Welcome to #WriterWednesday... with Chloe Jacobs

Happy Wednesday, y'all - and welcome to the second installment of #WriterWednesday.

This week, we have with us the fabulous Chloe Jacobs, who's a fairly new friend of mine, and a fellow writer at fabulous Entangled Publishing. We've made friends over on Twitter and on our own private Entangled Yahoo loop, and when she found out I was desperately searching for guests for this new #WW venture, she very kindly volunteered.

Let's put our hands together for Chloe, shall we? Not to mention for Chloe's fabulous YA novel, Greta and the Goblin King. It will be released in November, just like my book, and like mine, hers is available for preorder at the moment - see links below. It has one of the most gorgeous covers I've seen in a long time. Just look at this:

So without further ado, let's hear it for Chloe:

Hey, how’s everyone this hump day? Or should I say #WriterWednesday? Thanks so much to Jennie for having me as a guest. I’m so excited to be here!

Since it’s Writer Wednesday, I’ll share a little bit about what I’m working on. It’s the second book in my young adult fantasy series, The Mylena Chronicles. Book two starts up a few weeks after the first book finishes off. Greta is still recovering—from what, I can’t tell you…but oh man, it was epic.

Right now, she’s thinking a little bit about the choices people make, and the paths it takes them on.

(By the way…wow, I didn’t realize how very little I could say about this second book without giving away entirely too much from the end of the first book. Sorry about that J )

Here’s a very short little snippet:

There’s a moment in every situation when time slows and even the air stops moving. It’s measured in the uneven pounding of heartbeats. In the lightning flash of your life’s every mistake right before your eyes.

This is the moment that comes just before the moment of no return, because ideally you could still stop and go back. Resume the life you were living in the normality of the seconds before and pretend this turning point never existed. But the trouble is, if you speak just one more word, take one step forward, if you let go of it for even a fraction of a second…that’s it. It’s all gone. You fall headlong into the future.

Whether you want to or not. Then there wasn’t any going back.

The inevitability of this had been proven time and time again. Like when she followed her little brother into that damned cave, or agreed to go with Luke after he found her cowering in the snow.

First hunt.

First kill.

First time she met Isaac.

First time kissing Isaac.

And yeah, those were the big, glaringly obvious ones. But then there were the moments that snuck up on a person. They’re like a dark plague slowly and silently infecting person after person before lying back to wait for the perfect time to unleash hell. She pictured a kid in a crumpled cowboy hat and home-made vest, jumping up from behind the couch shouting “Bang! You’re dead!”

***********************************

Chloe Jacobs is a native of nowhere and everywhere, having jumped around to practically every Province of Canada before finally settling in Ontario where she has now been living for a respectable number of years. Her husband and son are the two best people in the entire world, but they also make her wish she'd at least gotten a female cat. No such luck. And although the day job keeps her busy, she carves out as much time as possible to write. Bringing new characters to life and finding out what makes them tick and how badly she can make them suffer is one of her greatest pleasures, almost better than chocolate and fuzzy pink bunny slippers.

Follow her on Twitter, Facebook and Goodreads and look for her YA fantasy GRETA AND THE GOBLIN KING in November, 2012!

Available for Pre-Order at Barnes and Noble and Amazon

GRETA AND THE GOBLIN KING

While trying to save her brother four years ago, Greta was thrown into the witch’s fire herself, falling through a portal to a dangerous world where humans are the enemy, and every ogre, goblin, and ghoul has a dark side that comes out with the full moon.

To survive, seventeen-year-old Greta has hidden her humanity and taken the job of bounty hunter—and she’s good at what she does. So good, she’s caught the attention of Mylena’s young Goblin King, the darkly enticing Isaac, who invades her dreams and undermines her determination to escape.

But Greta’s not the only one looking to get out of Mylena. The full moon is mere days away, and an ancient evil knows she’s the key to opening the portal. If Greta fails, she and the lost boys of Mylena will die. If she succeeds, no world will be safe from what follows her back…

Welcome to #WriterWednesday... with Joyce Tremel

Just about a month or so ago, the Working Stiffs blog closed its door. I'd been a part of it since 2007, at the invitation of Joyce Tremel, proud blog-mom and Pittsburgh mystery writer. Joyce had been contributing to the Working Stiffs even longer. It seems particularly appropriate that Joyce should be the first visitor to my new #WriterWednesday feature on my very own blog... just as I am on hers!

Joyce Tremel was a police secretary for ten years. More than once, she envisioned the demise of certain co-workers but took to writing as a better way to stay out of jail. Her fiction has appeared in Mysterical-e, and her non-fiction has been published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police magazine, as well as online. She is a member of Pennwriters as well as Sisters in Crime.


Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together and welcome the fab Joyce Tremel!

When Jenna Bennett/Jennie Bentley tweeted that she wanted to feature a #WriterWednesday (or #WW) on her blog I half-jokingly volunteered. She took me up on it. Her instructions to me were “Write something short about what you’re working on and send it to me along with links and an excerpt.” Easy enough.

I’m kind of in a weird state of limbo right now. After three rounds of rather intense revisions on In Spite of Murder for my agent, Meredith Barnes, she made a tough decision to leave agenting when she was offered her dream job at Soho Press. She referred me to several agents who have the manuscript in their hot little hands. I’ve never had so many agents reading at the same time, so I’m hopeful at least one of them will love it as much as Meredith did.

I’m working on two things at the moment. One is a sequel to In Spite of Murder—tentatively called In Spite of Politics—in which my protagonist’s mother runs for mayor of the small town of Spite, West Virginia. Murder and hilarity ensue, not necessarily in that order. If you want to read a short synopses of both books, you can find them on my blog. Click on the tab that says “In Spite of…”

The second thing I’m working on is a short story featuring a female police detective and a case of identity theft that leads to murder. It’s different than the Spite books—more of a straight police procedural.

If you’d like a taste of IN SPITE OF MURDER, the following is one of my favorite scenes. Yes, it contains kissing.

Here’s the set-up:  After Irma Jean is fired from her job as police secretary, she ends up at the bar in the Waverly Hotel which is owned by a hunky Irishman named Luke Jameson. Irma Jean is attracted to him, but still not over her ex-husband’s betrayal. She gets plastered and is rescued by Luke, who takes her up to his suite to recover. This is the scene where Irma Jean starts to admit to herself that there could be something between them.

“May I ask you something?” Luke said.

“Sure.”

He leaned toward me. His green eyes were tinged with blue. I hadn’t noticed that before. “Do you still love him?” he asked.

“No, I don’t love him.” I didn’t even have to think about my answer. “Far from it, especially right now.”

Luke reached over and tucked a stray piece of hair behind my ear. His touch sent a thrill through me. “I do miss him, though.” That didn’t sound right. “What I mean is I miss the man I married. Not the person he turned out to be. I miss—” I almost said I miss him in my bed at night. But that wasn’t true. Luke had been the one in my dreams lately. I felt a flush from head to toe.

“What were you going to say?” he asked.

It was hard to answer with my heart going thumpety-thump. “Nothing.”

He leaned in closer, his face only inches from mine. “You can tell me.”

No way. We hadn’t even had a date yet. It was one thing thinking about sleeping with him—it was another one entirely telling him about it. I didn’t know all that much about him, and he hardly knew anything about me. I thought I knew Curley and look where that got me. Luke was kind and considerate. Not to mention sexy as hell. I’d already made a fool of myself with him once today and I wasn’t going to do it again. “Really, it’s nothing.”

He grinned. “You’re blushing.”

“Thanks for telling me.”

“It’s cute.” He took my hand in his. “You don’t have to be afraid to talk to me.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I just don’t want to talk about Curley. He’s in the past and I’m moving on.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Anyone in particular in your moving on plan?”

“Maybe. I’m keeping my options open.”

Luke leaned forward and kissed me. The kiss was soft and tender and short, but the flush I’d felt a few minutes ago was nothing like the one I felt now.

“I hope I’m one of those options,” Luke said, then kissed me again.

A minute later, there was a knock on the door. One of the ovens in the kitchen caught fire and Luke had to go take care of things. At that point, I could have used a fire extinguisher myself.

It had been a hell of a day. I’d lost my job, been betrayed yet again by my ex, had too much to drink and made an ass of myself,  passed out, sobered up, and kissed the hottest guy in town. And it was only eight o’clock.

***

So, that’s my contribution to Jennie/Jenna’s new feature, #Writer Wednesday. And just so you know, she’s doing the same on my blog. Stop by and visit, won’t you?