Back from Romantic Times...

Hey all -- I'm baaaaack from RT, and what a blast it was! I got to hang with my crit partners, my publisher and a bunch o' readers! AND...a lady from Borders actually b0ught Brotherhood, saying that they were looking to expand their romantic suspense offerings, so cross fingers for me!

I took some great pics, which I'll load to the website later on this week, as I get time.

Hell, time is something I'm scrabbling for, at least these days! LOL. I'm off to San Antonio next Tuesday for an actual "work" thing, and I'm sure I'll get bunches of writing done, but quite frankly, the Oklahoma City Airport and I are getting to be waaaaay to familiar with each other! It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to drive an hour and a half to get there...and then back again at the end of the trip, but Lord, I soooo don't want to drive after being cooped up in a plane, y'know?

Okay, so I had yet another interesting plane companion on my way back from Atlanta...this kid was a cross between a young Matthew McConnaghy and Luke Wilson (yeah, break my heart), with the semi-sarcastic temperment to match. It was totally cool, given my semi-jaded view on life in general ;) Anyway, this dude was on his way back home from a 19-day vacation after finishing his residency. In what? It was something funky and medical, and I'm totally shamed that I can't figure out what in the hell he was talking about, considering I work in the medical field! LOL.

He was totally hung over (fishing and playing with his friends...did I mention he was young??), but we passed the time talking about Oklahoma (he left South Carolina to come home because it was just...HOME), various crap, etc. He seemed to think it was pretty damned cool that I was an author, which never fails to blow me away!

Anyway, he was met at the airport by Mom and his Britney-clone girlfriend, so we parted ways with a smile and a wave, but it was a most enjoyable two hours!

That's it for me, at least for tonight...I'm still recouping from the Dorchester party (can you say 4 hours sleep before I had to get up and catch the plane?), but will post my Book of the Week in the next few days.

Terri/Keira

Howdy from Daytona Beach & the nice young dude I met on the plane

Greetings and salutations from sunny Daytona Beach! I've been having a blast here, getting to meet lots of readers and booksellers (and other writers, of course). The weather is faboo and I've actually been getting a smidge of writing done during my downtime--got a bunch done on the plane as well. I got to sit next to the most interesting young man on the plane ride to Atlanta. He's going to a small junior college in Georgia, but was drafted by the Buckeyes before he blew out his knee. So I'm thinking, wow, total bummer for you, 'cause that really sucks...I mean, c'mon, full ride to a Division I school, right? Then he tells me that he decided to go into the Marine Corps and made it ALL THE WAY through Basic at Paris Island, but got dq'd because he was diabetic. Sigh. For having so many shitty things happen to him, this kid was totally upbeat, and not above talking to a crazy writer lady on the plane ride over! LOL. Anyway, talking with him was really inspirational for me, because he'd overcome some pretty bad things, but was still optimistic about going to school and maybe moving up to a Div I school next year. Hell, makes my life look pretty peachy, y'know?

Anyway, I just thought I'd share that and pop in for a quickie :) Hope y'all's week is going fabulously, and I'll check in before I hit the plane on Sunday!

Terri/Keira

View to a Kill Excerpt

Hey gang -- well, as promised, here's an excerpt from my next-in-line Work in Progress. Keep in mind that I go back and fix *lots* of stuff after I've gotten to "know" my characters, so lots of this will change in the final version. Without further ado...

Crime scene photographer Sara Covington has lived with The Sight her whole life. Now she’s run across a killer with a signature she’s never seen before, an enigmatic, sexy-as-hell cop with no aura whatsoever and a colleague who’s bent on smearing her name. What’s a girl to do but hold on and hope like hell she doesn’t end up dead?

Chapter One

Pure sensation arrowed through me, shooting blinding pain through my skull before settling into a low throb that pounded behind my eyes.
“You okay, Sara?” The low, concerned voice came from my left and belonged to my sometimes-partner, Charles.
I gave him a grunt for an answer, and prepared myself for what I would see when I opened my eyes. I whispered a low prayer that it wouldn’t be as bad as I thought, then took the plunge.
As crime scenes go, this one was no better or worse than the hundreds of others I’d visited over my ten-year career as a photographer. At least not on the surface. Beneath if was a whole ‘nother story.
My stomach rolled as my brain tried to process the sight of lust, hatred and terror imprinted on the aetheric. Sights and sensations that only I could see and feel.
The victim lay naked at the end of a filthy alley, sprawled in a graceless heap, arms and legs akimbo, vivid scarlet seeping from the gaping knife wound that decorated his neck like a gruesome Valentine’s Day tie.
Cops walked back and forth, the odd one cracking a joke. Their morbid humor had pissed me off, once upon a time, when I was young and naïve. Now I recognized it for what it was…a defense mechanism. I could appreciate that, if nothing else.
I raised the Nikkon to my eye. I could just as easily take the pictures using the two-by-two inch screen in the middle of the digital camera, but that wouldn’t mute the scene the way I needed. Staring through the viewfinder reduced the world to two dimensions, diluting the fourth that had haunted me since I was born.
I snapped the first photo, falling into the clinical detachment that had served me so well since the day I discovered the distance a camera could give me. It was with that detachment that I saw that the victim had been handsome—strikingly so—with a toned body and pampered hands. How had he ended up here, in the worst part of Dallas? Had he been hunting drugs and found what he wasn’t looking for? Namely, trouble of the worst kind.
I walked around the body carefully, my feet moving of their own volition. I’d shot so many vics before that I knew the drill, knew instinctively where I could and couldn’t step in order to preserve the crime scene.
When I finally lowered the camera, one thing struck me, and it was as bright as a neon sign.
The killer had left his signature, a thick, viscous smear of purple that hovered in the air, an exclamation point of rage that faded as it meandered toward the street. In my gut I knew what I couldn’t tell the cops. This perp had killed before—and would again. The sonofabitch liked it.
Sometimes being gifted with The Sight is a good thing. Most of the time it’s a bitch. This was one of those times.
***
Maybe it’s time for me to introduce myself. I’m Sara Covington, crime scene photographer. I’m twenty-seven and have been doing this since I got my high-school diploma. You might think that that’s way too young to stomach the sights and sounds of death, but I’ve been around it far too long to flinch. Much.
I’ve been told I’m attractive, with short spiky blonde hair, hazel eyes and a decent figure, and if the way the new cops hit on me is any indication, it’s probably right, but when you’ve got The Sight, you know that looks are not only deceiving, but can be downright deadly. So they pretty much don’t matter to me anymore.
I’ve had The Sight for as long as I can remember, and if anyone ever asked me, I’d be pretty honest in telling them how much it’s fucked me up. Not that anyone ever has, mind you. It’s not like I can drop into my local shrink’s office, tell him (or her) that I see things that other people don’t, and expect to walk out without a heavy dosage of something mind-altering. Been there, done that, don’t want to do it again.
The Sight is complicated and utterly simple at the same time. I see the fourth dimension. Not all it’s cracked up to be, trust me. If I knew what the real world looked like, I could probably make a comparison, but all I’ve ever known is the supervivid world I live in. It’s especially bad when it’s my time of the month. Must be a hormonal thing. I’ve learned to control how much I can see—most of the time. Anyway, most people just give off an aura that tells me what kind of person they are. People who are alpha personalities are hugely red, and if they’ve done something recently they’re ashamed of, then it’s tinged to orange. Pacifists are, you guessed it, serenely blue. But those are the extremes. Most everyone falls into a bluish-green or orangish-red category. The middle of the road. But every once in a while I run into someone who’s truly extraordinary. Like tonight’s baddie. I’d never seen a shade of purple that vivid before, never experienced the churning in my gut that signified seriously bad ju-ju. His signature had sucker-punched me, even though I’d known it was coming.
I learned to shut my mouth about my “talent” when I was a child. Getting whacked by your momma will do that to you. A serious, God-fearing woman, my momma didn’t know what to make of her only child. One day I was blessed by the Lord, the next I was demon seed.
Now that I’m older, I can understand some of where she was coming from, but I’ll never forgive her for sending me to “counseling”, which was a polite way of saying “in-patient psychiatric care”. Needless to say, I walked out when I was sixteen and never looked back. I lived on the streets for awhile, got my high-school diploma about a year later via GED, and by then I was already a regular photographer for the local sheriff’s department. One of the deputies had a big mouth, popping off to a Dallas detective about how good I was, and within a year I was freelancing for them.
Nowadays, crime scene investigators shoot most everything, but I’d been around for a long time, and the precinct captain trusted me, so the CSIs were stuck with me. It pissed them off at first, but after awhile they realized that having me there gave them more time to do the nine million other things that needing doing, and left me alone.
If you hadn’t figured it out, that’s the way I like it. Just call me the original lone-wolf photographer.
***
I kicked the door shut behind me and let The Sight unfold. My house was just as I’d left it, warm and inviting. The tap of claws on the parquet floor preceded my furry roommate.
I crouched and waited for the Lhasa Apso whirlwind that was Xena as she launched herself into my arms. She licked my face, smothering me in doggie kisses as she wiggled.
I know, a Lhasa is such a girly dog, but hey, what can I say, I’m a girl, and the pooch gives me unconditional love.
Tucking her under my arm, I rose and tossed my keys onto the hallway table, then carefully set the Nikkon down.
Tonight’s crime scene bothered me on an elemental level. What bothered me more is that I couldn’t shut it out. Usually I left the ugliness I saw far too often at my front door, but tonight’s work had left me feeling flustered and off balance.
I walked into the kitchen, fed Xena and poured myself a glass of wine. The Merlot slipped down my throat nicely, and complemented the bluesy Robert Cray that slid from the speakers as I turned on the stereo.

Off to Romantic Times, and my nonsense

Hey gang -- well, I'm getting ready to head off to the Romantic Times Convention on Tuesday. I'm really looking forward to it, if for no other reason than to hook up with my critique buds Jennifer Skully and Leigh Wyndfield. And yes, it's in Daytona Beach, so it's a real hardship :).

In other news, I've been jamming on my WIP, and hope to have more info I can share on it shortly. It's weird, cause I'm not one of those authors who can plot a damned thing out. I just start on the book and rock and roll from there. Sigh. I know when I sell to the big boys that's gonna be a problem since writing a synopsis is one of the major components of making your presentation, so I guess I'll just have to suck it up and move on.

When I get home tonight I'll post the start of the other book that's been floating around in my puny little brain...I think you'll like it...it's full of mayhem, murder and the wooowooo factor right out the gate.

Well, I'd better skedaddle on to work (blech)...I'll post my Book of the Week this weekend, and then check in periodically from RT.

Talk atcha soon!

Terri/Keira

Book of the Week...In Deep Voodoo

What a fun story! Stephanie Bond’s latest features Penny Francisco, recently divorced and faced with the discomfort of seeing her ex and his new girlfriend every single day…because in the settlement he got the house and she got her health food business. It wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t directly across the street from each other…and Deke’s new girlfriend has had the painstakingly restored Victorian painted Peptol Bismol pink! Enter BJ Beaumont, a private investigator in town looking for a missing girl. When Deke turns of dead during the town’s annual Voodoo Festival, Penny is the #1 suspect, and all the evidence points right to her. The plot twist at the end of the book ties things up neatly and makes you want to dive into the next book! Clear your calendar and settle in for an emotional, fun filled ride! The town of Mojo is peopled with awesome secondary characters that I can’t wait to see explored in Bond’s next book, and Penny and BJ are two characters you can’t help but fall in love with.