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Finally! Twelfth Night! Brotherhood of Blood

Twelfth Night traditionally signals the end of the holiday festivites. We’ll examine our last series today – until next year, I suppose – and that series is the Brotherhood of Blood. I saved one of the best for last, some might say. These stories are my vampire novels and novellas, though not every one of the stories has a vamp in them. Confusing, right?

Remember when we talked about Tales of the Were and I said we’d revisit some of the same issues when we got to this point? And I promised to go into a bit more detail. Well, it appears that time has come.

The three novellas that make up the original Brotherhood of Blood novella trilogy focus around three women who became friends in college while participating in the same study group. There were six women in total in that group and the series has expanded to include their stories as well. If you want to know the exact “order” of the stories, here goes:

1. One & Only

2. Rare Vintage

3. Phantom Desires

4. Sweeter Than Wine

5. Forever Valentine

6. Wolf Hills

Yes, you read that right. The last of the study group friends doesn’t end up with a vamp. She turns out to be a werewolf mate! How’s that for crossover? Of course, this isn’t the first time I’ve mixed up the supernatural races. SWEETER THAN WINE is mostly a menage story with a werecougar third, Matt Redstone.

Matt fans might be interested to know that we’ll meet a cousin of his in WOLF HILLS, which will be out April 17, 2012 from Samhain Publishing. We’re finalizing the edits right now and I’ll be revealing the cover on this blog soon. I’ve seen it and it’s awesome, but it has to go for final approval before I’m allowed to post it anywhere, so stay tuned for that! I promise, it’s worth the wait. Angela Waters, the artist responsible for all four of the red Brotherhood covers was tapped to do WOLF HILLS and it came out absolutely gorgeous! Sexy and smoldering and sinfully beautiful!!!

I guess you can tell I’m kind of happy with it, right?

The original Brotherhood of Blood novella trilogy is available individually as ebooks or together in print. SWEETER THAN WINE is also avaiable in ebook and print. I should mention SWEETER THAN WINE is the only full-length novel currently available in this series… until WOLF HILLS comes out. WOLF HILLS is also a novel. (I can hear you cheering!) FOREVER VALENTINE is also available separately as an ebook or in the print anthology titled CAUGHT BY CUPID which also has stories from Maya Banks and Gwen Cease.

People my age may remember an old television program called Forever Knight. A show I affectionately refer to as “vampire cops from Canada”. LOL. I chose the title FOREVER VALENTINE as a sort of homage to that show, which I used to watch late at night after I came home from grad school (which I attended in a night program while working full time during the day).

I’m very excited to have WOLF HILLS coming out in a few months. It’s the final Brotherhood story, but it also opens a whole new can of worms when we discover some secrets about the heroine’s ancestry. I’ve started work on a follow-up story. I may have a chance to work more on it later in the year.

And that’s it. The end of the 12 Series for this year. I think I’ll try to do this every year so I can get a feel for where I’m heading and what I’ve accomplished. Sort of a year-end summary. I like this idea. Thanks for playing along with me!

Happy New Year, everyone!

The Eleventh Series… String of Fate

And now we come to the String of Fate series. Oh, how I love big cat shifters.

This series is planned as a trilogy. There will be three books:

1. CAT’S CRADLE

2. KING’S THRONE

3. JACOB’S LADDER

CAT’S CRADLE is already out in print and ebook formats. It focuses on Cade, a Pantera Noir shapeshifter and the human woman who is his mate. Early in the book, Cade’s partner, Mitch, is mortally wounded and taken away by the heroine’s friend, a doctor named Gina. Gina’s hiding a great secret – she’s descended from the magical line of white tigers – the natural leaders of all tiger shifters.

In fact, Gina’s father is the Tig’ra - the white tiger king. Mitch is a golden tiger, a tigre d’or. KING’S THRONE will follow Mitch and Gina’s progress from their flight to the countryside and encounter with the deposed king, through a battle for their very lives and the course of true love and heat of shifter mating.

JACOB’S LADDER will focus on the Nyx, the queen of the Pantera Noir shifters, and her forbidden love for a human man. Although, Jake is not exactly a normal human guy. I haven’t started this book yet, but I have a good idea of where I want it to go. KING’S THRONE is already partially written and I hope to complete it later this year and get it into the pipeline for publication (which seems to take longer and longer the more successful my publisher becomes!).

You can get CAT’S CRADLE anywhere ebooks and print books are sold!

The Tenth Series… Gift of the Ancients

Gifts of the Ancients is another of the series that I intend to write more of in this new year. It’s also one of those stories that got sidetracked by its original publisher going out of business. I managed to get it re-released with a new publisher right before all hell broke loose in my personal life.

I’d already started the follow up story in this series, but as life got in the way, I didn’t have a chance to finish what I started. Maybe 2012 will be the year I finally get organized again! LOL.

Gifts of the Ancients is a series that combines two of my favorite elements – military heroes and paranormal doings. It’s based on the idea that a small group of Green Berets found the ancient city of Babylon while they were roaming the desert. In the ancient tower that magically appears out of the sand, they meet a very strange man who gifts them with powers that don’t become apparent until they get back home and start realizing they’ve been changed into something… more.

The first of the series, WARRIOR’S HEART, has one of my favorite contemporary themes – the girl next door. Hal comes back from his time in the desert a changed man who can no longer resist the love he’s carried around for a long time. Love for the little sister of his best friend.

I do have stories planned for at least two more of the men in Hal’s team. In fact, I started writing them a long time ago, but like I said, when the original publisher started the long slide to going out of business, and I didn’t want to give them anything new, I turned my attention to other things. Hopefully in 2012, I’ll be able to get back to these guys because each one of them is special in his own way.

WARRIOR’S HEART is available now from Samhain Publishing and wherever ebooks are sold. Here are a few other links: Amazon, B&N, & FictionWise.

The Ninth Series… Sons of Amber

The Ninth Series we’re going to look at is the other half of The Jit’Suku Chronicles – the Sons of Amber series. I call it “the other half” because of the internal chronolgy of the stories. The events in Sons of Amber happen a few hundred years after the events in the Arcana books.

How this all started… I was writing a novel based in this universe, which turned into two novels that I still haven’t finished. For some reason – probably a challenge from one of my publishers or something, though I can’t remember exactly right now – I wanted to write a couple of shorter stories and I chose to play in this universe, even though the novels weren’t quite finished.

It was easy because the setting was already so detailed in my mind. I had this whole cast of characters and had already worked out the external conflicts between the humans and the jit’suku. It’s a very real world to me, complete with a history, which I began to explore in the Arcana series of novellas.

The Sons of Amber focuses on a group of genetically engineered human men who were created by a scientist named Amber. She is their “mother” for lack of anyone else, because they were created in her lab through genetic experimentation, designed to save the human race from extinction. The novellas are set at a time after the jit’suku have released a bioweapon designed to kill human males – because one of the tenets of the jit’suku warrior code is that they never make war on women.

Without men, the human race is the next best thing to doomed, so Dr. Amber comes up with her “sons” – a group of men who are immune to the bioweapon. It’s their mission to go out and repopulate the human race – with any female who’s willing. Of course, nobody expected them to fall in love and want to stay with any one woman in particular, but they do and that’s where these novellas pick up.

Ezekiel is the first “son” to find his mate. His genetic codes have been tweaked so that he is more of a risk taker than some of the others. Michael, by contrast, is more dominant. He’s the second “son” to find a woman he loves. He’s a military commander who falls for his executive officer, a woman he’s worked closely with for years.

She’s been in love with him for a long time when she finally decides to quit her job so she can have a child – Michael’s child – though she doesn’t expect him to ever realize it. After all, many “sons” sperm is available at the special clinics where women go to become pregnant. But Michael finds out and he refuses to give her up. Their tempestuous relationship is tested by pirates, and forged in a crucible of danger and intrigue.

It’s a universe chock full of opportunity for good stories and at some point I will finish those first two novels, which are still near and dear to my heart. The characters in them are so awesome and the storylines filled with hard choices and uplifting resolutions. *sigh* I really love playing in this world. I hope to find time this year to finish what I started so long ago .

Not sure how it will work out because this series is more a labor of love than anything I’m contractually obligated to do. I have a bunch of series with publishers that people really want new books in and I’ll be brutally honest – right now I feel more pressure to add to those series than this one. But I’m not worried. This world has been percolating for a long time. When I finally get time to settle down and do it, I think it’ll be worth the wait.

The Eigth Series & Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Today we’re going to look at one of my newer series – StarLords. Only the first of the trilogy is available now. It’s called HIDDEN TALENT and it’s more of a erotic space opera romance that is set in a very different world than any of my previous sci fi romances.

I’ve only planned three books for this series and they are:

1. HIDDEN TALENT – Micah and Jeri’s tale.

2. TALENT FOR TROUBLE – Darak and Jana’s story.

3. SHY TALENT – Agnor’s book.

These books are smokin’ hot, set in a world where pleasure heightens psychic ability – or Talent – which is the basis for political power in one part of the galaxy. It can also cause someone to be hunted in other parts.

Work on the next two books in the series has already begun. I hope to have at least TALENT FOR TROUBLE completed sometime in 2012 and submitted for publication. I don’t have any control over the publication schedule at my publisher, but the sooner I get the books to them, the sooner they can schedule them.

I plan to finish a number of books during this new year. I wonder if I’ll be on this blog next year recounting how many of these little resolutions I actually accomplished?

If you’re looking for HIDDEN TALENT, you can find it at Samhain, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other fine ebook sellers. It will also be coming out in print later this year.

Join us tomorrow as we take a look at the Sons of Amber. Only a few more series to go now. We’ll be hitting some really great ones in the next few days, so stay tuned!