Tag Archives: Shadow Keepers

A werewolf walks into a bar…and wins a free book!

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Come join me at Romp v. Stomp over at The Book Nympho’s site! I’m going head-to-head with Amanda Carlson, who’s taking the “stomp” end of the equation. Yeah, I’m the “romp” gal!

Here’s a teaser from my entry (an original short read set in the Shadow Keepers world).

A werewolf walks into a bar…

Rachel Payne took the glass of whiskey from the bartender and downed it in one long swallow. She closed her eyes, letting it burn down her throat. Letting its fire spread through her fingers, her toes, every last bit of her. She shifted on the barstool, antsy. She wanted action, something. A fight or a fuck. Frankly, she didn’t much care. Just get her the hell out of this damn bar. Visit the Book Nympho to read more and enter to win a copy of When Blood Calls!

Short or long, stories pack powerful punches

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Today, I’m blogging over at the Whine Sisters, and I posted a link to Porcelain Unicorn, a truly lovely short film. And I mean short. Just three minutes. Pop on over and check it out if you want to see a truly powerful punch packed into just three short minutes.

Compare that to something like Game of Thrones, which I’m currently reading. Or Schindler’s List if we want to stay both on theme and with film. Also gut-wrenching, with deep emotion and strong themes.

There’s a lesson there, you know, and it’s not just that creative folks can make movies to fit the parameters of contests. No, it’s that sometimes the story dictates the length. And if you let the story do that, you’re going to get more bang for your buck because the emotion can either be drawn and milked and developed, as in a longer story, or laid out with heart-wrenching power (or humor or pathos or horror) as in a shorter work.

I haven’t always been a fan of shorter stories–I preferred to meet characters and then stay with them. It’s one of the reasons I love books that are part of series. But I’ve done several shorts now, and I love them. From short short stories to novellas.

Right now, I have three shorter works available, and each of them are exactly the length that they should be (which, frankly, is an advantage of epublishing). The first is a novella, SHADOW KEEPERS: MIDNIGHT, which is the prequel to my upcoming release WHEN PASSION LIES (which got a great review in Publisher’s Weekly and was named Amazon’s best romance for May! Yay!).

When Passion Lies

Shadow Keepers, Book 4

I’ve also got a fun, edgy short story in Love Is Murder…very noir and very short. And, again, just the right length for the story.Love is Murder (ITW anthology) cover

The Demon You Know cover art

Just released in e-format!

And, of course I’ve already chattered on about The Demon You Know, my first foray into indie e-pubbing. (subliminal message…only 99 cents … buy, buy…it’s cheaper than a cuppa coffee….ahem…sorry. Back on track…)

All of which brings me to my ePub Tip of the Day: The cool thing about publishing ebooks is that you truly don’t have to worry about word count. Write the story as the story needs to be written. And doesn’t that just feel great?

My first historical! Really!

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Yes, yes, yes! More Shadowkeeper books coming out this year (the covers for the next three–this summer–are awesome, and I’ll post on Monday). But I’ve been lax in shouting out about my enovella, MIDNIGHT, which features Caris and Tiberius, star-crossed lovers. I had a bit of a Romeo and Juliet thing going as I wrote the novella. (Amazon calls it a short story…it’s not. It’s a novella. Weird.)

The first book this summer is WHEN PASSION LIES, and it’s Caris and Tiberius’s book. You don’t have to read the novella to enjoy the novel…but I hope you do! I had a great time writing it, and it’s entirely historical. A first for me (well, I wrote in the twenties once–does that count?)

Here’s the blurb for the novella:
Enter J. K. Beck’s thrilling, seductive world of the Shadow Keepers, which New York Times bestselling author Lara Adrian calls “exciting paranormal romance with a sharp, suspenseful edge.”

Carissa de Soranzo will not rest until her kidnapped younger brother has been freed from the nobleman Baloch de Fioro, a fiendish werewolf who means to turn the boy at the next full moon. Against her father’s wishes, Carissa secretly seeks help from the mysterious werewolf hunter Tiberius. Desperate, she promises to do anything if he’ll save her brother—and she can see in his eyes what that will mean.

Dark, strong, and virile, Tiberius cannot resist ravishing the most beautiful woman he’s seen in centuries. But he can never truly have his fill of her, for Tiberius is a vampire. On a quest to trap the werewolf in his den, Tiberius realizes that the only way to rescue Carissa’s brother is to reveal what he truly is. But he risks losing Carissa forever—especially when she discovers that she has given her heart to a vampire.

I hope you check it out. Again, here’s a link to order from Amazon and from B&N.com