I want to tell you about the biggest project on my desk right now: THE COMPLETE HOMESTEAD HERBAL APOTHECARY. This is not a little pamphlet of home remedies. It is a full-size, full-color hardcover, twenty-five chapters in five parts, built around fifty herbs and one hundred preparations. And every single herb in it is one you can actually grow in a home garden. That was a rule from day one. If you cannot grow it yourself, it does not belong in this book. The whole book has an

On a nine-square-mile island in the Inner Hebrides, a crew of mostly elderly locals just dug up a monastery that had been lost for 1,400 years. Lios Mòr, founded in the 6th century by St. Mo Luóc, who carried Christianity to the Picts. A cemetery, metalworking, carved crosses nobody in Scotland has seen the like of. Gone for fourteen centuries, and found by somebody's granddad with a trowel. This is the Scotland underneath my stories. The old world didn't vanish, it's just un

When I wrote my last post in September, I was keeping almost everything about THE VEILED a secret on purpose. I told you her name was Alara and that was about it. A lot has happened since then, so let me catch you up. The books are out in the world. Blackthorn Academy and What Lies Beneath, the first two books of THE VEILED series, are published and in readers' hands. And on October 23, I published Book Three, The Threads We Carry, the biggest book of the three and the one ev

Wow! We've been busy here at T&RP... There is now a Thistle and Rowan Press Facebook PAGE as well as a profile, so if you would, check it out and follow us. We'll post videos, new releases, etc. on there. Maria has two of the Veiled books out, Blackthorn Academy and What Lies Beneath, as well as her cookbook, Homestead Farmhouse Recipes. Jay has a revised edition of Cage of the Pawn out now, with the second book of the series, The Return of the Arch-Druid, set to go live on H

Just a quick note to let everyone know what's going on in the world of T&RP and me, your friendly neighborhood author, Jay Evans. With Cage of the Pawn, Enchanted Echoes, and Shadows in the Frame all out in print, I've been working on The Return of the Arch-Druid. This is the next novel in the Nechtan Cameron Chronicles. Cam returns to 1 Milton St. I'm not going to give any spoilers so don't expect any. That being said, I've turned my attention to a story-line that started a

For a while now, many of you have been following along as I work toward becoming a published author. My first step into that world has been through something incredibly close to my heart—food. Writing my cookbook gave me a way to put pieces of my life onto paper: recipes made in my kitchen, meals shared with my family, traditions I want to preserve, and the simple belief that some of life's best moments happen gathered around a table. But I've realized something during this j

Here's the first real update on what's going on in the Nechtan Cameron world. Cage of the Pawn is the first book. It tells the journey of Cam, Caoimhe, Iain, Owen, Ailsa, Eilidh, and the infamous Dark Druid - Diarmad Mag Uidhir. With it, you, the reader, are introduced to the main characters of the series, the world in which Nechtan Cameron resides, and how things work in that world. All the locations are actual places in Scotland, from 1 Milton St. to Loch Doon, the Isle of

Series Series title: Enchanted Echoes Author: Sorcha MacLeod Imprint: Thistle and Rowan Press, Leon, Iowa Genre: Historical fantasy / Celtic folklore / coming-of-age / generational saga Setting: Scottish Highlands, early-to-mid 16th century In the glens above Loch Shiel, the old ways have not quite died. They live in rowan at the threshold, in standing stones half-swallowed by ivy, and in the blood of those the land still calls. Enchanted Echoes follows the MacGregors wh

The long awaited debut of the Enchanted Echoes series has happened! Book One - Threads of the Old Blood is now live on Amazon as paperback and ebook. The mist clings to Loch Shiel like a widow’s shroud. Ten-year-old Alaric MacGregor sits at the water’s edge with his bare feet in the peat-dark shallows and feels something older than the kirk stones pulling at his ribs. His grandmother’s tales of selkies, kelpies, and keepers of the old blood no longer sound like stories told t

Colin R Parsons lives in South Wales UK. I met him on MySpace many years ago before either of us had actually published anything. We were just getting started. No, Colin is not a Thistle And Rowan author. He's grown into a traditionally published author, which is the dream of a lot of us indie people. He's come a long way since those days of discussing plots and characters and how/where to publish. Since then his catalogue has grown substantially: Wizards' Kingdom book 1 The

My name is Maria, and I am a 29-year-old wife, stay-at-home mom, homemaker, and home cook. I am a mother of three children, and my family is at the very center of everything I do. Our home is built around family, faith, hard work, and a love for the simple things in life. I have always believed that some of life's greatest blessings can be found in the ordinary moments: a homemade meal on the table, fresh bread cooling in the kitchen, children gathered around for dinner, and

I got this email from Geraldine W. regarding Cage of the Pawn. She hasn't read the book, just the description. I couldn't make this up if I tried. If she got all of this just from the description of the book, then she's quite perceptive because it is EXACTLY what the book is. From Geraldine W.: I have a confession. I read the description for CAGE OF THE PAWN three times. Each time, something new stopped me. Here is what I could not shake: In the grey heart of modern Edinburgh

I decided that, even though it's new, the Thistle and Rowan Press website needed a little revamping. I had some comments that it was hard to navigate and read so, I've spent quite a few hours in trying to get it a little more organized and user-friendly. I took the first chapters of Cage of the Pawn, Enchanted Echoes, and Shadows in the Frame and set them below the book descriptions on their respective pages then removed them from the Blog page. Hopefully this will be a littl

My Heritage and Research People sometimes ask where the world of Nechtan Cameron comes from. The honest answer is that it grew out of a long, quiet looking backward. I carry Scottish ancestry that reaches, through an ancient aunt, to Malcolm Wallace—father of the more famous William. I have never set foot on Scottish soil in person. What I know of the land has come through years of reading, through historical texts and folklore collections, and through long hours spent d

Coming Soon: Enchanted Echoes The old blood does not die easily. Long before Nechtan Cameron walked the modern world carrying the weight of ancient gifts, there were others who kept the thread alive in far harder times. In the shadowed glens of 16th-century Scotland, when the Kirk’s reach grew longer and the old ways were driven deeper into silence, one man stood at the heart of that quiet resistance. His name was Alaric MacGregor. Enchanted Echoes is the three-book origin st

Welcome to the Nechtan Cameron Chronicles blog. If you’ve found your way here, you’re probably curious about three things: Scotland, stories, and the strange places where myth and modern life overlap. This space is where all of that comes together. Here you’ll find: Lore and worldbuilding from the Nechtan Cameron universe Behind‑the‑scenes notes from 1 Milton Street and beyond The occasional short story or character moment that doesn’t quite fit inside a book, but still belon