Gallowglass
Book One
Jennifer Allis Provost
Genre: urban fantasy, paranormal romance
Publisher: Bellatrix Press
Date of Publication: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1622510320
ASIN: B06XXQCPFB
Number of pages: 272
Word Count: 75k
Cover Artist: Deranged Doctor Design
Tagline: Karina didn’t set out to free the Seelie Queen’s gallowglass. Now she’ll do anything to keep him.
Book Description:
After Karina and her brother, Chris’s, lives fall apart in separate yet equally spectacular ways, they leave New York behind and head to the UK. Karina buries herself in research for her doctoral thesis, all the while studiously not thinking about the man who broke her heart, while Chris—who’d been a best-selling author before his ex-fiancée sued him for plagiarism—drinks his way across the British Isles.
In Scotland, they visit the grave of Robert Kirk, a seventeenth- century minister who was kidnapped by fairies. No one is more shocked than Karina when a handsome man with a Scottish brogue appears, claiming to be the Robert Kirk of legend. What’s more, he says he spent the last few hundred years as the Gallowglass, the Seelie Queen’s personal assassin. When they’re attacked by demons, Karina understands how dearly the queen wants him back.
As Karina and Robert grow closer, Chris’s attempts to drown his sorrows lead him to a pub, and a woman called Sorcha. Chris is instantly smitten with her, so much so he spends days with Sorcha and lies to his sister about his whereabouts. When Chris comes home covered in fey kisses, Karina realizes that the Seelie Queen isn’t just after Robert.
Can Karina outsmart the Seelie Queen, or is Robert doomed to forever be the Gallowglass?
Excerpt:
I sped back to
the ruined kirk, my knuckles white as I gripped the wheel. The real reason I
didn’t get on Chris about his constant mooning over Olivia was that at least he
and Olivia had had something. I’d had nothing with Jared. No it hadn’t quite
been nothing, but it may as well have been. One thing that Chris and I had both
learned on this trip is that an ocean is not nearly enough distance to outrun
your past.
I parked in the
kirk’s tourist lot, leapt out of the rental and ran across the bridge and up
the fairy hill, startling some of the local wildlife along the way. When I
reached the Minister’s Pine I was panting, my heart pounding as sweat poured
down my back.
I had to find
that quartz. I just had to.
I dropped to my
knees and felt around near the base of the tree. I found my brush rather
quickly, along with my hairclip and the stupidly expensive Mont Blanc pen that
my advisor had given me when I earned my masters degree. But the quartz, the
quartz wasn’t anywhere. The bits of lunch I’d had turned to lead in my stomach;
if the quartz was gone, then it was really, truly over.
“Lookin’ for
this, are ye now?”
I turned toward
the voice, blinked, and pushed my glasses up to my forehead. Yeah, he was
really there. Standing in front of me was a tall man in what I assumed was
period dress. Instead of a kilt—we American girls tend to think that all
Scotsmen run around in kilts, no matter the occasion; sadly, this is not the
case—he was wearing a padded brown leather coat topped with chain mail, along
with matching brown pants and well-worn leather boots. A helmet was tucked
under his arm, and I could see the hilt of a claymore, one of those medieval
broadswords that were so heavy you had to swing it with two hands, poking up
over his shoulder. A shield rested next to the sword’s hilt, its curved edge
just visible above the man’s shoulder.
I hadn’t
realized they did reenactments at Doon Hill, and I made a mental note to check
the brochure for show times. I also noticed that the actor had his hand
extended, with my lump of rose quartz sitting on his open palm.
“Yes!” I got to
my feet, and grabbed the stone. “Thank you,” I said once I remembered my
manners, stroking the stone with my thumb. The man looked at me intently, his
expression wavering somewhere between confusion and curiosity. “What made you
think it was mine?”
“Saw ye drop it,
I did,” he replied.
“And you’ve been
waiting here since then?”
“I knew ye would
be back for me.”
I blinked, since
I must have misunderstood his accent. What I’d heard as ‘me’ must have really
been ‘it’. Accents do tend to garble words. “I really appreciate you waiting
for me. Thank you,” I said, extending my hand.
He eyed my hand,
dark brows low over his blue eyes. Then he grasped my fingers and brought them
toward his mouth.
“What are you
doing?” I snapped, snatching my hand away.
“I thought ye
wanted me to kiss your hand,” he explained.
“I wanted to
shake your hand!” He looked befuddled rather than offended, so I attributed
this to yet another cultural misunderstanding. It was becoming quite the list.
“Well, regardless, thank you. I’m Rina.”
“Rina,” he
repeated, that Scottish brogue of his making my nickname sound positively
decadent. “’Tis quite an unusual name.”
“It’s short for
Karina,” I explained. “Karina Siobhan Stewart,” I added, wondering why I’d felt
compelled to give him my full name. Historically I’d only been called Karina
Siobhan when I was in trouble.
“And I am Robert
Kirk,” he said, extending his hand. This guy was way deep in character, like
method actor deep. I shook his hand, and we both smiled.
“Good to meet
you, Mr. Kirk.”
“Reverend Kirk,”
he corrected.
“My apologies,
Reverend Kirk.” These reenactors sure liked to stick to their roles, though I’d
never expected to see a reverend wearing chain mail. We stood there for a
moment, holding hands and grinning like a couple of fools, and I took the time
to really look at him. He was older than me, probably a bit older than Chris
too, with dark, tousled hair, chiseled features, and a roguish glint in his
blue eyes. They had obviously picked reenactors that would appeal to the
ladies.
“Do no’ fash,
Karina lass, no offense was taken,” he murmured, and my cheeks were suddenly
hot. I took back my hand, barely resisting the urge to fan myself.
“I should be
going,” I said. “My brother’s waiting for me.” I scanned the area around the
Minister’s Pine, ascertained that I’d left nothing else of import behind, and
turned toward the path. A hand on my arm stopped me.
“Ye canna leave
me here,” the reenactor said. “Ye must take me with ye.”
“What? No!” I
faced him, planting my feet before him and whipping out my cell phone. “I don’t
know what goes on here in Scotland, but I’m an American citizen. Stay back, or
I’ll call 911.” I didn’t even know if they had 911 in Scotland. Would I have to
call Scotland Yard instead? I hoped my phone had some kind of app for
international emergencies. I waved my phone in what I hoped was a menacing
manner, and Robert—or whatever his name was—eyed it as if it would bite him.
“Put away your
tricks, lass,” he said. “It was ye what called me here in the first place.”
I shook my head.
“This is an act, right? Reverend Kirk, freed at long last from the Minister’s
Pine?”
“’Tis no act,
lass. Would that it were.” He stepped closer, and took my hands in both of his.
Robert’s hands were warm and callused, and, despite all this nonsense,
comforting. “I am Robert Kirk himself, and ye have freed me no from just a
tree, but from Elphame, and the Seelie Queen herself.”
“Elphame?” I
asked.
“Aye,” he
replied. “Some refer to it as the Fairy Realm.”
I leaned against
the Minister’s Pine. He claimed he was from Elphame. Of course he was. How did
I always attract the weirdos?
It was generally
agreed that when magic left the world, it was because the fairy realm had
closed its doors to humans. Some claimed that human industrialization, and its
rampant use of iron, had caused the fae to retreat, while others claimed the
global shift from pagan to monotheistic faiths was the culprit. No matter which
theory you favored, the end result was the same; there was no new magic. For
hundreds of years humans had made do with a few crumbling artifacts and
enchanted items, but those items were wearing out too. It was as if magic had a
half-life, and we’d long since passed the middle point.
“You can’t be
fromElphame,” I said. “It’s closed. It’s been closed for centuries.”
“Has it, now? I
will say this, when I was a boy the land was thick with magic. Ye could hardly
walk the roads without encountering one o’ the Good People.”
“When you were a
boy,” I repeated, then I remembered that Robert Kirk had lived in the
seventeenth century. Magic hadn’t started disappearing until a century later.
“Still, it’s closed now.”
“Just because a
door has been closed, does no’ mean it canna be reopened.”
I slid down to
the ground and Robert sat beside me, both of us leaning against the tree he’d
recently emerged from.
Wait, when did I
start believing him?
“So, um, you
think all of this is real?” I ventured, gesturing around the clearing. “The
legend and all?”
Robert smiled
wanly. “Ye have heard o’ me, then?”
“They say you
told the world of the fairies’ secrets, so they imprisoned you in a tree.”
“That is no the
whole of the tale.” Robert closed his eyes as he leaned his head back against
the trunk. “I did have dealings with the Good People, but it was no them who
abducted me.”
“Then who did?”
“’TwasNicnevin,
the Seelie Queen herself.”
My jaw dropped,
and if I hadn’t already been on the ground I would have fallen. As it was, my
arm went out from under me, and my shoulder bumped into Robert. “Are ye all
right, lass?” Robert asked.
“Yes,” I lied.
There was nothing all right about this. “Why did the queen take you?”
“She fancied
me,” he replied. “Offered me an apple, ye ken. I said no, it angered her, she
cursed me. And here we are today.”
I looked up at
him. He still had his head tipped back against the tree, his eyes closed. “That
sounds like the ridiculously oversimplified version.”
At that, he
opened his eyes and speared me with his gaze. “Would ye be likin’ all the
details, then, lass?”
I swallowed.
“Um, maybe not just yet.” My gaze moved from Robert’s face to the quartz in my
hand. “What makes you think I freed you?”
“Ye made contact
wi’ the tree, wishin’ to rescue me. Wishes are powerful things, ye ken.” Robert
leaned over and touched the quartz. “Then ye dropped your stone, and a door
opened for me. I ha’ been waitin’ for ye ever since.”
“Wishes are
powerful things,” I repeated. “Why do you want to leave with me? You don’t even
know me.”
“I know ye freed
me, and that is no small thing,” Robert replied. “I also know that as soon as
Nicneven kens I’ve left me post, she will send her creatures to retrieve me.”
“Creatures?”
“Aye. And I do
no’ want to be here when they arrive.”
I took a deep
breath and got to my feet, Robert following suit. Once we were standing I
looked into his clear blue eyes, his guileless face, and sighed. He was either
telling the truth, or he was the greatest actor in the world. Or I was the
world’s biggest idiot; the jury was still out on that.
“Well, let’s
go.”
“Go?” he
repeated hopefully.
“If you’re
telling the truth—and I’m not saying that you are—I can’t just leave you here.
And, if you’re not telling the truth, I’ll drop you at the nearest police
station,” I added, trying to act tough in front of the armored man with the
sword.
Robert inclined
his head, and took both of my hands in his. “Lass, soon enough ye will ken that
I only speak what’s true.” He once again brought my knuckles to his lips; this
time, I let him kiss me. It was nice, having one’s hand kissed by a dark,
handsome man. “Karina Siobhan Stewart, I am now your charge, and I shall follow
your every command.”
“Okay. Um.” I
looked him over and issued my first command. “First of all, you can’t tromp
aroundAberfoyle wearing chain mail. You’re going to have to take off your
armor.”
About the Author:
Jennifer Allis Provost writes books about faeries, orcs and elves. Zombies too. She grew up in the wilds of Western Massachusetts and had read every book in the local library by age twelve. (It was a small library). An early love of mythology and folklore led to her epic fantasy series, The Chronicles of Parthalan, and her day job as a cubicle monkey helped shape her urban fantasy, Copper Girl. When she’s not writing about things that go bump in the night (and sometimes during the day) she’s working on her MFA in Creative Nonfiction.
Web and blog: https://authorjenniferallisprovost.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/copperraven
Twitter: https://twitter.com/parthalan
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/jennallis/
Interview
Where are you from?
Western MA
Tell us your latest news?
My latest book, Gallowglass, released June 6!
When and why did you begin writing?
I’ve been making up characters and stories for as
long as I can remember. When the characters wouldn’t stop talking, I started
writing them down. Ten novels later, here we are.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
When I actually finished a novel! I remember looking
at the stack of paper and thinking, “Well, now what?”
What inspired you to write your first book?
Oh, so many things. It was really a collection of
stories I wrote as a kid. Fast forward ten years, and I found the notebook
packed away in an old box. I rewrote the stories, and ended up with my fantasy
series, The Chronicles of Parthalan.
Do you have a specific writing style?
My work tends to be in first person past tense, but
other than that no.
How did you come up with the title?
For my latest release, Gallowglass, the title refers
to one of the main characters who is a gallowglass. They were Scottish
mercenaries in the 13th-16th centuries.
Is there a message in your novel that you want
readers to grasp?
Outthink your enemy.
How much of the book is realistic?
It’s an urban fantasy that takes place in modern
Scotland, so the setting is quite realistic. Of course, that landscape happens
to be littered with fairies, and there is that legendary warrior running about.
Are experiences based on someone you know, or events
in your own life?
Slightly – the main character is a geologist, and I
studies environmental science in college.
What books have most influenced your life most?
The Hero and the Crown, The Once and Future King,
Tigana, the Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia… Really, I could go on all
day.
If you had to choose, which writer would you
consider a mentor?
Either Robin McKinley or JRR Tolkien.
What book are you reading now?
Two Queens of Heaven
by Doris Gates
Are there any new authors that have grasped your
interest?
Two new to me authors are Senan McGuire and Joe
Hill. Both are great for their vivid imagery and spot-on prose.
What are your current projects?
What would you like my readers to know?
That I appreciate every single reader. Thank you!
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