Meet Jessi Gage and Her Well-Hung Highlander

We're excited to introduce a wonderful new author who dared to go where we love wonderful, new authors to go and that's under the kilt.

So meet Jessi Gage, the new gal in town with a great sense of humor, an awesome hero and someone we old farts are excited to chat with.



Wishing for a Highlander, out with Lyrical Press, is about a single and pregnant museum worker who gets sent back in time 500 years by an artifact in her Scottish Immigrants exhibit and finds herself face to face with a real-life romance hero. Here’s the blurb:

While examining Andrew Carnegie’s lucky rosewood box, single-and-pregnant museum worker Melanie makes a tongue in cheek wish on the artifact--for a Highland warrior to help her forget about her cheating ex. Suddenly transported to the middle of a clan skirmish in sixteenth-century Scotland, she realizes she should have been a tad more specific.

Darcy, laird in waiting, should be the most eligible bachelor in Ackergill, but a cruel prank played on him in his teenage years has led him to believe he is too large under his kilt to ever join with a woman. He has committed himself to a life of bachelorhood, running his deceased father's windmills and keeping up the family manor house...alone.

Darcy's uncle, Laird Steafan welcomes the strangely dressed woman into his clan, immediately marrying her to Darcy in hopes of an heir. But when Steafan learns of her magic box and brands her a witch, Darcy must do what any good husband would--protect his wife, even if it means forsaking his clan.

WARNING: A pregnant museum worker, a sixteenth-century Scot, and a meddlesome wishing box.

 

 

Buy Links:

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Carolyn and I have talked about doing a time travel book but we can't agree on when in time to travel to (I want dinosaur shifters but she refuses). What made the idea of time travel attractive to you?

Thank you, Lori and Carolyn, for having me on Old Farts. I’m so excited to be here! Let me hitch up my pants, fluff my iron-gray curls and jump right in.

One of my favorite authors is Karen Marie Moning. Her Fever series is impeccable and powerful, but it was her Highland romances that drew me in first. She started out with time travel, sending her modern-day heroines back in time to charm the kilts off of unsuspecting lairds and warriors. Reading KMM gave me so many exciting ideas, I just had to write them down. One thing led to another and BAM! I had a time-travel romance.

How does a modern woman cope with the 16th century? (Carolyn, I believe was born back then and has adapted well). What about your heroine?

LOL! Glad to know Carolyn has adapted. No easy task with all these new fangled conveniences like refrigerators and water heaters and interwebs.

Melanie is such a champ when she finds herself 500 years in the past. It helps that she’s a museum worker with a passion for history, especially Scottish history. It also helps that she’s got a 6’7” hero to protect her and her unborn baby while they run for their lives all over the beautiful Highlands. Besides, she’s so intent on seducing him, she hardly notices the lack of modern conveniences.

I love me an alpha male and Darcy sounds like a perfect alpha. Was he inspired by anyone or anything specific?

Darcy is definitely alpha in some respects, like whenever he has a Highland broadsword in his hand. But a prank played on him in his formative years left him insecure about his manhood to the point where he refuses to attempt intimacy with a woman. This gives him a vulnerable beta quality that made him so endearing to write, and I hope endearing to readers. Inspiration? I’ve never read anyone quite like Darcy. I think he just came from a place inside me that craved a hero with incredible strength mixed with tender vulnerabilities.

Um, so Darcy has a rather monumental baseball bat of love. Who inspired that? (Tell all, we love us some smutty talk.)

LOL! I love the metaphor! Well, every hero in romance seems to have inches to spare. Heroines everywhere go wide eyed with mingled lust and trepidation and wonder how it’s going to fit. Heroes everywhere throw their shoulders back and preen and always know just what to do with their “baseball bats of love.” I wanted to turn that concept on its head and write a hero who had a complex about the size of his bat and truly had no idea what to do with it. I wanted my heroine to be the one in the know and have to draw my hero out of his shell. And let me tell you, it was fun to put the seductive power completely in Melanie’s hands. Talk about knowing what to do with it! That gurl was not afraid of Darcy’s big bat *winks*.

And because I'm always interested in other writer's journies: When did you write your first book? What was your road to publication?

I have a typical 200+ rejections story, but I prefer to think of it as a single-shining-moment story. Wishing for a Highlander is my first publication, but it’s my fifth full-length novel. I found an audience for it when a blog by the name of Word Wranglers hosted Lyrical Press editor Piper Denna in a three-line pitch contest. At first, Piper thought my plot sounded a lot like Outlander (heroine time-travels and is forced to marry a rough and tough Highland warrior). But she gave me a shot and requested my synopsis. That turned into a request for the full manuscript, and the rest is history! I’ve loved every step of working with Lyrical and am so proud to be publishing with a small press.

Do you do anything special to prepare to write? )(I can't write unless I've cleaned the house and Carolyn can't write unless she's wearing her bunny slippers.)

LOL! If clean house was a requirement, I’d get nothing written. Ever. I’ve got two little ones that I stay home with, so there’s really no such thing as preparing to write. I always have the laptop on, and I give it 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there in between bouts of chaos. Nap times and after bedtimes are the BEST for writing! As far as rituals, I have to have Tweetdeck up and I have to check it constantly. Whenever I’m stuck in writing, I get my tweet on and then I get back to writing and the words seem to flow better. Whatever works, right?

Any other titles for sale?

My contemporary romance Road Rage will be out with Lyrical in June! In the mean time, I’m working hard on a sequel to Wishing for a Highlander. It’ll be called The Wolf and the Highlander, and it will tell the story of Wishing’s villainess, Anya.

For more information about Wishing for a Highlander, I’d love folks to stop by my website. Here are the buy links for anyone inclined to check out Darcy’s “monumental baseball bat of love”. LOL!

Thanks again for hosting me today on Old Farts! I had a blast!