Happy Thanksgiving!
In America the fourth Thursday in November is set aside as Thanksgiving Day. That is today! I am thankful for so much. It sounds kinda corny, but I am thankful for you, the people who read my books. Thank you for reading my books, for leaving reviews, for recommending my books to your friends, for leaving comments. I know I am not the Great American Novelist. I write stories because 1) I love to write. And 2) because I want people to be able to find an escape from life for a few hours. Life kinda sucks sometimes, right? If someone reads one of my books and has a few hours of relaxation and fun, then my job as an author is complete.
So THANK YOU! I know this time of the year gets pretty crazy, but try to find a couple of hours to grab a good book and relax.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy Halloween!–Enjoy a Little Treat on Me
I can’t believe tomorrow is Halloween! I know it is a favorite holiday for a lot of us, including Glory Peterson Wolfe, the heroine from Wolf’s Glory. I have a treat for you: a little peek at Shadow and Glory a year after their book ends. Read on!
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Glory folded her arms, considering the exterior of the small house her mate had built for her. It was painted white, with a wide porch of natural wood on three sides, and a chimney made of native Black Hills stone climbing the fourth. A wisp of smoke rising from the chimney showed white in the sapphire blue of the late afternoon sky. Glory stepped back a few yards, looking at the postcard-perfect view of the house against the reds and golds of the autumn foliage. It was cute.
Glory didn’t do cute. How could she turn cute into scary? Halloween was only a few weeks away. Except for last year, she’d always gone all out decorating for her favorite holiday. Last year … Well, last year she’d been too busy to do anything for Halloween. Between surviving a plane crash, meeting and marrying a hunky werewolf, and finding out she’d gone forward to a time after Armageddon, she’d completely lost track of the days.
But this year would be different. Glory put her hands on her hips, strolling from one end of the house to the other, considering where the spider webs would look most effective.
“Sunshine.”
At the scolding sound of her hunky werewolf’s voice, Glory turned to see him walking toward her from his mother’s house a hundred yards away. Shadow was, as always, all but naked in just moccasins and a breechcloth. His hair, black and thick and heavy, hung down his back to his butt, leaving his broad, beautifully muscled chest bare. At six feet and six inches tall, he was the only man who made Glory feel petite. Hell, he was six inches taller than she was, and almost outweighed her. The fierce Lakota Wolf Clan warrior, who was a terrifying sight in battle, tenderly cradled a pink and blue bundle in one arm.
“Sunshine,” he scolded again. “You are supposed to be lying down, resting.”
“Quit being so bossy. I just wanted to think about how to decorate for Halloween.” She lifted her face for his kiss and twitched the edge of the baby blanket aside to peek at their daughter’s face. “Hey, there, little Miss Vicki,” she cooed.
“Sh, she’s sleeping.” Shadow hooked his free arm around her waist and towed her up the steps of the porch into their house. “I thought you wanted to call her Victoria.”
“Well, yeah.” Glory watched him set the baby down in her cradle with as much care as if the afghan Lisa Madison had made was wrapped around nitroglycerin. “Victoria for my grandmother, Jillian for Jill, and Tara for your mom. But Victoria Jillian Tara Wolfe is a big mouthful for such a little thing.”
Not that Vicki had felt that little while she was being born. The books in Kearney’s library talked about the joy and beauty of childbirth. They were lucky she wasn’t allowed to burn them. Joy and beauty, her ass. Still, Glory didn’t remember the pain nearly as vividly she remembered the expression on Shadow’s face: terror and joy and awe, all mixed together, as he held the screaming scrap of humanity that was his daughter in his big hands. Glory wished cameras still existed. She never wanted to forget that sight or that moment in time.
“Hm … I wonder what she should be for Halloween? I think I could put together a little witch costume. Do you think we could get a pointy hat to stay on her head?”
“Sunshine, she’s only five weeks old.”
Glory reluctantly agreed. “She’s too young this year, but soon she’ll be going all around the neighborhood Trick or Treating, going to parties, playing with the boys …”
“PLAY—” Almost too late, Shadow remembered to keep his voice low. “Playing with boys?” he hissed, his eyes taking on that weird werewolf glow.
“Uh-huh. You know, Chase and Raven and Matt.”
His eyes went back to normal. “Oh, her cousins, you mean.”
Glory hid a grimace. Their daughter was going to have a hell of a time finding a boy brave enough to date her. That was years away, though, and Glory’s thoughts were on something in the present. She watched her mate put another log on the fire, admiring the way the muscles in his back bunched and smoothed as he moved. Her mate was mouthwateringly sexy. “For this year, I have the perfect costumes for us.”
He turned in a flare of hair, eyes wide in apprehension. “I don’t wear costumes,” he warned her.
“Good,” she purred. “I like you naked best. I thought I could be Little Red Riding Hood and you could be the Big Bad Wolf.” She let her fingers comb through his hair, smooth down his chest to the knot of the cord that held his breechcloth up. “But I don’t have a costume, so I guess we’ll just have to pretend. If I took off my clothes, could you pretend to take a red cloak off me?”
He swallowed hard. “Sunshine, is it too soon? It’s only been a few weeks.”
“Almost six weeks. Jill says everything has healed up just fine after the birth.” She succeeded in loosening his breechcloth. It dropped, showing that though his words were reluctant, his body wasn’t. She took him in her hand, loving the heat and the weight of him. “I’ve missed you, Big Guy.”
His teeth caught her earlobe. “I’ve missed you, Sunshine. I’ll go slow, I promise.”
“Go as fast as you want, but remember the baby’s sleeping. Don’t roar and howl at the end like you always do.”
“Me?” He let go of her ear to give her a wolfish grin. “Who is it that screams my name when she comes?”
She faked a scowl. “I’m not anywhere near as loud as you.”
Shadow lifted her lightly into his arms and shouldered his way into their bedroom. “We’ll see,” he threatened.
Glory surrendered to his hands and mouth. This was a contest she could live with. And if she lost, well, she could live with that too.
Twenty minutes after their bedroom door closed, a roar and a scream woke the baby. In the cradle her grandfather had carved for her, Victoria blinked startled blue eyes, shoved a tiny fist into her mouth and fell back asleep.
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I hope you have a safe and Happy Halloween!
Re-reading Favorite Bits & and a Snippet
Are you like me? Even though my TBR (To Be Read) pile is sky high I still like to go back and re-read old favorites. Sometimes I don’t even read the whole book. I just go to my favorite scenes and re-read just those few pages. Since a lot of my old favorites are in paperback, this is easy. The book falls open to my favorite spots automatically. I love my kindle, but sometimes I like the comfort of holding a book in my hand while I revisit old friends. I don’t want to give you spoilers, but some of my favorite scenes that I re-read are from books by Sally Watson and Laura London, Ilona Andrews and Grace Draven, Wen Spencer and Steve Miller and Sharon Lee.
Occasionally I will come across a favorite scene in my of my own books. I thought I would share this one with you. It is from Victoria’s Cat, near the end when Vic has to introduce her new husband to her father.
One week later, the train, which had been retrieved from where the Kansas-Missouri troops had abandoned it, pulled into the Kearney station. Victoria stared out the window.
“I think every single person in Kearney is here. And more than half the Clan,” she added. Torn between joy at seeing her family, and terror at seeing her family, she swallowed. “Oh, no. There’s dad.”
Marty leaned over to look out the window. “Is he really angry, or does he always look like that?”
“Well, he just looks like that.” It wasn’t quite a lie. He did just look like that when he was ready to tear someone’s head off. “Oh, look, there’s mom.”
There were twelve of her cousins on the car with them, all of them waving madly at friends and family on the platform. Victoria waited for them to disembark first. They didn’t. She made shooing gestures at them. “Go ahead,” she ordered them. “Get off the train and be sure it’s safe like you always do.”
Eagle flashed her a wolfish smile, all bright teeth. “Oh, with dad and the rest of the Clan out there, it’s safe. We’ll wait until you’re done getting yelled a— er, hugged by mom and dad. We’ll just stay here where it’s safe and watch.”
Marty stood up, favoring his hip only slightly. “We’d better go face the music, Vic.”
He stepped off the train first and turned to steady her. Silence fell as a path opened between them and her parents. She saw other members of the Clan standing a short distance away, silently watching their Alpha. Her father, Wolf’s Shadow, Alpha of the Lakota Wolf Clan, jabbed a finger at Marty.
“You,” he bellowed. “You are the man who married my daughter, even though I ordered you to stay away from her.”
“Yes,” Marty began, but her father cut him off with an outthrust arm.
“She was stolen from you.”
“Yes,” Marty tried again. Her father glowered and raised his already considerable volume.
Well, I am cutting it off there. I don’t want to spoil it completely. I hope everyone has a fantastic week with lots of good reading material to keep you sane. 🙂
Want To Read a Snip of the New Work in Progress?
What a long, hot summer it has been! It was the second hottest summer on record in my neck of the woods, here in Fargo, North Dakota, USA. It cooled down nicely in the past week, although Sunday is expected to be 93 (about 33 or 34 Celsius). Of course, some of you are probably welcoming spring about now.
I have kept myself very busy during this long hot summer. The day job has been (as always!) stressful. I did write quite a lot for the first half of the summer, and that was fun. The second half found me buried under other stuff. Like playing with Little Miss Dottie, my new kitten. That should be fun, but I am her favorite chew toy, so… But what is not at all fun is cleaning out my mom’s house to get it ready to put it on the market. Man, my mom was *this close* to being a hoarder. The realtor’s photographer is coming on Wednesday 9/22/21 to do pictures and that is the day it is officially for sale. So tomorrow I go once again to do some final cleaning. You know, washing windows, scrubbing the registers and switch plates, etc. Part of me hates to see it go. My family lived in that house for 45 years! But it will also be good to have it gone. Then I will be able to get back to a more productive writing schedule!
So… Writing news. I am about 2/3 done with the rough draft for The Storm King. My goal was to have the rough draft done by September 1. Yeah. Not so much. To get myself back into it, I am going through the rough draft chapter by chapter and doing some self editing. I thought I would share the first three chapters with you here. This is still very rough but I hope you will enjoy it.
The Storm King, the Lords of Erebir, Book 1
Jerriel of Erabir is a warrior king who was captured by his enemies when he was a teenager and made their slave. The enemy governor’s daughter fell in love with him and helped him escape. He swore to come back with his father’s army to avenge himself and to take her home to be his wife. Now, ten years later, he has conquered his enemy, city by city, and has taken brutal revenge on those who enslaved him. All that is left for him to do is find his Lady Valdis and live happily ever after.
But Ashley Johnson is not Valdis. She is an older-than-average college student who used to write dreamy romances to while away her time in the treatment rooms at the cancer center. She never finished the story of Jerriel and Valdis, but now that she has somehow been dropped in the middle of the world she created when she was sixteen, she’s going to find out how it ends.
This Jerriel is nothing like the sweet teenager she made up. She is not the beautiful noblewoman she wrote about. Can they each learn to love the true self of the other?
Chapter One
I was so close. After way too many years I was almost done with school. I let out a breath and closed my laptop before looking across the table at my roommate who was also my best friend. “Maya, I am finally going to get my degree.”
The sound of the coffee grinder at the other end of the coffee shop almost drowned out my words, but Maya looked over the top of her own laptop and smiled. “Yeah, you are. It’s been a long, hard road, but you are almost there, and you’ve fought like heck for it. You deserve it.”
Tears stung my eyes. It had been a long, hard road. I hadn’t graduated from high school until I was nineteen, hadn’t started at the university until I was twenty, and now would be getting my BA at twenty-five. At the same age, Maya was working on her doctorate.
“I’m a little old to be getting my first degree.”
My best friend blew a raspberry. “Ashley, you’re not old. There’s a woman in one of my classes who must be pushing sixty. I think you are amazing. Consider what you went through. A lot of people would never have gotten this far.”
I glanced away, pretending to check out the coffee shop. I didn’t want to think about ‘what I went through’. Keeping up with my schoolwork after being diagnosed with ALL—Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia—at fifteen had been impossible. My normal had gone from giggling with Maya about nail polish, hairstyles, and boys to chemotherapy infusions, baldness, and bone crushing pain.
Maya pointed a finger at me, its perfectly rounded nail painted a glaring purple. “I know what you are thinking. But that is done. You are cured. Your hair is halfway down your back—it is gorgeous, by the way, you witch, so thick and glossy, like polished walnut—and you are about to have your B.A.”
I had to laugh. My hair was medium brown, boring brown, and I usually wore it in a high ponytail that brushed my back a few inches below my shoulders. All the weight I’d lost during my fight with leukemia was back. Sadly, it had all taken up residence in my midsection. I was just a little over five three, and my legs were long and slim compared to my poochy belly. My eyes were brown, too, but I liked to thing they were a pretty shade of brown, almost golden brown, with a slight tilt at the outer corners. They were the only beautiful thing about me. Maya, on the other hand, was a tall blonde with sky blue eyes and a slender, hourglass figure. She looked like a bimbo, but her mind was brilliant. She was getting a PhD in chemistry. I was pretty sure bimbos had no interest in being chemists. Only the fact that she was the best friend anyone could ever have prevented rabid jealousy from blackening my heart. At sixteen, when most girls spent an hour every morning getting their hair ready for school, Maya had shaved her beautiful blond hair off to give me moral support when my hair fell out in clumps from chemo. See? Best friend ever.
Let me know what you think. Please be kind! As I said, this is just the rough draft 🙂 I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Presenting Little Miss Dottie
First, a little bit of news. I am still working on The Storm King and hope to put out a little teaser in a few weeks. I’ve had a terrible cold for the past two weeks. It was so bad that I had to take some time off from work. I even had a Covid test, just to be sure. It was negative. But I went several days without writing a word. I am back to it now, and the manuscript is at 38383 words, but that break put me back from my expected first draft deadline of September 4. Also, my nephew and his family are coming into town tonight and I hope to spend some time with them this weekend. I haven’t seen them since my mom’s funeral two years ago. The next weekend my cousin and his family are coming up from Milwaukee. So I will lose some writing time, but it is so nice to see people I don’t get to see very often.
My next bit of news is about my new furbaby. Her name is Dottie. She is about 6 weeks old now. A friend rescued her and her motherless siblings when they were maybe a week old. I kinda fell in love with her pictures and today Callie brought her home to me!
I hope you are enjoying summer (unless you are on the other side of the world. Then I hope you are enjoying winter) with lots of good reading and no covid!
What Shall I Name My New Fur Baby?
Anyone who knows me knows I love cats. In the past few years I’ve had to put two of my furbabies to sleep. Merry was almost 17, and Dixie had health issues that couldn’t be fixed without a very expensive surgery, and maybe the surgery wouldn’t be successful anyway. It is always hard to put our babies to sleep. Masuka is getting up there in age too.
A friend recently rescued a motherless litter of six. She is bottle feeding them and looking for furever homes for them. I fell in love with this little calico. I have staked my claim and Callie thinks she should be ready to come to me in a month or 5 weeks. I kinda like the name Dottie but I’m not sure. What do you think? What would you name this adorable little girl?
Happy 4th of July-Wolf’s Oath excerpt !!
When I think of the Fourth of July I think of potlucks, picnics, kids games and of course, fireworks! Anyone else? I remember writing a scene in Wolf’s Oath that had fireworks. Well, not literal fireworks. Because, ya know, gunpowder based fireworks would be dangerous in the bedroom. *smirk* I thought I’d share that chapter here. FYI This is the wedding night scene. At first Connie told Des she wasn’t ready to have sex with him. Spoiler: she changes her mind when she sees him getting ready for bed. To read it, click HERE. Warning: For adults only!
Des Wolfe
I hope all my American readers have a very happy and safe Fourth!
I am BACK!!
I think everyone will agree that 2020 was a bad year. The first half of 2021 was rough too. Some of you may know that on July 10, 2020, I was diagnosed with Stage 3c colorectal cancer. Cancer is a scary word. Would I die? The surgeon told me that a majority of people with my diagnosis live 2 to 5 years.
Oh, boy. Scary stuff. My oncologist, though, was a cheerleader. He said we could and would fight this. He laid out a treatment plan for me. First, infusion chemotherapy every other week, with an infusion pump to wear at home for two days. That started in August and ended in December. After that, 28 daily radiation treatments with oral chemo pills. I finished that on January 21st. It wasn’t always easy, but I powered through all that, and CT scans and MRIs showed the tumor had shrunk enough that surgery was likely to be a success. They couldn’t guarantee it until they were actually in and saw what was there. My surgery was at the Mayo Clinic to remove the tumor and the affected lymph nodes. When I woke up the surgeon told me she was sure they had gotten all of it. YAY!!! Party time! Being sick a=from chemo and burned from radiation was worth it!!
However, a week later she called me (a surgeon renowned in her field called personally!!) to tell me that the pathology report had found a secondary kind of cancer called well differentiated neuroendocrine tumor. This type was fairly rare and was good at masquerading as healthy cells. She was still sure she had gotten all of it, but I would have to go back in three months for another scan to see if this other cancer was detected anywhere else.
Can you imagine how hard it was to wait for three more months to find out if the cancer had spread? I drove down to Rochester on June 22, had the scan, and met with Dr. Hobday, the Mayo oncologist, on June 23. That’s when he gave me the news:
I AM CANCER FREE!!!!
I had hoped and prayed that I was. And I thought that I was, because for an entire year I had NO interest in writing but
on June 4 I had an idea for a new story. Actually, an old story. I have a bunch of old notebooks that I had scribbled stories in years ago. I remembered one story I had started about 20 years ago but never finished. Suddenly I really really wanted to find it and finished it. I had to go through a ton of old notebooks to find it. I did find it and I am pleased to say I have improved as a writer in the past twenty years 😉
So, I am pretty much re-writing it from scratch and I am loving it. The title is The Storm King. It is a fantasy romance between a conquering king (think Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan, only much sexier) who is set on conquering the lands of his enemies, who had captured him as a teen and made him a slave. The only person who ever treated him decently there was the governor’s beautiful young daughter. She helped him escape, and gave him a pearl pendant on a gold chain as a souvenir to remember her by. He swore to return and marry her. But there is a big twist. More about that to come in the future. I expect it to be around 60,000 words, and I am at 16,450 right now. So I have a good start on it. My goal for the rough draft to be done is September 1. The next story is the Fire Prince, and The third in the trilogy is The Ice Lord. I haven’t been this excited about writing for years!!
So that is my update. I am doing well. I still have a little recovery from surgery to get through, but I feel like I have my life back. Here is hoping for a much improved second half of 2021. I hope you all are well and have wonderful reading material to keep your kindles and nooks busy this summer.
Gina’s Wolf is Live!
I started writing Gina’s Wolf as soon as I finished the last edits on Victoria’s Cat. I loved Gina, with her self control and take-no-crap attitude toward the hero. And Cole honestly tried to set aside his Alpha tendencies to please his mate. The setting and the Omaha versus Kansas-Missouri storyline was intriguing. There were some bad guys that dearly needed to be taken down. I really loved the story. I should have been able to finish it a couple of years ago. But…
The last couple of years have been hard for me. Noisy neighbors made it hard to concentrate on writing. Moving home and taking care of my mom cut into my writing time. In fact, I struggled to find any pleasure in writing. Then when my mom died I completely lost my mojo for about a year. But then I was SO CLOSE to finishing the book I was able to push through it. Thank God my editor mostly liked it. She pointed out places that needed some work and pointed out things she liked. I think Gina’s Wolf turned out pretty great. I hope you will enjoy it!
Gina wants nothing more than to escape his control and live her life on her own terms. Why can’t she have a husband who loves her because of who she is, not because of who her stepfather is?
She’d almost had that once. After running away from her stepfather, she hid herself in Omaha. There she met Cole Wolfe, a handsome Native American man who claimed that 1, he was a werewolf, and 2, she was his mate. He was bossy, supremely self-confident, and sure he knew what was best for her. Gina had had enough of controlling men, thank you very much. But when her stepfather and his army came looking for her, the wolf swore he would keep her safe at his pack’s den to the west. Any escape was better than being captured by her stepfather, so Gina reluctantly followed Cole onto the train. Gina thought her dream of freedom was coming true.
That dream was shattered when her stepfather’s men stopped the train, put a bullet in Cole’s head, and dragged Gina back to her stepfather’s unforgiving arms. She had come so close to escape, only to have a man who seemed to honestly care about her murdered before her. Maybe she would have loved Cole someday. Now, it was impossible.
But the word impossible is not in a werewolf’s vocabulary. A bullet in the brain is not enough to kill a wolf determined to claim his mate. Cole is going to get Gina back. He knows she doesn’t love him yet. He just has to bring her home to the Pack where he can take his time proving how precious she is to him. But first he has to rescue her, win the war between Omaha and Kansas-Missouri, and end the reign of her ruthless stepfather. Compared to that, winning the love of his mate should be easy.
Right?
You can find Gina’s Wolf at
Amazon.com https://amzn.to/2QUyu8a
Amazon.uk https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08GJTF11H
Amazon.de https://www.amazon.de/dp/B08GJTF11H
Amazon.ca https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B08GJTF11H
Amazon.au https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B08GJTF11H
Apple https://books.apple.com/us/book/ginas-wolf/id1529122354?uo=4&mt=11&at=1010l9S2
Barnes & Noble https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ginas-wolf-maddy-barone/1137539713
Strong Hearts is Available Again!
Strong Hearts, my comtemporary romance that was part of Paige Tyler’s Dallas Fire & Rescue Kindle World, has re-released. So if you wanted to read it but couldn’t because it was only availble on Amazon, here is your chance. I really love Brutus. He and Denise are flawed people who manage to make their love work in the end. 🙂
Buy it at Amazon.com
Buy it at Amazon.uk
Buy it at Amazon. ca
Buy it at iBooks
Buy it at Barnes & Noble
Buy it at Kobo
