Have you dreamed of Scottish islands?
Welcome to the home of Scottish Island Novels
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Brand new book from Audrey!
Down by the Salley Gardens. What would you do if you won ninety million dollars in the lottery? Buy a new wardrobe? Buy a car? Have a make-over? Buy a house? Wylie Kennerly happily tries all those ideas, but hits a romantic stalemate when she falls in love with Edward Jones, a passionate poet who doesn’t want to be “collected” by a rich woman. Sequel to Magic Carpet Ride, featuring Angus, Dorcas, Scotty, and Judith, and new characters Norah and Mickey Casey, Wylie's housekeeper and gardener, who are "sort of Irish." Salley Gardens is set in Minneapolis, just a few blocks from where we live. Writing it let me indulge my fantasy of winning the lottery!
Published by 4Square Books, 281 pages, soft cover, $15.95.
The Woman Who Loved Newfoundland
Fun to write, and quite a bit of it was written in the Province itself, which is nicknamed the Rock. Several episodes were taken directly from our experiences. This includes the moose one, which happened to us on the Trans-Canada highway around midnight one night when we were returning from a Scottish country dance session in St. John's to our cottage in Cavendish, on Trinity Bay. I spotted the moose in the middle of the highway. "There it is!" I babbled in terror. Can't slow down fast enough, collision upcoming, utter disaster looming. Then the moose drifted away across the road like a puff of smoke, leaving only a memory behind.
Moose weigh about twelve hundred pounds on skinny long legs that put their huge bodies right about windshield height. As Mrs. Puddester says about them in my book, "Don't want to see them fellers. They's right robustic." The understatement of the year. Our encounter still makes me shudder, after five years.
Newfoundland stars twenty-nine-year-old teacher Cleo English, who's wanted to visit Newfoundland since she was in fifth grade and thought its name was "New Fun Land." Now she’s off to spend her summer looking for some “new fun” in the Rock’s Last Man Ashore Cove. Seductive B and B owner Max Avalon is more than ready to provide fun both new and old, when he’s not dealing with mice in the kitchen, demanding guests, a combative Spanish housekeeper, and eccentric fellow Newfoundlanders. But Cleo has an epiphany: are verbal sparring matches and madcap sex really all she’s looking for?
Smart and sexy, my favorite kind of book to write. Published by 4Square Books, 234 pages, soft cover, $14.95.
Rescue cat O'Leary is ready for adoption!
Released February 2010, O'Leary, Kat and Cary Grant is about a psychic Burmese cat named O'Leary who leads his human into alternative realities, filled with everything from giant rats to vampires to ancient Roman assassins to a two-headed fire-breathing Etruscan monster. I
Writer Kat Hennessey is looking for the right cat and the right man and finds both, O'Leary, a rescue cat, and Cary Rodrigo Grant, a handsome philosophy professor. The three and Cary's fluffy white kitty Blanche move to a Victorian house in Southmeadow, Minnesota, where O'Leary makes an amazing discovery in the basement . . . a crack in the wall that opens up into strange and scary places. And Kat won't let him explore them alone.
The character of O'Leary is based on a rescue Burmese named MacDougall who lived with us for two and one-half years until he died of cancer in September 2007. He was very special and we still love and miss him very much. O'Leary accurately describes his adoption, his quirks and his character with two exceptions: MacDougall didn't speak English and he did not discover a crack in our basement walls leading to alternative realities. It wasn't for lack of trying, though; he made a break for the basement every time he could evade our clutching hands and exasperated shouts.
MacDougall, this one's for you.
O'Leary, Kat and Cary Grant is published by Amber Skye Publishing, my dear friend Judith Palmateer's new company. It is soft cover, 233 pages, and retails for $15.95.
About us
Husband Mike and I enjoyed our June trips to Scottish festivals in Glasgow, KY, and Blairsville, GA, with Maggie the GPS and our little travel trailer. Both are outdoor gigs, and the weather was wonderful three out of four days. Now we're planning what Mike refers to as the "fall circuit," which will take us to Scottish festivals at Waukesha, WI, Columbus, IN, Tulsa, OK, and McPherson, KS, from August 31 through September 24. Three of these are outdoors, so fingers crossed for good weather.
Cats Teddy and Bailee Burmese stay home, well cared for by son and daughter-in-law John and Carla, who have three cats of their own. (They recently lost their senior cat, Xena, to cancer.) John and Carla also pick the tomatoes from my garden as they ripen while we're gone, and set them aside for me to make tomato sauce when I return. This year I think I'll also have a good pepper crop. This blazing hot weather in Minnesota is difficult for humans, but the veggies love it!
In the last two years we have visited Scottish festivals to sell my books in Kentucky, Tennessee, Kansas City, Chicago, Wisconsin, Indiana, Charleston, South Dakota, Iowa, our home state of Minnesota, and on Maryland's Eastern Shore, my birthplace, where we ate crab cakes nearly every day.
I've completed two more books, and both are "resting," prior to publication. One is The Spirit of the Dark Island, another Eilean Dubh story featuring an American woman and man as leading characters. It will be published in 2013. The second is O'Leary, Kat and the Fairies from Hell, a sequel to the original O'Leary, telling the misfortunes that befall Kat when she's tricked into inviting a fairy into her house. A copy has gone to Sherry Ladig, my First Reader, for her comments.
The Scottish Island Novels are published by Beaver's Pond Press, Edina, Minnesota, except for O'Leary, published by Amber Skye, and Newfoundland and Salley Gardens, published by 4Square Books.
My books are available in both e-format and print at: http://www.amazon.com/AudreyMcClellan
Here's a list of the other Scottish Island Novels:
Westering Home
American Jean Abbott, fleeing a crashed marriage, comes to tiny Scottish island Eilean Dubh (pronounced ay-len doo). She makes friends, makes music, and falls in love with Scottish actor/laird Darroch Mac an Rìgh.
Introduction to Westering Home
The White Rose of Scotland (sequel to WH)
After learning of a forthcoming addition to the Mac an Rìgh clan, Jean finally agrees to marry Darroch. With Bonnie Prince Jamie and his wife Màiri, the four will take the British folk world by storm as the group Tradisean. As a bonus, they’ll get the Gaelic Playschool roof fixed.
The Devil and the Dark Island (the story continues)
A lot is happening on Eilean Dubh, and incomers are behind much of it. A property developer with evil intentions has his eye on the beautiful coastline, and elements both real and unreal will disapprove. A Cornish archaeologist looking for a Mesolithic site finds help and romance with newspaper editor/wildflower nut Anna Wallace. Joe Munro's mother Helen comes to visit, to the delight of Minister Donald who falls hard for her. Màiri MacDonald has a wild scheme to finance improvements to the Gaelic Playschool. Bonnie Prince Jamie is confronted by ghostly wisps who want something from him that he's not sure he's prepared to give. And Jean is contemplating a new addition to the family, to Darroch's pleasure and Rosie's dismay. Talking seals and fairies make their appearance, too. As Jean would say, whatever next?
Rosie's Cèilidh (the fourth Eilean Dubh book)
A nine-year-old girl, a corgi, a Dandie Dinmont terrier and a mountain . . . a tale of courage, perseverance and patience, a book for the "inner child" in everyone.
Rosamond Mòrag Mac an Rìgh, Jean and Darroch's daughter, loves dogs, her Island, music and her honorary uncle, Bonnie Prince Jamie MacDonald, and she wants to be a princess, or, failing that, the Lady of Eilean Dubh, when she reaches adulthood. But she's got some growing up to do first.
Rosie has illustrations and is suitable for ages 12 and up, especially nice for a parent or grandparent to read with a favorite young one. Not the book I intended to write . . . it took on its own identity, and at last had to be freed from another manuscript so that it could stand alone
Magic Carpet Ride (a romantic diversion)
A funny, sexy, spoof set on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, and in the tony Linden Hills neighborhood of Minneapolis. Hapless rug designer Dorcas Carrothers falls into an impulsive love affair with wonderful Québécois hero Angus MacQuirter. Readers report that it makes them laugh out loud!
O'Leary, Kat and Cary Grant: Adventures with a Paranormal Cat
Psychic Burmese cat O'Leary keeps disappearing into alternative realities . . . funny, frightening, and romantic.
Awards, Reviews and Honors for the Scottish Island Novels
Westering Home won a Bronze Award in Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year 2003 Competition and received the Andrew Simon Fraser Memorial Scholarship from the Saint Andrews Society of Minnesota.
The White Rose of Scotland was named a Notable Book in the 2005 Writers' Notes Book Awards, a competition which recognizes excellence in publishing by independent and small presses. The magazine said, "Even if you aren’t a fan of love stories, you’ll love the backdrop. You can almost see the heather and smell the peat."
Magic Carpet Ride won the Gold Medal for Romance Fiction in ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year competition. Romantic Times BookClub Magazine gave MCR four stars, and called it "a beautiful, sexy story . . . features characters who exude an openness and warmth that will have readers eagerly awaiting the next novel."
The Devil and the Dark Island. Romantic Times BookClub Magazine (May 2006)gave The Devil four and one-half stars, their highest rating, and called it "another fascinating tale in the Scottish Island Novel series . . . a book to treasure."
Rosie's Cèilidh. Honourable Mention, Legacy Fiction Category, The Eric Hoffer Awards 2011.
O'Leary, Kat and Cary Grant. Midwest Book Review calls O'Leary "a choice and very highly recommended pick for cat lovers." Honourable Mention, Legacy Fiction Category, The Eric Hoffer Awards 2012.
I’d love to hear your comments on the Scottish Island Novels.
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Leis gach deagh dhùrachd – with every good wish,
Audrey McClellan
Introduction to Westering Home
