiona wavered before his eyes and then sank slowly to the floor, her long gown fluttering in a nonexistent breeze. She halted her descent before the tips of her bare feet brushed the cold flagstone.

Fiona drew near his bedside. She smiled and the room brightened around her.
“Lazing in bed when ye’re needed elsewhere.” She reached out to cup his cheek and for the first time in all his lovely dreams of her, Rob couldn’t feel her fingertips. “What are ye doing, my daftie man?”
“Daftie man,” he repeated though he realized his lips hadn’t moved. “Ye always called me so. Ye must have known I’d come to this. D’ye ken they say I’m mad in truth now? Mad or witched.”
“Aye, but ye’re no’ mad. Nor witched either,” she said. “There’s one who needs ye, Rob.”
“Who?”
Fiona settled a hip on his bedside, but the feather tick didn’t sink a finger-width under her weight. “Elspeth Stewart, of course.”
“Ye know of her?”
She smiled sadly. “Aye, Rob, I know she has your heart in her keeping as I used to.”
“Ye still do,” he said.
“I know that too, but there is a great divide between us. I canna hold on to ye any more. I must let ye go.” She leaned down to kiss his forehead. Her lips were light as angel’s breath on his skin. “And ye must let me go.”
He knew she was right, but his chest still constricted.
“Aye, that’s love,” she said, still naming his feelings for him. “That willna end, though all else does. Dinna feel sad, Rob. ‘Tis the way of things.”
She began to float away, and he strained against his bonds to reach for her.
“Even if ye were unbound, ye canna hold me here longer,” Fiona said. “Ye must wake, Rob. Ye must hie yourself to Drummond’s stronghold before it’s too late.”
“Too late? Elspeth isna there. She left with her father. What’s happened?”

“Wake, Rob.” Fiona hovered near the ceiling, then began to pass through the thatch as if it wasn’t there. She faded completely from his sight, but her voice whispered into his ear as though she rested her head on the pillow beside him. “Open your eyes, love, but this time, truly see.”

Mia enjoys connecting with readers. You can find her at her cyber-home. While you’re there checking out the excerpts, her lively blog and other fun stuff, be sure to enter her website contest. The Grand Prize on Mia’s website is a New Kindle!

Sourcebooks is offering two chances to win Sins of the Highlander today. Leave a comment or question for Mia to be entered into the random drawing. (USA/Canada only) Here’s a question to get the conversation going:

What book or character lives large in your imagination?

0 thoughts on “Random Guest: Mia Marlowe!

  1. Liz

    Great, funny post and the book sounds wonderful! I love a man with a brogue and a kilt. Give him a broken heart and I’m buttered toast! I agree about the books from our youths shaping our outlook. For sure, I can’t think of too many books that affected me more than The Outsiders that I read many times as a pre-teen/teen. I adored S.E. Hinton for publishing at 14, writing a book that touched someone (me, that is) so sincerely, and getting a movie deal. I didn’t just love her, I wanted to be her. I would have very much liked to know what happened to PonyBoy and SodaPop and all the others as they grew up.

    My question for you, Miss Mia, is what is your favorite time period to write about?

    I’m on my way to your website to check out your blog and look at your other books. Best wishes and congrats on the book/tour!

    Reply
  2. Mia Marlowe

    Good question, Liz. I’ve written in the dark ages, Medievals, Georgian, Regency and Victorian. I’ve even played with a few contemporaries. But setting isn’t as important to me as character. I find out who my Hero and Heroine are and then I discover the world they live in.

    Reply
  3. Sheila M

    Many years ago I bought a book by Mary Burkhardt called Highland Ecstasy. I just love that book. Been looking all over for more of her’s but can’t find them. The hero Ian and heroine Myrtle are exactly what I like in a couple…shove and shove back.

    Reply
  4. Mia Marlowe

    Sheila–Does Mary have a website? If you know who her publisher was, they might be able to point you in the right direction. As you know, authors change houses and pen names and it’s easy for a reader to lose track of them. Happy hunting!

    Reply
  5. Mary Kirkland

    That was a great excerpt. Sounds like a good book.
    I think the first character that pops into my head is Gregori from Christine Feehan’s Dark series. He is bigger than life and made to be scary to other people but he’s a big teddy bear to his wife.

    Reply
  6. Pingback: Winners! | Mia Marlowe: Read. Write. Love.

  7. Diane Sallans

    Got a little teary eyed on that excerpt – lost love does that to me, but have faith that Rob & Elspeth will have their HEA.

    Reply
  8. CrystalGB

    Hi Mia. Sins of the Highlander sounds great. Love Highlanders. One character that has always stuck in my mind is Lisa Kleypas’ Derek Craven. He is a sigh worthy hero. 🙂

    Reply
  9. Maria D.

    Great scene! I think it’s wonderful that Rob is still in love with Fionna even though she’s been gone for a while and that she’s giving him permission to move on in this scene. He’s clearly a hero who loves deeply.

    A character that’s always in my mind is Adam Hauptman from the Mercedes Thompson series. He’s so in love with Mercy and devoted to keeping her safe, even though half the time she’s the one saving him.

    Thanks for the giveaway!

    Reply
  10. Monikarw

    Mmh.. I guess, the classics.. Mr. Darcy will always be Mr. Darcy 🙂
    also, Lisa Kleypas’s wallflowers! Adored thos books, and they’ll always be special for me 🙂
    Mary Balogh’s A Summer to remember Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels
    & Leigh Greenwood’s Seven Brides series! First historicals I read after Pride and Prejudice 🙂 loved them all!

    Reply
  11. Pingback: Winners & A Flash Giveaway « Limecello

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