Guest Blogger Nicole McDonald Drops In...

If you haven't met Nicole MacDonald today is your lucky day!  Nicole has been kind enough to drop by and tell us about herself and her new novel The Arrival.

Hello! My name's Nicole and I'm delighted to be a guest poster on Sharon's blog. Let me tell you a little about myself. I'm a 28yr old kiwi (New Zealander) living in Wellington New Zealand. By day I'm a customer service representative extraordinaire (read: receptionist) and by night I moonlight as a novelist. That is until my current project takes off and I'll be living the dream as a fulltime writer. *grin*

If you're not particularly familiar with NZ let me acquaint you. We sit on the bottom of all world globes and are usually cut out of world maps in movies. When Lord of the Rings was filmed here, New Zealand as a whole went into a state of utter delight and yes we are VERY excited about the hobbit. And yes we cheer in the movie theatres when an actor utters 'New Zealand'. Hey we're only a nation of 4 million here. *grin*
From a young age I have loved to read action / adventure books and always imagined myself as the hero. As I grew older I got more and more frustrated at the 'heroine' roles in books and movies because although these heroines were tough and wonderful, they still needed to be rescued.

When Buffy came out I was infatuated. Here was a sassy, strong heroine who still got the gorgeous guy even though she was capable of kicking butt and looking after herself (and rescuing him even!).

I'm not some scary feminist (just to be clear) but it's never been my life's ambition to be 'rescued' by a male. In fact I firmly intended to be single my entire life. Of course that's when the fates like to throw a spanner in the works, isn't it? I met my soulmate (and current partner) a month before I turned 19. While I would not change this for anything I won't deny that this was a MASSIVE learning curb. It occurred to me that I could 'rewrite' my story to how I'd have liked it to have played out. And I'd get to play the heroine in a way I'd always wanted to. Okay so I took more than a little 'artisitic license' when it came to it - but it's my fantasy!
Well my little idea to keep me from idleness certainly worked. An immense amount of work later and I am the proud author of The Arrival, book one of the BirthRight Trilogy.

A trilogy which follows the lives of Catherine, Kassandra, Laura and Sian, as they navigate a new world after dabbling in the arcane.

That old line 'be careful what you wish for' never rang so true and the girls have the fight of their lives on their hands as they discover who they truly are. The spell they cast, to find their soulmates, was simple.

The process in reality however is anything but, just because the first few steps of a new journey are easy doesn't mean the rest will be.

These girls challenge stereotypes as they stand up for their beliefs and prove themselves to be anything but damsels in distress.

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You can learn more about Nicole by visiting her blog  (and you for sure should visit it) .You can download The Arrival  for only 99 cents!  (I already did!) 

Nicole will be blogsitting for me for the next few days so if you have a question for her, you can leave it in the comments....

Have a wonderful week everyone!