Order your  Kindle copy of Bloodlines-Traces, sequel to Bloodlines Touch Not the Cat, during the countdown days Saturday July 8 to Tuesday July 11 starting at 80% …..

Here’s the Bloodlines Traces Kindle Countdown Schedule from, 4,99 GBP to: …drumroll…:

• Saturday July 8 2017, Kindle Copy of Bloodlines -Traces for less than a pound: 0.99 GBP
• Sunday July 9 2017, Kindle Copy of Bloodlines -Traces for less than half price: 1.99 GBP
• Monday July 10 2017, Kindle Copy of Bloodlines -Traces for only 2.99 GBP
• Tuesday July 11 2017,  Kindle Copy of Bloodlines -Traces still with 20% discount: 3.99 GP

Cathy’s quest to find out more about her Scottish ancestry, leads her past the battlefields of  WW I Gallipoli and follows the life and times of one of the first fictional woman to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1897.

Historical Fact mixed with fiction as real as life itself

What a great read. Thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish. Tom and Ingrid have a way with words, made me feel I was right in among the story.

Douglas Black- Sydney, Australia

As a sequel to Bloodlines – Touch Not the Cat, here is another well researched Genealogy Mystery novel, Bloodlines – Traces, once again set against the majestic, moody backdrop of the Scottish Highlands.  With a multi –layered, page-turning narrative, it combines an atmospheric Gothic romance with a gripping contemporary  murder mystery – Charlotte Bronte meets Sara Paretsky. !

Vivien Devlin, Arts and Travel Writer.

Click here for More Reviews or Take A Slide Show Tour (keep an eye on the Ballindalloch drawing for about 3 seconds)

To view even more, go to ‘the books’ section of our website; and while you’re there, take a look at the slide show and behind the scenes blogs

The idea behind ‘Bloodlines – Touch Not The Cat’ is an intriguing one. Two threads of a story taking place a century or so apart on either side of the Atlantic are brought together in alternate chapters culminating in an absorbing mystery that has been shrouded in secrecy for generations.

What begins with American David Stewart tracing his Scots heritage becomes increasingly murkier as the action shifts from North Carolina to the Scottish Highlands and a modern-day detective hunt by his homicide cop wife Cathy.

Vividly told, the story fairly rattles on through very convincingly fleshed-out characters as details from Victorian Scotland begin to merge with Cathy’s 21st century quest.

Written by first-time authors Tom McKerley and Ingrid Schippers, Touch Not the Cat is a triumph not only for pulling together two intriguing tales across the centuries but also in overcoming the strategic difficulties involved in the pair liaising from their homes in Troon, Scotland, and the Netherlands respectively.

Full of great characters and packed with fascinating detail – including the fact that Ballindalloch Castle which features in this work of fiction actually exists – this is a rewarding read for anyone interested in genealogy and historic novels as well as those who enjoy a good yarn well told.

Gerry Cassidy, The Word on the Street Magazine, October 2016

Bloodlines – Traces

US cop Cathy Stewart stays on in the Highlands to defend the Macpherson family from the inquisitive DI Duckett over the bones of Gordon Macpherson.

But she finds herself entangled in a 120-year-old scandal involving the laird’s daughter, Katherine, at the University of Edinburgh. Meanwhile, her estranged husband David continues the genealogy quest into the WWI atrocities of Gallipoli, where his ancestor Alexander Stewart is said to have died.

Following Cathy’s trail, New Yorker Diane Cox confronts present-day patriarch Angus Macpherson, when she boards the luxurious Royal Scotsman to heir-hunt her way to the Ballindalloch Estate.

But just as the paths of David and Cathy reunite, and all threads come together, Angus disappears.

This is a page-turner of a novel which sequels the hit debut of Tom McKerley and Ingrid Schippers and takes in many places familiar and not so familiar to Strathy readers, including Grantown and Boat of Garten, as the plot twists through time.

It reveals the challenges of women’s suffrage, poverty in Edwardian Scotland and the disastrous strategy of a young Winston Churchill in the Great War. Like its predecessor, Bloodlines – Touch Not the Cat, it’s a well-researched genealogy mystery novel. Its multi-layered narrative combines an atmospheric Gothic romance with a gripping contemporary murder mystery.

McKerley had become somewhat of a genealogy expert having spent time tracing his family tree back to the 1790s so was the perfect foil for the pair’s debut novel with the plot coming in a dream to Schippers.

McKerley constructed an initial synopsis for the first Bloodlines, “just for fun really”, and on a hunch went looking on the web for a location to set the scene. He found Ballindalloch Estate, family home of the Macpherson-Grants since 1546.

The pair started creating a story that would not let them go. Quickly the short-story turned into their first novel. Their second book picks up where novel one left off.

Bloodlines Traces is now on sale priced £8.99 by Would You Believe That Publishing. There’s a free download of the first four chapters on www.touchnotthecat.com

Gavin Musgrove, Strathspey and Badenoch Herald, September 2016

Bloodlines – Touch Not the Cat

I thoroughly enjoyed the read and my comments are shown below.

The book was ‘easy on the eye’ due to lots of white space, font style and size and spacing between the sentences. Each chapter clearly reminds us of date, time and location. Excellent for keeping the mind focused if you have to take a break from the book for any reason.

I loved the feel of the book and the chosen size meant it felt comfortable in the hand. I liked that acknowledgements are explained and not just a list of names. It shows how people can research for their ancestors and also gives a wealth of knowledge on history, life style differences. It also showed how position in life impacted our way of thinking , restrictions and control.

Thank you again for such a lovely book.

Linda Luman, Troon Writer’s Club

We had never before done much creative writing, or published a novel. Our combined experience depended on Tom’s love for reporting sports (I will not mention his club for fear of diversion from the subject) and my personal development-related manuals, texts and columns

At first we wrote for the fun it and called our venture a ‘short story’, (definitely not a book!)
Then, one day, when our ‘short story’ had turned into about 60.000 words; and google had lead us to the information, the average mystery novel should contain minimum that amount; we looked at each other and said:

There must be such a thing as a Scottish American Society or some other organization we could interest in our story

In we typed ‘American Scottish’ and ‘poof‘ a Cinderella-like fairy-godmother in the form of Mr. Alan Bain appeared, chairing the American Scottish Foundation based in New York.

Through Wikipedia we also learned America is home to 20-25 million people of Scottish American origin, about 8.3% of the U.S. population;
amounting to 10%, 27 to 30 Scotch Irish Americans; which is not surprising as most Scots have Irish blood in their ancestry. Tom also found out he is actually Irish, re: our blog ‘A Legacy for Prosterity

This is where the dollar signs started flashing in our eyes. With a total of approximately 30 million potential customers,(as Bloodlines Touch Not the Cat recounts the story of a young Alexander leaving Scotland and finding a new life in America) of which a good number we guessed would carry the name Macpherson and Stewart (the main family names of the Bloodlines characters);
and the support of Mr. Alan Bain who had committed to promoting ‘Bloodlines’ when we published, we decided to take the plunge.
And plunge we did

to be continued….

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The August Winner of the ‘Share a Post or Send in a Review’ contest is a Macpherson!
Thank you Karen for your lovely words. Your complimentary copy of Bloodlines-Traces is on its way.

Review of Karen Macpherson on Bloodlines-Touch Not the Cat.

What a fabulous mystery book! Loved the time-travelling alternate chapters, it kept me page turning to find out what happened in each century and found it fascinating how events were inter-related. Characters are easy to identify with and I warmed to the modern independent yet vulnerable Cathy as the story unfolded, each chapter encouraging me to support her that bit more. Would love to find out more about the historical Katherine as she lives in a time of emerging changes for women and education. The Scottish Macphersons were a joy to read, a perfect mix of warmth and compassion, dry humour and wit with a little eccentricity. The descriptive narrative easily sets the scene in your mind and I found myself longing to visit the places so beautifully described in the book. The plot is pacy and full of just enough turns to keep you interested yet gently unfolds to give you time to get to know Cathy and to empathise with her situation. Loved the ending, it tied up all loose ends with a slightly humorous and “you go girl” attitude!

Looking forward to reading the sequel,

Karen Macpherson

Will you be the September 2016 Winner of the Share a Blog or Send in a Review contest?

Win a copy of Bloodlines-Traces or Bloodlines-Touch Not the Cat, to be send to an address of your choice, in Europe, U.S.A or Australia/New Zealand.

Simple send in a review or share one of our website posts and tell us about it in a mail to info@touchnotthecat.com

Every month a lucky winner’s name is drawn from among the e-mails.

I just finished reading Bloodlines-Touch Not the Cat last night and WOW…what twists and turns and surprises…but oh, so much more to be revealed

It’s very well written, the parallel story lines and character development.
There were so many twists and turns in the story, I couldn’t put it down and kept wanting to read more.

I’m really looking forward to reading the sequel where even more of the story will be revealed! Having been through Scotland recently, I enjoyed the book even more because I felt like I could be right there in the story with the characters wherever they went.

Click here to read more on the Share a Post or Send in a Review contest

You can order your paperback copy of Bloodlines Traces here

While our initial intention was to publish in May 16 2016, we are quite surprised to find the learning curves of self publishing brought us to this wonderful date of June 21st 2016;
a day not only of Summer Solstice, but also right after a night of full moon, two indicators of change and renewal.

We’re very ‘date conscious’ from a numeral point of view, where certain numbers or combinations thereof, hold their own specific promise and perspective according to esoteric traditions.
In short: we’re somewhat superstitious.

Bloodlines – Touch Not the Cat for this reason was published 11.11.11

Just like some stories seem to find their storyteller however,
(a feeling that overcame us many many times while writing the Bloodlines series)
our chosen publication date of May 16 was overturned when an upload went haywire, leading to having to re-format a 107.000 word file.

Living by the principle of ‘never make the same mistake twice; plenty of new ones are available’  we took extra care and therewith extra time to create a new file.

Then we had to wait for a new proof to arrive, approve that and grant the distributor their time to make it available plus register our newborn with the Nielsen and Ingram databases.

It is for this reason that to our own surprise and delight today has become the official day on which Bloodlines – Traces paperback can be ordered on line with your international internet bookseller worldwide or with your local bookseller.

The Kindle edition of Bloodlines-Traces can be preordered here
and is available as of June 30 2016.

We very much appreciate your thoughts on Bloodlines-Traces.
Please send your reviews to info@touchnotthecat.com.

‘How do we proceed on the story line without repeating what already has been said in Bloodlines Touch Not the Cat‘

Or, related to this:

‘Should we write a sequel in such a way it can be read independently?’

In that sense Bloodlines-Traces is just as much of an accident as the first book.
What started Traces off were the leftovers.
It seemed a shame to toss them out, plus holding back certain parts of the story lines had not gone unnoticed to some of our readers.

‘What happened to Katherine after Alexander left?’, we were asked many times,

as well as:

‘How, (or even why!) did Alexander die?!’

The good news is historical fiction offers ample opportunity to bring characters back to life.
As a result, Traces reveals what happened to Katherine and Alexander while offering a look into the early hours of feminism and the atrocities of World War I, including the enormous mistake Churchill made in his younger years.

We take you sightseeing in Victorian and Edwardian New York, Chicago and Edinburgh, in times when people still stopped to watch a car ride by, the telephone was an invention only used by few and communication and connectivity in general offered a totally different perspective.

As with Bloodlines Touch Not the Cat, writing Traces was a joy. Researching historical fact, fine tuning language, phrasing sentences in Victorian, American or British (Scottish) English and discussing character development, proved to be fulfilling ways to spend our leisure time.

End of 2013 we had a draft ready. Inspired ideas for a book cover popped up spontaneously and set designer Graham Booth to work, while we asked our Facebook followers to help us choose the right cover by publishing a short list of examples.

Then the draft was sent to our editor Hans Offringa, who did a great job pointing out story line glitches and language bloopers, which was enjoyable as well, as some were very funny.
Did you for instance ever hear of ‘the clinking of knives and forks finding their way over the breakfast plates’? Well we did in our creative minds☺. In retrospect we had to admit it resembled the description of a skating ring.

‘Traces’ became as much part of our lives as its predecessor had been, co-authoring a creative effort in need of attention and on our minds even when we were living our other lives in our separate countries.
It never occurred to us the pink bubble could burst, which teaches you never to take prosperity for granted.

At the beginning of 2014 reality intervened with fiction through personal circumstances forcing us to slow down.
While activity flared up in October of that same year; it was stalled again in March 2015.
Perhaps this should teach us to be less forthcoming on our Facebook page about book cover samplings and promises of publication, for isn’t it one of the first rules of marketing to make sure to have your product ready once you start advertising?
On the other hand, this is a creative process we are talking about, not a bag of beans. The actions of sharing information with our audience are based on genuine enthusiasm and a feeling of being connected to our readers; like family, the genealogy of our book.
Our page would have been a whole lot less entertaining if we hadn’t shared our proceedings the way we did.

We still aim for 2015 to publish Traces,
but ask you humbly to bear with us a little while longer.

Ingrid Schippers

Chocolate, as many of us are conscious of, works wonders with women. Mind you, I’m not discriminating here. I know men can be ‘into chocolate’ as well, but like with high heels & diamonds; some worldly possessions simply find their way more often to a woman than to a man, and chocolate, as I know after half a life time of personal experience in the field, is one of those items.

When Tom & I were doing research for Bloodlines – Touch Not The Cat and visited Ballindalloch castle for the first time; it was the chocolate cake I spotted in the castle tearoom that pulled me straight into fantasyland.

‘”I see you’ve discovered our famous chocolate cake”  I had our character Angus later say to Cathy the cop, on page 173 of Bloodlines Touch Not the Cat.

“I’ll come back next year… just for the cake” Cathy answered;  And such was true!

When a year later Tom and I drove through the gate of Ballindalloch castle again, I knew one thing for certain: I was going to have another piece of that chocolate cake. Those who have seen the ‘Ice Age’ movies featuring the rodent obsessed with acorns; can picture me with the same behavior towards chocolate cake. If Tom hadn’t stopped me I would have written a whole lot more about Cathy’s taste buds and the effect the Ballindalloch cake had on her hormone levels. I certainly would have had Angus offer the possibility for Cathy to get the recipe. But helas!

“It’s a genealogy mystery novel Ingrid” Tom reminded me; “not a cookbook! “

Pouting my lips and ready to put up a fight I retaliated, I at least wanted to mention the cake in the acknowledgements of Bloodlines Touch Not the Cat. I got my way; for the chocolate cake comment in the acknowledgements is written in Italics as a special request in my name, but that is as far as I got. However… for (wo)men who recognize the need for chocolate cake, I have very good news. Even though Angus was not allowed to give the recipe in our novel, the real Laird of Ballindalloch, wrote a whole book filled with lovely food suggestions.

“I love food” by Clare Macpherson-Grant Russell, can be found on the official Ballindaloch website (with a picture of the chocolate cake) and can be bought through all regular (online) booksellers.

And again… I can really recommend it!!!

Ingrid

The success that has befallen the spiritual genealogy mystery novel since its publication was awarded June 5^th 2012 with a very special event at the main location of the novel: Ballindalloch Castle.

At the invitation of the current Lady Laird; Clare Macpherson-Grant Russell, the fictional inhabitants of the Ballindalloch Estate and their authors were welcomed in the charming castle tearoom.

As an extra wonderful surprise, the passengers of the famous ‘Royal Scotsman Train Journey’, that includes Ballindalloch Castle in its excursion program, visited the event.

Among the passengers was Arts and Travel writer Vivien Devlin, who shared her views on inspirational train journeys and talked to the authors about the sequel: Bloodlines – Traces, they are currently working on.

“What could be more appropriate”, Viv Devlin said “than to follow in the footsteps of Agatha Christie and have a murder or mystery on board the Orient Express Royal Scotsman train”.

With the words of Shari Low in mind, who in her Daily Record review of Bloodlines Touch Not the Cat described the novel as ”the perfect starting point for a series” this might well be another dream come true in the sequel, where the Royal Scotsman will bring an American passenger “who has a story to tell” to Ballindalloch castle…

Links

Photo album Ballindalloch June 5^th event

More on the Royal Scotsman by Vivien Devlin

It’s Sunday, 3 November 1895… “Gordon could not remember the pull of the Spey being this strong before….”

Listen to an audio excerpt from Bloodlines – Touch Not the Cat, read by Tom McKerley on location, at the river Spey on the Ballindalloch Estate….

Winners of the contest will receive a special signed copy of the book.

How to participate

Answer the 7 questions in this document:

The Bloodlines Mystery Tour

The answers are to be found in the genealogy mystery novel Bloodlines – Touch Not the Cat (including the reader’s notes).

Copy & paste your answers into a mail to: info@touchnotthecat.com with subject: mystery contest.

Closing date: July 7th 2012

The 7 winners of a Ballindalloch June 5th 2012 signed copy will be informed by mail no later than July 31 2012.

When given permission by the winners, the names will be published on this website in August 2012.