Okay, I have abandoned my poor blog and I am sorry, the last few months have been horrible but I’m back, I swear.
And trying to do Nanowrimo! I say trying because it’s day 5 and I am only on 2500 “words.” I say “words” because this year I’m being a Nano rebel and finishing the massive structural edit I’m doing to the first book in Ariana’s cozy mystery series. General rule for Nano word count is there’s 1000 words for every hour of editing. And you can’t cheat and say you’re “editing” while you’re watching TV and pecking out a sentence here or there.
I mean, you could cheat, but the whole point of Nano is to challenge yourself and there’s really no point in cheating because you’re only cheating yourself.
I’ve got about 2 and 1/4th books written in Ariana’s SDF series. The first needs a ton of work, the second less so, and the third is what I’ll be writing after I finish the damn edit.
And (hopefully!) I can get my shit together and get these pounded out and polished fast because I’m planning on doing a 3 in 3 release. 3 books in 3 months. The 1st one at the end of this month, 2nd in Dec, or start of Jan, and 3rd in Jan.
Here’s an excerpt from the first book, Psychic Undercover (With the Undead!).
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“What are you?” Quil asked, resting a cool hand on my forehead. “You’re burning up.”
He took a deep whiff and cupped my cheek with his other hand.
We stared at each other for nearly a minute, him breathing me in, and me cooling down.
Finally he asked again, “What are you?”
Have you ever had one of those moments where you ask yourself just a split-second later, “Why in the blazes did I do that?”
I opened my mouth, perfectly ready to lie and say I had an infection, when instead I said, “I’m a psychic.”
He drew air through his teeth in some strange parody of a hiss. “You know what we are?”
I nodded.
“Why are you here?”
“I’m trying to find out who killed Jo.”
Why am I answering him! I took a deep breath. What was it Grant always said? The best lies are mostly truth.
“I’m a fr… was a friend of hers. I figured out she worked here and I was hoping to get in and… I don’t know… look around. Find out what killed her.”
“You mean a vampire?” he asked.
I gulped and nodded. “I saw her body. She had two holes in her neck.”
He blinked quickly.
“You didn’t know that?”
“Two holes in the neck?”
I nodded again.
“What did you see when I touched you?”
Change of subject. Interesting.
“I saw you hunting. You took down this huge boar and you were really proud of yourself.”
His eyes met mine again. “That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“Why I can’t hypnotize you.”
“Hypnotize?” I asked. “You guys can actually do that?”
He didn’t answer.
“Hello! You’re a vamp; unless that whole thing about your hearing being fantastic is a myth, you can hear me. Don’t ignore me.”
Okay, yelling at somethin’ that’s about twice as strong as the average human is stupid.
He sneered and before I could blink he was leanin’ in front of me, face inches away.
My heart skyrocketed, hitting the moon, actually, it probably got to Mars.
“You would do well to mind your manners, little one.”
“I will if you will.”
Yes, I’m that stupid.
But he actually smiled. It was cold and made his eyes sparkle like snow.
His lips parted and slender fangs slid out, framing his two front teeth like pillars.
I gasped, heart-rate spiking into the absurd. His eyes looked almost red for a moment as they started me down.
Then the color and the fangs were gone and I wasn’t sure if I imagined them or not.
“Fair enough.” He was across the room in a flash, reclining against the wall like he’d been there an hour. “I’m investigating her death as well.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You’re not surprised?” he asked.
My eyes danced and his face turned cloudy. He was behind me in an instant and I jumped in my seat.
How did they move that fast!
“I could make you tell me,” he whispered in my ear, ticklin’ the small hairs with the breath.
He took a deliberate sniff again. I tried to stand, but he put a hand on my shoulder soon as I twitched.
Where were the guys?
His cold fingers twiddled my ear and I froze solid as he took out the earwig and hung it in front of my face.
“Now tell me,” he said, “where does a college girl get something like this?”
I gulped.
“I don’t like being lied to, Ariana.”
He closed his fist over the small electronic right in front of my face and it snapped, crackled, and finally popped.
“This room is protected from bugs, but I hope that made my point.”
He dropped the broken bug to the floor and walked around, sittin’ in front of me again.
“The point being, we don’t like spies in our midst.” His voice was still so quiet.
Oh yeah, I got the point.
I wasn’t leaving this room alive.
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