Thank you so much for hosting me and for allowing me to post
on your blog today!
Last week I wrote about the trip to Scotland and the course
I took on Scottish towns and villages that inspired much of the setting for Blood’s
Shadow including squares and market crosses. I’ll admit I saved my favorite
part, castles, for last.
I’ve always wanted to live in a castle. Growing up in the
Southeastern United States, I didn’t really see many, but my mother is Belgian,
so I got to visit some in Europe. The rest of the time, I substituted grand old
antebellum homes in my imagination. I was thrilled that my husband and I were
able to visit several during our trip to Scotland, and these inspired the
design of three of Blood’s Shadow’s
settings: the Institute of Lycanthropic
Reversal, Laird Hall, and Lycan Castle.
I imagined the Institute as being a gray stone building
rising above the trees, much like this picture of Holyrood Palace:
Holyrood is in good shape, as it’s the residence of the
monarchs in Scotland, and Queen Elizabeth spends a week there each summer. When
she’s not there, parts of it are open to the public.
Cawdor Castle, which you may remember from MacBeth, also
inspired the Institute, and the mix of older and newer-looking architecture
also made its way into Laird Hall, secondary character David Lachlan’s home.
Here’s an excerpt:
In spite of our
long association, this was the first time I’d seen Laird Hall. The castle had
been built back in the Victorian era once history had afforded enough distance
from the Battle of Culloden for the families who’d been on the wrong side of
the war to come out of hiding and reestablish themselves. However, the family
constructed it on the original site of their medieval fortress, and some of the
old stone had been incorporated into the new castle. It gave the place a
patchwork old and new atmosphere, and David had continued the tradition,
sometimes to a ludicrous degree, as I saw in the den, where a suit of armor
stood by a large flat-screen television.
“Is it standing
guard?” I asked, pointing to the armor.
“Old Gareth there
provided a great reception boost when we were still dependent on aerials.
Drink?” He held up a crystal decanter and a glass.
Apparently they were having some summer theater around the
time we were at Cawdor Castle. At first I thought the signs saying, “MacBeth
Sold Out” were advertisements, but apparently no, the play was actually sold
out.
For Lycan Castle, the seat of the Lycanthrope Council, I
envisioned something older-looking and darker, something along the lines of
Doune Castle or Edinburgh Castle:
Sadly I don’t have pictures of the insides of the castles.
Our 2006 visit was in our pre-smart phone days, and I can’t remember whether we
weren’t allowed to take pictures inside or if we didn’t for other reasons.
However, I did remember some of the anatomy, which I applied to Lycan Castle. As
Gabriel notes,
“Straight” is a
relative term in the hills of Scotland. Of course leaving the castle was never
direct since my offices were in a turret, and I had to negotiate a set of
winding stairs. Then I had to cross a minor hall, then the major welcome one,
and another minor one to the side door to the Council and employee parking.
Visitors valeted so they couldn’t leave quickly. That was mostly in place for
the rare wizard who showed up.
Even though I never got to live in a castle and at this
point don’t because wow, imagine the cleaning challenges, I enjoyed building
them in my mind and in my book. If you have the opportunity, I encourage you to
visit Scotland – there’s a castle for everyone’s taste and imagination.
Lycanthropy Files
Book 3
Cecilia Dominic
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Publisher: Samhain Publishing
Date of Publication: 11/25/2014
ISBN: 9781619223776
ASIN: B00MO9WHFQ
Number of pages: 214
Word Count: 84,000
Cover Artist: Kanaxa
Book Description:
Encountering werewolves can be deadly. Trying to cure them? Murder.
As the Investigator for the Lycanthrope Council, Gabriel McCord encountered his share of sticky situations in order to keep werewolf kind under the radar of discovery. Now, as the Council’s liaison to the Institute for Lycanthropic Reversal, he advocates for those who were turned werewolf against their will.
Everyone seems to be on board with the Institute’s controversial experimental process—until one of its geneticists is found lying on his desk in a pool of blood.
Gabriel races to single out a killer from a long list of suspects. Purists, who believe lycanthropy is a gift that shouldn’t be returned. Young Bloods, who want the cure for born lycanthropes as well as made. The Institute’s own very attractive psychologist, whose most precious possession has fallen into the hands of an ancient secret society bent on the destruction of werewolves.
Failure means he’ll lose his place on the Council and endanger the tenuous truce between wizard and lycanthrope. Even if he wins, he could lose his heart to a woman with deadly secrets of her own.
Available at Amazon BN Google Books
Excerpt from Chapter Three:
When I returned to my offices at Lycan Castle, the seat of the
Lycanthrope Council, I found a stack of files on my desk and a blessedly
welcome pot of coffee. Less welcome was the message slip my assistant Laura
handed to me.
“Lady Morena wants you to phone her as soon as you get settled.”
“I’m going to have to delay getting settled, then, aren’t I?”
“She didn’t seem in the mood to be pushed,” she told me and looked
sternly over her thick rectangular glasses.
“Yes, mum.”
“Cheeky,” she said as I walked into the inner office.
“It’s a good thing you make such good coffee. You can be replaced,
you know.”
Now she took off her glasses and squinted at me. “You’ve met
someone. You haven’t threatened to replace me since you phoned to tell me you
were close to finding Charles Landover’s secret laboratory in Arkansas and his
granddaughter was delightful.”
“Yes, and we remember how well that turned out. Please fetch me
the personnel files on the Institute staff.”
“Morena. Call her.”
I gave a noncommittal shrug and closed the door. Once I was safely
out of Laura’s line of sight, I tossed the message slip into the unlit
fireplace. Although nothing burned due to the warm early summer weather, the
small act of rebellion gave me momentary satisfaction. I wanted to do something, not waste my time writing reports and waiting for the
waffling of the Council. Frankly, I didn’t think the Council should be involved
in the Institute, but it hadn’t been my decision, and even though one of their
own was an integral part of it, the Wizard Tribunal hadn’t pushed back. Likely
they waited to see how it all worked out so that if it failed, they wouldn’t
have to take any responsibility for it. They’d just throw poor Max under the
bus.
Coldhearted bastards.
Laura brought the personnel files in. The first one I looked at
was Selene Rial’s. A health psychologist who’d been educated in the States and
turned after a flu shot introduced the viral vector into her system, she had
been invited to join the team when Iain had been impressed with her. He
observed that she took everything in stride and while she appreciated the
challenges of being a lycanthrope, she could step back and look at the
situation objectively, or at least more so than any of the other candidates
he’d interviewed—both human and werewolf. He’d written that she had a “unique
and sympathetic perspective” on the difficulties CLS sufferers faced, even
beyond her own experience.
Meanwhile, Otis LeConte, a geneticist, had worked in the same lab
as Joanie Fisher, now Joanie Bowman, prior to her being fired and turned. When
I closed my eyes, I still saw Joanie standing on the balcony off her bedroom at
Wolfsbane Manor, watching me change, her eyes burning with curiosity and—
“Lady Morena has arrived.” Laura’s voice startled me from the
memory.
“Right,” I said. “I didn’t call her.”
“She said she couldn’t wait, and she expects to be seen
immediately or she will fire me and every other staff member you depend on so
that your lazy ass will have to learn to do things for itself.”
A headache started in my right temple, and I massaged it, hoping
it wouldn’t flare up into a full-blown migraine. Although modern science had
given a name to my “sick headaches,” the medicines didn’t work for me. Losing
my staff wouldn’t help it, so I said,
“Send her in.”
Morena glided in without picking her feet very far off the floor.
She wore her customary navy blue pantsuit and flats. She’d adapted well to this
new era in which women could dress like men. When she and I had worked together
in the fifties, the skirts and heels of the time had always looked like they
enjoyed being worn by her as much as she enjoyed wearing them. Her yellow eyes
took in the details of the office, specifically the message slip in the
fireplace, but she didn’t say anything about it.
I bowed. “What a pleasant surprise, Chairwoman.”
As always, she got directly to the point. It was one of the few
things I liked about her. “I understand there’s been some unpleasantness at the
Institute.”
Cecilia Dominic wrote her first story when she was two years old and has always had a much more interesting life inside her head than outside of it. She became a clinical psychologist because she’s fascinated by people and their stories, but she couldn’t stop writing fiction.
The first draft of her dissertation, while not fiction, was still criticized by her major professor for being written in too entertaining a style.
She made it through graduate school and got her PhD, started her own practice, and by day, she helps people cure their insomnia without using medication. By night, she blogs about wine and writes fiction she hopes will keep her readers turning the pages all night. Yes, she recognizes the conflict of interest between her two careers, so she writes and blogs under a pen name. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia with one husband and two cats, which, she’s been told, is a good number of each.
Web page: http://www.ceciliadominic.com
Wine blog: http://www.randomoenophile.com
Twitter: @RandomOenophile
2 comments:
Thank you so much for allowing me to guest post at your blog today! There's nothing like a castle to brighten up a Monday morning. :)
Cecilia
I would never have made a connection between castles and cleaning challenges! :) When I think castles, I think ROMANCE.
Looking forward to the third book in your series! Love your books.
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