Archive | February 2014

What’s Next???

Feb18

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Onward and upward! Next on the agenda is The Viking’s Highland Lass, but  I had to finish listening to the audio book chapters for The Trouble with Demons to proof it and then make the suggested changes, so was working on that since 0-dark thirty this morning. I keep running out of WiFi time, *sigh*, and some of that is from having to download and proof the two audio books I’ve been going over. And some of it is from downloading pictures for book covers.

So I finished and sent it off, then remembered I’d received another interview I have to fill out. No wonder I wonder where the day has gone to and I haven’t gotten any writing done. But that’s okay, since all this other stuff needs to be done also.

Okay, so one of my beta readers is going over Cougar’s Mate and asked if the time would be right for the heroine to run as a cougar. To make sure it is as accurate as possible, I made certain the time was right. So if you read Cougar’s Mate, I will let you in on a secret. She can’t tell you how far she went and how long it took her each day because she has no idea. No watch, you see. And no pedometer.

So here’s the story–a cougar’s range is usually 50-150 miles. But they don’t travel during the day most of the time. They make day beds and then hunt at dusk and dawn. One cougar they know of had traveled 1500 miles, but they had no idea how long it had taken him. They travel around 15-20 miles per day. Which would make sense if their rage is only 50-150 miles.

Now, she would be moving a little faster to leave her area, but on the other hand, she’d have to be really careful not to be spotted either by humans or trespassing in a bear or wolf pack’s territory. She has to hunt for food. She doesn’t even really know where she’s going.

So, now the place is fiction, but if I said she went from Canyon, Texas to the Rocky Mountain National Park, and she’s only able to travel 15 miles per day, that would be 33 days. If 20, then 25 days. They travel in a zig-zag path looking for prey.

Isn’t that cool? 

And here you thought I just made all this stuff up. 🙂 

Have a super great Tuesday!!!

Terry

www.terryspear.com

Cougar’s Mate–The End!!!

Feb17

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Cougar’s Mate: Instinct told her to run…

 

Shannon Rafferty learns that hanging out with the bad boys could be a dangerous business, but hooking up with a cop is even worse. Now she’s on the run, trying to avoid being murdered by his cougar shifter brothers and uncle. If that isn’t bad enough, a deputy sheriff hunts her down while she’s running as a cougar and trying to survive in the Colorado wilderness. He vows to protect her no matter what she’s done. With three dead boyfriends to her name, she’s sure she will be the death of Chase Buchanan before either of them can prevent it. No matter how much she knows she has to run again, he soon holds her heart hostage. But will that be enough to keep them both alive?

Chase Buchanan—as wilderness cabin resort owner, former US Army Special Forces, and part time deputy of the small town of Yuma, Colorado that boasts a love of cougars—is tasked to track down a cougar reported to be hunting human prey. Chase soon learns she’s a shifter, not a full-time cougar, and she’s on the run. When he takes her in, he vows to protect her. After losing his wife and baby to the human kind of predator years earlier, he’s not letting Shannon’s hunters kill her, too. But how is he going to hold onto the wild-cat woman, who is unpredictable at every turn, without losing his heart to her, and then losing her as well?

***

One of the joys of writing books is writing The End. I have a TON of books I’ve started and are still works in progress, some that I’ve finished that still need a lot of revisions, but there is nothing like the thrill of writing a book from beginning to end!

I’m currently rereading Cougar’s Mate and catching mistakes. Here are a couple that I thought you might enjoy: He’s gone to bed and he’s on his laptop when he gets a call from the sheriff and learns who Shannon is. So he has to talk with her about what they’re going to do about the trouble she’s in.

The mistake in the scene? He went to bed naked. He’s a shifter, what can I say? And he’s alone. But…. he didn’t throw anything on before he went to talk to her. 🙂

I love writing. 🙂  Sometimes the mistakes we catch are just as much fun!

Another: He’s wounded, has to locate his phone. His police phone is outside. She had used his personal phone in his bedroom as the bad guys are trying to reach her. She drops the phone and shifts and heads out through his window. He realizes she has to have left the phone in the bedroom and he desperately needs it to call for help. So he goes into the bedroom, and sure enough, it’s there. Wait. The door was locked to keep the bad guys out. 🙂

Hopefully after it’s reviewed thoroughly, it will be ready in a couple of weeks. So yesterday after writing the end, I took a break to proof the first 17 chapters of the audio book for The Highlander. And today, I’m rereading the last half of Cougar’s Mate. And I already started rereading the first 12,000 words of The Viking’s Highland Lass so I can get to writing on it again. Then I have to write A SEAL Wolf for Sale.

Wait! Shouldn’t I have had a celebration in there for finishing another book this year?????

I will when I see my daughter and SIL and we’re going to do lots of fun things. So for now, I’m trying to get as much done before that happens! 🙂

This book was a lot of fun. But then, I always have fun writing them! 🙂 As with all my shifter books, I based a lot of the animal on the real animal–so I always enjoy researching about the animal and its characteristics and behavior while I’m writing. Jaguars love the water and love to swim. I never really thought of cougars caring for the water. But I was looking for references to this and found one where a cougar was swimming after a fishing boat! They caught it on Youtube. And then another was a photographer’s beautiful pictures of a cougar jumping up and into the water to rescue her cub that had fallen into the stream. He caught a picture of the leap, and then of her with the dripping wet cub in her mouth. Really cute.

I’m off to read and then write.

Ready for some cougar shifters?

Have a lovely Monday!!!

Terry
“Giving new meaning to the term alpha male!”
www.terryspear.com

The Road Runner Returns!

Feb15

road runner painting

For Valentine’s Day, my road runner visited me.  The poodle is my mother’s statue. We raised poodles when I was growing up and then when I was grown I had a couple of standard poodles for years.  But I never had a road runner. 🙂

This was a photo that I took of the road runner and then I used Topaz Labs Simplify program to create the look of a painting. See? I can even create paintings now. LOL When I couldn’t even draw stick figures before. 🙂

Have a delightful Saturday!!!

Terry
“Giving new meaning to the term alpha male!”
www.terryspear.com

Happy Valentine’s Day from Terry Spear and her Highlanders!

Feb14

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Doesn’t that sound like a Celtic band? Valentine’s Day wouldn’t be as special without some Highlanders wearing kilts in the mix.

I reached 65,000 yesterday on Cougar’s Mate, disappointed that I hadn’t done more than that. I had hoped to dig in and write to 70,000. But I have a problem. When writing a story, we have to make sure that something doesn’t seem too contrived.

Oh, I know, I’m writing about humans who shift into cougars or wolves or jaguars. LOL

But still, heroes and heroines have to be smart. That’s why we root for them. It’s okay if they do rash and dumb things if they’re trying to protect someone who needs protecting. We can buy that. Motivation is always the key.

I’m still brainstorming with friends to come up with a good solution. Otherwise you will think, oh yeah, I know what’s going to happen next, and I don’t want you to. 🙂 That’s the whole fun of writing–the twists and turns, the unexpected shift, the journey.

When I was writing a YA (young adult) book, I read part of it to my daughter and asked, “What do you think is going to happen next?”

I had led her in one direction. There could be only one path to take. But I had a really, really neat different direction to turn in. The unexpected. She told me where she knew it was going. I smiled.

“Well, it is, isn’t it?”

“Nope.”

Not to be thwarted, she gave me three other ways I could go with it and I was like, YES!!!! I had come up with the perfect twist. It worked for the situation. And she’s a great reader, so if she couldn’t figure it out, I had it made.

I told her where I was going with it and this time she smiled. She’d never thought of it.

I’ve been told if you get stuck to write 20 ways the story could go. I find sometimes just brainstorming with someone else will help me to come up with an idea. One of my fans actually did help me in one thing. It had to do with one of the story elements that I had alluded to, but only as a passing thought. Just the mention of that one element helped me to strengthen the bad guys’ motivation. Would I have thought of it on my own? I might have during edits. But maybe not.

Off to work on the story and maybe something will come to me!

Have a super day! It’s supposed to be 71 here today. Unreal in Feb!

Happy Valentine’s Day from me to you!

Terry
“Giving new meaning to the term alpha male!”
www.terryspear.com

 

Do You have Change for a Million Dollar ($1,000,000) Bill?

Feb13

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Credit for Images

Okay, so I was researching about the various high dollar amount denominations so that I can make an issue in Cougar’s Mate realistic, and ran across this article on the various amounts of these currencies still left.

As of 5 years ago, only a little over 300 of the $10,000 and $5,000 bills are in circulation. But over 150 thousand $1,000 bills, so we’re good.

But what I found so funny was the two articles that related to individuals using “million dollar notes” to buy goods at Walmart. One was in Georgia, the other in North Carolina. Don’t they know that Walmart clerks are trained in not giving out that much change for a million dollar bill?

Chuckling here.

Can you imagine??? “Okay, wait, I don’t have $999,524 in my register. Let me get some from all the clerks’ cash registers, a few banks and….”

Yeah.

Haven’t they ever watched those movies that show that using counterfeit dollars of a small denomination, though still not easy, is a safer bet? Especially when a $1,000,000 bill doesn’t even exist?

The other thing you have to be careful of is spending a $1,000 antique bill at the bank. Well, trying to cash them in. Especially if you’re a teenager and on the lam after robbing a parents’ safe of the $1,000 bill. Yep, all three of the boys got nabbed.

Okay, see, this is what happens when I do research. I learn all kinds of things I didn’t know!

Did you know any of this?

Have a great Thursday! And may your dreams be filled with million dollar wonders, but if you ever receive one of those million dollar bills, don’t try to spend it at Walmart.

Jaguar Valentines copy (640x420)

Terry
“Giving new meaning to the term alpha male!”
www.terryspear.com

Taking a Minute to Play with Photos!–Happy Valentine’s Day Early!

Feb12

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For all my snowbound friends, I’m sending the wolves to warm you up!

While my computer was broken, I couldn’t do some of my fun photo magic, no photoshop, and so I finally downloaded a bunch of brushes, again, and I’m all set to work. Not that I have a lot of time for it, but sometimes I just want to do something special. Like create a wolfish Happy Valentine’s Day statement. Of course, when I do this, I feel guilty about not writing. I kept telling myself it’s okay to take a break every once in  awhile. But my goal was to write 5,000 and reach 60,000 on Cougar’s Mate, and I did it! So see? I can do both! 🙂

It’s early, but if I didn’t want to spend all that time creating something of such wolfish beauty and only use it for one day of the year. 🙂

How I did it:

The bride pictured is from: http://faestock.deviantart.com/

The wolves and background I purchased from Bigstock photos. The wolves are two separate photos.

I used mist brushes from: http://www.obsidiandawn.com/mist-photoshop-gimp-brushes

And that’s the magic!

My parents were both artists and they both had written stories. I didn’t know about their writing, though dad made up stories to tell us when we were kids, until I began to write my first novel and they shared with me. Dad was also a photographer. But early on, my dad told me I wasn’t an artist. Don’t try. lol

I kept thinking that maybe I was. Maybe not with paint or watercolor, but with fabric when I began to create things that they couldn’t. My parents made doll carriages later on and their creations were wooden art. Beautiful. But my bears received all kinds of awards and were featured in magazines and newspapers, so that way was my contribution to the art world. And writing after that in the form of books.

And then I began playing around with creating my own book covers. Horrible. But the more I learned, the more I loved doing it, and just even creating pictures that wouldn’t be used for book covers, and they weren’t so bad after all. 🙂

My parents and I were really close and every year I see something new that I know they would have loved to have done too, and wish they could see all that there is to see. I’m not sure if my mother would have wanted to learn how to create pictures on the computer, but dad would have loved it. And he would have loved the new cameras and all that they could do. And both my parents gave me their stories to publish someday, if I could.

So for someone who can’t create artwork, it’s not too bad, don’t you think?

Okay, I had a light bulb moment on Cougar’s Mate, so off to work on it. I also have the audio files stacking up on The Highlander that I need to go over to ensure they’re accurately synched with the manuscript, and I need to pre-post another blog for the blog tour for Silence of the Wolf. Four more interviews to go, haven’t gotten them yet, and I’m all set.

Are you an artist? What is your medium of fun?

Terry

http://www.terryspear.com

Silence of the Wolf Review! And Jaguar Fever and A Howl for a Highlander–$2.99!

Feb11

1c2a7-silencewolf121212a“Exciting romance with sweet, sexy wolf shifter hero!”

Silence Of The Wolf
Terry Spear

Reviewed by Miranda Owen
Posted February 10, 2014

Romance Paranormal

SILENCE OF THE WOLF is Book thirteen in Terry Spear’s Heart of the Wolf series. As a fan of Terry Spear and this series, I have been waiting for gray werewolf Tom Silver to have a story of his own for a long time. He is my favorite of the three Silver brothers.

This story takes place in Silver Town, Colorado. Silver Town is a unique environment and it’s nice to re-visit it in this story. It’s a town run by wolf shifters and they make up the majority of the population.

Elizabeth Wildwood is an interloper to this town. She has a lot to be anxious about: she is a red wolf/coyote shifter in a town full of gray wolf shifters, and she is trying to get evidence of her parents’ possible murder. There were many sources of conflict in this story — rogue wolves loose in Silver Town riling up the human farmers, shadowy figures trying to capture Elizabeth, and the mystery surrounding Elizabeth’s parents’ death. All these things kept up the level of excitement and made things interesting.

For me this is a book very much about family. Elizabeth is stunned and deeply touched by how much acceptance and friendship she finds among the gray wolf shifters. Acceptance is something that has always been in short supply for her. The only time she has felt love has been when her mother and father were alive. She was hidden or looked down on by both her mother and father’s families for being both wolf and coyote. It’s this bad experience with family that makes it difficult for her to trust that she can find happiness and attract and hold onto love. Of course this makes Tom the perfect guy for her since he’s such a sweet and sexy combination.

SILENCE OF THE WOLF continues Terry Spear’s tradition of writing strong female characters and sweet, sexy male characters. I really enjoyed this romance and I think Elizabeth and Tom are a great match. I love that they have a teasing, fun flirtation right from the beginning. As always with this author’s books, the secondary characters are great as well and really add to the story. It’s great to catch up with favorite characters from past books like Sam and Silva. I loved this romance and eagerly await the next book in this series as well as other books by Terry Spear!

Learn more about Silence Of The Wolf

SUMMARY

A hunky werewolf and a beautiful stranger collide in this hot new paranormal shape-shifting romance

Gray werewolf Tom Silver is determined to find the wolves who have been attacking local livestock. While tracking the pack through the Rockies, a blizzard forces him into a remote cabin where he hears a plane crash nearby. When he discovers the sole survivor is a beautiful female werewolf/ coyote shifter mix, bound as a prisoner, he knows it’s his duty to hide her. Now, they are both at risk as a search ensues for the missing prisoner. Will Tom be able to protect this beautiful stranger while tracking down the wolves responsible for terrorizing the local livestock?

****

Only $2.99!!!!! For a trip to the jungle with him, wouldn’t you love it???

http://www.amazon.com/Jaguar-Fever-Heart-Terry-Spear-ebook/dp/B00CA3SHDC/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1392051631&sr=8-9&keywords=terry+spear



Only $2.99!!!! And you know he’s worth a LOT more than that! 

http://www.amazon.com/Howl-Highlander-Terry-Spear-ebook/dp/B009RXIV5C/ref=pd_sim_kstore_5

We never get notification of sales, but I came across this yesterday, so wanted to give a heads up! Don’t know how long they will be on sale for!

And I’m off to write! 55,000 words on Cougar’s Mate and counting. 🙂

We’re supposed to have icy rain today, and by Thurs, 71 degrees! The weather has been too weird this year.

Have a lovely Tuesday!

Terry
“Giving new meaning to the term alpha male!”
www.terryspear.com

Is Your World Upside Down?

Feb10

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It was a gorgeous day outside and so I sat out on the patio and wrote some, hoping to catch a picture of the birds, but the only one that came close was the female cardinal, usually the most skittish of birds and she sat in a shrub right next to me, but the pictures still didn’t turn out. A big bird, not Big Bird, but some big bird, I figured was a predatory kind, landed in the leafless maple tree. I saw its white breast feathers, that it was big, and then it moved somewhere too high that I couldn’t see it through the trellis, though he continued to yell at me. I was dying to get a shot of it, to see what it was.

The cardinal was on the shrub next to me, watching him, and watching me. She was in between us. But I think she was more worried about the big bird. It was probably a hawk. I see them a lot, but I hadn’t see one in the tree before, just on our electric wires sometimes. Usually they’re quiet. Unless they’re flying around. So I’m still curious.

Here’s the picture that did not turn out of the cardinal. 🙁

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The top picture is of my upside down world. While I was waiting for a bird to come around so I could take a picture, which of course they wouldn’t, I looked around to see what else I could get a shot of that looked interesting. A reflection of the bird feeders and side of the barn in a puddle of water. It’s like looking into another dimension. Too cool for words, right?

And I’m back to writing on Cougar’s Mate.  I’m at 48,000 and that means only 32,000 to go! See how easy that was? 🙂

Terry

Saving, Restoring, and Downright Cheatin’

Feb9

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First, my birds. 🙂

I was having a blast with Cougar’s Mate, just going along nice and linear like, which means from Point A to Point B to Point C, and then something happened. I had the brilliant scene play out in my mind that was the whole ending. Or not.  I thought it was the black moment, and I thought it was the ending, but the characters did the unexpected, again.  What that means is that some of the other stuff I wrote that I had already cut out–the 10,000 words could be used, so I inserted them back in. But they have to all be reworked because they don’t fit now with the new beginning and the almost ending.

So what happens? Can’t sleep. I had another scene, so wrote it, but I wanted to write another scene. Too tired. Hoped I’d remember it in the morning. 1:00 and I’m thinking about the scene I didn’t write. It doesn’t pay to put the muse on hold. So I wrote it, turned out the lights, couldn’t quit thinking and had another scene come to me. *sigh*

The first 6 chapters are great, linear, from the first point through the end point. The end chapters are too, well, the almost end. And then, I have to rework and add a lot in between. Does this mean filler? Never. Conflict, mystery, romance, adventure. If it doesn’t add to the solving of the mystery, to reaching the ultimate goal and a HEA, it doesn’t belong.

When I was playing RPGs, Role Playing Games, I saved a lot. I do with my writing too. But if you don’t save an earlier version, that you might decide you like better, just like in a game, you might find you saved too late. Believe me. I’ve been in really tight spots of no return in a game, and the last saved game means no going back–or to a much, much earlier place where I didn’t have half the wonderful armor or weapons or magic skills, hadn’t solved a lot of the mysteries, and have to fight all the bad guys again.

My dad used to say he really hated to have to go backward when he was trying to move forward, like heading out, forgetting something crucial, and having to return for it. Or getting lost and traveling way out of his way.  That’s how I felt about having to go to an earlier game and start “all over”. I didn’t enjoy fighting all the monsters again, or finding all those treasures again. I wanted to find new monsters, new mysteries to solve, new treasures.

If you play a lot of these games, you’ll be driving through town and think:  I wish I could have restored to an earlier play. 🙂 If I’d only known the mess I was going to get into driving this route, I could just take a different one. If only I could click a button and I would be back at that point and just take the other road. I think there’s a story in that. 🙂

Or, saving. Wouldn’t it be neat if, like with that thought I had last night, just save it in a game folder? And then open it up in the morning, at a decent hour and it’s all there???

Okay, so saving and restoring are great game play techniques. If I didn’t have them, I’d be dead. Game over. Forever and ever and ever.

Now then there’s cheatin’. I’m going to tell you that if I try and try and try to solve a puzzle and I can’t go anywhere else to continue the game play because that’s a main quest and I have to do it, I cheat. I’m not saying I’m proud of it. But sometimes, I have to have a clue or three to get me on my way. There’s something called an Easter Egg that programmers add to games also, and so you can get a cheat item, unlimited money, magic potion, whatever.  I usually don’t do this. But I was playing Dungeon Siege and it was so glitchy, I kept having trouble. You can’t kill of the monsters and have fun exploring the area. You have to keep killing them. I love the mystery, finding cool stuff, solving puzzles. Killing over and over and over is not my thing. It wears me out. 🙂

So I got a cheat code that made me really powerful. And then I got to the place where I had to fight several wizards and they killed me! Over and over again. I was no longer all powerful.

You see, sometimes you can’t just save and restore and downright cheat. You’ve just got to put your nose to the grindstone, and… work. 🙂

And that’s what I’m going to do.

Have a super great Sunday!!

Terry

Ready for a Cougar Shifter Story?

Feb8

I’ve been working on a cougar shifter story for a while after fans asked me about it. I LOVE my wolf packs. And I LOVE my jaguar shifters–they’re exotic animals, which makes them fun to write. But cougars are all over North America, and so I really wanted to write about them TOO.

And so, coming this year, the first in the series: Cougar’s Mate. The series name will be: Heart of the Cougar

I also have a book I’m revising that I hope to have out this year also:

 
I love historical books. I read them all the time. But my favorite is medieval and there aren’t as many of them. I love, love, love Highlanders. But I had already written a number of English historical romances and so I’m in the process of revising this one to show my other favorite genre to write about: wolf shifters. 🙂
In my wolf shifter books, they have a historical past. They live long lives. So I often have a historical background in my contemporary books. But I thought it would be fun to actually write about that historical wolf and how they coped.
This will be the first of the series. I need to come up with a series name though! 🙂  Any ideas?
I’m also working on those sexy Highland heroes, well, in this case it’s Gunnolf and he’s a Viking, but he’s got to have a Highland lass!
And I’m currently proofing A Hero of a Highland Wolf.
And Silence of the Wolf is coming out March 4, so writing up all the blogs for the blog tour for that!
And having Jaguar Pride beta read before I turn it in.
Oh, and on Cougar’s Mate, looking for second book title, maybe Call of the Cougar?
Have a lovely Saturday!
Terry
“Giving new meaning to the term alpha male!”
www.terryspear.com