Today's release day for A Heart in Port, part of TWRP's Christmas In The Castle Series.
A historical tale with a title borrowed from a line in an Emily Dickinson poem (which feature throughout the story), this tale will transport you to 1895 when George Vanderbilt was first constructing Biltmore castle, an American castle!
The story of Maddie and Zack will warm your heart through these cold winter nights.
Ta da! The cover artists at The Wild Rose Press gave me an early Christmas present - this beautiful cover!
My latest novella, A Heart in Port, will be published as part of TWRP's Christmas in the Castle series. Edits are still to come, so no word yet on a release date.
Here's the blurb:
Madelyn
Winterborn hasn’t celebrated a true Christmas since her mother’s passing. She
never expects her dear Mama’s final words to be an omen of what awaits her this
Christmas at Biltmore castle, especially when her father’s schemes jeopardize
both their futures.
Zack
Kingley’s vision of creating a beautiful landscape around Biltmore castle is on
the way to reality. But when he meets Madelyn, he might have to trade in his
dream job for something more beautiful.
This
Christmas, can their hearts find a port in each other?
The Wild Rose Press will soon release two historicals!
On May 8, TWRP will re-release my historical, Angels, Sinners and Madmen. This full-length novel is set in 1856 Key West, it's full of adventure and romance. You can preorder a paperback from Bookshop.
Plus, I just signed a contract for another historical, A Heart in Port. This novella will be part of TWRP's new Christmas in the Castle series. Edits are still ahead, but I'm hoping this will release sometime this year. Stay tuned!
Happy Spring! Not as happy as last spring, probably. Like us, you're likely experiencing a distorted reality these days, but quarantine can have benefits of its own. For one, you may find yourself with more time to read.
If so, I hope you'll visit my Smashwords pages, where I've listed all my titles for 60 percent off, or for free! Smashwords is holding an Authors Give Back sale, good till April 20.
C.A. Masterson - speculative, fantasy, mainstream and women's fiction
If you don't have an ereader, don't worry. There are various options for downloading the stories, including PDF and
If you like quirky short stories, I've also added a few new ones to my C.A. Masterson blog. All you need to do is click on the link and read the story on your screen.
So if you have to stay in, do more of what makes you happy. Please take care of yourself and your family, and stay well.
Wow, this blog is getting hit with a lot of spam. Blogger apparently turned off the option to block certain people, so I'm going to have to go to extremes.
For now, at least, I'm turning off comments to the blog. I hate to do it, but spammers really annoy me. I've spent too much time trying to track down individual spam comments and delete them, and it's too much to keep up with.
If you want to reach me, there's a handy box on the right for you to do so.
Thanks to Book Strand for releasing the rights to my historical Western, A Midwest Summer Night's Dream.
I've spent the past few weeks revising the novella and creating a new cover (sorry their clothing isn't historical. I could find no good images portraying that time period).
The new title is The Taming of the Mountain Man.
You might notice that both titles are a play on Shakespeare's stories, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Taming of the Shrew. Both the hero and heroine are fans of The Bard, and their mutual love of literature is one of the many reasons they fall in love with one another.
Here's the blurb:
Open sky, Shakespeare, solitude - everything Jebediah Greene needs.
Alone since his teens, he’s never known loneliness, until he leaves Winona
Young in California. Worse, he fears she’ll trap herself in a loveless marriage
of convenience. After acting as her guide to San Francisco, how far will Jeb go
to win her heart?
Reading provides escape for Winona Young. Usually. Fleeing
Philadelphia, she learns her distant suitor isn’t who he seemed. Neither is her
mountain man guide, in a good way. Intelligent, but mule-headed, Jeb’s
impossible to speak to, in any language. Winona falls in love with the stunning
beauty of the wilderness, with the simple ways of the Osage people, and with
Jeb. But books can’t teach her how to tame a mountain man.
The hero's name is a nod to one of my ancestors, who was a French Canadian fur trapper in the 1800s. His name was Peter LeVert, which in America became Peter Green. My grandmother's maiden name was Nettie Green. It's fun to include little personal details in stories.
I found it really interesting to research the Osage tribe, too.
If you read the revised version, I hope you enjoy it!
This week, I sent out what may or may not be my final newsletter under the pen name of Cate Masters. If you're a subscriber, I hope you enjoyed the extra goodies! If you didn't receive a copy and would like to, simply drop me a line and I'll send it off to you.
This past year or so, I've been writing under my pen name of C.A. Masterson, the name under which I initially began writing (also my maiden name). Because I love all genres, it made more sense to explore stories in genres other than romance. Romance will always have a special place in my heart, but my writing heart is restless and needs space to expand.
The story I'm currently writing will probably become two full-length novels. There's a lot to explore in this alternate world. I'm not even certain what genre it fits into. The only thing that matters to me is making it the most compelling story possible, with characters readers will love as much as I do.
If you'd like to keep up with news from C.A. Masterson, you can find me here:
Monsters come in many guises.
No one knows better than Bruno DiCesare, whose ancestor was cursed centuries
ago by none other than Leonardo da Vinci, whose experiment to create an actual
Vitruvian Man went horribly wrong. The beast within Bruno prevents him from
mingling with people – except during Carnevale. The festival provides him ten
days of glorious freedom.
Ten days of freedom
isn’t enough for Melina Weaver, whose work at the Institute has taken a
frightening turn. She’s ordered to experiment on inmates, but she never signed
on to create monsters of men. Carnevale might provide more than a temporary
escape, especially after she meets Bruno.
Brought together by
accident, bound by fate—and magic. Love works its charm over Bruno and Melina,
but each one holds a secret. Bruno thinks his secret will drive Melina away.
Melina’s afraid Bruno will hate her for what she’s become. He’s become her
world, but his world is full of monsters who want to destroy them.
Thanks to Decadent Publishing, who first published this story as The Vitruvian Man trilogy of novellas (Cursed, Charmed, and Claimed) in 2013.
Reviewers have said (of previous versions):
"A spellbinding tale of love, mystery, suspense and intrigue like no other"
"A unique blend of historical facts and paranormal elements that combine in an action-packed romantic story"
"A magical novella that will surely engage the imagination of a reader"
The previous novellas totaled 66,528 words. After revisions, which included cuts as well as additions, the word count for The Vitruvian Man novel is now at about 83,000.
After nearly two years, I’m finally
finally putting the finishing touches on The Vitruvian Man! First published by
Decadent Publishing as a novella trilogy (Cursed, Charmed and Claimed) in 2013,
I asked for the rights back a few years ago so that I could combine the stories
into one full-length novel, and expand the story as it should have been from
the first. Because of the word count restrictions on Decadent’s line that I
subbed the stories for, some readers said the story felt rushed. I couldn’t
argue – I had to cut quite a bit, and abbreviate some sections to fit the
guidelines. It’s long been a regret.
The story’s been one of my favorites.
I’d read an article in Smithsonian Magazine about Carnevale in Venice about the
same time I read two other intriguing science articles, one about human tests
of the hormone oxytocin (not to be confused with the street drug), and another
about scientists embedding the text of books into human DNA.
While researching Venice, I fell in love
with the city. The history’s so rich, and the setting’s incredibly beautiful.
My longtime interest in Leonardo da Vinci played right into it, and after
learning of the objections of his contemporaries to his gruesome study of human
anatomy, that also played right into the story line of da Vinci experimenting
not only with his inventions, but with dark magic.
Add the Goo Goo Dolls’ song to the mix,
and that’s how Cursed first came to me.
Since getting the rights back to the three releases, I’ve made
a few important changes to the story premise. The hero is now a descendant of the man
to whom Leonardo subjected his experiments to become a literal Vitruvian Man. The
story goes into greater detail about the antagonist characters, and as I
mentioned, is expanded in general.
The exceptions are the sex scenes. I’ve
honestly never been comfortable with writing them. Editors were constantly
prompting me to add more “body parts” and lengthen the sex scenes. Another
publisher once pushed for me to include the “C” word, which I flatly refused. I
have never liked reading stories that demean women in that way, and I will
certainly never write one.
So I’ve taken out any explicit sexual language
from this story, and the scenes focus more on the emotional aspect.
This will be my last release as Cate
Masters, at least for awhile. I have so many other stories I want to tell that,
while they may or may not include a romantic aspect, will not dedicate more
than fifty percent of the story to the romantic development, as the romance
genre requires.
I’m grateful that readers have loved my
romance stories, and I’ve had a lot of fun writing them. It may be more
difficult to find a publisher for the novels I’m writing now, but I need to
follow my writer’s heart – into speculative, fantasy, magical realism, and
mainstream stories, writing as C.A. Masterson.
