Sorry again to have vanished! How rude of me!
I got eaten alive by our special election edition, VOTE 2008, which came out on Oct. 9, and then took some time to catch up on all the other areas of my life in which I had likewise fallen behind, neglecting my poor blog!
And now I'm popping in to say that I'm leaving tomorrow for a four-day trip to New York.
Tomorrow afternoon, my mother and I will land in Ithaca and spend the evening with Ben, who is going to college there.
On Thursday morning, we're heading north through Albany to Ford Edward/Rogers Island, known to you all as Fort Elizabeth/Ranger Island, the location where my MacKinnon's Rangers series is set. We're going to be getting a tour of Rogers Island (Fort Edward is now a town), where archaeologist David Starbuck has been excavating since the 1990s. And, yes, this will be very emotional for me. Eileen, who is the manager of the Rogers Island Visitors Center, is going to be giving us the tour. She has read Surrender and, I think, the ARC of Untamed that I sent her. I've warned her that I will probably cry. She says that's okay with her.
On Friday, we'll drive along Lake George north to Fort Carillon/Ticonderoga, where most of Untamed is set. We're getting a private tour there, as well, and I'm so looking forward to seeing it for myself. The drive will take about 45 minutes. That's amazing when you consider that it took Rangers about three days to make the journey, given the fact that there were no roads, only dense forest. After the tour, we'll travel slowly back down to Fort Edward, stopping at all the historical sites along the way. That night, we're having dinner with David Starbuck. I am so looking forward to it!
Then on Saturday, we're going to get a dream tour of Lake George not from the road, but on the water. We're going out for a four-hour private pontoon tour and will be taken to a lot of the sites that have significance to the Rangers (and are included in my books). Of special significance for me is the jaunt along the eastern shoreline that will take us to an area where there is still relatively untouched wilderness. It will give us an idea of what it looked like when Iain, Morgan and Connor roamed the woods.
Here's the fun part: Ben is going to be taping our tour and editing it down to a documentary of my four-day visit to Ranger territory. That means a few weeks from now, I'll be able to share the best parts of it with you! I'm very excited about that.
I hope to check in while I'm there, so I'll check back periodically.
Upcoming events:
On Oct. 28, my first four historicals — Sweet Release, Carnal Gift, Ride the Fire and Surrender — are being re-issued and will be available in bookstores again. Many of you were never able to read them because the weren't available. But now they will be. Ride the Fire and Surrender will have sexy, new covers (though I liked the original Ride the Fire cover). The books are available at a discount, so if you're one of those readers who likes my romantic suspense and isn't so sure about historicals, you can try one for $5. I'm sure the women here will be happy to share their opinions as to the ones you should try.
To celebrate the release of the books, I have asked readers to send me interview questions for those four heroes — Alec Kenleigh, Jamie Blakewell, Nicholas Kenleigh and Iain MacKinnon. I'll forward the questions to the men and post their answers. So if you have questions you'd like to ask these heroes, please email them to me at pamelaclare@earthlink.net and I'll add them to the list. The questions I have so far are very fun. I really can't wait to be doing this.
Also, I'll be giving away signed copies of those books in contests. So watch after I get back for a documentary brought to you by my son's film company, Reel Films, in conjunction with PCTV, the re-issue of my first four historicals and hero interviews.