Valerie Douglas - Writer's Blog

Happy Anniversary to me!

2012-02-24T12:29:00.000-08:00

Today was the day I self-published my first novel, Song of the Fairy Queen, through Smashwords. It was an incredibly huge step for me at the time. I was traditionally published but not particularly happy with how my writing career was going.
To be honest, I was pretty anxious, I did the push the button/don't push the button dance. I had already taken the drastic step of self-publishing Song in print through CreateSpace, and pretty much accepted that choice was the kiss of death for the story according to common knowledge at the time and I grieved a little for that. It did make the decision a little easier. At least someone would see it and like it, or so I hoped. (I'm happy to say that Song of the Fairy Queen has gotten some wonderful reviews and is doing pretty well.)
So much was negative about self-publishing then. Sometimes it still is.
I remember that first check from Smashwords for a whole $15 and change, but by then I had discovered Kindle Direct Publishing and Barnes and Noble's PubIt, and I'd uploaded there as well. Now I would rather find another way to measure success, but dollars does seem to be the best measure.
I had made an agreement with my husband - he would agree that I could quit my day job, if I was making money from my writing within a year. That was predicated at the time on my relationship with my traditional publisher. I had been pretty confident that I had something moving forward with them, unfortunately, I was wrong. I had to make a decision - commit myself to the old traditional path or go all in as an independent writer - if I was to meet that goal.
That meant I had a LOT to learn, and fast. Like how to self-edit. I couldn't ask my sooooo patient and supportive husband to cough up a couple of hundred dollars for an editor, which meant I had to do it myself.
I scanned editor/agent websites for editing pet peeves and made a list of them, to complement what I'd learned from my editors.

Old cover

Then there was the cover art.
I pulled books off my shelves to use as examples, searched for stock images and learned to create covers - some of which I'd already learned making the covers for Song and Heart of the Gods.
I had already learned to make book trailers as part of the marketing for my traditional publisher, so I wrote a primer on how to create them, documenting the steps necessary. I already knew more than a little about marketing from my past experience with my publisher (the idea that they'll do all the marketing really is a myth), but they went mainly through select yahoo groups. I decided to try Facebook instead, because its popularity was growing. I also started to use twitter.
I was very lucky in those first few months to have two people offer to feature my books on their blog/websites for free, giving me exposure I couldn't have gotten elsewhere. I wish I'd been able to thank Kenneth Wayne and eLTC in a better way.
Getting the courage to ask for reviews was tough, especially from those I didn't know. What I also didn't know was that in the Indie community, for a while at least among some reviewers, was that you could ask for the opportunity to fix anything a reviewer found wrong. In traditional publishing, that wasn't an option. (Sadly, it isn't any more for most Indies, either, after a few abused the privilege.)
That though is how I met Kai Wilson.
One of the things I had noticed was how much Indie writing was really awful. Bad spelling, grammar, story lines, ugly or too busy covers.
So in conjunction with Kai and a few others (some of whom were just shanghaied) I started the Indie Author Group with the idea that we would help writers become better authors. (Neither and none of us knew what we were getting into.) And of course, help ourselves by creating a place to consolidate all this information. The IAG now has nearly 700 members. I'm really proud of that group and what we've done there.

From Amazon I learned the joy of free, when for reasons of their own they made my novella, Setting Boundaries, free. Suddenly I was hitting the Top Ten list of free fantasy novels. I was also learning that spamming was annoying (we'd already banned it on the IAG) but making an occasional appearance on writer's sites was far more effective.
Suddenly I realized it was nearly August, and I started anxiously looking at my checks. I was startled to see that those checks had been steadily increasing, doubling and tripling as I put more and more books up. My poor husband was horribly neglected. Editing 200/300/600 page novels just does not happen overnight and that all had to be done, but I had set myself to a one book a month schedule in order keep the sales ball rolling. (By then I had a backlog of quite a number of books.) I had read from Joe Konrath or Barry Eisler or someone that more books equals more sales. I'd also seen it through my friend Laurann Dohner, an erotica author who by then had several series going and was making very good money.
August came, and with it the first check that would equal what I had been making in my day job - or at least enough that I could start paying some of my own bills, like gas for my car.
With that, and to my husband's relief, I cut back on my release schedule, moving to a bimonthly release, and I also changed some of my work habits. I'd been so focused on editing and getting my existing books out that I had no time or inspiration for actually writing. I need to reschedule, put my priorities in order, so I did.

New Cover

I made some mistakes. Like many writers who dream of having a print book in hand, and being somewhat tired of having to carry the load of marketing, I got involved with a purported publisher. Fortunately I realized my mistake and got my book back, but not before that involvement thoroughly scrambled my release schedule, making hash out of my plans for the Christmas season. (I did get a great new cover out of it.)
One thing I had learned was that holidays and holiday tie-ins were the best opportunities for book buying and selling, and with the new Kindle release, it would be better than ever.
Thank heavens for Kindle Select. I had my reservations, particularly after what I was still going through, so I checked it out carefully, weighed the pros and cons and then decided to toss a few eggs in that basket. It paid off in a big way. ( I remember commenting that it was sure to slow down and getting called on that remark by a member of the IAG group, but it has - a natural function of a new opportunity and system - and I'm still doing well.) Will it last forever? Time will tell.
The possibilities are expanding, there's some talk of interactive books, and there are some cases where I wouldn't mind being able to tie in either the music that helped inspire a certain book (Nike's Wings - She Don't Want the World by Three Doors Down) or an image - the statue of Descending Night I saw on a visit to Hearst castle that gave birth to Song of the Fairy Queen.
Still, it's been a long strange journey. I've made some great new friends - Kai, Rik, Ed and others - someday I may actually meet them. *laughing* I've slowed my release schedule again to allow for more writing, and I'm already working on a sequel to Nike's Wings, as well as preparing another book for release in March. There are new opportunities popping up - Apple's iBooks, Barnes and Noble's new program.
It'll be interesting to see what this next year brings.

A Convocation of Kings - Second Edition

2012-01-26T23:49:00.000-08:00

Why a rewrite, you might ask? Many would argue that a professional writer - and I consider myself a professional - would never do such a thing, that you should never release a book that isn't finished.
Well, I didn't - insofar as the perfectionist in me would allow. I was happy with A Convocation of Kings, it was a good book . It accomplished the things I wanted to accomplish, said the things I wanted to say - that love can conquer all and the hatreds war engenders are never over when the fighting is over, among others.
I remember reading a quote from a famous artist that said that even when the painting is on the wall of a museum he could spot little things he might have done differently.
Another quote says that a work of art is never truly finished, it's just abandoned - a quote possibly attributed to DaVinci.
I understand both quotations. (and yes, writing is an art.)
But a point has to be reached where you simply have to say - It's done.
Go to any one of thousands of writer's groups and you'll find dozens of people who have been working on the same manuscript for years, endlessly polishing, questioning each word or phrase, critiquing each other's work, but never submitting a single manuscript. And they probably never will.
I understand that, too, but there is a point where you can actually tweak a story to death, render every sentence sterile and remove any semblance of soul.
You want it to be the best it can be, but sooner or later, you have to let it go.
So I made A Convocation of Kings as good as I could make it, and then let it go.
So again, why the rewrite?
Because, as any artist or writer can tell you, sometimes your mind is wandering and then suddenly this idea pops up out of nowhere. I was working on this completely different project when I had this brainstorm about A Convocation of Kings. Was it anything specific? I don't really remember. I was just driven to take another look at it. (Ask my husband, I disappeared into my writing room for the better part of three weeks.) I just knew it could be better and how to get it there. So I sat down, started on page one and did an extensive edit, tightening some scenes, making others clearer, expanding on others, deleting one or two that didn't move the story forward while adding others. New characters popped up and a small character got bigger, to reflect the part of the story that revolved around the main characters.
I'm hardly the first one to have done it. Stephen King released a Complete and Uncut version of The Stand because he wanted to put back in some scenes that had been edited out.
In the past, that wasn't possible. That may be one of the blessings of being an indie writer, especially of e-books. It's a new world, a new way of doing things, and we may now have the freedom to make changes on the fly - whether just minor grammar changes or something as extensive as with A Convocation of Kings.
All I know for certain is that when I finished, I felt a great sense of satisfaction. A Convocation of Kings was a good book. I really believe that now it's a better book.

Sample Sunday - The Coming Storm

2012-01-15T16:10:00.000-08:00

The Coming Storm

Book Description
Elon of Aerilann, Elven advisor to the High King of Men, helped negotiate the treaty between Elves, Dwarves and men. He suddenly finds that fragile truce threatened from without by an unknown enemy and from within by old hatreds and prejudice. With the aid of his true-friend Colath, the wizard Jareth and the Elven archer Jalila, he goes in search of the source of the threat.
Ailith, the Heir to Riverford, fights her own silent battle. Her father has changed, but her quest to discover what changed him puts her life and very soul in danger and leaves her only one direction in which to turn. Elon.
To preserve the alliance, though, Elon will have to choose between his honor, his duty and everything for which he fought.

Reviews:
The Coming Storm is the most compelling book I've read in a long time. I realize that's a gushy way to start a review, but as a long-time reader of fantasy novels, I'm comparing it to the often cliched books of the same type. ...I'm anxious to read the next book.
Donna K. Fitch
*****
Very good story! The plot is well developed and fast moving with strong, well developed characters that are easy to identify with and yet complex. The battle scenes are intense and the ending left me eager for more - both on the history of the world the author created and on what happens to the characters afterward. Well written epic fantasy in the middle earth tradition and definitely a must read!
Drew Stephens

Excerpt

Colath couldn’t remember a time when he’d ever been so weary and if he was tired, what of the men, Iric and Mortan? They hadn’t the endurance of his folk. Both were thinner in only a few weeks, there were dark hollows beneath their eyes and a dullness to them. Travel bread could sustain you but it wasn’t meant to replace real food and they hadn’t seen such in nearly a week. That had consisted of the one game they had scared up, a solitary rabbit that had somehow stayed hidden in these hills. Jalila had gotten it with one shot. The rabbit hadn’t been large.
Of other game, they saw only carcasses rotting in the sun. Boggins or boggarts, who loved entrails but not much else.
They had to get away from the borderlands and soon but that was becoming more difficult with each passing day. The line between the borderlands and the rest of the Kingdoms had blurred. Narrowly missing an encounter with a firbolg, they’d also avoided an ogre and several boggins. They’d spent a day or so upon a tor, looked down the slopes from the rocks at its crown to watch as a troop of boggarts passed below them. Thankfully, they hadn’t picked up on their scent or were so intent on their own quarrels they hadn’t noticed. Without warning a trio of the boggarts had leaped upon another and torn it to shreds. When they were gone a salamander had crept out from the rocks at the base of the hill where it had been hiding and made a fine meal of what the other boggarts hadn’t finished.
Manticores, they learned, hunted in prides much like some desert cats. The one they’d first seen had likely been a solitary young male, if they held true to that comparison.
All were far out of their normal ranges and too many in number.
A firbolg come down from the high ranges you would see once or twice a year, perhaps, after a hard winter. Young boggins and boggarts weren’t uncommon and the reason for the Hunters, most often. The smart ones learned their lesson and fled back to the borderlands screaming their frustration and defiance. Stupid ones died. Kobolds came once a season, maybe. Ogres and trolls once or so every few years. As for goblins, this wasn’t their territory so much as north and east but every few years a new leader would come along and gather them all up for a raid. It would take a small army of Hunters to rout them and send them running back to their own lands again. Never without there being wounded on both sides. Thankfully, they’d seen no trolls yet, nor goblins. So few in number, he and his small party would never have stood a chance against them, not with men in their party.
It was enough and more than enough, both north and south. Time to go home, to return to Aerilann. It was the how that was difficult, he thought, as he brooded beneath the overhang and stared out into the night. Somewhere not far enough away something screamed at the darkness.
They’d run across a trail of a number of orcs running before them.
Behind, of course and in both other directions, was more of the same.
The orcs, those monstrous, bear-like things with their oddly hinged jaws were more than his small party could face, particularly Iric and Mortan. Despite their protest, he and the two other elves had taken their watch this night. In the end, both men had to admit they were too weary to be useful. What tricks men used to stay alert had long since worn off. They were completely exhausted and both now slept deeply.
Alic gestured a warning and Colath tensed.
They’d had many nights like these, startled into alertness by some sign or strange noise. Once they’d had to kill a basilisk looking for a temporary den. Alic had been caught and frozen, to his shame, before the glare in those eyes.
That was the basilisk’s magic, their method for capturing their prey.
No shame to him, though, as basilisks here were as common as salamanders - that is, not common at all. They were southeastern creatures.
Then Colath caught the scent of what alarmed Alic, a faint stinging in his nostrils. A boggart or boggarts and near. He nudged Jalila gently. She rolled over, instantly aware and awake.
The two men were so deeply asleep they dared not nudge them to consciousness for fear they would cry out. As cruel as it was, it was still much better to press a hand over their mouths and frighten them awake than it was to risk an outcry. He nodded to Jalila to wake Iric, while he went to Mortan.
Mortan bucked beneath his hand but then his eyes opened enough to see Colath’s face in the dim glow cast by elf-light. Abruptly, he subsided but he looked more alert than he had in several days, the little bit of sleep and fright charging him with energy. It wouldn’t last, Colath knew, beyond a few hours. He hoped it would be enough.
Tapping his sword, he drew it, so the two men could see it. Nodding, they drew their own.
With a quick gesture, he sent Jalila and her bow to the back of the tumble of rocks that arched around them. Sheltered there beneath the overhang, she had a good defensive position from which to shoot and to guard the horses. Although Elves could and did run for miles, the men couldn’t and Colath didn’t want to think of any of them afoot in this country.
Alic stood with Iric on one side of the entry, he and Mortan at the other.
They waited.
There was little else to do. Boggarts were dark-skinned and stealthy, to venture out was to risk themselves foolishly.
A tumble of wood stood where the rocks ended but Colath hesitated to light it.
Once lit, it would be a beacon for any other creatures that prowled the night. He hadn’t lit it earlier for fear the smell of smoke would draw more than repel. Most of these creatures hated and feared fire but they also seemed to know that where there was fire there were men and Elves. He hadn’t wanted to invite attention.
If the boggart or boggarts attacked, they might have no choice, depending on how it went. It was unlikely to go well or unnoticed. Typically, boggarts screamed when they attacked, an unnerving shriek that was intended to shatter the nerves of its prey if they were unwary enough to be caught off guard. That shriek alone would often send prey flying from cover. Colath hoped he wouldn’t hear it. If he did, they were in serious trouble. While not as thick-skinned as the manticore, their skin was thick enough to keep an arrow from driving too deeply if the shot was off a hair. The swords of men could glance off if their aim wasn’t true, for that Elven steel worked better. Add long arms, sharp claws and wicked teeth and you had a formidable opponent even for Elves.
If it came to a real fight, they would have to run. At night, as dangerous as that was. There was no choice. The sounds of battle would carry. Like the salamander they’d watched, there would be those who would be drawn to the noise for a chance at the offal.
Orcs didn’t see well at night, unlike boggarts. With luck they would like not stir and the party might get past them.
An unearthly shriek rang out.
Instinct warned him.
He flung himself to one side as a boggart leaped from above, one long arm narrowly missing his head. An arrow from Jalila’s bow flashed by to bury itself in one massively muscled boggart thigh as the thing rolled to its feet and spun.
It roared in fury and charged, long arms reaching. The horses tried to scatter, blocking Jalila’s next arrow, kicking to defend themselves instinctively. Alic swung true, opening a gash along the thing’s side but taking a brutal backhand that flung him against the rocks as Iric hacked wildly, trying to drive it off. One of the horses screamed as Colath leaped forward to drive his sword straight and true into the boggart’s side as Jalila threw her shoulder against a horse to push it out of her way.
Free, she had an arrow nocked as Colath and Mortan fenced with another boggart that leaped over the rocks at the entry, ducking and dodging the reach of the claws at the end of the long arms. It shrieked again as Jalila let fly. Flinging himself forward, Alic threw himself back in the fray, although his face streamed blood. The scent of it maddened the boggart, who turned on Alic. Jalila’s next arrow buried itself in the boggart’s back, piercing deeply - nearly half the length of the shaft, as two more scrambled over the rocks.
Steel rained down on the things as they held them to the center of the ring of stone. Scores of wounds were opened on the creatures. Colath saw an opening and took it when one reached for Alic for the blood on him, exposing its vulnerable underbelly just long enough for him to drive his sword up into it. He dove out of the way of a massive backswing of an arm, claws slashing through the spot he’d just occupied closely enough to snag his shirt. There was no pain. Not at the moment.
It screamed its defiance, raising its face to the sky.
“Light the fire,” Colath shouted.
Startled, Mortan stared, then ran to kneel by the pyre and set flint to steel, sparks flying. The tinder caught and flared.
Another arrow and the other boggart fell.
“Jalila, stay alert.”
She nodded sharply and stepped away from the horses to get a better view. Iric’s mount was scored, long gashes running along one leg. The tendons in that leg were gone. It would never run. With a flash of his blade, Colath ended its life. Elven cull it might be but he wouldn’t leave it to the savagery of the creatures here. Dead, it could suffer no more miseries and might buy them some time.
“Iric,” he said, “you ride with Jalila.”
Both were smaller and light, not so much weight as putting Mortan up behind her. Her horse could carry both, although not for as long.
“When we go, grab a torch from the fire and ride hard,” he said and swung up onto Chai’s back.
His bow would be of little use. Even with Elven-sight he couldn’t see far and clearly enough to make his shot count sure. It was sword work or nothing and hope your sword was long enough.
Alic leaped for his horse with Mortan shadowing him to his own mount. Once she was sure they were set, Jalila swung up on hers and reached for Iric.
Dropping Chai’s reins, Colath let the horse have her head, leaning down swiftly to snatch up a burning brand as he went by the fire and sweeping it alongside to drive off any boggarts before righting himself and leaning into the race.
Chai took up the challenge, living up to her name. She was swift, leaping forward to clear the rocks completely and racing into the night.
The others were behind him, flames streaming from the torches. Fire wouldn’t matter in the mad charge except light and as a weapon. He sent an elf-light ahead of them to give the horse light enough to see.
Dawn was too far off, the first dim promise of it nearly an hour away.
“At all and any cost one of us must make it to Aerilann,” he called to the others.
Somehow.
Somehow all of them would if he had any say in it.

Purchase from Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004WLOBG2

Sample Sunday - Heart of the Gods

2012-01-08T13:46:00.000-08:00

Heart of the Gods

It was a shaken, terrified and desperate man who stumbled into the little temple to the shock of the priests and priestesses who served there. His face and hands were scoured and bloodied by the desert.

Abdul ignored them, prostrating himself before the figure of the Goddess. The priests and priestesses couldn’t help him, only a Goddess could.

They’d lost Mustafa in the desert that first night.

At first Abdul thought it safe to rest and so they’d stopped to set up what camp they could.

The wind had come up. All of them had looked up, knowing the signs in the clouds, in the haze in the sky behind them.

A sandstorm.

They found what shelter they could and hunkered down to weather it out.

Still something sent a shiver down Abdul’s back. He weighed his chances.

Something told him his chances were better in the sandstorm.

As the first rush of blowing sand reached them, he leaped for his camel.

Seeing him, Najib followed.

Mustafa had not.

Even over the sound of the storm they heard him scream in abject terror and then in delirious bliss, a dying gurgle of immense pleasure.

And yes, there was something about the sound of that ecstasy that drew their manhood tight and sent a chill through them. Even as it called to them.

Najib’s eyes had turned white at that cry.

It had been a race then, to see which camel could run or be goaded faster against the fury of the storm.

Once again, Abdul won, his fingers clenched around the figurine of the little priestess as he heard the cry out of the darkness.

Still he couldn’t shake the idea he was still hunted. He could feel it.

Desperate, he raced into the first temple he found and threw himself on mercy of she who ruled there.

All he had to offer was the golden figurine of the priestess.

“Take it,” he said to one of the priests, thrusting it into his hands. “Take it as my offering to her, to Sekhmet.”

The Goddess of War.

Instead the priest looked toward the open door of the temple and his face grew grim and set. As one, he and the others backed away, disappeared into the shadowed depths of the temple.

Nearly weeping with terror, Abdul slowly turned.

Sand swirled through the entrance. Something stepped out of it.

He looked from the figure in his hand to the terrible one who stood in the doorway.

The Guardian of the Tomb.

They were the same.

His cry was first of sheer terror and then of a deep and horrifying ecstasy.

When silence came once again to Sekhmet’s temple, the priests and priestesses emerged.

All that remained of the old thief was a dry and empty husk.

The wind gusted and swept the temple clean.

Book Trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T4Ibl5g560

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004RJ8RIW

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004RJ8RIW

How watching Survivor can make your writing better...

2011-12-30T14:05:00.000-08:00

If you're looking for character motivation, it doesn't get any better than Survivor, whether it's for villains or heroes writ large or small..
Just watch.
Case in point, this last season.
If you ever want to know how cult leaders, Adolph Hitler or even the kids in the high school clique operate, just watch Coach.
Seriously.
Talk about a cult of personality. For forty days the charismatic sonofagun successfully managed to get his people to do anything he wanted even as he convinced them that Ozzie (another character) was the enemy.
Not one of them seemed to realize that the biggest obstacle to winning a million dollars was... Coach.
It went right down to the wire. Top three. The only thing Coach forgot was the people he was loading onto the jury.
It's basic human nature on a small, intimate scale. Want to know why the good guys don't win? Watch Survivor where the 'good' guys have only won once or twice - and usually by default. Although Ozzie played a cleaner, more honest game - actually sacrificing himself at one point in a very dramatic, and silly, move - it was Coach's personal portrayal of himself as a 'Christian man' that kept him alive, no matter how many principles and people he sacrificed to accomplish it.
Want a petty character who'll do anything to win/succeed/triumph, then watch Jon a few seasons back - who told everyone his grandmother had died just to gain votes. (His grandmother was very much alive.)
I remember one season where all the attention was on the two 'big guys', the muscle men, one of whom everyone liked and rightfully so. It came down to a contest of strength and endurance, loading bags of sand onto the contestants. Everyone expected it to come down to those two.
But it didn't.
With quiet dignity and true courage, it was an attorney from Chicago who won, bearing up beneath the ever increasing bags of sand as both the big men fell by the wayside. Although he stood up for his team, no one noticed.
Even afterward the focus was on the two big guys failing, especially the popular one, and not the one who'd won the contest. He was voted off shortly later for being an ineffective leader, which he wasn't. He just couldn't overcome the cult of personality, the focus the network and the host had on another character. It's one of the realities of life, the unsung hero.
BTW, he became the love interest in one of my novels. No, I'm not telling which one, you'll have to read them and guess. The one that gets the answer right gets the series of their choice, free. (It's an easy bet that most of you won't get it right.)
Seriously, though, if you want to understand motivation, character and how people can justify even the most heinous actions, just watch Survivor. After a while, you'll get it.
Even watching host Jeff Probst in action as he asks the questions at each tribal council is an education in and of itself. In a few moments he skillfully picks apart the fragile bonds between the tribe members, or exposes one person's machinations against the others.
Or not.
Although I understood the basic motivation of the characters in my current work in progress, especially the villain, a part of me that struggled with it. I'm not a follower by nature so I had trouble understanding how even basically good people could follow someone like him. Until I watched one of the people in the current Survivor.
Then I got it.
There's an intrinsic human need to be liked that could be easily perverted, and was.
Survivor is a fascinating study in human nature. I can't wait until next season.

Egypt - of women and libraries... history repeats itself

2011-12-20T14:54:00.000-08:00

Watching the news out of Egypt, I could have cried. Like the long ago Library of Alexandria, the richest and most celebrated library of the ancient world, it burned by 'accident' when the protesters threw Molotov cocktails at a neighboring building. The Library of Alexandria burned in much the same way, depending on the story.
“The burning of such a rich building means a large part of Egyptian history has ended,” the director of the institute, Mohammed al-Sharbouni, told state television over the weekend. The building was managed by a local non-governmental organization.

So much knowledge lost.

According to some accounts the Library of Alexandria burned as the Roman Emperor Aurelian tried to save his ships from Zenobia of Palmyra, an Arabian Queen. The fire spread to the Library of Alexandria, as Hypatia, mathematician, astronomer and the last scholar of the library, tried to save it. (According to some reports.)

Ironically, considering current events, Hypatia was murdered by Christians who accused her of creating turmoil. They stripped her, dragged her through the streets and flayed her with pot shards.

But history has long recorded the complaints of the upstart, educated women of Egypt.

If the military government had only read their history, they should have known better than to attack one. I can only cheer as the women in Egypt rise up in protest against the army stripping a woman, then dragged her through the street as they stomped on her.

They are demanding a return to the Egypt of old, and the rights they once were given, that celebrated and honored it's strong, intelligent and capable women. They are not standing silent as their rights are assaulted but standing up and fighting for the rights.

Ladies, I salute you.

Servant of the Gods
http://www.amazon.com/Servant-of-the-Gods-ebook/dp/B0062PXJT6

Numbers.... Normally one wouldn't shout "I'm Number 3!"..unless...

2011-12-18T15:23:00.000-08:00

it's one of my books on an Amazon Best Seller list. Or any other for list for that matter. For however long it lasts, at this moment this was true...

Now, there's a wow. I'm hoping it goes higher, but I won't complain if it doesn't. That's pretty darn good.
I'm also trying not to let my writing be about a numbers game, that's not why I write. I write to tell good stories, something that has real meaning and truth behind them - even the romances.

I'd waited for this a long time. Many of you may know I tried the traditional route, sent query letters, collected the rejection slips. Cried. Wrote more query letters. And finally got accepted by a mid-level press.
In the midst of it all, my father died. Before I could ever put a book of mine in his hands. He'd never believed I could do it, neither he nor my mother. Only one person ever had, until I met my husband, and that was me.
Only to find out that the traditional route wasn't all I hoped it would be and that the path I had chosen wouldn't take me where I wanted to go.

So, I went Indie. It was such a risk to take that step, to put that first book up. It wasn't Servant of the Gods, it was Song of the Fairy Queen, a stand-alone heroic fantasy. A really good book, great story, heartbreaking romance.
Sales were lukewarm but grew steadily. I got some great reviews. They say indie publishing isn't a sprint it's a marathon, and they're right. I first published Song as an e-book in February 2011 but she'd been on Amazon as a print release since June 2009. Talk about a tough nut to crack! Sales were a trickle but they grew.
They grew more as I entered the Indie market and posted my first e-book.
When the cover of Song was declared a finalist in the EPIC Ariana Cover Awards, I was over the moon.
Then there was Heart of the Gods. That's how it started out. One book, beginning in ancient Egypt, morphing into a contemporary thriller. It was such fun to write, but I realized it was far too long, it needed to become a series...*smiles* and suddenly there were a few more books circling in the back of my mind. Heart of the Gods became two books, Heart and Servant of the Gods, a tale of ancient Egypt and a love that lasts beyond time. Even I cried at the end of Servant.
People keep telling me that I write good stories, that sometimes they cheer, sometimes they cry, and sometimes they look at things in a different way.
I hope to keep writing stories that make people cheer and cry. But more than anything, I hope I keep making them look at life in a new way.

Servant of the Gods
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0062PXJT6

Song of the Fairy Queen
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004774N2S

A Sign of the Times?

2011-12-11T12:39:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'll admit it, it's been a while since I was in my favorite bookstore. (That picture isn't it, by the way. ) Even so, I was shocked.
Where were the fiction books?

They were tucked away in a back corner of the store on the second level.

Oh, there were the New Release tables on the first floor, and two long shelves of New Release Hardcover fiction, but other than that there was only the discounted book racks. I had to go looking to find the rest.

Nothing on the first floor, only non-fiction, self-help, travel etc.

Children's and YA were on the second floor as you stepped off the elevator.
Toys now filled the space Mystery had once occupied and educational toys where shelves filled with fantastic flights of the imagination had stood. Philosophy and psychology where Romance had once filled the aisles. (Are they trying to tell us something?) Then, finally, fiction. Four or five lonely aisles in the upper back corner of the store.

Now, don't get me wrong, I own a Nook, and I love it. I know I've also debated a time or two whether to buy the cheaper e-book or the slightly more expensive paperback, and I've set down the much more expensive hardcover of an author I collected for years (although it was because their child wrote it, and I'm not sure it's as good as the parent's books were). But, but.... but... This was a bookstore! Yes, they were still selling books - but not much fiction. The last time I was there four or five rows was the space allotted to Romance alone, not all fiction. Were they just pushing their latest gadget? What about the folks looking to purchase a bunch of romance novels for their non-e-reader friends?

Exactly who is to blame here? Bookstores or publishers? (It's not the writers, in most cases we have no power.) Was the low number of print books a business decision on the part of the bookstore? Or was it because the price of those books from the publishers has gotten so high the bookstores can't afford to keep the stock?

I have to admit that part of my problem with print is the same - it's too expensive. Personally I believe that's why so many discount bookstores have popped up and the popularity of e-books has taken off - and not just because of the new gadgets. Like so many other things, movies, sports games, what used to be a cheap form of entertainment has now become expensive and all of that increase can't be blamed on electronic devices. A standard paperback novel now costs $10 and a hardcover at least $16. Even a Harlequin romance is $5. When money is tight, that's a hard hit to the wallet. And they wonder why sales of print have fallen off? It makes far more sense to put your name on the waiting list at the local library...or wait until the TV movie comes out. Books are starting to compete with video games in price - especially if you're not a re-reader. As libraries close or cut back due to budget cuts that effects far more than just the bookstores or publishers, that effects literacy. Books have now become a luxury where once they were the refuge of the poor.

Rather than making books more appealing or offering more selection - taking advantage of computerization and logistics - instead publishers are increasingly dumping their backlist books rather than pricing them at a discount. Thereby giving more fodder and more fuel to the growth of discount book franchises, e-books and companies like Amazon. A tragedy to all of us who love books, but a blow to the campaign to increase literacy.

How to Publish Your Novel in the E-book Age Press Release

2011-12-07T09:10:00.000-08:00

How to Publish Your Novel

In the E-book Age

Press Release Information

Valerie Douglas

3799 C. R. 114, Cardington OH 43315

419.560.2973 – valeriedouglasbooks@gmail.com

www.valeriedouglasbooks.com

Amazon.com bestselling novelist, EPIC Ariana Cover Award Finalist and local writer Valerie Douglas will be holding a free seminar on December 10^th at 1:30 PM on How to Publish Your Novel in the E-book Age

Where:

In the Meeting Room of the Northside Branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library

1423 N. High St., Columbus OH 43201

For the first nine months of 2011, e-book sales were up 137.9% at reporting publishers, to $727.7 million. Sales at all print trade segments were down in the same nine months. What does this mean for writers? It’s a new era. The printing paradigm has changed from the agency model controlled by a limited number of print publishers, to e-book publishers, and now, finally, to the author model. For the first time in history, writers are actually in the driver’s seat when it comes to their publishing options. With the advent of e-books and the multitude of choices available, authors are now driving many of the decisions as to how to publish and with whom, not agents or publishing houses.

Making the right choices, though, can be difficult. The information available is confusing and sometimes contradictory. How to Publish Your Novel in the E-book Age is designed to help the beginning writer or new author make the right decisions for them.

“As the author of nineteen novels, published traditionally and independently, I know the advantages and disadvantages of both. Knowing how difficult it is, I want to help new writers determine what the best options are, as well as avoid the pitfalls.” – Valerie Douglas

A fine pair of boobies grins

2011-12-05T14:59:00.000-08:00

Red -footed boobies

I don't suppose there's anything scarier than that moment in the doctor's office when they say those lovely, fateful little words - "Now, it's probably nothing but we need you to go back to have these tests redone..." In my case on my mammogram.
They were quick to reassure me that what they were seeing was probably just an anomaly. Nothing major. But my grandmother, aunt and a cousin on my father's side - that I know of - all had breast cancer, although my parents didn't really talk about it. My grandmother and aunt had died of it.
I've always had a sort of love/hate relationship with my breasts. At times I've been oddly proud of them (not too big, not small, so no complexes, you see). However, they did sometimes draw unwanted attention. As a drunken Naval Officer once said to me in a bar in Key West - "your mother must have said seven hail mary's to get you." She didn't, but you get the drift.
So I'd always had regular breast exams and mammograms but I'd been through a brief time when I'd been struggling. Doctor's visits were low on the totem pole compared to keeping a roof over my head and the electricity on. It's not that I wasn't working, my health care program just sucked. It's just tough when you have to choose between the bills you have and adding a new one. The next person who tells me they don't want to support poor, lazy people getting better health care will get bitch-slapped. Fair warning. Until you've been there, shut up.
So, there they were, little calcifications that might or might not be 'something'. Most medical folks will probably say the same thing - probably nothing, but better to check.
It was a rough year in a lot of ways, personally and professionally. It had started well. I'd married my husband at the end of the previous year, and with his support I had quit my day job on the strength of two novels I'd been fairly certain would be accepted. No two ways about it, though, the loss of my income did leave us more vulnerable.

Dude, your feet are blue...

Then I lost my beloved pet, my cat Bay, a friend and companion of 21 years. The two novels were rejected and I'd become estranged from my mother.
But life never times things well. *wry grin*
The second mammogram explained away the first problem but gave the doctors a new reason to be concerned.
Time for a biopsy.
And, of course, being me it couldn't be in someplace easy to get to, but required weird contortions so they could do the needle biopsy. They were quick to examine the sample right there and assure me it WASN'T cancer. Hurray. However...I'd need a followup mammogram in a year. They'd inserted a tiny metal clip in my breast so they'd know where to look.
So a bizarre anniversary. It's been a year. Tomorrow I go back to have that followup. I'm okay with it. A little nervous but that's to be expected. In all likelihood there will be nothing there. Of course, that's what I thought before...but *grins* we won't talk about that. I'm an optimist, always have been. In a week I'll see my doctor, and she'll tell me my cholesterol is through the roof (an inherited condition), my liver enzymes are a mess (same condition) and, hopefully, that the mammogram was clean.
I can deal with the rest. Moving on....

Sample Sunday - The Last Resort

2011-12-04T12:44:00.000-08:00

Review - Ms Douglas crafts a fine tale of romance, intrigue and suspense. Her characters draw you in and you feel that if you met Carrie on the street you would probably recognize her. Carrie has her own demons to battle as she wages war against the foes of others.

When anyone asks me which book I would choose as the best book I've ever written, The Last Resort is one of them. It's the most personal on many levels, the only one I've ever written in the first person, and it has some amazing characters. Real and unreal. I'll leave you to figure out which is which. *grinning*

The Last Resort

When Jack Spencer, the Head of Security for Fairview Mountain Resort, calls to about a missing coed, computer tech and sometimes troubleshooter Carrie Anderson answers. The last thing the resort needs is bad publicity. Jack knows that on the side Carrie is part of a team that help domestic violence victims escape their homes and abusers.
Complicating things for Carrie is the handsome new attorney that just joined the team.
What she finds, though, will test her skills at making people disappear and put all their lives in danger.
Sample:
The Lutheran Church, Pastor Charles, bless his heart. He was young and a little too naïve, a big, gangly, lanky man, but he wasn’t a bad pastor. There was one car in the church parking lot. A beat up old Chevy. Not the Pastor’s car. The parsonage for the church was down the street on the other side.
Sometimes it just went like this, nothing for a couple of months, and then suddenly a bunch of calls.
I headed for the door to the church, knocking just as Drew’s Volvo pulled into the lot. He’d wasted no time. That was a good sign. On the other hand, maybe he just wanted to make sure I knew he took this seriously. The thought he was trying to impress me pleased me more than it should have.
It was a small church, with the Pastor’s office and the Sunday school in the basement. I opened the door and held it for Drew.
“What have we got?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said, as I stepped inside the little entryway.
There was a short flight of stairs up into the Sunday school hall, and to the right, a longer flight of stairs down to the pastor’s office in the basement.
Pastor Charles poked his head out of the door at the bottom of the stairs. “We’re down here.”
He stepped out as we came down. “She’s quite upset. Her name is Sandy Miller.”
From the office I heard a bark, a little sharp one. Unmistakable. She’d brought a puppy. I blew out a breath. And what else?
He smiled ruefully. “She brought her dog.”
Oddly enough, I didn’t think that was a good sign.
We stepped inside.
Sandy Miller was a nervous wreck, pacing uneasily. Also, not a good sign. It wasn’t the agitation, victims were usually scared, but something about the quality of her tension. There were two children on the floor, one about eight, one about five, and both were far too quiet. The puppy bounced between them yipping, wanting to play. The children weren’t in a playing mood.
“Pastor,” Sandy blurted, “I’m so scared.”
With his sweet gentleness, he gestured at Drew and I. “These people are here to help you.”
“He’s really bad, really,” she said. “I’m so scared.”
She was moving very stiffly, as if her back hurt her.
“Okay,” I said, gently. “Are you sure you want to leave?”
“Yes, oh, yes,” she said. “Now. We have to hurry. When he finds out we’re gone… He said he was going to check on us. Make sure everything was okay.”
Warning bells were going off. Loudly. I took a deep breath but my heart was suddenly pounding.
“How often? How long ago?”
The look Drew gave me told me he was picking up on the concern in my tone.
She looked at me sorrowfully. “An hour, maybe. He called, just to check on me. I already had everything packed. I grabbed the kids, but they wouldn’t leave the dog, so I ran back inside to get it and then ran out the door.”
Some part of her knew. Oh, shit. Talk about a baptism by fire. Oh, I hoped we had time.
“Pastor, get the puppy if you would, Sandy get the children.”
I was hooking my hands-free over my ear and pushing speed dial. “Code,” was all I said when Moira picked up. I hung up instantly. “Let’s go.”
All of us heard the sound of a car in the parking lot, hitting the gravel in a hurry, a bit of a skid.
One of the kids started crying as instinctively I hit the stairs two at a time, praying to get to the door first. The car door slammed even as I shot the lock home. Drew and the Pastor were both in the hallway.
“Are there any other doors unlocked?” I hissed.
“The front doors.”
“Try to keep the children quiet. Bring everyone out into the hallway so he can’t look through the windows.”
Both my shoes were off and I was sprinting through the building to the front of the church. It was a small church, very local. Come on, come on, I told myself as I tried to figure out how to lock them. Drew reached across from behind me and shot the bolt home. I jumped about a foot. He damn near scared the shit out of me.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, quietly.
“Too many things to explain right now.” I was already heading for the one window that would give me a clear view of the parking area as someone banged on the door.
“Sandy!” a voice shouted. “Sandy! I know you’re in there. Come on, honey. It’s okay. I’ll be good. I just got a little mad. It won’t happen again. I promise.”
He banged on the door again, the force of it belying his words. He was pissed. He’d seen the car and knew she was here.
Carefully, I peered out the window. Looked again. Ready to duck if he looked the wrong way, I took a closer look, trying to keep out of view. He was pacing in front of the door. There was something about the way his jacket was hanging. Then I was running barefooted through the church again, Drew close behind. I gestured him through the basement door and pulled it quietly shut behind me.
A very frightened Sandy Miller crouched with her children at the end of the hall. The Pastor was looking very bewildered.
“Sandy,” I whispered. Please don’t say yes. “Does your husband own a gun?”
Slowly, with big eyes, she nodded.
This was worst case scenario, all my preparations and plans undone. I nodded, hitting speed dial.
“Moira, call them off.”
I hung up. “Does he know where the parsonage is?”
Pastor Charles nodded, his face paling.
I darted quickly into the office, grabbed the phone, and dragged it out of the office.
“Call your wife, tell her to get out of the house. Go to the nearest neighbor’s. She’s to go now.”
If Sandy’s husband got no answer here at the church, that’s where he’d go next.
I dialed 911 on my cell phone.
“Emergency operator.”
“There’s a man with a gun at the Lutheran Church in Fall Meadows.”
“Stay on the line, please, I’m relaying to dispatch now.” I hit mute on my end, so I could hear her on the other end but I could still talk.
There was a bathroom down here, if I remembered correctly. No windows and a door. It would be crowded, but it would be one more door between us and him. “Sandy, take your children in the bathroom. It’s the door across from you.”
Pounding on the door upstairs. Thud. Thud. Thud.
“Sandy, I know you’re here. Come out here now.” The voice changed, wheedling. “Come on, Sandy. I’m not mad. I’m not.”
I slipped into the pastor’s office and peered up through the window, looking again, just to be sure. Wanting very badly to be wrong. Drew, standing next to me, was keeping in the shadows, looking up at the man now pacing impatiently away from the door.
Youngish, average height, brown hair, and eyes. A light windbreaker hanging heavily to one side. Something big and weighty in that pocket. He stuck his hand in the pocket, closed his hand around it, and wiggled it around.
“Do you see?” I whispered. He nodded, his eyes steady. Bless that.
We backed quickly away.
“Without seeing it for certain, I’m pretty sure that’s what it is,” I said, softly. “A gun.”
“How did you know?”
I let out a breath. “Instinct, I guess. I didn’t, for certain, but something about the level of fear. The way she ran, and the place she came. She’s young, she has parents, a family. She didn’t go to them, instead she went the one place she thought he might think twice about. Church.”

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0052UX3V6
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0052UX3V6
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/62262

Twenty percent of all profit made from The Last Resort will go to victims of Domestic Violence.

Amazing News - I signed a contract with....

2011-11-22T16:06:00.000-08:00

Fantasy Island Book Publishing to publish Servant of the Gods! (They even did a new book cover, isn't it GREAT!)

This is something I dreamed of for years - 54 to be precise - My first book. In print. Something I can hold in my hands. Something I can send to my mother.

Well, that's not entirely true. I 'published' my first book at eight and I even did the illustrations myself. I got an A, but more than that was the expression on the teacher's face. She was impressed. I was pretty impressed with myself, too.

Truthfully, at times I wasn't sure it was ever going to happen again, legitimately. *grins* Talk about doing things the hard way! It all provided fodder for books, as you'll see.

Like most writers, when I wasn't reading I was 'writing', having conversations with the voices in my head. Then one day at fourteen or so, I started putting them down on paper. Until a kid at school made fun of me and the entire bus laughed. My first critic! *grins* It took a little while to get my courage back, though.

A three hundred page hand written novel at seventeen. Others followed.

I wish I could say my family encouraged me, but they didn't. An A/B student, rather than take the risk of being shot down completely at the idea of studying creative writing in college, I decided to try journalism, that way I might have a career of some kind afterward. I already submitted and had three colleges willing to take me. Nope. College wasn't on their agenda, not for me. However for the next ten years both my parents would send me little clippings from newspapers to remind me what a terrible career choice journalism was. Yeah, they really did that.

Sadly those early manuscripts are gone, my first ex-husband burned them... along with my clothes and all my books. (The Last Resort - a mystery/thriller - and one of the best books I've ever written.)

It would be a long time before I picked up pen and paper again, life kept getting in the way. There were some tough years, but wonderful experiences. I did community theater, appearing in everything from Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution to A. R. Gurney's The Dining Room. (Director's Cut)
I learned about computers and got a job as a computer software specialist, traveling all over (Lucky Charm and Irish Fling). I'd leave on Sunday night, get back on Friday night, maybe Saturday morning, then turn around and do it again.

Then one day, a story came into my head and just demanded to be told. I started writing again. Like many writers, that first novel will never see the light of day. It was a good story, good enough that someone thought of something similar and made it into a movie.
When I wasn't working I was writing, and trying to balance that with my responsibilities to my now ex-husband.

Until one horrible trip. I was writing A Convocation of Kings, the sequel to The Coming Storm and the story just had me. I couldn't stop writing. I wrote on the flight until the battery on my laptop died, then continued on any piece of paper I could scavenge.

All the hours of traveling, the stress at home and on the job caught up with me. I crashed and burned. Hard.

I woke up the next morning throwing up from trying to keep all those balls in the air.
Walking in the door of my home at 1 AM after a delayed flight to an unhappy spouse, I told him I was quitting. I had enough money saved to try it for two years. I'd been so busy, I had no time to spend it. And I was making GOOD money, nearly 75K a year.'
He said he'd support me. It lasted six months. Toward the end I just burned myself in books - romance novels of all things.
Suddenly I was divorced, living in a city I barely knew, among people I didn't know at all. The savings were still there. So, I wrote. I took myself to Great Britain, a place I'd always wanted to go, but the ex hadn't. He liked Vegas and Reno.

I went by myself. (Irish Fling)
I had a wonderful time. It really is different over there, the hills are steep, Scotland is wild and Ireland is greener than you can imagine. The plane no sooner landed on my return home than my cell phone started ringing. My father was in the hospital, beginning the two year downward slide.
Still, I kept writing. Editing, really, honing my stories.
The bank screwed up my account, and suddenly my savings and my good credit were gone. I had to take a job, any job, while I tried to straighten everything out. The only one I could find paid a quarter of what I'd been earning.
And I met the love of my life. On line.
Strangely, he very strongly resembles the hero of The Last Resort and he's proven to be the same kind of man as the one who inspired the character, a stand up guy. (He's also REALLY cute!) When he said he supported me, he meant it. Not that it's always been easy, but the support is there - even when I write for days at a time and he barely sees me at all. (Thank you, honey, for all that you do!)
I submitted a book to a publisher, a bit of a shift for me in genre and style. As I was waiting and submitting first long-time companion, my cat Trey, and then my father died. Shortly after, I received confirmation that a medium press publisher was taking not one, but two of my books. Dad had died before I had the chance to show him that I really could do it.
And then I asked the wrong question of my new editor. If I'd been a little more savvy about the industry, I'd have known better. What should have been a partnership turned adversarial.
On the same day I learned a beloved old friend was being taken off life support, I also learned our dog Rusty had been hit by a car and killed. And I got my first edits. It wasn't pretty.
After a while though, it seemed like things with the publisher had gotten better.
When I thought I had sure deals on several manuscripts, my husband and I talked. I could quit the day job to write full time. Never do that until you have the contract in your hand.
When they fell through though, he didn't flinch. Nor did he ask me to get a job. Our agreement was that I had until August - I had to be making enough money to offset what I earned at my day job. I made it. Just.
It was hard mental work - polishing manuscripts, posting and twittering, doing blog interviews, promoting and polishing some more - but I was achieving a qualified success, and making enough money to pay my own expenses.
Then one day in an on-line conversation I met JD from Fantasy Island Book Publishing. He liked what he saw of Servant of the Gods, my most recent release. He bet me that if I took the chance, he could get it on the Amazon bestseller lists faster than I could. If he succeeded I had to sign a contract with Fantasy Island. You have to like a guy that cocky but he did it. In four days! You can't beat success. (So thanks JD, and thank you Pame and all the folks at Fantasy Island who've been so welcoming!)
So soon, for the first time, I'll be able to hold my book in my hand (no slights to e-readers, I have one, too) and look at the cover. It'll have my name as the author. My title.
I've been waiting for that all my life.

Valerie Douglas - Servant of the Gods - Fantasy Island Book Publishing - Egypt

2011-11-22T11:36:00.000-08:00

As a student of history I've been fascinated by Egypt and the Arab world for most of my life. I watched the dawn of the Arab Spring with amazement and a real sense of hope that perhaps once again that part of the world could be an example to the rest of us.
Say what you will of Greece being the cradle of democracy, it was in the lands of the Near East where civilization was birthed and nurtured.
As I watch the Egyptian people fight for a restoration of their rights after decades of near dictatorship, taking to the streets of Cairo in droves, I think back to their ancestors.
In those days learning was treasured. As they tried to make sense of their world they studied the one around them. From the Arab world and India came the concept of Zero (0), without which a base 10 system (used in most computers) would be impossible. The astrologers of the day gave birth to our own wonder at the heavens and the science of astronomy. In the movements of the stars, they noticed that some were fixed while some moved (planets).
In those days, *laughing* unlike ours, there was much complaint in other cultures about the independence of Egyptian women. That still holds today, as some of the most notable of the protesters are Egyptian women. Unlike so many other cultures, in almost all of their art, husbands and wives are pictured together, and ancient documents give testament to their devotion to each other. In most cases, women could hold any occupation they wished, including serving in the army. While not as 'liberal' as we are, they didn't need to be convinced of the value of women in society, it was simply accepted.
There are those who are afraid Egypt and the others will fall under the sway of the militants, but I remember how they stood up first to Mubarak, Gaddafi, etc., and now to the army. Tens of thousands gathered in the square to demand true liberty. Even if they fail, they will have inspired the next generation. After all, they inspired this one. Look at the folks gathered to Occupy Wall Street. It's the same movement, the same idea. And ideals...

In Memory of a four-footed friend - courage and strength

2011-11-21T06:27:00.000-08:00

I lost my Bay last year at this time - she was 21. A pretty soft gray angora mix she'd survived one of those hoarder houses where they have cats and dogs all crowded together - one of the few who did. The police raided the house after complaints.
The next day my policeman brother showed up at my apartment with a small box. Inside the box was Bay. Her eyes were still blue and covered in fleas, she was too young to be flea-dipped so I had to spray her down and wrap her in a towel. It was NOT her favorite activity. But she forgave me over time, hopping up into my lap to curl up in it and suck her thumb. Yes, you heard me, she sucked her thumb. Like many kittens separated from their mothers too soon (and my new kitten Mendy) she never lost the need to suckle.
Many people thought she was imaginary, or a ghost cat. Extremely shy she tended to disappear when strangers were in the house. She was a great judge of character - unlike her adopted brother Trey who never met a stranger he didn't like - she would only allow a rare few close enough to touch her silky fur.

She really did think you couldn't see her

A year or so before she passed she lost her sight. I saw it when it happened, it was like a stroke or something. She twitched as if she'd been struck or heard a loud noise and then went still for few minutes. But she was incredibly resilient. After few moments, she adjusted, and then she started to walk - until she bumped into something. She continued walking around the entire house, including two sets of stairs, until she knew where everything was. Then she went on as if nothing had happened. If she wasn't sure what was in front of her, she would pat the object with one paw and sniff until she determined what it was.
When she went, it went relatively fast, as it had with her brother (they weren't related by blood, but by love, they tended to sleep curled up with each other). Both breathed their last in my arms, which was as it should be. They had been my companions through some of the most difficult years of my life.

Nom is right, she's a real treat hound

It took only a month before the absence sent me in search of another furry friend, and that's how I met Pi. (Because she's a piebald pirate cat) Stuck in an end cage, she was likely considered unadoptable because she only has one eye but she's another sweetheart, hopping up on my desk to give a little love.

The black mark on his ear is frostbite

*grins* Four months later, I found Tango in the middle of the road, determined to get the last crust out of a MacDonald's bag despite a broken jaw and frostbite. All I could see was his orange/ginger bottom and this looooong tail.

Her favorite place to be

Two months ago, someone with two many kittens decided to toss a spare one out of their car at our dogs Ruby and Ella - they just didn't know that the dogs wouldn't hurt her. Unfortunately, neither did Mendy but they did keep her in place long enough to be rescued.
So, now with Billie Jo (no picture, sorry) our indoor/outdoor cat, we have four cats, each unique, and two dogs (coonhounds), and the infamous African horned frog, Hopper, who delights in driving Bay crazy by splashing in his tank when she gets near.

Blog Tour de Troops - November 11th - 14th - Final Day!

2011-11-14T06:18:00.000-08:00

A Time to Give Back to those that serve this country. That was my only real purpose in joining the blog tour. As the old saying goes, I have no dogs in this hunt. None personal. I had uncles that served in the Armed Forces. I can remember my Uncle Bob coming back one year unexpectedly from wherever he was stationed. Every Christmas Eve my mother's family got together for my grandparents anniversary. He dressed up as Santa, and brought us all presents. No one knew who he was. *smiles* Because of him I believed in Santa until I was eleven - when I found the Christmas present hidden, badly, in the basement. Until then, no one could convince me otherwise because I'd SEEN him.
Other than that, I have Facebook friends who have children who are serving, but nothing that touches me personally.
Except I guess, empathy. I see the names of those lost on TV and listed in my newspaper, mostly young men but some young women. They joined for a variety of reasons - because of 9/11, for the desire to serve their country, or just to support their families - all of which I can admire. For whatever reason, they put their lives at risk to uphold the principles of this country. I wanted to honor that, so I give to them and to you one of the most precious things to me, and hope that you like it. In this month of Thanksgiving, I want to give thanks for those who give everything that they are.

A word about the blog tour: Fifty authors are offering their books as free giveaways to anyone who comments on this and the other blogs.

In addition, every comment earns an ebook for a troop. Plus, each comment is an entry into a drawing for a free Kindle! We’re also giving multiple KINDLES to several lucky troops. So, how cool as that?

Why? Because the number one care package item request is books. So, let’s give them to our troops!
Want to donate money toward the troop KINDLES? Excellent. Just click here http://blogtourdetroops.com/Blog_Tour_de_Troops/Home.html for secure donations via Paypal.

If you have been following the tour, you joined me here at Writer's Blog from Sherry Ellis's blog, “That Mama is a Grouch” http://www.sherryellis.blogspot.com/. I do hope that you will continue on to Zoe Saadia's blog, “The Cahokian” http://blog.zoesaadia.com/.

So, here is how you get your free ebook:
• Leave a comment below and share with us your connection to our military – is it you, a family member, a friend? Also please remember to include your email, or I can’t send you a free book!

• Do you have a specific soldier in mind to receive my book? Let me know! Leave their info below in your comment.

Here's where I get annoyingly redundant: Don't forget your contact info when you comment! Because otherwise I can't find you and give you a free book!

• If you just want us to designate a soldier, we are on it.

• It may take me a day or so to get through the comments and respond to you with the free ebook. Oh, I know you want the books and I want to give it to you! But I hope to have loads of responses (since each response sends a free book to a soldier, and all) and so it might take a bit to catch up.

• As authors, we’d ALL really appreciate a review on Amazon after you read our free books. Because that would just be so great.

Please help me to support the troops by sharing this post on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, or your own blog. You would be the coolest person ever if you did that!

Now, don't forget to mosey on over to Zoe Saadia's blog, “The Cahokian” http://blog.zoesaadia.com/ for more Tour, and more books...

Thank you all, very much. (And to anyone who responded to my prior post, I will be checking there, too!)

Sample Sunday - Servant of the Gods

2011-11-13T14:43:00.000-08:00

Rather than do the usual Sample Sunday post, I thought that maybe actions - or book trailers - would speak louder than words. Enjoy...

http://www.amazon.com/Servant-of-the-Gods-ebook/dp/B0062PXJT6

Blog Tour de Troops - November 11th - 14th - Starts Tomorrow!!!

2011-11-10T05:25:00.000-08:00

What could be better than getting a free eBook?

Why, giving one away to the men and women who have protected this country!

Join us Veteran's Day Weekend when we have a blast blog hop to dozens of authors sites where each is giving away not only an eBook to every commenter, but another one to a soldier!

We're talking bestsellers, award-winners and up and coming titles plus extra prizes! As in a Kindle giveaway

Just sign up for the newsletter and we'll point you in the right direction come November 11th all the way through the 14th. Make sure to visit the website for more details!

Please help us make this Veteran's Day one to remember! #supportthetroops #supporttheauthors

I hope you'll tell your friends to stop by and check out my blog, as well as the others on the tour! I'll be posting more about the other available titles as we get closer to the tour date. My day is November the 14th. Leave comments for free books for you and a soldier. The Tour also raises money to send the troops Kindles so they can read the books they receive. I'm offering a copy of Heart of the Gods (http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/44102) to anyone who comments on that day. See you then!

Blog Tour de Troops - November 11th - 14th

2011-11-06T15:08:00.000-08:00

I remember wearing this metal bracelet as a kid. My twin wore a matching one. It was just a simple thing with a man's name on it, his rank, and a date on it. The date that soldier had gone missing. I was old enough to understand what it was like for his family, waiting for him - son, father, brother, husband perhaps - to come home.
The war ended and my sister and I searched the lists for these men we'd never met... one who did, and one who never came home.
I remember sitting there for a while, understanding that some girl like me - if he had a daughter - would never see her father come again. Her mother would never see her husband. His family would never see a brother or son.
All they could do was wait. Some people waited for years, with no word.
I supported the war in Afghanistan, and still do. My feelings about Iraq are mixed.
But I think of those families, the families of the soldiers. Men and women who are trying to do what's right. Many of whom joined after 9/11. Whatever I feel about the war, I support those people.

I wish I could put it better, but I'll let Andy Rooney say it. After all, he was there in the last Great War, WWII - http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7387328n

I hope you'll tell your friends to stop by and check out my blog, as well as the others on the tour! I'll be posting more about the other available titles as we get closer to the tour date. My day is November the 14th. Leave comments for free books for you and a soldier. The Tour also raises money to send the troops Kindles so they can read the books they receive. I'm offering a copy of Heart of the Gods (http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/44102) to anyone who comments on that day. See you then!

Sample Sunday - Not Magic Enough

2011-11-06T14:01:00.000-08:00

When I first wrote The Coming Storm, there was a prologue. I felt it was necessary to explain to readers the circumstances that had led to the events in that book. As time went by, though, I had to accept that it was really what was called 'back story', history, and not really relevant to the book that would be The Coming Storm. There are just some characters, some stories, though, that haunt you. Delae and Dorovan were like that. They haunted some of my beta readers - folks who read Storm before it was published - all of whom wanted to know... what happened?
Like the story of how Elon, Colath and Jareth met (told in Setting Boundaries), Delae and Dorovan haunted me, as well. They just wouldn't let me go, demanding that their story be told. It would take almost five years before I could tell it right.
There was one problem, though. To tell it I'd either have to include spoilers for The Coming Storm or find a way to dance around them. I chose to dance. Their story was about them, and although they love they shared would ultimately change their world, what passed between them wasn't about that world but between two people in pain who gave each other everything they could offer, despite everything.

One reviewer said, "I was smitten by the archaic timbre of the writing style and the hardship of the era was well portrayed; as were the beauty and integrity of both hero and heroine - their love scenes are powerfully drawn. Whilst the ending is sad, but inevitable, the author sprinkles a dust of happiness over it." Another commented, "I laughed and I cried at the end both from sadness and happiness. I was immersed from beginning to end. I would gladly read others in the series as this one gripped me totally."

I hope you read it and like it, too. If you do, please click 'like' and the 'tags'. If you really feel inspired, please leave a review. If you'd like a taste of their story, you might want to watch the trailer to Not Magic Enough -

http://www.youtube.com/user/Baycat57?feature=mhee#p/u/2/9mjhi_Lg7Uk

Description
For Delae, a lonely landholder on the edge of the Kingdoms, a frantic knock at the door on a stormy winter's night brings more than a cry for help.
After centuries of war Elves have little contact with the race of men, but Dorovan can't bring himself to ride past those so obviously in need. One small act, with enormous consequences.
Not Magic Enough is a tale of love and honor, duty and determination...

Excerpt

The pounding on the heavy wood of the doors of the homestead sounded loudly even above the shriek and howl of the storm raged outside. Pulling her threadbare robe on, only half-awake Delae ran across the cold stone floors in her bare feet to answer it, rubbing her eyes wearily. Doubtless her aged cook and houseman had been roused, too, by the pounding and were on their way from their quarters at the back of the homestead but she was the closer of them. She hated to ask either Petra or Hallis to sit by the door of a night as many landowners did anymore than she set a guard by the gates as many others did. They weren’t so far from the seat of the lesser Kingdom of Riverford that they had much to fear behind stout walls.
Who would be mad enough to be out in such a storm as this? she wondered. It was early in the night, true, but it was still insanity to be caught so far from shelter.
Lifting the bar, she set it aside and released the latch.
The door opened on a blast of wet snow and wind that struck her like a blow, nearly literally, to reveal a stranger standing there, looking windblown, frozen, battered and desperate. She caught him as he almost fell in the door, a young, plain-looking man, by the looks of him a farmer or tradesman, a traveler of some sort not used to the vagaries of the weather at the edges of the Kingdoms. His ragged brown hair was drenched, his clothing soaked, his skin white and his lips nearly blue from the cold.
“Help,” he whispered as he staggered into the relative warmth of the great room.
The fire in the great fireplace that dominated the whole of one wall was banked to coals but it still heated the room beyond the chill of the weather outside.
He was clearly injured, with blood covering one side of his face.
“My family,” he croaked, weakly, “the wagon, it overturned, we were on our way home from the birthing…”
“Hush, hush,” Delae said, gently, reassuringly, as she took his weight on her shoulders and guided him to the padded bench by the fire. “What’s your name?”
“Marlan. Lady, you have to help them…!”
“Of course I do,” she said, kindly, although it was no more than her duty as landowner, but also because people needed aid. “We’ll help them, I promised. What happened, Marlan? Where are they?”
“We were coming from Raven’s Nest, heading south for the Heartlands. My sister Jessa had her baby, we were coming home,” Marlan said. His next words were bitter and angry. “Pa thought we could make it to Riverford before the storm hit. I kept telling him no, we should stop at the last village but you can’t tell him anything. So we pressed on.”
As he spoke, Petra and Hallis rushed in. With a shake of her head, Delae indicated they shouldn’t speak.
There was no need, at the young man’s words both turned to rush back down the hall to do what was needed, Petra to get the kitchens going and Hallis to gather up blankets.
“I told him we needed to stop, hunker down to wait out the storm but he wouldn’t,” Marlan said. From the way he spoke, it had the sound of an old complaint, much voiced and now tragically vindicated. “The wagon overturned.”
“Where?” Delae asked. “On the road?”
“Yes, mistress,” he said, respectfully, as Hallis returned to drape a blanket over the young man’s shoulders.
Tall and spare, his gray hair sparse, Hallis’s hands were knotted with age, bent and twisted.
“Petra is making soup, my lady, there will be food soon,” Hallis said, his heart aching for his poor mistress as he bent stiffly to stir up the fire, wrestling another log into place.
Hallis looked at her there kneeling by the young man, a pretty young woman with a kind, gentle face and a good heart, as graceful as the dancer she’d been in her youth, her tightly curled hair glowing red and gold in the light of the coals, her dark blue eyes focused only on the young man.
In truth, most landowners would already have put him and Petra to work as drudges in the kitchens or as lesser house staff by now and there were a good many who would’ve put them out to beg on the streets. Neither of them could move fast any more.
Not Delae, though. For kindness mostly but also for good reason as there simply was no money to hire better, that good for nothing husband of hers took every penny she couldn’t hide. Still, she never ordered, she always asked and never complained of her lot in life. It wasn’t in her to do it.
A sharp petulant voice came from the door to the west wing of the house startling everyone.
“What’s going on, what’s all that racket? Can’t a body get some sleep of a night? Bad enough with this storm but then folk banging around…”
Closing her eyes, Delae willed patience as she had a thousand times before.
“It’s nothing, Cana. Travelers have broken down in the storm,” she said to her husband’s mother. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Then you must send aid,” the woman said, equally sharply, as if Delae were witless.
“This I know,” Delae said. “And I will. Go back to bed, Cana, I’ll take care of it.”
As she took care of everything else.
Despair and frustration weighed on her, battered at her soul. It was at rare times such as this that Delae wished she had a husband in truth instead of only in name. This would’ve been his duty had he been there, although she would have gone with him to brave the storm and give aid. Instead it fell to her. All of it.
She took a breath, willed strength and patience. These folk needed her. There was no one else and there was something, some satisfaction, to be found in the knowledge that she could help.
“Hmmmph,” Cana said and slammed the door shut behind her.
At least Kolan, her husband’s father, hadn’t come, too, Delae thought, which was one blessing, his joints bothered him too much on these days.
Letting out the breath she’d taken, with a wince at the door slam, Delae turned to Hallis.
“Go fetch Dan, Morlis and Tad for me would you please, Hallis? Tell Morlis we’ll need our hay cart, two of the draft horses and Besra. Then you and Petra get the rooms in the east wing ready.”
Those rooms were usually reserved for rare visitors to the homestead or for travelers such as these caught out in the storm. In this isolated part of the Kingdoms the smallholders used them most when they came in during the harsh days of winter, now fast upon them.
“Yes, Delae,” Hallis said and hurried off as best he could with his stiff joints and aching bones as Petra came down the hall toward him.
Their fingers touched for just a moment, his and Petra’s, with love and understanding and then Hallis hobbled down through the west wing of the quarters toward those of the south wing. It would take longer but he was too old to fight the winds of the storm by cutting across the square.
Petra came to sit by the boy, a mug of hot herbal tea laced with wine in one gnarled hand. She gave a nod to Delae.
“Help will be on its way shortly,” Delae said, laying a reassuring hand on the young man’s shoulder.
As she hurried away, she knew she wouldn’t tell him it would be she who would go. She, her smith, her wrangler and the addled but strong young man who assisted Petra in the kitchen.
That was all there were here save for the women and children of the homestead. All the smallholders were sheltering from the storm in the safety of their cottages and too far away to aid her.
It would have to be enough, it would have to do. Somehow.
Casting aside the threadbare robe and the thin linen nightdress she wore, Delae quickly drew on her working clothes―simple but heavy men’s winter trews, her heaviest tunic, layering over it a sweater Petra had knitted for her and thick woolen socks before she stamped her feet into her working boots. She threw her sturdiest cloak over all of it. A woolen scarf covered her abundant hair. She wrapped the scarf around her throat despite the itch of the wool before gathering up her sheepskin gloves.
She stopped to gather a jug of fortified wine from the storeroom, pausing in the kitchen to fetch a piece of warmed iron from the fire, letting it drop it into the jug of wine with a hiss before she pounded the cork stopper back in place.
By the time she reached the great room, the men were waiting.
Dan was huge and burly, heavily muscled in the chest, arms and shoulders from his hours at the forge and capable enough there. Tall and gangly, Morlis was a wonder with horses and a godsend to her. Poor Tad just looked at her with no curiosity, his huge hands dangling, his moon face waiting to be wreathed in a smile…or a look of confusion. But he was strong and he would do as he was told. For all that he was shorted on wits, he more than made up for it in other ways.
She patted his cheek lightly, fondly, and the smile broke out, big and broad, heartening her.
“I’ve the horses and wagon waiting outside,” Morlis said.
She nodded. “Tad, will you take the spare blankets and the jug to the cart please? We’re going for a ride. Dan, go open the hayloft, quickly please. If their wagon has overturned, they’ll be cold, possibly injured. We’ll need hay in the cart for warmth.”
Obediently, Tad gathered up the things and trotted out to the cart as Dan ran to the stables, Morlis on his heels to drive the little wagon there.
With a glance back at the warm building that had been her home for the last ten years or so, Delae went out into the storm.
It was an early winter storm and all the more fierce because of it, driven by the warm winds from the south and the cold winds sweeping down out of the mountains to the east and north. It was bitterly cold and damp, hurling snow before it that wouldn’t stick but would turn the roads muddy, slushy and thick.
A rumble of thunder growled above the other sounds of the storm. Thunder snow… uncommon but less so at this time of year. If this were any sign, it would be a long and hard winter.
Faithful Besra, her horse, tried to turn her back to the wind, her winter coat thick, yet still she shivered as Delae mounted.
Delae could sympathize as she turned the horse’s head toward where Dan forked hay into the cart. The cold seemed to find every gap in the layers that covered her.
“Enough, let’s go,” she shouted and he nodded, pulling the upper doors closed behind him, emerging seconds later at the door below with torches he’d lit at his forge.
He handed one up to her before mounting his own horse.
The gates were unbarred as they almost always were, save for the rare goblin raid this far to the south and west. Far from the borderlands and in a Kingdom where the King kept faith with his subjects by keeping the roads safe for those who lived within his borders, they had little to fear.
Except the storm.
The wind struck with vicious force the moment they left the security of the walls, rattling the little wagon and nearly blowing Delae from her horse.
Still there was no help for it, as landowner here it was her responsibility to render aid, regardless of circumstances.
Putting her head down, Delae drew her cloak more tightly around her throat.
In the wind of the storm, the torches and lanterns on the cart guttered and flickered. Delae could barely hang onto hers, but she did, switching it from hand to hand to give each cold aching wrist and arm relief. Both were strained and sore by the time they finally reached the road.
With no sign of the passage of a wagon south, they turned north and soon enough found the stranded travelers, huddled together for warmth in the shelter of the overturned wagon. One horse was down, tangled in its traces, still kicking weakly as the other fought to stay upright with his fellow fallen beside him.
Delae’s heart sank at the sight.
The wagon was huge, a massive farm wagon, far larger than she’d expected, put to use no doubt for the family visit to distant relatives, the last such chance to do so before the snows closed the pass to Raven’s Nest. As it no doubt would be now.
It was easy enough to see what had happened. As the mud had grown thicker it had bogged the wheels of the wagon until they’d hit a low wallow. There the wheels on one side had caught completely, pulling them off the road. The wagon had gone over in a slow but inevitable roll onto its side. Now one side of the wagon was mired in the mud, making it far more difficult to raise.
There had to be more than a dozen people there, a few men but mostly women and children, all shivering in the cold. One of the men ― Marlan’s father? ― was also injured.
It was clear the cart would never hold all of them. They would have to right the wagon.
One of the other men cried out to her in relief as he staggered to his feet.
“Thank God you’ve come!” he said as she dismounted.
“How many are injured?” she shouted over the wind. “And how badly?”
“Forman is the worst,” the man responded. “He struck his head. One of the children has a broken arm. The rest are only bruises.”
That was a relief. Their thick clothes and hay had likely softened the fall, preventing more injuries.
“Get Forman and the child in the cart and as many of the other children as you can. There are blankets there. Try to get them warm,” she said, as she fought the wind and mud to have a look at the wagon. “Dan, I need you. Morlis, help them. Tad, keep the horses still.”
She slogged through the frozen mud.
At least the axle hadn’t broken. That had been her worst fear, as it would have made everything much harder. Otherwise, they would’ve had to take them back in stages with the fragile cart, each trip risking another accident such as this one while those remaining waited in the freezing cold.
If they could even get the wagon turned over and that was very doubtful.
The storm raged around them as Delae held her torch high examining the situation.
“If we cut the traces of the fallen horse,” Dan said, grimly, “we’ll lose pull.”
With a sigh, Delae nodded. That had been her assessment as well.
They’d never get the wagon out and there would be nothing to secure the draft horses to the wagon then. One horse couldn’t pull it alone but perhaps they could rig something.
Either way it meant the death of the horse on the ground. Without untangling it they’d never get the wagon righted and if they tried it would likely break one of the horse’s legs, if not worse. The way it thrashed she wouldn’t risk the life of whoever she asked to unbuckle it. Her heart grieved for the poor animal. She couldn’t ask Morlis to do it nor have the children watch.
Which left her. She sighed.
If they could even get the wagon righted with what they had.
They had to try.
Coming around the wagon, she eyed the situation.
Morlis had gotten the two injured and all of the younger children into the cart.
With a nod, she turned to the man she’d spoken to first.
“Your name?”
Tugging his forelock in respect, he said, “Pell, Lady.”
“Pell. Who among the women is best with the children?”
“Yana,” the man said and a young woman turned at the sound of her name, holding her thin cloak closed around her head with one hand.
“Morlis,” Delae said, “Give everyone on the cart a swallow of the wine to warm them and then leave it with those who remain to keep them warm. Leave the draft horses here. Take Yana up with you, get her, the children and the injured back to the homestead. Have Petra put them in the east wing rooms. If we aren’t back by daylight, return.”
She wouldn’t risk him coming back alone in this weather. If they didn’t get the wagon righted and on its way whoever survived the storm this night would get a ride back to the homestead in the morning. Already the cold was numbing Delae’s fingers and toes. Young Yana shivered badly.
The man nodded.
“Everyone else,” Delae said, “get back among the trees. We’re going to try to right the wagon.”
The little cart with its passengers trundled off, taking with it the dim light cast by its lanterns.
The remaining women and the older children took what little shelter they could beneath the trees. The remaining two men held the torches.
Delae turned back to the overturned wagon.
Dan and Pell waited, Tad behind them looking confused, Pell’s face already pale and set, knowing what needed to be done.
Clearly, she couldn’t ask it of him, either, and she would much prefer to do the deed herself, so it would be done as quickly as well and as painlessly as possible.
“Dan, Pell,” she said, “secure the draft horses to the rails of the wagon so they can pull as we lift but wait until I signal I’m ready. Tad, help them by holding the horses.”
She went to her knees beside the head of the thrashing chestnut horse, wary of its kicking forelegs, its tossing head hampered by the tangled traces and laid her hand on its cheek, looking into the one eye she could see. The white there clearly showed its fear. For a moment it stilled, distracted by her touch. Her heart went out to it as she stroked its rough hide and she drew her belt knife.

That was how Dorovan first saw her, kneeling in the mud by the overturned wagon. To his Elven-sight her brilliant hair was a bright splash of red against the light dusting of snow on the ground as she bent her head. Brightness sparkled on her cheeks as she touched the frightened, tangled horse gently.
Tears.
Nearby three men secured draft horses to the upraised side of the wagon while a group of men, women and a young boy stood nearby beneath the dubious shelter of the trees.
It wasn’t his business, it was a thing of men. He knew he should pass by, unseen in the darkness, his Elven-sight rendering everything to him as clear as day, unlike that of the men and women here.
He was cold as well, chilled to the bone, tired, heartsick and far from home.
It had been a long journey from Lothliann in the north, where he had gone to render aid against the Borderlands creatures, through the Rift and the lands Men called Raven’s Nest. They’d lost one of their Hunters to the goblins and his people grieved the loss along with Melis’s soul-bond.
As he himself did, his heart heavy. Even without a soul-bond of his own, through the empathy his people shared he knew a fraction of what it was to suffer such a loss. His heart ached for Melis. She would go on to the Summerlands soon, he knew. And then his people would lose not one, but two.
To his vision it was clear the small party was unlikely to right the heavy wagon, not with what they had to work with, but it was also quite clear they would try. There was nothing else for it.
It was also clear what the woman on the ground was about to do, however much she clearly dreaded it and how necessary it was… If he didn’t intervene. With the storm it was also likely they would all freeze and die out here if they didn’t succeed.
Dorovan had had enough of death.

Taking a breath, Delae set the blade to the horse’s throat. She didn’t think she could successfully put it through the eye and thus into the brain―nor could she bear to do so, but she could cut its throat if she was quick. The thought of it made her want to weep but she steeled herself to do what must be done.
A strong, long-fingered hand settled over her own, stilling it.
Startled, she turned her head to look.
Shock and amazement at who stood there held her rooted to the spot.
Not who, though, so much as what.
She wasn’t certain in that moment or any moment afterward which held her more immobile, that an Elf had appeared at her side, that he was an Elf, that he was the most beautiful creature she’d ever seen, as most Elves were, or the seemingly bottomless depth of the kindness in his silvery gray eyes. Or the grief and sorrow hidden in the depths, moving like shadows in the flickering light of the torch.
His features were perfect, strong, his smooth skin reddened a little with the cold beneath the hood of his cloak, his long straight hair streaming loose in the wind.
It was as if she were held spellbound and yet she knew she wasn’t. Elven magic didn’t work that way.
Rarely did her folk see Elves out here in the outlands and never one alone given the danger from her own kind, although she certainly knew of that aloof and beautiful race. Everyone did, as they knew of the Dwarves who dwelled deep in the earth in their Caverns.
What was he doing out in this storm so far from an Enclave? There was none close that she knew of and the storm would slow even his Elven-bred horse, standing patiently nearby. She hadn’t even heard its approach.

Empathic as he was, beneath the thick scarf covering her bright hair, Dorovan could see a woman of warmth and of spirit, of infinite tenderness, her blue eyes filled with both grief at what she was about to do, the determination and duty that was required to do it and wonder to see him there beside her. His kind and hers rarely interacted.
“Do not,” he said, gently. “I can hold him still, if you can but unbuckle the harness.”
Dorovan often worked with the horses in Talaena Enclave and the horses of men were much less headstrong than those, so keeping the animal still was only a matter of empathy with it, of sinking his awareness into that of the animal trembling beneath his hands.

It was on Delae for a moment to ask if he was certain, but he was Elf, so of course he was. If he said it, he was. There was that about Elves that they didn’t lie, it going so against their Honor.
Then he laid his strong, long-fingered hands on the horse, one on the horse’s strong neck, the other covering its eye, murmuring soft words as he did and it stilled completely.
“Dan, Pell, Tad, help me,” she said, softly, not wanting to disturb the Elf’s concentration.
Both seemed as dumbstruck by the presence of the Elf as she’d been, staring at him in amazement.
“Dan, Pell,” she called, more sharply, tugging her gloves from her nearly frozen fingers to work the straps free of the buckles. “Tad.”
That broke their suspension and they rushed to help her, Tad goggling owlishly at the Elf, something he’d never seen.
Still it took all of Dan and Tad’s muscle to lift and Delae’s and Pell’s efforts to get the harness unfastened from beneath the horse. Then it was free and she turned to the Elf.

As lightly as a feather, the woman touched Dorovan on the shoulder, letting him know he could release his control of the horse.
It surprised him she would know his people didn’t like to be touched by anyone other than other Elves, but even that brief touch told him much about her, including the knowledge that she possessed an empathy he’d thought uncommon among the people of men. Still, he couldn’t help but be grateful for it and for her consideration.
He looked up into her blue eyes and nodded, stepping back carefully, drawing her back with him with a touch to her shoulder as the horse thrashed to its feet.
Quickly he reached out to grasp the frightened animal by its halter.

“Pell,” Delae called. “Come help us get the horse harnessed. Have one of the women hold it.”
The other man nodded while Dan took the reins of the other horses.
Delae looked at the Elf hesitantly. “I can’t ask you for more than you’ve done…”

With a grave nod, Dorovan said, “But I can offer it.”
The gratitude in her eyes was thanks enough.
“I’m Delae,” she offered.
“Dorovan,” he said.
She smiled, her blue eyes warming, turning her beautiful.
Borrowing the traces from wagon, he set them on his own Charis, the Elven horse shaking himself at the feel of the leather on him before settling. The Elven-bred stallion knew his duty here, it didn’t need to be said. Dorovan attached the traces to the sturdiest rails on the side of the wagon. Before they could move it, first they must right it.
Even so, it wouldn’t be an easy task. It would take all of his strength and more to achieve it.
“Do you want to do this?” Delae asked.
He shook his head. “They are your people.”

Relieved, Delae turned briskly to the others.
This just might be possible, now.
“Dan,” she called, “get the horses moving forward, slow and steady. Pull them back as soon as the wagon starts to break free of the mud, as soon as it starts to go. Pell, Tad, I’ll need you with myself and Dorovan.”
The four of them bent to the wagon, dug their fingers into the thick mud to find the edge of the wagon bed. She only hoped the rails above would hold as the Elven-bred pulled against them.
Her gaze turned to the Elf beside her.

Somehow, it didn’t surprise Dorovan to find Delae crouched down beside him and them in the mud to lend what strength she had to lifting the massive wagon. He could only admire her, who wouldn’t spare herself.
“Now,” she shouted and the man Dan called to the draft horses, shaking the reins to get them pulling.
Charis needed no instruction, throwing his great weight against the traces.

At the side of the wagon, Delae, Dorovan, Tad and Pell heaved.
There was a pause and then they felt it begin to move, to shift. With a wet sucking sound it pulled free.
All of them leaped back as Delae shouted, “Stop!”
The wagon tilted free of the mud, paused for a moment teetering on its side and then it fell back to all four wheels with a crash, a rail broken, a little the worse for wear, but whole enough to get the remainder of the travelers back to the homestead.
Delae shivered with the cold and turned to Dorovan.
“Our thanks,” she said, softly. “I can offer you hospitality, shelter and food, for your help, if nothing else, but also as my duty as landowner. It won’t be Elven fare, but it will be hot and there’ll be a warm bed.”
It was the least she could do.

For a moment Dorovan hesitated, despite the wind cutting through his clothing, the cold, his heaviness of spirit. It was a long way yet to Talaena, though.
“I can guarantee you privacy and peace,” she said, very gently, reaching out to touch his hand with just her fingertips, no more. “No one should be out in a storm such as this, Dorovan. The food will be plain but good and warm. There will be a hot bath, a bed for you and a stall for your horse with plenty of oats.”
The gesture touched him. Her blue eyes were calm, steady. The offer was a kind and honest one.
It was no more or less than any Elven Enclave would offer and he was far from home. In gratitude, Dorovan inclined his head.

Purchase links

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004RJ44MA

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004RJ44MA

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/44048

Blog Tour de Troops - November 11th - 14th

2011-11-04T06:37:00.000-07:00

This Veterans Day weekend, Indie Book Collective's Blog Tour de Troops is giving back to the men and women who safeguard our freedom.

50 Indie Authors will be giving away their book to every person who comments + a book to the soldier of their choice. And...as many troops as possible will also be receiving FREE KINDLES!

Remember to visit this blog on Monday, November 14th! and leave a comment to receive a free ebook (Heart of the Gods) for you and a soldier & be entered to win a free Kindle!

Please enjoy Heart of the Gods...

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004RJ8RIW
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004RJ8RIW
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Heart-of-the-Gods/Valerie-Douglas/e/2940012213808
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/44102

and Servant of the Gods

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005XMAOP6
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005XMAOP6
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/97424
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Servant-of-the-Gods/Valerie-Douglas/e/2940013303768

Sample Sunday - Servant of the Gods

2011-10-30T14:19:00.000-07:00

Servant of the Gods
A child of prophecy, in her life she would bear three names, one as a peasant and mercenary, yet another after she was captured and enslaved. Despite it all she would rise to become Priestess of Isis and High Priestess of all Egypt and face her greatest challenge...an nearly immortal evil.

Excerpt

It was late in the afternoon when they came within sight of the tall, thick walls of the fort, slowing to a canter as they approached.

An eerie silence prevailed, unbroken by the sound of the birds that normally scavenged the refuse and detritus of the fort’s dunghill. All they heard was the wind blowing over the sand, a soft ominous hiss.

Khai looked to the walls.

They were empty. The gates were open wide, almost in invitation. No one could seen, within or without.

Something was badly wrong.

Instinctively, nervously, the archers strung their bows and carried them at the ready as the charioteers held their horses on a tight rein, the animals tossing their heads restlessly.

At Irisi’s side, Nebi made an anxious noise low in his throat, shaking his mane uneasily as his tail twitched.

Unsettled as well, Irisi reached behind her to loosen her swords in their scabbards.

The towers at each corner were unoccupied, as was the interior as far as they could see through the narrow aperture of the open gates. Nothing moved beyond them. The garrison should have been bustling with men drilling and patrols coming and going. Especially in light of the stories they’d heard.

Everyone looked around nervously as they rode through the gates in the outer wall.

No one challenged their right to enter. Shadows pooled unnaturally beneath the walls.

They passed through the first wall then through the second and into open marshalling yard.

To all appearances, the complex of barracks and buildings was completely empty. The square before them was barren, no soldiers drilled, no one repaired their gear or sharpened their swords, nor did the commandant come to greet them.

It was unnatural, eerie and disquieting. The entire garrison seemed to have vanished.

A silence unlike any other, broken only by the whistling of the wind, surrounded them.

“How many?” Irisi whispered.

Khai shook his head. “A hundred, perhaps more.”

The enormity of it…

With gestures, Khai split his people and sent them scouting carefully through the complex.

He and Irisi dismounted to cautiously approach the commandant’s quarters.

They could see nothing within the shadows of the entry but those shadows seemed darker than usual.

Nebi pressed protectively close to Irisi. Out of habit, she rested her hand on his head, her fingers in his mane.

Darkness seemed to press against her, though the sun was still high in the sky. Something was wrong… The closer they walked to the commander’s quarters the more disturbed she felt. She tried to tell herself it was her imagination.

She sensed…something…

Malevolent… Evil… Gathering…

With a great coughing roar, Nebi suddenly crouched.

“Khai,” Irisi shouted and threw herself at him.

Nebi leaped just as something with wicked teeth and claws erupted from within the concealing darkness.

Whatever it was that burst from the cover of the commandant’s quarters was like nothing Irisi had ever seen before… And yet it was familiar in a strange way, something she’d only read about, something to haunt her nightmares.

Nebi met it, snarling and roaring.

More of the thing bounded out in the wake of the first.

They looked like hyenas but they weren’t, everything about them was slightly wrong, from their oversized teeth to the too long claws on their feet, yet the powerful bone-crushing jaws of the hyena they resembled were still very much a danger.

Irisi spun away from Khai, throwing her swords up to defend herself as one of the things launched itself at her.

“Call your people back, Khai,” Irisi cried. “Get them back.”

The thing twisted to evade the iron in the rough steel of her swords.

Khai shouted for his people as more of the things and new, different, ones erupted from the shadows where they’d been hiding.

Things that resembled smoke but weren’t flowed from the barracks around them in rolling billows. That smoke transformed into creatures that were shaped roughly like men. It was there that all resemblance ended.

Rough creatures, their skin was as black as charcoal and rimose, threaded with glints of red like the coals of a banked fire. Their eyes were narrow glowing slits, their noses and mouths a slash of embers. Others shifted shape and form, some appeared to be men who’d suffered a terrible battle – all bore fearsome wounds. Khai feared he knew who they were and from where they’d come… The fallen of the fort.

With a howl, a hyena thing leaped at Irisi. She spun away, her swords flashing. It screamed in frustrated fury as her blade cut it while another leaped at Khai himself.

Khai took the thing down with a two-handed swing of his own sword, sending it tumbling across the ground. It instantly rolled to its feet and raced toward them once again. A spear thrown by one of his men pierced it. It howled, rolling, scrabbling and biting at itself.

“Don’t let the shadows touch you,” Irisi cried out in warning, as she cut an ifrit in two.

If she was right… Fear shot through her.

Gesturing, she called up a burst of wind to drive back the shadows closest to them and their people.

“What are they?” Khai demanded, turning to put Irisi at his back as his people raced to join them, most of them ducking, dodging and fighting the creatures that seemed to burst through or ooze from nearly every orifice of the fort.

He saw the smoke that wasn’t smoke swirl around one of his men.

Screaming, the man’s eyes bulged as he fell, his clothing stained red even as he toppled.

Irisi threw herself against Khai as he instinctively responded, going to the aid of his man.

“No,” she cried, “you can’t save him.”

More of the things appeared.

Nebi leaped past them to take another, his massive jaws locking on the throat of one of the hyena things.

“Djinn,” she answered as she looked around in horror. “They’re Dark Djinn…”

They came from everywhere.

Ifrit in the shape of hyena, sila – fire demons – ghuls who would eat the dead or a man alive...and the marid, beautiful spirits who would steal a man’s soul.

In all her reading Irisi had never heard of such a thing. Djinn didn’t fight together. Djinn never fought together. They were solitary creatures. And yet here they were.

United like this…

They couldn’t fight so many, not with so small a force.

Dear Gods and Goddesses, help us, she thought.

To Khai’s horror, his fallen man rose up to take sword against them.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005XMAOP6
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005XMAOP6
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/97424
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Servant-of-the-Gods/Valerie-Douglas/e/2940013303768

2011-10-26T11:02:00.000-07:00

Press Release - 10/26/11

A chilling, thrilling read!

Servant of the Gods delivers a spine tingling read!

10/21/11 through 10/31/11 – Valerie Douglas has released her newest book – Servant of the Gods. The amazing story follows a woman with three names, each that she picks up at various stages in her life. Love, romance, betrayal, treachery, action, horror and a thrilling ride, this is a solidly conceived, well-plotted book that leaves you aching and begging for more, and lets you become her companion throughout the life that she leads.

A rollercoaster ride that takes us into the world of a priestess of Isis, this factually effective and creatively conceived novel is unmissable.

Book information

Servant of the Gods - A child of prophecy, in her life she would bear three names, the one she bore as a peasant and a mercenary and another after she was captured and enslaved. Despite it all, she would rise to become Priestess of Isis and High Priestess of all Egypt and face her greatest challenge...an ancient, nearly immortal evil.

Valerie’s bio

Valerie Douglas is a prolific writer and genre-crosser, much to the delight of her fans. A fan of authors of almost every genre from Isaac Asimov to Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, she writes classic fantasy, romance, suspense, and as V.J. Devereaux, erotic romance.

Excerpt

Egypt, 17th Year of King Narmer’s Reign, Early Dynasty

Torchlight flickered over the stone walls of the immense cavern, bathing them in a soft golden glow. That light danced over the massive figures of the Gods, giving the faces of the statues the appearance of expression. It illuminated as well the faces of the priests and priestesses gathered around the stone pedestal that served as an altar. The air was pungent with the scent of burning incense. Chanting echoed throughout the chambers, a sound that rose and fell, a low atonal hum that resonated in the bones.

Mummification had never been intended for use on the living but it was as it must be and none of those gathered there could gainsay what was about to happen. Not General Khai, nor any of the priests and priestesses of the Gods, nor even the High Priestess Irisi herself. Who were they to second-guess the Will of the Gods?

Irisi could not and would not.

It was as the prophecy had decreed however much they wished to deny it. Kahotep’s prophecy, he who was High Priest of Horus, the Falcon-God whose Eye saw everything.

“A darkness rises, oh Pharaoh, to be unleashed across the world. It comes as a shadow rising from the desert laying waste to all of Egypt, scouring the earth as it passes. Death and destruction follow in its wake, and the cries of the people of the world are terrible. From the north comes a warrior, a crowned and golden servant of the Gods with eyes like the sky, bearing swords in hand to rise up and drive the terrible darkness out of the world, and to stand against it for all time.”

That shadow had risen and the battles had been terrible. Now they had a chance, one chance, to end it.

Here.

Servant of the Gods is available from Smashwords, Amazon and all other ebook retailers and is the prequel to the ground-breaking book Heart of the Gods, from the Servant of the Gods series.

# # #

Valerie is currently working on a prequel to her The Coming Storm Series, and a sequel to her Servant of the Gods series, as well as a new book “The Girl in the Window” to be released in time for Christmas.

If you’d like to request an interview please contact her at valeriedouglasbooks@gmail.com.

# # #

Links

Website

http://www.valeriedouglasbooks.com

Blog

https://valeriedouglasbooks.blogspot.com

Twitter her @ValerieDouglasA

Servant of the Gods – Available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Smashwords

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005XMAOP6

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005XMAOP6

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Servant-of-the-Gods/Valerie-Douglas/e/2940013303768

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/97424

Ancient Cultures/Modern Writing - Avoiding Prejudices

2011-10-18T19:31:00.000-07:00

One of the things I find amusing is to listen to people talk about ancient cultures and describe the lives of those who lived then as 'hard'. In comparison to ours, they definitely were. After all, most people barely lived past the age of forty and cause of death would be as likely from tooth decay. That was for men. We act shocked by the idea that young women of that time were married by twelve and old maids at fourteen, without considering that by the time their children were adults they'd already lived over half their lives. That's if they survived childbirth, one of the leading causes of death for women. Many children died young, either in childbirth, or from disease or accident.

Yet if you asked those people if their lives were hard, they'd be surprised at the very notion. After all, it was all they knew. It was life, they lived and loved, worked and fought, had children they nurtured. Just like us.

Many archaeologists and historians, though, operating under modern prejudices of society and faith, made similar assumptions and judgments - those ancient cultures were barbarian, filthy and pagan, they must have led a miserable existence. This despite all evidence to the contrary. Don't believe me? See how many movies portray the people of eras as unwashed, as if they didn't know simple hygiene. Yet ancient Egyptians used makeup, balms and ointments - many scented - and were nearly obsessed with cleanliness. It would take Christianity to make bathing a sin. In truth most ancient cultures were far more advanced, happy and egalitarian than assumed.

For the ancient Egyptians, its clear from their writings and their statuary that marriage was a sacred institution for them, and husband and wife were considered equal. As were women in general, many of whom ran their own businesses.
In most ancient societies the relationships between people, whether as couples or friends, were important and valued. If you read their writings, without the cynicism imposed by our own society, you can see it. In ancient Egypt husbands wrote to wives and wives to their husbands, of their devotion to each other without shame or embarrassment. Something that in our society until the last half century. Imagine something like that now.
There are tales throughout history of friends who sacrificed their lives for each other - now we refer to such friendships in derogatory terms like bromances, or BFFs.

People also had rights many today would envy. In early Rome women could get divorced and own their own property, something that didn't exist in some parts of the US until this last century.
Yes, there was slavery, but slavery still exists in this world, and many slaves had better rights than many of those who work on production lines or in cubicles, since their owners were at least required to feed and clothe them.
Cultural assumptions were also much different, or non-existent. Homosexuality wasn't an issue. In many cultures no one cared.
Sexual roles were also less defined. Without the societal assumption that women were the 'weaker' sex, women in those ancient cultures were able to do any job or hold any career they wished. Even serve in the army.
For example, in some pre-puebloan societies it was men who did the weaving - a task considered women's work for many these days - and a boy who wished to court a girl took a particularly fine blanket, woven by his own hands, to his prospective mother-in-law for judgment.
Yet in much of our writings we tend to condemn those societies based on our own cultural assumptions. It's easy to do so, after all, through the lens of our own judgments.
For instance, we condemn Cleopatra and portray her as being a harlot for marrying her brother but by the terms of Egyptian culture, what she did wasn't sacrilege or incest, it was their culture. After all, the Gods Isis and Osiris were also brother and sister (a neat way to explain how the first gods managed the whole procreation thing, unlike in the Bible, where a whole different tribe just appears).

What we do tend to forget is that some of these cultures existed, relatively peacefully and successfully for centuries longer than ours has.

We are fond of the image of Rome as that of the Coliseum and the 'poor Christians' being thrown to the lions. It was a fairly common, if brutal, punishment for criminals in those days. Yet from the point of view of the Romans, many of those early Christians were criminals, condemning the religion of others, fomenting rebellions, stirring up slave riots and fighting among one another. And much of that image isn't historically accurate either.
We condemn ancient Rome for its excesses and yet some in the US Congress or on Wall Street could certainly give them a run for their money. As we also tend to look down on the pharaohs and early Caesars but most of them understood they held their place at the will of their people. More than one ruler found himself overthrown when they forgot that. Some folks in power now might do well to remember it.
Given the importance of interpersonal relationships among those early societies, an argument could be made that the first sign of their failure was when those relationships were devalued, when the excesses of those in power diminished the value of those relationships and began to take away their rights. Not that they were all perfect, but in many cases they were far better than we've assumed.
Some of what we know now appears relatively new, but isn't, but the assumption that there's nothing new to learn is equally untrue.
The burial place of a female gladiator was only recently - relatively - accepted as such, in spite of the fact that all evidence pointed to her sex as being female. The evidence for it long existed, it just couldn't be seen past the lens of our own assumptions.
We're still uncovering new information. They just recently discovered previously untouched (except by thieves) ancient Egyptian tombs.
We now know that we understand much less about the ancient Incan culture than we once did, based on new discoveries.
So, are you or will you write your novel from the point of view of your cultural upbringing, to espouse a certain concept, or will you try to write it without preconceptions? And how will you market it? As 'factual' or as a 're-imagining'?
There is a group of reviewers that say they'll review your novel, not just the quality of the writing, but for historical accuracy. My only question is, whose history? From which point of view?

For example, if you're writing a western, and you want your female character to do certain things, would her actions have been acceptable or even possible for the period? I had started one, but was caught short by questions about that era. A little research reassured me that not only was my concept possible, it was even more likely to be right than the images we have of western women now. I'll definitely be citing my research on that one.
In a few days I'll be releasing a new book, a thriller/horror/romance based in time of the early dynasties of ancient Egypt. I'll make no claims that it will be 100% historically accurate - it is fiction after all - but I did try to stay as true to that era as possible. For example - I had my heroine riding a horse, possible given where she'd come from but unlikely even then, and certainly in ancient Egypt. The horses of that time hadn't advanced so much, they were much smaller. Breeding and time would change that.
The problem is that many people assume the author made the effort to do the research and so believe a lot of what they read. However I know a lot of books that were/are wildly inaccurate historically, others just mildly. Bodice-ripping is much harder to do than most assume. And let's not talk about the movie Pocahontas. I also had someone chide me about the danger of using the word Nike in the title of my book Nike's Wings - it was clear the individual had no clue that Nike was the Greek goddess of victory and not just a shoe manufacturer. Most of us know of a few novels written about ancient cultures from a specific point of view and some of those authors have quite a devoted following. If the native cultures they described could read those books, I wonder if they would recognize themselves? Especially given that some historians and archaeologists now question some of those assumptions?
So, what does this mean to us as fiction writers? (Non fiction writers have different issues) What are our responsibilities when it comes to referring to or describing these incredibly complex ancient cultures? First, before we put pen to paper, we must decide how true to that culture we want to be, how fictional is fictional? What do we owe those ancient societies? What do we owe our readers?
Honesty, that's all.

Sample Sunday - The Last Resort - In Honor of Domestic Violence Awareness Month

2011-10-09T16:30:00.000-07:00

In Honor of Domestic Violence Awareness month I've lowered the price of The Last Resort to $.99 until October 31st.
In honor of - that sounds so peculiar, but there you go...
It saddens me sometimes when I wonder if readers are turned off from The Last Resort because of some of the subject matter. That would be a shame because there are so many wonderful characters in it and it's such a great story, with moments of humor and heart mixed with the suspense. However, I will tell you that The Last Resort is not your standard story about domestic violence.
A.) It's not specifically a romance. Although there is romance in it, there is no tall, dark handsome stranger to save the poor heroine from her abusive husband.
B.) It's not a poor pitiful me memoir, either.
Strangely, for those friends and fans who've read it, The Last Resort is their favorite novel of all the ones I've written. It's also one of the most personal of my books, the one so like one side of me.
The inspiration for the story came from so many places, an episode of Survivor which gave me one of the characters and those parts - both good and bad - of my checkered past. Some of the people in it are real, some are compilations of people I once knew, and some are entirely made up. All the names have been changed to protect the innocent, and the guilty. I'll let you, the reader, figure out which is which.
I do feel the need to establish my bona fides here. Yes, I was the victim of domestic violence, but some of the experiences in The Last Resort come from other people and from my parents's time as First Responders for the local fire department.
I was lucky in a way. I escaped not once, but three times. There's a reason why I say that, but we'll get there.
I'd been married three whole months and realized that if I didn't leave, and soon, I never would. Recognizing that urge to escape, my husband locked me in the cellar.
My first escape, and my first mistake, was thanks to my sister - and then we went home. Thanks to her courage and that of a neighbor, I escaped yet again when my ex showed up with a shotgun to take me home.
The most dangerous time for most abused women is when they leave, and the most dangerous time for their family.
It was terrifying, but... I made it. Safe in a hotel room purchase under someone else's name.
Never underestimate the cleverness of the wicked.
The phone rang. It was the pastor who had married my husband and I. My ex just wanted to talk, he said, to apologize. He knew he'd scared me... etc. etc.
I wonder if even now the pastor involved knows I saved his life and the lives of the few other parishioners in the church? If there had been more people... It still might have been a bloodbath, since my ex came armed.
So, I went back. Let's just say it wasn't pretty. And the pastor who had promised me I'd be safe? Well, he came to get me several days later - but he made me walk a mile to meet him. Apparently he was aware that one of us would be in danger.
I was twenty.
What happened next is part of what forms The Last Resort. For me, as for Carrie, we both grew past those days. Like Carrie I won't be called either a victim or a survivor. I won't be labeled. What happened to me then is such a small part and time of my life. I'm a victor.

However, none of that is why you should read The Last Resort. Read it because it's a great thriller about a missing girl and the effort to find her. Read it because there are some great characters. Read it because you love a good romance. Read it because it's fun. That's all I want.

Description
When Jack Spencer, the Head of Security for Fairview Mountain Resort calls about a missing coed, computer tech and sometimes troubleshooter Carrie Anderson answers. The last thing the resort needs is bad publicity. Jack knows that on the side, Carrie is part of a team that help domestic violence victims escape their homes and abusers. Complicating things is the handsome new attorney that just joined the team.
What she finds though will test all her skills at making people disappear and put all their lives in danger.
Excerpt
A very frightened Sandy Miller crouched with her children at the end of the hall. The Pastor was looking very bewildered.
“Sandy,” I whispered. Please don’t say yes. “Does your husband own a gun?”
Slowly, with big eyes, she nodded.
This was worst case scenario, all my preparations and plans undone. I nodded, hitting speed dial.
“Moira, call them off.”
I hung up, looked at the pastor. “Does he know where the parsonage is?”
Pastor Charles nodded, his face paling.
I darted quickly into the office, grabbed the phone and dragged it out of the office.
“Call your wife, tell her to get out of the house. Go to the nearest neighbor’s. She’s to go now.”
If he got no answer here at the church, that’s where Sandy's husband would go next.
I looked at Drew...

Available at most major outlets -

Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0052UX3V6

Barnes and Noble

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Last-Resort/Valerie-Douglas/e/2940012614605

Smashwords

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/62262

Personal Blog - Rocky Mountain Travels

2011-10-04T16:14:00.000-07:00

There are places in the Rocky Mountains where the air is so clear that you can see for over 120 miles, the sky is so blue it nearly hurts the eyes to look at it and there is no view that isn't beautiful. Even pictures don't do it justice. To say it took my breath away is no more than the truth - altitude sickness had me gasping. No joke, folks. I'm a writer, so I'm not the fittest person anyway (I've got to get back on my exercise regimen), if you go be prepared for that. A little advice - if you're from the lowlands, step up to the altitude, slowly. Start in Denver, the mile high city - at 5,280 feet it's still below the fourteeners - mountains that stand at 14,000 feet. At Denver's height, golf balls travel 10% farther, and so does alcohol, but not oxygen. So watch when you're drinking, you'll breathe better!

Even so, it was still breathtakingly beautiful.
Our plan was to do a driving tour, take the Miata, put the top down, visit the pre-puebloan ruins and do a little research for a western novel I'd started some time ago. We found all that and more.
BTW, with all due apologies to the residents of those states, but skip OH, IN and southern IL. Outside of a metal dinosaur and a large pink elephant holding a martini glass, it all looks the same - post rust belt.

Bent's Fort

Our first stop in Colorado was the restored Bent's Fort a trading post. Contrary to much of what you read of the west, the Bents and St. Vrain (the son of French aristocrats) understood how necessary it was to maintain peace between the native population and the traders. It's a fascinating place and like much of what we saw an exercise in contradictions. The fort itself was burned and abandoned, much like the pre-puebloan ruins we would visit later, a victim of the Mexican-American War and the government policy toward the natives. The Native Americans there were destitute, having hunted the buffalo they depended on to extinction in order to supply the fort with buffalo robes for sale. Just outside the fort is a patch of wetlands that didn't exist when the fort was built, a side effect of irrigation.

As a writer one of the habits I've tried to avoid is falling into the familiar pitfalls of judgment, preconception and perception, and instead to see things a little more clearly the way they actually were. So it was interesting to hear the guides at some of the pre-puebloan sites refer to the lives lived there as 'hard'. I imagine to those people it wasn't any harder than ours. It was just life. Both men and women had their sacred places within their cultures. The women gathered and ground the corn with mano and matate and prepared the food. The men hunted and some wove the cloth they wore.
What they built, without mortar, though, was truly astonishing.
At Chimney Rock we were lucky to be joined by a woman of the Zuni culture, who helped us better understand the purpose of such places - gathering sites for those ancient peoples that were forefathers to her own. In fact, many archaeological sites now consult the native cultures and have been asked to stop referring to such places as 'Anasazi' or 'abandoned' since they are neither. No one knows what those people were called and according to Native American ways they weren't 'abandoned', it was simply time for them to move on. Those people who used those places live on through the people who live now.
I have to wonder if they weren't smarter than us. They didn't invent the wheel but they didn't need it. Unlike us what they did do was build their gathering places like Chimney Rock, Mesa Verde and others in high, barren cliffs and then they made them beautiful, while they reserved the good land on the mesas or in the valleys below for farming.
Oh, fair warning, if you're afraid of heights, be prepared. One glance at the shale covered slope of Chimney Rock and my legs would not move. Simply would not. My husband took the picture you see. The ladder at Mesa Verde was much easier although still a little spine-chilling. *grins* He now understands just how terrified I was when we rode the Pacific Coast highway on the motorcycle. (Although I don't think he's quite realized that's the reason I was sometimes a little cranky.)

Silverton

So, if I can offer a little advice? Don't miss visiting the Rockies, but go in the off seasons of spring (May or June) or fall (September and early October, before the passes are closed by snow) unless you like crowded ski slopes. The temperatures are much more comfortable - it gets very hot in the summer and very cold in winter - but the color of the trees is amazing! Get one of the scenic trail maps and follow them, but be aware that some are accessed only by four wheel drive. (Despite that, my husband took the Miata up one of the mining roads. I hung on for dear life and hoped the mountain wouldn't come down on us.) The Silver Trail is a great route to follow.
Go for the atmosphere and experience, too, and skip the chain motels. Most towns have restored some streets to period 1800s and there are some marvelous inns and taverns in the historical sections, many family owned. All of those we tried were clean with wonderful period accents. Most charge rates comparable to the chains but offer many more amenities beyond hi-speed internet and a 'breakfast' bar with bagels and toast.

Wyman Inn

In the lovely, family-run Wyman Hotel and Inn in Silverton they provided robes and wine glasses in each room. Other rooms had non-period whirlpools. (Suggestion: If you stay there, get the breakfast. It's worth it.) Our room overlooked what had once been Blair Street, the red-light district, and was decorated accordingly. We had a massive high four poster bed, a small dresser stocked with books while the TV sat on top of a large chifforobe.
You can also reach Silverton by one of the narrow gauge railways found in the region.
After breakfast, explore the towns, there are great shops to be found in most of them - some distinctly touristy and some quaint - like the old hardware store we found.
In Creede, Mineral County, there's The Old Firehouse historic building and B&B. They have an assortment of accommodations, some with attached rooms to fit the entire family yet still offer some privacy to the adults. And breakfast is great - the owner is the cook and he makes GREAT omelets. That's also where that old mining road was located.

Four Corners w/Chihuahua

For those of us from the US, the Four Corners is a unique confluence of four states coming together in one location. In reality it's a pure tourist trap maintained by the Navaho Nation. It's still a must see and if you're looking for Native American silver/turquoise jewelry, you'll find it ringed with vendors. How authentic it is I can't answer, although it's highly unlikely Native American culture celebrates the joining of four states smack in the middle of the reservations they were forced to occupy. You can find commemorative Four Corners jewelry there.

Great Kiva at Aztec

For our last stop on the pre-puebloan trail, we dropped down into New Mexico to visit the Aztec site. Actually a Chaco culture ruin once thought to be Aztec, it's situated in western New Mexico and a precursor to Mesa Verde.

The size of it is still astounding and the Great Kiva there is incredible, a massive circular space ringed with small rooms accessed by ladders. It reminded me very much of a church with meditative or monastic chambers looking down from above.

We saved the Great Sand Dunes National Park for last and it turned into a treasure trove in more ways than one.

First of course was the view - miles of rolling sand dunes, the accumulated result of the ceaselessly blowing winds across sandy soil coming to a stop at the base of mountains or sifting into the streams. In the spring and early summer water streams around these towering dunes before they dry up completely in late summer. To give you and idea of the size, the little dot on the dune toward the left of the picture is actually a person. That's how big they are. Unfortunately altitude sickness kept me from climbing them.

Remember that western I'd started to write? Well, I was somewhat hampered by a lack of knowledge of the life of most women in the Old West. There's a good bit of information about the lives of the men - and a lot of western movies - but the depictions of women mainly portrayed them standing in the doorways waiting for the 'menfolk' to come home. That was truer in some ways than I knew. Until barbed wire and fences arrived, pioneer women spent most of their time alone, sometimes for days, taking care of things around the ranch. For many it was truly a 'hard' life, coming from the more settled east, and facing daily threats from the environment, wildlife and the native populations.

Although I had done some research and new that much of the preconceived notions were inaccurate, I wasn't certain that the characters I proposed would work in the manner I envisioned. Thanks to several books I found at the National Park, I found out they would and will. I expect you'll probably see that book sometime in the spring.

To tell the truth, though, I wish the pictures did the Rocky Mountains justice, but you really can't imagine how blue the sky truly, or how clear the view, until you've been there. One night I looked up and for the first time in a very long time, I could see the Milky Way clear and sharp, that brilliant river of stars. I hope someday you get to see it, too.

From the press release

2011-09-02T11:17:00.000-07:00

www.valeriedouglasbooks.com

Fallin love with reading this Labor Day

Andlet an expert writer lead you all the way through till Christmas…

Place and date Multi published Author Valerie Douglas is dipping her toesinto sizzling, breathtaking thrillers again with her latest book, Nike’sWings. Available from Labor Day weekend,this book will set your heart racing and pull you into a world of desperateintrigue. A substantial read that pulls youinto the heart of redemption, trust and honor.

Against a backdrop of current events,this fantastic novel takes you deep into the world of ‘Nike’, an assassin’sassassin – one of the inner circle that takes down those that have become toodangerous to remain out in the world. Nike’s Wings isn’t the usual take on the now traditional leather cladkick-ass heroine with nerves of steel, Nike is an empathic, interesting,engaging character, with a flawed personality that makes her all the morerelatable.
Trained by the CIA, she walked away when her conscience started askingquestions she could not comfortably answer. The chance has come to find a newdirection, one that may bring her face to face with an old enemy. Torn fromtoday’s headlines, follow Nike from the jungles of South America, to thewar-torn Middle East, and back to the home-grown battle with the Mexican drugcartels.

Valerie Douglas said“What was the strangest thing for me about Nike’s Wings was learning how muchof what I imagined might have existed in reality, exactly as I proposed it,right down to the secret group withinthe CIA,” and continued “My success as an Indie author has let me explore newstorylines, and given me the freedom to lead others into escapes they may nototherwise find,”

Valerie Douglas has published numerousbooks across several genres, and enjoys chart topping success with her ‘TheComing Storm’ series on Amazon. Herbooks are elegantly written, and get to the heart of the story, while givingreaders characters to root for, believe in and revile. Designed to set pulses racing, and createdramatic worlds for readers to explore, Valerie Douglas is a strong writer thatwill go far.

Missed out for Labour Day ? You can stillgrab all of her books from www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.barnesandnoble.com, www.smashwords.com andwww.allromanceebooks.com.

## #

If you’d like to contact or interview theValerie Douglas please contact her at Valeriedouglasbooks@gmail.com.

Sample Sunday - Heart of the Gods

2011-08-28T12:12:00.000-07:00

I've loved the Egyptian Gods and early Egyptian society since I learned about it as a kid, despite the tendency of teachers to talk about the Greek/Roman pantheon. The Greeks/Romans were a better contrast of pagan beliefs to Christian than the egalitarian Egyptians. After all, what other society valued marriage as much? Why else do so many hieroglyphs and images portray both husband and wife side by side?
Okay, and to be honest, the Mummy movies (one and two, let's not talk about three) didn't hurt either, even though poor Anubis got such a raw deal. I guess a jackal head and being the god of mummification and afterlife seemed more threatening than a 'Set animal' or typhonic being - in other words, the first shapechanger - than Set, the god of chaos and darkness. After all, it was Set who chopped up Osiris and scattered him across Egypt. And Isis who rescued him.
That was part of the attraction - that it was Isis who rescued her beloved Osiris, and that women in Egypt were largely as autonomous as the men. They could have businesses, serve in the army, do anything and everything that men could do.
So, what was it that triggered Heart of the Gods, what made me write this story?
Like all of us, I was as intrigued by the process of mummification as the next person and there was the mythology of the Mummy movies - the person unwillingly mummified. Alive.
And then the scene that opens Heart of the Gods was in my head -

Chapter One

Egypt, 17th Year of King Narmer’s Reign, Early Dynasty

Irisi could not and would not.

It was as the prophecy had decreed however much they wished to deny it. Kahotep’s prophecy. He who was Priest of Horus, the Falcon-God, whose Eye saw everything.

That shadow had risen and the battles had been terrible. Now they had a chance, one chance, to end it. Here. Now they had a chance, one chance, to end it. Here.

Servant of the Gods. Irisi was that, she was priestess to both Isis and Sekhmet. To stand against it for all time? What was prisoned in the chamber below would live forever. And so, therefore, must she.

And so, this.

For it to have any chance at success she knew she must accept it without protest, she must give it both her Ba and Ka, her heart and soul, willingly, and so she steeled herself to face it.

There was no other way and there was no other to do it, only she, both warrior and priestess, could, however terrible it was.

Irisi knew only she must accept it without protest, willingly, if this they did were to have the slightest chance of success and so she steeled herself to face it. Even as that other below, Kamenwati, did not. He fought them, writhed and screamed in protest, in outrage. He chanted spells against them even as Awan, High Priest of Osiris, Kahotep, High Priest of Horus and Djeserit, High Priestess of Sekhmet struggled to contain him and his terrible magic. In the back of Irisi’s mind she chanted the words of the two Books she knew so well, the Book of Life, known only to the priests and priestesses of the temples…and the Book of Emerging in Daytime - what some called, wrongly, the Book of the Dead.

Of the priests and priestesses only Rensi, High Priest of Anubis and gentle Nafre, priestess of Hathor, stood with her in the upper chamber. Representatives of their Gods, each had their task. Rensi made certain the rites done this day were done as they must be to keep Irisi’s soul alive against all the odds and to preserve her body in the hope that someday she might reach the afterlife.

Nafre gave comfort to help ease her passage.

And then there was Khai, Irisi’s beloved Khai.

She looked up at him from where she lay on the cold stone of the plinth.

Her breath caught as it always did to look at him. He was so beautiful and she loved him so much. Her heart ached at the thought of leaving him.

Gleaming black hair streamed in shining waves to his shoulders and framed his strong handsome face, high cheekbones and beautiful long-lashed dark eyes. Deep within those dark brown eyes was the hint of warm gold she knew so well. There was grief in his eyes, the sure knowledge of what they were about to do. She knew what it cost him to stand aside and watch, how little he loved to feel helpless, but for once his strength and courage could avail him nothing. This was for her to do, and her alone.

She longed to touch him once again, treasured the memory of his hands on her, his body against and a part of hers. The thought was bittersweet. In that Kamenwati had succeeded, he’d kept them apart for so long. Surely the Gods wouldn’t deny her this much? In her heart of hearts she felt the sweet benediction that was the blessing of her Goddess, Isis, who, having lost her own beloved Osiris for a time, understood her fear and her pain at having to give up her own beloved.

Here, finally for this one time and with these trusted few around them, they could do as they’d wished for so long to do openly.

Kiss.

While Irisi had been Kamenwati’s slave that hadn’t been possible. Or while under his threat. Only that had kept Irisi away, the sure knowledge that Kamenwati would kill Khai had he but known of their love.

His lips touched hers, so warm, the feel of them firm but gentle, a soft caress.

Reaching up, Irisi touched Khai’s stern handsome face for one last time even as the sharp pain of the reeds lanced through her wrist, her ankles. She wouldn’t cry out, not looking up into that beloved face. It wasn’t in her to make him suffer any more than necessary. She loved the Gods, she loved Egypt her adopted home but above all else she loved Khai. It was only for her duty, for Egypt and its people, and the people of all the lands she’d known, that would she would leave him.

The Gods understood.

As did he.

“You are Nife-an-Ankh to me,” she whispered, “and Nomti…I love you, I will always love you. Forever.”

Breath of life and strength he was to her. Her heart.

She’d loved him from almost the first moment she’d seen him that long ago day in the desert, standing surrounded by her dead and theirs. He’d offered her honor, then, as one warrior to another. She loved him for that, for his honor, courage and for his great heart.

He was beautiful to her in all ways.

“Irisi,” he said and lowered his proud head to hers.

Khai looked down at his beloved Irisi laid out upon the altar and wanted to cry out his denial of what was to come but he could not. Leaning over her with one arm braced on the stone he touched her face, looked into her lovely eyes, at the glorious length of her hair as it spilled over the sides. So beautiful, so alive…

Breath of life and strength as she was to him as well.

Blood flowed through the reeds, her blood, drained out of her… her lifeblood. The rich coppery aroma of it filled the air, mixed with the scent of the herbs in the Water of Life as it was drawn into her.

It must be and they both knew it. She was the one who must go and he the one who must stay.

Egypt needed her only surviving General.

Irisi’s successor had already been chosen.

Slowly, he touched his lips to hers, the kiss soft as the priests and priestesses chanted around them. Her hand was warm on his face as their lips found each other. Grief lay heavy on his heart. Duty lay heavier. He couldn’t bear to let her go and yet he couldn’t keep her, however much he wished it. He, too, served the will of the Gods. And he could see no other choice, no other way.

The herbs, the potions, flowed into her, burned in her veins. Irisi fought the pain of it with warm feel of Khai’s lips, so long forbidden, on hers…and with the surge of love that washed through her.

“Irisi,” he whispered. “You are my heart.”

As he was hers but she could no longer speak the words or else break the chant that echoed endlessly in the back of her mind.

The stone of the altar was cold and the chill seemed to soak slowly into her flesh.

Around her Irisi could hear the chanting, the minds and voices of the priests and priestesses raised in support of her and of those who fought below, mixed with the drone of the Horn in the chamber far below.

It had taken some little time for Irisi to achieve the semi-trance state necessary to endure what was done, yet some of the pain and the weakness seeped through to batter at her will. As did the will of the creatures in the darkness of the chamber below - the magic of the Horn and her own will, joined to these others, was all held them there. She dared not falter.

She felt her lifeblood drain swiftly away even as she felt the embalming fluids flow in, the natron and herbs bit sharply into her veins. It burned as it went but she turned her thoughts away from it as she turned them away from the other things they did.

Her arms were folded across her breast with a hand on each shoulder and bound so tightly with lengths of linen that she could barely breathe. Her hair was coiled up as the cloth was wrapped around her throat, around her head to cover her mouth and forehead. All but her eyes.

Cold fluid brushed across her belly, followed by numbness. Something pressed just below her breastbone. There was a sense of invasion as they finished wrapping her body in the last long lengths of linen.

Warm liquid soaked her from collarbone to feet. It drenched the linen and stung sharply in the cuts they’d made.

A cry echoed from the darkness below. That, too, fell on deaf ears.

She bit back her own cries. Fought the sense of being constricted.

Khai…

Remaining still by an act of will she kept her eyes focused on his dark ones, sought the gold within them, the warmth even as her own drained away. His will melded to hers, lent her the strength she needed to do this as the weakness grew within her until he stepped back as, finally, he must.

Her heart hammered in her chest, drawing in the sacred herbs, natron and fluids through her veins even as it pumped her lifeblood out. Mixed among the herbs was the blood of the one who lay below so she would be bound to him and he to her.

The last length of linen went across her eyes. The light disappeared behind the linen to take her down into darkness.

Pain flashed, sharp, sudden, within her to leave a sense of absence, a stillness within her.

It would go quickly now and she was grateful for that.

And it did.

She felt them raise her to carry her swiftly out.

A coughing roar echoed down the tunnel that led outside. They followed that sound, she knew.

The lions, her lions…gifts of the lion-headed Goddess Sekhmet when that Goddess had turned her away and sent her to Isis’s service instead. They would come with her, to keep her company through her long duty so she wouldn’t be utterly alone.

Watching, Khai bowed his head and looked away as they tipped her up for he couldn’t watch as her linen-wrapped form slid with a splash of the Water of Life into the hollow in the stele they’d prepared for her.

He could wish this had been done in sunlight as Irisi was and always had been a creature of light and not darkness.

His light…

Irisi.

Grief burned. If only he could have gone in her place…

He could not, he was no priest, he had no magic, nor as Egypt’s only surviving General could he leave his country and its people undefended any more than Irisi could have refused this.

Duty and honor wouldn’t allow it.

He laid a hand against the cold stone, listened as the hammers beat above him, pounded the sealing stone into place with steady rhythmic blows so much like the sound of a heartbeat. Sealing the stele with Irisi inside it. What was it like for her in there, in the darkness filled with the Water of Life?

Like drowning.

He willed her the strength and courage to endure. Like the beat of her valiant heart, each blow of mallet on stone reverberated, echoed from the distant walls, to whisper back over the grassy hollow within them.

Above, through the narrow break in the cavern roof Khai could see the stars glitter coldly.

Desperately, instinctively, Irisi’s lungs sought air, her body fought…even as she clung to trance, to will, to the spells in her mind, to the endless mental chanting of the words from the Book of Emerging into Daytime – the Book of the Dead.

She had to hold against the grief and the fear, the close space that enveloped her. What lay below, him and them, battered against her will.

Khai was still here, though, her beloved Khai and these others she loved, Awan, Kahotep, Djeserit, all the priests and priestesses with whom she’d served over the years. Even poor Saini in the distant chamber below, seeking his redemption, watched the last faint light disappear as the doors shut on him to seal him in among the Dark, among Them…

She could almost pity him, not knowing which of them suffered the worst fate.

Faintly, she could hear the Horn call as he blew endlessly, drawing air in through his nose, blowing out through his mouth. That sound must not falter until the doors were shut and sealed. Forever.

Beyond, outward, there was all of Egypt, all of the world. They couldn’t let what resided so restlessly within that chamber escape to lay waste over it. Not again. She couldn’t set what lay within the tomb loose upon the peoples of this world, not with what they now knew of them. Those below would devour every living thing, turn the people of the Nile, the distant peoples from which she’d come and those of all the lands where she’d served and fought as a mercenary into cattle, chattel, something to feed upon…and their feeding…the torment of it…

Horror shook her.

If they were to be free, safe, she must hold, even as her body bucked, fought for air…and so she held. It seemed an eternity and yet it was only minutes.

She remembered…and clung to her memories, lost herself in them, held them against the pain, against the cold that seeped into her. The cold and the darkness.

Alone in the dark she remembered the ones, the one, she loved and would always love.

His hand upon the stone, Khai remembered, too, remembered his beloved Irisi with her swords flashing, her hair swirling around her as she did battle that first day he’d seen her and all the days thereafter. Priestess and warrior. So lovely, strong, so seemingly indomitable. It was her laughter though, that rang in his memory most. That beautiful hair, her glorious eyes…her laughter and her joy.

In grief and sorrow he touched the face carved into the stone of the stele…laid his forehead against the cold stone forehead of it as he would do with her in life.

His fingers traced the words engraved in the stele, the chants for Coming Forth into the Day, for Going and Coming Out of the Realm of the Dead, and For Taking on Any Shape. She would need to know them.

He willed her strength and he willed her love. How did she fare within? Was her struggle over yet, had the Gods taken her, given her surcease? Were her ba and ka yet free of her body?

He looked to Awan, to Djeserit, and saw the same thoughts mirrored there in their faces.

In the darkness of the cavern far below, the great iron doors slid closed as bands of gold and silver were hammered across it to secure it with the powers of the Gods Ra and Isis. The seal, carefully balanced, was placed in its niche to enclose what lay within, hopefully forever.

The chanting did not end…it was not done, not yet.

As one, the priests and priestesses closed around the stele. Each lay their hand on the stone and willed strength to the one within. The Gods came to the one within then, all of them but Set, each to render her a gift.

Sekhmet was the last.

In the chamber below the great iron doors were closed and sealed, and she set to stand guard over it, to ensure it remained sealed, forever.

Alone through the ages to come.

Tales were told of one’s life flashing before the eyes as one died, but Irisi was not dying nor would an afterlife await her.

So many memories…

Irisi remembered…

Heart of the Gods was originally written a much larger book, but once it was written I realized it was two separate books, both intertwined. Servant of the Gods, the prequel to Heart of the Gods, will be released in September of 2011.

Smashwords

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/44102

Amazon.com

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004RJ8RIW

Sex and Violence or Violence and Sex

2011-08-28T10:39:00.000-07:00

I had to chuckle a bit about a reader review I received. It seems the reviewer was a little disturbed about my novella Not Magic Enough. She thought I couldn't make up my mind about whether it was a fantasy, romance, erotica or drama. It was clear that she minded the sex (calling it erotica, which was an intriguing reference) but she didn't seem to mind the violence in it. Never mentioned it.
Now, she's absolutely entitled to her opinion, but I have to warn her then that she probably won't like any of my books. To me without drama there would be no novel - who wants to read about someone's daily undramatic life? And in all my novels the circumstances are what brings the protagonists - the hero(s)/heroine(s) - together. The romance begins, the drama fuels it, and - in any normal relationship beyond a certain age - intellectual and emotional attraction fuels physical attraction. To not include that seems to be a bit...puritanical and unrealistic. As well as unnatural. Some folks will argue that the sex - even expressing love - doesn't need to be so...um...visible, let's keep that behind closed doors. Banning the expression of physical affection between two adults while splattering blood all over the place seems strangely perverted to me. I'd rather project a certain reality, even in my fantasy novels. A reality where it's as okay to portray loving sex as realistically as the violence. And sometimes where the former allows us to express the relief and gratitude at surviving the latter with the one they love.

Fantastic Fridays - Director's Cut

2011-08-26T16:46:00.000-07:00

I received a wonderful review on Director's Cut from Jessie at Love on the Bookshelf ( http://loveonthebookshelf.wordpress.com/2011/08/26/review-director%E2%80%99s-cut/ ). She's a theater geek like me and in the review she makes mention of my "knowledgeable descriptions of acting in a Community Theater production."
That brought back memories, both good and bad. Yep, been there, done that - and I sometimes miss it. It was great fun at a time in my life when I hadn't expected to be having fun.
I'd just gotten divorced and was struggling with that, with confidence. Whatever the reasons, however right they might be, a divorce is still an admission that you failed in some intrinsic way. Between one thing and another, I'd also lost some weight and (judging by the pictures) looked pretty good. I was oblivious, still trying to regain my confidence.
Then one day I walked past the old Sherman Theater - and saw an old announcement that they were doing auditions. Sometimes the right things happen at the right time. I'd missed the audition but they needed someone to play the part of the girlfriend in Witness for the Prosecution - the opening scene in Director's Cut. Me, sexy? That little black-striped dress in the scene? I KILLED in it. *sigh, smiling*
Many of the events in Director's Cut mirrored real life events, with a few changes. Of course the names of both the guilty and the innocent have been changed. The on-stage action? That reflected many of my own experiences treading the boards. I still have the reviews to show for it.
Most of the Millersburg Quartet series are based on real-life events. Not all.
But the memories are priceless.

B&N Nook - (special price for the Nook)
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Directors-Cut/Valerie-Douglas/e/2940012802040

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0058KRLVS

Smashwords
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/69814

How to Write a Killer Blurb

2011-08-24T09:32:00.000-07:00

A blurb is the book description you find on the back of a book or online to describe a book's contents. After your cover, blurbs are the second most important selling tool you have for your book, so you want it to grab the reader's attention. The blurb is the essence of the book, a distillation of the characters, tone and conflict of your story that should, if it’s effective, lure a reader into wanting to read more.

Most run at least two paragraphs, but some are longer, roughly a minimum of 100 words to a maximum of 250. How can you condense all that important information?

Here are some examples from some classic novels:
"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.... When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out." To Kill A Mockingbird

“Guy Montag was a fireman whose job it was to start fires...
The system was simple. Everyone understood it. Books were for burning ... along with the houses in which they were hidden.
Guy Montag enjoyed his job. He had been a fireman for ten years, and he had never questioned the pleasure of the midnight runs nor the joy of watching pages consumed by flames... never questioned anything until he met a seventeen-year-old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid.” Fahrenheit 451

Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.
Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.
Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.
Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed. The Help

There are a number of commonly accepted elements to creating a good blurb:

The Hook
The story element that grabs the reader’s attention, something unique, a fresh twist, or just the emotional core of the book.

Conflict
Both external – world is coming to an end – and internal – the H/H isn’t sure they can do what needs to be done. (H/H - hero, heroine)

Emotion
What drives the H/H, the tone of the book. The driving force – love, vengeance, retribution. The tone can be light, a romp, or a dark fantasy.

Risk
Emotion, physical, societal or whatever. Something important to them can be lost.

Characterization
The essence of the main character(s)

Setting
Both geographic and emotional – lost in a harsh desert, fighting through a lush jungle, romance in a small town

Goals
What are they trying to accomplish? Just surviving? Winning the day? Clearing their name? This is an important element.

Motivation
Why are they doing it? Particularly, why for your characters? Why does Frodo keep struggling to reach Mordor? To save his people? Or to live up to Sam’s view of him?

What’s stopping them?
Who’s the bad guy? Or is it a massive earthquake with the attendant destruction?

Will they succeed?
You don’t actually have to answer this, but you must introduce the element of doubt or leave the question open. Too much information is a blurb’s worst enemy.

In each of the examples, you have a piece of all of these individual elements, sometimes in a single sentence. There’s obviously conflict, risk and characterization in the first– how did Jem get his arm broken? (those of us who’ve read that novel know, of course) ‘enable us to look back on them’ – there’s the emotion. The voice of the blurb sets the tone, setting and characterization, and the goal is to make Boo Radley come out. Nothing, though, is said of the central conflict of the book.

Notice, too, that the first two are considerably shorter, but The Help was a more complicated novel.

Keep in mind that genre matters, too. If you’re writing a terse thriller, you want to keep your blurb terse, too.

From Barry Eisler – The Detachment
When legendary black ops veteran Colonel Scott “Hort” Horton tracks Rain down in Tokyo, Rain can’t resist the offer: a multi-million dollar payday for the “natural causes” demise of three ultra-high-profile targets who are dangerously close to launching a coup in America.
But the opposition on this job is going to be too much for even Rain to pull it off alone. He’ll need a detachment of other deniable irregulars: his partner, the former Marine sniper, Dox. Ben Treven, a covert operator with ambivalent motives and conflicted loyalties. And Larison, a man with a hair trigger and a secret he’ll kill to protect.
From the shadowy backstreets of Tokyo and Vienna, to the deceptive glitz and glamour of Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and finally to a Washington, D.C. in a permanent state of war, these four lone wolf killers will have to survive presidential hit teams, secret CIA prisons, and a national security state as obsessed with guarding its own secrets as it is with invading the privacy of the populace.
But first, they’ll have to survive each other.

An epic fantasy may require more information or you can just set the scene…
G.R.R. Martin – A Game of Thrones

Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural forces are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the land they were born to. Sweeping from a land of brutal cold to a distant summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, here is a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens.

Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; and a determined woman undertakes the most treacherous of journeys. Amid plots and counterplots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, the fate of the Starks, their allies, and their enemies hangs perilously in the balance, as each endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.

Here’s one of my own, part of my epic fantasy series, and one of my bestselling books – Not Magic Enough
For Delae, a lonely landholder on the edge of the Kingdoms, a frantic knock at the door on a stormy winter's night brings more than a cry for help. After centuries of war Elves have little contact with the men, but Dorovan can't bring himself to ride past those so obviously in need. And so begins a tale of love, honor, duty and determination...

Very short but it's a novella and all the elements are still there.

And for one of my romances – Director’s Cut - the emotional content needs to be emphasized in romances:
Once the golden boy in Hollywood, Jack Tyler's life and career are on the skids. Struggling to find some direction, a visit to an old friend brings him to Millersburg, and the community theater group there. He's fighting his demons, hoping to rediscover his roots and his love of theater, through them.
He also discovers schoolteacher Molly Brighton.
Molly, though, wants no part of the sexy new director. He's too handsome, too charming, too dangerous to her heart.
The attraction is difficult to ignore, especially when aided by Jack's old friend, an unrepentant matchmaker with his own reasons for bringing them together.
Last and finally, the purpose of a blurb is to get the reader to want more, to open that book up and answer the questions each blurb asked.

How did Jem's arm get broken and why was it so difficult to talk about? Guy Montag was burning books, why? What will happen to the three women when they cross those defining lines? Will Rain and his team of irregulars succeed in their mission – and who is it they’re supposed to kill? What happens to the Starks? Or when Dorovan meets Delae? Will Jack overcome his demons or will Molly walk away?

And that's what a good blurb should do...

Sample Sunday - Nike's Wings

2011-08-19T15:24:00.000-07:00

Nike's Wings
They say writers should always go places that scare them, that make demands on their skills. Nike's Wings was one of the more difficult books I've ever written, for a lot of reasons. Nike came to be by way of my vivid fantasy life, an article on parkour and a song - 'She Don't Want the World' by Three Doors Down. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bQAs1KYfIk I could see how parkour would be handy for an assassin who didn't rely on strength or fancy weapons. That song played in the back of my head all through the scene that began it all, the moment when Ty confronts Nike at the abandoned school halfway through the book. I could see the dingy windows and smell the moldy mattresses. So Nike was born. Not only did I want to know how they got there, I wanted to know what happened next.
I've written harder scenes - the one where Elon and Colath are captured in The Coming Storm, for instance - but some of Nike and Ty's experiences were difficult. I believe you have to put yourself where your characters are, share their experiences, and to some extent at one time I sort of had.
I didn't need to do a lot of research, I'm an avid reader of not only books but newspapers and magazines. The information on the cartels, the wall, etc., are all based on real events. I was surprised when, shortly after writing it, a newspaper article suggested that the situation I postulated for how Nike was turned into an assassin might actually have been real.
Even so, I hesitated in releasing Nike, although I finished it over a year ago. I loved the book but something about it still felt incomplete. Not that the research didn't come in handy *grins* I used it as the foundation for an erotic contemporary suspense called Special Delivery, written under the pen name V. J. Devereaux.
I worked on several novels in between but Nike niggled at the back of my mind. Then, one morning at 4 AM, I woke up. In that halfway space between dreaming and waking, Nike and I walked through those scenes and suddenly I had it. I got up, rewrote them and tumbled back to bed. Woke up, thinking about how it could be stronger, better. Wrote that. Halfway through the day, I had the last pieces, and it all fell into place.
Deliberately, I stepped back for a day or two before going back to her and doing the final edit. I passed her to people I knew and trusted, particularly one. The feedback came back positive, and so I released her.
Now she's yours.

Excerpt:

Chapter One

August 2001 Somewhere in Central/South America

The big custom-built Hummers bumped their way through the jungle along the rutted road to the oil fields. It was hardly Callie’s first trip out there but it was the first in such prestigious company. Her father’s boss and some man from the State Department, of all things, traveled with them. It didn’t look as if she’d need the book she had in her backpack, or get the chance to read it.

Oddly enough, it was turning out to be something of an occasion. Originally, they hadn’t planned to bring her along on this trip but she’d just turned eighteen and was due to fly back home to the states in just a few weeks. In less than a month she’d start her first year at Princeton University with a major in international studies. As it happened, Princeton was where both her father’s boss, Tony Gallegos, and the man from the State Department, Phillip Reeves, had attended college. Once her father mentioned it, both men insisted on bringing her along so they could fill her in and trade stories of their time there.

There were several vehicles in the expedition into the jungle where the oilrigs were located, a truck with some of the oil field workers, cars with guards both ahead and behind, another truck carrying supplies and their own Hummer.

Except for the presence of Mr. Reeves, it was a fairly routine trip. Tensions over the oil were rising among some of the more radical groups in the area so he’d come to try to negotiate with them to see if he could smooth the waters a bit.

First, though, he wanted to visit the oil fields. A lot of people were pretty pissed about it and some of them would be even more so if they knew about this trip. Some of them thought that statement said too much about his priorities, that like in Iraq the oil fields were more important to the U.S. than the negotiations. It was the oil that Reeves really cared about.

Callie had even heard some of that kind of talk on the streets among the people she hung out with there, her parkour and free-running friends.

Listening to him on the way out, she couldn’t really argue the point, it was all he talked about, the importance of the oil fields. That was, when he wasn’t talking about Princeton and the bars she had to visit in the towns near the campus once she was there.

So far, though, the trip had gone pretty quietly with the two men trading stories of their days at college. Callie caught an amused and resigned look from her father when the other two men weren’t watching. He gave her a wink and she smothered a grin.

She glanced out the windows at the thick undergrowth that ran so close beside the windows here along the road where the sun could reach and then up at the trees that towered high above them. Branches clattered and scraped against the glass. The sky was cloudy and dark above them, the sunlight of the morning vanishing as the rainy season clouds rolled in. To those who didn’t know the rain forest it was surprisingly cool, the clammy air thick and heavy with moisture. Some folks thought the humidity at home was bad but they’d never been in the jungle in the rainy season.

Both Mr. Gallegos and Mr. Reeves were reminiscing again over their days at college. Callie restrained a sigh, listening with only half an ear. A part of her longed for the book in her backpack. It was a long usually boring trip, broken only by the appearance of an animal or bird erupting out of the brush but now she couldn’t even read or she’d look rude.

The sudden chatter of automatic weapon fire shattered the boredom, the quiet.

Instantly it became a green and scarlet nightmare as bodies shuddered with the impact of bullets, blood sprayed, screams and cries ran out as men fell amid the shouting and confusion.

Glass shattered in the car ahead of them, every window exploding as bullets stitched along the side of it from the cover of the underbrush. The bodies of those within juddered with the impact of the bullets as blood flew like rain. Some of the guards bailed out of the vehicles in a desperate attempt to return fire and save themselves. Bullets savaged them. Their bodies jerked and twisted as more blood flew. It was so sudden, so shocking Callie couldn’t even draw breath enough to scream. Others tried to run to save themselves and were cut down anyway.

The noise was incredible, the sheer volume of the sound stupefying, overwhelming.

Callie tried to twist in her seat to see the guards that rode in the car behind them. One of them, Jeremy, had been teaching her self-defense. He’d been with the Navy Seals and she’d liked him. Had a crush on him. No one had been expecting any trouble.

Even as she turned, her father unfastened her seatbelt and dragged her off the car seat onto the floor.

She only had a brief glimpse of the chaos erupting behind them before her father’s weight crushed her to the floor of the car. Instinctively she wrapped her arms around her head. She didn’t even know she was screaming as the car bumped and jerked, the driver trying desperately to get around the lead cars until bullets smashed through the windshield.

Hot wetness splashed the side of her face as the car filled with the coppery aroma of blood.

The car jolted to a halt, shouting men firing their weapons into the air pulled the doors open and roughly dragged everyone out, pushing and shoving as the gunfire continued. She smelled burning fuel and scorched metal.

Callie’s father fought to keep them away from her, fought to hold onto her, shouting at them, but the men tore her away. More shots were fired as she was dragged off into the jungle.

When she looked around, all she saw was the men who’d taken them. Mr. Reeves and Mr. Gallegos.

She didn’t see her father.

The rough, dirty, smelly men dragged and shoved her ahead of them, barking at her in Spanish. She nodded numbly, staggering between them along the nearly invisible trail.

She glanced back just once before the jungle closed around them.

Bloody bodies were scattered around the vehicles and the road. No one moved. One of the trucks exploded and she flinched. Thick black smoke billowed. It rose above the trees. She couldn’t see any sign of her father, of Jeremy…then even the trucks disappeared behind the dense foliage.

Somehow she knew her father was gone…dead…but somehow she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe it. She had no time for tears or grieving, only surviving. If her father had died trying to save her, the least she could do was stay alive.

She was so scared…so scared…but Jeremy’s words as he had been teaching her echoed in her head. “Most people die because they stop thinking, Callie,” he’d advised. “Don’t stop thinking.”

Unconsciously she nodded in response to his remembered words. She wondered if he’d had time to think before he died.

She’d only been taking the lessons from him because he was cute…and he seemed to think she was, too. Now he was dead back there like the others. Because if he wasn’t dead, they would still be shooting and her father would be calling for her. But he wasn’t.

Her throat was tight.

Maybe Jeremy’s words, his training, would save her even if they hadn’t saved him. Tears streamed down her face. That was his legacy to her. That and her life.

Another set of words moved through her mind, words from an old science fiction book she’d read. She thought of deserts, not jungles, and of enduring. Of surviving.

Something about fear.

Her mind worried at the puzzle of those words, trying to remember them right.

The men tied her wrists together, pushed and shoved her along, shouted epithets in Spanish.

Knowledge, too, was a dangerous thing. It was a valuable thing. She would keep her knowledge of Spanish to herself. Everything was an edge. She would survive. Somehow, she would survive this.

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005GHE94K

B&N
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Nikes-Wings/Valerie-Douglas/e/2940013185920

Smashwords
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/79960

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005GHE94K

A little word on the Indie Author/Editor self-editing conundrum

2011-08-14T19:15:00.000-07:00

Lately I've found myself on the wrong end of several sticks on this subject - oddly being perceived as being anti-editing, which I'm not. I couldn't figure out what the problem was. Finally, though, I did. It's me. Or at least, maybe it's reality.

So... Now I'm about to burst some bubbles.

For those who think editing doesn't matter, but especially for those who think being an Indie writer is a short cut to the kind of success Amanda Hocking, J.A. Konrath and a few others have had switching to traditional publishers...

It's not.

And most especially for those who think your prospective agent/editor/publishing house will do your editing/polishing for you.

You're about to have a VERY rude awakening.

Think editing is supposed to be collaborative? Interactive, a polite interaction between professionals? Pardon my bluntness, but... grow up, you've been watching too much TV.

Here, courtesy of Jessica Faust from BookEnds LLC - a well known literary agency - from her Submissions 101 blog entry:

Before getting started, before even writing a query, you need to make sure your book has been written, rewritten, edited and polished, and, as you have heard from me before, I even suggest you’ve already started writing your next book so you have something to focus on besides just the query process. Fiction and narrative nonfiction (i.e., memoir) writers will need to have completed the full manuscript.

I didn't even submit my first manuscript until the second was complete.

That's a submission folks, not a completed manuscript. In the traditional publishing world you not only have to be a good self-editor, you have to be a really good one! If that manuscript isn't polished to a fare thee well, it will end up in the circular file beside their desk with a form rejection letter back to you for your troubles. They don't have time to 'fix' your work and to them it says volumes about your commitment to your writing. Or rather, the lack thereof.

A multitude of errors says the same thing to your readers - that you just don't care enough about your craft to do it right! Get enough comments about mistakes and they will stop reading your books. Amanda Hocking hired a good editor as soon as she made enough money to afford one. Konrath was a pro already but there's no doubt he had someone editing for him. What makes you think you're so hot that you don't need to do the same? Or at least a beta reader or three - preferably ones for whom English was a subject they did well with in school.

A good editor doesn't have the time - or to be honest the patience - to mollycoddle your sensitive feelings. Even, or (that word again) especially, editors for small presses or for Indie writers. It's a job. It's how they make their living and they make their living by doing a lot of editing for a lot of people. And they may do it in addition to their day job, just like you. (Same thing for reviewers, BTW)

A good editor will send back your manuscript with corrections and notes. In the non-Indie world these are NOT suggestions and can come off as downright rude. After all their job isn't to do your work for you, that's YOUR job, and you should have done it right in the first place. A small press editor in this new world doesn't have time to waste. Think they won't ask you to change your manuscript to suit them or what the publisher wants? Think again. Their job is to get a marketable product out. Fast. I know of one author who was dumped by both agent and major publishing house simply because she took too long and it was taking too much effort. And it showed.

Even so, even with all the care I took, my first professional edit was a shock. Believe me, they weren't sensitive to my feelings. Every edit, though, taught me something else. I learned how to look at my work honestly, to see where perhaps this sentence, phrase or paragraph might work better someplace else and that I have a problem repeating myself. Which is why I need my beta readers so much. (God bless you Erin, Angela, Andy and Mateo, et al.)

So I learned, and learned fast, to be a very good self-editor. It never occurred to me to do anything less. How could you possibly consider yourself a writer if you didn't? Was I really so arrogant as to believe I had written the Great American Novel in one try? (Heck even Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, wrote multiple drafts.) No. My books were and are edited and re-edited every time I find a new pet peeve on a blog somewhere. Even so I still go back to do another polishing draft, just to be absolutely sure, before I post a single book anywhere.(I'm on tenterhooks waiting for feedback on the latest.) That's why I'd get so frustrated to find myself in the middle of this argument. I thought every Indie author wanted the same, to be as professional as they could be. I still get anxious every time someone contacts me to say they caught a mistake.

And if you're a good writer, a professional writer, you should, too.

Sample Sunday - Song of the Fairy Queen

2011-08-14T14:48:00.000-07:00

A lot of people ask - why this story, what made you write this story? For me it was the image that ends Chapter One and begins Chapter Two and is captured somewhat by the cover - Kyriay, Queen of the Fairy, alighting on battlements, her wings lit by the flames of the castle below. In that instant I also had the title. With it came the theme - what the story at its core is all about.
In all my stories there is always a central theme. A story can't be just this happened and that happened, there has to be more. If there isn't, it can't touch the reader, can't draw them in. For Song of the Fairy Queen, it was 'how heavy lies the crown'. It was about honor, duty and the choices, the necessary sacrifices that sometimes we all have to make in our lives if they're going to mean something. In Song of the Fairy Queen, all of the lead characters have to make those choices, Kyri, Morgan, Oryan and Gwenifer, Jacob...
There are other themes, too - what we'll do for love, for children, husband, lovers - but at its core Song of the Fairy Queen is about doing what needs to be done, despite the price that will have to be paid.
That's not to say that it's all doom and gloom, any more than life is. There are still good moments, all the more precious because so much is at stake.
So, most of the elements were there, only one was was missing. *smiles* I was holding out for the hero.
Morgan had to be unique, a man of honor and integrity. I didn't want the usual tall, dark and handsome, he had to be striking, different somehow. I just couldn't picture him. Then one day I was watching this movie (which shall remain nameless) which I had been waiting to see for some time and there he was. Perfect. Even better, his physical appearance added depth and complications to the book that helped enrich it. I also fell in love with him, with his strength and courage - because if I wasn't in love with him, how could you, the reader be? And since I was, as was Kyriay...
But I've already given you Chapter One...so I give you...

Chapter Two

A slender figure dropped to the parapet, crystalline wings flaring, a cascade of golden curls shimmering down over her shoulders to nearly her waist and wearing only a simple shift that showed signs of battle. That shift clung to a slender body with ripe curves at breast and hip, fluttered about shapely thighs. Blood stained it, some of it her own to judge by the rent in it. A sword belt hung on those curved hips, a bow at her back between her wings.

So they had been surprised, too.

Torchlight illuminated the fine, amused features of her face, the large liquid eyes…

Morgan’s breath caught.

She was beautiful as only Fairy were or could be… mischievous, fierce when necessary and wild.

Her bare feet touched stone with a soft patter barely heard above the wind.

Morgan looked to his King. Looking up, Oryan was clearly astonished, no more than Morgan, he’d scarcely dared to hope for help but not that the Fairy Queen herself would come.

“What would you Oryan?” Kyriay cried over the sounds of the battle still going on below, her voice soft, but clear and strong. “Haerold’s forces attacked mine, too. I heard your call. And so we came, thinking you might need aid.”

The attack on her embassy had come out of the night as if from nowhere. The flare of magic had alerted her and awakened both her and her Fairy sentries, if not, sadly, Oryan’s or Morgan’s… Even so, they had fought desperately for her. She winced at the memory, at the sharp sting of death so close. Still it had been a battle for her and her people just to find the space to take flight. With a wrench of grief and anger she remembered Ariol’s fall. And then Glennis, her wings striving for height before she spiraled to the ground, a black arrow piercing her. That young life ending as she crashed to the ground. Kyri grieved for her and her mate…

Besides Oryan, Kyri saw only young Gawain and Morgan–Oryan’s High Marshal, who she’d until now seen only in passing, a tall, handsome, powerful man with piercing eyes so clear and bright a blue as to rival a fairy’s wing ― these others then must be his people.

One face that she didn’t see that she should have, that she sought to see and ought to see.

Gwenifer.

Her breath caught…on bitter sorrow.

Grief filled Oryan’s gaze and not only for his people dying below ― as she sorrowed for those she’d lost ― but a greater grief still for the one who had stood beside him, his partner, his wife and his Queen. Kyri’s heart ached. She’d very much liked the tall, calm Queen.

“Kyriay! Thank the stars. Take Gawain, save my son,” Oryan said, as he reached for his son. “Get him away.”

Her chin lifted, she shook her head and then Kyri smiled, albeit a little grimly. She tilted her head to them once, sharply.

“You misunderstand me, Oryan. We came to take you all.”

She gestured upwards, spreading her arms, a graceful gesture of her hands toward her people as they hovered above in the night sky above, their wings beating steadily…a dozen of them or more.

All of them were beautiful, male or female, ethereal, yet all bore swords and bows.

For a moment, Oryan couldn’t grasp it. He’d resigned himself to fighting and dying. His only hope had been to save Gawain. Not himself. Not even Morgan, his friend as well as his Marshal, although he might have wished it otherwise.

Below him in the darkness and flames came the sounds of battle, the screams and shouts, fire and smoke. People, his people, were dying. He’d expected to join them and a glance at Morgan and his people showed they’d expected the same, had girded themselves to a pitched but hopeless battle against an overwhelming force.

Hope hadn’t even entered into it. He hadn’t even dared think it.

“Come, Oryan,” Kyriay said, as she leaned forward a little, holding out her hands to him, wings stroking for balance. “Live to fight another day. The Fair would rather you on the throne than Haerold. He is a cold and cruel master.”

Haerold hadn’t been kind to her folk in his own lands, what would he be like now that he had them all?

“Gawain, first,” Oryan said and she nodded, calling her people down with a gesture.

So, he thought, she didn’t doubt either who was responsible for all of this. It said much of Haerold, none of it good.

“Galan, take the Prince, protect him with your life, if need be, he is our hope,” Kyri said, as the sure knowledge of it coursed through her and Galan came forward, smiling reassuringly at the boy. “Dorien, to the King.”

Her wings stroked, lifting her from the parapet to make room for those above and behind her.

From below came the sounds of men battering the door. It wouldn’t hold long, it had never been meant to.

There was no time, soon enough the wizards would become aware of them up here.

Kyri looked below to the sounds and cries of battle rising. The sense of dying battered at her. As a Healer, their pain and sorrow tore at her, her heart ached as she each life ended like candles being blown out.

Morgan followed her gaze.

It was a grim scene. Parts of the castle were now ablaze. A small group of Oryan’s Guard was holding out in vain in one corner of the courtyard while random small battles continued elsewhere. It was a terrible sight…filled with death and dying, cruelty and slaughter…

Morgan looked down at the dead and the dying there in the forecourt and at his people standing firm and sure at his back. They would fight and die if he asked it.

The Fairy offered them a chance to fight and live. He wouldn’t ask his people to die if there was another choice, if there was any chance at all.

Fascinated by the Fairy, by the idea of flight, Gawain lifted his arms and went willingly into the Fairy’s hands.

His simple joy and pleasure briefly lightened the horror of the night for those watching.

Those seemingly fragile crystalline wings flared, expanded and flexed, catching air, the next stroke lifting the boy and the Fairy off the parapet to make room for another.

If Morgan was honest, a part of him doubted… Those wings, large as they appeared, hardly looked strong enough to hold the Fairy themselves, much less a man his size.

Oryan looked up as Dorien settled to the parapet and reached for him. He knew this Fairy, as he knew Galan, they were Kyri’s own people.

“Hold on tight,” Dorien cautioned, “take my wrist.”

Those great wings flared, stroked hard and then they rose. Another strong beat and they were clear of the tower. Dangling in mid-air, trusting to Dorien’s surprisingly strong grip, Oryan looked back.

Morgan’s people were being cleared but even as he looked he saw Morgan and two of his people turn toward the doorway…backing up to give themselves room to draw their swords.

A part of Oryan wanted to cry out in protest.

Not Morgan. He couldn’t lose him, too. He had no other left that he trusted, he needed, no other to stand at his back…not with Gwenifer gone. Morgan had stood at his side since they had been boys, been his most trusted lieutenant for his entire reign.

Kyri turned, too, at the motion, her lovely face set as she reached for her bow. Her wings flared, then they folded…and she dove, stooping like a hawk, those wings tight against her lithe body, golden hair streaming behind her. In truth, Oryan had never seen anything quite so beautiful, or so deadly.

Below, Morgan clearly heard the sound of the door below crashing open. It had finally given way beneath the battering.

They had been so close… Morgan had almost begun to believe they might yet make it, they might survive this terrible night when Kyriay and her people had arrived.

He turned to face the new danger, to give the King and his own people time to get away.

“Go,” he said, to those remaining, backing away to draw his sword as he heard the thunder of booted feet on the stairs.

They were coming, fast.

Jacob was at his right shoulder, Liliane at his left, two of his most trusted aides, their swords drawn as the black-garbed soldiers appeared at the top of the stair. More pressed behind them, the stairs limiting their numbers.

The first soldier snarled a smile at the sight of Morgan and his people. Then a Fairy arrow with its unmistakable crystalline fletching took him through the throat. The snarl turned to surprise as he staggered, fell back against those behind him and died. Another arrow took the man next to him.

“Get them,” Morgan heard Kyriay shout. “I’ve got Morgan.”

Jacob and Liliane were literally snatched off their feet, carried up into the air as the enemy soldiers thrust away their dead and pushed forward.

Like an arrow out of the night in a whistling dive the Queen of the Fairy shot past the enemy. The invading soldiers ducked instinctively.

Her hand reached…for him… Kyriay, her golden hair streaming in the breeze of her passage. Beautiful, seemingly delicate and insubstantial, her lovely face intent, eyes narrowed and her wings tucked close…one hand outstretched for his…

“Morgan,” she shouted.

He jumped to the parapet, reaching in return, furious with her for the chance she took. His hand closed around her slender wrist, her long, strong fingers grasped his and she snatched him off his feet. It felt for a moment as if they were falling…down into the carnage below.

With a sharp crack that reverberated through both of them, those great gossamer wings opened, caught air and they shot upward with a shock so hard Morgan thought he’d nearly dislocated his shoulder. And Kyriay? He looked up at her…

In all his life he didn’t think he’d ever seen anything so stunning, so beautiful…or so fierce and determined…

Firelight danced over those brilliant wings, reflected the glow, sparkled in the shifting intangible light.

She was glorious.

It had to have hurt her, too, but there was no sign of it in that fine-boned, resolute face.

Muscles straining, that lovely face focused, determined, indomitable, she fought for height against the speed of the dive, her wings cupped, then flattened, shifted. Smaller and lighter than he, even so she held on grimly, her rippling hair streaming in the breeze of their passage.

Insane as it was at the moment, he suddenly realized how very beautiful she was. Different, but not…exotic, incredible…and beautiful.

The hard stone of the curtain wall came at them fast, but they were rising, rising, to shoot over it so closely that Morgan could see the surprise on the faces of those who fought below. So closely he heard an arrow whistle past while another barely missed a wing, as the fighters on the parapets instinctively fired at the perceived threat.

Muscles straining, Kyri fought for height.

Darkness surrounded them. The wall fell behind them.

They had made it.

She banked, searching for the others, for the familiar sense of her people in her spirit and mind.

There. Relief flooded her.

Dizzyingly, to Morgan the ground seemed to come toward them in a rush and then her wings flared again, the shock more gentle this time.

His feet touched the earth and then hers.

Kyri staggered a little but Morgan reached out a hand to steady her. She smiled at him quickly and gratefully.

A different kind of shock went through her at the contact between their hands and then a quick rush of warmth that Kyri had no time to examine as she looked over the small party of survivors.

They had lost no one since the first moments of the attack.

She closed her eyes for only a moment in relief and gratitude. Every life, Fairy or man, was precious.

Her body ached, her wing muscles protesting the abuse and her wings fluttered a little, resettling the feathers automatically… A sword cut on her ribs stung, another on her arm. Until now she hadn’t even noticed they were there.

They were free, though, for the moment.

Oryan stepped through the small crowd, Gawain in his arms.

Turning from him only a little, Kyri drew a silver whistle from beneath her shift where it hung on a silver chain around her throat and blew.

For all that it made little sound, Oryan felt more than heard it, a sharp pressure in his ears.

“Thank you, Kyri,” he said, for her assistance. “Where do you go now?”

“South and west for a time, there is a place, not far, where we will be safe long enough to decide what we do next,” she said.

We.

“Kyri…” Oryan began.

She stilled him with a simple gesture. “Like it or no, our fates are joined, Oryan. Haerold didn’t only attack you, he attacked my embassy here, with the intent to kill or capture me and mine. My people have long withdrawn from Haerold’s lands for the wizards he kept company with. It is likely he will turn against us now whether we aid you or not.”

It was no more than the simple truth and they both knew it.

Oryan nodded.

“Where would you go, now?” Kyri asked.

“There is little time and Haerold will surely go there once he’s learned we’ve escaped, but to Gwenifer’s lands to the south―so that serves us both well―to gather what funds I may. They should be warned, too. Haerold will surely seize them… then...” He sighed. “Decisions will have to be made…”

He looked back at the castle in the distance. Flames blossomed from some of the windows, little else could be seen there.

“Good,” Kyri said, “then we will stand guard for you until you can gain some of that time to make them.”

A thunder of hooves had almost all of them turning in near panic as they quickly reached for their swords. Oryan wanted to shout in frustration and helpless fury.

“It’s all right,” Kyri said, as the horses galloped over the rise, their manes and tails blowing in the breeze of their passage. “I called them.”

The horses of the Fairy raced out of the darkness, gold, silver, bronze and copper, their long manes and tails flagging in the breeze of their passage, beautiful to watch as they ran, the muscles moving beneath their skin fluidly.

Morgan watched them come with the admiration of a true horseman, their gait so smooth and liquid they seemed to float over the ground.

At least they wouldn’t have to walk the miles from here to there.

With practiced ease Kyri caught a handful of mane and vaulted onto a horse’s bare back as it came to a halt, her wings tucked neatly and nearly invisibly against her back, her shapely legs bared high on the thigh as the shift gathered.

Morgan gave his orders, assigning Liliane once more to guard the boy, sending Alain north to call back his people there. As much as he hated it, he must leave the North undefended against the raiders so they could defend the King and what little they could salvage here until the King was back on the throne. Faithful Caleb he sent west and then south to carry the news and call up any of those he could. They would need every man and woman he could find.

He was under no illusions. Their situation was desperate. His job was to find a way to make it less so and then to put the King back on the throne.

It wouldn’t be an easy task.

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Sample Sunday - Not Magic Enough

2011-07-24T14:28:00.000-07:00

Writing The Coming Storm was such an ecstatic experience, to spend time in that world was astonishing. Apparently it was for my beta readers, too, as it is for my readers. But by far the most popular question from my beta readers (who had already read Convocation) was, are you ever going to tell the story of Delae and Dorovan? Because, you see, in the first version of the book, the tale was all one, and their story was a small part of a prologue I removed for the current version of The Coming Storm (it was really back story, as much as I hated to let it go). But I loved their story, too, I very much wanted to tell it and it very much wanted to be told.
Sometimes it's like magic, the stories just write themselves. From a few lines in The Coming Storm, one day I just saw Delae running to answer her door, hearing the banging on it, not knowing what would come out of the storm. I knew her heart and her duty. It wasn't just Delae's story though, it was Dorovan's, too. Dorovan, Elf, swordmaster, touched with an un-Elven wanderlust, who despite centuries of war couldn't ride past those in need or fail to offer comfort. Or to take it. A simple act of courage, trust, love and kindness, with far-reaching consequences, that would lead inevitably to the events of The Coming Storm...and change their world forever...

Chapter One

The pounding on the heavy wood of the doors of the homestead sounded loudly even above the shriek and howl of the storm raged outside. Pulling her threadbare robe on, only half-awake Delae ran across the cold stone floors in her bare feet to answer it, rubbing her eyes wearily. Doubtless her aged cook and houseman had been roused, too, by the pounding and were on their way from their quarters at the back of the homestead but she was the closer of them. She hated to ask either Petra or Hallis to sit by the door of a night as many landowners did anymore than she set a guard by the gates as many others did. They weren’t so far from the seat of the lesser Kingdom of Riverford that they had much to fear behind stout walls.
Who would be mad enough to be out in such a storm as this? she wondered. It was early in the night, true, but it was still insanity to be caught so far from shelter.
Lifting the bar, she set it aside and released the latch.
The door opened on a blast of wet snow and wind that struck her like a blow, nearly literally, to reveal a stranger standing there, looking windblown, frozen, battered and desperate. She caught him as he almost fell in the door, a young, plain-looking man, by the looks of him a farmer or tradesman, a traveler of some sort not used to the vagaries of the weather at the edges of the Kingdoms. His ragged brown hair was drenched, his clothing soaked, his skin white and his lips nearly blue from the cold.
“Help,” he whispered as he staggered into the relative warmth of the great room.
The fire in the great fireplace that dominated the whole of one wall was banked to coals but it still heated the room beyond the chill of the weather outside.
He was clearly injured, with blood covering one side of his face.
“My family,” he croaked, weakly, “the wagon, it overturned, we were on our way home from the birthing…”
“Hush, hush,” Delae said, gently, reassuringly, as she took his weight on her shoulders and guided him to the padded bench by the fire. “What’s your name?”
“Marlan. Lady, you have to help them…!”
“Of course I do,” she said, kindly, although it was no more than her duty as landowner, but also because people needed aid. “We’ll help them, I promised. What happened, Marlan? Where are they?”
“We were coming from Raven’s Nest, heading south for the Heartlands. My sister Jessa had her baby, we were coming home,” Marlan said. His next words were bitter and angry. “Pa thought we could make it to Riverford before the storm hit. I kept telling him no, we should stop at the last village but you can’t tell him anything. So we pressed on.”
As he spoke, Petra and Hallis rushed in. With a shake of her head, Delae indicated they shouldn’t speak.
There was no need, at the young man’s words both turned to rush back down the hall to do what was needed, Petra to get the kitchens going and Hallis to gather up blankets.
“I told him we needed to stop, hunker down to wait out the storm but he wouldn’t,” Marlan said. From the way he spoke, it had the sound of an old complaint, much voiced and now tragically vindicated. “The wagon overturned.”
“Where?” Delae asked. “On the road?”
“Yes, mistress,” he said, respectfully, as Hallis returned to drape a blanket over the young man’s shoulders.
Tall and spare, his gray hair sparse, Hallis’s hands were knotted with age, bent and twisted.
“Petra is making soup, my lady, there will be food soon,” Hallis said, his heart aching for his poor mistress as he bent stiffly to stir up the fire, wrestling another log into place.
Hallis looked at her there kneeling by the young man, a pretty young woman with a kind, gentle face and a good heart, as graceful as the dancer she’d been in her youth, her tightly curled hair glowing red and gold in the light of the coals, her dark blue eyes focused only on the young man.
In truth, most landowners would already have put him and Petra to work as drudges in the kitchens or as lesser house staff by now and there were a good many who would’ve put them out to beg on the streets. Neither of them could move fast any more.
Not Delae, though. For kindness mostly but also for good reason as there simply was no money to hire better, that good for nothing husband of hers took every penny she couldn’t hide. Still, she never ordered, she always asked and never complained of her lot in life. It wasn’t in her to do it.
A sharp petulant voice came from the door to the west wing of the house startling everyone.
“What’s going on, what’s all that racket? Can’t a body get some sleep of a night? Bad enough with this storm but then folk banging around…”
Closing her eyes, Delae willed patience as she had a thousand times before.
“It’s nothing, Cana. Travelers have broken down in the storm,” she said to her husband’s mother. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Then you must send aid,” the woman said, equally sharply, as if Delae were witless.
“This I know,” Delae said. “And I will. Go back to bed, Cana, I’ll take care of it.”
As she took care of everything else.
Despair and frustration weighed on her, battered at her soul. It was at rare times such as this that Delae wished she had a husband in truth instead of only in name. This would’ve been his duty had he been there, although she would have gone with him to brave the storm and give aid. Instead it fell to her. All of it.
She took a breath, willed strength and patience. These folk needed her. There was no one else and there was something, some satisfaction, to be found in the knowledge that she could help.
“Hmmmph,” Cana said and slammed the door shut behind her.
At least Kolan, her husband’s father, hadn’t come, too, Delae thought, which was one blessing, his joints bothered him too much on these days.
Letting out the breath she’d taken, with a wince at the door slam, Delae turned to Hallis.
“Go fetch Dan, Morlis and Tad for me would you please, Hallis? Tell Morlis we’ll need our hay cart, two of the draft horses and Besra. Then you and Petra get the rooms in the east wing ready.”
Those rooms were usually reserved for rare visitors to the homestead or for travelers such as these caught out in the storm. In this isolated part of the Kingdoms the smallholders used them most when they came in during the harsh days of winter, now fast upon them.
“Yes, Delae,” Hallis said and hurried off as best he could with his stiff joints and aching bones as Petra came down the hall toward him.
Their fingers touched for just a moment, his and Petra’s, with love and understanding and then Hallis hobbled down through the west wing of the quarters toward those of the south wing. It would take longer but he was too old to fight the winds of the storm by cutting across the square.
Petra came to sit by the boy, a mug of hot herbal tea laced with wine in one gnarled hand. She gave a nod to Delae.
“Help will be on its way shortly,” Delae said, laying a reassuring hand on the young man’s shoulder.
As she hurried away, she knew she wouldn’t tell him it would be she who would go. She, her smith, her wrangler and the addled but strong young man who assisted Petra in the kitchen.
That was all there were here save for the women and children of the homestead. All the smallholders were sheltering from the storm in the safety of their cottages and too far away to aid her.
It would have to be enough, it would have to do. Somehow.
Casting aside the threadbare robe and the thin linen nightdress she wore, Delae quickly drew on her working clothes―simple but heavy men’s winter trews, her heaviest tunic, layering over it a sweater Petra had knitted for her and thick woolen socks before she stamped her feet into her working boots. She threw her sturdiest cloak over all of it. A woolen scarf covered her abundant hair. She wrapped the scarf around her throat despite the itch of the wool before gathering up her sheepskin gloves.
She stopped to gather a jug of fortified wine from the storeroom, pausing in the kitchen to fetch a piece of warmed iron from the fire, letting it drop it into the jug of wine with a hiss before she pounded the cork stopper back in place.
By the time she reached the great room, the men were waiting.
Dan was huge and burly, heavily muscled in the chest, arms and shoulders from his hours at the forge and capable enough there. Tall and gangly, Morlis was a wonder with horses and a godsend to her. Poor Tad just looked at her with no curiosity, his huge hands dangling, his moon face waiting to be wreathed in a smile…or a look of confusion. But he was strong and he would do as he was told. For all that he was shorted on wits, he more than made up for it in other ways.
She patted his cheek lightly, fondly, and the smile broke out, big and broad, heartening her.
“I’ve the horses and wagon waiting outside,” Morlis said.
She nodded. “Tad, will you take the spare blankets and the jug to the cart please? We’re going for a ride. Dan, go open the hayloft, quickly please. If their wagon has overturned, they’ll be cold, possibly injured. We’ll need hay in the cart for warmth.”
Obediently, Tad gathered up the things and trotted out to the cart as Dan ran to the stables, Morlis on his heels to drive the little wagon there.
With a glance back at the warm building that had been her home for the last ten years or so, Delae went out into the storm.
It was an early winter storm and all the more fierce because of it, driven by the warm winds from the south and the cold winds sweeping down out of the mountains to the east and north. It was bitterly cold and damp, hurling snow before it that wouldn’t stick but would turn the roads muddy, slushy and thick.
A rumble of thunder growled above the other sounds of the storm. Thunder snow… uncommon but less so at this time of year. If this were any sign, it would be a long and hard winter.
Faithful Besra, her horse, tried to turn her back to the wind, her winter coat thick, yet still she shivered as Delae mounted.
Delae could sympathize as she turned the horse’s head toward where Dan forked hay into the cart. The cold seemed to find every gap in the layers that covered her.
“Enough, let’s go,” she shouted and he nodded, pulling the upper doors closed behind him, emerging seconds later at the door below with torches he’d lit at his forge.
He handed one up to her before mounting his own horse.
The gates were unbarred as they almost always were, save for the rare goblin raid this far to the south and west. Far from the borderlands and in a Kingdom where the King kept faith with his subjects by keeping the roads safe for those who lived within his borders, they had little to fear.
Except the storm.
The wind struck with vicious force the moment they left the security of the walls, rattling the little wagon and nearly blowing Delae from her horse.
Still there was no help for it, as landowner here it was her responsibility to render aid, regardless of circumstances.
Putting her head down, Delae drew her cloak more tightly around her throat.
In the wind of the storm, the torches and lanterns on the cart guttered and flickered. Delae could barely hang onto hers, but she did, switching it from hand to hand to give each cold aching wrist and arm relief. Both were strained and sore by the time they finally reached the road.
With no sign of the passage of a wagon south, they turned north and soon enough found the stranded travelers, huddled together for warmth in the shelter of the overturned wagon. One horse was down, tangled in its traces, still kicking weakly as the other fought to stay upright with his fellow fallen beside him.
Delae’s heart sank at the sight.
The wagon was huge, a massive farm wagon, far larger than she’d expected, put to use no doubt for the family visit to distant relatives, the last such chance to do so before the snows closed the pass to Raven’s Nest. As it no doubt would be now.
It was easy enough to see what had happened. As the mud had grown thicker it had bogged the wheels of the wagon until they’d hit a low wallow. There the wheels on one side had caught completely, pulling them off the road. The wagon had gone over in a slow but inevitable roll onto its side. Now one side of the wagon was mired in the mud, making it far more difficult to raise.
There had to be more than a dozen people there, a few men but mostly women and children, all shivering in the cold. One of the men ― Marlan’s father? ― was also injured.
It was clear the cart would never hold all of them. They would have to right the wagon.
One of the other men cried out to her in relief as he staggered to his feet.
“Thank God you’ve come!” he said as she dismounted.
“How many are injured?” she shouted over the wind. “And how badly?”
“Forman is the worst,” the man responded. “He struck his head. One of the children has a broken arm. The rest are only bruises.”
That was a relief. Their thick clothes and hay had likely softened the fall, preventing more injuries.
“Get Forman and the child in the cart and as many of the other children as you can. There are blankets there. Try to get them warm,” she said, as she fought the wind and mud to have a look at the wagon. “Dan, I need you. Morlis, help them. Tad, keep the horses still.”
She slogged through the frozen mud.
At least the axle hadn’t broken. That had been her worst fear, as it would have made everything much harder. Otherwise, they would’ve had to take them back in stages with the fragile cart, each trip risking another accident such as this one while those remaining waited in the freezing cold.
If they could even get the wagon turned over and that was very doubtful.
The storm raged around them as Delae held her torch high examining the situation.
“If we cut the traces of the fallen horse,” Dan said, grimly, “we’ll lose pull.”
With a sigh, Delae nodded. That had been her assessment as well.
They’d never get the wagon out and there would be nothing to secure the draft horses to the wagon then. One horse couldn’t pull it alone but perhaps they could rig something.
Either way it meant the death of the horse on the ground. Without untangling it they’d never get the wagon righted and if they tried it would likely break one of the horse’s legs, if not worse. The way it thrashed she wouldn’t risk the life of whoever she asked to unbuckle it. Her heart grieved for the poor animal. She couldn’t ask Morlis to do it nor have the children watch.
Which left her. She sighed.
If they could even get the wagon righted with what they had.
They had to try.
Coming around the wagon, she eyed the situation.
Morlis had gotten the two injured and all of the younger children into the cart.
With a nod, she turned to the man she’d spoken to first.
“Your name?”
Tugging his forelock in respect, he said, “Pell, Lady.”
“Pell. Who among the women is best with the children?”
“Yana,” the man said and a young woman turned at the sound of her name, holding her thin cloak closed around her head with one hand.
“Morlis,” Delae said, “Give everyone on the cart a swallow of the wine to warm them and then leave it with those who remain to keep them warm. Leave the draft horses here. Take Yana up with you, get her, the children and the injured back to the homestead. Have Petra put them in the east wing rooms. If we aren’t back by daylight, return.”
She wouldn’t risk him coming back alone in this weather. If they didn’t get the wagon righted and on its way whoever survived the storm this night would get a ride back to the homestead in the morning. Already the cold was numbing Delae’s fingers and toes. Young Yana shivered badly.
The man nodded.
“Everyone else,” Delae said, “get back among the trees. We’re going to try to right the wagon.”
The little cart with its passengers trundled off, taking with it the dim light cast by its lanterns.
The remaining women and the older children took what little shelter they could beneath the trees. The remaining two men held the torches.
Delae turned back to the overturned wagon.
Dan and Pell waited, Tad behind them looking confused, Pell’s face already pale and set, knowing what needed to be done.
Clearly, she couldn’t ask it of him, either, and she would much prefer to do the deed herself, so it would be done as quickly as well and as painlessly as possible.
“Dan, Pell,” she said, “secure the draft horses to the rails of the wagon so they can pull as we lift but wait until I signal I’m ready. Tad, help them by holding the horses.”
She went to her knees beside the head of the thrashing chestnut horse, wary of its kicking forelegs, its tossing head hampered by the tangled traces and laid her hand on its cheek, looking into the one eye she could see. The white there clearly showed its fear. For a moment it stilled, distracted by her touch. Her heart went out to it as she stroked its rough hide and she drew her belt knife.
That was how Dorovan first saw her, kneeling in the mud by the overturned wagon. To his Elven-sight her brilliant hair was a bright splash of red against the light dusting of snow on the ground as she bent her head. Brightness sparkled on her cheeks as she touched the frightened, tangled horse gently.
Tears.
Nearby three men secured draft horses to the upraised side of the wagon while a group of men, women and a young boy stood nearby beneath the dubious shelter of the trees.
It wasn’t his business, it was a thing of men. He knew he should pass by, unseen in the darkness, his Elven-sight rendering everything to him as clear as day, unlike that of the men and women here.
He was cold as well, chilled to the bone, tired, heartsick and far from home.
It had been a long journey from Lothliann in the north, where he had gone to render aid against the Borderlands creatures, through the Rift and the lands Men called Raven’s Nest. They’d lost one of their Hunters to the goblins and his people grieved the loss along with Melis’s soul-bond.
As he himself did, his heart heavy. Even without a soul-bond of his own, through the empathy his people shared he knew a fraction of what it was to suffer such a loss. His heart ached for Melis. She would go on to the Summerlands soon, he knew. And then his people would lose not one, but two.
To his vision it was clear the small party was unlikely to right the heavy wagon, not with what they had to work with, but it was also quite clear they would try. There was nothing else for it.
It was also clear what the woman on the ground was about to do, however much she clearly dreaded it and how necessary it was… If he didn’t intervene. With the storm it was also likely they would all freeze and die out here if they didn’t succeed.
Dorovan had had enough of death.

Taking a breath, Delae set the blade to the horse’s throat. She didn’t think she could successfully put it through the eye and thus into the brain―nor could she bear to do so, but she could cut its throat if she was quick. The thought of it made her want to weep but she steeled herself to do what must be done.
A strong, long-fingered hand settled over her own, stilling it.
Startled, she turned her head to look.
Shock and amazement at who stood there held her rooted to the spot.
Not who, though, so much as what.
She wasn’t certain in that moment or any moment afterward which held her more immobile, that an Elf had appeared at her side, that he was an Elf, that he was the most beautiful creature she’d ever seen, as most Elves were, or the seemingly bottomless depth of the kindness in his silvery gray eyes. Or the grief and sorrow hidden in the depths, moving like shadows in the flickering light of the torch.
His features were perfect, strong, his smooth skin reddened a little with the cold beneath the hood of his cloak, his long straight hair streaming loose in the wind.
It was as if she were held spellbound and yet she knew she wasn’t. Elven magic didn’t work that way.
Rarely did her folk see Elves out here in the outlands and never one alone given the danger from her own kind, although she certainly knew of that aloof and beautiful race. Everyone did, as they knew of the Dwarves who dwelled deep in the earth in their Caverns.
What was he doing out in this storm so far from an Enclave? There was none close that she knew of and the storm would slow even his Elven-bred horse, standing patiently nearby. She hadn’t even heard its approach.
Empathic as he was, beneath the thick scarf covering her bright hair, Dorovan could see a woman of warmth and of spirit, of infinite tenderness, her blue eyes filled with both grief at what she was about to do, the determination and duty that was required to do it and wonder to see him there beside her. His kind and hers rarely interacted.
“Do not,” he said, gently. “I can hold him still, if you can but unbuckle the harness.”
Dorovan often worked with the horses in Talaena Enclave and the horses of men were much less headstrong than those, so keeping the animal still was only a matter of empathy with it, of sinking his awareness into that of the animal trembling beneath his hands.
It was on Delae for a moment to ask if he was certain, but he was Elf, so of course he was. If he said it, he was. There was that about Elves that they didn’t lie, it going so against their Honor.
Then he laid his strong, long-fingered hands on the horse, one on the horse’s strong neck, the other covering its eye, murmuring soft words as he did and it stilled completely.
“Dan, Pell, Tad, help me,” she said, softly, not wanting to disturb the Elf’s concentration.
Both seemed as dumbstruck by the presence of the Elf as she’d been, staring at him in amazement.
“Dan, Pell,” she called, more sharply, tugging her gloves from her nearly frozen fingers to work the straps free of the buckles. “Tad.”
That broke their suspension and they rushed to help her, Tad goggling owlishly at the Elf, something he’d never seen.
Still it took all of Dan and Tad’s muscle to lift and Delae’s and Pell’s efforts to get the harness unfastened from beneath the horse. Then it was free and she turned to the Elf.
As lightly as a feather, the woman touched Dorovan on the shoulder, letting him know he could release his control of the horse.
It surprised him she would know his people didn’t like to be touched by anyone other than other Elves, but even that brief touch told him much about her, including the knowledge that she possessed an empathy he’d thought uncommon among the people of men. Still, he couldn’t help but be grateful for it and for her consideration.
He looked up into her blue eyes and nodded, stepping back carefully, drawing her back with him with a touch to her shoulder as the horse thrashed to its feet.
Quickly he reached out to grasp the frightened animal by its halter.
“Pell,” Delae called. “Come help us get the horse harnessed. Have one of the women hold it.”
The other man nodded while Dan took the reins of the other horses.
Delae looked at the Elf hesitantly. “I can’t ask you for more than you’ve done…”
With a grave nod, Dorovan said, “But I can offer it.”
The gratitude in her eyes was thanks enough.
“I’m Delae,” she offered.
“Dorovan,” he said.
She smiled, her blue eyes warming, turning her beautiful.
Borrowing the traces from wagon, he set them on his own Charis, the Elven horse shaking himself at the feel of the leather on him before settling. The Elven-bred stallion knew his duty here, it didn’t need to be said. Dorovan attached the traces to the sturdiest rails on the side of the wagon. Before they could move it, first they must right it.
Even so, it wouldn’t be an easy task. It would take all of his strength and more to achieve it.
“Do you want to do this?” Delae asked.
He shook his head. “They are your people.”
Relieved, Delae turned briskly to the others.
This just might be possible, now.
“Dan,” she called, “get the horses moving forward, slow and steady. Pull them back as soon as the wagon starts to break free of the mud, as soon as it starts to go. Pell, Tad, I’ll need you with myself and Dorovan.”
The four of them bent to the wagon, dug their fingers into the thick mud to find the edge of the wagon bed. She only hoped the rails above would hold as the Elven-bred pulled against them.
Her gaze turned to the Elf beside her.
Somehow, it didn’t surprise Dorovan to find Delae crouched down beside him and them in the mud to lend what strength she had to lifting the massive wagon. He could only admire her, who wouldn’t spare herself.
“Now,” she shouted and the man Dan called to the draft horses, shaking the reins to get them pulling.
Charis needed no instruction, throwing his great weight against the traces.
At the side of the wagon, Delae, Dorovan, Tad and Pell heaved.
There was a pause and then they felt it begin to move, to shift. With a wet sucking sound it pulled free.
All of them leaped back as Delae shouted, “Stop!”
The wagon tilted free of the mud, paused for a moment teetering on its side and then it fell back to all four wheels with a crash, a rail broken, a little the worse for wear, but whole enough to get the remainder of the travelers back to the homestead.
Delae shivered with the cold and turned to Dorovan.
“Our thanks,” she said, softly. “I can offer you hospitality, shelter and food, for your help, if nothing else, but also as my duty as landowner. It won’t be Elven fare, but it will be hot and there’ll be a warm bed.”
It was the least she could do.
For a moment Dorovan hesitated, despite the wind cutting through his clothing, the cold, his heaviness of spirit. It was a long way yet to Talaena, though.
“I can guarantee you privacy and peace,” she said, very gently, reaching out to touch his hand with just her fingertips, no more. “No one should be out in a storm such as this, Dorovan. The food will be plain but good and warm. There will be a hot bath, a bed for you and a stall for your horse with plenty of oats.”
The gesture touched him. Her blue eyes were calm, steady. The offer was a kind and honest one.
It was no more or less than any Elven Enclave would offer and he was far from home. In gratitude, Dorovan inclined his head.

Blurb:
For Delae, a lonely landholder on the edge of the Kingdoms, a frantic knock at the door on a stormy winter's night brings more than a cry for help.
After centuries of war Elves have little contact with the race of men, but Dorovan can't bring himself to ride past those so obviously in need.
One small act, with enormous consequences. Not Magic Enough is a tale of love and honor, duty and determination, that sets in motion a chain of events that will change their world forever.

Not Magic Enough - A KND quality book. A Top Ten Romance - Fantasy novel on Smashwords for July

Book trailer - http://www.youtube.com/user/Baycat57?feature=mhee#p/u/2/9mjhi_Lg7Uk

Available through
Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Magic-Enough-Coming-Storm-ebook/dp/B004RJ44MA

B&N
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Not-Magic-Enough/Valerie-Douglas/e/2940012213747

Smashwords
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/44048

Thriller Thursday - Heart of the Gods

2011-07-21T11:44:00.000-07:00

Heart of the Gods

Tales of the legendary Tomb of the Djinn and its Guardian fascinated Ky Farrar since a visit to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo when he was a boy. The story of the star-crossed lovers and their battle to save ancient Egypt from the dark Djinn made him decide to become an archeologist. He believes he’s close to finding it, only to discover the Tomb's Guardian is all too real, far closer than he expects - and she's as lovely as she is lethal.
He's also not the only one looking for the Tomb. It's a race against time to reach it before it can be opened, and what's imprisoned within is set loose on an unsuspecting world.

Excerpt:
It had been a race then, to see which camel could run or be goaded faster against the fury of the storm.
Once again, Abdul won, his fingers clenched around the figurine of the little priestess as he heard the cry out of the darkness.
Still he couldn’t shake the idea he was still hunted. He could feel it.
Desperate, he raced into the first temple he found and threw himself on mercy of she who ruled there.
All he had to offer was the golden figurine of the priestess.
“Take it,” he said to one of the priests, thrusting it into his hands. “Take it as my offering to her, to Sekhmet.”
The Goddess of War.
Instead the priest looked toward the open door of the temple and his face grew grim and set. As one, he and the others backed away, disappeared into the shadowed depths of the temple.
Nearly weeping with terror, Abdul slowly turned.
Sand swirled through the entrance. Something stepped out of it.
He looked from the figure in his hand to the terrible one who stood in the doorway.
The Guardian of the Tomb.
They were the same.
His cry was first of sheer terror and then of a deep and horrifying ecstasy.
When silence came once again to Sekhmet’s temple, the priests and priestesses emerged.
All that remained of the old thief was a dry and empty husk.
The wind gusted and swept the temple clean.

Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004RJ8RIW

Barnes and Noble

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Heart-of-the-Gods/Valerie-Douglas/e/2940012213808

Smashwords

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/44102

Setting Boundaries - the little story that could

2011-07-17T05:08:00.000-07:00

I'm told I really shouldn't use my blog just for talking about my stories, and I was going to do that, but then something strange happened....

Setting Boundaries has always been one of my favorite stories but no matter how hard I tried I just couldn't find a place for it, a home. As much as I loved it, I couldn't seem to find an audience for it so I just let it languish.
Oh, it has action and adventure in it to be sure, but at its heart it's a simple tale of friendship, of forging strong bonds between three people who have ample reason not to trust each other. But I didn't want to write the standard story of mistrust and distrust either.
Ever since writing The Coming Storm I'd always wanted to write the story of how Elon, Colath and Jareth met and became friends. As many times as I tried, though, they were all too dark, too cold, they didn't match the warmth of the original story. And that's what I wanted, that warmth, because so much of that is missing these days.
There's so much baggage that goes into such relationships these days. I didn't want readers to think they were gay - as if there was something wrong with that or gay people couldn't be friends with straight people. But that also wasn't the story I wanted to tell.
I wanted to tell the story of that friendship. But that came with baggage, too. As with so much of our interpersonal relationships these days, male friendships have become an object of fun. Our society gives them silly names like bromance or man-date, reducing it to a poor reflection of reality. It's even worse for women. Or consider marriage - everyone points out that half of all marriages end in divorce, rather than saying Half of all marriages succeed! Its no wonder so many of us are on anti-depressants, we're so afraid of being open with another human being for fear of looking silly or being made fun of.
Ask anyone who's fought side by side with his buddies, though, and you'll find out what such friendships can truly be. That was the story I wanted to tell. I'd been making it too complicated. So, that was the story I wrote.
It's a good story but although it received a great review within days of posting, it never seemed to take off. As hard as I tried, I couldn't seem to draw attention to it. No one seemed to want to read that kind of story anymore.
So when I first saw the numbers for Setting Boundaries on Amazon.com I honestly thought it was a fluke, a mistake they would soon correct. I mean, that couldn't be right - 1500+ copies? And they'd been having problems with reporting, so I just chalked it up to that. But the numbers didn't go away, they went up. It still seemed strange and I kept waiting for it to be corrected. Then, at some point, it began to dawn on me that they were real. Because those numbers kept going up. I couldn't believe it. Then someone told me Setting Boundaries was on the top 100 list of free fantasy novels on Amazon. Last night I looked and it was #23. 1800 copies. In the world of traditional publishing its a drop in the bucket. And, it's free. But still. For me? I'm breathless. Could it crack 2000? Has it already? I can't imagine it. If it does, if it did... wow...

Kindle
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004RJ7X50
Nook
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Setting-Boundaries-a-novella/Valerie-Douglas/e/2940012213709
Smashwords
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/43794

Excerpt

A feline scream drew Jareth out of sleep with a rush. For a moment, he could only stare in breathless astonishment…and in wonder.

He’d never seen anything so swift, so strangely beautiful or so very deadly as watching Elon of Aerilann fight off firbolg and boggins alone in the moonlight.

The Elf moved like water, smoothly, gracefully, his swords swirling around him almost as if they, too, were fluid, as if the steel bent like reeds in the flow of his movement. Yet where they touched, blood flew. There was no sound save for the cries of the firbolg and boggins. Bodies littered the ground around him as steel flashed like lightning in the thin moonlight. Every movement was graceful and sure as he wove a web of steel around himself, denying entrance as Colath took up his swords and went to join him.

There was no pause, Colath simply stepped into the flow of Elon’s movement and became part of it. It was as if they were one person, extensions of each other, one stepping in where the other wasn’t.

It was a wonder to watch.

Jareth saw the firbolg leap and scramble to the rocks above him and them and fired a mage-bolt, sending it spinning out into the night as he rolled to his feet, calling up power. Energy flared around him, gathered in his hands.

A boggart leaped to one of the rocks and then toward Colath. Jareth picked it out of the air.

It wasn’t his first firefight but he felt the same mixture of terror and exhilaration as he spun and turned in response to the motion he saw at the edges of his vision as Elon and Colath defended the entrance to their little shelter.

The Millersburg Quartet

2011-07-08T14:55:00.000-07:00

When I started to write the Millersburg Quartet series, I wanted to write about the girls who had been geeks in high school, the nerds, the outcasts, the ones who were different, who never quite fit in. You know. Us.
We hung together, some of us, against the cliques and groups and some of us stayed friends for a long time after high school and college.

Ali was the smart one, taking college courses while still in high school. A meteoric rise though led to an equally meteoric fall. To add insult to injury she discovered that her boyfriend had gotten engaged. To someone else. With her life and career in shambles, she goes in search of her mother's roots in Ireland. When she offers Aidan O'Connell a lift from his broken down car, she gains a handsome tour guide. But there's a lot she doesn't know about Aidan. Is he only looking for a brief Irish Fling?

Cam Kenyon has come home a different woman than the one that left. Always the sensible one, she's now a respected psychologist. If only she could apply that new-found confidence to Noah Denton, her old high school crush and the candidate for District Attorney. Some things haven't changed. But when she learns Noah's opponent is resorting to Dirty Politics, she can't stand aside.

Molly was the theater geek but now she's a teacher and her only forays in the theater are with the local community theater group. Then bad boy director Jack Tyler shows up, trying to wrestle his demons while rediscover his love of the craft. Getting involved with Jack is a risk. Is it one Molly's willing to take? Will she make the Director's Cut?

The wild child of the four, sculptor and welder Jesse Chamberlain has always been impulsive. For Mitch Donovan, whose world has been turned upside down, she's just the thing to shake him out of the tailspin he's been in. Suddenly he's riding Two Up and the writer's block that's plagued him has vanished. The announcement of a new M. J. Donovan novel, though, brings a fan out of hiding. What he doesn't count on is Jesse.

Here's a bit of trivia for fans. Almost all of these stories were inspired by real life, some by real people and/or real places. Like the solo trip to Ireland from Irish Fling and the grotto in the woods with its homemade hot tub in Two Up. The rest I'll leave you all to guess. I hope you all enjoy them.

Smashwords July Summer/Winter Sale Specials

2011-07-07T16:12:00.000-07:00

If you love my books and there's that fantasy or romance series you've just been dying to buy, this is the month to buy them. If it's epic fantasy you're looking for you'll love The Coming Storm series with it's Elves and Dark Wizards. Or perhaps you'd like the thrill of The Heart of the Gods as an archaeologist unearths an ancient tomb and resurrects more than he bargained for. Maybe you'd love the heroic fantasy of Song of the Fairy Queen when Fairy join with men to restore a King to his throne.
If it's romance you're looking for, try The Millersburg Quartet - Irish Fling, Dirty Politics, Director's Cut and Two Up - about four women who were the geeks in high school. Now they're all grown up and finding the right one.
Then there's The Last Resort, where troubleshooter Carrie Anderson just might be coed Gwen Smith's only hope.

Oh, and did I mention... Cooking Class... a hot and sweet little erotica, about a hot-tempered chef and the woman who heats him up.

Fantasy, romance and excitement, it's all right here - http://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=Valerie+Douglas. And all for 50% off. Just use the code SSW50 when you make your purchase.

And while you're visiting, take a look at all the other great books featured there.

Sample Sunday - The Last Resort

2011-06-26T07:03:00.000-07:00

Writing The Last Resort was such a strange and wonderful experience. It's very loosely based on real events and some real people (names changed to protect the guilty). A part of me is curious if readers will be able to tell which is which, some of the characters definitely felt as real to me as their living counterparts.
It's also the only one of my books written in the first person and of all my characters, Carrie is the closest to me as a person. And, strangely, it's been a bridge between the past and the present - the description of the character of Drew, based on a real person I never met, closely resembles my husband in a lot of ways. Who I didn't meet until after I wrote it.
A mix of thriller, mystery and romance, despite that at its core it has a lighter heart than many of my other books. A missing coed, a group of people dedicated to helping people escape domestic violence, and a budding romance between two people who haven't have much luck at love. All that's about to change.

The Last Resort
When Jack Spencer, the Head of Security for Fairview Mountain Resort calls to ask her to find a missing coed, computer tech and sometimes troubleshooter Carrie Anderson answers. The last thing the resort needs is bad publicity. Jack knows that on the side, Carrie is part of a team that help domestic violence victims escape their homes and abusers. Complicating things is the handsome new attorney that just joined the team.
What she finds though will test all her skills at making people disappear and put all their lives in danger.

Excerpt:
(My name is Carrie Anderson and this was a helluva first rescue for Drew...)

There was banging on the doors above us.
“Can you hear him?” I asked the 911 operator.
“Yes, ma'am. I heard that. Officers are on their way.” “How long?”
In rural areas like ours, it could be as short as twenty minutes - too long - or even longer, before help arrived.
She hesitated. “They’re coming as quickly as they can.”
In other words, too long. Okay. Back to Plan A.
I peeked out the window. He was standing out there pacing in agitation, pulling on his hair. He kicked the door, pulled something big, shiny, and metallic out of his pocket, and pointed it at the door. He thought about it. Now I could clearly see it. Definitely a gun. Abruptly, he turned and started across the parking lot. I hit mute.
“Everyone up the stairs,” I said.
I led the way. “I go first. If I yell ‘back’, get back inside the door, lock it, and go back downstairs into the bathroom. Okay? Don’t argue, don’t stop, just go. Got it?”
They nodded. Sandy looked very shaky.
“Don’t fall apart on me now,” I cautioned. “Remember the children.”
Her eyes widened, but she seemed to steady.
No window in the door. Take a chance, unlock it, and look? I had to.
Easing back the lock, I pulled open the door a crack and peeked out.
He was standing at the edge of the parking lot by the road, irresolutely. He glanced back and I prayed he couldn’t tell the door was ajar. I held up a hand to the others. Wait.
Turning, he looked both ways and trotted down the road with determination. It made sense. If no one was here, the most likely place the Pastor would have taken them would have been the parsonage. His home. I wanted Miller on the porch. The parsonage was an old forties style two-story, with a wide porch that wrapped around one side. Two windows overlooked the porch and the door into the house was along the side. For thirty seconds or so we’d be out of view. Please.
The wait seemed interminable. I kept praying for sirens, but I didn’t hear them yet. Come on, come on. Down the road, Miller was trotting now, in a hurry. If he heard sirens, he’d turn around, make a run for his car. In his state of mind, he’d be almost sure they were coming for him. I wasn’t sure which to root for. Go, just please go.
He was up on the porch. Please let the Pastor’s wife be gone, or let him be on good behavior. Then he was around the corner.
“Now.” I sprinted out the door and hit the remote lock release on my car. “Drew, front seat. Pastor and Sandy, back. Dog and kids on the floor.”
Doors flew open as I rammed the key into the ignition and started the car. Doors slammed.
“Seatbelts,” I shouted, ramming mine into place before throwing the car in gear. My eyes were glued to the rearview mirror.
The slamming doors on a quiet Thursday afternoon had gotten his attention. I could see his tiny figure come flying off the porch at a dead run.
I hit the gas and shot the car toward the dirt road. Dust plumed behind us. I heard a noise, a bang, something. Please let it be too far away. Drew had a hand braced on the dashboard of the car, the other cradling a child’s head against his knee to keep it from bouncing off the bottom of the dash. Good man. The child looked up at me with wide, frightened eyes.

The Last Resort - available through Smashwords http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/62262,
Barnes & Noble http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Last-Resort/Valerie-Douglas/e/2940012614605
and Amazon.com

Does anyone else miss Heroic Fantasy?

2011-06-19T07:32:00.000-07:00

Just a great story with great characters about people fighting nearly impossible odds to try to do what's right? With good guys, and bad guys, and characters who want to do good, and some who think they are but aren't? I know I do and did. That's part of the reason I write them...

Setting Boundaries - After centuries of war an uneasy peace has finally been negotiated between Elves, Dwarves and Men, thanks to Elon of Aerilann, Elven councilor to the High King. One final task yet remains, one last bone of contention - to set the boundaries between their lands. It's a task that will be easier said than done. Although the lesser Kings signed the Alliance not all of them wish to see it succeed, and some are willing to oppose it. Violently.
For journeyman wizard Jareth it's the opportunity of a lifetime. Unlike many he's long admired the calm, seemingly aloof Elves, especially Elon of Aerilann and his paxman Colath.
What he doesn't know is that the journey they will share will test him to his limits and forge friendships that will last for centuries.

Kindle http://www.amazon.co.uk/Setting-Boundaries-novella-Coming-ebook/dp/B004RJ7X50/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1308485473&sr=1-3

Smashwords
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/43794

Cooking Class

2011-06-17T15:26:00.000-07:00

I had two great reviews for Cooking Class this week, from opposite ends of the erotica readers spectrum - someone who has never read one and someone who loves them - both gave it five stars.

wistfulskimmie on Jun. 15, 2011 :

This was my first introduction into reviewing an erotic book. Boy what an introduction it was! It was sort of Hell's Kitchen meets Kitchen Nightmares with a whole load of sauce added.
That being said, all the steamy scenes (and wow were they steamy!) were very tastefully done. I never felt they were gratuitous and they fitted in with the story.
I would be interested to read more from this author as I feel she writes from a woman's point of view...for women. A classy novel that I very much enjoyed.

5.0 out of 5 stars ;0), June 16, 2011
Lady Raven "Raven Rave" I'm speechless, I had to give myself a minute before I reviewed. When I first picked up the book I thought it was something else completely, as much as I love hardcore erotica I never really got into the menage romances, I felt it was too much for me with 3 different emotions. This was my first and I have to admit WOW what a read, by the third chapter alone ok what they did and what they did with the sauce *blushing* might have to look at sauces differently for awhile. It did remind me of the tv show Hell's Kitchen that I am a fan of with Evan's temper that people seem to be afraid of, Dylan very sexy and Lily I'm jealous of her lol.

This book literally had steam coming from it Double your Pleasure Double your Fun with this book, it has the sexy guys, and lovable female and sex, sex, sex and more hot sex. So be warn ahead of time if all these things are not on your checklist of things you like in a book then I don't know what to tell you but I surely enjoy the read.

Thanks ladies!

Cooking Class -

Lily Cavanaugh did it the hard way. She'd apprenticed under Master Chef Evan Taylor until he threw one temper tantrum too many. She was madly in love with him but so was every other woman who worked for him. So she walked away and built her own restaurant. Then Evan and the director of his new TV show, Dylan Bryant, walk into her restaurant to offer her an intriguing proposition...

Nook

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cooking-class-v-j-devereaux/1031109509?ean=2940012407986&itm=1&usri=cooking%2bclass

Holding out for a hero

2011-06-13T14:59:00.000-07:00

I miss heroes. The real ones, not the surly, lip-curling badass on a motorcycle, the alpha male who treats a woman like a helpless idiot, but the real ones. You know, the good old-fashioned kind of hero, the average guy just trying to do what's right, or who finds himself caught up in a situation he can't turn his back on.
What brought this up? Someone mentioned the difference between the (relatively) new Cape Fear movie with Nick Nolte and Robert DeNiro and the old version with Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum.
In the new version, under the frequently misguided decision to add 'flaws' to the lead character, they made Nolte a shadier character than Peck was in the original and that took some of the edge away for me right off the bat. In the original, Peck is a lawyer trying to do a decent job but Mitchum blames him for not getting him off. Right away, you're rooting for Peck. And the burly Mitchum is clearly a tough guy, while Peck isn't. The odds are clearly stacked against him, setting up the ending.
There are some who would argue that heroes should have flaws and I couldn't agree more. But most of the true life heroes you see aren't six foot six biker type dudes in leather. In most cases, those are the bad guys. The real heroes are the firefighters, the policemen, the citizen soldiers. If you look at them, they come in all shapes and sizes. All of them have problems and issues, the same kind many of the antiheroes do.
Our society sometimes almost seems to encourage our helplessness - you can't fight city hall, don't get involved.
There's a TV show out of Canada, called Flashpoint, that epitomizes what I'm talking about. Oh they've got a pretty guy, but the two leads Enrico Colantani and Hugh Dillon aren't your classic hero types. Both are follically challenged *grins* but Hugh could park his shoes under my bed any day. Just don't tell my husband that - although to tell the truth what got me a little about him was his slight resemblance to another 'everyday' hero - Michael Biehn from Terminator.
I think of the volunteer firefighters in most communities, who risk their lives to save those in burning homes. And I think of the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan or the men who ran INTO the Towers that day. You look at their pictures and you see extra-ordinary men - who put their lives on the line every day. We should celebrate, and write about, those heroes. And remember the ones who inspired them.

Sample Sunday - The Coming Storm

2011-06-12T11:41:00.000-07:00

From Donna K. Fitch's Blog - What I'm Reading http://www.donnakfitch.com/index.php
(Since she did such a great job, I thought I'd let her do my talking for me!)

The Coming Storm came as a gust of fresh air to me. I support independent e-books, but the last two I read were not to my taste for various reasons. I haven't read epic fantasy in a long time, but picked this one up because of Valerie's appealing and helpful personality on the Indie Authors Group on Facebook. I was immediately struck by the carefully crafted writing of a skilled author and a well-edited work. The descriptions are lovingly detailed and vividly portrayed. Races that often seem hackneyed through overuse, such as Elves, are given fresh life by Ms. Douglas, preventing them from being Tolkien clones. The characters are likeable but dimensional, with their flaws and foibles.

Description:
Elon of Aerilann, Elven advisor to the High King of Men, helped to negotiate the treaty between Elves, Dwarves and men. That treaty has held for nearly twenty years but now his foresight warns him that the fragile truce between the races is threatened from without by an unknown enemy and from within by old hatreds and prejudice. With the aid of his true-friend Colath, the wizard Jareth and the elven archer Jalila, he goes in search of the source of the threat.

Ailith, the Heir to Riverford - fights her own silent battle. Her father has changed, something's wrong, but she can't say what, only that her beloved father is suddenly prone to inexplicable rages. Her quest to discover what changed him puts her life and soul in danger and leaves her only one place to turn. Elon. Ailith, though, has a secret that threatens everything for which they're fighting. To preserve the alliance, though, Elon will be forced to choose between his honor, his duty, and much more.

Excerpt:

The mother bear had put up a terrible fight to save her cubs, as such will do when their young were threatened. All around the clearing the dirt was torn up, the underbrush crushed and the trees marked with blood and fur. It had been a valiant but futile effort on the part of the bear. Little remained of her and her offspring except for the blood, the shattered bones and a few traces of offal. They stank but not nearly as much as the reek of something else, something that chilled Elon’s blood.

“Kobold,” he said, quietly into the unnatural silence of the wood, mute testimony to the fact that the predators that had done this still remained somewhere near.

They hadn’t reckoned on kobolds. Although there had been reports of something killing down here, they’d thought it was perhaps a young orc or a boggart. So far from the borderlands, it would’ve been more likely by far to be a rogue bear.

It wasn’t the bear that had gone rogue.

Every sense was alert, his eyes as much on the destruction here as on the least twitch of a branch against the breeze.

Around him, the eyes of the other Hunters scanned everywhere, down in the shadows, up into the branches and all around. Bows were strung and arrows were notched against what they couldn’t see.

“Aye,” Colath said, kneeling in the dirt next to a particularly noxious heap of offal and scat. Looking up, he gave Elon a significant look. “More than one.”

Elon looked closer, not that he had any doubts as to true-friend’s assessment. The signs were unmistakable. The coldness in his belly spread. Colath, his true-friend, paxman and most trusted companion, was vulnerable down there. Especially to kobolds, who ran low to the ground.

“Kobolds don’t travel in packs. Something’s wrong here. Get back in the saddle, Colath, and quickly.”

He didn’t speak loudly but he did speak urgently and then gave a soft, low whistle to call the others in as well.

An answer came from the scouts, who were already turning, quickly and quietly, to close in on the rest of the group. They, too, were vulnerable, so far from the others.

Those closest to them had already heard and were alert, passing the news to those who couldn’t hear. Elf or man, without instruction, responded by pairing up. One looked up into the trees, the other scanned the bushes around them. Men had an atavistic and ancient abhorrence of these creatures and no one of either race would discount instinct. Elon trusted his people enough not to need to remind them. Noise, too, wouldn’t serve them well here.

Colath didn’t need much urging or even the reminder. A cold chill had gone up his spine at the thought. Being on the ground was a bad position with kobolds around. He was exposed there. In one quick move he swung up into the saddle and drew his bow. Not his best weapon―that was the sword―but best against kobolds.

One kobold was bad enough but two were a nightmare.

With one kobold, a band this size was barely enough. For two? They were too few. Especially in country like this, with a lot of scrub trees and too much low cover. A bear and two cubs were a good enough meal for one kobold but not a second. This had happened some days ago, they would be hungry again and searching for prey.

Bears, wolves and mountain cats, all those natural creatures would avoid Elves, Men, or Dwarves unless they were desperate or starving. Kobolds, magically warped creatures of the borderlands, preferred the taste of men if they were near and would seek them out, although they would take a wounded Elf if they could. Elves were tougher prey.

Fantasy
The Coming Storm series
The Coming Storm [Kindle] [Smashwords]
Not Magic Enough - prequel [Kindle] [Smashwords]
Setting Boundaries - prequel [Kindle] [Smashwords]
A Convocation of Kings - sequel [Kindle] [Smashwords]
Song of the Fairy Queen [Kindle] [Smashwords]

Thriller/Fantasy
Heart of the Gods [Paperback] [Kindle] [Smashwords]
(Servant of the Gods - prequel - coming soon)

Suspense/Thriller
The Last Resort [Kindle] [Smashwords]
(Nike's Wings - coming soon)

Romance
The Millersburg Quartet
Dirty Politics [Kindle] [Smashwords]
Two Up [Kindle] [Smashwords]
(Irish Fling - coming July 1)
(Director's Cut - coming July 1)

Erotic Romance
Cooking Class [Smashwords]

Sample Sunday - Heart of the Gods

2011-06-05T10:28:00.000-07:00

I always wanted to write about ancient Egypt. Everything from their egalitarian society to their Gods fascinated me. Did you ever notice that only in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics do you constantly see both the men and the women represented? Not solitary figures. And many of the statues had their spouses beside them. Even their Gods were equal. No philandering, no bad behavior (except by Set.) And it was devoted Isis who rescued Osiris when he was betrayed by his brother. Knowing the Egyptian gods as I did, I felt bad for poor Anubis when they did The Mummy movies (not that I minded watching them, or one or two of the actors).
So, one day I'm piddling around with this idea...sort of daydreaming... There'd been a recent discovery of a new tomb, and I was thinking about the steps the Egyptians tried to take to keep thieves out, and their burial rites. Of course, the proverbial what if... What if there was this ancient tomb, with something nasty in it, and they really wanted it to be protected. I had been reading the Book of Emerging into Day (aka The Book of the Dead) and speculating on how they could create a Guardian of that tomb...
It was originally one book that began in ancient Egypt and came forward into present day. From the get-go I knew it would be a series but I quickly realized I'd have to break the book up into two books - the first of which is

Heart of the Gods

Tales of the legendary Tomb of the Djinn and its Guardian fascinated Ky Farrar since a visit to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo when he was a boy. The story of the star-crossed lovers and their battle to save ancient Egypt from the dark Djinn made him decide to become an archeologist. He believes he’s close to finding it―only to discover the Tomb's Guardian is all too real and far closer than he expects. And she's as lovely as she is lethal.
It’s a race against time to reach the Tomb before it’s opened and Djinn are released. For if they are even the Guardian may not be able to stop them

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Heart-of-the-Gods-ebook/dp/B004RJ8RIW/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1301925653&sr=1-2

Barnes & Noble
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Heart-of-the-Gods/Valerie-Douglas/e/2940012213808/?itm=4

Smashwords

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/44102

Valerie Douglas - Writer's Blog

Happy Anniversary to me!

A Convocation of Kings - Second Edition

Sample Sunday - The Coming Storm

Sample Sunday - Heart of the Gods

How watching Survivor can make your writing better...

Egypt - of women and libraries... history repeats itself

Numbers.... Normally one wouldn't shout "I'm Number 3!"..unless...

A Sign of the Times?

How to Publish Your Novel in the E-book Age Press Release

A fine pair of boobies *grins*

Sample Sunday - The Last Resort

Amazing News - I signed a contract with....

Valerie Douglas - Servant of the Gods - Fantasy Island Book Publishing - Egypt

In Memory of a four-footed friend - courage and strength

Blog Tour de Troops - November 11th - 14th - Final Day!

Sample Sunday - Servant of the Gods

Blog Tour de Troops - November 11th - 14th - Starts Tomorrow!!!

Blog Tour de Troops - November 11th - 14th

Sample Sunday - Not Magic Enough

Blog Tour de Troops - November 11th - 14th

Sample Sunday - Servant of the Gods

Ancient Cultures/Modern Writing - Avoiding Prejudices

Sample Sunday - The Last Resort - In Honor of Domestic Violence Awareness Month

Personal Blog - Rocky Mountain Travels

From the press release

Sample Sunday - Heart of the Gods

Sex and Violence or Violence and Sex

Fantastic Fridays - Director's Cut

How to Write a Killer Blurb

Sample Sunday - Nike's Wings

A little word on the Indie Author/Editor self-editing conundrum

Sample Sunday - Song of the Fairy Queen

Sample Sunday - Not Magic Enough

Thriller Thursday - Heart of the Gods

Setting Boundaries - the little story that could

The Millersburg Quartet

Smashwords July Summer/Winter Sale Specials

Sample Sunday - The Last Resort

Does anyone else miss Heroic Fantasy?

Cooking Class

Holding out for a hero

Sample Sunday - The Coming Storm

Sample Sunday - Heart of the Gods

A fine pair of boobies grins