Author Interview and Giveaway Amanda Scott

Today I welcome to Book Junkie author Amanda Scott. She is celebrating her release TEMPTED BY A WARRIOR! So please give her a warm welcome, enjoy the interview and don't forget to enter the contest!!

If someone were writing a story about Amanda Scott, what would your blurb say?
Read this amazing tale of how an imaginative child model and would-be rodeo trick-rider grew up to be the author of 54 Romance novels, mostly Historicals.

Can you tell us a little about your newest release TEMPTED BY A WARRIOR ?
TEMPTED BY A WARRIOR is a Scottish historical, set in the late fourteenth-century Scottish Borders (actually in Dumfries and Galloway, the southwestern corner of Scotland). The sequel to TAMED BY A LAIRD and SEDUCED BY A ROGUE, TEMPTED BY A WARRIOR is the story of Lady Fiona Dunwythie, the younger sister of Lady Mairi Dunwythie, the heroine of SEDUCED BY A ROGUE. All three books are based on an unpublished sixteenth century manuscript about fourteenth-century Scottish events. Although the manuscript tells us in great detail how Mairi met and married her husband, it tells us only the barest fact of how Fiona met and married hers. So at the beginning of TEMPTED BY A WARRIOR, Fiona’s husband is missing, and his dying father believes that he is dead. In fact, his father believes that Fiona killed his son, and Fiona is not sure that he is wrong about that. Will was a womanizing brute.

When naming your characters, do you give any thought to the actual meaning?
If you mean to the actual meaning of the name, yes, I do, although certainly not always. In fact, however, at times I have taken it to extremes, i.e. naming a French spy d’Espion, which means ‘spy.’ I like to amuse myself, you see, so in another case, when I had a repeating character in my Bath Regency trilogy named Sidney St. Denis, I neglected to tell the reader that the English pronounce St. Denis “Sidney,” so the correct pronunciation of his name was Sidney Sidney. I told my Regency editor about that a number of years later, thinking that she would also find it amusing. Her response: “I’m sorry, but we can’t change that at this late date.” Ah, well. Names of characters do mean a lot to me, but then so do the traits I give them. If the characters are real historical people, of course, I stay true to their real names, but I try to determine, if possible, what sun sign they might have been born with. For example, in the book I’m writing now, James I of Scotland is a seven-year-old child. We know that he was born on or about August 1, which would make him a Leo, and much of his history indicates that he did have many Leo characteristics. So, when I was determining how he would behave under the circumstances of the plot, I used that information to guide me in showing his temperament and his thinking.

If you could trade places with one of your characters, would you want to?
Nope. I spend my summers in a rustic cabin in the High Sierras, with no road, no sewer, no telephone, and no Internet. That’s enough historical living for me. I like libraries, iced mochas, and driving fast cars. Living in a drafty, smoky castle might be fun for a sennight or so, and I love good haggis, but after that…nae, thanks!

What was the first romance book you read and how did it affect you?
I couldn’t possibly tell you what the first one was, but the first one I can readily identify was Border Lord by Jan Westcott. I already loved Scotland and all things Scottish, because my heritage on both sides is Scottish, but I loved her version of Lord Bothwell. To discover years later that he had been the stepfather of the sixteenth-century Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, ancestor of the poet and a collateral ancestor of my own, I was both astonished and delighted. Buccleuch inherited all of the exiled Bothwell’s estates and as a result became the most powerful Border lord of his time.

Have you written a book you love that you have not been able to get published?
Nope. Every book I’ve written has been published.

What is the most interesting thing you’ve done in the name of research?
Traveling. I’ve done a lot of it, but the most amazing trip was when I went to Yorkshire and to Wales while I was writing The Rose at Twilight about Richard III, Henry VII, and the murders of the Princes in the Tower. I visited all the requisite castles in Yorkshire, guided by Richard III enthusiasts and stayed with a delightful woman in Brecon, Wales, who arranged for me to meet the headmaster of the boys’ school there, which had existed since the fifteenth century, as the Blackfriar’s school. I went through Buckingham House in Brecon, which was the residence then of the Duke of Buckingham, and my hostess conned an archeologist into taking me out on the Roman roads to see how my characters would have traveled and a history teacher to drive me to the church in mid Wales where an ancestor of mine was baptized. The very font is still standing there in that church. My hostess had organized the whole town of Brecon and they had decided how my hero would have been schooled, where he would have lived, how he got to where he was at the beginning of the book. Everyone from Gwyn the Books (bookstore owner), to the headmaster, to a lady named Daintrie (the inspiration for the heroine of my book DANGEROUS ILLUSIONS) had a hand in that book. And, when I needed an epithet for my hero to snap at the heroine, she got one for me from, of all people, the Bishop of the Cathedral in Brecon!

What are you currently working on?
Currently, I’m working on The Scottish Knights Trilogy: HIGHLAND MASTER, HIGHLAND HERO, and HIGHLAND LOVER. These stories will take place in early fifteenth-century Scotland at a time when the duke who was third in line for the Scottish throne was determined to rule Scotland, the heir to the throne was a reckless, womanizing profligate, and the second in line was a seven-year-old boy. Three close friends, all knights who studied together under the Bishop of St. Andrews, will do all they can to aid the rightful heir in his battle against the murderous efforts of his wicked uncle to seize Scotland’s throne. The first book, HIGHLAND HERO, will be out in February 2011. It is the story of Sir Finlagh Cameron, the sole surviving Cameron from the Great Battle of Perth, and Lady Catriona Mackintosh, daughter of the war-leader of the opposing faction in that battle, Clan Chattan. Think Romeo and Juliet with a murderous Romeo who has sworn a sacred oath to kill Juliet’s father.

If you could ask readers any one question, what would it be?
What is it that you are always looking for in a Scottish Historical but have either not yet found or have not yet seen treated the way you’d like to see it treated?

I am always interested in learning readers’ pet peeves and their thoughts on what they would like to read but have not yet found. So, if anyone has suggestions, please just fire away. Some of my best information has come from readers. In one case, a rare one, a reader in England wrote to inform me that meadow larks are American birds, that English larks are simply larks. I was delighted to have the information; however, I was even more delighted by the fact that she continued in her letter to tell me about her recent trip from the northeast coast of England into Wales, listing every bird and flower that she had noted on the way, complete with exact location. She thought that I might find such information useful, and to say that I have is a tremendous understatement. I do use various sources for such information; but I have found no source as fascinating as that one, because she interspersed every bit of her information with her own reactions and she had a marvelous sense of humor.

How can the readers find out about you on-line?
Go to http://www.amandascottauthor.com/ You can also email me from there, anytime, by using the email link.

***GIVEAWAY***

With many thanks to Anna @ Hachette I have 5 copies to giveaway of Tempted by a Warrior, (US & Canada). I also have 2 copies (ARC's) to give away for any International Readers.

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Winner Chosen 07/28