Bell Bridge Books

What inspired you to write Iain’s Plaid?

My first historical romance is a time travel set during the beginnings of the American War for Independence, and several people along the way to getting it published have asked me what inspired me to write this particular book. So here’s the answer to that query.

Back when I lived on the Maine coast, I came across a book by Bill Caldwell, The Islands of Maine, Where America Really Began. It was a fascinating book about the earliest European settlers in New England. From my front yard I could one of those islands mentioned in Mr. Caldwell’s book. Historian Charles K. Bolton also mentioned this island called Damariscove in his book, The Real Founders of New England, noting that four hundred years ago, “Here was the chief maritime port of New England. Here was the rendezvous for English, French and Dutch ships crossing the Atlantic. Here men bartered with one another and with Indians, drank, gambled, quarreled and sold indentured servants.” Four hundred of years ago, two hundred years before the Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth on the Mayflower, there were “wharves, salting houses (for fish) sheds, boatyards, taverns and perhaps a bawdy house or two for sailors coming ashore after a long Atlantic Crossing” clustered on this tiny island.

Edward Winslow, the Pilgrim representative who came begging for food and supplies in 1622, wrote in his journal that he and his group were graciously welcomed with “Kind entertainment and good respect and a willingness to supply our needs . . . and that there were 30 ships of sail anchored in the harbor.”

Damariscove Island is only two miles long and not more than a quarter mile wide, yet, in 1675 three hundred refugees fleeing Indian wrath sheltered here. A century later, just before the start of the Revolutionary War, a British Naval captain put ashore here and stole 75 sheep to feed his sailors before turning south to burn present day Portland to the ground. During the war of 1812 (the Second War of Independence) the HMS Boxer and the USS Enterprise fought a famous sea battle so close to the island that the inhabitants of Damariscove watched the fight from their own shore. (Just another bit of interesting history, the captain of HMS Boxer, Samuel Blyth, who was just 29 years old, and the American Lieutenant William Burrows, age 28, who captained the USS Enterprise, were both killed in the battle and were buried side by side in a cemetery in Portland, Maine with full military honors.)

Is it any wonder that I was fascinated with this scrap of land I could see from my front yard? So, one glorious summer day, my dad, my daughter, and I sailed out to Damariscove to explore this scrap of an island with so much history. As I stood gazing down at the narrow harbor, Winslow’s words came back to me, and I marveled that 30 sailing ships big enough to cross the Atlantic could have fit in that long gut of bright blue water. There were, just as Bill Caldwell had described, many old granite foundations scattered on the high ground above the harbor and as I stood on the cornerstone of one of the largest foundations, I tried to imagine this island full of people and what life might have been like here in an era when brave young captains ventured forth to harass the British Navy or carry ships filled with salted cod and furs across the Atlantic to Europe. There were tales of a ghost who roamed the island with his faithful dog, but I saw no sign of him. Or any of the other souls who had called this place home for hundreds of years.

Then the rock beneath my feet wobbled. I jumped back alarmed, not wanting to tumble into the long abandoned cellar hole. But as I watched a small shower of loose gravel and dirt tumble into the daisy-lined hole the seemingly random thought came to me, “What if I fell in, hit my head, and was knocked unconscious. And what if when I came to my senses again there were sturdy floor joists over my head and a door enclosing me in a basement filled with the sorts of things kept in basements a long time ago?” As we climbed back in our dinghy and headed back to the sailboat, that question continued to rattle around in my head and that was inspiration for my story, Iain’s Plaid. My heroine, Dani Amico. did just as I had done. With a fascination in American History, she sailed out to explore and she really did fall into that hole and woke up over 200 years in the past, shut up in a cellar belonging to a reluctant patriot. I hope you enjoy reading Dani and Iain’s story as much as I enjoyed imagining and writing it.

Iain’s Plaid is on sale – just 99¢ until April 15^th.

Was she sent back in time to change Iain’s fate . . . or share it?

Caught between a job offer she should take and a marriage proposal she doesn’t want, Dani Amico is dying for some adventure. So she takes off to visit some of the places on her bucket list. The first – an abandoned island she read about while researching her American History thesis. While there, she tumbles into an abandoned cellar hole . . . and wakes up more than two centuries in the past.

It’s 1775 and Iain MacKail’s ship is loaded with contraband he is smuggling into Boston. This unknown Dani, the “boy” he found in his cellar, could be a spy for the British customs agents, so Iain is forced to take the boy with him to insure that he and his mission are not compromised. Only he soon finds out that this ”boy” is so much more.

As they travel through pre-revolutionary New England, Dani realizes she’s falling for the rugged Scotsman. But she can’t forget something she came across in her studies—the fate of Iain MacKail. He would be betrayed by someone close to him and suddenly disappear from history. Could this be the reason Dani fell through time—to save Iain? Could they live and love together in this war-torn time?

Then again, if she tries—and fails—to change his fate . . . will she end up sharing it?

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Author June Trop gives some insight into the world of alchemy…

ALCHEMY: A SERIOUS BUSINESS

Perhaps to you the word “alchemy” conjures up images of sinister laboratories, black-robed sorcerers, or even quackery. Still, for thousands of years, the most accomplished intellectuals of their time, such as Isaac Newton, studied alchemy earnestly. Even now its study continues through the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry [SHAC], founded in 1935. Surely something studied for so many thousands of years is a serious business.

Until the nineteenth century, alchemists like the one in the painting here, were hanged on gilded gallows dressed in grotesque gold robes. Otherwise, they faced imprisonment and torture until they divulged their secrets. The promise of gold has always been a serious business.

In the Roman Empire during the first-century CE, the setting of my Miriam bat Isaac Mystery Series, all alchemists wrote under the name of a deity, prophet, or philosopher from an earlier time – perhaps to enhance the authenticity of their claims, but certainly to shield themselves from persecution. Amid accusations of cheating their clients, destabilizing the currency, or worst yet, of financing the overthrow of the Empire, they could be arrested, tortured, and executed. The Romans certainly took the business of alchemy seriously.

No wonder in THE DEADLIEST HATE, Miriam ventures to Caesarea to trace an alchemical document. Can she discover its provenance while eluding assassins and protecting a secret of her own? Be serious. Find out. Read THE DEADLIEST HATE.

On sale until the 15th for only $0.99!

A Miriam bat Isaac Mystery, Book 2

Winner of Honorable Mention for fiction in the 2016 New York Book Festival.

The Roman Empire may be the least of her enemies.

A secret alchemical recipe to transmute copper into gold surfaces in first-century CE Caesarea. As soon as Miriam sets out to trace the leak, Judean terrorists target her for assassination. Eluding the assassins while protecting a secret of her own, she discovers that she, herself, is responsible for the leak. Moreover she is powerless to stop its spread throughout the Empire and beyond.

But who is really trying to kill Miriam? Is it a case of mistaken identity, or is her late-fiancé’s ex-scribe, now an assistant to the Procurator of Judea, seeking to avenge an old grudge? Or is her heartthrob’s half-brother, a Judean patriot who inherited his mother’s mania, afraid Miriam knows too much?

And how did the recipe find its way from Alexandria to Caesarea anyway?

June Trop (Zuckerman) has had over forty years of experience as an award-winning teacher and educator. Now associate professor emerita at the State University of New York at New Paltz, she spends her time breathlessly following her intrepid protagonist, Miriam bat Isaac, who is back in the underbelly of Alexandria, once again searching for a murderer in The Deadliest Sport while worrying about her brother. junetrop.com

Walking the Story

By the time my debut historical novel, Keowee Valley, was published, I’d walked, hiked, trail run, swum, paddled, and climbed countless miles of rocks, roads, flatland and mountain trails, lakes and rivers in the foothills and mountains of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Some of this, I’d done as a child, because my family were outdoorsy types. Most, however, I’d done on my own: both as a camp counselor and backpacking guide in my teens and 20s, and on adventures with like-minded friends well into my 30s, the age I am now. Always, and until her death in 2015, I was joined by my faithful trail partner: my dog, Scout.

I go (and went) to the woods—and the forest, the lake, the mountaintop, the river—to “live deliberately,” much the same as Thoreau did in the mid-1800s (minus the wood-chopping). The “woods” bring me back to myself; there is no place I feel more authentic.

The heart of my historical novel, Keowee Valley, takes place in the woods—in the forests of the Southern Appalachians. In fact, nearly every scene in the wilderness sections of the novel occur in real spots: scenery in which I’ve hiked, rivers I’ve paddled (and fallen into), trails I’ve traversed, in all kinds of weather. It is a land I know intimately. I know it as well as the pages of my own heart.

Every time I write a story, place—or setting, as some like to call it—plays a vital role, as important as any character. Maybe it’s the Southern writer in me? Southern writers are such, of course, because of their place. Mostly, I think, it’s because I can’t separate from the land, and neither can my characters. After all, in Keowee Valley, Quinn falls head over heels in love with the dangerous, gorgeous, and wild Cherokee backcountry long before she ever lays eyes on the equally dangerous (and gorgeous, and wild) Jack Wolf.

Bio:

Katherine Scott Crawford is a novelist, newspaper columnist, college English teacher, hiker and mom who lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Her parenting and outdoor life column appears weekly in The Greenville News (South Carolina), and is often picked up by other newspapers across the country. She holds far too many degrees in English and writing, chases her children frequently through the Pisgah National Forest, and is currently at work (when she’s actually sitting down) on her next historical novel.

Pick up Keowee Valley by Katherine Scott Crawford today for just $1.99!

“A glorious debut from a gifted author.” – Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of Big Stone Gap and The Shoemaker’s Wife

“Keowee Valley is a terrific first novel by Katherine Scott Crawford–a name that should be remembered. She has a lovely prose style, a great sense of both humor and history, and she tells about a time in South Carolina that I never even imagined.” –Pat Conroy, bestselling author of The Prince of Tides and South of Broad.

On the edge of the wilderness, her adventure began.

She journeyed into the wilderness to find a kidnapped relative. She stayed to build a new life filled with adventure, danger, and passion.
Spring, 1768. The Southern frontier is a treacherous wilderness inhabited by the powerful Cherokee people. In Charlestown, South Carolina, twenty-five-year-old Quincy MacFadden receives news from beyond the grave: her cousin, a man she’d believed long dead, is alive–held captive by the Shawnee Indians. Unmarried, bookish, and plagued by visions of the future, Quinn is a woman out of place . . . and this is the opportunity for which she’s been longing.
Determined to save two lives, her cousin’s and her own, Quinn travels the rugged Cherokee Path into the South Carolina Blue Ridge. But in order to rescue her cousin, Quinn must trust an enigmatic half-Cherokee tracker whose loyalties may lie elsewhere. As translator to the British army, Jack Wolf walks a perilous line between a King he hates and a homeland he loves.
When Jack is ordered to negotiate for Indian loyalty in the Revolution to come, the pair must decide: obey the Crown, or commit treason . . .

“He’d spent several hours thinking about what had happened between them. It had come as something of a surprise to discover that he really wanted to marry her. They had nothing in common except a firm wish to be in charge on both their parts. But he found himself remembering her loyalty, her honesty as she asked to touch him, and her great passion. What more could a man ask for in the woman he wanted to spend his life with?

He could see them together, not in his New York hotel, but in the wilderness, in a small rough cabin beside a roaring winter fire, making love. Alaska and Portia both called to him in a way he’d not felt in a very long time. Exciting, passionate, each with great promise to one who understood what was being offered.”

-From SWEETWATER by Sandra Chastain, available in most ebook platforms

Today is National Baked Alaska Day!

Ingredients:

Vegetable oil (for brushing)

1 pint raspberry sorbet (softened)

1 pint vanilla ice cream (softened)

1 quart chocolate ice cream (softened)

1 c crushed Oreos

1 loaf pound cake

1 c egg whites (about 6 at room temperature)

1 t cream of tartar

1 c sugar

Brush large metal bowl with oil and line with plastic wrap. Fill the bowl with random scoops of the raspberry sorbet, vanilla ice cream, and half of the chocolate ice cream. Press firmly to remove spaces between scoops. Sprinkle with crushed Oreos. Spread the remaining chocolate ice cream over the crumbs.

Slice the pound cake into ½ inch strips. Cover the chocolate ice cream base with pound cake (may have cake left over. Cover with plastic wrap and freeze for 3 hours (2 days max).

Once frozen, whip the cream of tartar into the egg whites for 2 minutes. Slowly beat in the sugar and continue to whip until the meringue forms stiff peaks.

Remove the frozen cake/ice cream mound from the bowl by pulling on the plastic wrap and invert  it onto parchment paper. Cover the mound with meringue (making sides of dome thicker). Freeze for 2 hours.

Turn oven to Broil. Bake cake for 3-4 minutes until meringue browns. Let soften for 5 minutes and serve immediately.