But You Look So Normal by Teresa D'Amario

Lance is a Wizard. He’s not a great wizard, but he’s all right. Descended from a long line of wizards, his brothers taunt him for being slow to learn. And as the youngest, it’s his due course to accept such teasing. Life is good, and normal. For a wizard that is.

Cassie is a Shifter. A tigress to be exact. Raised by her father after her mother’s death she’s as well adjusted as any shifter can be, and still live in the human world, hiding who and what she is.

Bliss comes to a screeching halt the night Satanists kidnap Cassie and her best friend to use as sacrifices to bring forth their Dark Lord. When Cassie literally collides into Lance, she begs him to help them escape their captors, despite the dangers. The couple work together to save the life of Cassie’s friend, only to discover a shocking passion driving them closer together at a time when both should be devastated. But when Lance overhears Cassie’s father threaten his life, he heads for the hills. Cassie follows, determined to clear up the confusion. But evil is still afoot and Cassie is taken by a secret government organization dedicated to the eradication of all things magick. Is Lance willing to put his life on the line for a woman he believes is out to kill him? Especially when he realizes the organization that’s taken her, is the one he works for?



Any paranormal author will tell you, when people learn we write paranormal Romance, there's one question that always comes next: "You write WHAT?" Then of course, there's the expression of "But you look so normal. How does someone like you come up with ideas like that?"

I always laugh. What can I say to that type of question? It's just me. I always tell them I spent way too much time watching Star Trek and Dark Shadows as a kid. I know, I'm showing my age, right?

But ideas come from the strangest places. They pop into my head in the dead of night, while the rest of the world is asleep. Just as I'm about to doze off, something pops into my mind. A face, an idea, an entire scene. I recall once I woke up in the morning, and within two minutes an entire scene, colors, smells, the entire situation, popped into my head. It didn't feel like a dream remembered. It felt like *gasp* Imagination!

I think the initial ideas always come from one important place. Life. To start, the characters are usually first for me. They walk into my life unasked. And usually they interfere with the work I’m presently writing. For instance, even now, as I finish the current work in progress, another male is in my head, shouting to be written. His entire life history has presented itself, and he wants to tell me his future. Sometimes the characters come fully developed, sometimes it takes a process of thinking and feeling what he would feel, and why. Or she, of course.

The plot is something that comes slower. Much slower. It usually sparks from the characters themselves. Something they say which leads me in the right direction – something about their lives that tells me their deepest fear. I, as the author, have an obligation to exploit that fear for your benefit. So I dig. What makes him or her hurt? What terrifies them? And then it happens. Is it the fear of shifting in public? Losing one’s self to the control of the beast within? Is it losing one’s mate? Is it having a mate? That fear always guides me in the right direction.

Each character comes with their own package of faults and fears, as well as the strength that is required to overcome those faults. How we get to that strength, how we build it to the power needed, that of course is where the fun begins. For Tigress by the Tail, the hero is a wizard, who's been teased his entire life by his brothers. He's the youngest, and was very close to his mother, who made him promise to stop being a ladies man, that the next woman he took to his bed would be his mate. After she died, he lived by this rule, which works great until he runs into a young shapeshifter who draws him like no other female. The heroine, Cassie, is a young, immature shifter who's led a very sheltered life, and she lives by one rule: No humans can see her shift. But when she's caught in a bad situation, and needs a human not only to see her shift, but help her escape, the one rule she's lived by is in jeopardy. Even knowing her father will take Lance's life, she still finds herself drawn to him in ways which shouldn't be natural.

Okay, I'll admit it. Tigress by the Tail started as a dream! (Uh oh, didn't Stephen King once say that?) So what kind of person dreams such weird things? Do I look normal? I think so. Quiet, unassuming me.

I met an author at Celebrate Romance (who shall remain nameless, Oh Queen of England), who looks nothing like what she writes. Yet she does so with aplomb. So for me, I look normal, but what lies within my heart, that, my friends, is another story all together. And you can read what’s hidden in the recesses in The Moon: Tigress by the Tail, available at Amazon.com

So share! Tell me, my dear friends. What is YOUR deepest, darkest secret? What fears do you have? Are you willing to step into the world of a character, and tell me?

Ok, just kidding. But please, do comment. Tell me what you thought of SheWolf or Tigress by the Tail, and what it is you like so much about paranormal romance. One lucky winner will win a ecopy of SheWolf, the 2nd place finisher in the 2008 PRISM awards for best first book!

Teresa D'Amario
SheWolf - Prism Finalist, Best First Book
Tigress by the Tail