Hey everyone!

Every once in a while I'm lucky enough to score an author who is willing to let me be lazy and not post something of my own, and today I'm happy to introduce you to Kait Nolan. Who blames me for…well, if you read on, you'll see.

Welcome, Kait!

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A favorite question of readers is always what the big idea was behind a book or series. It’s hard to answer that question about my debut paranormal romance novella Forsaken By Shadow without talking about the book that came before—a book that will never see the light of day because it was a total disaster. Okay, not a total disaster because I got a world out of it. It all started with this sexy wolf-shifter doctor and a really wacky dream. Larissa, I partially blame you for putting sexy paranormal doctors in my head in the first place (mmm, Eidolon). Between your demons and J. R. Ward’s vampires, I had paranormal on the brain.

The original premise was about a wolf-shifter who abhorred and rejected his wolf nature, existing as a sort of fringe member of his pack until his mate, a human, shows up, forcing him to embrace the side of himself he hates in order to win the fight for alpha and save her life. It was supposed to be a stand-alone novel, just something to let me get my feet wet in the paranormal again (which is where I started years ago before my long and drawn out trip into traditional romantic suspense).

Then the agents from the Investigation and Enforcement Division showed up. They’re essentially the FBI of the paranormal world, responsible for—as the name implies—the enforcement of paranormal laws and investigation of crimes in their world. They’re under the command of the Council of Races (imagine a paranormal United Nations as the ruling body of the paranormal world). Also under the Council’s command are the Shadow Walkers, the Special Ops Force of the paranormal world, who are able to manipulate and travel by shadow. Once the IED, Council, and Shadow Walkers appeared on my mental radar and I realized that there was a world full of other paranormal races far beyond the typical vampires, werewolves, and the like, I was lost. I got totally sucked into the universe I had created and realized I had a series on my hands. The prevailing question of the series is what happens if their greatest law—keeping their existence a secret from the humans—were broken on a large scale? What happens if a whole faction of the Mirus world (that’s my term for the paranormal community) actively seek to start the apocalypse (which literally translates into lifting the veil)?

That was about the point when that first book derailed. The story didn’t fit in with the metaplot I’d developed for the series (no matter how hard I tried to force it). I still love that premise, and I still love those characters, so they’ll get repurposed on down the line in a very unexpected way, as it happens. But that’s where Forsaken By Shadow came in. I wanted to write something short that was an introduction to this world, this problem. A teaser to draw readers in to the broader series. And that’s what FBS is. It is a window into the Mirus world, the first glimpse of how it all begins.

It starts when IED Agent Embry Hollister finds out that her father has been captured by human military scientists—and the Council has no intention of mounting a rescue mission. She’ll do anything, break any rule to free him. Ultimately the only person she can turn to for help is her father’s protégé and her old flame, Gage Dempsey, who was banished from their world a decade before with his memory wiped. He’s built a whole new life for himself as Ultimate Fighting Champion Cade Shepherd and doesn’t even remember Embry exists. All Embry has to do is find him, restore his memory, convince him to take on this suicide mission, help him regain his abilities as a Shadow Walker, and if they survive in the end, walk away again to protect him from the world that wants him dead. She can do that…right?

Forsaken By Shadow is available for $1 at Scribd, Smashwords, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and the iBookstore.

Kait’s writing blog Shadow and Fang
Kait’s cooking blog Pots and Plots
Kait on Twitter
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Kait on MySpace

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 20th, 2010 at 12:00 am. . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.