Do You Have a Bucket List? ~ Jean C. Gordon

I don't have a bucket list per se. But my husband and I recently returned from a trip to the Scottish Highlands. I've been interested in Scotland since I was in fifth grade and read a book about Mary Queen of Scots and her three childhood friends, also named Mary. The book The Four Marys is now out of print. I checked. Since then, I've read numerous biographies of Mary, along with ones about Lady Macbeth and Queen Margaret. So you can imagine how exciting it was for me to walk through Mary's room at Edinburgh Castle and visit Queen Margaret's 13th-century chapel (below).

Another highlight of the trip for me was Culloden, a battle site of the 1745 Jacobite uprising. The site museum had a book with the rosters of men who fought there, and my husband and I found names of probable ancestors--Lindsays and Gordons. The book No Quarter Given is also out of print, but the museum guide thought it might be republished soon, since it's very popular with people researching their ancestry.

And, of course, there's all the natural and architectural beauty to see.

 

  

Do you have something you've always wanted to do?

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You may have guessed this already. Yes, I have written a couple of Scottish books. One is a mildly spicy historical romance, His Lady Viking, set in 10th-century Scotland. I wrote it quite a while ago--the only historical I've written. I loved the research so much that I kept getting lost in it and not writing. The other is my Hopeless Romantics of Willow Ridge romance, Falling for the Scotsman. I have another Hopeless Romantics novella coming out in early 2024 with a Scottish heroine.

Aedan Hakonson spent his childhood hating the Norse and his adult life fighting them. The son of a Norse warrior and a Caithness noblewoman, he’s never forgiven his father for abandoning his mother and him. Battle-weary and heavy-hearted, Aedan is wary of relying on anyone for anything.

Kara Thorddatter is a Viking warrior. For all intents and purposes, she’s her father’s second son and better suited for the world of a Viking warrior than her studious older brother. If only her father and stepmother would acknowledge that fact and let her lead the independent life she wants.

When Kara’s brother disappears in a storm off the coast of Alba, she and Aedan are drawn together into a mutual quest for a hidden Viking hoard—a quest that reveals love is the real treasure.

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Can their book boyfriends lead a book club of hopeless romantics to a real happily ever after?

Sorcha Laurent’s family-owned distillery has become her whole life. A far cry from where she’d expected to be when she’d left school with her newly minted MS in Chemistry and a sparkling new engagement ring on her finger. The family-business emergency that brought her home to the small-town of Willow Ridge has cost her a fiancée and her dream job in medical research. Now she’s at the end of the five-year agreement to manage the family distillery. Sorcha is ready to get back to having a life of her own. It’s time to throw in the bar towel and figure out what new dream might replace the one she lost. Little does she suspect that dream might involve potential business rival and swoon-worthy scholar, Ross Campbell.

A former Scotland National Rugby team player Ross Campbell is on track to his dream job, a professorship at his alma mater Edinburgh University. All he has left is to finish his doctoral thesis, while earning a few bona fides as a history teacher at an exclusive boys school outside Savannah. The fact that people here in the States accept him for himself, not as a former rugby star nor an heir to the Campbell Beverage conglomerate, is only frosting on the cake. And there’s no overbearing grandfather around pushing him to join the family corporation. Ross expects all things to continue according to plan, but meeting fiery Sorcha draws him down an unexpected and surprisingly enjoyable path.

When Ross catches Sorcha’s eye at the Savanah Scottish Games because he looks just like her historical romance book boyfriend, little do they know where their chance meeting will lead. A 50-year-old connection between her grandmother and his grandfather. A centuries-old mystery about a rumored stolen whisky recipe. Feelings that neither have experienced before and don’t know how to handle.

Will Sorcha and Ross’s research sessions take them beyond solving the recipe mystery and their intertwined ancestry to true love? Can they break free of family obligations and interference to live their dreams in a future together?

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