RION by Susan Kearney

Dragons and Shapeshifters and other Worlds . . . Oh why?

Why do these kinds of paranormal phenomena stir my mind?

The Pendragon world in the book RION comes mainly from my imagination. The world of Tor is old, modern and yet full of hidden dangers. I enjoy creating a fascinating backdrop for my characters and on Tor people live above the clouds in buildings that move as easily as our cars. This technology creates a migratory society where nothing is quite what it seems. But the fun part is watching my heroine deal with the danger.

And later when Rion and Marisa return to his world, Honor, again, the world is ancient, the civilization as old as Earth’s eastern dynasties, however the contrast between Honor and Tor is startling. Rion’s home has been invaded by the enemy, his people enslaved, the cities leveled.

His people may be dragon shapers, a race of beings capable of morphing into giant dragons who can fly and who exhibit telepathic abilities, but their strengths have been used against them. For without the proper nutrients, even the mighty will fall.

Part of what I try to do as a writer is show how my characters react to unusual situations. And since my characters are very human, they takes all of their pride and personality with them across the galaxy. The fun part is having them confront new situations and giving them ethical and moral dilemmas they might never have to face on Earth.

So if you like adventure, dragons, strong heroines and sexy heroes, give RION a try.

The seventh person to comment on this blog will win a copy of LUCAN.

http://www.susankearney.com/

THE YARD DOG - Sheldon Russell

To hear the cable pundits talk, one would think the United States had never entertained the notion of housing – much less housed – prisoners of war on our own domestic soil. But we had just short of 400,000 POWs during the course of World War II, thirty one camps in Oklahoma alone.

True, these were not “enemy combatants,” but many were considered evil and dangerous men—and just as much a threat to national security as their modern-day counterparts.

As a boy I grew up knowing that hundreds of Nazis ate, worked and slept in a POW camp just outside Alva, Oklahoma, and that German POW work crews labored practically in my own backyard, in the Santa Fe ice plant in Waynoka, Oklahoma.

As a man, I returned to this slice of American military history for the backdrop of my new book, The Yard Dog, a mystery set in the Alva POW camp.

What my readers and most American may never realize—in this day of the Guantanamo Bay Detention in Cuba and the discussion of whether or not to relocate its captives to American prisons—is that Oklahoma’s camps were just a tip of a WWII network of camps housing captured soldiers that sprawled across the American heartland. POW camps could be found in nearly every state in the union, with heavy concentrations in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana. Unlike Gitmo, which operates beyond the public eye, the WWII camps were right in our midst.

From the beginning, in spite of the mistreatment of our own soldiers in the war, the U.S. went out of its way to observe the dictates of the Geneva Convention at those camps. WWII POWs had access to both the Red Cross and the Swiss legation (prisoners could air complaints without fear of retaliation), educational opportunities and good food—sometimes better food than the locals, who were subject to the normal shortages of a war economy. POW work parties were also sent into communities to provide farm labor or to work in factories.

Torture was not permitted in the American POW camps. In fact, the ranking prisoners provided much of the camp’s discipline, and while prisoners could, and did, cause trouble, allowing the German officers to handle most infractions—as they would on the field of battle—seemed to work.

Escape attempts by POWs were few and largely unsuccessful. The camps were purposely put in remote locations, and while escape attempts were dangerous by definition, they were not treated as criminal acts. Even in the case of the Alva camp, which housed the more dangerous, hardened Nazis, the prisoners were considered to be, and treated as, captured soldiers not criminals.

Could this be because the German POWs were more racially similar to the locals, many of whom, like the POWs, were of German heritage, often carrying the same surnames and, on occasion, were actually related? Maybe.


But it might surprise Americans to know that WWII faced many of the same logistical problems as the War on Terror when it came to interrogating prisoners. Finding reliable interpreters has been a constant challenge in Iraq, and it was no less true in WWII POW camps. German interpreters were so desperately needed on the front, POW camp commanders often relied on prisoners as interpreters, making the information obtained unreliable at best.

Eventually, the war ended, as wars are wont to do, and the U.S. faced the problem of what to do with thousands of German POWs. The U.S. realized to send the German soldier home carried with it the risk that he might rise up again—despite all the efforts made during his imprisonment to reeducate him through films, books and articles that documented the atrocities committed against the Jews in the name of German nationalism.

In the end, he was sent back—sometimes directly home, sometimes to such places as France and Russia—to help rebuild, but back he did go.

Today I can walk through the Cherokee Strip Museum in Alva and see drawings, wood carvings and even escape maps the German soldiers left behind at the camp at the war’s end. I can go to the camp in El Reno, Oklahoma, and visit the graves of those who died and were buried in a foreign land.

All this has only reinforced my belief that sunshine is always better than darkness. The POW camps of World War II were there for all of us to see. The camps were not perfect, but they were honest and open and civilized—and, just as important, we knew it.

In the end, I can look at that history without shame, because America did the right thing for America by doing right by the prisoners it captured. It makes me proud.

Those German POWs went home carrying a message that Americans—and, thus, America—are what they claim to be.

Will the same be able to be said about the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay, when the day comes that it is time for them to go home?

http://www.sheldonrussell.com/

THE ROGUES' DYNASTY TRILOGY - Amelia Grey

Good morning everyone! I’m very happy to be at Writerspace today. I’ve had my website with Writerspace since 2000. Some days I think, “Has it really been that long since Cissy and I developed my first website?” and other days I think, “Hasn’t it been longer than nine years that I’ve had a website?” But one thing that is a constant is the good job that Cissy and all her staff do for those of us who leave our domains in their capable hands. Thank you for having me here today.

You know, one of the things I love about being a Regency author is that I get to write about titled gentlemen. There is just something extremely appealing and very sexy to me about a hero born to power, and privilege, but he never misuses either. When I started my new trilogy The Rogues’ Dynasty, I wanted all my heroes to be titled and related. That presented a problem at first. They couldn’t be brothers because titles are only handed down to the first born son. There are no leftovers for subsequent sons.

I finally decided that the best way to get around that issue was by making the heroes of the three books cousins rather than brothers or friends. It was easy enough to do that by creating their grandmother, a grand lady who was known far and wide because she managed to marry all three of her daughters to titled gentlemen. And all of her daughters gave her a grandson in the same year. Suddenly I had a duke, a marquis, and an earl!

I always want my heroes to be tall and powerful-looking with wide shoulders and lean hips. I like for their neckcloths to look as if they have been hastily tied making them appear to be the devilish rogues the gossipmongers claim they are. My heroes must be strong and commanding but never afraid to show their sensitive side.

The first book of my Rogues’ Dynasty trilogy is A Duke To Die for which came out in April 2009 and is still available. In A Duke To Die For,the hero’s life was chaotic and undisciplined, so I gave him a beautiful and quite charming heroine who was timely and organized to get under his skin and stay there. For fun I had her believe she was cursed, and for intrigue I had him be in danger because of it.

The middle book, A Marquis To Marry is an October release and is currently on sale wherever books are sold. In A Marquis To Marry, the hero is a fun-loving rogue and very happily a bachelor, so I had to give him a beautiful, fascinating woman who had the power, charm, and all it took to make him want to settle down to just one woman. For enjoyment, I had him in possession of a priceless necklace of pearls that belonged to her family, and then for intrigue I had them stolen.

An Earl to Enchant will be published in April 2010. In An Earl To Enchant, the hero is a planner who plays by the rules and has no idea what to do with an enchanting heroine who ignores convention and steals his heart with her impulsive ways. For merriment, I had the heroine pursuing the hero, and for intrigue I had a killer pursuing her.

But let me show you what I mean about a titled gentleman by giving you a short excerpt of what my heroine in A Marquis To Marry thinks about the hero when she first meets him.

Susannah Brookefield, the Dowager Duchess of Blooming had met her match, and he was standing before her, his nose to hers, in all his handsomeness. He was no ordinary man. Everything about him spoke of power, privilege and wealth. The Marquis of Raceworth was just as she had imagined him, tall, self-confident, pleasing to look at, and terribly spoiled.

Not that she could really hold that against him. Titled men were used to getting their way. Her gaze slowly rose past his clean-shaven chin to lips that were so masculine and so very close to her own that her heartbeat fluttered. She held her breath for a moment before looking into the most intriguing brownish-green eyes she had ever seen.

Thick light-brown hair was cropped short over his ears but fell longer at his nape. His sky-blue waistcoat with its gold-colored buttons fit seamlessly over a flat stomach and enhanced his slim hips. And even with his fancy-tied neckcloth and impeccably tailored, fine wool coat stretched perfectly over his broad shoulders and chest, he somehow managed to look casually sophisticated.

I hope you enjoyed this brief look at titled gentlemen and that you’ll check out the Rogues’ Dynasty trilogy and read about my titled heroes!

Please visit me at http://www.ameliagrey.com/, or e-mail me at ameliagrey@comcast.net to find out more about my Rogues’ Dynasty series or to ask questions.

Comment on this blog and you could win a copy of an Amelia Grey book.

SINS OF THE FLESH: Caridad Pineiro

There are lots of questions that people ask authors, but one of the most common questions is “Where do you get the ideas for your books?”

I don’t know if I’m odd or not, but I actually get the idea for my characters first. They start off as a niggling idea in my brain and little by little become full-blown people who have an interesting story to be told. Even more interesting, it’s usually the female characters that happen into my brain first.

For example, for DARKNESS CALLS, the character of FBI Agent Diana Reyes came to me while I was in the middle of writing another book, but her presence was so strong that I had to put that other book away!

It was a similar situation for SINS OF THE FLESH. I had a sudden flash of a woman, one who had something terribly wrong with her. One who would do anything to try and improve the last few months of her life so that she can continue to do the thing she loves the most – play her music. Enter Caterina Shaw into the picture.

Why music? Well, besides being a science geek (more on that later), I used to be a musician and loved performing. My instrument of choice – the bassoon. Not very sexy if you know what a bassoon looks like, so I changed it to a cello. Very warm and sensual. See what I mean?

The next thing I had to think about with this heroine was what kind of hero would really push her buttons. Someone who would be a little rough around the edges, determined, protective and since her heroine had a dysfunctional family, someone with a family support system. Enter Mick Carrera into the system!

But now that I had a hero and heroine, what could I do with them? Well, enter me, the science geek!

I’ve always loved science so it made sense to use that love and the knowledge that I had learned in college to develop a story that would allow for lots of weird stuff going on, action, adventure and of course, romance.

Since Caterina needed a cure for her illness, I decided to play around with the idea of a radical gene therapy to help her. Unfortunately, the scientists decide to use Caterina as a science experiment, adding a number of other genes to her that will give her all kinds of unusual powers. When one of the scientists decides to blow the whistle on the illegal activities, he is murdered and Caterina is framed for that murder. Luckily, she manages to escape during the murder, but that necessitates sending a hunter after her – Mick Carrera. Of course when Mick finds Caterina, he also discovers that the story that he is being told about Caterina may not be totally accurate.

That discovery puts into place the action and suspense in the story as Mick and Caterina must battle to prove her innocence and also fight the attraction that is growing between them.

So now you know how the glimmer of an idea, in my case starting with a character, goes from that glimmer to a full blown story!

Thanks for dropping by to spend some time with me.

Post a comment and you may win a SINS T-shirt and a copy of FURY CALLS. http://www/caridad.com

Vampires In Space - Susan Sizemore

I am a science fiction fan. I'm a space opera fan. There's a subgenre of science fiction called Military SF, of which I am a major fan. I also adore reading futuristic romance. Gena Showalter, Linea Sinclair, Susan Grant, Susan Kearney and other authors of futuristic romance are my heroes. And I love writing futuristic romance. My first effort was a futuristic/time travel/comedy/contemporary called WALKING ON THE MOON, available from http://www.cerridwenpress.com/. Then I tried a more serious space opera called GATES OF HELL that I wrote for a friend when she started a very small independent publishing company. There are maybe two or three thousand copies of this book in circulation. I'd love to write more books set in the GoH universe but haven't had the time to get to them. I really wasn't planning on writing any more futuristics...

Then DARK STRANGER came along. Actually, the idea forced itself into my head and refused to leave until I'd written Doc and Zoe's story. Not only is DARK STRANGER a futuristic romance. it's also a military SF story, and most importantly it is set in my Vampire Primes universe. That's right, "Vampires in Space...!" Although the story actually takes place on an alien planet. Actually, in an alien planet... You see, it's a war story set in an underground POW camp in a future where earth is the center of the Byzant Empire and humans are fighting against the aggressive cat-like Hajim. Our hero is a Prime Vampire, our heroine is the heiress to the Byzant throne. DARK STRANGER is the first book in what I'm calling THE VAMPIRE BOOK CLUB (read what Prime Vampires read).

"Do you think a princess and a guy like me..." as Han Solo once said is a prominent theme in DARK STRANGER. Of course, in this case, the guy's a vampire. He's also a marine general, and a doctor. I tell you, Doc's a prize, ladies! He actually looks like the hunk on the glorious cover that my publisher, Pocket Star, gave the book, tattoo included. The heroine, Zoe is a diplomat, hiding incognito in the POW camp as a navy officer after the ship she was on was captured by the Hajim.

DARK STRANGER is about finding love while surviving a desperate situation. It's about two people who shouldn't be together finding passion and fighting for the love that sustains them through stress, terror, political pressure and physical danger. It's a damn good adventure!

I adored writing this book. I love these characters. I hope you love DARK STRANGER as much as I do. http://www.susansizemore.com/

TAKE ME FOR A RIDE by Karen Kendall

Every writer experiences a journey while creating a manuscript, and I’d like to share part of mine during my work on TAKE ME FOR A RIDE, the third book in my series about an agency that recovers stolen art.

The story depends on a little synchronicity, a little personal history and a lot of coincidences I encountered during my research.

First, I had left my characters Avy and Liam on their way to Moscow at the end of the second book in the series (TAKE ME TWO TIMES). So I knew that I had to have some kind of subplot, at least, happening in Moscow during TAKE ME FOR A RIDE.

I did a little Googling and discovered that the patron saint of Moscow is St. George. This is where synchronicity kicked in, because when I was growing up, my mom had a big rug hanging on the wall of our house that depicted St. George and the dragon. (It had been my grandfather’s.) While I no longer have the rug, it is one of those deeply entrenched images from my childhood.

Further research on St. George dug up the facts that Catherine the Great founded an order of St. George . . . and I had one of those “what if” moments! What if my characters were trying to hunt down a St. George necklace that had belonged to Catherine the Great?

I thought about my proposed main character, Eric McDougal, who is definitely no saint, LOL. He’s never been anyone’s idea of a knight in shining armor. And again, I had a “what if” moment. What if McDougal was forced to become a girl’s knight, against all of his instincts? What if he suddenly discovered a conscience after all these years of womanizing . . . and had to struggle against his true nature as well as the external plot of the book?

Better yet, what if under all that attitude and bad boy bravado, McDougal was really, secretly, a nice guy . . . with a lot of hidden psychological reasons for behaving the way he did? Hmmmmm.

And so, TAKE ME FOR A RIDE was born. But my personal journey with this book gets even stranger. My grandparents were very much affected by World War II, and I’ve always thought about that. While my grandfather himself wasn’t Jewish, he had many Jewish friends and was penalized for trying to help one in particular. It led to his personal ruin.

During the writing process on RIDE, which contains a Nazi restitution element, I received a phone call from a lawyer in Berlin . . . and the hair on the back of my neck stood up, because he was calling to tell me that I might be part heir to a piece of art wrongfully taken by the Nazi’s. Never mind that the piece isn’t worth much . . . it’s a piece of family history, and that phone call was eerie beyond belief!

So these are little bits and pieces of my writer’s journey during the creation of TAKE ME FOR A RIDE. I hope this opens a window into how personal writing can be. Have any of you experienced strange hints from the universe while you’ve been working on a creative project? If so I’d love to hear from you!

To read an excerpt from TAKE ME FOR A RIDE, or to enter my contest to win a gorgeous sterling silver St. George necklace, visit me at http://www.karenkendall.com/.

Post a comment and you could win a signed copy of TAKE ME IF YOU CAN, the first book in the series.

Happy Holidays! xoxoxo,

Karen

The Romantic Chase - Sandy Blair

While reading a contemporary suspense recently in which the hero and heroine were immediately attracted to each other and making love by the end of the first chapter, I couldn’t help but think, “But where’s the romance in that?”

Color me silly but I want the hero to have to chase the heroine to ground, or see the heroine long for a man she can’t/or shouldn’t have for whatever reason and then watch as they struggle and find their way to a happily-ever-after ending.

I want to be there when heroines and heroes come to the realization that their lives will be poorer should they give in to their fears--or external forces--and give up the chase, allow this love to slip through their fingers.

Perhaps this is why a “chase” is at the heart of my stories no matter their length.

In my upcoming novella MacDuff’s Secret, MacDuff is immediately attracted to Sarah and vise-versa, but with each having private agendas, neither understands or trusts the other. It’s the struggle--the development of mutual respect that boosts the physical attraction, which grows into love--that makes the difficult decisions I put before them feel all the harder and thus makes their happily-ever-ending all the sweeter.

Am I being greedy wanting a compelling plot and the romantic chase? What are you hoping to find/experience when you open a Romance?

I’ll be giving away an autographed copy of A Highlander For Christmas to someone who comments.

Sandy

http://www.sandyblair.net/