It's the last day of March, so I thought I'd stop by and wave goodbye to my month as a featured author!  It's been a lot of fun chatting with all of you. Don't forget, there's still a few hours to enter my contest at The Romance Book Club - the prize is an autographed copy of The Grail King and a beautiful blank journal to record your thoughts, dreams, and story ideas!

 I can hardly believe tomorrow is April 1. Finally. Easter coming so early has really screwed up my perception of the seasons - I keep thinking that since Easter is over, it should be WARM OUTSIDE!!!!  The signs of spring are coming...purple crocuses, yellow forsythia, early morning bird song, the bathroom scale creeping upward due to all that winter inactivity...

I am soooo looking forward to that first spring day warm enough to wear shorts outside!

 Joy

Two weekends ago, my teenage daughter was sick and she wanted to watch a movie with me, so we watched the first Star Wars movie. Hard to believe I was in high school when it came out. But wow, wasn't Harrison Ford a cutie! So I told my daughter we ought to do a Harrison Ford marathon the following weekend and she thought that was cool.

We've got all the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies at home, so we've seen them a lot and didn't put them on our list. Not being a member of Netflix (yet), we headed over to the movie rental place, armed with a list of about 12 HF movies, and started hunting. I was really hoping to find Witness, but it wasn't there. I wanted Blade Runner, which I've actually never seen, but no luck on that one, either. Or Frantic.

But I did find Working Girl, one of my absolute favorites, and it was great seeing that again. We also rentedt Regarding Henry, which is a very sweet movie, and The Mosquito Coast, which is very intense. And Sabrina, a romantic comedy I've never seen before. Of course Harrison was a doll in that one, too.

Any other Harrison groupies out there? I can't wait to see his comeback in the new Indiana Jones movie. 

Joy 

I'd like to invite everyone to view the latest special feature on my website: Druids of Avalon: The Legend. In it, you'll learn the origins of some of my characters in my historical fantasy Druids of Avalon series, which begins with my award-winning novel, The Grail King, and continues with my latest release (and this month's bookclub selection!), Deep Magic. 

In Druids of Avalon: The Legend, you'll read about the mysterious "Lady" who brought the Holy Grail to Avalon, and explore the "lost generation" of Druids driven from their home by a conquering army. You'll also learn about the tragic events that led to the Druids' return to Avalon, where they vow to reclaim their home and their power despite the treachery of their enemies and the dangers inherent in their own magic.

Druids of Avalon: The Legend

Enjoy!

Joy

Mostly, I'm hooked on LOST, but last week I heard about a new TV series on Fox featured a Immortal detective for a hero. Since I've been writing about Immortal heroes for Dorchester's multi-author "Immortals" series,  I had to check it out. Especially when I saw how gorgeous this particular Immortal - actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau - is!

The show's called New Amsterdam and the immortal hero is John Amsterdam, once a soldier in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. In 1642, he saved the life of a Native American girl on Manhattan island. She rewarded him by saving his life, and granting him immortality - until he finds his one true love, at which time he can resume a normal life.

John Amsterdam is now a NYPD homicide detective because 350+ years of life has given him an obsession with death. His vast life experience (looks like this guy could take on Fox Mulder in a game of Trivial Pursuit) helps him crack the toughest cases. But what JA really wants to do is age, and eventually die. He can't do that until he finds his soul mate.

Then he's chasing a murder suspect in a subway station and suffers what seems to be a heart attack and collapses. Immediately, three or four gorgeous thirty-something women rush over. I guess they all said to themselves - whoa! hot guy down! gotta help!

After being pronounced dead at the hospital (by the hot female doctor who tried to save him in the subway - could she be The One?) John skips out of the hospital morgue, leaving the docs scratching their heads about the missing corpse.

He goes on to solve his homicide case - with the help of an old (very old) lover and some handy lip-reading skills. In his spare time, he attends an AA meeting, makes furniture, and takes pictures of NYC for his 100+ year NYC photo montage collection.

His only friend is - ironically, given he's a recovering alcoholic - a friendly bartender who knows all about the immortality thing. John tells him The One is near, because the Native American woman who saved his life told him he'd feel his true love in his heart when his soul mate finally approached. Detective Amsterdam ends the show perusing surveillance tapes of his subway heart attack, looking for the clue that will let him die.

As he tells his bartender friend when asked why he's so eager to die - "To be human is to die. To die is what makes life worth living." Which is kinda cool, because I just turned in Immortals: The Crossing, in which my Immortal demigod hero voices pretty much the same sentiment.

John Amsterdam is detective, artist, psychologist, mystic - and a very interesting character. Not sure why one of the show's trailers tried so hard to make him out to be an arrogant jerk - there's an early scene in the show when he meets his new female partner (could SHE be The One?) and he does his level best to make her hate him. Why? It made no sense, because five minutes later he was busy being nice to her, and to everyone else he cames in contact with, like some New Age guru. I was happy Amsterdam brushed the chip off his shoulder quickly, because I don't generally have too much patience for characters in books or film (or in real life) who are sarcastic and rude to people for no reason. I would hope someone who's been around for almost four centuries would actually be an adult by now.

Another interesting part of the show is how the history of Manhattan is intertwined with John Amsterdam's life, which is shown in historical flash back sequences. Seems the guy has lived in NYC since 1642. Now personally, I'd think eventually he'd have decided to get out and see some of the rest of the world, but for the show's purposes, this is an interesting detail.

I'm not completely hooked on the series yet, but I'll definitely tune in next week (or watch it online afterwards), hoping John Amsterdam comes face to face with the pretty doctor, still in shock about her missing corpse. She's in for a shock when she sees it walking toward her, I think!

All the best,

Joy Nash

www.joynash.com

 I'm honored to be guest blogging here at The Romance Book Club this month! My January release, Deep Magic, is featured for March. Deep Magic is the second in my historical fantasy Druids of Avalon series for Dorchester, a stand alone story, though some characters in the book appeared in my previous historicals, Celtic Fire, the "prequel" to the Druids series, and the first "official" Druids of Avalon book, The Grail King. TGK won Romantic Times Magazine's Reviewers Choice Award for Best Historical Fantasy.

This month I'm coming up for air between books. I turned in the manuscript for my October 08 release, Immortals: The Crossing, a couple weeks ago. Immortals is a contemporary paranormal series I'm doing with two other authors, Jennifer Ashley and Robin T Popp. A bit different from my historicals, but since my books in the Immortals series are set in Scotland and have a Celtic flavor, there are similarities as well.

 When I'm not writing all day and night (at least it seems like that sometimes!), I like to watch movies.  In the past I usually rented the DVDs to watch at home, but we recently got Comcast On Demand, so now there are a ton of free and pay-per-view movies on my TV as well. Which is great, really. At least in concept. In reality, the better my cable service gets, the less I know how to use it!

 We now have THREE remotes. With lots and lots of buttons. These buttons don't always do what they say. For example, there on On/Off buttons on all of the remotes, but only one of these turns on the TV. Ditto for the volume buttons - got three of em, but only one works. Which remote lets you watch a TV station? Which lets you watch a DVD? Which one for a VHS tape? Which one gets you to Comcast On Demand, so you can bang around the buttons looking through 5 separate lists of movies to see if there's one you'd like? Which button makes the screen go totally snowy? - oh, wait, that's the button I always seem to be able to find. What does AV-1 and AV-2 mean, anyway?

I'm not a techie, but I've never been a techno-dolt, either. So why is it so hard just to turn on the TV??? Luckily, I have kids, including one uber-techie who has some weird psychic connection to the buttons on all the remotes. So at least until he goes to college, I'm good.

Joy

www.joynash.com