BLAST, BLITZ, PROMOS, REVEALS, & TOURS . . . : SPOTLIGHT w/INTERVIEW - PNR - BOUND ACROSS TIME (Bound, #1) by Annie R McEwen

Bound Across Time

Bound, #1

by Annie R McEwen

Date of Publication: May 7th 2024

Publisher: Harbor Lane Books

Genre: Paranormal Romance, Ghost Romance

ASIN: B0CV4RPDDX

Number of pages: 324

Tagline: In a castle on the shores of the Irish Sea, she’s met the love of her life. Clever, witty, strong, fiercely attractive. What’s the catch? He’s a ghost.

BLURB

Historian CeCe’s dream job in a Welsh castle goes sideways when she’s ordered to ditch the history and lead ghost walks. That’s the worst of her worries until she meets Patrick: strong, handsome, irresistible…and dead since 1761.

Desire and hope flare in Patrick’s heart when CeCe touches him while, for CeCe, Patrick is everything. But she’s in the bright world of the living while he’s trapped in the shadows.

Loving a ghost is deadly business. Patrick and CeCe struggle to outrace fate as it hurtles them toward disaster. Can the ancient riddle of an Irish seer save them? The spells of Welsh witches?

Or can powers CeCe didn’t even know she possessed bridge time and defeat death?

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Book Trailer: https://shorturl.at/ajuE0

Excerpt from Bound Across Time, by Annie R McEwen

You’re an idjit, Patrick. Death was always too good for you.

He should have gone slower with her, no doubt about it. He was a lout, a brute, to startle her so thoroughly, and that was never his intent. He could have—no, he should have—whispered, or moaned, or shimmered from a distance. Instead, he was hasty.

Hasty? He was a burning brand of desire. Who could blame him after two hundred-fifty…how long had it been? He’d lost count of the years.

That was still no reason to be an imbecilic knave, popping up like codswalloping Punch on a puppet stage while wearing the same filthy linen he was tipped overboard in when the Earl didn’t have the decency to give him a proper burial. At least the sea water had washed away the blood.

His honor, his common sense—perhaps they’d washed away as well. Within reach of this woman, he could remember nothing he’d learned of subtle romance and courtly manners. All he could think of was making her his, now until the end of time.

What an embarrassment he was, to his sainted mother, to his upbringing, to the gentleman he was reared to be. An embarrassment to every Irish bard who ever sang songs or wrote poems about women who were doves, and lilies, and other things he couldn’t remember.

He did remember that they were fragile and easily startled. Easily driven away.
Next time, I will be slow. I will slowly and gently explain things to her. Unusual things. Highly unusual, uncanny, frightening, nigh incomprehensible things.

Sure, now, Patrick, me boyo, that’ll be a stroll along the banks of the Shannon.

By the right hand of God, but she was beautiful. Slumbering on the stone floor, her skin smooth ivory but gilded, as though the sun had kissed her once and then fallen in love, unable to leave. She’d lost her cap, and her hair—rich, deep brown and burnished with red, like brandy—tumbled around her neck and shoulders. Her sun-brushed skin, high and perfect cheekbones, the delicate slant of her eyes, the plump swell of her breasts above the top edge of her bodice, the curves of the body he could imagine pressed to his own aching and lonely one…

Beauty itself, she was, not only of body but of mind. In the weeks before she’d seen him, he’d watched her exercise that beautiful mind among the slower thinkers of the Castle, who doubtless envied her. She was stubborn, spirited, and quick-witted—he liked that.
He crouched over her crumpled form, not touching, only taking in her scent. Rose attar and mint—he liked that, too.

The only thing he didn’t care for was the name she went by, See-see. What sort of name was that? It was something you called a canary. He would never call her that, not when the French name with which she’d been christened was just like her.

Céleste, meaning heavenly.

She was waking now. He rose and backed away. Time for him to depart, as he must, and breathe a prayer. Not for himself, there was no point to that. If God had ever listened to him, he wouldn’t be where he was, and he deserved no better. His prayer would be for her, the angel who defied or escaped God’s curse to light his endless night.

Come back, Céleste Gowdie. Please come back.

Author Info

Annie R McEwen is a career historian who’s lived in six countries, under every roof from a canvas tent to a Georgian Era manor house and driven herself to work in everything from a donkey cart to a vintage Peugeot. For her, it feels perfectly natural to create stories of desperate love and powerful secrets in faraway times and places.

Winner of the 2022 Page Turners Award, Genre (Romance) Category, Annie also garnered the First Place 2022 RTTA (Romance Through Ages Award from Romance Writers of America; Post-Victorian to WWI Category), the 2023 MAGGIE Award, and the 2023 Daphne du Maurier Award. Her Regency murder mystery “Death at Dunarven” appears in the 2024 Murder Most International Anthology.

Annie’s books are published by Harbor Lane Books (US), Bloodhound Books (UK), and The Wild Rose Press. When she’s not in her 1920s bungalow in Florida, Annie lives, writes, and explores castles in Wales.

The Book Junkie Reads . . . Interview with . . . Annie R McEwen . . .

How would you describe your style of writing to someone that has never read your work? Indescribable, but it could be likened to salted caramel ice cream and single malt Scots whiskey. Actually, salted caramel ice cream in single malt Scots whiskey.

Do you feel that writing is an ingrained process or just something that flows naturally for you? Water flows. Writing is reluctant toothpaste forced from the tube with a hammer.

Do you people watch to help with character(s) development? Or do you build upon your characters during story creation? I watch people constantly and log their traits. I’ve been barred from a local coffee shop due to complaints.

Do you have a character that you have been working on for a long time that still isn't quite ready, but fills you with excitement to work on the story? A couple of years ago, I began a novel about a 1700s smuggler on the Kentish coast. He appears in the historical record, but I believe nearly everything written about him is wrong. I have only one small documentary scrap to support my belief, but I know in my gut that the genuine man hides behind a screen of lies and inaccuracies, and I want to tell his story. The awkward reality is that sometimes the only way to depict the truth is to fictionalize it.

Can you share your next creative project(s)? If yes, can you give a few details? Apart from the Bound series premiering this May, I’ve completed Book One of The Corset Girl, a Victorian working class romance series under contract to Bloodhound Books (UK.) The quartet of novels is about four women working in a London corset workshop, and the four men who love them. No parading dukes and earls in that series; it brings the smell of coal smoke and the language of the working poor to the page. If readers liked Peaky Blinders, they’ll love The Corset Girl.

If you could go ANYWhere, money is not a concern, and spend one full year. Where would you go and what would you do with this time? I’ve never stopped missing Majorca, the island off the coast of Spain where I lived for five years. My travels have taken me many places since then, but I’d love to go back. With mountains at its heart and the Mediterranean at its feet, Majorca takes in air and breathes out magic. I would rent a small flat in Palma, in the ancient quarter next to the church called Sta. Eulalia, and I’d do nothing but write and eat fried sardines from the tiny shop in the plaza.