It’s Release Day for What Lies Beneath!

 

I’m delighted to present my new young adult historical fantasy novel, What Lies Beneath, out today from Book View Café!

War. Spies. Gossip and lies. Mythical Creatures. Falling in love. And it’s still only July.

It’s 1917, and everyone is doing their bit now that America has entered the Great War—everyone except 17-year-old Emma Verlaine. Her overprotective dad won’t let her go to nursing school while he’s off doing war work; instead, she’s been sent to stay for the summer with her Gran on an island off Cape Cod, and the most she’ll be able to do for the war effort is knit socks. Socks!

As it happens, island life isn’t so bad. There are the seals that seem even more fascinated by her than she is by them. There’s the new Navy Air Station that guards the coast from German U-boats where she’s determined to get a job. But most of all there’s Malcolm, whose family owns a resort hotel on the island and who gives her swimming lessons and delicious kisses.

But danger lurks in the waters off the island. Only Emma can save her new home—if she accepts that everything she thought she knew about her life is a lie, and that the seals are following her for a very good reason…

 

“Malcolm and Emma are appealing characters, and their sea-crossed romance keeps readers turning pages.... Engaging and fun.” –Kirkus Reviews

 

I’ve already talked about how different it was to write a story set firmly in the 20th century… and in a place that I know and love. That second part was especially important—to be able to use home in a story is both a delight and a challenge for any author, I think. There’s the desire to show what is beautiful and compelling about one’s home tainted by the fear that we won’t be able to communicate it to our satisfaction. I hope that I’ve done justice to my home world in What Lies Beneath.

And of course, selkies. You already know they’re my favorite mythical creature; it was exciting and challenging to dive a little deeper into their world and speculate about what might have happened if selkies lived near Cape Cod and how their world might intersect with the human world.

“What Lies Beneath beautifully knits patriotism, self-discovery, and bravery galore into a mystical pattern of young love and legendary lore!” –5 stars, InD'tale Magazine

 

What Lies Beneath is available in ebook direct from Book View Café as well as from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple, Google Books, and Smashwords, and in both paperback and hardcover from your favorite bookstore and from Barnes and Noble and Amazon. You can also read a sample on my website.

I hope you'll enjoy it!

What Lay Beneath Those Teaser Posts…

 

This!

 

I’m happy to announce that my new young adult fantasy, What Lies Beneath, will be out on September 14 from Book View Café!

War. Spies. Gossip and lies. Mythical Creatures. Falling in love. And it’s still only July.

It’s 1917, and everyone is doing their bit now that America has entered the Great War—everyone except 17-year-old Emma Verlaine. Her overprotective dad won’t let her go to nursing school while he’s off doing war work; instead, she’s been sent to stay for the summer with her Gran on an island off Cape Cod, and the most she’ll be able to do for the war effort is knit socks. Socks!

As it happens, island life isn’t so bad. There are the seals that seem even more fascinated by her than she is by them. There’s the new Navy Air Station that guards the coast from German U-boats where she’s determined to get a job. But most of all there’s Malcolm, whose family owns a resort hotel on the island and who gives her swimming lessons and delicious kisses.

But danger lurks in the waters off the island. Only Emma can save her new home—if she accepts that everything she thought she knew about her life is a lie, and that the seals are following her for a very good reason…

It was quite a change of pace to write a story set firmly in the twentieth century, after dwelling so long in the nineteenth. Telephones! Airplanes! Bathing suits! Working women! And as you saw, the research for this book was a lot of fun: 1917 had so many more similarities to our world, yet still some crucial differences. But some things will never change—young women striving to find their place in the world…and love. It was also great fun to set a book in a place I know and love so well, and to incorporate real bits and pieces of history, both national and local, into the plot.

What Lies Beneath is up for pre-order at Amazon (affiliate link), Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple, Googleplay, and Smashwords, and will also be available in print from your favorite bookstore. And if you're feeling impatient, there's a sneak peek over on my website to whet your appetite.

I hope you'll enjoy it!

Sort of, but not quite Retro Blast: Skin Deep

Today is re-release day for Skin Deep! A slightly revised version of the story first published in 2016 is now out through Book View Cafe; while it’s the same story, it’s been polished (ask any author: once you release a book, you immediately see all the sentences you wish you’d worded differently or the commas you should or should not have used) and repackaged a little. But it’s still the same award-winning, starred-review story...and one I’m still very proud of. You can buy it direct from Book View Cafe in both MOBI and EPUB formats, as well as at all the usual on-line bookstores.

 

And just to remind you what selkies are...

 

* * * * *

 

 

For those who aren’t familiar with them, selkies are a type of shape-shifter, a magical creature that can take the form either of a seal or a human.  They’re a Celtic creature, from the islands and west coast of Scotland as well as the east coast of Ireland. But unusually for shape-shifters, they don’t just change from one form to another: in order to assume his (or her) human form, a selkie takes off his or her skin and puts it on again when it’s time to return to the sea. In human form they’re said to be very beautiful, dark-haired with shining eyes—so beautiful that humans who see them often fall madly in love with them. But they also often have rough skin on their hands as well as webbed fingers.

The most common stories about selkies usually involve a human happening upon them at one of their dances, for selkies were said to gather on beaches at the full moon to take off their skins and dance together in the moonlight. Smitten by their beauty, the human (usually a fisherman out late at night to check his nets) would sneak over to where the selkies had left their skins and steal the one belonging to the fairest selkie maid, forcing her to remain in her human shape. Though she would beg for him to return her skin he always refused, and would somehow convince her to marry him (maybe she figured that if she stayed close to him she would be able to find her skin again.) They would marry and raise a family together...but years later the selkie would find the place where her husband had hidden her skin  (often led there by one of her own children, who has no idea what the soft furry cloak he or she has found is) and snatch it away to return to the sea...though in some of the stories she would return to visit her children.

It’s a beguiling image, isn’t it—the beautiful selkies, laughing and smiling as they dance on the beach with the sea glittering beyond them in the moonlight, the smitten fisherman watching them from behind a boulder, perhaps? I’m not sure if that’s the image that drew me, or the fact that seals are pretty neat creatures to begin with...but the selkie legend has always held a strong fascination for me, so it was inevitable I’d write about them one day.  But in Skin Deep, I’ve turned the selkie legend more than a little upside down...and given it a happily ever after ending.  

The (Al)lure of the Selkie

In Tuesday’s post announcing Skin Deep’s release I mentioned something about always having had a thing for selkies, so I thought it might be fun to take a look at selkie legend and folklore.

For those who aren’t familiar with them, selkies are a type of shape-shifter, a magical creature that can take the form either of a seal or a human.  They’re a Celtic creature, from the islands and west coast of Scotland as well as the east coast of Ireland. But unusually for shape-shifters, they don’t just change from one form to another: in order to assume his (or her) human form, a selkie takes off his or her skin and puts it on again when it’s time to return to the sea. In human form they’re said to be very beautiful, dark-haired with shining eyes—so beautiful that humans who see them often fall madly in love with them. But they also often have rough skin on their hands as well as webbed fingers.

The most common stories about selkies usually involve a human happening upon them at one of their dances, for selkies were said to gather on beaches at the full moon to take off their skins and dance together in the moonlight. Smitten by their beauty, the human (usually a fisherman out late at night to check his nets) would sneak over to where the selkies had left their skins and steal the one belonging to the fairest selkie maid, forcing her to remain in her human shape. Though she would beg for him to return her skin he always refused, and would somehow convince her to marry him (maybe she figured that if she stayed close to him she would be able to find her skin again.) They would marry and raise a family together...but years later the selkie would find the place where her husband had hidden her skin  (often led there by one of her own children, who has no idea what the soft furry cloak he or she has found is) and snatch it away to return to the sea...though in some of the stories she would return to visit her children.

It’s a beguiling image, isn’t it—the beautiful selkies, laughing and smiling as they dance on the beach with the sea glittering beyond them in the moonlight, the smitten fisherman watching them from behind a boulder, perhaps? I’m not sure if that’s the image that drew me, or the fact that seals are pretty neat creatures to begin with...but the selkie legend has always held a strong fascination for me, so it was inevitable I’d write about them one day.  But in Skin Deep, I’ve turned the selkie legend more than a little upside down...and given it a happily ever after ending.  Want to find out how?  You can find it in ebook format at Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo...and in print also at Amazon. Or if you’re feeling lucky, you can take a chance at winning one of ten copies I’m giving away through Goodreads.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Skin Deep

by Marissa Doyle

Giveaway ends May 15, 2016.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

Any fellow selkie fans out there? Or is there another shape-shifter legend that has you fascinated?

Release Day for Skin Deep!

Sometimes it's what's on the outside that matters...

That’s the tag line for my newest book, Skin Deep, which I’m very happy to announce ships today from all the usual online retailers—Apple, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo—and in paperback as well!

Skin Deep is a contemporary paranormal romance (yes, that means adult not YA, but the level of steam is restrained) with a bit of a twist: while the hero is a selkie (I have been obsessed with selkie folklore since childhood), the heroine does not fall into the usual human-with-no-powers role often seen in shape-shifter romance. Unbeknownst to her, Garland Durrell has a strange gift: the quilts she creates are imbued with magic. She’ll have to learn to use that gift to save the man—er, selkie—she loves as well as the town that is her new home from an evil entity bent on destroying them—and claiming her magic for itself.

As much as I lurrrve writing historical settings and characters, this book was just as fun to write. It’s set on Cape Cod, near which I grew up and where I still spend a lot of time, and writing a setting I know so intimately was both easy and hard—easy because all I have to do is close my eyes and I’m there, but hard because I needed to make readers see it as well and not just assume you would feel the contours of the land, the colors of the ocean, and the scents and sounds that I do.

In addition, I’m a quilter (though not with my heroine’s talent!), and again it was both easy and difficult to bring the tools, the processes, and most of all the sensibilities of the craft to life in a story.

And of course, there’s that thing I have for selkies...but we’ll talk more about that later. ☺

Skin Deep has already received a 4 ½ star/Reviewers Top Pick designation from Night Owl Reviews; I hope NineteenTeen readers will give it a try!  You can read an excerpt on my website to get a feel for the story...and just for fun, I’ve created several quilt templates that can be downloaded so that you can color and create your own enchanted quilts.

Have fun, and thank you for celebrating with me!

 

Surprise!!

Hey, guess what? I have a new book coming out, and it’s available for preorder!

I haven’t talked much about Skin Deep here because it’s (a) not YA and (b) not historical fiction. But it’s based on a couple of my other passions: quilting, selkies, and Cape Cod. I suppose it was only inevitable I'd have to write a book including them at some point.

Here’s the blurb:

After a painful divorce, Garland Durrell looks forward to settling into her home on Cape Cod to make the quilts that are her passion. On the first morning of her new life she finds a man and a small boy washed up on the beach, both badly wounded. Since the town chief of police is strangely reluctant to help, Garland takes on the care of the mysterious pair who don't seem to remember what happened to them--and feels her own heart begin to heal.

Alasdair does remember. He and his son Conn are the last of the ruling family of selkies from the waters around the Cape, locked in a decades-long struggle with an evil that threatens all, selkie and human. He’s not sure if he can trust the lovely, blue-eyed woman who takes them in until he touches one of her quilts and feels the magic she’s sewn into it...and the emotions that he never thought he’d feel again.

But the evil entity that stole Alasdair’s sealskin and left him for dead quickly senses both his presence and Garland’s magic, and is determined to destroy one and possess the other. Only Garland and her quilts, made with a power she barely believes she has, can save them all from destruction—if she can avoid being destroyed first.

Skin Deep’s official release date is April 12, but it’s available for pre-order now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple ibooks, and Kobo, and will be available for pre-order in print as well in the next couple of weeks.  I promise that I’m working on more historical stories (set in 1810, if you recall) but sometimes those other pesky interests will demand my attention too. I hope you’ll give Skin Deep a try!