An Interview with Bess McBride and a Contest!

Please welcome Bess McBride to my blog today!

Alisha: Can you tell us a little bit about your childhood? Favorite
memories?

Bess: I was born in Aruba to American parents. We left there when I was 2 to move just across the water to the coast of Venezuela where I lived until I was 12 in a multinational community of people who worked for oil companies. It was a great upbringing. I walked the beach every day collecting seashells and hid my treasures in the sand cliffs around the beach. The temperature was 70 something every day of the year.

Alisha: Sigh...now that sounds so peaceful. What a lovely, sunny childhood. Tell us about the hero and heroine in your latest release.

Bess: Robert is a Victorian gentlemen in 1901 Seattle who is pressured by his grandmother to marry. A well to do banker and otherwise sensible man, he continues to wait for a woman, though he doesn’t know who. Ellie, who lives in modern day Chicago, is just floating through life aimlessly. She has a fiancée who doesn’t really plan to marry her but no other family. She teaches Women’s Studies at a local college, and is on her way to Seattle for a seminar when she meets Robert, albeit she travels back in time to do it.

Alisha: I love time travel. I'm already hooked! If you were granted three wishes by a genie, what would they be?

Bess: Good health for myself and my family, a comfortable living writing books that afforded me the opportunity to travel, and peace on earth... Yup, I really said that.

Alisha: Well, hey, it may be cliche but we all want it, don't we? If you could go anywhere to tomorrow, where would you go?

Bess: Ireland...getting in touch with the roots!

Alisha: If you could see anyone tomorrow (dead or alive), who would it be?

Bess: My mother, who died at 56. I’d want to help her change her life so that she could live well and long...especially quit smoking and drinking.

Alisha: If you could choose six people to spend one week on a desert island, who would it be and why?

Bess: My daughter, my granddaughter, my son-in-law, a man who loved me or Tom Hanks or any of the heroes of my books, that’s interchangeable. And that’s it for me. Six is too many.

Alisha: Oh! I love Tom Hanks too! What word or phrase tingles in all the right places for you?

Bess: I love you.

Alisha: If you had one day to spoil yourself, what would you do?

Bess: Sit in a bookstore with hot chocolate and read to my heart’s content.

Alisha: If you could change one incident in your life, what would it be and how would you change it?

Bess: There are so many “incidents” that I would change. I can’t pick just one. But they would always involve hurting someone I love.

Alisha: What’s the sexiest thing a man has ever done for you or said to you or both?

Bess: He paused in the midst of making love, took my face in his hands, and said “I love you.”

Alisha: Goodness, Bess! Butterflies just fluttered all up inside of me. So dang perfect!

Contest: Leave a comment today and you'll be entered into a drawing for Bess's A Train Through Time (download).

Blurb for A Train Through Time:
College teacher Ellie Standish thinks she’s on a sleek modern train heading to a conference on women’s studies in Seattle , but she awakens from a night’s doze to find herself on a bizarre historical train full of late Victorian era reenactors who refuse to come out of character. When the leader of the group—one handsome, green-eyed Robert Chamberlain—finally convinces her the date is indeed 1901, a skeptical Ellie decries any eccentric theories of time travel and presumes she is smack dab in the middle of a very interesting historical dream. She turns the directorial reins of her dream over to one smitten and willing Robert, only to realize that dreams cannot last forever. Someday, she must wake up to reality, though Ellie no longer has any idea what reality is. She only knows that Robert must play an important part in her future. But how can he...if he’s only a figment of her imagination or worse yet...a man who belongs to an era long past?


Excerpt of A Train Through Time:

“I’m not going to marry an eighteen-year-old girl, Grandmother.” Robert turned away and strode to the bay window. He stared down onto the city below.

“Robert, be reasonable. You need to marry sometime. Don’t you want a wife? One young enough to give you children? Any one of your sister’s friends would be quite suitable.”

“I’m afraid not, Grandmother. I’m waiting.”

“Waiting for what?” Mrs. Chamberlain muttered.

“The right one. She will come along. I know it.”

“For goodness sake, Robert. Where will you find her? You never appear even to look.”

Robert continued to stare out the window with his hands clasped behind his back. “I do not think I have met her yet, but I feel certain that I will know her when she does finally appear.”

“Robert, what nonsense! You are usually so sensible in all matters except when it comes to this subject. It seems my son’s wife raised a silly romantic,” the older woman muttered.

“Perhaps she did, Grandmother. Perhaps she did,” he murmured with a smile.

“Give me great-grandchildren, Robert. I cannot live forever.”

He turned away and grinned at the frail appearing silver-haired woman resting on the green velvet settee.

“Yes, you will, Grandmother. You will outlive us all.”

“Hmmppff,” she muttered looking away. “The house is quiet. We need children in it once again.”

“Perhaps my sister can do the honors in a few years, Grandmother. All she lacks is a suitable husband.” He consulted his pocket watch.

She eyed him with a piercing stare.

“Have you become a confirmed bachelor, Robert? Has time passed you by then?”

Robert laughed and bent to kiss his grandmother’s pale cheek.

“I hope not, madam. I did not intend to remain a bachelor for the rest of my life.”

“Then why do you wait? Give me a practical reason, none of your romantic musings.”

He straightened and grinned. “I can only assure you once again that I wait for the right woman. I know it sounds foolish, but it is the truth.” He turned away toward the door. “I must go into the office to see to a few things before we leave tomorrow. I look forward to riding the train. I always do.”

Not only do I love time travel but I love this time period. I'm looking forward to reading your book, Bess! Thanks for being my guest of honor!
~Alisha