The Truth About Cats and Dogs

WATCHING: The Wire
READING: Countess Billie
LISTENING TO: Muse
MAKING ME SMILE: Europe next month!

I am a cat person. I love their independence of spirit, their indifference to the desires of their owners (owners? I hesitate to use the word), their aloof self-containment. Dogs are lovely but their devotion can seem excessive. I find it hard to gaze into adoring eyes. The weight of a loving head on the knee becomes burdensome after a while.

Yet I have to admit, when I think of animals in literature, dogs seem to have it over cats all the way. I can immediately think of famous fictitious dogs: Lassie, Toto, Marley, Santa’s Little Helper, Lady and the Tramp. Georgette Heyer often tucks a dog into her books as a barometer of the trustworthiness of her heroes.

Cats are not so easy. Garfield. Thomasina. Puss in Boots - especially with Antonio doing the voice. Help here, please. There have to be more!

Why is this? I refuse to think that dogs have more personality, but because they wear all their emotions on the outside, they are far easier to write about. A sphinx-like cat stare does become a bit repetitive to describe, however restful it is to live with.

Cats, alas, often end up in villainous roles. They are the familiars of witches (oh, add Salem to the mix), the arch baddie (Shere Khan) or the organised thugs (Truth about Cats and Dogs). New Zealand breeds particularly tough fictitious felines such as Scarface Claw and Horse. Dogs are always the dependable helpmeet, the h/H’s best friend. Often they rise to heroic roles and will even give their lives to save the ones they love. Cats would watch on unblinkingly. I know that.

But just as I feel there have to be good roles out there for actresses over fifty, I feel sure there much be heroic, self-sacrificing cats in fiction or real life. I’d be grateful to anyone who can supply me with examples.

What are your views on cats and dogs as characters? Who are your favourite animal characters?

Seasons

Reading: The Girl in the Picture - Denise Chong
Listening to: the birds waking up
Watching: the day get started in our bay

This year I'm trying to hold onto summer for a lot longer than it intends staying. I love all the seasons but this year I would like a bit more of the sunny days on the deck. We have a large deck that for about four months becomes an outdoor lounge where we eat all our meals, entertain friends, barbecue, and have the occasional party.

The sea is cooling down making kayaking a wee bit chilly around my bottom but the water is so calm that I still head out whenever I can. Soon we'll have ice on the roads and fog lurking at the edges of the bush. The wood pigeons will head elsewhere, the dog will lie ever so quietly on his bed in case we notice him and send him outside. But on the plus side of those cold months is lighting the fire and curling up with a good book. Or a glass of wine and a good man - my good man.
Put it that way and maybe I can let go of summer after all. Of course we're really mid autumn now but I'm pretending otherwise. The temperatures have helped me here. And when I get fed up with winter there's spring to look forward to - daffodils and lambs.
Definitely prefer summer.

My second book PLAYBOY DOCTOR TO DOTING DAD is out now in the UK and will be downunder in April. Guess what? It has a summer setting. I have a copy to give away to one blogger today. Tell me about your favourite season.

Sunday Smooch

Welcome to another LoveCats DownUnder Sunday Smooch!


Today we have a smooch from Chosen as the Sheikh's Wife by Harlequin Romance author Liz Fielding, but first ...

the winner of last week's Sunday Smooch Giveaway is -- sheandeen (Nancy)!


Congratulations, Nancy! Can you please contact Nikki at

nikki (at) nikkilogan (dot) com (dot) au

Since you already have a copy of Friends to Forever, Nikki will send you a copy of Shipwrecked with Mr Wrong!

And now for today's Sunday Smooch from Chosen as the Sheikh's Wife by Liz Fielding, out this month in the US in the 2-in-1 Becoming the Tycoon's Bride.

After a beautiful stranger discovers his long-lost heirloom under a floorboard, Sheikh Fayad al Kuwani swoops in to protect innocent Violet Hamilton. Now, with greedy enemies gathering, the only way he can keep her safe is to put her on his private jet, take her to his desert kingdom and…marry her!

[Prior to the kiss...

Violet Hamilton, having found a priceless khanjar hidden in her grandmother's house, has been whisked away to Ras al Hajar by Sheikh Fayad al Kuwani for her own safety. On arrival she presents the khanjar to the old Emir and finds herself tricked into a public declaration of marriage to the Sheikh. Her new husband is immediately declared Emir. She takes a dim view of the proceedings, certain that she has been used by him to gain the throne.]


‘Whatever happened to your much-vaunted chance to say “no”?’ Violet demanded, kicking out in an attempt to free herself, furious. Hammering on his shoulders, his back. ‘I trusted you, but your words are worth nothing, Fayad al-Khalifa. I gave you your khanjar and you used it to buy your country. Used me to buy the alliance of the Sayyidi.’

‘Will you just listen to me!’ he thundered. Forget calm. Forget quiet reason…

‘Oh, that’s right. Shout. The male answer to everything.’

‘Violet, this isn’t helping –’

‘It’s helping me.’ She lifted her head, looked down at him. ‘So, your Emiri Highness? What happens now? I’m supposed to go away and get swaddled in veils, is that it? Sit on the white sheet and wait for you to come and unwrap me?’

So intent was she on making her point that she’d forgotten to struggle and with a nod to the driver, he bundled her into the back of a waiting limousine.

They were cut off from the world, even from the driver, who was hidden behind a darkened wall of glass, but Violet was not frightened.

She was furious.

She’d given Sheikh Fayad everything he wanted. Fallen for all that fake sincerity. Believed him.
And here she was with a man – a virtual stranger -- who’d tricked her into marrying him. Sitting in his lap, his arm around her, his breath warm against her hair.

Fight. She’d fight…

‘You’d better be wearing body armour!’ she warned.

And without warning Fayad laughed. How dare he laugh at her… ‘I’ve married a cat,’ he said. ‘I’d always heard that Sayyidi women fight like tigers.’

‘I’m not Sayyidi. I’m Hamilton…’

‘No, you’re not, Violet. You’re mine. You’ll always be mine…’ And he kissed her, not gently. Not to distract her from some painful moment, but like some desert lord who, having captured a prize, aroused by the chase, was determined on making her his.

And that he was aroused she was in no doubt.

But that was his problem, not hers.

Her problem was that, as his kiss became deeper, the satin pleasure of his tongue giving rather than taking, it was not him she was fighting, but her own body’s shockingly urgent response.

Need…

Desire…

She felt hampered by far too many clothes. The long skirt, the thaub were encumbrances, not just holding her down but keeping them apart. She wanted freedom to move, wanted to feel his hand, his hot mouth upon her skin, upon breasts tight with need. Wanted him to sooth the heavy, yearning ache between her thighs.

She wanted, she discovered with a jolt of understanding, to be blissfully, and repeatedly … overwhelmed.

To be in the draw to win a signed copy of Chosen as the Sheikh's Wife (in the 2-in-1 Becoming the Tycoon's Bride), simply tell Liz what it is about a sheikh romance that you love!


Come back next Sunday, when the winner of today's giveaway will be announced -- and a smooch from Playboy Doctor to Doting Dad by Medical romance author Sue MacKay will be posted!

Lovecat: Tracey O'hara

Please raise your glass and give a warm, fuzzy welcome to fellow Lovecat, writer friend (and conference roomie) Tracey O’hara, whose 2^nd Dark Brethren novel is set to be released April 1st in Australia.

Tracey, can you give us 5 words to describe Death’s Sweet Embrace?

Dark. Rejection. Love. Retribution. Family.

Christian and Antoinette feature in your first Dark Brethren novel, Night’s Cold Kiss, do they get to make an appearance in Death’s Sweet Embrace?

Yes, although Christian is only in the book briefly, Antoinette has a fairly major and active role in DSE and she is even more kick ass than ever.

I loved Antoinette. What is her role this time around?

She is learning to use her new powers and revelling in the way she can now hunt and kill her Dreniac enemies.

Tell us a little about your main characters in this book?

Kitt is a doctor. Though she has been a medical examiner for the past several years, dealing with only death, she still has a healer's instincts.

Raven is a very hot and dangerous man. He’s a past member of a secret covert black ops team and an assassin. But he cares deeply for Kitt and the twin daughters they share from an affair they had 18 years earlier.

Lots of deep conflict with Kitt having to leave behind her daughters?

Yes – in her grief over her husband’s murder, she didn't know how to protect them and thought sending them away was the best way. Emmett was her husband in name only, but he was her best friend and her protector. They kept each other’s secrets.

I've been lucky enough to read some of your WIP, (future book 3) and loved it! Do any of the DSE cast make a comeback?

Yes - we will see a few. Of course there are the old favourites - Oberon and Antoinette. Though they only play a cameo this time. Sin’s Dark Caress mainly concentrates on the two main protagonists. There is a lot going on for them.

Tracey, you work full time, you’re a wife, mother and housekeeper, where do you find the time to write?

You really have to make the. It can be very tough juggling everything and sometimes you drop a few balls. But you have to pick them up again and keep juggling.

Thanks Tracey, I am really looking forward to book 3 of the Dark Brethren! Tracey also writes deliciously hot, erotic shorts for Spice Briefs as Tracie Sommers.

Buy link

First Cover Joy!

Reading: Archangel's Consort by Nalini Singh
Listening to: Silence - my favourite music!
Makinig me Smile: My first book cover

After years of writing, there is nothing to rival getting “the call”. But once you’ve hit the high of selling, there are plenty more milestones along the way.
Seeing your first cover has to be one of the biggest highlights, and one I’ve just enjoyed. On Saturday morning Natalie Anderson phoned me and I knew by the tone of her voice that something exciting had happened. Imagine my excitement when she told me that my first cover had just been listed on Amazon UK!
After months of anticipating my first book hitting the shelves, it finally feels real. Aside from the birth of my son, my cover has to be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Seeing my name on a real book is incredible, and it’s even more amazing to know that next month I’ll be able to see my US cover of the same book, as well as the UK cover of my second release.
At the moment I’m knee deep in hard revisions for my third book, and it’s moments like this that make it all worth it. Because nothing will ever compare to knowing that one day soon, those covers will turn into books that will soon be delivered to my doorstep for me to hold in my hot little hands ☺

Catchy First Lines

Reading: Abandon the Night by Joss Ware
Watching: American Idol
Listening to: Lady Gaga
Making me smile: Tiny little baby clothes

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately and was wondering exactly what it is that makes some books suck you in right from the beginning while others can take a little longer to warm up.

I came to the conclusion that there is no simple answer: its great characters, beautiful description, a unique hook, great action, intense emotion, excellent pacing…the list goes on.

But one thing that certainly helps is a catchy first line.

There are some awesome first lines out there in books of all genres. Here are some of my favourites:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. ~ Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. ~ 1984 by George Orwell

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. ~The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis

Had Eidolon been anywhere but the hospital, he would have killed the guy pleading for his life before him. ~ Pleasure Unbound by Larissa Ione

Ross Wakeman succeeded the first time he killed himself, but not the second or the third. ~ Second Glance by Jodi Picoult

Our own LoveCats are pretty catchy in the first line department as well:

Who knew silence came in so many shades? ~ Friends to Forever by Nikki Logan

He was staring at her again. ~ At the Billionaire’s Beck and Call by Rachel Bailey

Knees gone weak, Phoebe Moore drank in the sight of two bronzed arms angling down over a well-packed T-shirt and large masculine hands raising its black interlock hem. ~ Every Girl's Secret Fantasy by Robyn Grady

And from my latest Nocturne Bites:

She needed a man. ~ One Night with the Wolf by Anna Hackett

So, do you have any favourite first lines? Lines that dragged you into a book and left you wanting more? Lines that have always stuck in your head long after you’ve finished reading.

Sunday Smooch

Welcome to another LoveCats DownUnder Sunday Smooch!


Today we have a smooch from Friends to Forever by Nikki Logan, but first ...

the winner of last week's Sunday Smooch Giveaway is -- Nas Dean!


Congratulations, Nas! Can you please contact Anna Hackett at

anna (at) annahackettbooks (dot) com

and she'll send you a free download of One Night with the Wolf.

And now for today's Sunday Smooch from Friends to Forever by Nikki Logan! For the first time, we'll be using one of our nifty new 'content' icons...

She was the high-school princess – he was the high-school nobody…

Marc Duncannon and Beth Hughes were the best of friends – until a heated kiss exposed secrets and ruined everything.
Ten years later, Beth seeks out Marc and finds him battling to save a stranded whale. Together on a lonely Australian beach they face exhaustion, the elements and their own personal demons. They discover that their friendship is worth fighting for, because they share something even stronger – a love that
could last a lifetime.


***


Set-up: Everything changed between inseparable friends Beth Hughes and Marc Duncannon when they hit puberty and life got complicated. Beth has always blamed herself for the horrible way their friendship ended and has tracked grown-up Marc down to set things right as part of her management of her alcohol addiction. But instead of saying her piece and driving back into the sunset, she finds herself alone on a remote beach, thigh-deep in freezing water, with the man who has so much reason to hate her. But once the euphoria of freeing the stranded whale drains from their systems, Beth and Marc are left weak and exhausted, clinging together in the icy, midnight shallows with the turbulent echoes of that day floating around them… As she sags, broken and emotionally battered against him in the surf, Beth asks Marc what he’d do differently about that last day they were together if they could go back in time…

‘It matters to me, Beth.’ Marc said. ‘Whether you hated it. Whether I damaged our friendship, too.’

Too. Misery came surging back in at the reminder that she’d said the words that destroyed their friendship. Even if she hadn’t set out to. She was only going to ask him to back off for a while. But he’d kissed her and she panicked. Those angry lips pressing against hers, forcing hers wider. The hands that had plunged into her hair to hold her captive sent electric sparks through her body and threw her into confusion. The press of his eager body into hers made her want things she shouldn’t want. The desperate, intense pain in his eyes echoing hers. The thick smoke-like energy he’d been pumping out all around them.

Did she like it?

Enough to rip his heart out with her reflexive over-reaction.

She took a breath. Held his eyes. Held her breath. ‘I didn’t hate it.’

This is where he’d kiss her in a movie. The water. The cold. The intimacy. And her admission practically cried out for his mouth on hers.

Instead he nudged her head back down to his shoulder and rested his cheek against her wet hair. A particularly full wave washed over them and buffeted Beth against him with its chilly brush. Her heart squeezed hard. Had she been so starved for affection in her loveless marriage that she was finding it now in impossible places? Marc was just moved by their circumstance and harking back to better times. That was all. Waiting for a kiss was stupidly naïve and impossibly romantic.

Since there was to be no kissing, she needed—really badly—to get off him. But her body had practically seized up in the foetal position and straightening her limbs was a new kind of agony. Just when she thought she’d already met all the cousins in the Pain family.

‘Easy, Beth. You need to walk off the ache. Your muscles will be eating themselves.’

Pretty apt, really. Starting with the giant, thumping one in her chest cavity. Crawling into Marc’s lap had not been part of her plan as she drove up the coastal highway this morning, but now that she had it was hard to imagine ever getting the sensation out of her mind. Her heart.

But she had to.

Her back screamed as she pushed against his chest and twisted up onto her knees, between his. She gave herself a moment to adjust.

‘Just one more thing…’ Marc murmured, before she could rise much further. Those powerful abdominal muscles she’d spied before he zipped them up beneath his wetsuit did their job and pulled his torso up out of the splash and hard into hers. His lips slid warmly, firmly against her mouth and he took advantage of her shocked gasp to work them open, hot and blazing against her numb flesh. Her lips drank heat from him and came tingling back to life, startled and wary. His hands forked up into her wet hair and held her face while he teased and taunted her blissfully with his tongue, letting her breathe his air as though he were giving her the kiss of life.

Which, in a way, he was.

Relief and a decade of desire surged through her. Forgiveness tasted an awful lot like this.

He lifted his face and stared into her glassy eyes. ‘This is how I would do it if I had my time over,’ he said softly and then lowered his mouth again.


Nikki has a signed copy of Friends to Forever to give away to one lucky commenter. Just tell her whether you have a best friend of the opposite sex from your past that you let go due to social expectation or peer pressure. Do you ever wonder what happened to them? Or have you kept track all these years? Or did you end up turning your friendship to forever?


Come back next Sunday, when the winner of today's giveaway will be announced -- and a smooch from our international guest Liz Fielding will be posted!