Licking Her Wounds

You may have met Cal...

Cal was Gar's little brother (even though there is nothing "little" about the golden leopard shifter) in Hallie's Cats.  While Gar was a huge black leopard (panther) from the Louisiana Bayous, Cal was the golden child.  Well, everyone (including reviewers) who read Hallie's Cats wanted to see Cal get a gal of his own.  So I wrote what I had tentatively titled "Cal's Omega". However, after subbing it and getting a contract offer, I was asked to find a "sexier" title.  Of course, "Cal's Omega" is certainly not very sexy.  So I deferred to my wonderful editor in her suggestion of "Licking Her Wounds".

Here's a short excerpt from Licking Her Wounds...

Licking Her Wounds
Fran Lee
Copyright 2012

Cal wanted for nothing. He had a family. He had a comfortable home. He even got to kick some Lykos ass once in a while. But still, something called out to him. Over the past few weeks, he had sensed her. He knew she was waiting. But how would he ever find her if he remained here? Lately he had been thinking seriously of striking out on his own. Maybe heading north where the others had migrated long ago. Gar had Hallie and the boys. He would miss his sibling and Gar’s small family, but there was nothing much here for him anymore. 

He could sense something else out there…something waiting for him. Something he could call his, alone.

He loved Hallie, but she didn’t need him now…and he had the deep gut feeling that someone else did. 

Someone…

He recalled the fact that the boys were out of sight, and that he couldn’t hear them. Not good. He shifted his pace to a ground-swallowing run, following their scent trail easily, tracking them through the undergrowth without great concern…until another scent trail crossed theirs.

The hair lifted on the nape of his neck as the scent filled his nostrils and sent him into a mad run.

Dog!

Without hesitation, he shifted, his body splintering into a sinewy mass of golden-furred muscle as his clothes shredded and fell away with every powerful leap. He called out with his mind for the boys, and heard a shaky, whispering voice in his head.

Help me.

Not theirs.

Veering toward it, he leapt over a fallen tree and bounded like sinuous lightning into the small clearing where two little figures stood, close together, on guard as he had taught them, staring intently at a small silver-grey wolf that was standing just outside the tree cover on the opposite side of the glade.

Dog…you are gonna die…

Cal landed squarely between the boys and the wolf, creating a barrier with his big body as he crouched in front of them, his ears flattened to his skull, his massive fangs bared in a vicious snarl. The wolf didn’t try to run, yet made no move to attack. Cal hissed and batted the air between them with a set of deadly, flared-out claws, showing the wolf what awaited it should the beast make a single move.

It was Jet who said excitedly, “She’s hurt, Uncle Cal.” And a small hand came to rest on his bristling shoulder. Cal drew in a deep breath at the calming touch, but didn’t relax his guard.

She’ll be dead if she makes a move toward you. Stay behind me.

I don't have a cover or a release date yet.  I will let you know when I do.

Hugs!

Fran Lee

http://www.franleeromance.com

You May Require a Tissue (I did!!)

Suzette, the Animal Control Officer for the City of Madison Heights, Michigan, sent me the following post. 

I don't know who wrote it, but I want to thank them for sharing such an incredibly poignant story. 

We don't know who replied, but there is a beautiful soul working in the dead letter office of the US postal service.

Our 14-year-old dog Abbey died last month.
The day after she passed away my 4-year-old daughter Meredith was crying and talking about how much she missed Abbey.
She asked if we could write a letter to God so that when Abbey got to heaven, God would recognize her.

I told her that I thought we could so, and she dictated these words:

Dear God,
Will you please take care of my dog?
She died yesterday and is with you in heaven.
I miss her very much.
I 'm happy that you let me have her as my dog even though she got sick.
I hope you will play with her.
She likes to swim and play with balls.
I am sending a picture of her so when you see her you will know that she is my dog.
I really miss her.
Love, Meredith

We put the letter in an envelope with a picture of Abbey and Meredith , addressed it to God/Heaven.
We put our return address on it.
Meredith pasted several stamps on the front of the envelope cause she said it would take lots of stamps to get the letter all the way to heaven.

That afternoon she dropped it into the letter box at the post office.
A few days later, she asked if God had gotten the letter yet. I told her that I thought He had.

Yesterday, there was a package wrapped in gold paper on our front porch addressed, 'To Meredith' in an unfamiliar hand.
Meredith opened it.
Inside was a book by Mr. Rogers called, 'When a Pet Dies.'
Taped to the inside front cover was the letter we had written to God in its opened envelope.
On the opposite page was the picture of Abbey & Meredith and this note:


Dear Meredith,
Abbey arrived safely in heaven. Having the picture was a big help and I recognized her right away.
Abbey isn't sick anymore.
Her spirit is here with me just like it stays in your heart.
Abbey loved being your dog.
Since we don't need our bodies in heaven, I don't have any pockets to keep your picture in so I'm sending it back to you in this little book for you to keep and have something to remember Abbey by.

Thank you for the beautiful letter and thank your mother for helping you write it and sending it to me.
What a wonderful mother you have.
I picked her especially for you.
I send my blessings every day and remember that I love you very much.
By the way, I'm easy to find. I am wherever there is love.
Love,

God 

Tessie

New Excerpt of "The Strix"

This week has been so busy. Last week was too. I'm on round two of edits for book two of The Bag Of Tricks book series, "Claimed By Dragons", which I promise is shaping up into a big, crazy, erotic adventure of a book.

But today I want to share a little more of The Strix.

Short blurb for The Strix: 

After drawing a piece of amber from a witch's wish bag, Arcona awakens to a past life as a vengeful Celtic witch - a Strix, who used blood and sex magic to get her way. She turned the gladiator Tyr into a bloodthirsty Slayer. Now Tyr wants his revenge.

The Strix is a vampire tale told through the eyes of one woman who comes in contact with her past life as a witch and vengeful captive of Rome. It’s a contemporary and a historical tale at the same time.

This excerpt takes place in Pompeii 78 AD. Arcona is a young Germanic woman who has been captured by Romans and sold as a pleasure slave to the owner of gladiatorial school. In this scene she breaks the rules and escapes her courtyard prison to peek over the balcony into the ludus or gladiatorial school attached to the villa. She sees Tyr below.

…She crouched low and crept toward the back balcony that overlooked the ludus, where enslaved gladiators were quartered and trained. Surprisingly there were none of the expected sounds of clashing shields or wooden practice swords. The drill yard was silent of the usual clang of battle craft and the sounds of men arguing.

The villa’s rear balcony hovered high above the fray and was safely separated from the ludus by thick earthen walls topped with iron spikes and barred gates below, yet it provided an unencumbered bird’s-eye view of the daily mayhem that took place in the dirt yard beyond.

The August heat of the drill yard, and the scent of men’s sweat hung heavy in the air. Arcona peeked over the top of the balcony and into the sunbaked ludus below. Most of the gladiators were leaning against a far wall, standing in the shade, their swords and shields cast on the ground.

She couldn’t believe the always strict Cilician trainer would allow such slothful behavior, until she scanned the drill yard and saw the Cilician was nowhere in sight.

A dark Gaulish gladiator named Rog stood at the barracks door, pounding loudly on it with his fists. His angry words were so garbled she could hardly make out what he said.

A small crowd of gladiators gathered around Rog, and they too shouted threats and pounded their fists against the sealed door. She watched the events carefully but couldn’t figure out what the enraged commotion was about.

Only one man, a murmillo, the largest and most powerful class of gladiator, remained active on the drill yard. The man had sandy-blond hair and a beautiful sweeping back, which made him breathtaking to look at. She had studied this same man on many occasions and found him fascinating to watch. He was so unlike the others who tended to clump together in groups and speak as a mob.

The murmillo stood apart. He was quiet and solitary. All the times she had spied on the ludus she had never heard him speak, yet she noticed the other gladiators looked to him constantly as an example, which he quietly provided. Any martial skills he mastered the others were quick to imitate.

For such a large man he moved with power and grace, holding a sword in one hand and a heavy, iron-rimmed shield that stood nearly as tall as he in the other. He advanced with calculated steps across the packed dirt of the yard, thrusting and parrying his blade against an imaginary foe.

He ignored the angry chaos surrounding him and worked through his practice drills with concentrated precision. His skin glistened golden under the noon sun. His focused gaze remained lethal and aloof. He looked incapable of distraction, as if he occupied an entirely different realm from the others.

He swung the sword in tight, controlled circles as he stabbed and sliced at his own shadow. He moved beneath the balcony and paused. His sword arm stilled. He held the shield high between him and the others and glanced directly at her.

His clear hazel eyes made such forceful contact with her she felt as if she’d been touched. She was left breathless. Despite her caution about remaining unseen, he seemed to possess another sense that alerted him to her presence. Perhaps she was not so stealthy, because he often noticed her crouching behind the balcony while the others remained oblivious.

She gazed into his eyes and froze, unable to look away. She wondered how it was possible for such a formidable man to become enslaved to Rome.


A slight smile curled the edge of his lips. He gazed at her with scorching intensity as if he meant to bolt over the wall and grab her.

She felt a little flutter of anxious tension and desire and struggled to extinguish it.

The barrack door burst open with a loud bang, and a wailing, hysterical woman staggered into the yard with tears streaming down her face. Her tunic was rumpled and hung from her shoulders, exposing her breasts and back. She tried to wrap her head shawl around her body to cover herself. She ran straight toward Rog and threw her arms around his neck, and clung to him.

Rog snatched the woman into his arms. He crushed his face against her thick, dark hair and appeared to be sobbing.

The Cilician trainer strode out the open door with a churlish smile on his swarthy face. He gazed at the gladiators resting in the shade. A look of rage hardened on his harsh mouth. “Pick up your weapons, you slothful oxen! Just because I took a pleasure break doesn’t mean you get one.”

Rog glared at the Cilician, bared his teeth, and snarled. “I hate you! I’ll stuff a blade in your gut the first chance I get!”

“I don’t think so.” The Cilician dismissed Rog with a rude wave of his hand. “By the way, I enjoyed fucking your wife. Tell her to come back next week.”…

Obviously the ludus is a demoralizing place to be imprisoned but believe it or not a kernel of real love does take root here.

I hope you enjoyed the excerpt and will check out The Strix.

XXOO Kat

You can find The Strix here:

      The Strix book trailer on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHkumnAXaiQ&list=UUKWmBpg3YYPkdrDkpTpEj1Q&index=0&feature=plcp

Loose Id LLC: http://www.loose-id.com/bag-of-tricks-the-strix/

All Romance eBooks http://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-thestrix-882524-139.html

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Katalina+Leon

Going on Hiatus

I'll be gone for the month of August. I'm currently under tight deadlines and when it comes to blog topics my mind is mush!

If you'd like to win a print copy of Art of Modern Love with my story Dante's Desire, drop over to my blog and take part in the contest.

http://amberskyze.blogspot.com

Cerise's Praise: Mr. & Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy by Sharon Lathan!

Take-offs of classics, whether as sequels to beloved novels like Pride and Prejudice [P&P], or the newer expanded erotica versions of them (see Clandestine Classics from www.total-e-bound.com) seem like such a fine idea to me. And along the lines of my post last week, I am here to say I am all for this kind of elaboration or extrapolation, if the writing is superb and in line with the character of the originals.
Well, I have found one such and wow, was I a tickled reader!
Mr. & Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy is the first in a series, starring said characters, by Sharon Lathan (whom I do not know, BTW, other than she and I share Pinterest pix we like! And she does not know I am writing this either!)
But I bought a few weeks ago, and as you know, Dear Reader, I take a while to get to things, what with writing and editing and friends' birthday parties coming along to consume my time.)
I was very much in the mood for a Regency and I thought, hmm, finally time to indulge myself and see if I can like a work that is a continuation of the original.
Let me say, Dear Reader, I not only can like such a book. I ADORE this one.
Why?
Ah, let me count the ways this author surprised me, satisfied me and made me read in awe.
First, she begins with a bang, hours after the wedding of Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy. In his POV, she tells us about his desire for her, his anxiety about the coming evening, his plans and how they have grown so much closer in the ensuing days since he met her on the moors and proposed so eloquently the second time.
Approaching the issue of their wedding night with a charming attitude, Darcy shows the reader how their coming intimacy will only complement their intellectual closeness of the past few weeks.
In these ways, Lathan sets us up for a modern historical romance based on the more, shall we say, prudish one, but with all the tangible sexual tension of the original P&P which we ascribe to it.
Secondly, the author manages to my delight to use the language of Austen. In fact, I was so taken with Lathan's prose, her syntax, all so terribly English Regency, that I could not put down the book.
Thirdly, as Austen does, Lathan slips in and out of hero's and heroine's POV, but then also deftly weaves in an omniscient that is true to Austen, the book and the period.
Fourthly, she introduces new characters, all as believable as the others whom we know so well from P&P.
This Lathan manages while doing one other thing which utterly astonished me: She has written a novel which has no plot other than to show how two people in love marry for good reason, desire each other with all their hearts and then, build the relationship into a union built on honor and trust.
For me, this book was an extraordinary read. I am used to plots. BIG PLOTS with dilemmas and excitement that illustrate and heighten the conflict. Those changing pictures and scenes meant to capture our rapt attention!  Here we have not conflict, but union, some discord but not enough to merit the  term conflict between characters/lovers. We have harmony, lots of sex and a lot of happiness. Extraordinary, don't you think?
I do.
I did.
And so now, you realize, I must read another by Lathan, for she has a series. What does the series appear to do? Allow me to savor the matrimonial bliss, the blending of two people in a marriage who seem incapable, at this point, of tensions.
Intriguing.
If you like Regency, if you really and I mean REALLY like Lizzie and Darcy, this is your big fat cuppa.
Get going!
And BTW, right after this, I ran through what turned out to be the exact opposite of this plot! No planning on this one, just what I was in the mood for, let me assure you. What was it?  The contemporary psychological suspense that rocks the best seller list and Hollywood, GONE GIRL.
Oh, yeah, baby. From ballroom to padded room for me!
Is GONE GIRL good?
Got a few minutes? And if you have a thirty-something in your family?
Be careful what you read there. It might show you things you don't wish to acknowledge.

Another Saturday morning...

My pre-release giveaway for

Come, My Love

will begin on August 15, 2012!

Of course, many of you may have already read this one as First and Ten, but for those of you who haven't read it, you might want to join the fun and try to win a copy of the newer, better version. LOL!

COMING SOON - August 29

Available NOW for pre-order.

Barnes & Noble

Kindle

What Fran Jamison and Jack Gerrard have in common could be balanced on the head of a pin. Jack screwed up his chances with the BBW years ago when he allowed his friends to influence his choices. And Fran totally lost her chance with the hot campus jock by openly spurning his attempt to apologize.

Fran has never been to any of the reunions, but now a friend needs her, so this time she hasn’t been able to shimmy out of it. What she doesn’t expect in a million years is to find herself making hot love with Jack Gerrard on the hood of a parked car…on the airport parking ramp!

Jack lost her once. But if she thinks she’s getting away this time, she’s dead wrong.

An Excerpt From: COME, MY LOVE

Copyright © FRAN LEE, 2012

All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave Publishing, Inc.

To: franjamison@think_tank.com

From: SikorskiK@WIndiU.edu

Hello to all of Gracie’s Girls, class of 2002. Once again, thanks to all of you for the flowers and phone calls after my aunt Gracie’s passing last winter. You all meant so much to her, and to me.

As I’m sure you all know, our ten-year college reunion is coming up this summer. Since I now have Aunt Gracie’s big rambling house all to myself, I’d like to extend an invitation. If any of you are coming back for the reunion, you’re more than welcome to stay here, in your old rooms. Gracie quit taking in college students several years back, so there’s no one here but me and I’d love to have some company while I’m getting the house ready to put on the market. So what do you say? One last time as roommates? It would be great to see all of you again.

Hugs,

Karen

She hadn’t planned to attend, at least not until she’d received Karen’s guilt-inspiring email. Every instinct she possessed screamed at her to hit the delete key and pretend the email hadn’t arrived, but she just couldn’t do that. Karen was having financial problems and might have to sell the historic but dilapidated old Victorian house they had all shared in college.

She shouldn’t feel so gun-shy, but even after all these years it would be hard for her to go back and see all her old pals with the memories of her college years slamming hard into her refurbished self-image. A self-image that had taken her seven long years of analysis and hard work to create.

Fran sighed and rubbed her temples, shoving her reading glasses up onto her sleep-tousled head. She’d received the formal reunion invitation last week but had tossed it without even looking at it. No use reliving the whole college scene just to see how everyone else looked… See how many of her friends had kids… How they had all changed over the ten years since she’d last seen them. She certainly didn’t feel like listening to them telling stories about new babies and favorite pets and how they’d met their husbands.

All the things Fran had excluded from her life in favor of monetary success and “being her own woman”.

Fran was far more realistic now. She refused to kid herself. She had never found the man of her dreams and settled down to raise a family, mainly because it had taken her seven years to get past her own demented mental image of herself. And now that she finally recognized her own worth and had learned to love herself as she was, she was way past the wild need to flaunt her wares and try to trap some unwary male. Besides, most men in her age bracket were already married. Or divorced and on the rebound. Or just looking for a one-night stand. So far, that had never quite appealed, no matter how good looking the man in question happened to be.

Men were not a necessity in life. Besides…she’d royally screwed up, long ago, with the only man she’d ever really wanted any sort of relationship with.

She ran her fingers through her wild curls and pressed her thumbs against the bridge of her nose. Back then she’d been so sure that the tentative advances he’d made were simply another way for the jock community at WIU to have a laugh-fest at her expense. She’d reacted defensively, tearing his ego into tiny strips. And then he’d basically left her alone. Damn…

Only years later, after many long sessions with her uber-patient therapist, had it flashed with astonishing clarity into her mind. Jack Gerrard—her dream man—had actually tried to ask her out on a date. And she had gone off on the man as if he’d just asked her to jump naked into an anthill.

She gave a sigh of resignation. The worst part of it was that she’d always had the most pathetic crush on the man—most girls had crushes on the hot, sexy hero of the WIU gridiron.

Even in high school, Gerrard had always been in the company of cheerleaders and prom queens and the most popular girls. They hung all over him like bees around a honey pot. One look from those riveting blue eyes could make any girl drop her panties with a scream of delight. But Jack had ignored them most of the time, keeping up excellent grades so he could play varsity football. She supposed that was the true attraction.

Sure. There she went, lying to herself again. She’d been hot for his ripped body, just like all the other girls. But it had gone deeper than that with her.

He had offered her some modicum of friendship, and good-looking guys did not want to be pals with Fran Jamison. So when that friendship was withdrawn without explanation or reason, it had torn her up inside.

 

All contest rules will be available on my blog and website on August 15th. That is, just in case you want to enter. :)

 

Have a marvelous weekend!

 

Fran Lee

http://www.franleeromance.com 

I'm Back

Sorry for not posting the last couple of weeks! I've had lots going on, not enough hours in the day...you all know how it is!

Late last night I finally finished my 5th Erotic Gem story for Resplendence Publishing! One might think that since they are short, short stories, one could write them in a short, short time - NOT!!

Hubby and I have both been working crazy hours. We've had car trouble, home repairs, and bouts of power outages due to frequent storms.

The icing on the proverbial cake?

All three of my dogs have a serious respiratory sickness!! They are coughing, sneezing, and are extremely pitiful. They are on antibiotics and cough medicine, and are up all night being miserable, so we are up all night being miserable with them! Thank God the vomiting seems to have stopped.


Let's all try to have a great weekend~
Tessie
www.tessiebradford.com