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| photography from Dreamstime(c)Chaoss |
Although I suspect she still has her blemishes and bruises, she is back. And she is stronger and better.
And I owe it all to a four star review from a person whose opinion I respect and who pulled no punches in telling me what I needed to do, and to the five star reviews which sent a message assuring me The Green Woman was worth the effort. While I was doing a line edit, I found a handful of anachronisms and some inconsistencies in the plot line, trimmed some of the historical facts, and in addition to the proofreading, I made the green woman's encounters with her lover sexier and stronger.
I have learned some lessons from my less than stellar reviews,not just with Green Woman, but with all of my novels. With six books on my Dashboard, I am becoming less thin-skinned and more apt to respond to criticism appropriately. I still read right over my own mistakes, and my betas do not always catch them. When I withdrew Green Woman from Kindle Direct, I was delighted to receive a handful of private messages from people who wanted a copy and complained when they could not find one. A few even bought the paperback at $9.77. I sell so few trade paperbacks that I did not bother withdrawing it until the editing was complete. I am taking steps to make certain those loyal fans get the updated paperback version.
Oh Aye, Thea Jameson is back.
She suffered a fall from #1 to #8 in the ratings during her three week vacation concurrent with a minor price increase. I hope she will recover soon.
I market the Green Woman series under another name,so persons who are accustomed to the factual accuracy of my other books will realize this one is different. This is a robust adventure that mixes fantasy, time slip and a hint of horror.
As to what happens next with Green Woman, I am putting off the sequel until November and the NaNoWriMo event, but below is the Prologue:
Prologue
Roxburgheshire, Scotland - 1616
Dand Ker was
clearing the brush from around the outbuildings when he saw the
apparition. At first it had no form.
Just as his father had reported the sighting in the barn in 1597, it first
appeared as a green glow coming from the loft.
Had it not been green, Dand would have overlooked it as mere dust particles
caught in sunlight. But then, Ker was
familiar with the aura surrounding the Green Woman who had been haunting
Ferniehirst Castle since early in the Fifteenth Century. He set his woodman’s
axe aside and rushed inside the barn.
‘Helen?’
And then he
saw the child.
His heart fell
into his boots. He had raced to the barn
in hopes of finding a fully mature and
beautiful woman enshrouded in a cloak of gossamer green silk as light as
a butterfly’s wings , not a wee female bairn—albeit a pretty lass no older than
the milkmaid’s daughter who was four.
She had red-gold hair the color of young
strawberries which were set in curls that framed her face, a pert little
upturned nose that was running like a seasonal stream, and eyes too swollen and
wet to show their color. The child was strangely dressed, not at all
like a properly clad Scottish lass. Her
kirtle did not reach her knees and her shoes were made of straps and shiny
buckles that showed her toes which were painted pink and covered with silver
sparkles. She wore a jumper with a
picture of a funny looking kitten with a red bow in its hair. Her most distinctive feature was her aura.
‘Are you
looking for my Mommy?’
The child was
not speaking Scots. For that matter, she
was not speaking any English dialect known to Ker, except, of course, that spoken by Helen, who
had come to him disguised as The Green Woman but who was not a true ghost
because at times she showed herself in
flesh and blood and not much else, wearing a green gown a man could see
through.
He moved further
into the barn and squinted.
‘Are ye
searchin’ for a body, Lass?’
She shook her
head and sniffled.
‘Are you
looking for my Mother?’
‘Ah dinna
think ah was. Have ya lost her?’
She screwed
her face into a terrible frown and put her white knuckled fists on her hips.
She did not answer his question and she did not come down from the loft.
‘How come you
knowed my name?’
‘Ah must’a
guessed it.’
She seemed
more comfortable in his presence and she slowly descended the ladder. He was about to reach out to steady it, but
she looked over her shoulder and launched a look that might have been fired
from a hunter’s crossbow.
Ker had never
been that good with children, having none of his own and he did not know how to
converse with a wee lass who had obviously been crying. He might have been a widely feared Border
Reiver, but he was intimidated by the little girl, even after her aura faded
and she appeared as flesh and blood, just as his Helen had done.
‘Ah once knew
a bonny hen name ‘a Helen, the same as ye’ he said.
The frown
deepened.
‘. Hens are chickens. They lay eggs. I’m a girl.’ She stuck her lip out in defiance.
‘How did ya
get yerself here?’ he asked.
Her lip curled
back against her teeth. She was not so
defiant now.
‘You’ll spank
me if I tell.’
‘Nary once
‘ave ah ever spanked a wee bairn such as yerself-- nae even so much as a swat.’
‘You talk
funny.’
Dand wondered
how it was that he got tagged for being the one who was the intruder and
speakin’ strange when he had been born here and lived here most of his life. It
had been the same with the other Helen- the one who called herself Thea and
came from someplace far off and strange.
‘How ‘boot ah
promise not to spank ya and ya tell me how ya got here?’
The child
lowered her chin until it fell against her chest and glared from under her
furrowed brows, but she did not approach.
‘Promise?’
‘Ah swear.’
Then she
raised her head and look directly in his eyes.
She had stopped crying and he could see hers were green, the color of
jade.
She scanned
the corners of the barn and spoke in a hoarse whisper as if even the cows were
suspect.
‘I sawed the
picture of your big castle on my mommy’s book and I dreameded my way here. I sawed you chopping something up so I hided
in the barn.’
‘How do ye
know ye are dreamin’, Lass?’
‘Cause when I
went to look for Mommy and I putted on my sweater, Hello Kitty was not green but now she is and
so are my shoes.’
‘How ‘boot yer
eyes?’
‘I was bornded
with green eyes, Mister Silly.’
He could not
suppress a chuckle nor could he stop himself from asking: ‘Is yer mammy’s name Helen, too?’
‘No way! Mommy’s
name is Dora Thea, like Dora-Thee in the Wizard of Oz.’
‘Actually, Lord Oxnam or whoever you are, my name
is Dorothea Jameson.’…
Dand raised
his hand to stifle the expletive coming from his lips.
He wanted to
grab the lass and carry her into the castle to the kerry-twisted staircases
where they could sit and talk without the others interrupting. Often when he
had been alone with the Green Woman and they sat on the counter-clockwise
turret stairs, she who called herself Thea would cast aside her aura and be his
Helen.
Sometimes they did not spend all of their time
talking.
The passage of
time had dulled his sense of loss but not his memory.
A shrill voice
called his name from outside the barn and he stepped back to look. It was his
gudewife Margaret coming from the henhouse carrying the basket she used for
gathering eggs. In the instant it took
him to turn his head, the wee girl and her aura were gone. All that was left
was a whiff of lavender.
He remembered
the scent of lavender in his lover Helen’s hair. It had lingered on him long
after she had disappeared.
‘Aright, Dand
Ker. Woods ye care to spit out what ye
were doing out in front a’ the barn talking tae yerself?
‘Ah thought ah
saw somebody.’
‘Oh Aye! Off
ye go again-- lookin for yer precious Green Woman.’
She was laughing when she said it. But then, she only knew half of the
story. He was overcome by the sighting
of the child but he could not let it show.
He went looking for the Goose Boy, who had been the only other soul at Ferniehirst
who could see the Green Woman when she put aside her aura. Once he had caught a glimpse of the Goose Boy
and Helen holding hands and the sight had made him jealous. Until that moment, he had been the only one
able to see her when she was flesh and blood. That had been before Dand and his
father had returned from London Town in a chariot led by two black beasts that
were half horse and half dragon and driven by a Woman as hard and shiny black
as obsidian who said her name was Nyx.
He had watched the Goose Boy whose name was
Michael climb into the chariot and ride away with Nyx, who called to him with
the name Thanatos, which meant Death.
But the next
day, Michael appeared at the usual time with his gaggle of hungry geese and
seemed to be the same ill-mannered mortal Scottish foundling he had always
been.
And Helene was nowhere to be found.
He
thought he had put it behind him. Until he saw the lass in the loft, he
had all but convinced himself that the great adventure of his life had been
nothing but a dream.
Because the
council of the Scottish Kirk considered those who commensurate with ghosts and
spirits to be witches and dealt with them accordingly, Dand never shared his
tale with others. He had gently prodded his father Sir Andrew Ker of
Ferniehirst who had been there for part of it, but it was obvious to Dand that
his da remembered none of it. But
whenever he was alone with the Goose boy, he was aware that Michael knew it
all.
He met the boy
on the path leading from the river.
‘Where are the
geese?’
It was unusual
to see the boy without them.
‘They are in the pond in the rocks... They will find me when they want some a’the
scratch from my sack,’ he said, patting the burlap pouch that he had tied
around his waist.
‘I saw a wee
lass in the barn a bit ago.
Methinks she
was Otherworldly. She said her name was
Helen and she was lookin’ fur her mammy.
‘Dinnae know
how she got here, but she said she had dreamed her way. I dae nae s'pose ye
might know who she is and what she’s doin’ here.’
The Goose Boy
grinned.
Whenever he
was in Michael’s presence, Dand was never quite certain if he was being teased
or taunted, but he did know that. Michael was not an ordinary boy.
‘The lass ye saw this mornin’ came because she
was drawn here. Methinks 'twas the Green Woman what made her come,’ he imparted with certain smugness that Dand found
annoying.
‘And why would
that be?’
‘Methinks she
is yer dotter.’
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