Guest Blog - Doris O'Connor is bringing us some Panther Magic!

It's always a pleasure to have Doris here! I'll let her fill you in on all the details of her newest release - PANTHER MAGIC. Take it away, Doris...

Thanks so much for having me on your blog today with my new release, Panther Magic, book five of The Projects series. 

You know that old saying… A picture speaks a thousand words. Never is that truer than when your muse is a very visual creature like mine is. Hot men get her going every time, and this story is no exception. I had no intention of writing this story in fact, until, my search for a Mancandy birthday pic for a friend let me to these two hunks.

Incidentally, if anyone knows who these two are, please let me know in the comments 

Where was I? Oh yes… My friend loved the pic, and some light hearted banter occurred. Was she going to have one or two…. Separately or at the same time…

*grins*

Her husband chirped up saying it sounded like one of my books, and just like that Zeb and Aran Harris jumped into my head, and wouldn’t leave me alone until I told their story.

And, trust me, having not one but two Alpha, Panther Shifter, Doms in my head, I did as I was told—fast!

I’ve learned long ago, never to argue with my characters, especially the Doms. No, sirreee, this little subbie does as she’s told in those circumstances.

You can’t say the same about the heroine of this story, Kate. Experienced submissive she might be, but as those in the lifestyle will know, that certainly doesn’t equal doormat, and Kate is one feisty human.

Kate does not believe in magic, and using animals in their act is just cruel, and she’s not afraid to put that point across. In the end—of course—resistance is futile.

She can’t resist the combined dominance of Arran and Zeb, and when they do get together they ignite the pages.

Prepare to laugh, cry, and fear for them all, when that dreaded council gets involved…

Blurb:

There’s no such thing as magic…

Kate doesn’t believe in it, let alone the panther sort Arran and Zeb Harris are famous for. Using animals in their act is just downright cruel. If only she could convince her libido of that. Instead she seems to have fallen head over heels in lust with those sex-on-legs twin brothers. Getting laid will cure this, surely?

When panther shifters Arran and Zeb scent their mate, they know they’ll have a fight on their hands. The delectable human morsel might be submissive, but Kate has spirit, never mind the small matter she has no idea shifters exist.

They want her submission freely given and not forced upon her by the mysterious mating bond. However, when their panthers kill while rescuing Kate, that bond might well be the only thing to keep them alive.

It’s up to Kate to save her Sirs.

Buy it from Evernight ARe Bookstrand Amazon B&N

Read on for a (mature!) excerpt and a giveaway!

Buy! Buy! Buy!

Yes, BLOOD WITCH is in the wild and available for your e-reader right this very second. Where, you ask?

Evernight
All Romance Ebooks
Amazon US
Amazon UK

Get it while it's hot!*

*It will always be hot.

Witches, Wolves, and the Ties Between

So in case I hadn't mentioned it yet, BLOOD WITCH is out tomorrow! *showers everyone with glitter* And tomorrow I'll do the usual business of throwing buy links in your faces and being over-excited, but today I thought I'd share an interesting factoid about BLOOD WITCH.

BLOOD WITCH exists because of a book read by a character in another series of mine.

Yes, this gets meta.

I mentioned when I finished the first draft of BLOOD WITCH that an early scene where Lola, our fearless heroine, goes to visit her ex-girlfriend was originally part of an urban fantasy parody I was writing. Lola's ex, Rowan, owns and runs a high-scale BDSM club which just so happens to be the scene of the murder that kicks off all the trouble in BLOOD WITCH. This club is called the Red Lotus and I lifted the club, and the murder for that matter, from this parody.

So what was the deal with the parody? Ugh, long story short, I was going through a bout of anxiety over my writing and decided I'd just find something silly and fun to work on until it was resolved. I'd not long finished writing BLOOD HUNT (my second Urban Wolf novel), and one of the things I'd really enjoyed about that was working in references to Ayla's favourite series of books.

The Katrina Pagan series is a very OTT urban fantasy series that exists only in the Urban Wolf world. Ayla loves them, Shannon teases her for loving them. They are meant to be a riff on the genre, exaggerating the tropes and poking fun at the themes. So when I was in a funk and wanted something utterly ludicrous to work on, I thought...why not an actual Katrina Pagan story? It could be as stupid and embarrassing as I liked, it would never have to see the light of day, and it might shake me out of the funk.

I wrote about 1000 words of ridiculous cliched shenanigans and then, I guess, something distracting came along, like a new series of MasterChef, and I forgot about Katrina. Until some time in 2014 when I was salvaging my old, nearly-dead laptop for files I wanted to keep. On a whim, I opened up the Katrina file and found I kinda liked that opening scene with a bloody murder at a sex club. It was too good to waste, but I no longer had any desire to write a stupid, embarrassing story.

And then I found something else - a few pages from a notebook, where a witch is being questioned by the police over a murder she didn't commit.

And then...alchemy.

Well, not immediately. It took me several months (with a massive gap in between) before I got past the first three chapters of BLOOD WITCH. But I had it, or at least the opening. I had Lola.

So because of a fictional book my fictional werewolf read in one of my actual novels, tomorrow you get to read a brand new actual novella from me! A novella with witches! Demons! Murder! And strangely no werewolves!

Have some glitter.

BLOOD WITCH cover reveal

I have been more or less gagging all day to show this off, but I didn't think I'd get the final files for a while yet. BUT HERE WE ARE! Courtesy of the very talented Jay Aheer, I'm delighted to show off the gorgeous, moody cover for BLOOD WITCH.

 

I love it! I can't wait for this to come out so you can all love it as much as I do. Because you will. You must! How can you resist this cover?

How to Handle Your Editing Hangover

So I spent the past couple of days working on the first round of edits for BLOOD WITCH. It was a relatively smooth process - I added in a couple of scenes, tightened up some sloppy prose, and generally polished up the manuscript. In the next couple of days I should know if there'll be a second round. For all that it was a pretty stress-free process, I feel strangely exhausted and hungover today. Moody, listless, and blah. I always feel like this after finishing either a first draft or an editing session, though - I think it's probably similar to an adrenaline dump, but of the mind rather than the body. Before I open the manuscript to check the required edits, my mind is all geared up and ready for battle. Ready to defend my deathless prose to the...death, I suppose. Ready to argue and fight over the placement of a comma or whether or not this witty piece of dialogue is really necessary. Or ready to accept that my story is awful and I'm awful and everything is awful and what was I thinking? Because I always expect editing to be a battle between me and the editor.

And it never is. My editors are always lovely and they get my work and their suggestions are always helpful. So then all this mental energy I've amassed in order to deal with the Epic Battle of Wills I'm subconsciously convinced is coming...It has nowhere to go. I power through the edits and then I'm left with a surplus of energy and nothing to do with it, and generally the people around me assume I've slumped into a terrible depression.

But today I was prepared! Knowing I'd be kinda crappy and at a loss today, I made myself do some stuff. Kyle and I went into town for a bit of light Ingressing this morning, then I stopped off for fancy chocolate and came home alone for a little "me time," which has largely consisted of watching Destination Truth and eating said chocolate whilst drinking fancy tea. Because I am nothing if not fancy.

Artist's rendition of Naomi in relaxation mode

I've also been working on my Master Plan to buy a tarantula (which is totally Ally of Word Vagabond's fault). My plan is not particularly complex, as it mostly consists of "buy tarantula, enjoy tarantula ownership," but we're waiting for a couple of other things to happen before we actually buy one, so in the mean time I'm researching Mexican red knees and their care, and making short lists of possible tarantula names, because I know what matters when it comes to buying an exotic pet (and since Kyle named the snakes, I intend to name the spider. It's my turn).

This. This is what my house is missing.

With the edits temporarily on hold and my moodiness mostly under control, I'll give myself the rest of today off and get back to writing tomorrow. I'm planning to finish an Amber Morgan project, which should be done this week, and then turn my attention to a new Ethan Banning short story. Hopefully, if there are no more edits for BLOOD WITCH, I can start thinking about release dates, cover art, and promo...by which time I may well own that tarantula.

Build Your Own Dystopian Future - Today!

No, don't worry, I'm not going to talk about politics.* I'm going to talk about gaming!

I'm a casual gamer. I have an obsessive love for the Legacy of Kain games (ask me how I feel about Rahab! Please!) and Guild Wars 2 (probably don't ask me how I feel about GW2 because there are only so many hours in the day), but Ye Olde Arm Problem** keeps me from gaming very much these days. This makes me sad, but I have found a solution! Ingress.

Ingress is basically virtual Capture the Flag - you play on your smart phone, you wander the wilderness (or the city, whatever), hacking virtual portals, capturing them, and looting them for virtual goodies, and then getting unreasonably angry when someone on the other team does it to you. It's stupidly addictive, easy to get to grips with, and has the added bonus of making you walk places. For someone who's idea of exercise is "walking to the kettle and back," this is pretty good for me. Plus you end up finding things in your city you never knew existed, because someone has made them into a portal and you need to go hack the shit out of that.

But the BEST PART is that you can pretend you live in a high-tech dystopian future as you walk around your village hacking pubs/portals and collecting virtual loot. Honestly. If you can play Ingress without pretending to be a secret spy who's part of an underground movement that opposes the evil, shadowy Tory government that wants to access all your communications*** then you are a better person than I am. Because I basically spend my bus rides to work at the moment pretending I live in a futuristic anime. (Kyle always wears a black hoodie with the hood up when he's playing. It helps him get into character.)

So while I wait for my physiotherapist to decide if I have neuropathic damage or am just a massive drama queen, I'm staying away from computer gaming (and saving my arms for writing) and Ingressing instead. If you're a walker anyway, or you like roleplaying or screwing over strangers by destroying their carefully maintained portals, this is something you would probably like. You may also find yourself engaged in deep philosophical discussions about transhumanism, in which case I also recommend you check out the Mysterious Universe podcast.

Also you should join the Enlightened team. Trust me.

*Although seriously, we need to talk about politics.

**My current physiotherapist is telling me to do all the things my last physiotherapist told me to avoid, so...That's happening.

***Oops, I politcked.

"...all the magic I have known I've had to make myself."

Shel Silverstein

Earlier this year I got a new tattoo on my forearm. It's the first part of one of my all time favourite quotes - hope begins in the dark. I named my blog after that quote, so it was probably only a matter of time before I went one step further and had it inked onto myself.

Note also the attractive bruise above "dark" from where Remic gave me a love bite last weekend

It's an important quote to me, massively so, and one I've recited to myself daily over the past few years when personal griefs and family tragedies seemed to come one after the other. But it's really the last line of the quote that's been playing on my mind lately:

 

You wait and watch and work; you don't give up. Oh sweet Cthulhu, this. This! You can't just sit around waiting for the world to change. You have to make it change. I laid a lot of groundwork for myself in 2014. I bloody well worked to get back to where I wanted to be.

And in 2015, the Year of the Basilisk, that work is paying off. I've already produced more new stuff than I did for the past two years. I've signed three publishing contracts, two under my pen name, and I'm writing more regularly (almost daily, which I really never thought I'd be able to manage again). I'm writing in new genres, as well as the one I love most, and I'm having a shit-ton of fun on both fronts. 

I'm so excited about BLOOD WITCH, I can't even tell you! A brand new world, new characters that I adore, and a story that made me really fucking love writing again. The provisional publication date is June, so I'm expected all the fun stuff like edits and cover art to start appearing soon. My first Amber Morgan title, THROUGH HER EYES, is out on 8th May, and my second, EXILED ALPHA, will be appearing in a summer-released anthology. I've got a new Ethan Banning short story brewing in my head, and plans for at least two more Blood Canticle books. I used to feel like I had to have a set schedule for my writing - "I will work on A, and then B, and then C" - and if I didn't stick to that, I'd feel like I was failing at something. I'm trying to shrug off that attitude and I'm stumbling into new stories and worlds along the way.

Spring is here. There's no denying there's something magical in the air at this time of year. But I'm inclined to believe it's magic we've created through our own hard work. The first few months of 2015 have been pretty awesome. I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the year brings.