Marsali’s Bio
Marsali Taylor grew up near Edinburgh, and came to Shetland as a
newly-qualified teacher. She is currently a part-time teacher on
Shetland’s scenic west side, living with her husband and two Shetland
ponies. Marsali is a qualified STGA tourist-guide who is fascinated by
history, and has published plays in Shetland’s distinctive dialect, as
well as a history of women's suffrage in Shetland. She's also a keen
sailor who enjoys exploring in her own 8m yacht, and an active member of
her local drama group.
Links
Marsali’s Website
Amazon
Goodreads
Facebook
Pinterest
Attica Books
I am so excited to have Marsali Tayler Guest Post with a Giveaway at Paranormal and Romantic Suspense Reviews.
Marsali Taylor is currently touring to promote hers new release Death on a Longship.
Thank you Attica Books, Marsali and Sourcebooks for letting me join your blog tour with a Guest Post and Review.
Please take it away Marsali!
Death on a Longship by Marsali Taylor
The low, heather hills and stony beaches of Shetland are filled with
strange creatures, says Marsali Taylor, author of the newly-published
Death on a Longship.
I found the way into my heroine, Cass, when I remembered one of our local folk-tales: the selkie wife.
It's an old Shetland tale: the seal woman who's shed her skin to dance
as a human on a moonlit beach - except that a young fisherman's
watching, and hides her skin, trapping her in the land world. When Cass
was a teenager, I decided, she was wrenched from her Shetland life,
where she spent her time messing about in boats. Her father was given a
job in the Gulf, and sent her to her mother, now pursuing her singing
career from an elegant flat in Poitiers, France. Cass felt ' heartsick
for the tide flowing past in jagged waves, the sucking noise of the
breakers on the shore, the tell-tales fluttering white on Osprey’s red
jib ... These French girls were land people, and I was plunged in among
them like the selkie wife who’d lived as a seal among currents, suddenly
married to an earthling and having to talk of supermarket prices and
new sofas with the other wives.'
That was the key I'd needed. Like the selkie wife, Cass is used to a
grey, blue, silver wilderness of sea and sky. She's fearless,
self-reliant, quick-thinking, practical. This crowded green land world,
with birds gossiping in the trees and people scurrying like ants, is
alien territory, a temporary halt between voyages, so she's never tried
to make it home, any more than you'd buy ornaments for a motel bedside
table.
Writing through Cass's eyes, I consciously took on her world, deleting
all land comparisons. When she finds a dead woman on her foredeck, it
looks ' like a marionette washed up by the tide, the manicured nails
still gleaming like shells in the bloody mess the gulls had made of the
exposed hands.'
The Selkies aren't Shetland's only mysterious creatures. In her next
adventure, Cass is going to get into trouble investigating a Trowie
mound - the home of trows, mischevious little humans who dress in
brightly coloured clothes. In any traditional crofthouse, it was
important to get the trows on your side. They were liable to cause a
lot of damage if you left the main room in a mess overnight, playing
pranks like spilling the milk and throwing earth on the floor - but if
you pleased them by keeping neat and tidy, they might help out with an
extra bit of cleaning. They'd kidnap human babies, and leave one of
their own instead. They loved music so much that they had an awful
habit of kidnapping some poor fiddler to play for a trowie wedding …
he'd think he'd been there just for a night, but when he'd emerge from
the grassy mound, blinking in the daylight, then everyone he knew would
be dead, for over seventy years had passed…
Trows could well be a mixture of the Viking folk-creatures, trolls, and a
memory of the Picts, who were driven into the hills when the Norsemen
came, for they too dressed in bright colours, liked music and lived in
wheelhouses that looked like green mounds.
Another creature who could be a long distant memory could be the
mysterious Finns, tall, fair wizards who came from overseas - the
Vikings themselves?
A Norse tradition that's still strong in the isles is what Shetlanders
would call yarning. The Vikings were great story-tellers, and created
long sagas about their history - that's how we know the story of Floki
the Navigator, whose daughter has a district named after her, Girlsta,
Geirhilda's place. Shetland men are still great story-tellers - get one
going by the fire on a winter's evening, and you might hear stories of
trows, or the Finn-men, or the tale of the 'Thief o da Neam', who lived
on stolen sheep in a cave half-way up a cliff, or 'Jeemie's giant
skate', a fish so large its wings touched both sides of the bay at once!
I'll end with a word of warning. Everyone loves Shetland ponies, those
tubby, hairy sparks of mischief who won't walk if they don't feel like
it, but can gallop lightning-fast, short legs drumming like pistons, if
there's food offered ... but if you're in Shetland on a misty night, and
see a most beautiful Shetland stallion grazing by the roadside, with
his black coat gleaming like the silver on his saddle and bridle, then
don't you go for a ride! No matter how friendly he seems, he's one of
the nastiest creatures going, the dreaded njuggle, who'll plunge
straight into the nearest loch with you and drown you - and don't think
your body will ever be found, either, for he'll take you straight to his
lair, under the mill wheel, and that will be the end of you!
Maybe Cass, my heroine of Death on a Longship, was right when she decided to spend her life at sea ...
Death on a Longship Blurb
When she talks her way into a job skippering a Viking longship for a
Hollywood film, Cass Lynch thinks her big break has finally arrived -
even though it means returning home to the Shetland Islands, a place she
hasn't set foot on since she ran away as a teenager to pursue her
dreams of sailing. When a dead woman turns up on the boat’s deck, Cass,
her past and her family come under suspicion from the disturbingly
shrewd Detective Inspector Macrae.
Cass must call on all her local knowledge of Shetland, the wisdom gained
from years of sailing, and her glamorous, French opera singer mother to
clear herself and her family of suspicion - and to catch the killer
before Cass becomes the next victim.
Giveaway Info
Marsali is giving away THREE prizes; a copy of Death on a Longship at
each blog stop on her tour, a 1st place grand prize giveaway at the end
of the tour of some silver Viking-inspired jewelry from the Shetland
Islands, and a 2nd place $15 Amazon gift card.
1) To win a book: leave a comment on this blog post to be entered
to win a book (open internationally for ebook or the US, UK, and Canada
for a print book). Be sure to leave your email address in the comments
so we can contact you if you’re the lucky winner. This giveaway ends
five days after the post goes live.
2) To win Viking-inspired Jewelry OR a $15 Amazon gift card: Click the
link to go to the contest’s website and enter the Rafflecopter at the
bottom of the post. A first and second place lucky winner will be
selected on October 1st. First place person gets to choose which grand
prize he/she wants. The second place person gets the remaining grand
prize. Open to every country.
Here’s the contest’s website >
My Review
Cass Lynch is haunted by some parent issues since her teens. When she becomes a skipper for the longship that is connected to her father's movie production company. When she happens upon a dead body it makes her think about her troubled relationship with her parents and how it all ties in with what's happening.
She discovers accidents on the set aren't really accidents but someone killing off cast members. Cass and her father are suspects and she discovers this movie set has secrets.
The setting is in Shetland and we get to see how they speak in their native language. Cass spends most of her time reflecting about her past which was interesting.
