DARK BREW
A time travel romance
Learn from the past or forever be
doomed to repeat it.
Accused of her husband’s murder, Kylah McKinley, a practicing Druid,
travels back through time to her past life in 1324 Ireland and brings the true
killer to justice.
Two months of hell change Kylah’s life forever. On her many
past life regressions, she returns to 14th century Ireland as Alice
Kyteler, a druid moneylender falsely accused of murdering her husband. Kylah’s
life mirrors Alice’s in one tragic event after another—she finds her husband
sprawled on the floor, cold, blue, with no pulse. Evidence points to her, and
police arrest her for his murder. Kylah and Alice shared another twist of
fate—they fell in love with the man who believed in them. As Kylah prepares for
her trial and fights to maintain her innocence, she must learn from her past or
forever be doomed to repeat it.
An interview with Diana about Dark Brew
Where did the
story come from?
The story took 12 years from start to finish. I’m a longtime member of
the Richard III Society, and in
the spring of 2004, I read an article in The
Ricardian Register by Pamela Butler, about Alice Kyteler, who lived in
Kilkenny, Ireland in 1324, and faced witchcraft charges. After her trial and
acquittal, she vanished from the annals of history. I couldn't resist writing a
book about her.
How did you decide to make it a paranormal?
I’m a believer in
reincarnation, and I go on paranormal investigations whenever I can. I’ve gone
on several past life regressions. Cape Cod has a lot of history and paranormal
activity. I’ve been on many ghost walks and ghost hunts there. I wanted to
connect Alice in the past with someone in the present, her reincarnation.
Was Alice Kyteler famous in 14th century
Ireland?
Not at all but she
was the richest woman in Kilkenny, and for that reason the villagers hated her,
especially the men. They accused her of killing her first husband, but she was
acquitted. Then they accused her of killing her fourth husband, John LePoer,
with witchcraft, the accusations more absurd than those of the 1692 witch
hysteria in Salem, Massachusetts. Chancellor Edward de Burgh arrested Alice
because her stepsons claimed she had murdered John by casting a witch’s spell with malefecia…and
she used the enchanted skull of a beheaded thief as her cauldron.
She went to trial and her dear friend Michael Artson had her acquitted,
but she vanished into the annals of history. According to legend, she went to
England. But no one knows for sure.
Why did you make it a time
travel?
Because my
heroine, Kylah McKinley, is a druid and has done many past life regressions,
she knows she’s the reincarnation of Alice. So she has to go back and find out
what happened to Alice, because too many weird things are happening to her in
this life that parallel Alice’s life.
Kylah lives on my
beloved Cape Cod. She’s a druid, a ghost hunter and owns a new age store in a
restored Revolutionary War-era tavern. She was also the target of a
hit-and-run. Another hit-and-run crippled her husband Ted. That’s no
coincidence—she’s convinced someone’s out to get them both.
She brews an ancient
Druid herb mixture, goes back in time and enters Alice’s life to find out
exactly what happened and who killed her husband.
These two months of hell change her life forever. Kylah’s
life mirrors Alice’s in one tragic event after another—she finds her husband
sprawled on the floor, cold, blue, with no pulse. Evidence points to her, and
police arrest her for his murder. Kylah and Alice shared another twist of
fate—they fell in love with the man who believed in them. As Kylah prepares for
her trial and fights to maintain her innocence, she must learn from her past or
she’s doomed to repeat it.
Have you ever
spoken to Pamela Butler, who wrote the article about Alice?
Yes, we’ve corresponded. She lives in New Mexico, so we’ve
never met in person. I asked Pam what inspired her to write about Alice. I’d never heard
of Alice until I read her article, “Witchcraft & Heresy. She replied:
“You asked why I wrote about
Alice Kyteler, who preceded Richard by a century-and-a-half. I only wrote it
because others on the listserv encouraged me to write about witchcraft, a
subject about which I knew very little. I ordered three books from Amazon.com
on the subjects of witchcraft, heresy, Satanism, etc. for research reasons.
That was my basis, plus I searched the Internet. The Malleus Malleficarum was published in 1487, just two years after
Richard's death, so it's almost contemporary. I chanced across Alice in
this reading and thought that it was an interesting case. Witch burning was
fairly rare in Ireland, and wasn't as bad in England at that time as it had
been on the Continent. I wish that the M.M. had never been published; still,
the fact that it was published and accepted may reveal the mindset of those
times.”
An excerpt from Dark Brew
Kylah shut Ted’s den
door. She couldn’t bear to look at the spot where he gasped his last breath.
His presence, an imposing force, lingered. So did his scent, a blend of
tobacco, pine aftershave and manly sweat. Each reminder ripped into her heart
like a knife. Especially now with the funeral looming ahead, the eulogies, the
mournful organ hymns, the tolling bells . . .
These ceremonies should
bring closure, but they’d only prolong the agony of her grief. She wanted to
remember him alive for a while longer, wishing she could delay these morbid
customs until the hurt subsided.
Throughout the house,
his essence echoed his personality: the wine stain on the carpet, the heap of
dirty shirts, shorts and socks piled up in the laundry room, the spattered
stove, his fingerprints on the microwave. But she couldn’t bring herself to
clean any of it up. Painful as these remnants were, they offered a strange
comfort. He still lived here.
“I’ll find that
murderer, Teddy,” she promised him over and over, wandering from room to empty
room, traces of him lurking in every corner. “I’ll do everything in my power to
make sure justice is served. Another past life regression isn’t enough anymore.
I know what I have to do now. And I promise, it will never, ever happen
again—in any future life.”
She inhaled deeply and
breathed him in. “Go take a shower, Teddy.” She chuckled through her tears as
the doorbell rang. She cringed, breaking out in cold sweat when she saw the
black sedan at the curb.
“Not again.” No sense
in hiding, so she let the detectives in.
“Mrs. McKinley, we need
your permission to do a search and take some of your husband’s possessions from
the house,” Nolan said.
“What for?” She met his
steely stare. “I looked everywhere and found nothing.”
“Mrs. McKinley, the
cupboard door was open, four jars of herbs are missing, and the autopsy showed
he died of herb poisoning. Those
herbs,” Nolan added for emphasis, as if it had slipped her feeble mind.
“Foxglove, mandrake, hemlock—and an as-yet unidentified one,” he read from a
notebook. “The M.E. determined it was a lethal dose.”
Sherlock
Holmes got nothin’ on him, she thought.
“Where’s this cupboard,
ma’am?” Egan spoke up.
“Right there.” She
pointed, its door gaping exactly the way she’d found it that night. Nolan went
over to it and peered inside.
“Ma’am, it would be
better if you left the house for a half hour or so. Please leave a number where
you can be reached,” Egan ordered.
Nolan glanced down the
hall. “Where is your bedroom?”
What could they want in
the bedroom? “It’s at the top of the stairs on the right. But we didn’t sleep
together,” she offered, as if that would faze them. It didn’t.
After giving him her
cell number, she got into her car and drove to the beach.
An hour later, she let
herself back in and looked around. They’d taken the computer, her case of CDs,
her thumb drive, her remaining herb jars, Ted’s notebooks, and left her alone
with one horrible fact: This was now a homicide case and she was the prime
suspect.
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A Recipe to Try While Reading
DARK BREW
DARK BREW is set on modern-day Cape Cod, when Kylah
isn’t traveling back in time to 1324 Ireland. I have a home on the Cape, and
spend as much time there as I can when the weather cooperates. The Cape Cod
Irish Village is a restaurant/pub/hotel where my husband and I have been going
for many years. We have a traditional Irish dinner there and dance up a storm
to the live Irish music they always have. I mention the Irish Village in DARK
BREW and their great Irish cuisine.
Traditional Irish fare has been a long-standing theme
at the Irish Village where Chef Chris Lynch has headed the kitchen for the
better part of 16 years. New American cuisine with a slant on old Irish staples
is how Chef Lynch would characterize the menu at the Irish Village. Having
spent many years honing his craft in kitchens all across the Northeast, Chris
realized that most of the guests who come to the Cape and have frequented the
Irish Village for decades in some cases want to feel at home and his team tries
to match the daily specials to their memories of meals taken at the tables of
their own families. Simple and plentiful is a formula that has kept many repeat
customers coming back to the Village year after year.
Here’s a recipe from Chris for “Breadan Eireann”
This recipe serves 4 people
Preheat oven to 375 degrees
4 ea. – 6oz Salmon Fillet
4 ea. – Jumbo Shrimp
12 oz. – medium sea scallops
4 cups mashed potato
1 cup sauteed onions & mushrooms, sliced thin
6 oz. dry sherry
8 oz. clarified butter
DIRECTIONS
In a baking dish or in individual casserole dishes
arrange salmon, scallops & shrimp closely together. Pipe mashed potatoes around salmon and
seafood encircling all of the fish. Pour
1 ½ oz. of sherry and 2 oz. of butter over the fish and potatoes. Bake in oven for approximately 20 minutes or
until salmon flakes under the touch.
Remove and top with ¼ cup sautéed onions & mushrooms. Return to oven for 2-3 minutes to finish
browning the potatoes and to heat the onions & mushrooms. Serve immediately.
