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Five things that set the shifters from X-Ops apart from others in the paranormal romance world
Author Guest / September 14, 2017

The entire concept of the X-OPS series started around 2011, when the Navy SEALs were in the news seemingly every week. As I was coming up with ideas for the first book in the X-OPS Series (HER PERFECT MATE), I knew I wanted to partner up shifters with covert operatives. Think putting shifters on a team with SEALs, Special Forces, CIA or FBI. But for that to work, I knew my shifters were going to have to be different. I simply couldn’t imagine my operatives going into a dangerous situation with a partner who couldn’t carry a weapon when he or she shifted into an animal, even if that partner did have fangs and claws. I wanted the best of both worlds, so I made my shifters half animal, half human. That took them in a completely different direction than you’d normally see in a paranormal romance. Here are a couple different ways my shifters are unique: Where They Come From: In X-OPS, shifters aren’t some kind of monsters, aren’t cursed to live in the darkness, their change isn’t controlled by the phases of the moon, there’s no magic involved, and they aren’t possessed by a demon (which are all…

S.D. Grimm | Immerse Yourself in the Paranormal
Author Guest / September 14, 2017

Hello! I am so excited to be on Fresh Fiction for Supernatural day! I love all things supernatural from creepy, bump-in-the-night things (hence SUMMONER, which is basically a ghost story and love story wrapped up together) to the pretty and fascinating things like unicorns and dragons and gryffins. (Gryffindor represent!) One of the really cool things about the fantasy genre, I think, is seeing how different creatures have changed in folklore over time, or how they can be different in different works of fiction. I mean, how cool are the flying thestrals in Harry Potter than you can only see if you’ve witnessed a death? What a new take on a normal Pegasus-type of creature? Those surprises and differences are something that I love as a reader and lover of all things geeky. When I settle down with my popcorn to watch a new show about vampires and learn that they can be in the sun, or the sun does in fact burn them, or they can have magical daylight rings that allow them to walk in the daytime (oh my gosh, early seasons of The Vampire Diaries, anyone? Can I just geek out about that show for a moment!?),…

Meg Kassel | How To Tell
Author Guest / September 14, 2017

In my debut book, BLACK BIRD OF THE GALLOWS, we meet Angie Dovage, high school senior with a talent for music and a crappy past. Her dream of coasting through that her last year of school under the radar are blown to smithereens when Reece Fernandez moves in next door with his family. She thinks he’s hot (naturally) but so does half the student body. Angie notices other things about him, though, that begin to make her wonder if Reece is a little more—or less—human than he takes such pains to appear. So I’m turning it over to my heroine, Angie Dovage, to share her three step program of determining if your hot new neighbor is supernatural, in her words (passes the keyboard to Angie)… Okay, so hey. Thanks, Meg. Also, thanks for, well, deciding Black Bird didn’t needed to be a tragedy. Even if you were just worried about bad reviews if you killed me or Reece off, whatever. I’m grateful. I’m not holding it against you for making my love interest a harbinger of death or anything. No, not at all. Actually, you did make Reece pretty amazing. But anyway, you want me to share my three steps…