Lady Catherine Gordon, princess of Scotland, daughter of the Earl of Huntly, was by all accounts a remarkable woman who became a legend in her own lifetime. She married four times for love in an age when men controlled the destiny of women and bartered them for gain. Her first husband was believed to be the younger of the two princes in the Tower.

Lady Catherine lived in a turbulent age of upheaval when survival required both courage and tenacity. But she not only survived; she even triumphed over the enormous tragedies that marked her life. Henry VII fell in love with the twenty year old beauty the moment he laid eyes on her, and remained besotted with Catherine to the end of his life. Though he tore her child from her arms and hid him away where she might never find him (because the babe was a threat to his throne) he still hoped to win her love. He viewed her husband with jealousy and hatred as his rival in both love and war.

Catherine’s husband, Richard of England—called Perkin Warbeck in England—was forced to watch helplessly as the Tudor king wooed his beautiful wife. But Catherine never succumbed to the lure of riches and royal power. Courageously, she rejected his overtures. Impoverished and a captive in the dangerous Tudor court, she stood by her husband so loyally, with such grace, dignity, and loving devotion, that she won the admiration of a nation. The English people adopted the Scots-born beauty as their own and named her their Pale Rose of England.

Henry VII never abandoned his efforts to win her love, and Catherine never wavered. After Henry’s death, she married three more times, each time for love.

Did she ever find her son again?

Did she ever find happiness?

For that you will have to read Pale Rose of England.

Sandra will offer a signed copy of The Rose of York: Fall from Grace with a gold award seal to someone who comments.

www.sandraworth.com

In CRUEL ENCHANTMENT, my upcoming September 7^th release, the hero, Aeric, has an intense passion for the heroine, Emmaline. At first his passion is distinctively negative and with good reason. Over three hundred years ago, back when the fae were free in the world, Emmaline killed the woman he wanted to marry. When Emmaline re-enters Aeric’s life, he captures her, convinced he wants to take revenge on her for this.

Yet something stops him. Emmaline isn’t the cold-hearted woman he has presumed she would be and even though she admits to the killing, he senses there’s more to the story than she’s telling him. Could it be that all these years he’s never known the full truth about his fiancée’s death? To top it off, he’s attracted to Emmaline. There’s something about her that fascinates and draws him to her.

Aeric’s already passionate nature is soon inflamed by Emmaline’s presence and his negative feelings toward her become fiery and near uncontrollable. Emmaline also has trouble resisting Aeric. After all, he’s the man she’s loved for centuries. Try as she might to hold herself away from him, she just can’t do it.

I love it when my characters have this emotional, dramatic energy in their relationship. It doesn’t always work this way with the characters I create. Oddly, bringing fictional characters together is a lot like observing a true life couple. Sometimes they have chemistry, sometimes not. Aeric and Emmaline have chemistry in spades, explosive chemistry. I really enjoyed spinning their tale and I hope you enjoy reading it.

I recently kicked off Twenty Days of Enchantment on my blog, a celebration of the release of CRUEL ENCHANTMENT. Stop by to participate in daily book giveaways and enter for a chance to win a $75 gift certificate to Barnes & Noble plus other prizes. http://www.anyabast.com/blog/

Here’s a small taste of that chemistry I was talking about between Emmaline and Aeric.

Excerpt from CRUEL ENCHANTMENT

He moved closer and her whole body stiffened. “So we’ve established that you killed Aileen and you’re lying about the circumstances to save your pretty ass. We’ve also established that I’m unable to kill you. The only question that remains is how I should make you pay.”

His gaze raked her up and down and his body reacted. His too big clothing hid her curves, but he’d had enough of a tantalizing glimpse of them during her shower to let his imagination run wild.

The very last thing he should be doing right now was remember the way her body looked behind that frosted glass. It was almost worse than having her naked. The image behind the shower door hinted at lush breasts—an overflowing handful—a narrow waist that flared into a generous, curvy bottom, and shapely legs.

He wanted to find out for sure, using his hands and maybe his tongue, too.

He’d brutally suppressed the urge before, tamping down the attraction he felt for her because it wasn’t right. Now, in the violent wake of what Emmaline had told him and his subsequent confusion over whether or not it was true—all that want came rushing back at him. It didn’t matter that it was horribly misplaced.

And damned if he could remember why he shouldn’t give in to it.

* * * * *

He was looking at her without anger in his eyes for once.

Okay, maybe there was a little anger in his eyes, but she had the feeling that the anger—for whatever mystical and unbelievable reason—wasn’t directed at her, but at himself. And anger wasn’t the only thing in his expression right now; there was hunger, too.

And that was all for her.

Her heart thudded so fast and so hard she thought it might break her ribs. What the hell? His behavior had changed so quickly she practically had whiplash.

“Aeric?” she whispered. She wasn’t even aware his name had slipped past her lips until it was out there. She didn’t know what to do with this sudden turn of events . . . although her body sure seemed to know. Her mind was awhirl with confusion, but the rest of her was quite aware that the man she’d wanted and fantasized about for so long was inches away from her . . . and seemed to actually want her back.

“Fuck,” he growled, bracing his hand on the wall right near her ear and moving closer to her. “This is not a good thing.”

“No.” She licked her lips—a nervous habit she’d had since she was a kid, no matter what guise she used. “This is not a good thing for either of us.”

His mouth almost brushed hers when he spoke. Her body flared to life, singing to almost painful arousal. Her nipples leapt to hard little points and she ached between her thighs. This man seemed to either terrify her, piss her off, or plunge her straight into animalistic heat.

His voice was a low growl, laced with anger. “I should chain you to my bed in charmed iron and take my revenge that way.”

She closed her eyes, her breath shuddering out of her. “I wouldn’t object.”

His eyes narrowed like a hunter’s sighting prey—and, boy, was she ever. Wounded, limping prey at that. She had no chance. “Don’t you have any shame?” he asked in a low, harsh voice.

“Not where you’re concerned. I never have.”

He eased her against him and dropped his mouth to her throat. Goose bumps erupted all over her skin. He nipped her flesh and then licked the small hurt. As though he wanted to punish her, but couldn’t make himself do it…

When I was a kid I got into a lot of trouble for day dreaming. I had a very flexible view of what was real and what was not and often created lovely stories about myself or my family which weren’t strictly true. I soon learned I shouldn’t do that so I confined myself to reading gazillions of books and day dreaming about those worlds, which I knew weren’t real, rather than turning my own life into a fairy story.

It is easy to see why we are encouraged not to dream. We’re constantly being told we need to get a good education so that we can be successful and make money. And, unfortunately it is true. We do have to live and work in the real world, whether we like it or not.

It took me a long while to work out that I still needed to be creative. I worked in finance before I had children and it just stifled me. When I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to stay at home with my four kids and move to a new continent, I decided to write one of those big epic historical romance novels I’d always loved to read. I set about it with passion and joy and enthusiasm- without having a clue what I was doing.

But I knew it was right. It felt like all the pieces of me that had never made any sense suddenly clicked together and I knew that even if the book never sold (and it didn’t) I’d found something to do with my life that meant something to me.  And how cool is that? Okay, so the glow had to last through five years of writing, submitting and being rejected, but I kept going and then I sold something and then something else and got an agent and sold to New York and recently sold to another New York publisher as well.

And here I am writing this blog and wondering how to give my own kids that balance between allowing them to follow their dreams and encouraging them to go to college and set themselves up to earn a good living.

My question for you is, how important is it to allow yourself some creative activity and how do you balance this with your real life?

I’m giving away a signed copy of Kiss of the Rose and the perfumed soap and scent I had created just for the book launch to one commenter.

www.katepearce.com