About Before I Wake ~ Travels Across Time by Mary Ellen Johnson
Historical novelist Magdalena Moore is haunted by the black-haired, black-eyed knight she first encountered during a past life regression—when he was the darkly charismatic Ranulf Navarre and she his meek, compliant Lady Jane. Such a mismatched pairing must inevitably end in betrayal and tragedy. Throughout her life, Magdalena Moore searches for a contemporary version of Ranulf Navarre. While she realizes her obsession verges on madness, Magdalena swears she does glimpse her thirteenth century knight at a medieval reenactment and a tour of a battlefield where Ranulf died fighting to unseat an unpopular king. Most unsettling of all, Magdalena uncovers an ancient document which hints at Ranulf and Lady Jane’s tempestuous relationship–and which is written in her own hand!
Like a treasure hunter, Magdalena follows clues that ultimately lead her to Tintagel Castle, where Ranulf and Lady Jane played out their disastrous relationship.
Upon visiting Tintagel’s ruins, Magdalena is miraculously transported back to thirteenth-century England, where she becomes Lady Jane and Ranulf is her husband.
But Ranulf Navarre is far from the man of Magdalena/Janey’s imagination.
Why is Ranulf so cold and Janey so erratic? What secrets are they hiding? When England plunges into civil war, Ranulf backs the wrong side—that of rebel barons against an unpopular king with vastly superior forces. Knowing her husband is destined to die in battle, Magdalena/Janey tries desperately to cheat fate, save Ranulf, and finally find happiness. But when her secrets are laid bare—or more specifically Lady Jane’s secrets—Magdalena fears Ranulf can never forgive her. And if he cannot, will they be forced to replay their doomed love yet again?
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Mary Ellen Johnson’s writing career was sparked by her passion for medieval England. Her first medieval historical, The Lion and the Leopard, was followed by The Landlord’s Black-Eyed Daughter, a historical novel based on the Alfred Noyes poem, “The Highwayman.” (Published under the pseudonym, Mary Ellen Dennis.) Landlord was chosen as one of the top 100 historical romances of 2007.
After taking a twenty-year detour in a quixotic quest to change the world–rather like Arthurian knights’ quests to find the holy grail, which ended in similar failure— Mary Ellen happily returned to historical fiction writing and her favorite time period, the tumultuous fourteenth century. Her six-book series, Knights of England, follows the fortunes of the characters (and their progeny) introduced in The Lion and the Leopard through the Black Death, the reign of that most gloriously medieval of monarchs, Edward III, the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, and ends in 1403, when the usurper king Henry IV overcomes his enemies—and lays the groundwork for the Wars of the Roses..
Mary Ellen has now turned her attention to time travel. Her four-part series will begin in Medieval England and end with the labor wars at the beginning of the 20th century. Her first time travel romance, Before I Wake, recently reached number one on Amazon’s Top 100 (Time Travel Romance.)
When not writing, Mary Ellen enjoys visiting her children and grandchildren and taking occasional trips across the pond where she can once again explore her beloved castles, cathedrals, and medieval battlefields.