Karilyn Bentley and Magical Dragons Visit!

interview with Suzanne

Banditas and Bandit Buddies I'd love for you to help me welcome a very good friend, Karilyn Bentley to the lair. Karilyn is here to tell us all about her debut paranormal romance, MAGICAL LOVER.

Suz: Welcome Karilyn! Pull up a barstool and we'll share some sangria punch in honor of your first visit as a guest. As you know I've been so excited about showcasing your book in the lair. We Banditas LOVE call stories. Would you tell us how you got the call for your first sale?

Karilyn: Hi Suzie! Hi Banditas and Bandit Buddies! Yum, I love your sangria punch (takes another sip). I've been excited too about you showcasing my book! ? (puts the sangria down lest she drink too much and make no sense)

The Call.

My first story published was a novella in the Taming of the Wolf anthology put out by The Wild Rose Press a couple of years ago. I entered a contest where they chose the top six stories and placed as number four. The winners were announced online and I logged in and saw my name.

It was Halloween so all these kids were coming to the door and I was jumping around in a state of shock. Since the winners were noted online and I didn't get a call from an editor I kept thinking I had it wrong, that I couldn't have won. So I kept going to the door and dumping candy in bags and then running back to stare at my name on the winners list. It was rather surreal.

The Call for Magical Lover was more like a series of emails between my editor and me about changes I needed in order for her to contract the story. I made the changes and-yippee!!-she made the offer! And here we are with my first novel.

Suz: We've had some interesting shape shifter books pop up in the Bandit Lair. Yours is particularly interesting as yours is a dragon shifter. Why did you choose this particular shifter?

Karilyn: When I decided to write romance, I knew I needed a world to return to (because people were going to buy my books and want to read more stories from me, right?? I've always been a big fan of fantasies, so it was natural to set the world in a whole different place. And I've always liked a story with dragons. At the time I wrote Magical Lover, there were very few dragon shifters out there. It took six years and more revisions than I can count to bring Magical Lover to its print form.

Suz: At the beginning of MAGICAL LOVER, Thoren, your hero has a special goal regarding halflings when he meets Keara, your heroine. What is that mission?

Karilyn: Thoren is a reconnaissance specialist, who has been tasked with finding Halflings and returning them to Draconia. Apparently, many of the male Draconi have been parking their scales in non-Draconi females' caves and producing offspring. As a whole, Draconi are very picky about keeping magical beings on their land. Hence Thoren's Halfling finding duties.

Suz: Keara is in a bit of a predicament when she meets Thoren. How does she get out of it?

Karilyn: Keara has red hair and green eyes (a sure sign of a Halfling, although she doesn't know that's what she is) and has the misfortune of living in a town that shuns all coloring except for brown hair and brown eyes. As one of the town's outcasts, she is believed to be a witch and is caught by the town's nobleman. Instead of killing her, he plans on marrying her, which to her way of thinking is worse than death. Enter Thoren to the rescue.

Suz: Was it easy building a world for dragon shifters? By the way, we have our own dragon here in the Lair, so I'm sure Ermingarde is going to demand we keep a copy here for her to read!

Karilyn: I do hope Ermingarde likes the dragon shifters in Magical Lover! I'll be happy to give her a copy. One doesn't want to upset a dragon! Personally, I think world building is fun. It wasn't hard to do since the story came to me in this world, but like all world building, one has to be consistent. I had to know the way the world worked, what the rules were and never break those rules. Occasionally that created problems, but then, natural laws in our world create problems too.

Suz: What's next for our readers to expect from you?

Karilyn: I'm so glad you asked! I have a novella coming out next month featuring the wolf pack from Werewolves of London, the novella in the Taming of the Wolf anthology (which BTW is no longer available for sale. Bummer. I'm working on getting the novella back out, though). Wolf Mates releases on 10/19/11 from The Wild Rose Press. I'm also working on Warrior Lover, which is the story after Magical Lover.

Here's a blurb and excerpt from Magical Lover.

Blurb:

In a world where men can become dragons, Thoren is one of the most powerful. As a shape-shifting Draconi, Thoren wants nothing more than to continue searching for Halfling children, and returning them to Draconia. The last thing he wants or needs is a mate-until he meets Keara, an outcast unaware of the power that lies within her. Keara doesn't know what to make of Thoren or of the magic he practices. She learned early to keep her magic hidden-her witchy red hair and green eyes are burden enough. When Thoren offers his hand in place of a forced marriage with Lord Simon, Keara jumps at the chance to leave her town behind. But she fears Thoren will shun her when he discovers the truth about her abilities. Can Thoren convince Keara she is his lifemate, or will her secret talent be the wedge that drives them apart?

Excerpt:

"I know enough to realize she denied you." The stranger growled at Lord Simon, his voice gentling as he turned to Keara. "She will take me though, won't you?"


Keara locked her gaze on the stranger, drawn by his green eyes that looked so much like her own. She had never seen green eyes on anyone else, but knew what they meant. Remembered what her grandmother had told her about them.


"Green eyes are the mark of evil, girl," the old woman liked to say. "Be wary of them."
The wind whipped the stranger's hair about his face. A chiseled jaw topped by firm lips that whitened around the edges and a long straight nose comprised a face tightened in anger. His compelling eyes bored into hers.


She couldn't stop staring at those eyes, all the while his fingers continued their steady pattern against her mark, sending sensuous feelings coursing through her veins.


A stranger or Lord Simon? The man whose touch sent zingers of pleasure throughout her body, or the possibly crazy, but socially acceptable man who might have her best interest in mind. Did she actually think that?


There was no choice. It took two tries to get the words out of her dry mouth.


"I'll take you." She lifted her chin toward the stranger and said a silent prayer he would spare her life.

Thank you again Banditas and Bandit Buddies for letting me stop by! If you'd like to contact me, my contact info is on my website: www.karilynbentley.com.

I'll be giving away a free pdf of Magical Lover to one lucky commentator. What is your favorite type of shifter and why?

Here Be Dragons

by Nancy

"Here be dragons," read the margins of old maps, warning of dangers in the seas beyond the known (flat) world. Today, however, we know what's in those spaces, or think we do, and dragons are consigned to the realms of myth and magic.

A book I've been using for research on the current wip says dragons are part of almost every culture on the planet, that they're associated with the Great Goddess and are symbols of power and royalty. Pretty cool.

The book also mentions an herb called dragon blood that's used for a variety of magical purposes, such as those involving love, purification and protection. Some sources say it can add power to particular spells.

Helping carry a long paper dragon is part of Chinese New Year celebrations. King Arthur's surname has come down to us in legend as Pendragon, and Wales historically used a red dragon on its flag. Beowulf fought his last battle against a firedrake, a winged serpent that breathed fire.

The Vikings, as I imagine we all know, carved dragon heads onto the prows of their ships. In Norse mythology, the dragon Fafnir guarded a treasure hoard until Sigurd, or Siegfried, slew him. Jormungand, the Midgard Serpent, coiled around the world with his tail in his mouth and created the oceans.

One of my favorite children's songs is "Puff the Magic Dragon" by Peter, Paul and Mary. If you're too young to know who they are, click on the link. I think "Puff" is probably available from iTunes or from their website. It's a sad song about what happens to our childhood's imaginary friends when we move on, but it has an upbeat ending. And no, I never made the counter-culture associations with it until someone pointed them out to me.

The boy has led us to many fictional and fabulous dragons. Playmobil makes wonderful, if pricey, knights and dragons. One of the boy's favorite Pokemon was the orange dragon, Charizard, who had a very obstinate and independent personality. From Pokemon, our son moved to Yu-Gi-Oh, which featured the Blue Eyes White dragon and several others.

If you like dragons, you should check out the beautiful, detailed children's book Dragonology, which I would never have seen if the boy hadn't been the right age to care when it came out.

Much as Sherlock Holmes's adventures are presented as John Watson's chronicles, the material here is supposedly the result of extensive research by a Victorian dragonologist into types of dragons, preferred foods, ability to fly, ability to speak, and pretty much anything else a person might ponder about dragons.


The boy also had a gorgeous picture book about why dragons left the world, but I can't remember the title. One of his favorite picture books was Saint George and the Dragon (original cover pictured at left), with text by Margaret Hodges and illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman, who won the Caldecott Award for it.

The tale of St. George and the dragon, of course, is an old one. This version comes from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queen, but it's beautifully retold. When the boy weeded his childhood books, we refused to let him discard this one or Dragonology.


Our search for adventure books to share with our young son, who had no bias against stories starring girls, led us to Patricia C. Wrede's wonderful series about Cimorene, a princess who hates court life so much that she runs away to cook for a dragon. When knights come to her aid, she finds creative ways to discourage them because she has no desire to be rescued, thank you very much.

The first book, Dealing with Dragons, is pictured at right. The books are rich in story and humor, and the princess has major but endearing attitude and quick wits. She eventually finds true love. The last book in the series, actually the first published, features her son.


Now the boy is into Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, an alternate history of the Napoleonic Wars in which the armies have air forces mounted on dragons. In the first book, His Majesty's Dragon, a Royal Navy captain captures a rare dragon egg, only to have it hatch on his ship. The dragon, Temeraire, chooses the captain as his rider, changing his life forever.

Novik won SFWA's John W. Campbell Award for the most promising newcomer with this book. The series is now up to six and still going strong. They're on the "must read" list for me, but I'm putting them off until the first of the year, when I'm not teaching, lest I be swept up and unable to stop until I reach the end. The Aerial Corps, as England's dragonriders are known, seems like the Napoleonic equivalent of World War II's RAF, and I'm a real sucker for Battle of Britain stories. And dragons.

As an adult reading Tolkien for the first time, I met Smaug, the greedy creature who has a riddle match with Bilbo Baggins in his cave outside the town of Dale. Given my weakness for archers and Smaug's sly malevolence, it's no wonder I loved the scene where Bard the Bowman's expert shot brought down the dragon. I didn't love the Bakshi version, so I'll be interested to see how this comes across in the forthcoming movie.


The first dragons I remember finding really cool were in Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight (pictured at right with the beautiful Michael Whelan cover that graces my copy), the book that launched her epic Dragonriders of Pern series. The planet Pern suffers from periodic invasions by something called thread--long filament spores that fall from the sky, starting fires and eating through anything they touch. To combat them, the Pernese bond with dragons when they hatch. As pairs, they take to the sky to fight thread before it reaches the ground. The riders feed the dragons stones that help generate fire breath, and the dragons destroy thread before it reaches the ground.

F'lar, the dragonriders' leader, knows a queen egg is about to hatch. Because dragons choose their riders, not the other way around, he needs a selection of girls available to greet the hatchling. When he rescues Lessa, an abused servant, and takes her back to the weyr for the hatching, he doesn't realize she and the golden queen, Ramoth, will win not only the planet's future but his heart.

I also loved Melanie Rawn's Dragon series, which starts with Dragon Prince. In a land threatened constantly by war, a new ruler and his wife struggle to protect the dragons tradition demands he slay. Doing so may be their best hope of avoiding war. There are six of these, shelved in fantasy but including a lot of romance. Another wonderful book is Barbara Hambly's Dragonsbane, which kicks off her Winterlands series.

There are plenty of other dragons out there. Allyson James's Stormwalker features a shapeshifter dragon as a hero, and Deborah Cooke has a series about shapeshifter dragons, just to name two. One of my favorite guilty pleasures movies is Reign of Fire, starring Christian Bale and Matthew McConnaughey, an alternate future tale about humans trying to destroy the dragons that have decimated them. Dragonheart, with Dennis Quaid and Sean Connery, has lots of fans, and How to Train Your Dragon has done well in theaters this summer.

So what are your favorite stories about dragons or other mythical creatures? A package of books I picked up from RWA National, including a signed copy of Jessica Andersen's wonderful Demonkeeper, will go to one commenter today.

Tracy Wolff shifting into the Lair

hosted by Donna MacMeans

I have a real treat for you today! Tracy Wolff, writing as Tessa Adams, is joining us for the day. Tracy writes something for everyone, from Silhouette Superromance, to yummy single title paranormals to young adult novels. (whew!) Today, we're featuring Dark Embers, her Dragon-shifting paranormal from NAL. Check out the fabulous cover and back cover blurb:

King Dylan MacLeod is one of the last pure-bred dragon shapeshifters in existence—and ruler of a dying race, the Dragonstar clan. It falls to him to protect his people—and their ancient magic. He has one more duty: to provide an heir.

Like all dragons, Dylan can only procreate with his destined mate—for whom he’s searched for five hundred years. His dark, rampant sexual appetite has earned him quite the reputation, all in the pursuit of his one true match.

But his search is delayed when a deadly disease sweeps through the Dragonstars, and Dylan must venture to the human world to find a cure. He tracks down renowned biochemist Phoebe Quillum, never imagining the beautiful scientist will be the mate he’s been seeking for centuries. But no sooner do they meet then Phoebe and Dylan are besieged by an obsessive, overpowering sexual desire.

Their passion turns to something truer—and they know in their souls and bodies that they’re in too deep to get out. And when Phoebe is kidnapped by Dylan’s oldest enemy, he must risk everything to reclaim the only woman he’s ever loved, or his clan will be wiped out forever.

So welcome, Tessa! So glad you could join us here today.

First of all, Donna, I’d like to thank you so much for having me here today. I love your blog and am so excited that you’ve let me be a small part of it.

We're excited to have you. Shapeshifting novels are hot right now. What inspired you to chose a dragon shapeshifter?

When my editor first approached me about writing a sexy paranormal series, right away I knew I wanted to write a shifter series. And since I’ve been fascinated by dragons since I was a young girl (I always thought they were so much more interesting than the prince who came to rescue the damsel in distress) it just made sens

e to try my hand and writing them. Thankfully, my editor loved the concept and Dylan and the Dragonstar clan of modern day New Mexico were born.

You also have a Superromance coming out as well, can you tell us about that?

My July Superromance, Beginning with Their Baby, is a follow-up to my June 2009 story, From Friend to Father. Though I wrote The Christmas Present, my Rita nominated book, in between the two, I got so much reader mail asking about Matt that I couldn’t resist giving him his own story. I paired super-serious Matt with fun-loving, capricious Camille and then watched the sparks fly. And, boy, do they fly. The third book in the trilogy, Unguarded, features Matt’s sister, Rhiannon, and hits the shelves in December of this year.

I have enough difficulty writing for one house. What’s it like writing for two publishing houses?

I actually write for three publishing houses now. I’m at Harlequin, New American Library (Penguin) and I have two young adult novels coming out from Walker Books in 2011. Actually, I really enjoy writing three very different things for three different publishers. I’m a very eclectic reader, and always have been, and writing for three houses gives me a chance to explore the many different story ideas in my head. Plus, I learn something new about my writing from each book I write and each editor I write for. The challenging, and exciting, part is taking what I learn from one house and using it to the best of my ability with another book for another house.

Here in the lair, we love call stories. For our writer/readers, can you tell us about your path to publication?

This is usually when I start to dodge the question, because I was incredibly blessed on my path to publication. I’ve known my whole life that I wanted to be a writer, and spent my entire college career training for this fact (I have an MFA in creative

writing and a Ph.D in American Literature) but it wasn’t until we moved to Texas four years ago that I really had the chance to pursue my dream (between school, work, and my children I didn’t have much time or energy left to actually write). My husband and I agreed that I would quit work for a year and spend my time writing. If at the end of the year, I was nowhere, then I would go back to trying to fit my writing in between a full-time job and a family.

The first thing I did, was get online and find out about RWA. It was May, so I signed up to go to their national conference, where I didn’t know one other soul. But I went, found out that Harlequin was running two contests—one for their new Everlasting Love line and one for their Blaze line. I already had an idea for the Everlasting Love story, so I went home and wrote that first chapter. I submitted it to the contest and wrote the Blaze chapter as well, submitting it to that contest.

The Blaze contest announced first, and I was thrilled the day I received the phone call from Blaze editor, Kathryn Lye, telling me I had placed in the contest and that they were requesting a full of my novel, Picture Me. I’d written the whole thing while I waited to hear about the contest, so it was ready to go in the mail the day after I got the news.

About a month later, I heard from Paula Eykelhof at Everlasting Love, that I had placed in that contest as well. They, also, requested the full manuscript of my second novel, The Turn for Home.

As I waited to hear from Kathryn and Paula regarding the status of my submissions, I had a premature baby and spent the next months dealing with his medical issues and running from one doctor to another. But right about the time that things had finally leveled off for him and his pediatrician pronounced him in very good health, I got the call from Beverly Sotolov at Everlasting Love, telling me they wanted to publish my book, The Turn for Home.

Talk about excited!!!!!!!! I actually cried when she told me, a fact she was very proud of as I was her very first crier. As I revised the book and anxiously awaited its publication, I finally heard from Kathryn, who was passing on Picture Me, as she didn’t feel the heroine was a Blaze heroine. Of course, she was right. She gave me a number of suggestions on how to change the book to make it more Single Title friendly, many of which I took, so that when I signed with my fabulous agent a few months later, and she asked if I had any books laying around under the bed, I was able to answer, “Why, yes, I do …”

Within three weeks, she had sold Picture Me, which I was now calling Full Exposure, to NAL in a two book erotic suspense contract. At the same time, Harlequin was closing down the Everlasting Love line and moving many of the book purchased for it over to Superromance. What this meant, for The Turn for Home, was an extensive revision to make it more Superromance friendly, and it finally became my very first novel, published in November 2008, as A Christmas Wedding. It was followed in January 2009 by Full Exposure. The rest is history …

Tessa, you make me dizzy just reading about your journey. So many simultaneous releases! Anything new on the horizon?

Yes, actually, I have a lot of stuff going on in 2011. As I mentioned above, I have a new young adult paranormal coming out in March 2011, called Tempest Rising. It is the story of a young girl named Tempest, who is the daughter of a professional surfer and a mermaid. As her 17^th birthday approaches, she must make a choice between staying human or becoming mermaid. She expects to stay human, but then things are taken out of her control when she is forced to face down an evil unlike any she has ever experienced.

Due out in the same month, is Hidden Embers, the second book in my dragon shifter series, about Quinn, Dylan’s right hand man and the clan’s best healer. Later in the year I will also have my next Superromances coming out, as well as the YA book my writing partners and I just sold, called The International Kissing Club, about four girls from small town Texas who, for various reasons, become foreign exchange students. Determined to find themselves, and kiss as many foreign guys as possible, they form a Facebook page to keep track of the points they earn from their many kissing adventures … only things go from fun to complicated in the blink of an eye.

Those sound like fun. Can you give us a sneak peek into Dark Embers?

Prologue

He’d failed. Again.

Locked inside his head, tormented by shades of what might have been, Dylan MacLeod stepped into the night and closed the heavy, wooden door behind him.

He paused for a moment, sucked in a deep breath full of heat and sand and misery. Told himself it was no big deal. Part of him even believed it.

After four hundred and seventy years, he was damn good at lying to himself.

Shoving away from the small house with the cactus garden and the stone swimming pool in the front yard, he walked the deserted street rapidly. It was three a.m., and his only company was a scorpion or two. The desert was quiet, the night solemn.

And he had failed again.

With each step he took, his conscience grew heavier.

With each footfall, his heart grew colder, until he was once again at that place without hope. It was where he usually existed, where he’d spent the last century, mired in guilt and rage and a fear he refused to admit.

That he was here now was his own fault. It had been stupid, even for a moment, to truly believe that she might have been the one.

Agitation made him walk faster, until his boots were pounding the pavement in rhythm with his too-quick pulse. Self-disgust made him shut down inside, until all he could think of was the night.

The stars.

The moon shining brilliantly over the desert.

At least until his jeans sagged around his ass.

With a muttered curse, Dylan yanked the faded denim back into place. Slid the button through the tab, jerked up the zipper.

What did it say about him that this latest encounter had left him so desperate to get away that he hadn’t stayed long enough even to get his clothes on properly? Worse, he hadn’t bothered to say good-bye to Eve . . . Eva? Eden?

For a brief moment, he struggled to remember her name, what she looked like. Then let it go, as it mattered less than nothing. It wasn’t like he’d be seeing her again. Within moments of slipping inside her, he’d figured out that she wasn’t the one—none of the signs were there.

No instant connection between them, as his clan mates so often spoke about.

No burning as the tattoo around his arm shifted to reflect the presence of his mate.

No searing pain as a part of her soul arrowed into his.

Nothing but a mediocre orgasm that had barely given his powers a pulse. Before she’d rolled off him, he’d been plotting his escape. And by the time the shower had kicked on in the bathroom, he’d been halfway to the front door.

God, he was a fucked-up bastard. Cold as ice, despite the fire that raged within him. Hot as flame, despite the glacier that had taken up residence in his stomach. Was it any wonder, then, that he couldn’t find her?

He didn’t deserve her.

His laugh, when it came, was anything but humorous. That had to be the understatement of the year. The decade. The new millennium, and probably the old one, as well. Why else would it have taken him this long to do what everyone else managed in the first two centuries of their existence? Why else would he be doomed to failure night after night, encounter after encounter? He had screwed up generations ago, and now he and his clan were paying the cosmic price. Big time.

His boots ate up the streets in the sleepy little town, as he struggled to put distance between himself and his latest sexual escapade. Wind whipped around him, played with the tails of his shirt, caressed his bare chest. But Dylan didn’t bother buttoning up. What was the point, when he was headed right back to the bar to find yet another female shifter interested in taking it off?

Hope sprang eternal.

As he walked, he scanned the desert around him. Checked out every brush of the wind against cactus; narrowed his eyes at the rustle behind a random pile of heavy rocks. Then shook his head as a low, deep howl split the air next to him. A lonely coyote was the least of his problems.

If someone had told him four hundred years ago that he would be here, in this place, he would have laughed at them. If they’d told him he would grow tired of night after night of hot, anonymous sex, he would have told them they were insane. But youth was like that—arrogant, seemingly invincible, convinced the world was for the taking. Or at least that’s how his youth had been.

He’d spent centuries gorging on women, taking them each and every way he could. Glutting himself on their scent and taste and feel, until his powers reached staggering heights. Devouring whatever they gave him with a grin and a wink and a softly whispered “Thank you.”

He had plenty of time, he’d told his father when the man had advised him to settle down. He was trying to find the right woman, he’d promised his mother when she’d fretted about the future. And then, from one heartbeat to the next, everything had changed.

His brother had been murdered. His parents had died soon after. He’d been crowned king. And just that suddenly, his people, his legacy, were without an heir. Bad enough that the second son was now the king. That he couldn’t find a mate, couldn’t deliver on his family’s legacy, was a nightmare.

There were others—his sister, his niece—who could take his place if he fell. But it wouldn’t be the same. The line of succession, which had remained in his family for more than three thousand years, would fall with him.

One more fuckup from a man who had never wanted to be king in the first place.

Dylan shoved the thought away—what he wanted didn’t play into things anymore. What was best for his people did. And what was best for them now was that he provide them an heir.

He should already have done so, should already have guaranteed his people’s survival through this millennia and into the next. God knew he had tried—for nearly four hundred years, he had tried. And he had failed.

No mate meant no heir.

No mate meant night after night of anonymous sex as he searched for her.

No mate meant a dwindling in his powers that was not just devastating, but downright dangerous—for himself and his people.

His was a precarious state of events for any centuries-old dragon, but for him it was an out-and-out disaster—particularly considering the state his clan was in.

Not that an heir would solve all the problems, but it would solve the most pressing—including the fact that it had been far too many years since a young dragon had been born to Dragonstar.

Far too long since they’d had something to celebrate.

His cell phone vibrated in his pocket, and for one brief second Dylan considered ignoring it. The day had been dismal enough—any more bad news and he might just take flight and never return. The idea was far more inviting than it should have been, far more compelling than it had ever been before.

In the end, he grabbed his phone and flipped it open. Barked “Hello” in a voice he knew was far from welcoming. He was king of the Dragonstar clan, and as such could never be unavailable to his people. That didn’t mean he had to like it—especially tonight.

“Dylan, come quick.”

A shot of uneasiness worked its way down his spine at the panic in his best friend’s—and second- in-command’s—voice. As a rule, nothing fazed Gabe.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s Marta. She’s—” Gabe’s voice broke. “She’s sick.”

His stomach plummeted to his boots. “Are you sure?”

His brother-in-law’s voice was hoarse. “I’m sure. I tried to deny the symptoms, to ignore them, but that’s not possible anymore. I don’t think—” His voice broke again. “I don’t think she’s going to make it through this.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.” Dylan was already running, his boots echoing in the deserted street as he stripped his shirt from his body. He didn’t bother with the pants or boots; they would take too long. Just blurred his image as he started to shift.

Pain—red-hot and intense—as bones broke, reshaped, grew longer.

Pleasure—acute and all-consuming—as he became what he was meant to be.

He ignored both sensations; concentrated instead on making it through the change. One more second. Two. And then he was in the air, his wings spread wide as he soared through the star-bright sky.

Not Marta, not Marta, not Marta. The simple phrase was a mantra in his head as he sped toward his lieutenant’s house, making sure to stay invisible, despite the panic racing through him. So many of his friends, so many of his clan, had been taken from him in the last years. He couldn’t stand to lose his sister—Gabe’s wife—too.

Please, God, not his baby sister, too.

But when he landed in Gabe’s yard, he knew his prayers had, once again, gone unanswered. He could smell the blood from outside the house, could hear his sister’s nonsensical mutterings through the walls of dense stone.

Marta was bleeding out.

Delirious.

Probably already paralyzed.

If her illness followed the same pattern all the others had, she would be dead before the next moonrise. And there was nothing he could do about it.

Inside him, the power sputtered to life, surged through him. The need to heal, to fix, to do what he was destined to do. But he’d tried it so many times before on so many of his clan members, and each time, he had failed. This disease was an enemy he didn’t know how to fight.

Rage and anguish welled within him, crushing his lungs and twisting his spine into hard knots. Throwing back his head, Dylan roared with all his pent-up fury—then went inside to watch his baby sister die.

I'm always on the lookout for a good paranormal author. Who are some of your favorites? A few of mine are Patricia Briggs, Christine Feehan, Nalini Singh and Marjorie M. Liu. I'll choose a winner for a copy of Dark Embers from the comments.