Reading Lark After Dark: Guest Post: L.L. Muir

We'd like to welcome author L. L. Muir to the Dark Nest today. Her novel, Going Back for Romeo, is available now.

I’m honored to be guest posting on Reading Lark After Dark. I’ve done my best to provide you all with some romance choices for the coming holiday, but since it will be Valentine’s Day, and many of you will be getting a flower or two, I thought you might benefit a little more from a little one-on-one advice from a professional florist—also me.

Yes, I’m a Scotophile. Long before I had the luxury of writing Scottish Romances, I had a flower shop in Syracuse, Utah, called The Scottish Rose. If I could have pulled aside each recipient of my floral creations and give them some quick advice, it would include the following.

*Don’t water your flowers with softened water. Salty water kills flowers quickly.
*Don’t dump out the water in which they were arrange. If the florist knows up from down, she’s already added preservative to the water that feeds the flowers and kills bacteria. Just add more water DAILY. If you get something with a sunflower or two, they drink like a horse. Water three times a day.
*In about five days, you can get all new water, give the stems a fresh cut, and put them into the water quickly. After they’re cut, they take a gulp. Do you want it to be a gulp of water or of air? After that, change the water daily until they go the way of the world.
*If you get wrapped flowers, closely follow the instructions on the flower food packet. Easy peasy. It’s okay if they’ve been out of water for a little while. A fresh cut and a big gulp of water should bring them back to life.
*If your roses last two days, take them back to the florist. Always. Even with the busy holiday, there is no excuse for getting old roses, or poorly processed ones.

If you have questions, I’ll be checking back as often as possible. Hope you have a terribly romantic holiday, even if it’s just you and the hero of a novel!

About Going Back for Romeo:

Alone, with a Highlander, in his castle, on a cold dark night...

(Okay, so it wasn’t that cold.)

Jillian MacKay is being conned by a pair of eighty-year-old witches. They’re convinced she’s the perfect sucker to test a prophecy and they’re willing to bury her alive to prove it. Once she escapes and finds herself in 15th Century Scotland, she believes her return home depends on a heroic deed—she must rescue a plaid-clad Romeo and Juliet before tragedy can strike. The monster standing in her way, however, is a handsome Highlander who might just be her own Romeo...a Romeo she must leave behind.

Rather than surrender his secrets, Montgomery Ross would prefer to go down in history as the heartless creature who betrayed one sister and buried the other alive. When he falls in love with the prophesied faery who has come to expose him, he'll have to learn a wee lesson from the star-crossed lovers or suffer the fate to which he once condemned them.