Guest Blog & Contest: Waiting for Magic by Susan Squires

Susan Squires is the New York Times Bestselling author of nineteen novels and four novellas. She is writing her current series, The Children of Merlin, at the beach in Southern California with her husband, Harry, a writer of supernatural mysteries, and three Belgian Sheepdogs, who keep her busy.

The Joy of Museums.

I have always loved museums. My husband and I go to the Natural History Museum several times a year. Dinosaur bones! Gemstones! Butterflies in the spring and spiders in the fall! And of course art museums have enthralled us all over the world. The Gulbenkian in Lisbon, all those statues of naked men in the Uffizi in Florence, the Guggenheim in New York: Oh, my! I’ve looked at museums differently ever since I took a class in art history in college and had to spend some long afternoons at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art looking at a single painting each day and writing about what I saw. I think it was a little like meditation. The longer you looked, the quieter your mind got and the more you saw in each painting. It was a very different experience than cruising through an exhibit at high speed and catching only an overall impression of a work (though that can still be fun.)

So when it came to writing my Children of Merlin series, I knew my big, boisterous family with a magic gene had to be involved in a museum in some way. I created a fictional museum in LA that has art, artifacts of daily living, and historical exhibits. Because they are descended from Merlin, they sponsor the Dark Age Britain exhibit, which bores some of the siblings and enthralls others. They are big-time donors, so they get to go to all the cool openings of exhibits and hob-nob with the artistic elites.

But I also made Keelan, the middle Tremaine daughter, an artist. My latest release, Waiting for Magic, is her story. She’s a volunteer docent in the museum (docents are some of my favorite people. They know everything and they love to answer questions.) As we open, her mother invites the new curator, Christian Coombs, to dinner, hoping to set him up with Kee. I hate when mothers do that. Kee is struggling to find herself as an artist. She keeps waiting for something magic to happen in her art, just like she’s waiting to fall in love and activate magic gene her family inherited from the wizard of Camelot that will give her a power. Of course, what kind of power would an artist get? And when will it happen for Kee? Never? Before she can find her true love or her art, she has to understand just who she is. That seems like a tough job, since she’s harboring a secret that’s going to change her view of herself and her family.

Do you have a favorite museum? Do share. I want to know where to go next in my travels. I’ll put them on my list….


Title: Waiting for Magic by Susan Squires
Children of Merlin Book Three
Publisher: Susan Squires
Genre: Paranormal, Romance
Length: 305 pages

Summary:

Keelan Tremaine is part of a large and boisterous family descended from Merlin. The magic in their DNA comes alive when each meets the destined lover who shares the Merlin gene. Keelan wants her magic, and she wants it now. Two of her siblings have theirs. Just Kee’s luck she’s fallen in love with someone who doesn’t have magic in his genes. She’s afraid to tell her even her best friend and adopted brother, Devin, that she’s about to give up on her destiny.

Devin has his own problems. He harbors a secret that’s driving him to leave the family for good. He never felt he belonged anyway. To repay them for their kindness, he vows to acquire the Talisman that can protect the Tremaine family from Clan descended from Morgan Le Fay. And only Kee can keep him from making the ultimate sacrifice.

Purchase Link: Amazon


Author Bio

Since beginning her career in 2000 with Danegeld, which won a Golden Heart for best unpublished manuscript from Romance Writers of America, Susan has published seventeen novels and three novellas in collections with Dorchester Publishing and St. Martin’s Press, as well as self-publishing three books and a novella in The Children of Merlin Series. She’s been a finalist in the Rita contest for Best Romance Novel and garnered several Reviewer’s Choice awards from Romantic Times Book Reviews. Publisher’s Weekly named Body Electric one of the ten most influential mass-market books of 2003 and One with the Shadows a Best Book of Year. Her work has appeared on the New York Times and USA Today Best Sellers lists. She’s known for breaking the rules of romance writing, and whatever her subject, historical period, or theme, her work always contains some element of the paranormal.

Author Links: Website * Facebook


Contest

Ms. Squires is giving away an digital copy of the first book in the series, Do You Believe in Magic, (click HERE for the synopsis) to one lucky commenter. To enter today’s contest:

You must Do TWO of the Following:

1. Sign up for e-mail updates (upper left corner). One email daily with the day’s posts.

OR:

2. Be or become a fan of Book Reviews & More by Kathy Facebook page

OR:

3. Follow me on Twitter (@BookReviewsMore)

OR:

4. Friend Book Reviews & More by Kathy on Goodreads

Make sure you have filled out the contest entry form:

5. To be eligible to enter contests on Book Reviews and More by Kathy you MUST fill out the contest entry form (found HERE). This form only needs to be filled out ONCE. Your privacy is important to me, and I will not share your information.

And don’t forget to:

6. Answer the question: Do you have a favorite museum? by 5 PM Mountain Time Monday afternoon.

It’s that easy! The winner will be selected using random.org. Ms. Squires will e-mail one lucky winner the eBook of their choice in their preferred format. The winner will be posted HERE on Tuesday.

14 Comments

Filed under Contest, Guest Blog

14 Responses to Guest Blog & Contest: Waiting for Magic by Susan Squires

  1. Christine LaCombe

    I went and read the synopsis for Do You Believe In Magic and boy, does it sound really good. I would love to win a copy. Thanks for the giveaway. Now to answer the question, No I do not have a favorite museum. In the city where I live, there is none. We have a children’s museum which I have been to but it is mainly geared for children’s parties and they have things set up for activities. One of the things is set up like a newscaster desk and the kids can act like they are on the news show.

    • I love Children’s Museums, too, Christine. Though the only one I’ve really been to is the Exploratorium up in San Francisco. I set the end of Twist in Time and parts of Mists of Time there. My heroine in Mists was a docent there. And I hid a time machine in the basement, under the Palace of Fine Arts, which is a pavilion sort of thing right outside the Exploratorium. Think I have a picture of it on my website. I’ll have to check later. Anyway, I learned a lot in that museum, and had a load of fun. Husband too. You just had to watch for caroming children–only a slight hazard!
      Susan

  2. laurie g

    my favorite museum has always been the british museum in london england. i have been there twice and found it totally facinating

    • Ooh, that’s a good one. How could I have left that out? We’ve also been a couple of times. You see displays there that you can’t see anywhere else. Big Sumerian statues, and the Rosetta stone, and REALLY old manuscripts sometimes printed on Vellum. They have a copy of the Gutenberg Bible too–the first thing ever printed. You can kind of spend days there if you want to. But after a while you get overwhelmed, and have to go out for a pub lunch. Not bad.
      Susan

  3. SHELLEY S

    THE MUSEUMS IN JACKSON AND NOLA! THANKS FOR THE GIVEAWAY!

  4. Jess1

    One of my favorite museums is the Phoenix Art Museum which has the Thorne Miniature Rooms (the largest display of Thorne rooms are in Chicago which I haven’t seen). I haven’t been there in years and want to visit again.

    I love the diorama displays at the LA Museum of Natural History too.

    • Jess
      Lived in Phoenix for two years and NEVER got to the Art Museum there. Isn’t that a shame? Sometimes the ones in your own town get overlooked, because you aren’t in tourist mode. Your description of the miniature rooms makes me want to get back there one day.
      Susan

  5. Sherry

    I honestly have to say I don’t think I’ve ever been to a museum. If I was it had to be when I was a kid and I don’t remember it.

    • Sherry,
      I think lots of times we don’t go to museums as adults. As we get older, they just get taken off the list of things to do. But if your town has one, think about exploring it–with your kids if you have them, with a DH or friend if you don’t have kids. Makes a great day out. And if your town doesn’t have one, put museums in the back of your mind when you’re traveling to another town. Some of the most fun museums my DH and I have done were just spontaneous visits to some weird museum in towns we were passing through.

  6. Timitra

    No, I don’t.

  7. Mel Bourn

    Two of my favorite museums to got to is in Springfield, IL. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum is phenomenal! My husband and I were crying at the “Laying in State” portion. Absolutely moving!

    The second one is the Illinois State Museum. Really well put together. My family was even given an impromptu guided tour by one of the volunteers who was also a college professor of Paleontology. He even showed us his private collection of artifacts and fossils. My 10 year old still talks about everything he learned.

    Mel

    • Aren’t docents wonderful, Mel? They really make things come alive. And their services are free, they answer questions patiently. Fabulous. I even like those guided tours where you get a recorder and earphones, or where you can just dial a toll free number on your phone and they give you a tour. You can stop or start whenever you want, skip stuff you don’t care about, linger over stuff you do care about. Or have lunch and come back to it.
      Susan

  8. Meghan Stith

    I don’t have a favorite specific museum but I LOVE aquariums!
    I also like The Natural History Museum in DC.
    THanks for the giveaway!
    mestith at gmail dot com