Heart of Gold is Now the #1 Western Romance in the Kindle Store

 

Thanks to all my readers for your support. I look forward to reading your reviews and feedback. 

Heart of Gold FREE on Kindle 2/12/2023 - 2/15/2023

 

Love is in the Air!

As part of my Valentine's Day Launch, I am hosting a free promotion for my new release Heart of Gold. Get your copy on Amazon now through Wednesday.

Here's a snippet of what you'll get:

"For a moment, he was taken by her beauty, lying there in her floral gown, with her lashes turned down on her round cheeks, and wispy, golden waves of hair fanned out around her, totally unselfconscious and unaware that she was being admired."

"Ada found she liked all of his strange ways, from his daring completion of crosswords in ink, to the boxes of bugs he fed weekly, to his choice of dowdy flannels. It was not because she had ever sought those habits in a husband, but only because they were his habits and she regarded them with true sentimentality."

Book Release Announcement

 Harmony Ridge is getting its Wild Western backstory! When a powerful Gold Baron arranges a marriage, can the bride and groom find happiness? And when a sharp shooter with a grudge gets on the loose, will they even be able to survive?

Follow my here or on Instagram for upcoming news and previews!

Free On Kindle!

 

Today through Saturday only, get all the Holiday Feels Free on Kindle !!

It is a gloomy winter morning when Becca Evans arrives at her grandparents’ home with little more than the clothes on her back. Struggling with a recent trauma, she seeks refuge in the small, mountainous community of Harmony Ridge. She wants nothing more than to be left alone, but her grandparents have other plans. According to her grandmother, Mikhail Volkov, the widower next door, is as close to perfection as a man can get. Handsome, charming, kind, and thoughtful, he also just so happens to be the county sheriff.

When danger follows Becca to town, Mikhail offers not only his help, but his friendship. Soon she realizes that if she has the courage to open her heart to him, he may have a place in it. As the darkness of winter gives way to the brilliance of Christmas lights, so too does Becca’s loneliness give way to the warmth of love and family.

Please follow my blog and Instagram for future book giveaways and updates! Thank you to all my loyal readers. Merry Christmas! 

About that Christmas Kindle...

 Tomorrow only, download two of my novels for free!

In the mood for comedy and romance? Looking for a Happily Ever After to brighten up the dreary winter weather? Download His Lucky Catch.

Take one sassy, capricious City Girl. Add one broody, hard-working Country Boy. Throw in the world's most disgusting RV, a ragtag group of rescue animals, a reality TV star, and one disastrous fishing trip. What do you get?

A recipe for romance, of course!

Craving action and adventure? Join my Viking prince and his Celtic Lady for swashbuckling action set in Dark Ages Ireland.

When a Viking Prince is shipwrecked and stranded, a Celtic woman makes him an offer he cannot refuse.

Merry Christmas!

A Blueprint for Hope Free Promo!

From now until July 14th, 2020, get my novel, A Blueprint for Hope FREE on Amazon Kindle!

A Blueprint for Hope Release Announcement & Free Giveaway!

I am so excited to announce my new book launch! A Blueprint for Hope, a contemporary sweet romance will be released on July 6th, 2020. Thank you to all the followers who have encouraged and supported me on my writing journey. 

From now until July 5th, 2020, please email me at olenequinn@gmail.com for your FREE pre-release copy. Honest reviews posted on release day would be greatly appreciated.

Here is the first glimpse:

A Broken-Hearted Chef with a Big Dream. An Architect with a Past. A High School Crush. What could go wrong?

When Hope Gibson broke up with her fiancé, she lost everything. She returns to her small hometown of Harmony Ridge with a modest savings account and big dreams of opening her own restaurant. However, she soon learns that her own father and his cronies in the county government have every intention of blocking her plans.

Hope’s high school crush, Lone McGregor, is not having any better luck. The death of his grandfather forces him away from his high-speed life as an architect in Los Angeles to repair and sell the property he inherited in Harmony Ridge. As a member of the least popular family in the county and boasting a hell-raising reputation of his own, he too finds the local government standing in his way.

When Lone concocts an ingenious plan to solve both their problems, they must commit to working together. And manage not to fall in love…

 A Blueprint for Hope is a sweet romance and is book one in the Harmony Ridge Romance Series. Each book in the series can be read as a stand-alone novel. Keep up with your favorite couples by reading them in order. Happily Ever After guaranteed!

The Gates of Nottingham Free on Kindle

I am excited to announce that from 7/13/17 to 7/17/17, my medieval action/adventure novel The Gates of Nottingham will be FREE on Kindle. Get your copy while the promotion lasts!

Please remember that an honest review is one of the best payments you can give an author. I hope you enjoy.

All Kindle Books now $.99

I am very pleased to announce that I have lowered the price of the kindle editions of each of my books. For a trial period, each book will sell for just $.99 on Amazon.

These are not run of the mill $.99 self-published novels. Each one is a completed story of over two hundred pages. You will not reach the end of your kindle edition only to find that the last chapter has been removed and that you have to pay a second price for it, nor will you discover that what you hoped to be a juicy read turns out to be a low-effort, seventy-page promotion for something else. I am very proud of each of these novels and worked diligently on them. As always, they are free to read for members of Kindle Unlimited.

If you choose to purchase or borrow anything I have written, please remember that the greatest gift you can give an author is an honest review. Whether one sentence or multiple paragraphs, one star or five, every review and rating is helpful. I learn from criticism and profit from praise.

Remember, you can also leave a comment here or contact me by email or on Twitter.

Prince Dead: A Note on History

Just a reminder… Prince Dead is still on sale for $.99 on Amazon. As always, it is free to read for members of Kindle Unlimited and you can preview the novel here.

Note: This post is a re-print of the Forward from the novel which explains the decisions behind the presentation of some of the minor historical points. If you are considering purchasing, I hope this helps.

Author’s Note

The Vikings are a people whose history has been much clouded in legend, forgotten in time, warped by their enemies, and twisted in popular culture. Even their name, the Vikings, is incorrect to their people as it stems from the Old Norse word Vikingr, meaning freebooter, sea-rover, or pirate. Not all Vikings were pirates. Most were farmers, landowners, and craftsmen, but it is the few great seamen and the warriors who ravaged foreign lands whom are best remembered.

Gokstad Ship

Among our sources of knowledge about the Scandinavian people of the eighth to eleventh century are the rare rune stones. These give us records written in the actual period. However, they are scarce and, unlike other ancient languages, there is no Rosetta Stone to help in their deciphering. In fact, it would seem that what is recorded on many of these stones is street directions, which indicates that the majority of the population was literate, but tells us little else.

Detail from Oseberg Ship

We also have pieces recovered from archaeological digs. Among the most famous of these are the Oseberg Ship and the Gokstad Ship. Though they are only two of many vessels which have been unearthed, they are the most well-preserved, having been buried in clay. From these and other finds, archaeologists know that by the ninth century Viking ships had undergone vast improvements as compared to their earlier counterparts and were built for specific purposes. Some were large, robust vessels, equipped with sails and built for the open seas. Others were slim, fast war ships, wherein rows took the place of importance. There is even evidence of ships which seem to be built specifically for cargo.

Prince Dead: A Historical Heroine

Just a reminder… Prince Dead is still on sale for $.99 on Amazon. As always, it is free to read for members of Kindle Unlimited.

Now that I had a character sketch for my hero, and had chosen the setting, I needed to draft an idea for my heroine. She was to be Irish, but beyond that I did not know.

There seems to me to be a dominate popularity in historical fiction for what I call, “bad ass warrior babes”. You know what I’m referencing. These are the heroines whose long hair flows in the breeze without ever getting caught on anything and whose gravity-defying breasts do not fall out of their anachronistically low-cut gowns as they meet their enemies in hand-to-hand combat. They are 5’2” tall and weigh 110 pounds but still boast the decadent curves of a Golden Era Hollywood siren, and they are so mighty that when sword-fighting the 6’5” warrior hero who was trained up for battle from the cradle, they send him straight onto his backside and steal his heart.

As you may have guessed, this heroine bores me.

My heroine would be a strong woman, one who was up for adventure, but not an utterly perfect goddess entirely lacking in self-doubt. She must be intelligent and cunning, I decided, but more empathetic than my hero.

I turned once more to my research. Ireland was in a transition phase during the period I meant to set my novel. The old Celtic ways had already been touched by Roman Imperialism and were now merging with newly adopted Catholic beliefs and culture.

I wanted to capture this cultural strain in my heroine. Ironically, most of the first-hand accounts of the Celts were written by their enemies, just as is the case for the Vikings. We do know that there were high-ranking women of power among the Celts and it seems certain that Celtic women held a better position in society than Roman women. Ammianus Marcellinus, describes meeting Celtic women in battle by stating they were “large as men with flashing eyes and teeth bared”. There is also a notion, first popularized by 18th and 19th century Romantic authors that the Celts were a strictly Matriarchal society, yet there is little direct evidence to support this. The Catholic influence in my setting would surely have put an end to much of this, but I wanted it’s echoes to still be heard in my novel.

My heroine would be a stand-in landlord for her father who left her in control when he went on a pilgrimage. Her younger brother would be coming of age, however, and have the full support of the local church in trying to grab power from his sister. The people they rule over are torn, some happy with the way she has managed things, others sure that their leader must be a man, others simply taking the opinion of their priest as fact. To further complicate it, they face encroachment and possible defeat by a neighboring warlord, one who has fully immersed himself in the old traditions and who has no interest in the culture of the Catholic church.

Thus, my heroine would teeter on the edge of losing all. She would try to balance the needs of her people with her own beliefs. She would barter, manipulate, compromise, and fight to do what she believes right.

Now, to make things just a little harder on my heroine, I would send in the Viking invasion…

Prince Dead: The Setting

Just a reminder… Prince Dead is still on sale for $.99 on Amazon. As always, it is free to read for members of Kindle Unlimited.

Once I had a character outline for my hero, I knew I needed to decide on the setting of the novel. My Viking would be invading… somewhere… sometime. I just needed to know where and when. I turned once again to my copy of The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings.

According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, on June 8, 793 AD, “the ravages of heathen men miserably destroyed God’s church on Lindisfarne, with plunder and slaughter”. Subsequent raids in England between the late 8th century and the first half of the 9th century were sporadic and seemingly unorganized. After that, however, the attacks intensified until in 869, the Vikings killed King Edmund and conquered East Angles.

I wanted to set the novel within this time frame, when the Viking were known and feared in the British aisles, but before they gained a true stronghold. I was not sure, however, that I wanted the novel set in England. That story, it seemed to me, had been told.

Between 795 AD and 824 AD the Vikings attacked Rechru, Innis Patraic, Do Chonna, Inishmurray, Roscam, Ulaid, Clew Bay, Howth, Cork, Skellig, and Etgal. They plundered, killed, razed monasteries and villages, and kidnapped women for hostages and slaves. From thence forward, the attacks in Ireland only intensified, just as they had done in England.

I personally never knew much about this and I suppose it is because, in an ironic turn of events, American students are generally given English history almost as their own prior to Christopher Columbus arriving in North America. We focus on English history, I suppose, for the simple reason that we can read it. So, while I was vaguely aware that the Vikings had raided throughout the British Aisles, Ireland was not the first place that jumped to my imagination when I thought of Viking invasions.

For this reason, I decided to set the novel in Ireland. It fit just enough with people’s preconceived notions (Americans’ at least), but would offer a bit of a fresh take. So, half my characters and my hero were to be Vikings. Now, I decided the heroine and the other half of the characters were to be Irish.

Prince Dead: The Inspiration for a Viking

In honor of the $.99 promotion I am currently running on Amazon for my Viking adventure novel Prince Dead, I would like to share a little bit about my inspiration for it.

I had known for some time that I wanted to write something set in the Viking era, though I did not know what. So, I had tinkered around with some research to understand the Viking age and the customs of it's people. I knew that the pop culture image of horned-helmet wearing, blood swilling, culture-lacking barbarians was not based in reality. Not even the name we call them, The Vikings, is accurate. Vikingr described the raiders, adventurers, and conquerors who traveled the seas and rivers in pursuit of fame and fortune. To call all Nordic people of this period Vikings is like calling all Europeans in the 18th century pirates.

When I wrote the novel, I knew I wanted to portray a more accurate, rounded image of these people and their cultures, though much of their history is shrouded in mystery. I also knew I would probably write about a raider, a true Vikingr for the simple reason that, like most people, they captured my imagination. The trouble was, I had no idea for a general plot line.

Authors get their ideas in myriad ways and this one came to me in the form of a single picture. I was never a fan of HBO's True Blood. I think I watched half an episode once. One day, however, I happened upon an image of Alexander Skarsgard as vampire / Viking Eric and, for whatever reason, a character started to form in my head.

The character I wanted to write was born to his bloody profession. He did not choose it. He was a quiet man who led a hard life, full of loss and misery. His fate seemed to him to be predestined. He felt he was living on borrowed time.

Further research helped me better sketch the character. The Nordic countries in the Viking age were generally politically turbulent, ruled by clans rather than kings, and plagued with blood feuds and invasions. There were, however, some united kingdoms, and a few great kings. To write about a common man would not provide that feeling of fate to the character, but to write about a noble king or a prince seemed too tediously cliche.

Yngvarr would be the son a a great king, but the disposable son. Nowhere close to being in direct line for the throne, he would be the black sheep of the family, the one they sent to lead the troops into battle when they could not surrender but knew there was no hope of victory. He was raised to serve his family and did so with pride and single-minded determination. The brutality of his era, his military training, and his unwavering loyalty made him ruthless, uncaring, and wary in many ways. He would be a bit of a dark hero, a man whom very few knew well.

At last I had a general sketch for my hero. Now, I needed my setting and my heroine.

The Northman Saga: Prince Dead $.99 Promo

Now through Friday 19th Prince Dead will be on sale on Amazon for $0.99! 

Ireland 816 AD

In the dark of night, a Viking warship lays anchor. Ninety warriors besiege a village, lighting its huts aflame and pillaging its monastery. No sooner are they heavily laden with loot than a great storm arises, quenching their fires. They watch, helpless, as their ship is pulled out to sea and smashed to splinters against the cliffs.

Stranded in a foreign land amongst the rubble of their own destruction, caught in the midst of a war not their own, and facing a harsh winter, the Vikings do not fear, for they follow Yngvarr in Feigr…

Prince Dead

Free previews are available on my blog or through Amazon. As always, Prince Dead is free to read through Kindle Unlimited.   

Print Addition

I am here to announce the release of The Gates of Nottingham in print! As it turns out, Adobe Acrobat is no longer needed to make this happen on Amazon’s affiliate, Createspace. They have just released templates that work very well. Granted, you can’t get super fancy, but that was not what I wanted in the first place. The template was easy to use even with a behemoth like my novel which ended up being 475 pages in this format. Here I am reading it:

Shameless self promotion (like the picture above) is what’s up next. I have a couple of little fairs and book-signings scheduled, but I’m a little bit at loose ends right now. I am new to my community and net-working was never my forte. Anyone have any suggestions? I was thinking it might help to donate a copy to a few local libraries and that since I am now officially self-published, I could teach a few courses on how to do it. Obviously, the internet is where it’s at right now as far as sales go, but if I can at least get local buzz, that can help with the online part.

Right?

I've read books on the subject, but those don’t really give many concrete answers. So, I must turn to you for fresh ideas ideas. Everybody chime in.