I have bought my plane tickets for Christmas. This is all
very adult, both because I bought them in advance and because I’m actually
going to fly this time, despite the little pile of neurosis I become around
plane travel. (Before the advent of modern chemistry, I left little fingernail
divots in the armrests each time we hit turbulence.) Like many people, I’m
going home to see my family, to stay in the house where I spent much of my
childhood, and to practice the traditions that have been a part of my life for
a long time.
The Highland Dragon’s Lady isn’t actually a holiday
story, but it too is about going home and encountering the past; it’s about
reunions, and how they both defy and highlight transformation.
We leave the place where we came from, most of us. We go
away, we change—and sometimes we don’t even know how deep or wide those changes
are until we come back. The things and people we leave behind change too, of
course, even if we don’t expect that change, or want it. Sometimes it takes a
touch of the familiar to realize just how different everything’s become.
Sometimes, too, you don’t realize just how much things have
stayed the same, or how easy it is to slip back into the person you were.
Stephen King points out, in Danse Macabre, how you see this at high
school reunions: a few drinks and the class clown will be telling his old
jokes, the accountant who used to play in a band will try a guitar solo, and so
forth. The same is true for families. To some extent, maybe, your old identity
is always there waiting for you, needing only the right place or the right
company to bring it back.
The past is resilient.
This can be a good thing—for me, and for many people going
home in the next few months, it’ll be comfortable to slip back into the
familiar, hopefully approaching it with a little more maturity (not to mention
a little more fashion sense, in my case). For a woman like Reggie, with present
conflicts and memories that she’d really rather not have, going home again is a
much more mixed experience, even before the murderous ghosts come out.
Colin, as well as being a pleasant distraction and good
company, is also a symbol for Reggie: ancient in years yet a thoroughly modern
man of the world, a handsome human man who can also be a giant dragon, he defies
the notion that you have to stay who you were.
(This is what happens when you major in English: you start
out all “oh, shapeshifting dragons with cute accents,” and then you start
analyzing things after the fact. I also can interpret Little Shop of Horrors
as a Freudian construct, but that’s not as relevant.)
***
Title: The Highland Dragon’s Lady
Series: Highland Dragons
Author: Isabel Cooper
Pubdate: December 2, 2014
He’s Out of the Highlands and on the Prowl...
Regina Talbot-Jones has always known her rambling family
home was haunted. She’s also aware her brother has invited one of his friends
to attend an ill-conceived séance. She didn’t count on that friend being so
handsome…and she certainly didn’t expect him to be a dragon.
Younger son of a family of shapeshifting dragons, Highlander
Colin MacAlasdair has lived a life free of both family duty and mortal cares.
Moving in and out of human society as he wishes, he takes very little
seriously—until Regina drops onto his balcony one midnight, catching his
attention and his interest. She’s like no mortal he’s ever met, and no matter
how hard he tries, he can’t seem to get her out of his head.
Bound by circumstance, drawn by the fire awakening inside of
them, Colin and Regina must work together to defeat a vengeful spirit—and
discover whether their growing love is powerful enough to defy convention.
The Highland Dragons Series:
Legend of the Highland Dragon
The Highland Dragon’s Lady
Night of the Highland Dragon
Isabel Cooper lives in Boston with her
boyfriend and a houseplant she’s kept alive for over a year now. She maintains
her guise as a mild-mannered project manager working in legal publishing. She
only travels through time the normal way and has never fought a demon, but she
can waltz. For more visit isabelcooper.wordpress.com.
Buy Links:
Amazon: http://amzn.to/1tBXcc5
Apple: http://bit.ly/1Drnuix
Chapters: http://bit.ly/1tGmqr8
Indiebound: http://bit.ly/1sArZAY
Happy Launch Isabel! I enjoyed your thoughts on looking back, and on coming home.
ReplyDeleteThank you very much--and thanks to the Casa blog for letting me ramble!
ReplyDeleteBig congrat's on the launch! Loved the post! This year Mr. B and I will be leaving home rather than going home. He's from the east and I'm originally from Texas. Our three kids all come home for Thanksgiving and Easter and we run away from all of it and go to Florida for two weeks at Christmas...just the two of us!
ReplyDeleteCongrats on the release, and welcome to Sourcebooks!
ReplyDeleteGood luck on the flight, hopefully things will go well. Focus on the awe-inspiring thought of being able to traverse so many miles in such a short amount of time, rather than sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic for hours on end. Your book is very close to the top of my TBR pile and I am looking forward to reading it, it sounds like it will be a lot of fun! (and congrats on keeping a houseplant alive in the challenging climes you live in, lol).
ReplyDelete