Please welcome author Karin Shah who is celebrating the release of In Like A Lion. I’m a sucker for a shifter romance, and this one contains a chimera—something a little different. My favorite kind! Over to Karin…
The announcement last year that power might be disrupted because of solar flares reaching it’s peak, uh, now, caused me to spend a few hours pondering how to protect my precious electronics. After much web-surfing on Faraday cages, etc. I discovered if I put my cellphone in a plastic box in my old metal desk drawer, the phone didn’t get any reception and therefore was theoretically safe from being fried.
Now, I am by no means what you would call a "Doomsday Prepper." I’m nowhere near that category, but having lost family members in natural disasters (Hurricane Camille in 1969). I believe in preparing to evacuate and that it never hurts to get ready for emergencies, even if they never come.
The possibility we might all be back to pre-elecrical times made me start to wonder? Do I have a skill that is necessary for survival? Is my job something that (when the s*&t hits the fan) I can use to get food and supplies for my family?
Smugly, I think it is. Even though paper would be scarce and printing presses hard to come by, I, as a writer am a storyteller. Storytellers have been necessary to a group’s existence since Paleolithic times.
I think when the work is done and people gather, they’ll want entertainment and without movies, TV or video games. We writers will be one of the only games in town.
(Don’t tell my IT manager husband *g*)
So what do you think? Does your job stand a chance after the apocalypse?
CONTEST: Win a copy of In Like a Lion. a Rafflecopter giveaway
IN LIKE A LION
The Chimera Chronicles Book One
Karin Shah
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Publisher: Soul Mate Publishing
ASIN: B00AQJ756C
Word Count: 86,673
Cover Artist: Rae Monet
Book Description:
Dangerous and forbidden…
Research scientist, Dr. Anjali Mehta, lost her beloved family in an earthquake. Only her work cuts through the paralyzingly grief, but when she finds her new research subject, reputed mass murderer, Jake Finn, maddeningly uncooperative and inexplicably sexy she’s tempted to run away. How can she burn to touch a killer–a man behind bars?
What she doesn’t know is that Jake is a chimera, a shapeshifter who can change into a lion or a dragon with all the strengths of both even in human form, who believes his ability to shape shift is nothing but a terrifying hallucination, and his overpowering attraction to his new doctor proof positive he’s finally gone over the edge.
And the employer she trusts has an agenda all his own. If she can’t believe the impossible, neither she nor Jake may make it out alive.
Book Trailer: http://youtu.be/iLsLAtOMmhM
Short Excerpt:
As Anjali stepped out into the corridor, a shout made her freeze.
The exclamation’s guttural force spurred her heartbeat into double time. What the hell?
She tracked the alarming sound to a door with a glass window and peered inside.
In the center of a large room, a shirtless man moved with fluid grace on exercise mats. Karate? Or Tae Kwon Do? That explained the shout. She shrugged.
Before she could slip away, the man turned and came closer. She ducked to the side so he couldn’t catch her watching.
Her breath caught as she saw his lean face.
She swallowed, pulse leaping. God, he was gorgeous. Staring much, Anjali? she admonished herself, scraping together the remnants of logic blown away by the sight of him.
This was just a man, his face, just a pleasing arrangement of features.
Papers on the appeal of symmetry to the human mind had been mandatory reading in some of her classes.
His movements took him deeper into the room and she inched closer again, her long exhale fogging the window in front of her. She didn’t need calipers to know when God had handed out facial symmetry, this man had pushed to the front of the line.
Odd shadows lent the suggestion of a tiger’s stripes to the man’s elegant cheekbones and clean jaw. She glanced at the ceiling and noticed metal baskets caging the fluorescent light fixtures, throwing voids into the harsh glare.
Her attention zeroed back to the man.
His hair—raven black with the sheen of a crow’s feather—hung past his chin and fell forward, masking his eyes. She caught herself wishing he would raise his head so she could see them. Her gaze drifted downward, following the delicious curve of his shoulder.
His large body was a work of art, each muscle defined and chiseled, as if Michelangelo had carved him from a piece of granite. The impish light played more tricks, lending his golden skin the sheen of satin as he defended against the attacks of invisible adversaries.
Her mouth dry, she watched him flow through the movement, muscles rippling beneath that flawless skin. Who was he? A guard?
Given his size and superior musculature, if he was a doctor, he was nothing like the doctors and researchers she’d worked with in the past.
Goose flesh pimpled the back of her arms. There was just something about a man that big that called to her most basic instincts.
A disparaging laugh huffed from her chest. She’d been living like a nun for years and now she was drooling over a man so out of her league he might as well have been a movie star.
What sounded like a voice—short and harsh, but indistinct—reverberated through the thick, metal-reinforced glass. The man halted mid-move and glared over his powerful shoulder.
For the first time, Anjali noticed there were other people in the room; uniformed men with sleek, ugly rifles, not only drawn, but leveled at the man as if prepared to shoot him at the slightest misstep.
She gasped as an awful realization washed over her. This man—the first man to draw her interest since her loss—was not a guard or a doctor.
He was Jake Finn, her subject, and a stone-cold killer.
About the Author:
I live in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio and worship Jeni’s Ice Cream, JK Rowling, Jayne Ann Krentz, the tv show Supernatural, and the movies, Hunt For Red October and The Princess Bride(though not necessarily in that order.)
I am a fanatical reader of Romance, particularly Sci-Fi Romance, Fantasy Romance and Paranormal Romance. I always write the book I want to read, so I tend to jump sub-genre a bit. My husband and I are the parents of two kids (a girl and a boy) and slaves to two dogs ( a basenji and a vizsla)
I was born in Rochester, NY, attended SUNY Oswego and got my Master’s in Information and Library Science at the University of Buffalo. I was a School Librarian in Webster, NY for five years before starting my writing career. (I still miss my students.)
http://KarinShah.wordpress.com
@KarinShah
While I don’t have a cell phone, just a landline phone I was worried that my laptop might not work if the electronics got fried. My husband still thinks a solar flare is gonna hit and all the electronics are gonna be…*gone*
If that’s the case I’m sure we’ll learn to live with it…that is until we can get stuff up and working again. lol
I’d have to learn to write a much better first draft if I was going to verbally tell a story.
Your book sounds great. Good luck!
Hi, Shelley!
We never heard of solar flares etc and electronics down this end of the world. Interesting. My father is great at bartering etc. Maybe I could do something like that – go into non-traditional sales :)
I’m looking forward to reading your book.
Thanks for stopping by, Carol! I know what you mean. I could never present my first draft to an audience! Horrors!:-)
I’m with you, Mary. Living without my electronics scares the heck out of me. Let’s hope that solar flare never actually hits. Thanks for joining the discussion!
I agree, bartering is where it’s at! I surely hope I never have to test my bartering skills, I’m not much of a haggler. :-)
Thanks for having me, Shelley! I hope you enjoy IN LIKE A LION!
Hi Karin! Hi Shelley!
Congratulations on the release, Karin!
I loved the blurb and enjoyed the excerpt. Sounded intriguing!
Thanks for sharing.
Hi Nas,
Thanks for the kind words and coming by!
Great question and interesting take on it. Although I’m a story teller, too, I’m not sure I’m the right kind. But I know how to cook for hundreds over an open fire, so I think I’ll be all right.
Ah, Alice! Now, that *is* a valuable skill! I hope I know someone with that talent if the lights do go out! Thanks for entering the conversation!