Welcome to Nicola E. Sheridan!

Title: "Magical Gains",

Genre: Paranormal/fantasy romance.

Blurb:

When wishes are forbidden, what's a Genie to do?

Imran is sexy. He is available, but taking anything from him is illegal and could land you in prison or at the very least, with an extraordinarily large tax bill.

Imran is a genie and Primrose a government employee, and in a world where magic is heavily governed to ensure equality for all, their relationship appears doomed from the start.

When Primrose finds herself the unwilling mistress of a hot male Genie, her stifling suburban lifestyle is shattered. Thrust into the steamy Free Zone, filled with lascivious Satyrs and treacherous Sirens, Primrose discovers that three wishes can giver her anything she needs, but can they give her what she truly wants?

Excerpt:

“Just make three little wishes. No one will know,” Imran urged smoothly. “Just little things, you know, a new pair of shoes, maybe a necklace, and a puppy.” He grinned.

Primrose looked aghast.

“A Magical Investigations Team would be out here in a second!” she snapped.

“That’s not really a problem since I’m not registered,” he drawled. “Correct me if I am wrong, but it is only registered magical beings whose magic is traceable.” Imran’s black eyes flashed with amusement.

Primrose Brasco, apart from being incurably prudish, was a lovely-looking creature. Small and curvaceous, with long, cascading chocolate brown hair and honey brown eyes, she was every male Genie’s dream mistress.

Primrose sighed. “You may be unregistered, but the government can still detect your magic, even if they don’t know who or what you are…” She paused, taking yet another gulp of air. “I really don’t want to risk it. I’m sorry. I think I’ll have to turn you in myself.”

A flash of anxiety flickered in Imran’s dark eyes but was gone in an instant.

“I don’t think you should do that,” he replied very casually, as his eyes became unreadable.

“Really? Why?”

“Because…” He paused for subtle effect. “I will do everything in my quite substantial power to make your life a misery.” He smiled again with wicked white teeth.

Primrose stiffened. “Then I suppose we have a problem,” she whispered.

Bio:

Nicola E. Sheridan is a West Australian author, who specializes in the use of magic and mythology in contemporary romance. A mother of two, with a Bachelor of science majoring in Archaeology and Anthropology, Nicola enjoys spending time with her family, reading, writing, 4x4ing and travel. Her second book, "Magical Creations" is due for release in October this year, and "Mimosa Black" a paranormal novella is due for release in December.

http://www.nicolasheridan.com/

http://www.magicalgains.blogspot.com/

Welcome to Kathryn Meyer Griffith!

The Story of Vampire Blood

Author’s Revised Edition by Kathryn Meyer Griffith

A rerelease of my 1991 Zebra paperback romantic vampire novel

out from http://www.damnationbooks.com on July 7, 2011

In 1990 or so I’d just got done releasing my first three paperback novels with Leisure Books, a romantic historical (The Heart of the Rose 1985) and two romantic horror books (Evil Stalks the Night, 1984 and Blood Forge, 1989), and because I wasn’t making much money on them, was looking, as most so-called restless young authors were doing, to move up in the publishing industry.

So I wrote snail mail letters to three established authors of the day – Dean Koontz, Stephen King and Peter Straub – asking for a little advice and a little help. What do I do next? I want to be one of the big dogs running in the big races. I want to make the big bucks. Be famous like you. (Ha, ha. I was so naïve in those days!)

Well, Stephen King and Peter Straub never answered my letters but one rainy fall night I got a phone call from Gerda Koontz (Dean Koontz’s wife) and she said Dean had gotten my letter and wanted me to have a name of a brand new agent who I should call or write to and say I was recommended by him. If I thought it strange that Dean Koontz himself wasn’t actually talking to me I was told by Gerda that he was a shy man and had had a particularly hard couple of months because of family problems (I think it had something to do with his father in a nursing home or something, but can’t exactly recall now) and he’d asked her to call me. She often did that for him, as well as helping him with the business side of his writing career. He (through her…and I got the impression that he was actually nearby telling her what to say the whole time) said I had to have an agent (I didn’t have one) and then he gave me the name of an ambitious one, Lori Perkins, just starting out and his advice on what I should do to advance as a writer.

I do remember being incredibly touched that he, a famous busy novelist that I admired – I loved his Twilight Eyes – would take the time to talk to me, even through his wife. They were both so sweet and we talked for nearly an hour all about writing, books and everything.

I took their advice and contacted that agent and she agreed immediately to represent me on my fourth book, Vampire Blood, no doubt, because I said Dean Koontz had recommended her to me. Name dropper! But Vampire Blood was the reason I’d contacted those famous authors in the first place. I thought it was the best book I’d done so far and wanted it to go to (what I thought at the time) would be a better publisher than Leisure Books, which contracted and hog-tied their writers with a horrible ‘potboiler’ one-size-fits-all ten year contract with low advances and 4% royalties. Yes, I got a whole whopping 14 cents a book in those days, but, I must confess, they did print thousands of paperbacks each run and had a huge distribution area. I thought I could do a lot better. Anyway, Lori Perkins wanted me to send her the book and she did like it and eventually sold it, and then three others zip-zip-zip right after, to Zebra Books (now known more as Kensington Publishing) at 6% royalties and double the advances I was used to getting. They slapped a sexy blond vampire with a low dress on the cover and a hazy theater behind her. Lovely colors. I thought it was an eye-catching cover. I was so happy. I thought I’d made it! Again, so naïve.

Vampire Blood. A little story about a family of vicious killing vampires who settle in a small Florida town called Summer Haven and end up buying and fixing up an old theater palace to run, and pluck their victims from, and a divorced, down-on-her-luck ex-novelist and her hard luck father, who along with friends, help thwart them.

Now to how and why I wrote it.

My husband and I lived in this small Illinois town, Cahokia, at the time and there was the neatest little hole-in-the-wall theater in a nearby shopping center we used to go to all the time…run by a family of a sweet man, Terry, and his wife, Ann, and sometimes their three children, two teenage boys and a girl named Irene. Such a friendly, but odd couple. The run-down theater was their whole world it seemed. The kids helped take in the tickets, pop the popcorn and sell the candy snacks.

Now the minute Terry and Ann found out, in one of our earliest conversations, that I was a published novelist they were my greatest fans. Terry went right out and bought all three of my books and they all read them. Terry always thought they’d make great movies. Next time my husband and I went to the little theater Terry and Ann greeted us like old friends, so delighted to see us, and refused to take a dime from us for anything. We got in free whenever we went from then on. Now in those days my husband, my son, James, and I were pretty broke. I worked as a graphic designer at a big brokerage firm in downtown St. Louis (across the Poplar Bridge from our Illinois town) but my husband was in between jobs. We lived on a shoestring. Hard times. So I always was so tickled that we could get into the local movies for free. We went a lot, too, as we loved movies, especially science fiction and horror films.

One night I was watching Terry and Ann and their joy in running that little theater, with the kids bustling around doing their jobs, and I got the idea for Vampire Blood. Just like that! Use them and the theater as a backdrop for a vampire novel. Hey, wouldn’t it be neat, I off-handedly mentioned to Terry one night, if I wrote a book about a family of vampires that was trying to pass as a real human family, the man and woman wanting so badly to fit in and lead a normal life for a while, renovating and then running a theater together…but the kids are wild and, as kids always do, make trouble for them in the town…killing people? Terry loved the idea and I asked him if it’d be all right to use him and his family as a template for the vampires. He was thrilled to be part of anything to do with my books and said yes. So…I wrote this book about them (sort of), the theater (making it much grander than it was, of course), a small town terrorized by cruel, powerful vampires who can change into wolves at will….and a saddened lonely woman, her brother, and her ex-husband (who she still loves and ultimately ends up with again after he saves her life) who finds herself again, but loses a lot, as well, fighting these vampires. Vampires she doesn’t believe in at first.

I was very happy with the book when it was done and dedicated it to Terry and Ann when it came out in 1991. Terry and Ann were thrilled, too.

So Vampire Blood came out and did very well for me, second only to my Zebra 1993 Witches. As the years went by it went out of print and when, twenty years later, Kim Richards at Damnation Books contracted my 13^th and 14^th novels, BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons and The Woman in Crimson, she asked if I’d like to rerelease (with new covers and rewritten, of course) my 7 out-of-print Leisure and Zebra paperbacks – and I said a resounding yes!

So…here it is…Vampire Blood…twenty years later, alive again and better, I believe, than the original because my writing then was done on an electric typewriter, with gobs of White-Out and carbon paper (I couldn’t afford copies), using snail mail; all of which didn’t lend itself to much rewriting. And in those days, editors told an author what to change and then the writer only saw the manuscript once to final proof it. Who knew what those sneaky editors were slipping in inbetween and before the final book was in an author’s greedy little hands. Hey, and I was working full time, raising a son, living a life and caring for my big extended family in one way or another, too. Busy, exciting, loving, happy and sad times.

For this new version, Damnation Book’s cover artist Dawné Dominique made me an astonishingly intriguing cover of a lovely vampire (Irene the youngest vampire who turns out to be the most brutal and ancient in the end)…but, thank goodness, without the low sexy top. And my DB editor, April Duncan, helped me make it a better novel.

A lot has happened to me and my family in these twenty years, as well. Both my parents, and my beloved maternal grandmother, the storyteller of her generation, have since passed away. Many people we used to know have. Old boyfriends, old friends and relatives. I miss them all! I no longer have that agent; she went on to bigger advances and bigger writers. I lost my good job at the brokerage firm, bumped around in lesser jobs for years, always writing in my spare time, and now, at long last, write full time while my husband works way too hard in a machine shop to support us.

Rewriting the book brought back so many good memories…and tears over those no longer here. The theater closed sixteen years ago, the owner believing it’d served its purpose and used up its time. Terry and Ann, heartbroken, were never the same. They had other jobs, none they truly cared about. Ann is still with us, but Terry died a few years ago, I heard from someone. We lost contact once they stopped running the theater and we moved from Cahokia to a nicer town miles away.

But I’ll never forget those early days and the stories that came with them. Days of high hopes and far distance future dreams…some of which have come true and some which haven’t. I’ve never made the big bucks, never gotten truly famous, but now, at long last and to my great delight, all twelve of my older books, from Leisure, Zebra, and The Wild Rose Press are being rewritten and reissued from Damnation Books and Eternal Press between June 2010 and July 2012. Better than ever after I’d rewritten them. I have plans to write more books and short stories, too, when they’re done. Most importantly, I’m living a good life with a husband I adore and brothers and sisters I love. Writing the stories I was born to write and happy I am. I have my memories. All in all, I’m a lucky, lucky woman.

So, all you writers out there…never give up and never stop writing!

Thank you!

***

Kathryn Meyer Griffith has been writing for nearly forty years and has published 14 novels and 7 short stories since 1984 with Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press in the horror, romantic paranormal, suspense and murder mystery genres… and all 12 of her old books, see below, (and two new ones) are being brought out again.

Here’s a list of all my published novels and short stories:

Evil Stalks the Night (Leisure,1984; Damnation Books, July 2012)

The Heart of the Rose (Leisure,1985)

Blood Forge (Leisure,1989; Damnation Books, February 2012)

Vampire Blood (Zebra, 1991; Damnation Books, July 2011)

The Last Vampire (Zebra, 1992; Damnation Books, October 2010)

Witches (Zebra, 1993; Damnation Books, April 2011)

The Nameless One (short story in 1993 Zebra Anthology Dark Seductions;

Damnation Books, February 2011)

The Calling (Zebra, 1994; Damnation Books, October 2011)

Scraps of Paper (Avalon Books Murder Mystery, 2003)

All Things Slip Away (Avalon Books Murder Mystery, 2006)

Egyptian Heart (The Wild Rose Press, 2007...out again from Eternal Press in

August 2011)

Winter's Journey (The Wild Rose Press, 2008...out again from Eternal Press in

September 2011)

The Ice Bridge (The Wild Rose Press, 2008...out again from Eternal Press in November 2011)

Don't Look Back short story (2008...out again from Eternal Press in 2011)

In This House (short story 2008...out again from Eternal Press in 2011)

BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons (2010)

The Woman in Crimson (2010) ***

A Warm Welcome to Jane Toombs!

1. What is Sweet Hawk of Love about?

The hero, Coleman, is a man who doesn’t think he’s interested in commitment. He grows and changes as he comes to appreciate the heroine’s qualities.

The heroine, Aldis, is a woman burned by a bad marriage , now ended, and doesn’t want any part of a love relationship. She has a younger sister she believes is far more attractive and vital than she is.

The title refers to her pottery creations, which feature birds in cages.

She’s raising her dead husband’s much younger sister, Moya, in her huge old family home on the west bank of the Hudson Rive in upstate New York.

The theme of the story is how love can free you and change your concepts of life. At the end of the book, the heroine has discovered how she’s superimposed her own beliefs onto the child she’s raising and , like the pottery hawk she’s able to create at the end of the story, allow the girl to fly free, just as she, herself, is able to accept love.

2. Could you give me a short sample passage?

Moya is the young girl Aldis is raising. She was supposed to go back to boarding school, but instead turned up missing, Aldis and Coleman have been looking all over for her when they finally decide to go the local cadet academy in the town:

A graying man in an Army officer's uniform approached them. "I'm Captain Scarborough," he said. "Can I be of help?"

Aldis told him what had happened, showing him the picture of Moya she carried in her wallet, and described the clothes she'd been wearing.

"No, I haven't seen her. Let me ask our cadet officer of the day." He turned to the mess hall. "Lieutenant McCoy!"

A young cadet sprang to his feet, marched up the aisle between the tables, halted in front of the captain and saluted. "Yes, sir."

The young lieutenant frowned when Aldis showed him the picture. He hesitated and finally nodded. "I did see a girl who looked something like this."

Thank God. If only it was Moya.

"At around thirteen hundred hours," the young lieutenant went on. "I didn't think anything of it because our cadets are returning from spring vacation today. A lot of them come with their families and I thought she was somebody's sister."

"If necessary," Captain Scarborough said, "we'll search the grounds. I'll have the entire corps of cadets fall out in barracks square and assign each company an area to patrol." The captain seemed eager to send his cadets into action.

"That might not be necessary," Aldis said as an idea took hold . "Can we look in the stable area first?"

"The stables?" The captain looked surprised.

"She loves horses," Coleman put in.

The captain nodded. "A lot of our cadets do, girls especially. As a matter of fact, I suspect that's why some of them come to the academy in the first place."

Aldis mentally urged them to stop talking and get moving. Why hadn't she followed up after Coleman had told her about talking with Moya about horses? That had to be her reason for asking to transfer to Stanton. If only I'd paid more attention instead of jumping to conclusions.

"I'll be glad to show you the stable," the captain told them.

After dismissing Lt. McCoy, he led them down a road past the faculty houses and across a field dotted with equestrian jumps, some hedges and other bars laid between low uprights.

"For cavalry training," Captain Scarborough said.

The stables, an old, long, low building, was at the far side of the field. Inside the odors of horses and hay, a nostalgic smell that reminded Aldis of the time, at thirteen, when she'd begged her parents to buy her a pony. How could she have forgotten?

The captain turned on a row of four unshielded overhead lights. As they walked from one end of the stable to the other, horses whuffled and stamped their feet in their stalls. Otherwise, the stable appeared empty.

Noticing a door at the far end, Aldis asked, "Does that lead to more
stalls?"

"No, it's our tack room."

She opened the door and looked into a shadowed room redolent with the odor of leather. She saw bales of hay piled along one wall and, curled up on top of them, a dark figure.

"Moya?"

The figure rose from the makeshift bed. Aldis saw it was Moya. Aldis held out her arms and Moya ran to her.

"Oh, Aldis, I'm so glad you came." Moya hugged her so hard it hurt. "I don't want to stay here, I want to go home. Please take me home."

On the drive to the Gorman house, Moya sat in the back to the small car. Aldis, half-turned in her front seat kept an eye on her.

"I thought I'd like the academy," Moya said, leaning toward her, "but I didn't. I was there all day wandering around and all I really liked was the horses. They were fab. But somebody's always telling the cadets what to do. The older cadets give orders to the younger ones, the cadet officers give orders to the older ones, Then the instructors give orders to the officers.
It's as bad as--" she put her hand over her mouth.

"As bad as I am?" Aldis asked. "It's all right, you can say it. Now I can see I wasn't listening to you. Because I was too busy trying to make sure you had the chance I missed."

"I know you want to help me." Moya wiped the tears from her face. "That's why it was so hard for me to come right out and say anything. And maybe painting's what I want to do. I'm not sure. There are so many things I could do, so many possibilities. I might want to paint or be a vet or direct films."

3. Who do you consider your writing influences?

Mostly my father, who was a published non-fiction author who encouraged me to write stories as a child and would always say something good about my work before pointing out ways I could improve it.

I was also an eclectic reader from childhood on--didn‘t matter what it was, I read it. I was published before I joined RWA, but they’ve been a wonderful resource for meeting other authors and making friends. But I’ve made friends on the lists as well.

4. Where are you from?

I was born in California, but my mother brought me home to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula when I was nine months old and I grew up there. Though I’ve lived in several areas of California, in Upstate New York, Northern Nevada and Florida, the Viking and I have come back to live where we grew up--in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula wilderness.

5. How experienced are you as an author?

My first book, a gothic titled Tule Witch, was published by Avon in 1973. In those days all gothics had no more than a kiss or two. How the world has changed. I’ve been writing ever, since so I have quite a few published books. My web site is: www.JaneToombs.com for anyone curious.

6. Is there anything else about you that you'd like readers to know?

With a writer friend of mine, Janet Lane Walters, we published Becoming Your Own Critique Partner, a book for helping aspiring authors. We tried to include what we wished we’d known when we first starting writing, but had to learn the hard way.

7. If I lived in an enormous mansion where you were welcome to stay, what would you prefer your guestroom to be like?

Since we live across the road from the south shore of Lake Superior, I’d need windows in my room with a view of a lake, an ocean, distant mountains--something that changed with the seasons. A garden outside would also be necessary, one birds and butterflies would want to visit. And because I’m no longer young, I’d want a comfortable couch and a chair such as a La-Z-Boy that adjusts. I‘m a writer, I’d need the latest in computers, printers and the like, with wireless access. Something that would play music as well, with my choice of what I like to listen to. I read more than I watch TV, but if I had a good ereader, I would not need an array of print books, since I could download what I wished to read. I’d like the room to be a suite, with the bedroom separate from what would be the writing and living room. I assume a cook is on the premises, one that is appraised of individual allergies or dislikes. One more addition. Since I can’t live without the Viking he’d have to share the suite with me--so add another adjustable chair and a TV to the bedroom so he can watch and not disturb my writing. A private bath with tub and shower is assumed. All this sounds so good, I wish I was there!