Throwback Thursday: In Twilight's Shadow

In Twilight's Shadow is book 2 of my Light Warriors series. It was released in 2008 and I wrote it in 2007. This is the only deadline I needed to ask for an extension on and I was still late. While writing this book I was 1) severely burnt out from the deadlines I'd had on my previous four books and 2) the original plot wasn't working and I was too panicked about the deadline to cut everything and start over. Which I finally had to do anyway.

The heroine in Twilight's Shadow is Maia Frasier, the sister of the heroine in book one of the Light Warriors. Maia gave up her powers years earlier (the why is revealed in Midnight Hour) and she's stayed near her sister ever since. And has felt excluded because Maia is no longer considered one of the Gineal people.

Her hero is Creed Blackwood, the biggest badass troubleshooter the Gineal have. Creed...well, what can I say about Creed? He was an ass and did nothing to soften that. I liked him anyway, but it took me a while to warm up to him. It's a good thing he's so pretty. ;-)

This is the book where the prophecy/mythology of Twilight Time starts to be revealed. It's long forgotten by most of the Gineal people, but Creed has always had an interest in history. He knows that Ryne (heroine in Midnight Hour) is the strongest Gineal troubleshooter ever tested and that signals the onset of the prophecy. I can't remember how much of this is spelled out in the book itself, although I know some of it is. Again, I haven't reread this book in a long, long time. Because I had to fight for every word on this story, it doesn't make me feel all happy inside to revisit it. :-)

Twilight's Shadow is also the book where we learn about the existence of the god-demons. Maia was romantically involved with one years earlier, although she didn't know what he was at the time. The ancient Egyptians called him Set (or Seth). Seth makes another appearance later in the series.

The opening of the book where Creed is gored wasn't in the manuscript I turned in to my editor. She asked me to add an action scene since Midnight Hour opened with action.

There's also a scene where I mention the name of the heroine in the next book, although in this book it's used to explain some of why Creed can be such a jerk.

Smoke On the Water

I received a call Tuesday night. In Twilight's Shadow is a finalist for Best Paranormal in the Colorado Romance Writers Award of Excellence! Yea!

Today, I was watching the national news, something I do as the mood strikes rather than an regularity, and toward the end of the broadcast, I saw the most incredible clip. It's from an undersea volcano near Tonga. I would have been captured by the visual imagery anyway since it's quite a site to see, but I had an extra pull in to this because of it's location--it's in the South Pacific. Because of my Polynesian couple, I've developed an interest in anything going on in the Oceania area.

In case you missed it, here's a clip of the undersea volcano going off:


It's amazing how this works for me. When I was writing The Power of Two, I developed an interest in Vietnam because Cai was 1/4 Vietnamese. When I wrote Through a Crimson Veil it was Japan because Mika was half demon, half Japanese-American. With my Light Warrior series, I've become interested in Gaelic. Every book or series of books seems to bring something that I glom on to. Kind of cool, really, when you think about it. :-)

News, News, Coffee!

To start with the most exciting news first, In Twilight's Shadow is a finalist for Best Paranormal in the Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence! Happy dog dancing on this one!

Next exciting bit of news is that I have the cover for The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance 2. I'll have a story in the collection called Blood Feud and I had so much fun writing it! Maybe because it's such a different length for me. I've never written anything this short before in my life! The heroine is Isobel and she's the vampire, so I was really glad to see a female vampire on the cover. The hero is Seere and he's a demon.

Release date in the US is Halloween and it's up for pre-order on Amazon.



That's all my news for today. To move on to the next subject in the title, I started grinding coffee beans today. I'd gotten a "deal" on some pretty expensive coffee, and although I'd been warned to only grind about a week's worth at a time, I decided not to. It's so darn messy that I wanted to grind everything and get it over with. I made it through 3 of the 5 twelve ounce bags. Ugh!

I could never work in a coffee shop, not if I had to grind coffee and smell it. I like the smell of coffee someone else has ground, but this just left me nauseated. Right now I don't even feel like getting my coffee pot ready to brew tomorrow's pot and that's like a fish not feeling like swimming. It just doesn't happen. :-) So my plan is not to grind any more for a while until I can stand the thought of smelling that again. And I am never, ever buying beans that I have to grind myself, not even if the price is good. This is torturous!

Shona Blackwood

When I started writing In Twilight's Shadow, I believed that Creed Blackwood, the hero, was an only child. As alone as he was, I assumed his parents were dead and had been for awhile. I didn't learn differently until Maia visited a store with a glass pyramid made my Shona Blackwood.

Who's Shona? I asked as soon as I heard who the artist was. There was no chance she was unrelated to Creed, I knew that, but he wasn't talking.

At first, I wondered if she was his mother, but something felt off about that. I kept writing and putting questions to Creed. I learned who Shona was around the same time he finally told Maia about her. As it turned out, Shona was his sister and his parents weren't dead.

It was interesting to discover the true circumstances and how it all shaped Creed, but I had no idea I was going to write Edge of Dawn, Shona's story, not until I was ready to start working on proposals and she was suddenly there.

I didn't know much about her when I began. She was a glass artist and about 10 years younger than Creed. As it turned out she was an interesting dichotomy. Shona loves the energy of crowds, but isn't comfortable with people she doesn't know well especially if they're around her own age. I guess it comes from growing up an only child who spent a lot of time with adults, but she's much more at ease with people in her parents' age range than her own.

Her circumstances became even more interesting when I learned a secret about her--something she, herself, didn't know and something Logan didn't know either. Logan is her hero and the Seattle-based troubleshooter for the Gineal people.

Some facts about Shona. She's 26 and nearly 6 feet tall, something the other kids she went to school with continually ridiculed her about--and it's another reason why she's not completely comfortable around people her own age. Her eyes are brown and her hair is dark.

Shona lives in the guest house behind her parents' house and is taking care of everything while her mom and dad are living in London for a year. She's had a pretty easy life with her parents bankrolling her so that she can work on her art full time.

At least things were easy for her up until about 2 months before she meets Logan. You see, Shona has lost her desire to work on her art. It's as if her creativity has been drained from her and she's struggling with that. She's attacked one night leaving a nightclub and is rescued by Logan. This is when things really start testing Shona. Someone is after her, she's seeing monsters and sensing invisible presences, and things are moving far too fast with Logan.

And this is all before she learns about the Gineal and that she's part of this society of magic users.

Logan has his own list of problems to deal with, but I'll save that for another day.

Reviewed by the Chicago Tribune!

Sometimes insomnia pays off.  :-)  I was looking around the web tonight and I found an absolutely great review of In Twilight's Shadow in the Chicago Tribune.  It was published in the June 14th issue, so now I have to hope my relatives who subscribe to the paper didn't throw it out yet.  This is one for the scrapbook.

Here's what the Tribune said:

Non-stop action, magic-laced suspense and some sizzling sexual chemistry fuel "In Twilight's Shadow," Patti O'Shea's latest inventive paranormal romance.

Read the Full Review.

This morning was the first day the sprinkler system ran on its own.  It was pretty slick and I'll confess that I'm a big enough geek, that I was pretty excited by the whole thing.  :-)

I also am coveting my mom's peonies.  They're beautiful right now and we didn't have a chance to split any out for me last year.  We're going to try again this year, but I bought two yellow plantings to put in the ground this fall.  My mom doesn't have yellow and this is a hybrid between the tree and the bush so it's supposed have strong stems.

I then stumbled across this gorgeous amaryllis, and even though I already have two pots filled with six amaryllis, I am coveting this new plant.  I even found it for a reasonable price in the wholesale catalog I received.  You know, that makes me wonder, have I ordered so many flowers that nurseries believe I'm a landscaper?  Yikes!

Fresh Fiction

I blogged over at Fresh Fiction today about In Twilight's Shadow, Maia, and risk. The post actually ended up being not that long. I say that because when I wrote it, I thought, uh-oh, I really ran on again. But it doesn't look too bad posted. I just hope I didn't make any mistakes. I didn't proof it as much as I would have liked because I had too much other stuff to do.

On Your Mark

Ready, set, go! :-) In Twilight's Shadow comes out today!

Excerpt and Video on my website.

It doesn't seem to matter how many books I've had come out, release day is always exciting. I spent the evening last night writing a couple of guest blogs and a new newsletter. One of the blogs posts today. Check out 2 B Read to read it.

I Think I Want a Nap

I think my head is going to explode. Seriously. I've spent the last 9 days writing from nearly the time I wake up in the morning until I go to bed. I kind of petered out today, though, after only about 5 pages. Horrible headache and I needed to write a fight scene. Those scenes should be high energy and it helps to feel energetic when I do one. Needless to say, that's on the agenda for tomorrow.

What else is stressing me out this week? Well, I'm blogging at 2B Read on Tuesday and Fresh Fiction on Wednesday. I need to send out a newsletter to announce the release of In Twilight's Shadow on Tuesday and I need to send half a bazillion emails, including review quotes to my agent and editor. I also owe my fabulous editor a thank you note because she sent me copies of Twilight's Shadow early!

No matter how many books I have out, I still get hugely excited to hold the finished story in my hands. I already checked and my point of view shift that I discovered in galleys did get fixed. Yea! I wish I had time to sit down and read the book--that's my ritual when a new one is released--I sit down and read it and revisit my characters. I'll have to save that for later.

Anyway, I'm feeling hugely stressed right now and I have to go back to the Evil Day Job tomorrow where I'll be running around like a mad woman trying to get caught up on everything that accumulated in my absence. Gah!

Video for In Twilight's Shadow

I'm supposed to be leaving the house early today because the Evil Day Job has closed the entire North parking lot and that means trouble. :-) There won't be enough spots in the remaining small lot for all of the employees who need to use it. But despite the fact that I'm already behind schedule, I wanted to share my video for In Twilight's Shadow.

The book comes out Jun 3rd. The heroine is Maia Frasier and the hero is Creed Blackwood. If you've read In the Midnight Hour you met them both. Maia's still trying to deal with giving up her magic and Creed has his own issues going on, not the least of which is the fact that he omitted some information that nearly got Ryne killed in Midnight Hour.

Gallimaufry

I found gallimaufry in the thesaurus--it means hodgepodge--and I decided to use it since it's perfect since I intend to jump all over the map today and I'm unlikely to ever use it again. And not just as a blog post title. ;-) I'm starting with the bragging first; I hope y'all don't mind.

First of all, I received my first ever Publisher's Weekly review for In Twilight's Shadow! Mostly it's a recap of the plot, but at the very end, they say:

"Maia is a strong, realistically vulnerable heroine, and gruff Creed melts almost immediately."

I'm in the Mass Market section with authors who have much bigger names than me. I'm hugely thrilled and now I need to get to the library so I can make a copy of the review for my scrapbook!

I also found a completely fabulous review at Simply Romance Reviews.

"In Twilight's Shadow was a fast paced intricately woven tale of suspense, revenge, love, and possession."

Another piece of good news at a time where I need it so much. I guess I owe the universe a thank you.

People who've been reading my blog for a while know that I'm a rabid baseball fan. I've had to curb myself numerous times to keep from talking about games and other happenings in the sport too much--sometimes the temptation is difficult to resist. Now, however, I think I can safely promise y'all no more baseball talk over here. I found a new place to talk ball! Major League Baseball allows fans to talk about the game over on their blog site. I've already posted at Patti's Baseball Blog. I need to remember to add this to the sidebar.

Extra, Extra, Read All About It

Sorry, the blog title is as clever as I can manage on the amount of sleep I had last night. :-)

This is going to be kind of a newsy post today since I've had a pretty exciting couple of days.

First on the list is that In the Midnight Hour is a finalist for Best Paranormal in the Colorado Romance Writers Award of Excellence!

Every author has a book that's a little more special to them than the others and Midnight Hour is one of those stories for me. And I'll totally deny I ever said this if any of the characters from other books ask! I guess I'm lucky to have more than one title that I would call the book of my heart.

Second, I received my first review for In Twilight's Shadow this morning and it's a great one! This is from Detra Fitch at Huntress Reviews:

"The story is so well written that Maia's anguish and despair seemed to dance on my nerves, making this a compulsive page-turner."

This is my first review for Twilight and it's always a nervous moment to see what people think of the latest baby. I was thrilled to read this and now I can relax--a little bit. :-)

And so concludes the exciting news portion of this blog. :-)

Last night I was nearly done with the chapter I was working on--within spitting distance--and I vowed that I would not go to bed until I finished it. I was getting tired, but I persevered, and I did finish it. At 10:39 at night. That's really late since the alarm goes off at 4am for the Evil Day Job (EDJ).

Of course, I didn't fall asleep right away. I was too busy running scenarios through my head for the next chapter and wondering if it would be too much talking in back to back chapters if I went with Idea A.

Maybe that's why I had the weird dreams all night that continually woke me up. The only one I remember had writing people in it--not characters, I mean people in the business. I might not have known any of them, but I knew what they did. Dreams are funny that way.

So other than the fab review, it's been a rough morning for me. I couldn't get out of bed, was running late for work, and barely punched in on time. At least I haven't had to resort to the second cup of coffee. Yet.

It's a Book!

My ARCs (Advanced Reading Copies) arrived today for In Twilight's Shadow. They look beautiful. :-) It's almost as good as getting actual copies of the official book. This is my first chance to see the spine and back of the cover. Actually, it's my first time I've seen the cover in anything except electronic format and that's always darn cool. I think it looks striking and (hopefully) it will stand out among the other books.

I also discovered that the back cover copy I have up on my website is missing a few words, so when I have some time, I'll have to update that and upload the new version. I can also see the font they used for the copy and it's clean and legible, and most importantly, easily readable. Yea!

Sorry, I didn't mean to run on about every facet of the ARC. My plan was to talk about how exciting it is to actually hold something like this in my hand and think, "wow, I wrote this." It doesn't matter that this is my sixth full-length book, it's still a huge thrill. And it's still surreal in a way, you know?

When I received copies of my first book, it didn't feel real. I kept thinking, this can't be my story. I kept reaching for Ravyn's Flight reading parts of it, trying to get it to sink in that hey, I wrote this. I finally just started carrying it with me everywhere I went because I constantly had to assure myself it was reality. :-) It took two weeks before it finally penetrated that it really, truly was my work. There are times I still wonder if this is real, but I think I like the wonder of it all, you know? It's just magical to hold a book I wrote in my hands and I'm glad I haven't lost that.

So now I have to figure out when to send copies out for review. Too early and the reviews get posted too far in advance of the book. Too late and the reviewer doesn't have enough time to read the book and write her review. I'm still not certain I have the timing exactly right, but eventually I'll learn. I hope.

Continuity

The WIP (Work in Progress) is the third in the Light Warriors series and that means continuity is on my mind. In fact, it's a major issue at the start of the book. The first instance where this comes up is that the creature Logan's fighting is mentioned in Twilight's Shadow. It was a one line throwaway on who/what it is, so I'm clear there and can do pretty much whatever I need to do.

However, the second flare up isn't that simple. There is the council chambers and anteroom. They were not only mentioned in Twilight's Shadow, they were described in some detail. Normally, I like to find a picture of a room and use it as guide. That way I don't get details wrong and it doesn't require that I reread previous books. This time, though, I had a clear image of what these rooms looked like and I didn't bother searching for any visual representation. I'm paying the price now. I think I've had my finished book file open as many times as the WIP files and I'm still not finished with the scene.

Sin

I've had notes from readers asking for Creed and Sin's stories--both made brief appearances in In the Midnight Hour. I was able to tell them that Creed's story was next, but Sin? Well, I knew I wanted to write him at some point, but I didn't have a story for him. That all changed this week.

The first revelation was who his heroine was. I've started working on my next book and the hero has three younger sisters. Boom. Suddenly I knew that one of Logan's sisters belongs with Sin. That happened back on Monday or Tuesday, I think, but there still was no story, just a pairing. I should be used to this by now since I almost always get the characters first, but I wanted the story, too.

That came yesterday. I can't tell you what I was doing because I don't remember. I was at the Evil Day Job (EDJ), and either during lunch while I was writing Logan and Shona, or after lunch when my mind was still on them, I got it. Another boom.

It's just a general idea and not a full-blown story, but it's something I can mull over while I'm writing the WIP (Work In Progress). The best part is that there's built in conflict--I'm thinking the council divided Sin's territory in half because there's so much activity that one troubleshooter can't keep up with it, and that Tris is the one they assign to work in Los Angeles alongside him. Sin would hate that. Tris would hate that, too. But when something that's related to In Twilight's Shadow comes to their neck of the woods, they'd have to work together. (And no, because it might be a spoiler for Twilight, I'm not going to say what that is.)

Of course, who knows if I'll have the chance to write it. The story I'd like to do after Logan and Shona is Logan's brother, Kel, so this is at least two books out, but it's nice to have the idea of what to do anyway.

In Twilight's Shadow Cover Copy

Yesterday I received the cover copy for In Twilight's Shadow and I couldn't stop reading it. Hey, it really is a book. :-) What do y'all think of this?

Something Wicked...

Maia Frasier thought she'd escaped the world of troubleshooters and demons when she'd ceded her magical powers years earlier. Now a wounded enforcer has turned up in her home, claiming Maia's sister is in danger.

Creed Blackwood needs Maia's help to hunt the demon he's after, especially since he's hiding the fact that his powers are becoming erratic. And then there are the blackouts...

Maia soon begins to fear Creed has fallen to the dark forces himself, and with his strong magic, that makes him as dangerous to her and her sister as any demon could be.

I'm not going to load it on my website yet, so this is the sneak peek of what will be on the back cover.

Now if only my ARCs would come....

Didn't Make It

I fell short of having the new website ready to load. I have two more books to do pages for and some links to set up yet; I was this close. If only I didn't have to go to the Evil Day Job (EDJ) today and I could stay home and finish this morning, but I do, so that means needing to wrap up this website tonight. Tomorrow begins the onslaught of the New Book.

So speaking of books, how did the galleys go? I'm sure you're all wondering, right? I made 12 corrections. That's an incredibly small amount. The part that's scary is that 11 of those changes are to fix my stuff, only 1 change is for an extra word.

My mistakes include the point of view debacle where in the middle of my hero's POV, I have a paragraph from the heroine's POV. Why? Because during copy edits I needed to add the paragraph for explanation, thought I was in the heroine's head and didn't double check.

My other lulu of an error was having two full moons in approximately a two week period. I almost missed that, but as I made my last read through on Friday at the EDJ, I thought, "hmm, didn't I mention the full moon once before?" A quick little search of my WordPerfect document when I arrived home showed that sure enough, this was the second full moon in the book. I changed the first reference to starlight because I needed the moon more in the second scene later in the book.

Everything else was mostly nitpicky stuff.

Last Friday night, I go to make my final changes to the galley, and I decide I need to refresh my memory, so I look for the cover letter with the instructions on how they want the markups handled. Um, I couldn't find them. Anywhere. I think in my cleaning frenzy that I mistook the galley letter for the letter that came with the copy edits and shredded it thinking I was done with it. I was left with my memory of what I did the last time I had galleys for Tor. Hopefully, they didn't change their process.

Too Clean

My mom finished two read throughs of the galleys for In Twilight's Shadow and she only found one error. Now I'm really worried that there's stuff we're missing. I've never had a set of galleys come back this clean before. Ever. The only things I've found have been things that I did that I want to change--like the point of view debacle.

I still have a 120 pages left to read and I need to have it ready to go in the mail on Saturday. Or I should. I might send it back on Monday and take the chance the envelope arrives a day late because I want to finish my second reading.

Believe it or not, there was a writing topic I planned to talk about this morning. The thought came to me yesterday as I drove into the Evil Day Job (EDJ), but I didn't write it down and I can't remember what it is now. Clearly, I need more sleep. :-) Maybe this weekend....

Planet Earth

Discovery Channel did an all day marathon of episodes of Planet Earth on Sunday and I totally became addicted. In case you're unfamiliar with it, this is a series that looks at different aspects of our planet, one hour per aspect. Some of the programs covered the deep ocean, the deserts, the antarctic/arctic, the forests, the plains, etc. The photography was stunning and the entire thing was fascinating. They also were able to film things that no one had filmed before and were allowed in places where few are ever permitted to go in order to film. If you haven't seen this before, definitely watch for this to be rerun. It's worth it.

And just so you don't think I was totally worthless this weekend, I was working on galleys while I watched. Fortunately, it's a left-brained activity, and when I did need to focus more intently, I just muted the television. I've got another 65 pages to go to finish my first read through.

I worked my tail off on Saturday. I spent the day unpacking all the boxes in my spare bedroom. Okay, so it's been a year and a half since I moved in--I just hadn't gotten around to it. :-) I'm such a geek that I keep standing in the doorway and staring at my nice, clean room. The only thing left to do in there is to organize all my scrapbook supplies, but that's a job for another day. That leaves the office as the last room that needs to be set up. That's just going to be ugly. No doubt about it.

Texas Gold and Ten Down

I found out yesterday that Eternal Nights is a finalist for Best Paranormal in the Texas Gold Awards. This is the first time for me in this one because to be eligible, the author needs to be from Texas or have the book set primarily in Texas, or a main character who's Texan. Wyatt is from Fort Worth. :-)

I'm still going through the galleys and I found a huge oops--and it was mine. :-( During copy edits I needed to clarify who someone was, and when I did it, I thought I was in the heroine's Point of View (POV) and wrote it that way. Yesterday I found out I was wrong.

The scary thing is that I read right past the paragraph as if everything was fine and it wasn't until I was halfway through the next page that I noticed something was off. I stopped and went back to reread. It still took me a minute to figure it out. Thank goodness I spotted it. I'm a POV purist, and when I break that, I want it to be for a specific reason, not by accident. It won't take much to fix it, but this was one close call. :-)

Otherwise, I'm not finding a lot that needs to be fixed. That's worrying me since I don't want to miss stuff.

Six Down, Nineteen To Go

I've made it through the first 6 chapters of the galley so far. It's still reading really clean to me and I wasn't totally exhausted yesterday. Now that I'm thinking about, In the Midnight Hour had really clean galleys, too. Of course, I found more mistakes later, after it was published, so it wasn't quite as clean as I'd believed. :-( Then there was the proofreader who didn't know what keyless entry was and changed it to keys entry. I still cringe every time I think about that in my book.

Anyway, I'll try to get three read-throughs in for In Twilight's Shadow and hope my mom gets a couple of readings in as well. She spots things I don't all the time.

I've been watching National Geographic Channel and HGTV lately, and there are two commercials I see all the time that are really getting on my nerves. The first shows this red chair in the middle of a suburban street and this guy is talking about the American dream being that each person gets his own dream. I'm sooooo sick of hearing it. Talk about overbuying media time. I have no clue what the ad is for, but I'll hate that product forever because of how tired I am of seeing their commercial. :-) The second ad I'm sick of is for Direct TV and has Beyonce singing about upgrading and HD TV. This is another commercial I've seen like six million times. Give it a rest already.

And on a final note, I really stuck my foot in my mouth at work yesterday. Sigh. This is why I usually don't talk too much when I meet people because I am totally socially inept. My problem is that I'm comfortable enough at work that I don't think about what I say--at least not enough. My social faux pas was mentioning I thought of one of my engineers when I saw some idiot riding his bike on a two-lane road with no shoulder because of the snow. And that I thought the bike rider was a moron. My engineer rides his bike in winter, too, which is why I thought of him, but I didn't mean to imply I thought he was a moron. Why don't I think before I open my mouth? Gah!

One last final note. :-) I swear, no more after this. I'm supposed to have homework for my online class done today. Big, huge GAH! This is hard homework requiring hours of work on my part--hours, quite frankly, that I don't have.