Tag Archive | Cougar’s Mate

6 Degrees Cold–Freezing Rain

Ice on the suet bird feeder

I caught the cardinal below the window, the blinds were open, couldn’t pull them up without scaring him off, but he’s even got ice on his tail feathers and their bird feeder has a layer of frozen water on top.

I finished two of the bears and have them and books to ship, but we’re going to have freezing rain all day today and it’s only 6 degrees out for now. Soooo…

Campbell Clan bear and MacPherson Clan bear are ready to go to Australia!

The Matheson Clan Bears are nearly ready. Just need some more clan fabric from Scotland.

And I’m off to work on taxes, a student’s lesson, and getting books and bears ready to ship.

But, no matter what, I can’t quit thinking of books. Two days away from the STORY, or STORIES, was way more than a break that I needed.

So last night I was mulling over A SEAL Wolf for Sale, which is the next deadline book I have. And The Viking’s Highland Lass, which I have written 14,000 words on, but am not sure I’m going in the right direction on it. So more pondering on that. However, I have come up with the way I will begin SEAL. I want fun, excitement, adventure, the usual. 🙂 And I think I have the right scenario in mind.

I have ice on the inside of my kitchen window. Which means I need to replace it!!!

Have a lovely Monday! Hope you are not having icy weather like me. 🙂

I often forget to include a link to my bears when I’m posting about them, but here ’tis: www.celticbears.com

And just a reminder, Silence of the Wolf is available online and at stores tomorrow. Actually online, the orders are already shipped. 🙂

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SILENCE OF THE WOLF BY TERRY SPEAR – IN STORES MARCH 2014

Life For the Silver Pack Just Got Wilder…

Elizabeth Wildwood has been a longer all her life, ostracized because of her “mixed” half-wolf, half-coyote blood. When she ventures into gray wolf territory on a dangerous quest of her own and his thrown together with the sexiest shifter she’s ever met she begins to wish for the first time that she could be part of a family.

When this unusual shifter female comes into his pack’s territory, it’s Tom Silver’s job to protect her—if only she would let him.

Praise for Silence of the Wolf:

“The outstanding and gripping plot of Spear’s latest installment in the Heart of the Wolf series will appeal to paranormal fans, and romance junkies will take delight in the red-hot love story embedded within.” —RT Book Reviews, 4 Stars

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

USA Today bestselling author Terry Spear has written over fifty paranormal romance novels and five medieval Highland historical romances. Her 2008 novel, Heart of the Wolf, was named a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year (romance category). A retired officer of the U.S. Army Reserves, Terry creates award-winning teddy bears that have found homes all over the world. She lives in Texas. For more information, please visit http://terryspear.com/

To purchase Silence of the Wolf:

Yes! Tom Silver! 🙂

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

Mission: Fog

Mar2

That was my mission. Take pictures of the fog. I love fog. It reminds me of vampires. And ghosts. And the mystery beyond.

So when I see a fun, foggy day, I take pictures. Only this time I thought I’d try to capture the fog and then do a black and white version of it. Some of the photographers’ sites I visit have the most gorgeous black and white photos. Total novice here, but I thought it was interesting, nonetheless.

It’s a bit cluttered with telephone pole, wires, a fence post, hose roped around it, a picture of the bare field in between my property framed by trimmed hedges and then my neighbors of his trimmed peach orchard, and beyond, trees in the distance. It’s also interesting to see the fog layers and how deep it is the further out you get. It shows a country life where wildflowers can grow with abandon.

And this was taken on my other neighbor’s side where the fog was even more pronounced. Actually, it was getting thicker by the time I moved to the backyard.

But I was thwarted on my mission to take pictures of the fog.

Because of him.

Here I was happily looking for fun fog shots and he was in the backyard, looking at me when I must have taken the 2nd fog picture. I turned to take one of my back acreage, and there he was. The farmer was actually getting ready to sow his crops so was making a racket right next to my yard, yet Wiley, the Road Runner, just watched me and let me take several pictures of him surrounded by henbit, the wild purple flowers around him.

And then I worked on bears for one bear order, 3 Matheson Clan bears. They have their tams/bonnets on, but are bear chested, needing their sashes still, and waiting on the fabric to come from Scotland.

And then I have to finish up the Campbell and MacPherson Clan bears for another order.

So that’s my mission today.

And our nice warm weather dropped in temperature, because it’s March! Prediction of ice on Tuesday.

Do your plans ever go asunder?

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

Cougar’s Mate and the Near Catastrophe

Doesn’t that sound like the title of a book?

If I just told you that I wrote the story and then it was ready to go and then it was ready to read, that wouldn’t be any fun at all, would it? Stories need conflict.

So I put ten hours into proofing it one more time, and then… get an error message when I saved it. Now, I’ve gotten them before, no problem. Not this time. I saved it under a couple of different files I would need and then went to send a copy to myself, just as a precaution, and guess what? Instead of 526K of story, I had 0K. Nothing. Zero. Nada.

I don’t have panic attacks except over losing a book I just wrote!!! I can lose half a page I’ve written and be upset. Fire in the kitchen? I can deal with it. First snake in the house, no problem. Second snake in the house…it was biting at me, so, okay, that was giving me a slight amount of angst.

But lose a book I’ve just written? That’s the reason to have a panic attack. And I had lost an entire book, years ago when I had nothing else to save on but a CD disk, and I still wish I had a way to get it back!

After a couple of hours of searching on the internet for a solution, not wanting to shut down Word or the computer, I had planned on uploading the finished manuscript to bookselling sites right after saving it, I hadn’t figured out the problem.

I called my daughter, but I’d already tried everything she suggested. And my mss was sitting there, right before my eyes. And yet? I couldn’t save it. I have to say that I did have earlier copies of it, but not the one I just spent 10 hours working on.

Well, she suggested I save the mss on a thumb drive and then try it on my laptop. I did. And it opened fine. Then I emailed myself a copy.

And then with a whole lot of trepidation, I was going to turn off my computer and restart it. So I began shutting everything down, including Word and it said there was some kind of glitch. Did I want to restart it?

So I was like, yes!!!

And once Word restarted, all my work was there. Plus, like 10 copies of the mss in various forms of distress. I had copy and pasted some into notepad which makes them lose all their formatting.

The happily ever after is that, the mss was fine, uploaded to the sites last night, and I have it saved everywhere! If you ever have trouble with something you’ve written and you save it and it shows you have 0K, maybe you can do what I did to recover it. At least for me and for this time, it worked.

But I just thought you should know that sometimes what seems like a smooth process can be anything but, and that’s perfect for a story, don’t you think?

I had to take another picture of the daffodils as they’re doing a beautiful job of blooming, and though I didn’t think it would ever happen here, they are multiplying! So I’m excited about that!

I’m taking the weekend off from writing to catch up on working on bear orders and such. 3 Matheson Clan bears, 1 Campbell Clan bear, and 1 MacPherson Clan bear. See? Even Highland bears are hot! 🙂

Are you having a fun weekend?

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

Cougar’s Mate is Available!

Feb28

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?

This is one of the joys of writing!!! Sharing the story with the world! One of the problems I had with figuring a title is that I wanted to use the “Cougar” in the title, rather than Mountain Lion, too long, Catamount, that some wouldn’t know what it was, Puma, too soft. Cougar is perfect–hard, short, recognizable. ONLY the problem is that cougar now also means an older woman who dates younger men. 🙂 Which is fine, BUT, that’s not my storyline. These are cougar shifters, so I wanted to make that clear. On searches, if I put in Cougar Love, it could sound like an older woman scenario, rather than a shifter. 🙂 I bet you didn’t know that there was that much thinking that even went into a title, did you?

So I chose Cougar’s Mate, because most don’t think of their significant other as mate. And the next, Call of the Cougar, because it reminds me of Call of the Wild, and because you don’t think of a call from an older woman to a younger man, hopefully, but the wild call of a cougar. You see, there truly is method to my madness. Bonnie gave me the idea for another title: Crouching Cougar. I love it!

So I’m off to let the world know–I have cougar shifters on board.

And here is a parting picture of a nifty bird nest. It looks big enough for an eagle! I’m keeping my on it to see what really nests there. 🙂

Have a lovely Friday, TGIF! My post got away from me before I realized it and was published. 🙂

Are you planning anything fun for the weekend???

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

Sunsets and Bears and Books!

Feb27

I went out to get the mail and saw this sunset and had to capture it!

Every day is a day filled with a goal or six.

I recently read a post where the author said she was bored. I just can’t even imagine.

I have 3 Matheson bear orders I need to complete–they sent me the wrong fabric from Scotland yesterday–my fault. They changed up a scarf for a square and it’s too small to use to make a sash for the bears. So I had to reorder. I received another clan bear order this morning, different clan, MacPherson–headed for Australia, and luckily, I do have that fabric.

MacPherson Clan Bear 002 (427x640)

I’m still working on a trip to Minnesota to see a fan and friend who is taking me to see the International Wolf Center in Ely. I was also interviewed in their magazine once, which was really cool, given I write about wolf shifters that are based on wolves, and setting up a book signing at a store up there also, and making sure they’ll have my most current release on hand!

I’ve been trying to come up with a more exciting opening on The Viking’s Highland Lass. I had to rewrite Cougar’s Mate for that same reason. Sometimes I have to get to know my characters a bit before I can figure out where to take them. In this one, it’s action packed, lots of humor, romance and suspense, much like my other books, and not at all how I started it before. Well, some of it is. Because some of the scenes did have that forward movement and lots of what I like: action, humor, romance and suspense.

I tried writing for one publisher once, but I had too much suspense in the story. I tried writing for another and I had too much humor. 🙂 I tried writing for another and I had too much romance. All three of those lines folded. No more. Crashed. Burned. Vanished.

Maybe, just maybe, readers would have loved those stories that had action, adventure, humor, romance, and suspense all lumped in one. Oh… yeah, they do!

Anyway, so I got the final critique from one last reviewer, and so need to make the changes and then Cougar’s Mate will be ready to go!

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So though I thought my main focus today was The Viking’s Highland Lass

I have to revise my plans and spend the day revising Cougar’s Mate, then getting it ready to publish. 🙂

I have no time to be bored!

What about you? Are you ever bored?

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

Trying to Spread Some Winter Cheer with My Wolves!

Feb22

In the more northern reaches of the States, my friends have been buried under snow. And they’re tired of it. They sent me pictures, and feeling for them, while I’m planting my new plants and it’s 70 degrees out, I sent my wolves to warm them up.

What else could I do??? That’s what werewolf friends are supposed to do, right? Send in the pack to help?

So here’s what happened when they arrived. It was time for a photo op.

The first is in Minnesota. The second is in Chicago area.

And now I’m back to edits on A Highland Wolf Christmas.

Which means, I’m back to hibernating…

But not sleeping!

But I’ve been tossing around the idea of working on a shorter book for Bella’s wolf pack in Heart of the Wolf, and one for the lost Arctic wolf pack that is currently homeless. 🙂

Are you interested?

Cougar’s Mate, the first in the series will be coming out soon also!

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

Eau de… Skunk

Feb19

With the coming of spring, so too come the skunks. In my shifter series, my jaguars, cougars, and wolves have a better sense of smell than humans do. But there’s one thing that humans can smell very well without the enhanced abilities of their wilder halves and that is–skunk. And this morning, I woke to its overwhelming fragrance.

I think of Pepe Le Pew: “Ah! This leetle one wishes to commit suicide to prove her love for me. What a sweet gesture. Never-the-less, I must prevent eet!”

And I admit, I hated that he was so in love and they were the typical star crossed lovers. I always wanted him to find a REAL skunk to fall in love with.

I ran into one in the side yard one time at night when I went to turn off my water, and it immediately hid behind a sheet of plywood my dad had leaning against the house, have no idea why, but I had to wait until the next morning to turn off the water, AND move that piece of plywood to get rid of the “cute” little skunk’s hiding place.

When my parents were a newly married couple, they had to get the first prerequisite child–a boxer puppy, and once when they were boating on a Texas lake when she was about a year old, the dog got skunked while they were on shore, so rather than let her in the boat for a while, they made her swim after the boat. Suffice it to say, the dog was still wearing eau de skunk until they could scrub her down later.

So when we think of spring flowers and the new green leaves appearing on the trees, we also have the reminder that Pepe Le Pew is on his way looking for that purrrrfect mate. So… get out of his way!

Has Pepe Le Pew visited you, too???

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

What’s Next???

Feb18

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

Cougar’s Mate: Instinct told her to run…

***

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

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

Feb14

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

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Terry Spear's Shifters

"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy IS reality."

Tag Archive | Cougar’s Mate

6 Degrees Cold–Freezing Rain

Mission: Fog

Cougar’s Mate and the Near Catastrophe

Cougar’s Mate is Available!

Sunsets and Bears and Books!

Trying to Spread Some Winter Cheer with My Wolves!

Eau de… Skunk

What’s Next???

Cougar’s Mate–The End!!!

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