Ready To Start Sharing... Paranormal Love Blog Hop

This year I'm once again doing NaNoWriMo in November but I can already tell you that I'm sort of cheating because some parts are already written. I want to finish the manuscript I've been working on in fits and starts, piece by little piece for the last couple years. It's actually the story I intended to start the last time I participated in the month long writing event... However at that time life intervened and the story didn't get written.

I've spent the last 6 weeks or so planning, outlining and playing through scenarios for key points in the story. Originally I thought the story I was going to tell would be one book. Now I know it's actually 3. My focus in November will be to get the first book The Queen's Mate completed so that it can move into editing and beta reading. I'm really hoping that I'll actually be able to publish it by January 2016, with book 2: The Heart of the Healer, and book 3: The Touch of Winter to release in the months following. They will be the first three stories of the paranormal romance series I'm calling the McKenna's End Series. 

Today I'm pleased to share the blurb for THE QUEEN'S MATE... 

Years after they loose touch, two friends are reacquainted after the death of ones' parents. Winter Tallant and Dawn McKenna quickly become the best of friends, but is it Winter that keeps Dawn tied to the Tallant family or is it something more?

Dylan Tallant feels like his world is crumbling around him. When his parents die and leave him responsible for his siblings, their home and all their secrets, Dylan has no idea how to deal with the curveball life throws him in the very alluring shape of Dawn McKenna. 

Can Dawn and Dylan overcome the obstacles they've built up in their minds? Can the two of them face the secrets that they keep and finally let them go? Will they reach the tipping point naturally or will they be pushed off the edge by circumstances beyond their control? 

I'm feeling very giving today so... Here's a wee excerpt too! (This comes from an unedited, rough draft.) 

"I've lived in your house for nearly a year, how could I miss your scents?" Dawn was shocked by the scent that she could now sense and was completely flabbergasted as to how she hadn't noticed it before. 

Dylan shook his head. "How did I not scent you?" He asked her and nodded at the expression that flashed briefly across her face. "Exactly. You were obviously trained to hide your scent just the same as I was." 

"But Aidan? Winter?" She questioned. "I've never sensed they were anything but human." 

"They've always scented that way for me as well. Dad always believed it was because they couldn't shift." 

Now it was Dawn who shook her head. "I've never come across that before. Even those who couldn't shift still smelled of the animal that was in their blood." 

"I think it comes from my mom. She never smelled of her cat unless she was close to her shift or shifted." Dylan explained. 

"Dylan..." She said softly with wonder staring at the man, no the lion shifter standing in front of her. 

"I know," he replied. "We've been damn fools."  

Well I hope you've enjoyed this sneak peek into my head. This project is one that's been brewing for a long time and I simply can't explain how excited I am to be getting closer to my goal, nor how overjoyed I am to be able to share it with you... Well, overjoyed and slightly nauseous. But I'm sure I'll be alright. 

This post was lovingly prepared as part of the Paranormal Love Wednesdays Blog Hop! Thanks for stopping in and don't forget you can catch all the blog hop submissions for this Wednesday by going to the Paranormal Love Wednesdays Blog Hop page... See you again next time!

The Next Step of The Journey

We write. We read. We edit and re-write. We re-read and then edit and re-write again.

We authors do everything in our power to make our manuscripts the very best that they can be.

We try to eliminate typos and grammatical errors. We strive to ensure that John doesn’t mysteriously become Desmond, only to turn back in to John. We push ourselves to ensure that the timeline of our back-story doesn’t clash (or *gasp* contradict) with the timeline of the rest of our story.

We do all of these things but we are human and we still make mistakes.
 

So we employ, beg, or plead for beta-readers and editors. Those people who are going to read our stories and tell us what works and what doesn’t. Those individuals who we trust to rip our precious babies apart and then help us put them back together and make them (hopefully) better. The like-minded peeps who look for all the nitpicky errors of people, place and thing, and actually enjoy telling us when we’ve done something wrong. They are the men and women who are going to say to us “why?” and “no, just no” and even “WTF is going on with this?”

These people are in many ways our guardian angels, our saviors, our own personal heroes.