katduarte

Clues for the trivia contest answers can be found in these three excerpts and in the “10 Reasons to date a werewolf” page here on this website.

Remember to put “TRIVIA CONTEST” in the subject line andemail your answers to me at:

katiecat.katduarte@gmail.com

The entries need to be received no later than 10pm on October 30th. Good luck!

EXCERPT 1 from Rise of the Wolf:

“She won’t always have your protection,” Creepy Fangs sneered.

“She won’t always need it.”

“What the hell is going on here? Who are you guys?” Hilary demanded. She forgot about the whole undead-drink-your-blood imminent danger and stepped out between her boss and the vampire.

Nathan Sutton grabbed her arm and pushed her behind him. She found herself pressed up tightly against his back. Even through their clothes she recognized the feel of his body, the warmth of him, the scent. And she remembered where she had seen those damn blue eyes of his before: looking up at her when he’d been the wolf.

“What the hell is going on here?” she repeated in a completely different tone.

“He hasn’t told you yet?” the vamp asked with his shiny, pointy grin. “Isn’t that just like a werewolf?”

Blood-curdling howls, vampires, werewolves? Help me, I’ve fallen into a nightmare of gothic clichés and I can’t get out! She hated to admit it, even to herself, but in a situation like this, it was nice to have a man’s broad, muscular back and shoulders to lean on. At least, it was broad and manly at the moment.

“Werewolf? My boss is a werewolf?”

EXCERPT 2 from Rise of the Wolf:

“Oh, by the way, we’ve got one of those ‘special’ customers waiting to be seated,” April warned in a much more subdued tone as they walked out toward the restaurant’s hostess station.

Hilary surveyed the line of customers in the waiting area and tried to guess which one April meant. Business had been good ever since the grand opening. Seemed the people of the far south suburbs had been starved for some place like Café Lotti, somewhere they could get a fine cup of Arabica brew. But that wasn’t what made them come back instead of going to the coffee franchise at the mall. “Coffee is just the beginning” was the Lotti motto and what separated them from the typical coffee, dessert, and sandwich places. The Lotti’s customers also had the lunch and dinner menu of a fine restaurant, not to mention the same service and atmosphere.

“The older couple in the matching windbreakers?”

April shook her head. “The handsome one in the red plaid shirt and brown suede jacket.”

(Later in the evening…and in the story):

“He’s still here?” Hilary’s tone had enough heat to singe lava.

April chuckled as her boss smacked the stack of menus down on the back counter to vent her annoyance.

“He’s still here,” she confirmed in more admiring tones, amazed at the way the man had made it seem natural to spend three hours to eat dinner. Plaid Man, as her boss had nicknamed him, had ordered the braised ribs, eaten his fill, had dessert, and lingered over coffee longer than any customer she’d ever known. Then he’d ordered more coffee. And another dessert. He’d already paid his bill, but still he sat where he’d plunked down at the beginning of the dinner rush. The man definitely had staying power.

Cyndi, his waitress, secretly pissed that he’d hogged one of her tables for so long, had named him best-customer-ever after he handed her a super-sized tip just minutes ago so she could go home.

April hadn’t minded his molasses-slow dining habits at all. She’d been savoring the sight of him ever since he sat down, his table near the front window in clear view from her hostess station. Damn nice window dressing, if you asked her.

EXCERPT 3 from Rise of the Wolf:

“You look like hell,” April said when she got to the Lotti that afternoon.

“Don’t get me started. And just when do you think they’ll put up some street lights along the road, for Pete’s sake?”

“For Pete’s sake or yours? And I thought you didn’t want to get started? What happened, baby boss?”

Hillary smiled. She let April get away with the “baby boss” label because they were both the same age and because under her assistant manager’s small-town trappings, there existed a very sharp and clever woman like herself. April was one of the few people here in the boondocks who could make her day.

At first, moving to McKenna had felt like moving from a penthouse into a walk-in closet—claustrophobic to say the least—but she’d soon come to not loathe the small-town atmosphere, mainly because of April. Her assistant manager had quickly filled her in on the fact that a fairly good-sized shopping mall did exist only twenty miles away. One of the stores actually carried Anne Klein, though sadly, not Donna Karan. A super-sized Farm and Fleet store had also been built just ten miles in the opposite direction, which, while much lauded by the locals, Hilary would probably never visit. Due to the mall, the wifi at the Lotti, and April, she decided she could stick it out for the time it took to establish a steady customer base and train her successor. She’d have no problem leaving the Lotti in April’s hands when she moved up in the company.

Tabitha Shay has done it again. She’s lured away some of us from our writers dens (or moonlit walks through the forests) to offer our readers the chance to win some enchanting prizes. Each writer will post questions about her own work on Tabitha’s blog and will be give clues for you to find the answers. You can enter one author’s contest or all of them; you will have to email your answers to the appropriate author’s site. For example, if you want to send answers for my trivia questions, you need to email your entry to: katiecat.katduarte@gmail.com

Entries must be in by 10pm on Oct. 30th so we can do our drawings at midnight.

For more on other authors contests, go over to Tabitha’s blog and fall under her spell.

There are two places to look for clues. Three excerpts are posted in my blog entry “Excerpts for the Trivia Contest Clues” and you’ll also need to read “10 reasons to date a werewolf” here on my website in the About Kat section.

All correct entries will be placed in a drawing and the winner will be announced Oct. 31st on Tabitha Shay’s blog. I’ll be giving a first prize and one runner up will also receive a prize.

First prize: a free copy of Rise of the Wolf and a Halloween themed decorative bowl full of goodies

Runner up prize: Halloween themed book thong and some sweet treats

Hope you have fun!                                                        

Congratulations to Cindi Hoppes on winning the Blog Train Scavenger Hunt. I hope you enjoy all the free ebooks you’ll be receiving. I have special hopes that Rise of the Wolf will be one of your favorites, of course. And I also hope you’ll stay in touch and let me know what you thought of it. I’d love to know what you liked about it and if there was anything that you didn’t like. Constructive criticism is always welcome!

To everyone who participated, both readers and authors…a big thanks to you all, but especially to Ginger Simpson who put it all together. Please visit her blogspot to find out what the secret quotation was and to give her a nice round of applause. Even better, go and check out all of her great novels at Eternal Press and pick up a copy or two. I’m sure she’d consider the best thank you of all.

Till next time,

Kat

Welcome to the next stop on the Blog Train Scavenger Hunt. I hope you enjoy your visit here and perhaps drop by my MySpace page, too.

Somewhere in this blog you’ll find a word, plainly labeled, that’s part of a famous saying. (Ginger told me it’s not too famous though, so you’ll get a bit of a mental workout putting all sixteen words together.) The hunt starts today and ends on September 13th, so you’ve got some time to look around. Remember, you’ll have to have your entry in by midnight on September 13th at mizing2003@yahoo.com. All correct entries will be entered into the drawing. What’s the grand prize? A virtual basket of eBooks, one from each of the authors whose sites you’ll be visiting. There’s also a prize for honorable mention: one of Ginger’s books.

I hope everyone enjoyed the first four stops on this Blog Train. As you go from one author’s page to another, stay awhile and get to know all my fellow writers. If my page is the first stop you’ve made and you haven’t yet visited the others, take a trip back to the starting point at Ginger Simpson’s blogspot and she’ll get you on the right track!

If you’ve never heard of me before, I hope I make a good impression on you today. I’m relatively new to ePublishing. So far, so good! Eternal Press is a great publisher.  My paranormal erotica stories tend to mix serious, romantic moments with a touch of humor.

Rise of the Wolf is my first ebook, but I just got the news a few days ago that I’ll have another one out soon with Eternal Press. It’s a Christmas story and (this time around at least) there won’t be any werewolves or vampires in it. Still, it’s not about everyday, down-to-earth folk. In fact, the main character, Angel Marinez-O’Reilly, hasn’t been down to earth for awhile: she’s a cherub-in-training who’s trying to earn her wings.

Those of you who read my first book and are werewolf and vampire fans…never fear! There’s another new story in the works that will focus on April (Hilary Samuels’s assistant in Rise of the Wolf ) and what happens to her when spooky things start to plague the residents in McKenna again. Keep your fingers crossed. (The secret word = BOOKS.) Maybe April’s adventure will be my third novel at Eternal Press.

In the future, I also plan to write another story about Hilary Samuels and Nathan Sutton, the main characters of Rise. I have some ideas for that one, but nothing set in stone yet. After you read Rise of the Wolf, come back here and let me know if you have any ideas for their future adventures. I’ll take your suggestions into consideration.

As soon as you’ve finished visiting here…and found the secret word, of course…your next station stop is at Kim Richard’s MySpace page. Kim’s new novel Death Masks is about a creepy, serial killer. I’m sure she’ll have more to tell you about it on her space.  And while you’re riding on the blog train, remember to bookmark our pages so you can visit again. We all hope you’ll have fun, not only with this scavenger hunt, but each time you come back to check in on our blogs.

Til next time,

Kat

…and werewolves, vampires, ghosts, fairy folk, monsters and alien beings of every ilk. When a new story idea comes into my head, it usually has a twist which takes it off on some tangent of what if: What if the protagonist meets her true love and he turns out to be a werewolf? What if the heroine falls asleep in a fairycircle and wakes up in the arms of an archfay? What if, once upon a time, Red Riding Hood was a handsome young man and the wolf was female shape shifter?

More often than not the monsters in my stories turn out to be the heroine or hero or both. Why does my mind work this way? I blame it all on Boris Karloff.

I must have been all of six or seven when I first saw “Frankenstein” with Boris Karloff. My father, a big fan of horror films, asked me if I wanted to stay up with him and watch “a real classic” about the best monster ever imagined. Although I don’t remember exactly, my reaction probably went something like, “Wow! Can I really?” I do recall my mother’s words to my dad: “Okay, but if she wakes up in the middle of the night with bad dreams, you’re the one who’s going to sit with her until she falls asleep again.” Understandable considering I’d not yet been able to watch “The Wizard of Oz” in its entirety. Even with my mom’s assurances that Dorothy and her friends lived happily ever after, I couldn’t get past the part with the haunted woods outside the wicked witch’s castle.

My dad must been wondering how he and I would fare, but he set the stage well for my first monster flick turning off all the lights and made a big bowl of popcorn. We watched it all the way through while the flicker of the TV sent eerie shadows across the room. I crept closer to the screen as the action rose toward the end, so when the credits started rolling dad couldn’t see my face as he asked, “What did you think, little one?” For a minute I was silent and he must have thought he’d get an “I told you so” from my mom in the morning. But tears, not fear, had sabotaged my voice. “The poor monster!” I finally choked out. My father shook his head and, with a grin on his face, pulled me into a hug as I continued to mourn for the monster.  “It wasn’t his fault he got the wrong brain. He didn’t know his own strength. And no one tried to help him! They were all so mean just ’cause he looked different. And then they killed him!”

I cried till my father assured me the monster didn’t really die because he came back in the next movie. Since then, I’ve always looked for the good in any monster, wanting irrefutable proof that he or she or it is evil and not just a misfit, deemed unworthy by society. Years later I read Mary Shelley’s novel and found my instincts confirmed, that the real horrors were perpetrated by man’s arrogance and prejudice, not the creature Dr. Frankenstein created — not until he began to play the role of a human all too well. Karloff’s acting, more informed by the novel than the movie script, had gotten the message through to me even as a child. Now, like Tom Baker’s Doctor in “Doctor Who,” I’d be much more apt to introduce myself and offer up a hand to shake if a strange creature crossed my path than to shoot it or run away. At least, some of the characters in my stories prove brave enough for that!

Is it any wonder my first published story contains “monsters” both good and bad?  Rise of the Wolf, an erotic romance, will be out August 7th as an eBook published by Eternal Press. In it you’ll meet Hilary Samuels, a city girl, who moves to Chicago’s far south suburbs to open a new restaurant. She’ll be meeting a not-so-nice vampire and an heroic werewolf. Will the werewolf turn out to be a delectable hunk? You betcha. Will Hilary do more than introduce herself and shake his hand? It’s all there in the book, so please buy a copy and find out. I and kind hearted monsters everywhere will thank you for it.

Watch for Rise of the Wolf at http://www.eternalpress.ca/index.html