This week I’m hosting Linda Windsor with The Healer (US only giveaway) and Margaret Daley with Severed Trust (US only giveaway). If you want to enter the drawings for the books, please leave a comment on one of the post during the week with your email address. I will not enter you without an email address (my way to contact you if you win). If you don’t want to leave an email address, another way you can enter is to email me at margaretdaley@gmail.com. The drawings end Sunday (Nov. 3rd) evening.
Interview with the hero from The Healer by Linda Windsor:
1. Ronan O’Byrne, tell me the most interesting thing about you.
I’m the laird of Glenarden. At least the responsibility is mine. The title remains with my invalid father, who seems to live for one reason alone—to spite the dying prophesy whispered to him by the woman he once loved and now considers a witch. That her seed—the Gowys heiress spirited away from the massacre as an infant—would divide our house and bring about a peace beyond his understanding. I don’t believe in such nonsense, but the old man’s is haunted by those words.
2. What do you do for fun?
There is no such thing as fun at Glenarden—only duty. Although I do enjoy riding the estate alone, away from all the conflict. Leave the feasting and revelry for my brother Caden.
3. What do you put off doing because you dread it?
Nothing. I face what I must and move on—even father’s futile hunt for the lone Gowys survivor of his blood-feud massacre. We’ve hunted each year for twenty years on the anniversary of her parent’s murder for Brenna of Gowys. As if the lass, if she even survived, can threaten us. As I say, Tarlach is obsessed, haunted by his own filthy deeds.
4. What are you afraid of most in life?
Living long in this infernal world. If there is a God, He certainly doesn’t reside at Glenarden. It is I who is responsible for maintaining peace and prosperity—a sore task for any man. The remnant of the Gowys is a thorn in my side, as is my young and reckless brother, who yearns to take my place. I’d give it to him, if father would allow, and leave this wretched place. But I have the dubious honor of being father’s chosen.
5. What do you want out of life?
What isn’t possible this side of Heaven. Peace. It evades me by day and night. I was but six when I witnessed the murder of the Gowrys at my father’s hand. My memory of it is just as sharp and nightmarish as the physical scar it left on my cheek. The devilish deed that marked Tarlach as well, for I saw him lose the use of his right arm as he raised his axe to end the life of Lady Gowrys. Neither of us recovered from that horror.
6. What is the most important thing to you?
Perhaps I am as mad as my father, but I yearn for what never lived within the walls of Glenarden’s hall. Love. It’s said by the local priest that God is love. I’ve seen evidence of neither in my lifetime. Love from a father comes in the form of demands and expectations. Brotherly love in the form of jealousy. And if what my besotted brother and his manipulating wife have is love, I’ll have no part of it. Love is the stuff of bardic tales, nothing more.
7. Do you read books? If so, what is your favorite type of book?
I read, but mostly the steward’s accounts and correspondence. It is a luxury I gave up after my education to take over Glenarden.
8. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I’d rid myself of this cynicism that darkens my spirit down like a highland fog. But it is based on truth, so that would entail changing the world, wouldn’t it?
9. Do you have a pet? If so, what is it and why that pet?
Every laird has his dogs, although they favor my younger brother who has time for sporting with them.
10. If you could travel back in time, where would you go and why?
Permit me to travel forward, if I may, to a cave hidden in the mountains beyond Glenarden’s boundaries, where I, in all my miserable skepticism, will find myself barely alive–saved by a wild white wolf and utterly dependent on a woman I did not believe to exist. A remarkable healer who will prove all my thoughts regarding God and love wrong.
