New Cover for Season of Blood!

Well, here's my new cover for Season of Blood! I love it, of course. :D Season of Blood will be released with Cobblestone Press as part of their Octoberfest celebration. I don't have an exact release date yet. When I know, so will you.

As for other news, I have contracted two more works with Cobblestone. Vali's Curse is a shifter story about the first of my werewolves. If you want to know how it all began, watch for the release of this tryst. The other is a contemporary novel titled Forgiven.

Lynx Clan: Forgiven
Kelly uses her psychic powers for good. Saxxon has been using his werewolf powers for evil. But when he escapes his abusive captors, he’s given a slim chance to be free of the torture and drugs, but will they survive long enough to find love?

I'm currently working on a romantic paranormal chicklit. Yes, you heard right. LOL It is a definite experiment, but I'm having a ton of fun writing it. Imagine a girl (Faith) who might be a werewolf, but is certainly being chased by assassins one day meets the essence of death (Nail) in a dark alley. You'd think she would be bright enough to run, but she doesn't. Not this time. This time she strikes the first blow and from the moment she presses her lips to his, they are both goners. There are of course problems with this match made in hell. The first of which seems to be that she can only date him when she's asleep. The worst of which is that she is being sent to the home territory of the assassins and expected to talk them into stopping their attempts to kill her...

Watch for Dead Men's Nails: Kindred Spirit coming soon to a publisher near you.

Shannon
writing to "figured you out"
Faith: I will date whoever I like! Yes, even the dead dude!

Good Guys, Bad Guys and building your Characters

I write character driven stories. Some might call it a fault, but I know what works for me. And what works is getting to know my characters and then turning them loose with the conflicts that I come up with for them. I do start off my rough draft with a general chapter outline of what I think will happen and when, but sometimes they simply don't react the way I expect.

This week I'll be working on my paranormal chicklit, Dead Men's Nails. I've set this up as a fast paced trilogy. The books will be Kindred Spirit, Arms of Death, and Body and Soul. I have specific things that I need to happen at certain points to make the series work and already my characters are making demands that I will probably give in to.

First I'll share a little bit about my characters.
Faith - tells the story in first person. She is coping with a lot of stress and then she meets a man/being that she finds hard to resist even if he does add to her problems.
Nail - He's not human, has no place in her world, but needs to bask in the light that surrounds Faith.
Jenna - Faith's werewolf bodyguard and friend
Angel - Faith's friend who happens to be half demon
Jason - Jenna's human boyfriend or ex-boyfriend depending on who you ask.

You might notice that everyone on the list above is good guys (more or less). I started this story without bad guys because my good guys were causing enough trouble all on their own. Now I have 60 pages written and badly need bad guys. *sigh* So I started thinking about where they would be be and who they would be interacting with and who might cause the biggest problems for them. Seeing as Faith has people out to kill her I needed to find out who and why.

The why wasn't too hard. Faith is the daughter of the Keeper of Records for the Valafrn Clans. This is a super traditional role and completely inherited through mortals, passed mother to daughter. Faith is next in line. BUT Faith's father is Athair who is Valafrn which is also inherited. So Faith should be a Valafrn werewolf as well as the human Keeper. Both are mutually exclusive. So magically speaking she is trapped in a middle place, with unreliable magic. No one knows if she will have a short mortal life or the longevity of the Valafrn. And many of the most traditional elders believe this goes against all that it means to be Keeper and some of them are willing ot risk the loss of the records to hold onto their traditions. Doesn't make sense but there it is. They want her dead to prove she can die.

The who took some thinking. Kindred Spirit takes place in the summer and I want them to have to deal with uncomfortable heat. I decided on a clan located somewhere hot and tropical, but for this book I want to stick to the US. My location is still slightly up in the air, but the clan will be one that fits into its area. This time it will be the Snake Clan. As if that wasn't going to cause problems enough I wanted the Clan to have some internal troubles. So I have the Snake Clan from Eurasia come to take over a splinter clan called the Cottonmouth Clan. By doing so it leaves a pair of unhappy Alphas that are being forced to follow another pair, which like most alphas, they don't follow well.

The interesting thing is that sometimes while looking for information on one character, I accidentally create another. It just so happened with the Bushmaster. While researching snakes and characteristics, locations and habitats, I came across the Bushmaster pit viper of South America, and I immediately liked him. For good or evil, this guy just took hold and grew almost on his own. The snake is 12 feet of solitary poisonous danger- my kind of guy, but should he be a good guy or a bad guy? I haven't decided, and neither has he. LOL So I'm going to turn him loose in the story as a wildcard and see what happens.

So there you have it. Now I have bad guys. Although I still need names for them, I'm not too concerned because I think those will come easy enough. Bad guys will be the leaders of clans, but not all four. Oh and don't forget Melvin. He will make his debute in Kindred Spirit too.

Shannon
about to write to Institute.

Playing catch up

Hi everyone.

Due to some summer family activities, I've been a bit out of the loop. But this week I'll be catching up on all those behind things. So if I owe you something, feel free to mention it. :) And I'll push it to the top of the pile.

Shannon