What would you like to tell readers about yourself?
* Visit Taryn at her website, or her blog, as well as Twitter, Facebook, tsu, Pinterest, Goodreads and Amazon. Links can be found on her website.
Today Taryn Kincaid will be talking "Of Spiders, Astronauts, Weather and HER CAPTAIN."
* Most writers, when asked “How did you become a writer,” talk about how they always wrote and have characters on the brain, and in their ears, constantly yammering at them. They’d have you believe that, they lay on their backs in their infant cribs and stared at the spinning mobiles above their heads, they secretly thought, “I can take that cow and have it jump over that crescent moon.” No. Wait. “I can have that puppy dog stare at the full moon and become…a WOLF.”
* OK. Not really.
* When I was very young, though, somewhere in the lower grades of elementary school, I wrote my first published story. It was on construction paper. The “hero” was an astronaut (I always loved a country-serving man in uniform!), but he ran into some sort of space weather storm and the end of his journey seemed in doubt. Enter The Itsy Bitsy Spider who, after all, is something of a weather expert. And the next thing you know our Gravity-floating astronaut hero was climbing down some sort of weather spout.
* Maybe that’s why the titles in my Sleepy Hollow series of paranormal romances are LIGHTNING, THUNDER, FROST, HEAT WAVE and IN FROM THE COLD. And why I’ve got a short, shot, hot HOT erotic contemporary called BLIZZARD. Or why my post-apocalyptic take on the Sleeping Beauty fairytale is called RAIN.
* Who knows how a writer’s mind really works.
* HER CAPTAIN features a huge winter nor’easter that traps the hero, ex-Navy SEAL Slate Claybourne (a Capricorn) in a dilapidated island inn with effervescent Aries, Holly Harper. They’re about as compatible as oil and water. But combustible as gasoline and a lit match. HER CAPTAIN is part of the Tempting Signs series of romances from Fated Desires Publishing. Each author chose a zodiac sign. I chose Capricorn, which is mine. All I knew when I started out was that I wanted the hero to be the Capricorn…and I wanted him to be a real captain. Billy Joel’s video of “Downeaster Alexa” affects me every time I see it and I had a lobsterman in the back of my mind. But Slate had other ideas. American Sniper kinds of ideas. “I’ve been in country,” he told me. “I’m exhausted from all my tours. Something bad happened to me last time out. Real bad. I need to come home.”
* I decided that “real bad” thing would have a big impact on the heroine. Holly Harper and Pieberry Island were born. And Slate and Holly and I were off to the races.
* A broken, soul-dead man unable to be around people, his body still a lethal weapon when his night terrors wake him from sleep, Slate’s failed to keep the promise he made to the commander who died in his arms: to look after the older man’s baby girl.
* But animated Aries Holly Harper is not the pigtailed tot Slate expected her to be, when she lands on the island to take over the decrepit Pieberry House, determined to turn it into an inn for summer tourists, and even more determined to yank Slate back into the land of the living.
* First she crashes into him at the island’s holiday Winter Festival, dumping a towering stack of pies at his feet, then she drags him off to a fortune teller against his better judgment. Except for the sizzling attraction smoldering between them, they’re incompatible in every way.
* But when a furious December nor’easter traps them together at Pieberry House, will Slate and Holly overcome their pasts and discover they are two halves of a whole?
* “Jesus. You really have no boundaries, do you?” He raked her with a glare and rested the cartons on the hood of a nearby car, then brushed a hand through his disheveled hair. His attempt to restore some semblance of order failed miserably when a wayward lock flopped over his forehead. Growling, he flipped the stray curl away with an irritated gesture.
* “I think not,” she responded. “I’m never going to have them where you’re concerned.”
* “We’ve just met, Holly.”
* “But I don’t feel like we’re strangers, really. Didn’t my dad ever mention me? He talked about you. Besides, I’m an Aries. Get used to it.”
* With his now-straggled hair and a puzzled air reorganizing his features, he appeared almost boyish, or might have, if it hadn’t been for the wave of pure, unadulterated lust smacking her like a two-by-four every time she gazed at him.
* “You have no idea what Aries is, do you?”
* “It’s a constellation. I’m a sailor.”
* “It’s also a zodiac sign. You know, like in horoscopes? And it’s not actually aligned with the constellation anymore because of the way the equinoxes have caused a shift.”
* His eyes glazed over a little.
* “Aries are impulsive, impetuous, impatient, and daring,” she nattered on, surprised at her breathlessness, but not her need to babble. “I’m guessing that’s everything you’re not.”
* He frowned. “I can be impatient,” he said, as if that was a good thing. The look he shot her indicated his nerves might, in fact, be wearing a little thin at the present moment
* “And I suspect, given your last employment, daring, too.”
* “Maybe that,” he conceded. “Not by inclination or choice.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I’m a lobsterman now. And I run the ferry when needed.”
* “But still mainly serious, driven, hard-working, and wise, fiercely loyal, tough, and unapproachable on the outside but with a soft, warm, and squishy nougat center. I have you pegged for a total Capricorn. I bet you’re a secret romantic at heart, although you never show the world that side. When’s your birthday?”
* “Do we have to play this idiotic game?”
* “We do. And it’s not idiotic. You’d be surprised how telling astrology can be. Was I wrong about you?”
* “Well…” He paused, and the silence between them lengthened.
* “I’ll take that as a no.” She grinned at him.
* “All right.” Again he said nothing more, and she wanted to shake him until a confession fell out of his mouth.
* “Chatty, too.” She tapped her foot and crossed her arms over her chest, drawing his gaze to her breasts. But he still didn’t take the hint. She groaned. Such a man. “Eyes up, sailor.” She flicked a finger in the vicinity of his chin until he raised his focus. “Birthday?” she demanded again.
* “In a couple of weeks,” he said at last, the admission apparently so difficult it might have been wrung from him on pain of torture.
* She snapped her fingers. “Knew it. Do I have you sussed or not?”
* “Do you?”
* “I mean, we’re completely incompatible. Like oil and water. The tortoise and the hare.”
* He shot her another incendiary look, and then glanced at the exit as if contemplating how fast he could make his getaway.
* “Oh, wait. So I ruffled your feathers a little, and you’re not going to help me now?”
* Instead of replying, he seized her fiercely by the arm and spun her around, dragging her into him until he’d caught her up against his rock-hard chest. Then his mouth came down on hers, hard, harsh, and demanding. Giving absolutely no quarter. Shocking her into utter and complete silence.
* Whoa! I thought this man lacked spontaneity? Holy simmering cinnamon buns!
ANNOUNCEMENT! Taryn Kincaid will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN GC + a download of the book to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour! So be sure to leave a comment AND use the Rafflecopter below. Also, visit the other tour stops for a greater chance of winning!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
3 comments:
Thanks for hosting!
Good morning! Thanks for hosting me today!
I thoroughly enjoyed the blurb and the excerpt! Thank you!
Post a Comment