WordPlay

posted on Wednesday

Not all that far into Sentinels: Wolf Hunt….

Jet has been trained by the Sentinels’ dark counterparts for one mission: To take down Nick Carter.  Everything she’s been told in preparation has come through that Atrum Core filter.  But Jet can think for herself, and she has the strength to do just that.

(Have I mentioned how much I enjoyed writing Jet?)

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Quite suddenly she bent over, laying her face against his–nuzzling him ever so slightly. Just as suddenly, she straightened again. “I think he lies,” she said. “He will do to my pack what suits him, no matter what I bring him.” A gentle lift of his head and a flick of her hand, and she removed the amulet thong. “No more do I heed him. You, I help. And my pack…I save on my own.”Instantly, breathing seemed natural again. And if his body shuddered with waves of flame and ice, he nonetheless had his growl back.

Wednesday…

Heading toward p. 50 of The Reckoners….

Garrie really had no idea what she was getting into.  Just looking for a little change of pace and a taste of the excitement from her work with mentor Rhonda Rose…but here, as she gets in over her head while scoping out the Winchester Mystery House from afar, she’s beginning to realize.  Mwah ha ha!

This scene was  really fun to write.   Oh yes it was.  Not that I’m evil or anything.

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The screams, when they came, clamped onto her like a leg-hold trap. Deep moans spiraled rapidly upward over a demanding rumble, tangling furiously within her–stealing her thought, stealing her calm. Stealing even the run away, fool! The muttered cacophony built, snarling, and then burst into a sudden shriek of sound, a chorus made of voices below bass and beyond ultra-sonic and everything in between, buzzing and twining and reverberating into complete incomprehensibility—-And she couldn’t think or move or even flee and still the sound climbed and spiraled battered away until she joined it, screaming into her own head, entangled in the chorus–”Garrie!”The sound cut off. Cut off flat, the only remnants of it the strangled noise she made in her own throat.

posted on Wednesday

Dun Lady’s Jess…Not my first book by far–you’d have to go back to age 12 to find that one–but still, the ONE. The one I knew had the chance to publish–the first one that did. I can still remember the frisson of writing it.

And where did it come from? The idea of it? Well, recently I had the most wondrous opportunity to work on a new edition of JESS with an equally wondrous editor/author, Julie Czerneda. We wanted this edition to have all sorts of goodies–an introduction, a forward, the most keen cover, lovingly drawn graphics inside…

(Those are mine, by the way. The little dingbat. And if anyone’s ever wondered what Lady’s snaffle bit looked like, the one in the book…well, there it is.)

Anyway. And the introduction. Here’s a peek at some of it–because here, finally, I had the chance to talk about where the book started, and what it means to me.
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Once upon a time I had a dream.

No, seriously. I dreamt of a man on his horse, carrying important information and running for his life. Running for their lives. They triggered a spell and ended up…

Elsewhere. And entirely changed.

So I wrote it, and it became another sort of dream—the one where you’re so in love with the story and characters that you want to share. Need to share. Are obsessed about sharing—!

Jess sold to the second publisher who saw the manuscript; less than a year later the book was on the shelves. Dream come true? You betcha. And the next spring, when Jess won the Compton Crook award for the
best “first book” of the year, I realized that what I’d wanted so badly—to find others who as I do about Jess and her world—was now a reality….

…Now here I am, years later, and I’ve found an editor who loves Jess, who has offered her a home with Star Ink Books. A home that will allow me to share the story and the people with a whole new group of readers…to share Jess’ heart.

Because when you come right down to it, that’s what Jess has taught me. While exploring her story, how she reacts to the changes in her life and the people she encounters…while watching her grow from a baffled young woman into someone with destiny…I learned about heart. About having it, and staying true to it. That the lesson applies when it comes writing, to reading…and to life. Having heart is how we grow, how we live lives we’re proud of and happy with, and how we fill our lives with people who do the same. And if I ever forget that lesson in the detailed trappings of deadlines and assignments and bills, Jess is—thank goodness—always there to remind me.

posted on Wednesday

Lion Heart…if you’ve seen the dedication, then you know I wrote an important chunk of this in the hospital, on my wee smuggled EeePC.  Fairly surreal, that.  That work was in the middle somewhere, though…not this prologue bit.

No, here we have Lyn, and her first glimpse of Joe Ryan.  Poor Lyn.  So sure she’s got all the facts, so ready to act on them…so completely unprepared for what lies before her…

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Lyn Maines stared at the image of Joe Ryan, big as life–much bigger than life–as it splashed across the high definition plasma screen of the sleek Sentinel conference room in Tucson, Arizona. Both Joe Ryans, actually–the man and his beast. On the left, tawny mountain lion, heavy masculine head with black tracings and jaw dropped in a panting snarl as the animal stalked the camera, clearly aware of and annoyed by the photographer’s presence. On the right, Joe Ryan the man, caught unaware, leaning over a railing before an enormous high desert panoramic vista of pines and sere ochre plains, head turned three-quarters to the camera, wind lifting his tawny hair with its dark tracings at the nape of his neck and temple, features clean and straight and strong.

Not always did the human form reflect the Sentinel form. Her own didn’t, aside from a certain something around the eyes. But there in Joe Ryan, the mountain lion lurked out loud–the sinuous authority, the simmering power. All of it.

Too bad that striking exterior covered a corrupt interior.

Joe Ryan was as dirty as they came–a dark sentinel. He’d killed his partner for cold hard cash, and he’d done it cleverly enough so the Sentinel’s brevis region consul and his echelon hadn’t been able to pin him down. Cleverly enough so Ryan had now gone on to a new assignment, a new home at the base of Arizona’s San Francisco Peaks, to start a brand new scheme–acquiring power on top of his money. Still on the Sentinel rolls, still roaming free in his powerful form. Still playing with power itself.

And Lyn…Lyn would prove it.

posted on Wednesday

Here’s another little goodie from The Reckoners….Garrie, trying to convince a reluctant team to head from home town Albuquerque to San Jose–and just now realizing that she’s not going to get them all…

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“Look, chicalet,” Lucia said, voice quiet. “You know I’m in. The shopping, right?” As if she hadn’t been with Garrie before the others had come on board, and as if she wouldn’t have gone on regardless. “But it’s maybe time to spill, yes?”

“Right,” Drew said. “Let’s hear the four-one-one.”

Garrie thought about asking him if he knew he was actually a nerdy white college student, and then–as usual–she just let it alone. She’d get over it. And it was really just her mood, her ongoing discovery that the status quo was possibly no longer the status quo.

“San Jose,” she said. “Winchester House. Our friend from last night was for real. He’s willing to pay our way.”

“Winchester Mystery House?” Quinn said, and not as though it were a good thing.

Garrie spoke quickly, overriding his pending reaction. “Look,” she said, “I know what you’re thinking. It’s a big fat hairy tourist trap. But what’ve we got to lose? It’s a free trip. There’s shopping for Lucia. And whether or not the reckoning pans out, Drew, you know there’s gonna be history behind the place.”  Oh my God, she sounded desperate.

She was desperate.

There was a pause, as they all made silent note of the desperate.

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BONUS MOON PICCIE!

It was SO much better than this–I couldn’t fool the digital camera into the right exposure (must get film in my Nikon!). But I kind of like the tree looming up on the side.

posted on Wednesday

And look! It’s another snippet!

Rounding out the first chapter of Sentinels: Wolf Hunt….

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A nudge of her long muzzle and refined nose brought Nick’s head down; she commenced to cleaning his face–his eyes, his strong cheeks, his ears. The submission of an alpha to a wolf-bitch of his choosing.

Or maybe that had just come from within, after all.

posted on Wednesday

Call it an experiment.  Little bits from the books.  But I admit it: the ego is fragile.  And I do watch the numbers.  So if it turns out that the Grand Snippeting Experiment isn’t truly of interest in the long run…well, you’ll know why you aren’t seeing them any longer!

From the first chapter of The Reckoners….


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Sklayne stretched his awareness into their new location, sheltered by an unfamiliar spreading bush. ::green sharp smells, twittering dry feathers, hard glossy beetle–::  A satisfying crunch and swallow, beetle no more. “Think cat,” Trevarr said, his tension battering at Sklayne’s edges.