Today I’m sharing with you one of my favorites: THE FIFTH KINGDOM, a romantic suspense I did for Carina Press early last year. Why is it one of my favorites? Both the heroine and hero, Bill and Deanna, are wounded characters who need love to help heal the wounds of the past.
I loved bringing them together as well as something very shocking in the middle of the book. I can’t say what and spoil it, but it involves Bill and it’s a biggie. A life-threatening biggie.
I hope you like this excerpt. Please note that it is for mature audiences.
By now you know that I’ve got two releases coming up, THE FIFTH KINGDOM a romantic suspense, and THE LOST, a paranormal romance.
Now I don’t want to give too much away about either of them, but after considering it for some time, it occurred to me that they have something in common that has really grabbed my attention: Magical and mystical energies.
In THE FIFTH KINGDOM, the energy comes from an ancient relic discovered in what could be Montezuma’s tomb. The relic is a copy of the Aztec Sun Stone sitting the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. The original sun stone is about 12 feet in diameter and weighs about 24 metric tons. You can read more about the original here.
The relic in the book is similar in terms of its look, but it is small enough to hold in your hands and made of obsidian and silver on stone. It is very different in one important way: It has mystical powers which are released once it comes in contact with something very sacred.
What can be so sacred? What about blood?
Now I won’t spill about whose blood awakens the energy in the relic or what it is because I don’t want to spoil the story for you.
Those energies, whether in relics, nature or in people, are all around us I think. As I said, that’s what inspired me for the two stories.
For THE LOST it was my visits down to the shore and the power I’d feel in nature, but also in the people gathered on Sunday mornings for Pavilion Praise in Ocean Grove. The gathering of that many people focused on one thing creates almost palpable energy to me.
It made me remember that I had felt something similar on a Palm Sunday many years back when my family and I went to Rome for Holy Week. Walking into St. Peter’s Square when it was filled with thousands of people joined together was seriously an amazing experience.
Those energies in us and around us is what inspired the SIN HUNTERS, a race of people capable of harnessing and using those energies for all kinds of cool things.
In the next few weeks, I’d like to explore with you those LOST energies. Find out if you believe or not in whether such powers can exist in nature, people or things.
For today, I’ll leave you with the Aztec Sun Stone and it’s supposed abilities to predict the end of THE FIFTH KINGDOM and also, the video premiere for the novel.
I’d love to hear from you as to whether you believe in THE LOST energies as we explore some other relics, people who see auras and sense energies, and all other kinds of cool things!
Don’t forget that on Thursday I’ll be having a live video event with Jeaniene Frost where we’ll be chatting about sexy urban fantasy and its heroes and heroines. If you can’t see the widget below, you can go to this link: http://t.wbx.me/fbam1 for the live video event.
When I was busy thinking about AZTEC GOLD atop that Mexican pyramid (and also wondering how I’d ever get down), I was also envisioning how I could use the locale for another of my favorite things – a romantic suspense novel.
That’s how THE FIFTH KINGDOM was born. I wondered what would happen if someone found something very important, like the tomb of the last great Aztec leader Montezuma. A find like that would have great historic and symbolic significance, especially since only one other such tomb has been found. Of course my writer’s mind then envisioned what would happen if there was something dangerous in the tomb. Something that could do great harm if it fell into the wrong hands. Add a sexy and wounded CIA agent and the daughter of a missing archeologist, who hasn’t seen her mother in nearly 14 years. Shake and you’ve got a romantic suspense novel.
What I liked most about this novel was surprisingly not the action and adventure, but the fragile understanding that develops between Bill Santana, the CIA Agent, and Deanna Vasquez, the daughter who also happens to be a well-known historian in her own right. They are both wounded souls who come to discover that maybe having family is not as bad as they both thought.
Without further ado, a short excerpt from THE FIFTH KINGDOM which will be out in July 2011 from Carina Press.
Today I’m sharing with you one of my favorites: THE FIFTH KINGDOM, a romantic suspense I did for Carina Press early last year. Why is it one of my favorites? Both the heroine and hero, Bill and Deanna, are wounded characters who need love to help heal the wounds of the past.
When I was busy thinking about