WordPlay

This Wednesday Behind the Scenes, it’s total indulgent gratitude.

What the (insert word of your preferred emphasis here), you may wonder, is that?

Well, that’s when you wallow in gratitude for something you didn’t plan but find truly comforting.

It’s a coincidence that the first released Backlist Ebook was A Feral Darkness, which contains a dog who carries traits, physical and behavioral, from two of my dogs–the first and only time I’ve done that. (Contrary to what many people think, mostly authors just make this stuff up.) The dogs? Jag and Jean-Luc Picardigan.

Jag came to me as a pet and with behavioral rehab needs: a developing and inexplicable fear of…well, no one was quite sure what, only that it happened unpredictably and otherwise didn’t suit his personality. He was an incredibly sweet dog, and I had fallen for him on sight, some months earlier, during a cross-country visit with Cheysuli breeder Jennifer Roberson. (Sometimes you really can almost hear that *click*…). He arrived, fit instantly into the household, and was much adored.  I began trying to understand what drove his problems.

Never actually had the chance. Six short weeks after his arrival, a neighbor child released him from my yard. He panicked straight into traffic.

I wanted to write him a better story than that. Eventually, I did.

By then, I had another Cheysuli dog. Jean-Luc’s special child issues were no mystery; he was injured at birth, made vulnerable by an open fontanel, and as a result developed into a deeply autistic dog in nature. Not to mention his subtly asymmetrical forehead!

So pieces of Jean-Luc Picardigan also helped inform Ch. Nuadha’s Silver Druid. Two special dogs, being shared in their own way.

As it happens, I chose A Feral Darkness as the first Backlist Ebook for many reasons.  Then, when I couldn’t find a stock photo I liked for the cover, along came another unplanned development–Jean-Luc’s appearance there (there were no good ones of Jag, and Jean-Luc isn’t actually too far off in coloring).

It’s the total lack of intent behind it all that makes the situation all the more meaningful to me this week. To know I didn’t plan the timing, the cover…the circumstances…and yet I can still look at the book and smile.

So yup. Today I’m feeling grateful for such comforts.  And the indulgence is talking about it, because some of this you’ve already heard, and none of it is probably truly meaningful to anyone but me.

And in that vein, here’s a totally indulgent snippet from A Feral Darkness!  From a book about forgotten gods and rising powers and modern-day potential for plague and one woman trying to figure out exactly what she started with her childhood wish at an inadvertently anchored place of power…this time it’s all about the dog!

Smashwords
Kindle

===========================

“He’s got a lot more white on him than I thought,” Elizabeth admitted, pausing in her own work.

Or than Brenna had thought. No way, under the mud, to see how broad his blaze was, how symmetrically it encompassed his muzzle, narrowed just enough to miss his eyes, and broadened again at his forehead. Or to see the dark freckles on the bridge of his nose, or how richly his brown cheek patches stood out against the black on the rest of his head. He had a white bib and undercarriage, and except for brown points, a white tail tip, and a jagged white collar, the rest of him was sleek black. Black, aside from his ears. The interior of one was stark white; the other light brown.

But it was the backs of those huge ears that were so beguiling, mostly white with thick brown freckles. Utterly unexpected, utterly charming.

And his eyes. Coming from a clean face, they looked softer, more open. Big love-me eyes that followed her every movement.

But he’s somebody else’s dog.

Surely you saw this one coming after last week’s Behind the Scenes.

Because ohhh, yeah, A Feral Darkness made it into “e-print” during the last week, and I’m MOST gleeful about it.

(Right.  That would be at Kindle and Smashwords.)

ME = GLEE

So that means a bonus excerpt (Yay!  Excerpt!),  and some more cover tidbits!

In the Baen version, the chapters are headed by painstakingly chosen runes (Elder Futhark, to be precise), assigned for their meaning to the chapter.  In the e-versions, that wasn’t going to work.  But I found the font!  And there the runes are on the cover, marching neatly across in the proper chapter order.

Plus they look really cool.

The covers in general are coming from stock art, but this one has another special touch to it.  I didn’t have any good photos of Jag, the dog to which this book is dedicated–a dog from Jennifer Roberson’s Cheysuli kennel who had only just come to live with me to see if I could work out some inexplicable fears that had shown up with his maturity.  (Yes, indeed, this was Jag’s book.)  We had only just gotten started with that when a neighbor child let him out of my fenced yard; he didn’t survive the day.  (Oh, YES, this is Jag’s book.)

And I really couldn’t find any adequate stock pictures, and I really wanted Druid on the cover.

But it just so happens that shortly after I welcomed Jag’s successor, the brain-injured but sweet Jean-Luc Picardigan, I took a rather dramatic photo of him.  And that was good enough to work with.

And so there it is.  Not Jag, whose blaze was broader and whose right ear was so charmingly white and speckled, but his nephew.

Yeah, I really like this cover.

===========================

But Sunny cowered at her feet. She whined, and her eyes showed white, and then she bolted away from the door and ran circles around the room, her claws scrabbling in her usual graceless galumphing stride and her tail tucked so tightly to her belly that she didn’t even appear to have a tail at all.”Sunny!” Glancing from the bewildering dog to the starkly empty porch and back again, Brenna would have reached for her, tried to calm her—But then she felt it herself.A whisper of dire gibberish in her ear, a cold brush of fear down her neck…

Of nothing.

It left as abruptly as it had come.

…Wednesday

See me doing the little dance of Kindleization?

(No, really. That’s what that is. It’s not a seizure disorder.)

Both “The Right Bitch” and “Bitch Bewitched” are now up on Kindle! And yes, soon to be Smashwords.

I had thought to work on that this week, actually, but it turns out I’m writing first draft on something else, about which I can only do another little dance of–

Oh. Er. Right. I’ll spare you that. Anyway, I’m happy about it.

“The Right Bitch” was the second of the Bitch stories to find a spot in Esther Friesner’s Chicks in Chain Mail anthologies.

Shiba isn’t alone on the border line; she now shares the territory with a hound named Sabre, who would rather leave her in his dust. Two hounds, two handlers, and a new kind of magic rising…someone’s got to figure it all out. Who else but the right bitch?

And then, you know…there are gonna be puppies…and while Shiba happily protects the borderlands from spellrunners, she never thought she’d be protecting her puppies from their magic! Or that the puppies would have something to say about it…

(“Bitch Bewitched” was a story I waited years for the opportunity to write, and found it in the really fun anthology, Misspelled, edited by Julie Czerneda.)

In case it isn’t obvious…I am a hound-lover at heart! They’re goofy, hard-headed, persistent…and as honest and loyal as the day is long. And those eyes! Those ears–! I mean, awww…come ON!

=================

Sabre whooped with enthusiasm, barreling through the thick wood undergrowth, his nose full of magicsmell, his ears full of Taliya’s distant encouragement—and his brain too hot on trail to think.  So hot he almost missed the answering trail cry to the south—a slightly clearer voice than his own and closing in fast.It made no sense; he didn’t care.  Not with his quarry so close, his sweaty, unwashed humansmell strong with forbidden magic.But suddenly the trail doubled in both humansmell and magicsmell, and then Sabre understood after all.  Two spellrunners, joining forces, both being trailed.Sabre called out, wild and strong.  Confident.

…Wednesday

A BITCH IN TIME

(Yes, now on Kindle!)

Shiba isn’t your average chick in chain mail…she’s a line hound with a very special tracking skill. With her handler, she patrols her territory for illicit magic. But Shiba has just lost her lifelong partner, and isn’t getting along so well with his replacement. He doesn’t trust her and he doesn’t want to, either–for he’s just lost his own partner. With nasty illicit magic sneaking across the border, what’s a bitch to do? Of course, the real question is, will she do it in time…

First published in the anthology DID YOU SAY CHICKS?!, this story was written for the popular Chicks in Chain Mail series edited by Esther Friesner, and a delightful opportunity it was. Because, seriously…I got to play with hounds (my favorite!) and magic (my favorite!) and a slightly twisted sense of humor (my favorite!). What’s NOT to like?

Also, this story was for Strider the WonderHound, with whom I first got to use the words, “Strider! Come down from that tree!”
==========

Tallon dropped the satchel and looked thoughtfully at his new linehound.Shiba gave him her Noble Beauty pose. After all, she was of the best bloodlines and strikingly marked. The black of her back was glossy beneath her chain mail, and her chest, belly, and legs were white, so heavily ticked with black that from any distance they looked blue-silver. The black of her head and ears was divided by a neat ticked blaze that spread out to take over her muzzle, and her eyebrows were punctuated by deep brown. Her body was sturdy, her tail strong and graceful, and her ears fell long and soft, the perfect compliment to her hanging flews. Best of all, her legs—long, heavy-boned and angular—were up to the task of following her incomparable nose.She knew all this because Jehn, her former partner, had told her so. She believed him utterly, just as she believed everything he said.Tallon just shrugged. “We’ll get along fine,” he said. “Jehn’ll have trained her right, and beyond that, a dog’s a dog.”

…Wednesday

Deep River Reckoning

Deep River Reckoning is a Reckoners short story newly available on Kindle: the journey of a woman recently passed strikes close to home for Garrie and Trevarr, as living and dead clash over the mysteriously damaged spirits of the Rio Grande.

I wanted an excuse to write a Reckoners story, so I ran a contest…the winner shared a few details to allow me to jump start the ghost. Of course, as uncontrollable as my muse is, she quickly did as she wanted to with those details. It was a great start, and a pleasure to work with the ghostly namesake!

And, of course, this is the cover with which discussions here, on Facebook, and over on SFF have been of such help. Look down to Monday’s post…and then take a good look at the cover here!

==========

…Wednesday

THE SCORIA

Nope, don’t go scrambling through your memory or your bookshelves; this isn’t a book title you should be familiar with!

The Scoria is an idea I’ve had for a very long time; I started working it up in the late ’90s, and then my writing path took me in about ten different directions at once, none of them leaving me time to write this book.  Every once in a while I huge the folder holding my notes for it, though!

And, as it happens, some years ago I had the chance to submit a story to the anthology (edited by Julie Czerneda and Jana Paniccia) UNDER THE COVER OF DARKNESS.  The antho theme targeted secret societies: “Down through the centuries there have been groups sworn to protect important artifacts and secrets, perhaps exercising their power and connections–possibly even mystical affiliations–to guide the world’s future. ”

My little idea was a very nice fit, in a sly way.  So I had the chance to write the foundation piece for the book-to-be, and I was thrilled, and am still thrilled, to have had it.

And now it’s equally fun to have the chance to put out an e-version–for now, on Kindle (currently a sweet 99 cents at that)–but as I gather momentum, on Smashwords (with its many available formats) as well.  I mean, dig it, man–the muse gets to work on a sleek cover and the prose within!  Oh, the happy!

So guess what!  Here’s a snippet!

==========

“Alleksa! Alleksa!“

Voices raised in joy, in a rare daring.

Galetia twisted from her sentry spot and raised her own hands high, flashing fingers open and closed in the approval of their kind. “Alleksa!” she shouted down into the bowl of the arena ruin, a midnight darkness spotted with tiny ground fires and fire spinners on the move. A spontaneous, whirling circle closed around the central dark spot that held Alleksa.

Hidden here outside the city, only the Scoria celebrated the night.

And only the Scoria celebrated surviving the coming of age that the citties took for granted. Alleksa proved more blessed yet…she would not only survive, she would thrive. Everyone saw the signs–the flashes of change without fever, without shakes, without chills. The ripples of ethereal otherness across her face, without the rash that so often came with such a strong turning.

She would be one of their strongest.

She might even live through to adulthood, protected by this secret gathering of the abandoned, the discarded…those both lost and found. Each year, more infants were plucked to the safety of loving arms. Each year, more youngsters lived through the change.

But oh, the authorities had begun to suspect.

…Wednesday

Speaking of covers…Sklayne believes he should have a cover of his own.

Ahh, Sklayne.

He’s one of THOSE characters.  Always doing the unexpected.  Always saying the embarrassing thing.  He not only colors outside the lines, he makes up his own coloring book.

He’s a wonderful foil.  And for sure he keeps a certain  off-world bounty hunter on his toes…

Of course, he’s got his own story, too…how he came to be with Trevarr, the trade-offs he’s made with that choice…the way it’s changed him.  It’s a story of secrets and partnership…and it’s spinning out at its own pace, there in the background…

==========

And Trevarr said nothing, but Trevarr knew, and Trevarr fought against what was within, what was always within but always so deeply buried…never allowed any freedom, for fear it could never be caged again. Never controlled.

Sklayne knew that fear. Lived beside it. Had seen it woken once on this world already.

The eyes…always the change showed first in the eyes. The skin patterns, tattoos inborn, trailing and growing from those vestiges present at birth. After that, few knew…because few had survived. Or been allowed to. The bastard-breeds…they were the worst. The strongest. The hardest to control. Too torn between what they were and what they weren’t to live by the rules of any given being.

::Half-blood!:: he said, and ::Beware!:: and ::Danger there!:: but by then he knew the power had stirred and scraped and howled, stripping away carefully guarded layers with the shock that made this cat form writhe upon the bedspread these miles away. Trevarr, hurt. Trevarr, struggling. Trevarr surrounded by beings who did not know, who could not know.

Sklayne snarled a rudeness at the weak cat form and the feeble damage its claws had done to the bedding. He knew. He should be there.

Bound familiar.

::Take,:: he said, and gave what he could, across the miles. And knew he was heard when that gift was received, when Trevarr held ground against that which had been woken within. When he persisted, even as the Garrie-person wielded her bastardized breezes, her terror turning to confidence and profound competence.

So Sklayne gave, until the moment was done. Until he felt the faintest of touches, a mental scritch along the fur of his spine. And so he collapsed in on his corporeal aspect and let himself retreat back to this hotel room.

Oh, most disapproving.

::Cat-form, so very broken.::

Fark.

Sklayne set about fixing it.

…Wednesday

Yes, Checkmate was the first of the Bombshells to be available in ebook–in the very first batch, actually, since it’s #12 of the really popular Athena Force series.

Writing Book Twelve of a complex 12-book continuity…well, that was interesting, all right. Especially since I had only brief (VERY brief) synopses of books 1-11 to work with. And while we had an email list, on which everyone shared as they could, it turned out that we all had different deadlines, and I actually wrote #12 before most of the others were done.

Fortunately, the Silhouette editors had mercy on me, and my basic working concept was “Selena goes to Berzhaan (AKA Fakeistan) and walks into Big Trouble involving [continuity wrap-up], while temporarily estranged from her hubby.”

OH. The research I did for this book. I mean…THE RESEARCH. Including an interview with the CIA officer who’d retired from the field to work liaison with Hollywood (Alias, for instance…). Not to mention all the reasearch into homemade devices and weapons, and worrying whether anyone would, er…notice.

But it all paid off! Because basically, this book is my wicked fun take on MacGyver vs Die Hard, with a female protagonist (and her hubby is no slouch, either!). And oh! It was FUN!

==========

Selena surged around the door frame and shot him in the ass.

…Wednesday

Yes, Survival Instinct, along with the other Hunter Agency Bombshell books, is now widely available as an ebook. Hooray!

Survival Instinct is about the black sheep of the Hunter Agency family…Dave Hunter prefers to do his own thing, in his own way. And Karin? She really wants to do her own thing, thank you very much.

Here’s the fun part–my old once-upon-a-time southwest Virginia farmstead provides the setting for that book. As usual, when faced with fiction based on reality, I did freely change things to suit, but at the core…it’s the place I loved and lived for a number of years, and which I still miss. That gave this book an extra special connection.

And the dog?

Oh yeah. He was there, too.

==========

posted on Wednesday

Yup, it’s my first Bombshell, cover ugh and all!  Notice the title in the blog doesn’t match the title on the cover.  That would be because someone along the way in production erred, and left off the “s” at the end.  I still think of it as “Rules,” though…

Oh–PS–The book has been reissued electronically! Now, that’s cool.
————————-

You Can’t Go Home Again…

But Hunter Agency operative Kimmer Reed has to. She’d fled as a teen, swearing never to return, but now–vastly changed, greatly disguised–her latest assignment has brought her back. Still, watching over a computer genius who also has her own bodyguard should be a piece of cake–after all, who’d think to look for Carolyne Carlsen here?

Surprise. Everyone. And so Kimmer plays a dangerous cat-and-mouse game to keep her mission hidden, the genius protected–and the bodyguard far, far away….

===============

“And what if I refuse the op?”

.