Natale Stenzel | The Druid Made Me Do It

And I mean that literally. The other day, I was out signing stock at local bookstores for my current release, The Druid Made Me Do It (Dorchester Love Spell, Aug. 2008), and had the good fortune to run into a reader who was really excited about my books and authors in general. It didn’t take thirty seconds for her to ask the question that writers field pretty frequently: Where did you get your idea for these stories?

Well, I’d like to say I was off on some exotic adventure and based my books on personal experience. But, um, no. I was surfing the Internet. Geeky, huh? While procrastinating, I frequently find myself drawn to news stories and websites describing the weird, the wild and the wonderful. I was reading up on fun stuff like Druids and ancient monuments and mythology (another obsession of mine). That’s when I came across this piece about the Circle of Avebury in Wiltshire, England. The Circle of Avebury is like Stonehenge, except older, bigger and less well maintained. A lot of the stones are missing, many of them taken down by Christian authorities who insisted on replacing pagan sites of ritual with churches of their own. Other stones were destroyed by locals, who fractured the enormous monoliths into smaller fragments and – get this! – used them in construction. Just imagine having a tiny piece of Stonehenge (its equivalent, but you know what I mean) built into the foundation of your home . . .

Did you get goose bumps? I did and, yep, I have them right now. My writer’s imagination was totally seduced by the possibilities and a series was born. It began with my February release, Pandora’s Box, where my heroine inherits her own piece of the Circle of Avebury, only she doesn’t quite know this at first. Nor does she know about a curse and a condemned but gorgeous trickster of a puca named Riordan, and how much her strange inheritance would disrupt her life. My August release, called The Druid Made Me Do It (check out the hunky cover!), picks up where Pandora’s Box leaves off, with some of the same cast and mythologies, but with a new romantic couple and new conflict. To satisfy karma and Druid justice, hunky but penitent bad boy Kane must make amends to everyone he’s harmed in the past – including Dr. Janelle Corrington, his new and reluctant guardian. How does a Druid convince a human doctor to take on guardianship of the guy who devastated her years ago? Why, he offers compensation in the form of a gift she cannot refuse: the power to heal with just a touch. Not that this gift is without its own drawbacks . . . and temptations.

So there you have it. The Druid did indeed make me do it. And I’m so glad he did.

Natale Stenzel
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