I decided to reveal the cover to McKenna's Honor today, along with the new prologue.
Our target release date is July 26, 2013. Pre-order link should be live at Amazon around June 20th. ;o)
Hugs,
Suzan
Prologue
An
old adage declares that there is no honor among thieves. The same can be said
of traitors. Traitors often hide in the open, in our full plane of vision. The
truth is there, if we choose to see it, if we are determined to see things for
what they are and not what we wish them to be.
In reality, traitors are nothing more than
pretenders. Actors in a play in which only they know who is who and what is
what. Master manipulators.
And people
tend to see only what they wish to
see.
When a traitor performs, openly defending the
weak, speaking only in the highest regard toward his king and country, and
displaying an unequaled façade of honor, well, who among us would question his
fealty? The traitor shows us only what he wishes
us to see and only what we wish to believe.
All the while the traitor silently laughs at the
folly he has created, taking great care in the absurdity of the entire
situation.
And if he is extremely careful the world will
never know who or what he truly
is.
However, as is often the case with thieves,
traitors, and ne’er do wells, sometimes fate steps in at the most unexpected of
times. It rips away the heavy curtain of subterfuge and duplicity, to openly
display to the world not what it wishes to see, but what it in fact must see.
Such inaugurations to the truth are often painful
and traumatic, leaving the newly inaugurated feeling stunned, stupefied, and
bitter. For some, the only means of survival is outright denial. They shun the
truth. Curse it. Preferring instead, to live in denial. Mayhap because they
love the traitor so much, it is easy to justify the aforementioned traitor’s
behavior. Or, they may not wish to believe they could have been so easily
duped.
But as in all good plays, there are subtle twists
and turns. Some are quite obvious, others, not so much. Mayhap the truth isn’t
always what it seems. Mayhap there is far more to it than anyone realizes.
What then, motivates a man? A man like Angus McKenna?
Angus McKenna
has spent his life defending the defenseless, offering hope to the hopeless,
lifting up the weak. This is how the world see’s him: Honorable. Honest.
Steadfast. A leader of men. A man loyal, to king and country. A man above
reproach. That is the man his people see, the man other leaders see, the man
the world sees.
Since the day
he took his oath as chief of the Clan MacDougall and made the promise to uphold
and protect his clan above all other things, Angus McKenna has always put his
family and his clan first. Each decision he has made since that fateful day in
1331 has been made with only one thought in mind: how will this decision
affect my family and my clan?
Nothing else
mattered but the safety and well being of his people. Not his own comfort, his
own desires, or his own needs could be taken into consideration when making
decisions that would directly affect his people.
What then,
could have made Angus McKenna don a red and black plaid and turn against his
king? His country? How could a man like Angus McKenna do such a thing? What
could be of such a value that he would plot to murder his king and to forge a
pact with the English? A pact that would cause the fall of his country and put
it squarely into the hands of the very people he has spent his entire life
fighting against.
Gold?
Silver?
Power?
Something more?
Through time
and experience, we learn that things are not always as they appear.
