Interview with Jill McDonald @rebeccajvickery @JillMcD-C #paranormal

Let's give Jill McDonald a warm welcome! She's here to chat and tell us about her new release, The Gypsy's Kiss. 

Karen: I'm so happy to have you here at Once Upon A Word. Let's start with telling the readers a little bit about yourself. Where were you born and what year?                                      

Jill: In Liverpool, England. Do you really need the date? As my Grandmother used to say – ‘I’m as old as my tongue and older than my teeth.’

Karen: lol- Love your grandmother's saying. And no, you don't have to tell. :) Moving right along... When you were a child, how did you entertain yourself when you were told to go outside and play or else?  

Jill: Mostly, I played in the fields, or went to the local riding schools. My best friends were animals.

Karen: What is the funniest thing that ever happened to you or you witnessed that made you laugh so hard you couldn’t catch your breath? 

Jill: One day my late husband, Chris was carrying some heavy pieces of wood down the long garden to his shed when his pants fell down! He couldn’t move then, or bend down to pull them up as the wood was too heavy. And I couldn’t help because I was laughing so much! Well, it was funny at the time!

Karen: That is funny. I would probably react the same way. (heehee)
What hidden talent do you possess outside of writing... something you do for fun, but are good at? 

Jill: I like drawing and watercolor painting. I have been told I am quite good at it.

Karen: What are you a collector of? It can be serious, funny, or unique.

Jill: Cookery books mainly. I have about 300, many of them quite old. And reference books of course!

   
Karen: Name some of your most favorite things?

Jill: I love classical guitar music, time slip stories, the sea, snakes, the movie ‘Don’t Tell her it’s Me’ (‘Boyfriend School’ in USA) and of course, my family and dogs!

Karen: Tell us about your new release and what inspired you to write the tale.

Jill: ‘The Gypsy’s Kiss,’ is a sweet, contemporary Romance, with a touch of the supernatural. The cottage in the story is loosely based on one my husband and I used to live in, which was in the same state as the one in the story when we took it on. In it, I felt many of the same things that my heroine, Sofia, feels, including a very powerful sense of welcoming which took my breath away. I just wanted to share some of those experiences. (Unfortunately, our cottage didn’t come with a pig gypsy!)

Karen: What are you working on now?

Jill: I have a few books on the go, I feel that if I get bogged down with one, I can turn to one of the others until my brain clears for the first one. I am working on a traditional Western, a Western Romance, two more Contemporary Romances, a 1920s story, a Medieval Romance, two children’s books, and a collection of poetry. Sounds a lot, but I do only work on one at a time! And what I work on all depends on the mood I am in.

About the The Gypsy's Kiss:

City girl Sofia hates the countryside with a vengeance. Then she inherits Mere Hall, in the country! Surrounded by beautiful yellow roses, and secrets, the neglected house somehow gets under her skin. Perhaps a ghost and a handsome pig gypsy, with his own secrets, might be able to change her mind about the country being a great place to live? And Love.

Excerpt:

Around them, the sudden thickening of the atmosphere stole the breath from her lungs.

“Right, yeah, erm – well, I’ll get out of here, Miss - Marchant, leave you to your sorting out. And there’s a hell of a lot of sorting to do, by the look of it. Staying around here for a few days, are you?”

Sofia grimaced. Her hand was still tingling from the

sensation his had left behind.

“Oh! Good grief, no! No way! It was simply a condition of the will, that I had to come in and look around. Which is all I’m doing, then I’m going back to my job, my boyfriend, Edward, and our river front apartment; I will then sign this place over to the solicitors and leave it all to them to sort out. They can bulldoze it to the ground as far as I’m concerned.”

“That would be a real shame.”

The crease beside his mouth deepened as his luscious lips curved up into a broad smile and his dark eyes twinkled mischievously. Sofia cursed to herself. Why on earth had she felt the need to tell this – this scruffy – gorgeous – gypsy pig man, any of that?

About the Author

Jill always has a few writing projects on the go at any one time, so if she happens to get stuck on one, she can work on another until fresh ideas occur to her. Working and researching in a variety of genres as she does, means there is always something fresh and exciting to discover, only sometimes, the research can take more time than the writing!

Jill lives in a village in a scenic part of the north of England with her two Miniature Schnauzers, Poppy and Pepper. She has been surrounded by animals all her life and has lived on farms and in pet shops.

Her first published piece was at the age of 12, when the local paper printed her long poem about the Vietnam War. After returning to education as a ‘mature student,’ she finally achieved a Master’s Degree in 2001. Her first ‘real’ book was published in 2011.

As well as three traditional Westerns through a British publisher, under the author name of Amos Carr; Jill is now delighted to be able to say that she sells cowboys to America! She has now had Romantic Westerns, true animal stories and supernatural tales published in USA.

Follow the Author:

Website - womanwholeads.webs.com

Facebook – Jill McDonald-Constable

Twitter – JillMcD-C