Courting Cassandry has a Pinterest board!

I've put together a Pinterest board with a few glimpses of the story in Courting Cassandry. (I don't want to give away any spoilers, you know.)

Here's a sampling of what you can see there.

This is how I imagine Cassandry, sitting and worrying about her teenage daughter, Egelina. All mothers worry about their children, right?

(The Lady of Shallot by J.W. Waterhouse)

Everyday someone leaves a token (small gift) outside the chamber Cassandry shares with her daughter, Egelina. Their first day at Lyonstoke Castle (Gerolt de Warrenne's home), the token is a shell. Are the tokens meant for Egelina? Or could they possibly be meant for Cassandry?

(Visit my Pinterest page to see what other tokens Cassandry discovers!)

My hero, Gerolt, also has a teenaged child, a son named Rauffe. Rauffe is hound mad. He knows every breed of medieval hunting hound and the best way to train them. Egelina quickly grows tired of Rauffe's constant prattle about hounds, while he thinks the poetry she loves to quote is silly. Can these two ever make a match of it, as both their parents hope?

Cassandry and Gerolt want their children to marry. But if they do, then medieval law says that Cassandry and Gerolt cannot marry each other. Will they succumb to their own desires, or will they do what they believe is best for their children?

(Painting from Codex Manesse)

You can see the rest of my pins on my "Courting Cassandry" board on Pinterest!

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Courting Cassandry is available at the following retailers:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

iBooks

Kobo

The Lady and the Minstrel has a Pinterest Board!

Did you know The Lady and the Minstrel has a Pinterest Board? Here are just a few pictures that you can find there.

Some medieval minstrels playing my hero, Robert's, favorite instrument, the lute

A painting that reminds me of my heroine, Marguerite, embroidering while she waits for Robert to return to her from King John's wars in France

What happened to King John's nephew, Prince Arthur? The truth remains a mystery, but this painting speculates on one possible foul ending for the unfortunate boy.

Visit my Pinterest board for The Lady and the Minstrel to see more "pins" like these to help you "see" the story when you read it!

Click here to go to Pinterest

Loving Lucianna has a Pinterest board!

Pinterest and I have a hot and cold relationship, but last night our relationship bloomed warm again and I created a Pinterest board for my upcoming medieval romance, Loving Lucianna (based on the character of Lucianna from Illuminations of the Heart). I pinned some pictures that represented some of the research I did along the way as I wrote a romance for Lucianna and Sir Balduin. Here are just a few examples of my pins:


Medieval embroidery needles. Lucianna is extremely proud of her embroidery skills. As a child, she first learned to embroider by using bone needles,  later graduating to bronze, and for a very brief time, she had the thrilling opportunity of using silver needles for her work. Here's an example of a bone needle from the Viking age. (http://sagamuseum.is)

The color in this picture is called Vermilion. It was a red pigment that could be mined from cinnabar or produced by heating mercury with sulphur. In Loving Lucianna, Siri uses a vermilion paint to illuminate a psaltery as a wedding gift for Lucianna's approaching wedding to Sir Balduin.





Lucianna was raised as a young girl in a convent in medieval Venice. Sometimes they made her work in the herb garden and one day she pricked her finger on the thorn of a barberry (barbury) bush. When she became angry at the bush for pricking her fingers, which made it difficult to do her embroidery, the nuns scolded her for blaspheming, for the barberry bush was also known as the Holy Thorn and was considered a holy plant. (http://www.onlyfoods.net)


If you enjoyed these pictures and would like to see more, check out my "Loving Lucianna" board on Pinterest!