I Solemnly Swear to Continue to be Up To No Good

I've got another book reformatted and ready to go--this one's a previous Ellora's Cave title and one of my favorites, Lady of the Seals.

Please note this is an Elizabeth Jewell title, so it's an erotic romance, so if that's not your cuppa, be warned. And it's a Scottish selkie story, so if that IS your cuppa, go grab it!

Special offer for blog readers--if you go to Smashwords, you can get the story at half-price with the code TW63G.

It's also available at Amazon. 

What I've Been Up To

December and January have been a bit weird for me. There’s been a lot of work, but also a lot of down time. I’ve spent tons of time with family, from gatherings with my now-local parents, sister, niece and nephew and respective significant others, to a visit from my son, who’s still headquartered in Colorado while he finishes up college. December saw the release of Call Me Zhenya, a book I still really like. Based on the reviews, some other people like it, too.

There’s also been a big drop-off in client work, which is typical for the holiday season. It always worries me, though. I’ve been filling the time planning for 2017, promoting Zhenya, and working on some new projects. I’m writing a sequel to Zhenya with the working title Code Name Anya. You can follow a rather cryptic chronicle of my progress on Pinterest. This is where I dump research material, inspirational photos, and other bits and pieces while I’m working on a book. Zhenya has a board, too. Just think of it as a glimpse inside my brain.

I’m also tackling a big project I’ve been picking at for ages, and that’s reformatting all the books I’ve published through Notes on Vellum. I’m making the interiors way prettier using Vellum (no relation), and I’m redoing some covers. The first book to get the treatment is Sweetest Songs. (For some reason the new cover isn’t showing for me on Amazon, although it’s showing on my KDP dashboard. This is what it should look like—)

Sweetest Songs is a little darker and sadder than most of my books, with a bittersweet ending. The hero goes through a process of change that’s painful for him, but at the other side of loss he finds his way to a new and better version of himself. I hope you’ll give it a look.

Finding Anna--the Doctor Who Connection (More about Call Me Zhenya)

When I write, I find it really helpful to find real people to "play" my characters while I'm spinning the story in my head. Sometimes I base them on pictures I find in magazines, but in most cases I cast an actor or another well-known personality, and incorporate some of their quirks into my characterization. It helps the characters come to life for me, and makes it easier to write about them.

In this post, I talked a little about how I tuned in to the character of Evgeni. It was finding my Evgeni that got this version of the story moving along. But I also had to find Anna before I could really get underway.

Anna was a shakier process. Originally, I had pictured Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Eliza Dushku), but as the story changed into its current form, that didn't quite work. While I was doing my initial work, the news arrived that Elisabeth Sladen had passed away. Elisabeth played Sarah Jane Smith in Doctor Who back in the 80s and also in some of the more recent incarnations of the show. She was the first companion I saw, when I started watching Doctor Who with Tom Baker's first story, "Robot," back when the original series was being broadcast on PBS.

Right away, I wanted Anna to be a sort of tribute to Elisabeth Sladen. But she herself didn't quite work for me in the head canon of the role. I named Anna Slaten in her honor (yes, I changed it a little--it just seemed like the right name for Anna although, as an aside, for some reason I kept also calling her Stanten, and had to weed out those typos in the last few drafts), and then started looking at other Doctor Who companions to fill her role. I tried Karen Gillan for a while, but that didn't work. Finally, while I was catching up with some episodes, I hit upon "Planet of the Dead," and the one-time companion Christina, played by Michelle Ryan. She was a kickass type who liked to wear black, and she immediately felt like the right face to put on my Anna Slaten.

I also "cast" Delgrado. This was a strange process, because I had him pictured very clearly in my head, but then couldn't place the face of the actor who had taken him over (this isn't the first time this has happened...). Finally I realized he was Clark Gregg, Agent Coulson from the Marvel movies and now Agents of SHIELD.

You can take a look at all my "casting" photos as well as some other research materials I used for the book on my Pinterest account. And please take a swing by my Kindle Scout page and drop me a vote!

How "Call Me Zhenya" Came to Be

This week, I'm going to spend some time talking about my Kindle Scout book, Call Me Zhenya, and how I came to write it. Next week, I'll be encore-posting some blog posts I did over at Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers about Kindle Scout and the Scouting process. I hope you'll enjoy a peek inside my creative process (aka--KK's brain is freakin' weird).

You might get tired of seeing this cover.
I won't. It's pretty. *pets*

The seed idea for this book hit me several years ago. I was watching an episode of Angel (first-run--I told you it's been a while...), during the Season Four arc when Angelus was unleashed. There's a scene where Wesley Wyndham-Pryce (STILL BITTER, JOSS WHEDON) breaks Faith out of prison so she can go do her vampire-slaying thang. She was in prison voluntarily, atoning for her sins from way back in Season One (and Season Four of Buffy the Vampire Slayer), but they needed her, so she took a fancy dive through a glass window and high-tailed it out with Wes. (Which, frankly, any lady in her right mind would do, because, hello, Wesley Wyndham-Pryce.)

That scene got me thinking. What if a spy were in prison voluntarily, taking a hit for something that happened in an operation that wasn't her fault? That evolved into having her there for protective custody. Then another spy comes to let her out. And what if that spy were the man who betrayed her? Or the man who killed her lover?

The idea sat in my ideas folder for a long time, just called "Spy Girl." I'd thought about writing it to submit to a specific publisher, but then the line at that publisher was discontinued before I got the manuscript underway. So it continued to incubate.

Evgeni Malkin, Russian Werewolf Spy

A few years later, my BFF and I were talking about story ideas, hockey player fic, and specifically Evgeni Malkin. (This was the same type of conversation that led to me writing Blood on the Ice, which started with "Vampire hockey. Go.") At some point, one of us said, "Evgeni Malkin, Russian Werewolf Spy." Maybe she said it, maybe I did--I don't actually remember. But that made me start thinking about "Spy Girl" again, and suddenly the whole story fell into place. The Spy Girl, inspired by Faith, became Anna, who's been sitting in a prison in Barrow, Alaska for two years under what she was told would be temporary protective custody. Then along comes Evgeni Belyakov, Russian Werewolf Spy, an assassin who's been having second thoughts about an assignment he was involved in two years ago. Poking around in places he wasn't supposed to, he found out things he shouldn't have. And now he's going to atone by breaking Anna out of prison. Because if she stays there, the Agency that promised to protect her is going to kill her to prevent the information inside her genetically enhanced superbrain from falling into enemy hands.

So that's the story of the story. I hope you'll take a minute to drop by and vote. I had a hell of a lot of fun writing this book, and I think you'll have a hell of a lot of fun reading it.

Big Announcement! New Book on Kindle Scout!

I’ve got a new book ready to go, and I need your help!

Over the past few months, I’ve been getting a manuscript ready to submit to Kindle Scout. Scout is a platform on Kindle where readers get to help Amazon decide what books to publish. It’s a little like Kickstarter, in that your votes are part of the process that gets the book picked for publication, but you don’t have to pledge money. All you have to do is vote.

At the end of the voting period, if my book is chosen and you voted for it, you’ll automatically get a free copy. If it’s not chosen, I’ll make it available at a low introductory price as soon as possible after the voting closes, and I’ll have a contest to give away a few free copies.

So I need your votes! The campaign runs for thirty days. Here’s the URL—go check out the excerpt and add me to your Scouting list!

He'll risk his own humanity to save her life.

Short-term protective custody, they said. But two years later, Anna Slaten—and the data locked inside her enhanced brain—is still behind bars.

Evgeni Belyakov seeks atonement. Two years ago, the wolf shifter/assassin did what he was ordered to do. Since then, he’s learned the ugly truth about the Agency. And that Anna is next on their hit list. But saving her could mean risking everything. His heart. His secrets. And surrendering control to the most dangerous creature of all. His wolf.

Cover Reveal! And some Book Recs

Drum roll, please....

Below is the cover for my upcoming release, Summoning Sebastian, from Samhain. It'll be coming out this August. It's a followup to Necromancing Nim. If you read Nim, you'll know there were some loose ends left behind. This book ties them up.

 

And some book recs. I did some editing work on both of these, and they're both very good, very involving stories.

 

When the mine waste dam above them broke, it scoured the entire valley clean of all vegetation and many inhabitants. Almost every family lost a loved one or more, as well as their homes, gardens, and live stock. Worst of all they lost a sense of dependability and security. Life would never be the same. Clary Gibson was determined that her son, Ben, would not spend his adulthood deep in the coal mines of West Virginia digging for coal—like his ancestors. Her husband, a proud miner, wanted nothing more than having Ben join him in the mine. The marriage which had been rock solid, took a near fatal blow while they tried to put their lives back together, as well as cope with opposite dreams for their children. A very emotional, involving read. (Warnings for child loss.)

This is a really powerful book, but it can be difficult to read. If you have trigger issues, be sure to read the synopsis first to see if it might be an issue. I can disclose that it does have a happy ending. It's an amazing story about an amazing woman. It was a great honor to work with her to get her story out.

 

Blood on the Ice--Out Today!!

My new book, Blood on the Ice, debuts today from Samhain! Check out the excerpt below, and I hope you'll check out the whole book!
 

Chapter Fifteen

He woke to pitch blackness, and for a few seconds he couldn’t remember where he was. Panic rose, but he was too sluggish to react to it.

And he was hungry. So fucking hungry. Even paralyzed in the blackness, his body and brain not quite transitioned to nighttime consciousness, he was hungry.

The blackness receded, as if his eyes hadn’t quite started working yet when he’d awakened. Returning consciousness prickled along his arms and hands, his brain, like circulation returning to numb limbs.

He was never going to get used to this.

As soon as he could, he sat up and groped for the bottle of pills on the nightstand. He popped two into his mouth, letting them dissolve on his tongue. The hunger eased, feeling more like a normal early-morning craving for eggs and a bagel and less like a crazed badger setting up a home under his rib cage.

He made his way downstairs, tiptoeing because the silence of the place seemed far too...silent. He was loath to break it, not because he liked the quiet but because he was afraid it might become corporeal and attack him if he disturbed it.

Downstairs seemed more normal. He could hear the vague sounds of traffic from below, a siren wailing somewhere, a screech of brakes as someone narrowly avoided an accident. The refrigerator hummed. He opened it, took out a bottle of blood.

He felt like he was physically holding the hunger back as he waited for the blood, transferred to a highball glass, to heat in the microwave. Don’t try to rush it, he remembered, watching the LED numbers count down.

He had to concentrate to keep from chugging the blood, instead rolling it over his tongue, letting the flavor settle. He savored it, feeling the hunger recede as the blood washed warm through him. He’d finished the first glass and set the refill in the microwave when he heard his cell phone tweedling from the bedroom. He dragged himself away from the hypnotic spectacle of his breakfast turning around and around on the carousel to go find it.

By the time he retrieved the phone from the bedside table, it had stopped ringing and made the beeping noise that alerted him to a voicemail. He looked at the call history. Marc. He called back as he made his way back downstairs.

“Hey!” Marc answered on the second ring. “Turn on CSN Chicago.” The connection clicked off.

Travis grabbed a TV remote and did as told. As the microwave dinged in the kitchen, his own face appeared on the TV screen in all its widescreen, high-definition glory. His pores looked like a small child could swim in them.

“...makes his debut tonight at Cobra Stadium in the team’s third game this season against the Detroit Damnation. These teams are bitter rivals, and their last confrontation ended in a shootout, with Detroit coming out on top after the fourth round. Sources from inside the Cobra organization say Payne’s more disciplined, team-based play style has already had an effect on the Cobra’s practice sessions...”

The door swung open and Marc ambled in, joining Travis in front of the TV. Travis gave him a startled look.

“I still have the key.” He eyed Travis sidelong, the corner of his mouth curling.

Travis nodded, wondering if he should ask for the key back. The smirk on Marc’s face made Travis think he probably should, or Marc would take advantage. Mulling, he turned back to the TV.

“...in the meantime,” the announcer continued, “controversy continues to rage over Payne’s right to have his name engraved on the Stanley Cup after the Hawks’ victory last spring. Payne played in all but two regular-season games and every game in the playoffs until the finals against the NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers. Under normal circumstances, he would be eligible for inclusion on the Cup, but the league has shown reluctance due to questions regarding his changed status.”

The NHL commissioner’s face appeared on the screen then. Travis was happy to note that his pores looked even more spacious than his own had.

“We still don’t know the circumstances of this incident. If Payne chose to be Turned, then he has no reason to complain. And it’s my understanding that very few full transformations are involuntary. It requires a certain level of cooperation from the ‘victim.’”

“You smarmy motherfucker,” Travis muttered. Then he fell silent again as Susan’s face replaced that of the commissioner.

“Travis Payne was Turned involuntarily, and there is a pending police investigation regarding the identity of the individual responsible. Mr. Payne is no more responsible for his change in circumstance then was Vladimir Konstantinov of the Detroit Red Wings after his devastating car accident in 1997. And, as we all know, Konstantinov’s name is, indeed, on the Cup. In fact, it’s on the Cup for the 1998 win, during which season he never played due to his injuries. Travis Payne’s should be allowed, as well.”

“And there you have it.” The main announcer dominated the screen now. “Yet another blatant act of prejudice against the vampire race. Only this time it looks like we have a human on our side. Best of luck, Ms. Harris, with your crusade for justice, and best of luck to you, Mr. Payne, in your LVH debut tonight.”

The coverage switched then to a story about the Eastern European vampire rugby league. Travis flicked off the TV, a little stunned.

“I just called her last night. Or way early this morning. She wasn’t even awake.”

“She’s a good agent,” said Marc. He punched Travis in the shoulder. “And you, my friend, are a big fucking deal.”

Travis just shook his head. He’d known all this was going on, but seeing it on a fifty-inch TV was a bit different from watching clips on YouTube.

There was a moment of silence, not quite awkward but not quite comfortable, then Marc said, “I’m keeping your key.”

Travis didn’t look at him. “Fine. God knows when you might have to bust in here to save me from myself.” He finally gave Marc a sidelong look, his mouth twisting into something that didn’t really feel like a smile. He knew damn well that wasn’t why Marc was keeping the key. “Let’s face it—I’m still kind of a shit vampire.”

Marc chuckled and dragged a hand across Travis’s back, the touch lighting up Travis’s skin in ways he wasn’t entirely comfortable with. “Not going to argue with that,” Marc said. He waved toward the kitchen, where the microwave was still blinking. “Finish your breakfast. Game’s in four hours.”

Coming Soon, plus New Cover!

Coming soon from Shara Azod, LLC:

Snow: White Tiger Shifters Series

Jayanti is pissed. The last thing she knew, she was cavorting with tigers in Rewa, India. Then suddenly she's abducted and dragged off to a zoo in the US with no safe way to shift back to her human form.

Dr. Logan Carter, DVM, has worked his whole life to try to preserve white tigers. When an apparently wild white tiger arrives at his zoo, he sees hope for a new genetic line to revitalize the animal.

But it's not long before Logan discovers his new tiger isn't what she appears to be. And that's when things really start to get interesting...

New Book on the Way!

Taylor Pyatt. He sat on my casting couch and he liked it.

Today is October first. What does that mean? Opening night for the NHL, of course. It also means I'm going to announce a new book.

I just signed a contract with Samhain Publishing to publish my book Blood on the Ice, a literary look at the importance of... no, that's not right.

It's about vampires who play professional hockey. If you see anything particularly literary in it, please shoot it.

On the eve of the Stanley Cup Finals, Travis Payne of the Chicago Blackhawks intervenes in a vampire attack outside a bar where he and his friends are celebrating. The vampires in question turn on him, and just plain Turn him.

Waking up in the Warm Room of the Cook County morgue, Travis discovers his whole life has been turned upside down. He can never play for the NHL again. Fortunately, there's the VHL--the vampire-only league--and his contract is transferred to the Chicago Cobras.

Marcus Antonius, ex-gladiator, has been a vampire since the days of Julius Caesar. He's also the Cobras' captain. He takes on the job of mentoring Travis, helping him adjust to his new team, his new life, and his shifting views of sexuality (that last one means there's lots of vampire sex...).

I'll be talking more about this book in the future, as we get closer to the release date. It's scheduled for next year, but I don't have a final publication date yet. In the mean time, visit the Pinterest board where I've assembled a lot of my research materials and my "casting couch." I've added some short excerpts so you can have an advance taste of the rest of the novel.

And be sure to tune in tonight to see the Blackhawks decimate the Washington Capitals!! :-D

As If You Never Left Me--Sunday Snog

Another Sunday--another excerpt. And since As If You Never Left Me comes out TOMORROW from Crimson Romance, this Sunday's snog will give you another glimpse at Rey and Joely's story.

The snowballs flew crazily for several frenzied minutes. She screeched and he hollered, she laughed and he let out great howls of mirth. She barely missed his head; he came within inches of hitting her square in the face with a slushy projectile. Finally, emboldened by laughter and adrenaline, she slipped out from behind her fort, then darted across the snow to sneak behind his fort and dump her last three snowballs down the back of his shirt.

He howled in protest and grabbed her, pinning her arms behind her. “I don’t even have a decent coat and you do that to me?”

Immobilized against his strong chest, she could do nothing but look up into his laughing face. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You’re right, I’m not.”

“Then neither am I,” he said, and kissed her.

His lips were icy cold but the inside of his mouth was warm, his tongue hot as it stroked against her lips. She opened to him, pressing hard into his heat. Snow and cold forgotten, she sought only that warmth, that union. His mouth on hers, soft and mobile, his tongue pressing softly against hers. He pulled her close, his hands sliding down her back.

She clutched at his coat, so absorbed it was a few long seconds before she registered the cold, the wet. As she pulled back, he ducked forward, his mouth still seeking hers even as she ended the kiss.

“You’re soaked,” she said. “We should get you inside.”

He dipped his head one more time toward her, and when he missed, he smiled a little and said, “Yeah. My shoes are full of snow and my jeans are soaked.”

“You’re going to catch pneumonia.” Fighting the reluctance of her entire body, she took a step back. Her hand sought his, unwilling to break the connection totally. “Come on. I’ll make you some hot cocoa.”

Humpday Hump

Sharing an excerpt from my upcoming release from Crimson Romance: As If You Never Left Me for Marteeka Karland's Humpday Hump blog hop.

***********

With the Jeep in low gear, she trundled over the uneven, snowy ground until they were shielded by a stand of evergreens.

“Back seat?” he said, mischief in his eyes.

“Damn straight,” she answered, adjusting the driver’s seat as she spoke, moving it forward as far as it would go.

Braving the cold, they got out and climbed into the back seat. Before Joely had quite closed the door, Rey had caught hold of her, dragging her across the back seat, half into his lap. He kissed her, devouring her mouth while his hands slid down her back, cupped her ass. His tongue pressed in, tangling with hers.

Joely laughed. "What?" Rey said, almost as if in protest.

She shook her head, unable really to explain. It just struck her funny, that they were about to make love in the backseat of a car, like teenagers afraid of getting caught by their parents.

He grinned at her, eyes twinkling, and she sensed that he understood. She smiled back. That was the way they had always been—in synch, practically reading each other's minds. It felt good to have that back.

She grappled with the snap on his jeans, with the zipper, finding it quite difficult to get them unfastened while he was sitting. But she managed to get them open, and to work the jeans down his hips and partway down his thighs. He was already firmly erect, and as she worked the jeans down, he worried a rather bent condom package out of his pocket and laid it on the seat next to him.

She smiled up at him, not sure why that particular gesture touched her so much. Maybe because it proved he'd planned ahead, or maybe because it proved he was thinking about protecting her. Either way, it made her warm. Made her love him.

She maneuvered into an uncomfortable sitting position on the floor between the driver's seat and the back seat. She'd positioned the driver's seat to its farthest forward position, so there was some room, but it wasn’t quite enough. Still, she could make do. She adjusted until she was relatively comfortable, sitting between Rey's open knees. He looked down at her, heavy-lidded, lips slightly parted, and put his hand on her head, combing his fingers into her hair. He knew what was coming. Not forcing it, but obviously anticipating it.

She smiled. Tenting her fingertips against his knees, she traced them up his thighs, then back down. His eyes closed and he let his head settle back against the headrest with a soft sigh of contentment.

She slipped her fingers again along his thighs, up to his belly, dropped a fingertip into his navel, lifted it back out again, carefully circumnavigating even the dark curls of his pubic hair. Then, with no preamble, she bent and took him into her mouth. He jumped, gasped, and she chuckled, licking him.

He filled her mouth as well as he did her body, and the taste of his skin brought back memories of other back seats, other blowjobs, quickly going down on him behind bushes at dusk on the college quad. She took him in, deep, all the way to the back of her throat, smiling at the way he fit perfectly against the back of her palate. She had missed that. They fit together like puzzle pieces. His hands fisted gently in her hair and he began to pulse his hips. It felt good. He tasted good. Faster, deeper, and she brought up a hand to curl her fingers around him as he thrust, working his skin, feeling the hardness beneath it. Then, abruptly, he stopped, and drew her head up.

"Inside," he said. "I want to come inside you."

Cover Reveal--As If You Never Left Me--Coming Soon from Crimson Romance

I'm a bit behind on this, and if you follow me on Twitter and/or Facebook, you've seen this already, but here's the cover of my upcoming book from Crimson Romance, As If You Never Left Me. This is a reprint of a book that was originally released by Ellora's Cave. If you didn't read it in its previous incarnation, I hope you'll check it out!

Rey and Joely Birch had what they thought was a perfect marriage. Then, suddenly, it all fell apart. Joely left Rey in a fit of anger, moving halfway across the country to make a new life for herself in Colorado.

Now, fourteen months later, she’s happy with how things are going, running a classy boutique in the mountains, creating ceramic art, and seeing her business already in the black. But then one day she looks up and Rey is standing in the middle of her shop. Sexy as ever and asking for a second chance. The last thing Joely wants is to let herself be hurt again. But he’s still Rey, still the man she fell in love with, still the man who can send her heart racing with a look. And Joely’s having a very hard time resisting him.

Rey knows he screwed up the best thing he ever had when he let Joely slip away. Now he has a chance to prove to her he can be the right man for her again. He wants time to be her husband again, to show her how he truly feels. And it looks like she’s going to give it to him. She’s willing to accept a date—even willing to let him sleep on the couch in her tiny mountain cabin. Bit by bit, he’ll chip away at the wall she’s built around herself. A piece at a time, he’ll put his heart back together for her.
But will his carefully laid plans disintegrate when she finds out what really brought him to Colorado?

Things That Are Going On, AKA Busy McBusyson

Photo by jayofboy, via www.sxc.hu/

The last few weeks have been a bit crazy—well, crazier than usual—and there’s some news, which I’ll condense into one blog post instead of like nine zillion of them…

Dealing With David is now out in paperback! Check it out at the usual outlets:
Samhain Publishing Amazon Barnes and Noble

I also have a reprint on the way from Crimson Romance. As If You Never Left Me, a contemporary romance originally published with Ellora’s Cave under the name Elizabeth Jewell, will be available from Crimson on April 29. It’s been revised a bit for the new version.

Speaking of my Evil Twin, Elizabeth Jewell is up to her usual evilness. She just released a short story called “Valentine’s Special” with Shara Azod, LLC. It’s available at Shara’s site, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and All Romance eBooks. Ms. Jewell will also be announcing a new release with Changeling Press: Café Midnight: Chai Latte, written with Marteeka Karland. It’s scheduled for release at the end of March. 

I'm also going to put together a page for appearances, because it looks like I'm, well, making some appearances. As in showing up places and being on panels 'n' stuff. So that'll be a new way for me to get into trouble... I for one am looking forward to it.

Kicking the Tropes to the Curb

I talked a little bit about how I came to write Necromancing Nim in my last post (or the one before that—I don’t remember. You really expect me to keep track of my own blog? C’mon, people, that’s hard!). Now’s the part of the show where I admit that part of my motivation for writing this book involved me reacting to urban fantasy tropes.

It seems like urban fantasy has brought two major tropes into its fold over time. These are the Extremely Broken Protagonist and the Whiney Moany Love Triangle. Now, the EBP is pretty common in fiction across the board. This bugs me. Why does everybody in a book have to have a horrible past with parental abuse and tragic circumstances and a great-aunt who turned out to be a demon who put magically noxious chocolate chips in her Christmas cookies? It gets a bit tiresome, in my opinion, and after a while it stops being a character development tool and turns into a cliché. So Nim isn’t Horribly Broken. She’s actually a fairly functional adult (well, maybe not entirely functional since she’s a lot like your dear author-person) with a mostly normal family life. I think the worst thing her parents ever did to her was decide not to pay for braces.

Which brings us to the Whiney Moany Love Triangle (tangentially, I guess, but since a triangle is a geometric concept why not have tangents, too?). Nearly every urban fantasy heroine these days has to have two hot guys (sometimes more—see Sookie Stackhouse) who want in her pants. And then she’s all… omg I love them both whatever shall I do? At which point I yell at the book, “Bang them both and quit whining, for the love of everything!”

So Nim, being the practical, straightforward and flexible gal that she is, bangs them both. And they bang each other. And everybody’s happy! Perfect world, right?

Now if they could just figure out how to deal with that whole turning people into mindless vampire zombies thing...

Now Available! Necromancing Nim

Necromancing Nim arrived today from Samhain Publishing, available at all your usual ebook outlets. In honor of this auspicious occasion, here are some words of wisdom from Nim herself.

"Vampires aren’t great with plants."

"Word of advice—if you’re ever hiding something in your house that you know evil vampires are after, leave it in plain sight on the kitchen table. Otherwise, you’re going to be left with a lot of cleanup work after they turn your house upside down trying to find it."

"The Englewood Police Department is much like any other suburban police department. There are places to wait, places to fill out paperwork, places to be intimidated, interrogated or incarcerated. It’s always a little wackier at night. At night, there are more drunks, more vampires and more drunk vampires. The cops who work there after dark are also quite a bit testier, or at least that’s been my experience."

"God save me from Alpha males."

"Sometimes it’s good to be a bitch."

 Get to know more about Nim Taylor and her two vampire, um... "special friends" in Necromancing Nim.

Necromancing Nim--Advance Review

My new book, Necromancing Nim, isn't out until next Tuesday (10-23), but it's already gotten a great advance review from Night Owl Reviews. Thanks to Night Owl and Zollyanna for the Top Pick review!

Here's an excerpt:

"Necromancing Nim by Katriena Knights is a fast-paced paranormal romance that is engaging and will hold your attention. The characters are well-rounded and seem to leap off the page making you feel as if you are right there living the story with them. The story does get hot. Katriena Knights’ made sure the story flowed very well, and I look forward to reading more of her books. I won’t hesitate to suggest this book to anyone. It is a great book to read and I will definitely be reading it again." --Zollyanna at Night Owl Reviews

Necromancing Nim--Coming Soon!!

When last we spoke—a nearly unforgivably long time ago (please forgive me, omg)—I was yammering about learning Russian and posting still more pictures of Evgeni Malkin. Today I’m going to yammer about something else. My new book! Which is coming out really soon! A week from tomorrow, in fact!

You can read what it’s about at the buy links. I’m going to tell you how I came to write it.

(Here, have a buy link: Necromancing Nim)

When I first started writing with intent to publish, I focused on science fiction and fantasy because that was what I loved the most. Later, after some failures in that area, I moved to romance because it was a big market and I discovered I liked reading it far more than I’d expected. These interests became a big mish-mash that eventually turned into paranormal and futuristic romance.

I don’t think I’d heard the term Urban Fantasy back then. I’m not sure it was a term that was being bandied about much at the time. But I knew I liked books that mixed contemporary settings with paranormal elements, which was what I found myself writing with my paranormal romance.

When Urban Fantasy started becoming a “thing,” I decided I wanted to write one. I’d had a character name knocking around my head for a while, but I wasn’t sure what she would be up to once I started writing about her. Finally, one afternoon at work when I was bored, I put pen to paper and started fiddling with a first person perspective to see what would come out. I remember it was a red pen. I even remember exactly what kind of pen. I won’t go into detail because you probably don’t care, but this just demonstrates that my brain is weird.

I wrote a couple of pages and quit. First person is hard, yo! Especially when you’ve never really written that way. But I picked it up again later. People kept posting writing challenges on Live Journal, and I’d go back to the book and use it to meet the challenge criteria. I joined NaNoWriMo and managed to add about 30,000 words during that November. Then it languished until the next November, when I added another 20 or 30K. I think I went through three NaNoWriMos with the same manuscript before I finally finished it.

(Here, have another buy link: Necromancing Nim at Amazon. I'm trying to be subtle. Is it working?)

Then I started rewriting. I rewrote the first third I don’t know how many times trying to get the voice to work. Because I wrote it over such an extended period of time, the pieces didn’t always fit together right. Something I set up in the first section would be completely contradicted in the second. So I tore out a lot and put in new stuff. My best friend and critique partner informed me she hated a big chunk, so I redid that bit, too. (She was right. She almost always is.)

I submitted it. I got rejections. I got a request for a full from two different places. I was happy. Then I got more rejections. I put it away for a while again.

Finally I resurrected the story and sent it to my editor at Samhain. I’d done still more revisions between the last rejection and this submission, trying to address some of the issues the rejectors in question had brought up. And finally, Nim found a home. We changed the title, added quite a few scenes, cleared up some inconsistencies, buffed and polished and all that jazz. I’m pretty happy with the final result.

(Have a Nook? Here, try this link: Necromancing Nim.)

I do have to warn my readers, though, that this book is very different from previous books I’ve published. I think it has a lot of similarities to the Vampire Apocalypse series, but it’s not a sweet-ish romance. The heroine has hard edges on her. There are two heroes. There are ménage shenanigans. There are vampire shenanigans. There’s a hell of a lot of swearing (sorry, Mom). But there’s a lot of emotion and humor and action and Nim is pretty kickass, in my overly biased opinion. So I hope you’ll give it a look, and I hope you’ll enjoy it.

EXCERPT:

Fangs-deep in debt? Visit Bernstein & Carter for full-service financial management, structured with the modern vampire in mind. Visit us today at our convenient Lower-Lower Downtown location. Vampire-Owned and Registered in Denver, Colorado since 1972.—from the Bernstein & Carter Financial Services brochure.

Chapter One

Working for a vampire is fun. Vampires are cool, and the coolness rubs off. People are scared of you because they think your boss might bite them if they piss you off. At parties, you can tell people you work for a vampire, and their eyes get big and they take a step back, and for a few seconds, they can’t quite eat their crab puffs. And the vampire boss is always rich and hot, with a nice car and a penchant for cute human girls.

At least, that’s the way it always is on TV. But my vampire boss is an asshole, and I, the cute human girl, work in collections, because I suck as a receptionist.

Tonight, collections meant standing in the middle of the sidewalk at eleven-thirty p.m., under a shot-out streetlight, staring at the looming, gloomy house that was the target of my current appointment. The neighborhood, about five miles south of Denver, wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either; one of those odd residential pockets in Englewood that had never settled into all-human or all-vamp dwellings. Cute, cheery little ranch homes sat cheek by jowl with narrow, windowless vamp townhouses. This house was among the latter. I was beginning to think flipping burgers for humans would have been a better option than approaching whatever organizationally challenged vamp lived behind that decidedly unwelcoming front door. Hell, if it was all about working for vampires, serving blood shots at the local fang bar would be better than this.

But Colin, my asshole vampire boss of two years, had put this address on the top of my list of stops for tonight, so knocking on the door was my job.

“Mitch totally fucked this one up,” he’d said. “Pissed his pants and ran away like a little girl. You take it tonight—I want it done.”

I decided not to point out that, unlike Mitch, I actually was a girl. And little. “Why?”

“You make more than Mitch. If you get eaten, or I have to fire you for rabbitting, it’ll be financially advantageous.” He gave me a look that wasn’t that much different from his usual dissatisfied glare and so was open for interpretation. “Plus, you won’t screw it up.”

Hard to argue with that. It was the closest he’d ever come to complimenting me. So I’d taken the clipboard and headed out to find out why Mitch—who was, in all honesty, kind of a natural fuck-up—had pissed himself.

After sparing another minute to frown and sulk, I headed up the sidewalk to the house that had been Mitch’s undoing. With the streetlight gone and the porch light off, it was dark and disturbing. Yeah, I have night-vision goggles—it’s a necessity in my line of work—but they make everything green, and they don’t quite fit right. Tonight’s full moon and clear sky made them optional, so I’d opted against.

In any case, it was up to me—all five feet nothing and a hundred and mumble pounds of me—to go to the door and tell the vampire who lived there that we were going to impound his HDTV if he didn’t cough up four months’ worth of back payments, interest and administrative charges. Something told me he wasn’t going to be happy.

I gave my jacket pockets a last check—Taser, pepper spray, garlic, squirt gun full of holy water, properly licensed, thank you very much—and stepped through the gloomy dark to the gloomy front door of the gloomy, windowless house.

I knocked. And waited. Knocked again. Finally, HDTV Guy answered his door. His shirt buttons were askew, and he had a drip of blood at the corner of his mouth. God, I didn’t even want to know.

“Good evening. I’m Nimuë Taylor, from Bernstein & Carter,” I announced. “I regret to inform you—”

“I talked to you assholes last night,” TV Guy interrupted. “Told that little shit not to come back.”

I pressed my lips together and gave him an annoyed head-tilt, eyes narrowed. Not that I managed to be intimidating, since I resemble a shaggy-headed anime character. “In deference to your request, my company has thoughtfully provided a different little shit. Now, I have paperwork here with a breakdown of all funds currently in arrears. You can contact our office tonight to let us know how you’d like to handle the situation. Otherwise, we’ll have to impound your TV.”

Apparently, he and his TV had developed a serious relationship in their brief acquaintance. “You are not taking my fucking TV.” He flashed his fangs, as if the sight of moonlight glittering off sharp, pointy teeth would send me gibbering off to mind my own business.

Fangs didn’t faze me much these days. I blinked at him blandly, ready to squirt-gun his ass if necessary. I had my clipboard in one hand, so I could hand it to him for his signature, but my other hand was inside my jacket pocket, finger on the trigger of the squirt gun.

“You’re correct, Mr. Smith.” What a lame name. Like I couldn’t figure out it was fake. “If you fail to contact our office, someone will drop by tomorrow, and he will take your fucking TV.” I held out the clipboard, a business card clamped under the clip on top of my paperwork. “The phone number’s right here.”

He snarled. My hand tightened on the squirt gun. He was going to get a face full if he didn’t watch it.

I took a loose, cocky stance, refusing to show fear, though I could feel it curling in my stomach, and he could probably smell it. Vamps are gross that way. “If you could just sign here, to verify I made this stop—”

He knocked the clipboard out of my hand. I pulled the pistol and pointed it at him. “Pick up the clipboard and sign it.”

“Or what? You’ll shoot me with your little purple gun?”

“My little purple gun full of holy water,” I said calmly.

His sneer faded, and he eyed the gun. “I can take that out of your hand before you have a chance to pull the trigger.”

Nice piece of vampire posturing. I pulled the trigger. The stream of water hit him right in the eye—I’m a good shot, and, lame as it sounds, my squirt gun is souped up.

“Shit!” He lurched back as his eye began to smoke. While he was still off-balance, I squirted him again, then grabbed my clipboard and ran. Colin would bitch that I hadn’t gotten the signature. Let him. I wasn’t going to hang around to get chewed on.

I still heard Mr. Smith swearing behind me, then issuing threats. “You fucking bitch! I’m gonna tear your throat out!”

Not if I got to my car first. From the sound of it, he was still scrambling behind me, and from the smell, the holy water had done some serious damage. My car was only a few yards away—

And someone was leaning against it. Not just any someone, but a vampire someone. He grinned at me, flashing fangs, and this time, the sight of sharp, pointy teeth in the moonlight did make me want to cut and run.

In no way could this be construed as good, regardless of how much you tried to stretch the definition of the term. In fact, I was willing to go out on a limb and say it was just plain bad. I dropped the clipboard, leaving both hands free. One still held the squirt gun; I shoved the other into my jeans pocket, where I’d stowed my car keys.

The new vamp pushed away from the car, giving me a feral, fangy smile.

“You upset my friend,” he said, his voice oily. The performance was almost too over the top to be scary. Almost. “I don’t like that.”

“It’s just a TV, for God’s sake,” I said. There wasn’t much I could do at this point to get away—he was between me and the car, and I could hear Mr. Smith staggering up behind me. Could smell him too. There’s nothing quite like the reek of burnt vampire.

“He likes his TV.” The vamp took a menacing step toward me. This was my only advantage—it appeared the newcomer liked to play with his food. “I like his TV too.”

“Well, I’m sorry your boyfriend can’t remember to pay his bills.” My fingers found my keys in my pocket and hit the alarm button. My car began to wail, and I groped into my hoodie pocket again, searching out another weapon.

The vampire jumped, then glared at me, obviously embarrassed at his reaction to the sudden, pervasive noise. “You really think that’s going to help?”

But it had helped, because it had distracted him for that split second. I leveled the squirt gun at him. He let out a barking laugh and slapped it out of my hand. At which point I treated him to a face full of pepper spray from the other hand.

He recoiled, grimacing, eyes watering. The stuff hurt like hell, I knew, even if you were a vampire. While he made incomprehensible grunting noises, I ducked around him and jerked the car door open.

Just then, Mr. Smith descended, his right eye weeping goo onto his cheek. He reached into the car after me, and I slammed the door on his arm. He grimaced but still groped for me as I held the door shut as tight as I could. Wriggling in the car seat, I got my feet up against the doorframe for leverage and pulled harder, wondering how much pressure it would take to sever his arm.

He couldn’t quite reach me, his fingers wiggling in the air a few inches from my face. If I leaned forward, I could get one of those stupidly annoying fingers between my teeth and bite it off—

Suddenly, Mr. Smith flew backward across the grass. He landed hard on his ass and sat there, stunned. I stared back at him, at first not sure what had happened. Then the other vamp flew across the lawn as well. I recovered enough to realize I could close my car door now that the vamp’s arm was no longer in the way, so I did. I stuffed the key into the ignition and started the car.

There was a tap on my window. Startled, I met the gaze of still another vampire standing next to the driver’s-side door. They were just crawling up out of the lawns tonight. He laid my clipboard against the glass with a careful smack.

“You’re going to need this.”

I wasn’t sure what to do at first. This new vamp had just saved my ass—well maybe not saved it, per se, but he’d made things easier. Adrenaline still rushed through my system, so my first impulse was to slam him with the door, get him on the ground and spray holy water into his ear until his brain melted. I’d done that once, and it wasn’t pretty. Vamps didn’t come back from that. In fact, their families sued under those circumstances. And then lost a shitload of money if you could prove self-defense.

I didn’t do that, though. I just stared at him, heart galloping, trying to control my breathing before I hyperventilated and passed out.

He smiled. He was nice to look at. A slim face with etched cheekbones, a wide mouth not marred but enhanced by a slight overbite, and the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. The rest of him appeared to be slim as well, though I couldn’t see all of him out the window.

“If you’d like to put the window down just a bit, I can slide the clipboard through for you.” And British. I hadn’t registered the accent at first.

I swallowed, adrenaline still muddling my head. Finally, I hit the button to lower the window just enough for the clipboard to slide through. He displayed my squirt gun and eased it through to me too.

“Thanks,” I said as I took the gun. “You really saved my ass.”

He shrugged, still grinning. “Seemed you were doing all right, actually.”

I smiled in spite of myself. “A little help never hurts.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

There was an awkward moment of silence. I felt like I should say something else, but I didn’t know what.

And that was when the cops showed up.