Tag Archives: Books

Cast by Flames sneak peek and pre-order

I have good news that Cast by Flames (ebook version) is now available for pre-order on all major retailers. Links are below.

For those who’d like to get a peek at the novel, I’m posting the first chapter as well. Keep in mind that it’s with the editor, so some minor changes may be made to the final version. I hope everyone’s week is going great!

AMAZON US AMAZON UK

Chapter 1

Bailey

The massive green dragon lay on its side with its tongue lolling from its mouth, having expelled its final breath moments before. A puddle of blood pooled under its chest. I’d hardly had to try when I killed it despite the fact it likely weighed twenty times as much as me.

The beast and two of its buddies had been chasing down a group of kids, hoping to snack on them. Their prey looked like preteen orphans who’d formed a gang—not all that uncommon after more than six years of living with dragons in our world.

So many people had died in that time.

According to very rough estimates, the Earth had lost at least half its population. Of course, an official census was impossible, but many of us suspected the percentage was far greater than that. Lack of modern medicine, clean water, law and order, changed landscapes, and numerous other factors steadily eroded mankind.

My friends and I had intervened in this latest attack, using magically enhanced bullets and arrows we’d acquired from sorcerers to shoot at our targets and bring them to the ground, but my part in the fight had ended too soon for my liking. The dragon I’d attacked hadn’t even recovered from its fall before I stuck a sword in its heart. Any true slayer wanted a bit of a challenge before the battle ended.

At least the kids we’d saved had the sense to run away the moment we intervened.

I glanced over at one of my hunting partners, Rayna. “Any trouble with yours?”

“Nope.” She blew a lock of her long, coppery brown hair from her face. She’d put it in a tight braid, but her wavy strands often came loose while fighting. “It’s annoyingly disappointing.”

“It seems like only the weakest and dumbest members of the Shadowan hang around here anymore.”

She nodded with resignation in her hazel eyes.

We were currently on a hunt in south Oklahoma City. As slayers, Rayna and I had to fight at least once a week to quell our dragon-killing urges, but even that pushed our limits if we spent a lot of time around our innate enemies. Considering I was mated to the pendragon of the Taugud—a shifter clan—and lived in his castle with him and our son, I tried not to wait that long.

Rayna lived away from the fortress but still ran into enough dragon shifters while residing in their territory that she needed to play it safe, too. No matter how hard we fought it, our hard-wired instincts would win if we weren’t careful despite the fact the Taugud could take on human form. We had to stay on our allies’ good side with a much larger war looming against a powerful force to the West.

She wiped her sword clean and slid it into the scabbard strapped to her belt. “It is getting annoying. We haven’t had a decent fight in over a month, and our prey used to be tougher when we first started hunting here. These days, they don’t even hurt me before I finish them.”

“Yeah,” I said, humor and sarcasm lacing my voice. “It’s terribly frustrating when you walk away from a battle without a scratch.”

She grinned. “Right?”

Grunting and cursing came from about a hundred feet away, where Conrad still fought to finish his dragon. He wanted to be a slayer like me and Rayna. He’d been gifted with immunity to flames almost six years ago and used that advantage to fight our fiery-mouthed foes. I suspected he’d eaten a couple of hundred dragon hearts over that period, hoping to make the transition as we did. It was part of the initiation process for those of us born with the gene who accepted our duty. Conrad’s distasteful diet had made him stronger and faster, so I supposed he was on to something, but I was glad I only had to eat the heart once to become a full slayer. He was attempting it the hard way as a regular human.

Also, unlike us, he took his time with his prey and killed them slowly with sword strikes and verbal mockery. I’d begun to feel sorry for whichever dragon he targeted since it would die a slow and ignoble death. Conrad really enjoyed the job for someone not born into it.

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Cast by Flames coming soon

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I know the wait was longer than expected, but I wanted to let everyone know Cast by Flames is coming late next month. I’m currently getting final beta reader feedback. The manuscript is due to the editor at the end of this week.

Currently, it stands at nearly 158,000 words. To put it in perspective, the longest novel in this series was the last one, Torn in Flames, at 109,000 words. I hope this helps make up for the long wait.

I had to put a lot of my military knowledge into this one, along with research, to fill in the gaps where I had less experience. Writing was very fun as I wrapped up the story for the main characters. Of course, there is one spin-off with Galadon, so you will get to see several of them in that, but otherwise, this is the end of Aidan and Bailey’s journey.

Those of you who are members of my Facebook fan group have been getting regular updates for some time, but for those who haven’t, I’m going ahead and revealing the book cover below. You’ll also find the summary, which I just finalized, so that’s new.

I plan to get the pre-order up over the weekend, and once it’s live, I’ll post the links (likely early next week). As for the release date, I’ve got that set to December 30th to give time for the editor and my final revisions.

In the coming weeks, I’ll also share excerpts and the first chapter to give you a taste.

Hope everyone’s week is going well!

Malicious forces are coming for Bailey, Aidan, and everyone they know. The Kandoran are cunning and ruthless when conquering land and all the beings who live in it. They infect everyone they touch with evil magic, assimilating them for their own dark purposes.

With a massive army coming they cannot hope to match, the best Bailey and Aidan can do is court as many allies as possible to form an unlikely coalition of pure dragons, shifters, sorcerers, slayers, and humans bound together with the single purpose of preserving their way of life. They will have to form strategies and fight back in both modern and magical ways their adversary could never anticipate. Even then, the odds are against them, but with everything they love on the line, they’ll do whatever it takes to survive.

Publishing timeline, KU, and other updates

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Things have been hectic for me lately. Both of my sons have had some rare/unusual health problems, and my oldest spent several days in the hospital a couple of weeks ago. It was a similar issue to what happened to him last September when a virus triggered rhabdomyolysis (mentioned in this post), but it hit him even harder this time even though it was only a cold. I detailed what has been going on to my Facebook fan group if you’re interested in finding out more. We have begun to recover from that (the adults in the family got sick right after the boys began getting better and it was brutal on us too), but at least I can start catching up on author-related matters again.

The health issues did set me back a few weeks on my writing/book release schedule. I’d hoped to have Cast by Flames out by the end of July, but it’s now looking like mid-October (updated). Sorry for the delay, but I’ll be working hard to get it done and out to you all. After that, I’ll begin work on the Galadon novel with the hope of releasing it early 2024.

Kindle Unlimited News

I originally planned to pull the Dragon’s Breath Series from Kindle Unlimited early next month when the current 90-day term expires. Having said that, in recent weeks the ebooks have been getting borrowed and read at an increased rate that makes me hesitate to pull them. I’d hate to catch people in the middle of the series and cause them to be unable to borrow the rest, so I may leave the ebooks in the program for the rest of the year. The series would have gone back to KU around the time Cast by Flames released anyway.

Also, I am considering putting the Sensor Series in Kindle Unlimited for the very first time. Sales have slowed down for those books on the other retailers, so it would be a good chance to let readers try it in KU. This is also in anticipation of my returning to that universe next year (after I’m done with the Dragon’s Breath books, of course) when I begin work on a fresh spin-off series with Kerbasi and an all-new heroine.

For those of you who haven’t tried the Sensor Series and have no idea who Kerbasi is, let’s just say he’s the super powerful antihero who you fantasize about murdering in terrible ways only to find him growing on you later down the line. I continue to have readers email me about him getting his own books, and I’ve been brainstorming how to make them work best for a while now. I’ll post more on that early next week. For now, I’ll probably start moving the Sensor novels and novellas over to KU in late May or early June. I’ll let you all know for sure soon.

Really excited about the ideas percolating in my head and all the writing to come. Feel free to let me know your thoughts!

Note on the Dragon’s Breath Series and an excerpt

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As some of you know, I’m in the midst of writing Cast by Flames, the final book in the series with Bailey and Aidan (not including the spinoff). There is a lot to cover in this novel, but it’s coming along well so far, and I’m finding it easy to write. Well, except for one little twist.

Long ago when I released the first book, I let readers know this one would not contain spicy elements. Some may recall this, some may not, and people who started it later probably never knew about that promise. I wanted readers who prefer not to have naughty parts in stories be able to enjoy the series. Also, I’d rather that when my boys get older they can pick these books up and it not be awkward. I’ll just have to steer them clear of the others.

Having said that, it was tough to stay within my promise while writing Torn in Flames because obviously Bailey and Aidan had a lot of pent up passion when they reunited after five years. I had to walk a fine line to show that without it going too far. It wasn’t easy! Since beginning Cast by Flames, it has gotten even more difficult. As I was writing the final part of chapter five, I deviated into “forbidden” territory because I just had to get it out of my system.

Later, I mentioned it to the readers in my Facebook Fan Group and how I’d have to heavily edit the scene later. There was a large response of people who thought I should still share it somehow (ideas varied on this). I ended up revising the scene with a lot more of what I wished I could have written had I not been holding back (even with crossing the line a bit). Then I posted the 1700 word scene in the group. They loved it.

I know I have a lot of readers who are not in that group who may wish to see it as well. As a result, I’m posting it below. Keep in mind that this scene takes place in the midst of the next book, so there are some brief mentions of things going on in the story, but they are vague without context and shouldn’t feel like actual spoilers. No one who has read it so far has had an issue.

If you’re still with me and want to read it, continue below. Please do keep in mind this is just a draft and has not been edited except me running through a few passes to try catching any typos/issues. Hope you enjoy!

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KU & Audio News for Torn in Flames (and other stuff)

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Just a couple of quick book updates for you all, followed by tales of my naughty toddler.

First, I pulled Torn in Flames off of all the retailers except Amazon last night. When I checked this morning, it appeared to have cleared from everywhere, so I could go ahead and enroll it in Kindle Unlimited. Yay, I got it done earlier than expected! I didn’t visit every single Amazon country site, but it is definitely in KU for the United States and United Kingdom. My guess is it should be good everywhere else as well. If you’ve been waiting to borrow it, you should have no problem now.

For those waiting on audio, I checked my publisher’s website and found they had listed the expected release date for Torn in Flames as May 23rd, 2023. That has always been accurate in the past, so it should be reliable this time. I know it’s not as soon as you’d probably like, but it’s a quicker turn around than the last book in the Dragon’s Breath Series. As soon as the edits were finished with this book, I sent the manuscript to them right away. They received it ten days before the ebook released.

Still, it takes time to schedule the narrator, for her to do the recording, then handle edits and sound engineering. Plus, they have to do their version of the cover during that time. I’ll let you all know when the pre-order is available.

On a personal note, my youngest son (22 months old) is becoming quite the handful as those in my Facebook Fan group are aware since I relay stories to them occasionally. Last week, I was setting up my coffee maker. While I walked away to dump the coffee grounds in the trash can (located behind a locked gate in the laundry room to keep him from pillaging it), Dean managed to grab the pot and smashed it into the counter. Glass everywhere. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but it certainly wasn’t fun to clean up.

Of course, buying a new pot is nearly the same cost as a whole coffee maker. Mine had stopped letting me program it to brew in the morning, so I chose to get a new one. It arrived a few days later since Amazon’s shipping times seem to be slower these days. We also have a Keurig my husband loves to use, so I made do with that, but I prefer my coffee maker to those pods. The taste just isn’t the same no matter what brand I try.

Two days after breaking my coffee pot, Dean got a hold of his big brother’s glasses. I searched for over an hour for them and couldn’t find them anywhere. Checked again the next morning and then had no choice except to send Adam to school without them. He has an older pair with the same prescription, but they’re chewed up and scratched. Since one of his eyes has almost perfect vision, he can get by without them. It’s the other one that is nearly blind that made me frustrated that I couldn’t find them.

Thirty minutes after I dropped him off at school, I had an epiphany and decided to check the trash can (locked behind a child gate but visible from the hallway). My future baseball or basketball star had thrown his big brother’s glasses into the bin and they were buried at the bottom . I scrubbed them and my hands with anti-bacterial soap very thoroughly and then rushed them to my son at school.

No idea where my younger son got his excellent throwing arm, especially since he’s not even two years old yet. Back when I was in the U.S. Army, I hated when they made me go to the range to throw live grenades. I can aim for short distances, five feet is good, but grenades must be tossed much farther than that. All I had to do was get them over a tall reinforced wall to be safe, but every time I was terrified I’d drop it or not make it over the top. Since I survived these training exercises, you can assume I did get the grenades over the side, but they always sounded like they exploded rather close. Pretty sure it didn’t make it very far past the wall.

Thank God I never had to throw one in combat. As much as I hate to admit it, I throw like a girl in the most cliche sense. My oldest son appears to have inherited that same bad gene from me, but not the youngest one. He’s surprisingly good at a lot of things that can get him into trouble. Hopefully, I survive this toddler period with my sanity intact and most of my stuff!