Traveller's Refuge

Framed and running for his life, Traveller Devereaux decides to follow his missing brother Dancer, using the clues he left behind when he disappeared. They lead Traveller to the mysterious Mystic Valley where the people are blue, the flora and fauna are decidedly odd, and the mating customs are definitely different.

On his journey, he is injured in a serious accident that traps him in a cave with his best friend, Bishop. Bish finds the hidden tunnel leading to the valley and takes Traveller to safety. Trav's slow recovery allows him much-needed time to adjust to the valley and fall in love with Wrenna, the woman chosen as his bond mate. When he finds out that she is related to the man who murdered his parents and siblings, he must choose between the woman he loves and her murderous grandfather.

Excerpt:
Two mornings later, sunrise broke across Mystic Valley, throwing beaming rays of light over the training field. Tyger and Llyon danced the deadly Grimahr Dance against Arano and Arturo in the pearly mist rising from the wet grass. Arturo’s first level students stood attentively outside the marked circle, intently studying the moves of the dancers as they demonstrated the flowing combinations of individual moves the students had practiced in class. The contrast between the two teams, Ty and Ly with their flaming red warrior braids and pale green shardas and Arano and Arturo, dark knights with snapping black braids and dark gray shardas, made it easy to pick out the ways each team worked together.

Wolfe lounged against the wall of their training hall, well back from the action and absently watched the fluid movement in the circle while he wrestled with the knowledge Wrenna had dumped on him. As far as he could tell, she still hadn’t informed Dai or Llyon that she had begun schalzina. Wolfe struggled with the unpalatable choices he faced—to break her confidence and tell Dai himself—or accept the responsibility of serving as her healer. Neither choice was to his liking.

On the field, Arturo flung up one muscular blue arm and shouted, “Hold!” The action stopped immediately and his fellow dancers relaxed around him. After a brief muttered conversation, Ty, Ly and Arano nodded and walked off the field, heading for the bridge over the river. Wordlessly, Wolfe joined them as they headed for the main house and breakfast.

Llyon shot him a curious glance, quirked an eyebrow and waited for an answer. Wolfe shook his head in reply and broke off to go to the bedroom he shared with Hawke. He would have liked to bounce his dilemma off Llyon but Ly was no idiot. He would immediately deduce the details and how was that different from just telling him straight out? In any case, Llyon had strong feelings about Wolfe’s refusal to accept his healing skills. Certainly, he wouldn’t be a sympathetic ear.

When Wolfe and Hawke joined the others in the kitchen for breakfast, he saw that his agonizing had been wasted after all. Wrenna sat at the table sipping on wachaz tea, the standard remedy to suppress early schalzina and stomach cramping. The strong scent of the tea filled the air, nearly overpowering the other familiar odors of baking bread and sizzling hopper slices on the griddle.

From Wrenna’s rebellious, stiff posture, it was clear that she was annoyed to be the subject of discussion among the males milling around the kitchen. “I still don’t see where this is your business. Any of you!” she observed acidly, shaking her head for emphasis. Her loosely skewered topknot of fine red silken hair threatened to tumble down. Wolfe squelched every clamoring instinct and reached out to firmly anchor the thick braid into a neatly wrapped knot. Wrenna ignored his ministrations as she pointed out, “Not a single one of you can change the circumstances. And none of you can possibly empathize with the symptoms!”

An embarrassed silence fell over the room. Wolfe delicately cleared his throat and carefully pointed out, “We love you. We’re concerned for you. It’s a built-in part of being a male sib.”

When Wrenna turned her head to look up at him, her eyes met his and after a brief war, hers fell first. “It would help a lot if every one didn’t make such an issue of it,” she admitted grudgingly. “It’s difficult enough when such a personal feminine problem is so public. Now I know how Eppie felt when she was waiting for Dancer. I don’t walk around discussing every instance when one of you has an erection!”

“Maybe you should,” Dai said with a brief twitch of his lips. “It would be more honest than ignoring it.” Her brothers shifted uneasily under the healer’s sharp green eyes. Then Dai shot a glittering rapier glance at Wolfe. “I will see you after breakfast in your Papa’s office, Wolfe. We have much to discuss. As for the rest of you…”

“I’m sure we all have somewhere to be,” Tyger interjected hastily. “Hawke and I have a meeting about a loom—”

“I have patients to visit—” Ly offered immediately.

“I’ll be at Silence’s, helping her get rid of Homer’s stuff—” Arano jumped up and started passing out the platters as Dai filled them with steaming peekie eggs and hopper slices.

Arturo slipped into the kitchen just as Dai finished up. Silently, he sat next to Arano and applied himself to the task of eating. After a thoughtful look at his bowed head, Dai merely asked, “Will you be available to fix breakfast for the younglings, Arturo?”

With a curt nod, Arturo agreed.

“I will wake them before I meet with Wolfe. Since your Papa has taken your Mama down to my retreat to rest, I believe that eating in two shifts will work best. Any objections?” he inquired mildly. Merlyn and Jade didn’t raise stupid children. Everyone concentrated on eating.

What's in a Name? by Mona Risk

What’s in a name?

When I was pregnant with my first child, I was sure it would be a girl. I called her Mitzie, talked about her in the feminine and even bought her a few pink dresses. At the time, there was no ultrasound to know the baby’s sex before birth. A month before delivery, my mother suggested that if, by any remote chance, I had a boy I should remember to call him George because all first-born boys in my family were called George, my father included. Around the same time, my mother-in-law sent me a letter saying that if I had a boy, he absolutely had to be called Leo like his paternal grandfather. Both grandmothers debated together and agreed the baby should be called Leo George. Both grandfathers couldn’t care less about the baby’s name.

Hey, how about the mother? Did she have any say in the matter?

There was no doubt for me that my baby would be a girl, but what if my intuition went wrong and I had a boy? To be prepared I studied both family trees and eliminated from my list every name that belonged to either family. Together my husband and I chose a boy’s name and kept it secret.

Sure enough, my intuition failed big time and I had a boy. His name was a first for both families. Both grandmothers fussed about the baby and forgot their arguments about names.

So the name was not as important as the person, the character.

I follow the same principle when I name my characters and stay away from relatives’ and friends’ names so that no one thinks he/she can recognize themselves.

In my novels, my heroes are all foreigners and my heroines, all American. I have two Russian heroes, Sergei and Fyodor, three French heroes, François, Olivier and Luc, an Italian, Roberto, a Greek, Stephanos (heroine calls him Steve) and a Puerto Rican, Marc (his relatives call him Marquito).

The names chosen for my heroines lend themselves to the story. In To Love a Hero, Sergei likes to transform Cecile’s name into a Russian one, Cecilya. In one of the first scenes of French Peril, François can’t remember Cheryl’s name, and uses the French endearment that always works well for this playboy. He calls her chérie and she smiles, thinking he knows who she is. In that same book, I had a lot of fun playing with names for the secondary characters, mostly foreign students: Adriaan is Dutch, Roberto Sicilian, Juan-Pablo Spanish, Karl German and Chuck Minho Chinese. I made sure not two names started with the same letters.

Two days ago, I was at my doctor for a checkup. Everyone there knows I write novels. I distributed bookmarks for French Peril. The nurse, a lovely woman called Jocelyn, asked me if she could be in my next book. I needed a name for a nurse and told her I could use a Jocelyna. But then, Gaby, the clerk who books the appointments, protested that she too deserved to be in my book. She always gives me immediate appointments. This woman is a gem. For her I created a Gabriella in my current whip. Now, the whole staff is impatiently waiting for the book where Jocelyna and Gabriella will hold a role.

Names are important. They become synonyms of a story. If I say Scarlet, won’t you immediately think, Gone with the Wind? But it’s the character that makes a name immortal.

FRENCH PERIL
http://www.cerridwenpress.com/productpage.asp?ISBN=9781419917189
Blurb:
What could be more exciting for a young American architect than to live in a French chateau owned by a young count and to work on the restoration of a chapel in the Loire Valley?
But when her professor is poisoned because he knew too much about a missing statue, Cheryl's summer job changes into a dangerous treasure hunt and Count François is faced with a difficult choice:
Are the statue and his chateau worth endangering the life of the impetuous young woman who's turned his life upside down?
Review Your Book Review, 4 Stars
Mona Risk, author of French Peril, offers her fans another great read. In French Peril, she creates a swirling air of mystery around the excavation of a chapel ruin. Murder, mystery, and intrigue seem to follow Cheryl as she assists Francois on his project…. Risk has a talent for character development. Cheryl is a multitalented, impetuous person. Francois is romantic, determined, and very protective. French Peril is a great contemporary romantic read.
The Romance Studio Review: Overall rating: Sensuality rating: Mildly sensual
This is a wonderfully exciting romantic suspense novel. The characters are appealing and the setting is very romantic, a chateau in the Loire Valley. There is an interesting cast of characters. The plot is full of action and the reader is never sure who is on the side of good or evil. As a matter of fact, very few are who they appear to be. The love story between Francois the Comte and Cheryl is very engrossing all on its own. Cheryl is a very earnest grad student. I really liked her character; she has spunk as well as brains. The various plotlines converge into a very exciting climax that will surprise the reader.

Behind The Name

What’s in a name? everything. Don’t believe me? Just ask the boy named Sue. When I’m coming up with character names for my stories, I pick them with great care. Sometimes, I choose the name, because of the meaning (in most cases, long-forgotten), other times I choose the name to give a shout out to various family members whose names happened to coincide nicely for a given character.

Let’s examine the name Nina as a prime example of multiple meanings. She was one of the villains from my book The Dance. It is a common enough name and has several modern translations ranging from Mother (Swahili) to little girl (Latin based lingues) to pretty eyes (Hindi). There are numerous variations (seemingly one for every language), but all in there own way are applicable to the character. But if you dig a little deeper, you’ll find that Nina was the Babylonian Goddess of Life and Death. Once worshiped far and wide and held in such reverence that a King of Sumer even took her name for himself. In the book, this is the definition that fits her best, but the reader wouldn’t realize that until well over half-way through the story.

I’ve been known to spend days (if not weeks) deliberating on the names of my protagonists and antagonists. Having said that, it’s next to impossible to get a full picture of the characters until I see them in action, so I use a generic name as I write the story and once I have a better feel for who the character is, I’ll go back and do the research before I officially dub them.

Of course this begs the question: Would anyone know the difference? I doubt it. I can’t think of a single instance where I finished a book and went back to look up the meanings of the characters names to see if there were any underlying messages hidden within them.
Perhaps I should revisit a few of my favorite books and do just that.

A rose by any other name

Names. One of the most memorable aspects of a story. When I say Aislinn and Wulfgar, almost every romance reader instantly remembers Kathleen Woodiwiss’s The Wolf and the Dove. Names help create the character and define the era, location, and social class as well. When I was in about junior high, I for no apparent reason started a list of every name I could come up with starting with each letter of the alphabet, and kept it probably through college. I've always been fascinated by names--their meanings, origins, and combinations.

As an author you try to create names that fit the character and will stand out, just a bit, from the crowd. One of my publishers has a no-no list of overused names, which I applaud, even though I question a couple of inclusions. I was also a little cranky when my first French gargoyle had to suddenly change his name because I hadn’t checked the list. So Luc became Damien. C’est la vie. Luc had probably been a bit of a lazy choice, anyway. And I’d like to add Jack, Jake and Nick to the list. Sorry. All good solid names. All just a wee bit over-used.

I also use names and variations on names to show certain things within a story. In my cowboy books, the brothers are all named after famous authors, because their father was a voracious reader as well as a rancher. So CJ is named for Raymond Chandler and James Jones, Fitz is Faulkner Fitzgerald, and Trip (Triple H) is named for Robert Howard and Ernest Hemingway. The use of nicknames is an indicator of the relationship between the brothers. From the time he meets Allison, CJ calls her Allie, which no one has done since her father. That she lets him is an indication of her growing feelings for the man. In Curses, there is a similar thing with Jonas/Joe. Mel loves his name, while he’s spent so much of his life trying to be “an average Joe,” that he has totally adopted the name. Only his attraction to Mel lets him accept being called Jonas.

I’ve been guilty of using ethnic names that need a pronunciation guide. David Garvaglia, the hero of Djinni and the Geek, is pleased when Anissa (a made-up name, since I invented the existence of a Djinn language) pronounces his name correctly—Gar-VAHL-ya, instead of Gar-VAG-lee-a. I’ll admit I stole this name from a high-school friend. Cian, the 200-year-old Irish mage in Sorcerer’s Song, coming in September’s Ellora’s Cavemen Anthology, loves the way his name sounds in Lyra’s musical voice: KEY-inn, with just the right inflection.

Lyra, from the Greek for music, seemed kind of obvious for a siren, but pretty enough that I used it anyway. Marina, the selkie in Stone and Sea, is a bit obvious too, but in reality I named her for a cousin. I kind of like to slip little homages in here and there. Beth, heroine of Always a Cowboy was also named after a recently deceased cousin. I do have a couple of websites I use when I’m looking for names, especially for specific nationalities. Other authors on my loops have been helpful too. Welsh author Hweyla Lyn (Yep that’s her real first name. Isn’t it cool?) provided the names for Beltaine Bargain. For most of my contemporary characters I like names that are simple and not too far out, but not overused. I try to diligently avoid trendy. (shudder) Now fantasy and futuristic names...those you get to simply make up. Working right now on Tabrin and Zeyd--futuristic bounty hunters. Yum.

In the end naming your characters is nearly as personal as naming your children, though you're not stuck listening to them grouse about them through their teenage years. It's a fun part of the creative process and a place where you can add a subtle nudge or a tip of the hat. And if they don't work out? Oh well, there's always another story.

So? Your Hero is a BABY BOY???

I remember when my husband and I came up with a name for our son. We, of course, wanted a great name because after all he would carry it for the rest of his life, be identified with it, yada yada. When we tossed names around, kicked them around like kicking the tires on a used car, we decided we wanted something short, masculine, easily spelled and we didn't want to give him a BABY name that would haunt him later. I'm sure there are plenty of new parents who look at their tiny, itty bitty boy and can come up with a million "cutesy" names that fit perfectly but that "cutesy pie" name is gonna stink to high heaven when he's a thirty year old man. If I were that guy, I'd be headed to see someone "legal-like" to apply for a name change.

I'm constantly thinking of that when coming up with names for my heroes. Female character names aren't as big of a problem, to me. I think of something and BAM, that's it. It's all rather organic. Characters will have certain traits that remind me of particular names so that's the name they'll get. As as rule, I avoid faddy names. A look at an elementary school yearbook can be a big clue as to the current fads. I avoid them like the plague and try like everything to choose more common names. Male characters pose a completely different set of problems. For me, my over the top Alpha male character will NOT have a baby name. That's the bottom line. My heroine doesn't want to yell out a baby name when in the throes of passion with this guy. I would mention some of those names but sure as I do, someone will write and tell me that's what she named HER itty bitty boy thirty years ago or maybe she gave that little boy name to the hulking alpha hero of her latest romantic suspense. I'm not in this gig to make enemies so, nope, no examples but if you are guilty of using littly boy names then you probably know who you are.

Wish I had a big, character naming secret to share but I really don't. Names come to me. I don't thumb through baby naming books either. I avoid weird names and tend to go toward more average sounding names. It's my preference. Nothing is more irritating that reading a book and you don't know how to pronounce the name and have to stop in the middle of things to dig out a dictionary. Irritating.

The Name Game-is it accurate?

There are a lot of sites out there dedicated to finding a name. My favorite is this one, but this one is pretty good too. I use them. It isn't so much for the reason of finding a particular meaning to name my characters, but in finding unusual names that aren't so different as to be difficult on the reader.

I get tired of Bobby, Mark, and Fred but I don't want a name that is so out there the reader has to wonder how it's pronounced. I look for ideas in my neighbors too. For example, Captive Heart which comes out in January has an Ora. One of my recent neighbors had this name and though it sounds feminine, it isn't. I gave it to a cameo appearing farmer guy with a shotgun.

In a collaboration, a friend wanted all her werewolves to have one type of name and all her vampires to have another. Her solution was to look up names that mean death or eternity for her vampires and warrior for her werewolves. I thought it was a pretty clever solution. And though I don't think she'll make the reasoning evident in the finished product, she argued that she will know and therefore it matters.

But here's a thought. Back when, parents named their children after something. And Biblically, names were a foretelling of the personality to come. So looking at my children, I have one who's named after a river. She is strong, stubborn, unchangeable, willful, and delighting. Um, yep just like the river. The other daughter was named after a character in a book I read when I was a young teen. However, I always liked the light, playful, cheerful, engaging quality of the instrument and yep, sure enough, that daughter is all those things. One has an old soul with mood fluctuations and depths which seem to contradict what you see on the surface. The other skips and runs instead of walking, she laughs in a high musical tone, she's funny and is rarely down. I couldn't have named them better.

My name means green and warrior. Now I don't think this is a reference to sick fighters but it does conger up thoughts of spring and strength or resilience. I'd like to think I am those things but I leave it for those who know me to decide if it's accurate. Then there's the other side of that. My husband's name is Scott. The meaning is that he is Scottish. No, he isn't. He is German, Norwegian, and Swedish. He's not kilt-wearing either.

I took a class in college which talked about names and the impact they have on us. He wrote a book on the subject in fact (sorry all I remember is he was Dr. Carter and the cover was pale). He noted that every location was given a name for a reason. Like Hell, Minnesota which freezes over every year. He taught us to look at names of streets, parks, cities, and towns. Then he noted that all retirement homes and cemeteries are given serene names like, Hollowed Meadows, Whispering Pines and the like. It game me a whole new perspective on the names we choose to surround ourselves with as humans. I mean, it's not like you're going to see Tortured Souls Resting Home or Muddy Swallow Cemetery, right?

Look around and pop off some names. What is the name of your local cemetery? Your street?What's in your name? What does it mean and does it reflect you? Is it a contradiction to who you are? Speak up. Let's hear what you have to say.

Tell me your name...

It's funny how we associate certain names with certain personalities. Names that were common male names in other eras are considered female names now. Names that were indicative of brawny macho masculinity are now thought to indicate wimpy nerdiness. Solid old boy names like Bob and George and Harry are now reserved for... well for solid old guys.

When naming a character we as writers can use some of those characteristics as a type of short hand to tell our readers something about the character. Orrrr, we can cast our character opposite of expectations by naming them something unexpected. Orville doesn't immediately strike one as the heroic type. Hmmm. Let's see what we could do with that. Orville.

First, though, let's give him a last name. There again, surnames tell a story. So, with Orville as a first name, a sturdy old-fashioned first name, we can go two ways. Stick with a down the middle of the road surname like Smith or Jones--or go for something a little more unusual. What shall it be? For myself, I just never seem to stick with the norm so I think that Orville's surname is... Peskowitz. There ya go. Orville Peskowitz.

Now what do we know about Orville? What do you suppose Orville looks like? I believe that Orville has sandy blond hair just long enough to wear in a clubbed pony tail, kind of like that guy in The Princess Bride. His eyes are chocolate brown...a deep dark chocolate. Yummm. Orville is almost six feet tall, but not quite. He has a barrel chest and excels at shot put in his spare time. He renovates old houses for a living and is particularly skilled at carpentry. Oh yeah. The important stuff. He's solvent, intelligent, patient, and single.

Now about that name... he was named Orville after his maternal grandpa. And Grigori after his paternal grandpa. So with a name like Orville Grigori Peskowitz, what do you suppose his friends call him? Anything he wants them to call him! Mostly they call him Orgi, a holdover from a little publicized event from high school. Nope, he doesn't want to discuss it at all. While the nickname lives on as a reminder of immaturity, he's all grown up now and past the foolish choices of the teen years.

Orgi drives a truck. Blue, Ford 150 with a matching cap on the back. He wears jeans, white tee shirts and loves cowboy boots.

There ya go. Whatcha think? I can guarantee you won't likely run into another hero character named Orville...

Anny