DAY 2 AND FLYING HIGH

My 1 - 4 July Blog Hop Competition

My winner will receive an ecopy of Monogamy Twist (see left sidebar for details, and bottom of blog for blurb and extract) and a bumper pack of Scottish Castle Greetings Cards and Matching Gift Tags (see sidebar photo) 

Use this link to enter the blog hop page:


http://thebloghopspot.com/event-page/






Here are my competition rules. All you have to do is this:  

1. LIKE AND TAG Monogamy Twist by Nancy Jardine Amazon.com: http://amzn.to/wwaGCv   A like of my Amazon author page while you’re there will be most welcome!

(If you follow me on Twitter @ nansjar /and or like on FaceBook http://facebook.com/nancy.jardine.56  I’ll follow you back) 

2. NAME my featured Scottish Castle each day. There will be a photo of a castle on my blog sidebar (look left). You'll find the name of it in the short blog post on the page for that day. 

Send all 4 castle names in an email by the 5th July to nan_jar@btinternet.com  to be entered into the draw for my winner! 

3. and ...Say 'Hi!' in the comments box below. Just that one word will do.

                              
                            ****It could be you****

Day 2- Name the Castle.

 

There has been an Inverary Castle standing on the shoes of Loch Fyne since the 1400s. The castle as we see it today was reconstructed after a fire in 1877, a third floor being added. The conical corner roof points were also added at that time.

 Flying high

Imagine soaring like a bird. Feel the rush of any wind; imagine the swoop and lift of air currents. See the earth from way above. What is it about flying that some people adore, some detest, and others just get on with?

I know a few people who would much rather never embark another airplane, yet know it's their most expedient way of travelling from A to B-often by way of C, D, E etc. I've never joined the realms of a frequent flyer so have never acquired a fear or hatred of it. In fact some of my flights have been very memorable, in one way or another.

Do you have a thing about flying? I’m beginning to wonder if I do. So far, in three out of five of my completed novels, I have characters flying about somewhere, or other. In my three contemporaries I take my characters to fabulous destinations as they solve mysteries and fall in love with the places...and each other.

Why do I have my characters flying about? It’s because I love taking them to exotic and interesting, far flung places, and as more of a pantser than a plotter, my stories have sort of evolved that way.  If I’ve actually visited the places myself I've found it’s easier to write about them, though nowadays the internet is so…GOOD for garnering any information you need to know.

What about you? How many of you include locations that incur some kind of travel for your protagonists?  I’d love to know just how common it is.

In TAKE ME NOW Aela Cameron transports her injured boss, Nairn Malcolm, to lots of lovely places, albeit they are all only fleeting visits. She flies his floatplane better than he does. He’s not too miffed about that, though, since she saves his hide on one momentous journey. Throughout the novlel Aela competently whizzes Nairn around in his jet, catamaran and Range rover. A girl of many talents, is Aela.

Lanera-  Nairn’s dinky castle, on the Scottish island of Lanera, is the base for Aela to fly Nairn elsewhere. (Don’t bother looking for Lanera on a map,though, because you won’t find it!) Can you imagine her flying him over the neighboring islands, leafy green from recent rain, with the landscape twinkling down there in a blue sky scudded with cirrus clouds? Nairn’s home, Garvald Castle, is only one of many castles to be found down there, some of them well restored like his. In other cases, all Aela sees as she flies past are the castle remains, a ruined shell of what was once a strong keep-what's left of a square fortified tower. Aela continues to fly Nairn's beloved floatplane south, low over the hills that border the true lochs, and the sea lochs, which have access way out to the Atlantic Ocean. She flies over those lochs as she takes him to Glasgow, where they board Nairn’s jet. Aela flies him past Inverary Castle along the route, as she skirts Loch Fyne. Nairn’s so glad Aela is superbly competent when she battles ferociously wild weather on another occasion, landing his floatplane at Lanera in battering high seas he’d never attempt himself. Aela saves not only his butt, but his plaster casts, too! 

The photographs used on this blog today I took from the copilot's seat of a 10 seater seaplane, family members seated behind me. And no, I wasn't flying the plane, but the pilot needed one of us to volunteer for the front seat, so first in the queue was ME!

It was such a fabulous experience, my novel, TAKE ME NOW, was conceived.

TAKE ME NOW will be available from The Wild Rose Press from the 3rd August 2012.