“Queen of the Hollow”
So what’s going on
here?
To have taken so long
to come to light, “Queen of the Hollow” is short. Really short. Too long to be
flash fiction, not long enough for novella status. I wanted it to be longer, I
truly did, but sometimes you just have to let the story make the decision. Actually
- and please don't tell anyone - especially my publisher - but that’s what I
always do. The stories and the characters make my decisions for me.
Plotter? Pantser? If
forced into a corner, I’d have to go with Pantser, hands down. Excel
spreadsheets and I have a hate-hate relationship. I looked into various and
sundry approaches for story-telling like free form, balloon, spider webbing and
even the snowflake method, but I finally had to come up with my own description
I call Char-Lab (pronounced “care lab” for you obsessive
articulators out there), and stands for “character collaboration.”
Which pretty well sums
it up. I collaborate with my characters on what happens next. I will may have
an idea or The Situation, and then I’ll find a character in my head who lends
herself to this idea, and then I put the character and all her friends into The
Situation. The characters either go and do things, or talk through things, and
I generally just listen. I may have an idea of where a story needs to go, or how
it needs to end, but the really good stories never end up where I thought they
would when I started.
Whenever the end of
the book looms, then I might have to tie aforementioned characters down so I
can get to The End. Because they are normally not real happy about
that. And really, who can blame them? The End usually means,
well, the end for those characters. They continue living in an endless loop
within the pages and never get to adventure beyond that single tale, or
experience growing in other directions. So I promised them I would try to
have “Queen of the Hollow” the first book in a series. We took a vote and
decided we all really liked the name High Lonesome for the
series. It also happens to be the (fictional) West Virginian town in which
their stories take place.
Below is the blurb and
a short Excerpt from it. (A short excerpt for a short story.) I hope you enjoy!
~*~
Calla is a young
shifter, the only female within miles of High Lonesome, her small town in
southern West Virginia. Her mother has managed to keep her safe from the bounty
of mountain lion males in their hills, but now Calla finds herself alone,
without a protector, and the moon is full.
Haben hasn’t been able
to get close to Calla since their meeting right around Valentine’s Day a year
before. When he shows up at her house, he finds the wounded spit-fire
determined for him to keep his distance - despite his instinct to keep her
safe.
Calla has to trust an
outsider in Haben or fight off every male mountain lion between here and
Charleston with just her wits and a shotgun. With sheer numbers against her,
the stakes are higher than she knows. And when the fight is over, she has to
face the last cat standing as he succumbs to the raging Heat himself.
~*~
Excerpt
She wouldn’t lie down.
She told him she had no idea if she’d be able to get back up or not. Which was
true. But she wouldn't put herself in that position of submission with a tom here
so close and her in her Heat cycle. That was just asking for trouble.
He kept his attention
on her injuries, on wrapping them securely, on looking for her a crutch or a
cane to help get up the stairs. She focused on his eyes and his lips. His eyes
were the most beautiful she’d ever seen. They’d been dark brown in the store. Here
they were the color of creamy caramel and it made her heart beat in her ears
every time they met her gaze. His lips were dark and shaped with a stern
current underneath, which looked positively suckable when he bit the bottom one
in concentration. She wondered if maybe God had made them so dark so his teeth
would shine all the more white when they flashed a quick smile. She bet his
teeth were long and sharp when he shifted.
~*~
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Available on Dark Hollows Press
Amazon.com
GoodReads
All Romance
October 29th, 2015
~*~
1 comment:
Thank you for having me, Destiny!
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