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So my week hasn’t exactly been normal, starting on Tuesday
right before lunchtime when my son-in-law had to grab the baby and the cat and
literally drive out of their apartment complex parking lot as fire was burning
down the hillside above. (Sometimes the mandatory evacuation orders don’t
arrive until a few hours after you needed to be OUT, so stay aware if you live
in a brush fire zone!). My daughter and
her family sheltered here all week in my apartment and we did our best to make
it as stress-free as we could, all the while wondering what the fire was doing.
0% contained for two days…fortunately the huge winds forecast for two nights
ago never did materialize in our vicinity and the wonderful firefighters got a
handle on the fire. I’m always supremely grateful to the men and women of the
various fire departments involved when these brush fires start up. (Well grateful
to them anytime, of course but especially during the grueling fire ‘season.’)
Our little drama has a happy ending – the mandatory evacuation order was lifted
today, the apartment complex didn’t burn and now they are back at home.
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The baby was resilient, as babies are, although plainly
puzzled by various things, including two ‘new kitties’ (mine) who did not wish
to be petted…the lack of his crib, his toys….
I got no writing done. Too much else needed doing! I did
manage to keep my commitments on blogs and other activities but my hero and
heroine of the next book are stuck in limbo. (I did have a new release on
Monday – details below – a new series starter!).
In general, I prefer to write in silence, at my desk, with
sleeping cats strategically located nearby. I could never write in a coffee
shop or other public place. I like to sink into my own zone, be in the flow and
just write….I can block out distractions, but I’d rather not have them there to
begin with! When I was younger I used to write to a soundtrack, nothing
particular, just an endless mixtape of my favorite songs, but starting a few
years ago I found that was too distracting.
The blurb for the new
book, Aydarr (A Badari Warriors SciFi Romance Novel): Sectors New Allies Series Book 1:
Jill Garrison, a maintenance tech at the Sectors Amarcae 7
colony, goes to sleep one night as usual only to wake up in her nightgown
stranded in the middle of a forest on an unknown world. There’s no time to
think as she’s stalked by carnivorous predators and rescued by genetically
engineered warriors calling themselves the Badari. Turns out they and she,
along with her whole colony, are now prisoners of the Khagrish, a ruthless race
of alien scientists. Working for enemies of the Sectors, the Khagrish have
created the Badari to be super soldiers.
Aydarr, the Badari alpha, isn’t sure he can trust Jill but
his attraction to her is undeniable. He impulsively claims her as his mate to
prevent her death at the hands of the Khagrish.
Can he continue to protect her from the experiments already
underway? Will his claiming her put his
pack in jeopardy from their alien masters?
As Jill searches for a way to rescue her fellow humans and
get them all to safety, she finds herself falling for Aydarr, despite the
secrets he’s keeping. She has a few of her own.
The situation becomes dire when Aydarr and his pack are sent
offplanet on a mission, leaving Jill unprotected, prey for the senior
scientist. Can she escape the experiments he has in mind for her? Will she be
able to thwart the Khagrish plans and liberate humans and Badari alike? How
will she and Aydarr reunite?
A quick excerpt as
the novel begins:
Why am I lying face
down on the wet grass in the rain?
Jill rolled over, putting a hand to her forehead in an
attempt to quell a ferocious headache. Opening her eyes gingerly, she blinked at
the vividly colored pink, purple and blue leaves on the tree above her, which
certainly had never grown on Amarcae 7. She’d been all around her home colony
on various repair jobs, and nothing there had riotous leaves in these colors,
much less with spikes at the tips. As she watched, one of the leaves snapped
into a tight roll to capture a slow moving insect.
“Thank the Lords of Space I’m too big a bite.” Wary, nauseous,
she sat up, swaying a bit, and examined her unfamiliar surroundings. She was in
the midst of an old growth forest, with other forms of vegetation besides the
carnivorous trees but nothing recognizable.
A loud roar in the distance gave her the shivers, and she
forced herself to stand, staggering a few feet to lean on a less colorful tree’s
broad trunk to stay upright. Despite the rain, her mouth was dry, and she had a
hard time swallowing. “What the seven hells?”
Her mind was curiously blank, no memory of how she’d gotten
to this place, or what had happened in the last few hours. She guessed it might
be late afternoon here, from the glimpse she got of the white sun above the
horizon, before the clouds drifted in front of the orb again. She refused to
contemplate the fact that the star providing heat and light to her colony was
yellow. If the sun here was white hot, the reality of where she stood, lost in
the galaxy, was terrifying.
She remembered eating dinner in her small modular house on the
edge of the colony, falling asleep watching an adventure trideo she’d seen a
hundred times then…nothing.
“And
now I’m here.” She took a closer look at her left arm and did a double take. A
black bracelet she’d never seen before was solid against her skin just above
the wrist, with no visible hinge or fastening. As she gawked at it, prying at
the edges in an increasingly desperate attempt to make the band move, flickers
of red and yellow pulsed inside the cool, hard surface. The bracelet and what
it might mean scared her more than the loss of short term memory or even the
unknown sun above her.
The
roar came again, closer, and was answered by another. Something hunting me maybe? Distracted
from the ominous mystery of the bracelet, she was briefly tempted to try
climbing the tree, but the lightheadedness persisted. Also, the smooth trunk
didn’t offer anything in the way of handholds. She pushed off, realizing she
was barefoot, wearing her short, pink-and-black nightgown, molded to her body
by the rain. Lingerie was her secret luxury after a day spent in technician’s
coveralls, but certainly not suited to this experience.
Am I dreaming? She paused, gazing at the
sky and pushing her damp hair off her face. The shower had tapered off and now
the sun was shining but an ominous gray storm front was advancing. A bolt of
lightning arced across the sky, and Jill broke into a zigzag run, forcing her
body to respond to her terror. Standing anywhere close to a giant tree in a
thunder storm was a recipe for disaster.
I’m in a nightmare,
not a dream, but it’s all too real.
It's the time of year when people are writing their "best of the year" lists and such. Unfortunately, as a reader, I tend to be a bit slow and behind the times, so I'm hardly going to be able to tell you the best books from 2017 that I read. 
