To be honest, release day itself is somewhat stressful. It’s typically a day full of chaos, phone calls, blog interviews, Facebook parties, and emailing all the people out there that are helping to spread the word about the new book.
Then there’s that horrible thing known as the SALES RANKINGS. Like pretty much every other author out there, I peek at my sales rankings—Amazon and Barnes and Noble mostly—the moment I get up, agonizing over what the total number is and what category I’m ranking in.
“Oh goodie, I’m ranking number five overall in the category of romantic/suspense/wolf shifters/who are right-handed/and part their hair on the right!!!”
“Yikes, is that good enough? What if I never get up to number four in that most sought-after category?”
My publisher and agent tell me stop looking at the numbers and that my books are selling fine. I agree with them, then immediately check to see if my ranking has changed in the last three minutes!
Fortunately, release day is only twenty-four hours long, though it can seem longer. After it’s over is when I really celebrate. For me, that celebration usually means a good movie (preferred an animated one…Disney if possible) and dinner at PF Chang’s with hubby.
Of course, anyone who knows me will remember that PF Chang’s is where hubby and I brainstorm our books. So we take about four hours or so to celebrate, then it’s right back to work on the next book in the series!
To give you a taste of my latest, here’s an excerpt!
An Excerpt:
“So what did you and Landon do this afternoon?” Minka asked, her soft voice dragging him back to the present.
Angelo looked up to see that Minka had already polished off two fajitas. Damn, the girl could eat. “Landon gave me a tour of the DCO complex. I did some target shooting and blew up a few things. He even let me play with the expensive surveillance toys. I swear, it felt more like a recruiting pitch to get me to work there than anything.”
Minka’s eyes flashed green, her full lips curving slightly. Damn, why the hell had he said it like that? Now she probably thought he was going to come work for the DCO. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t, not after just reenlisting for another five years. The army wasn’t the kind of job where you could walk into the boss’s office and say, “I quit.”
Thinking it would be a good idea to steer the conversation back to safer ground, he reached for another fajita and asked Minka a question instead. “What do you think you’ll work on next with Ivy and Tanner? You going to practice with the claws for a while or move on to something else?”
Angelo felt a little crappy about changing the subject, but if Minka noticed, she didn’t seem to mind. And it wasn’t like he had to fake interest in what she was saying. Anything that involved Minka was important to him. Besides, he didn’t know much about shifters or hybrids, so the whole thing was pretty damn fascinating.
“What do you visualize when you see the beast in your mind?” he asked.
“Before today, I thought of it as a giant, blurry monster.
But after learning that the beast is a cat, that’s how I picture it now.” She smiled. “Not a little house cat, of course. They aren’t scary enough. More like a big cat that roams the mountains.”
“Makes sense,” he said.
Minka set the other half of her fourth fajita on her plate and gave him a curious look. “Would you mind if I ask you a personal question?”
His mouth twitched as he prepared another fajita. He wasn’t used to Minka being so reserved. She usually said whatever was on her mind, regardless of whether it was personal or not.
“Go ahead,” he said.
“The first time we met, I had claws, fangs, glowing red eyes, and I tried to kill you. Since then, I’ve spent most of the time telling you about an imaginary creature that lives inside my head and makes me act like a monster. How are you so calm about that? Most people would have run away already.”
Angelo chuckled. Not exactly the personal question he’d expected, but then again Minka rarely did the expected.
“Well, my mom was full-blooded Cherokee, and I grew up around all kinds of Indian folktales and legends.
My dad was in the army, and whenever he was deployed, Mom would take my sisters and me back to the reservation where she grew up in Oklahoma. I’d stay up half the night listening to the old men tell stories about shape-shifters, animal spirits, skin-walkers, and trickster spirits.” He grinned. “I’m not saying I necessarily believed in all that stuff back then, but after meeting Ivy, Tanner, and the other shifters at the DCO, it just didn’t faze me that much.”
Minka looked at him with wide eyes. “You’re a real American Indian? Like in the movies? With horses and everything?”
He laughed again. The expression of wonder on her face was adorable. “First, I’m only half-Indian. My dad is Mexican, so there’s that. And second, Native Americans are almost nothing like you see in the movies. We don’t all live in tepees and ride horses. In fact, I don’t even own a horse.”
Minka was a little disappointed about the no-horse thing, but she was fascinated with what it was like growing up on an Indian reservation and being surrounded by all those legends. She immediately asked him to tell her some Indian stories. It had been a long time since he’d thought about them, but to make her happy, he dug through his head and tried to remember every tale he’d heard as a kid.
Giveaway
Where would your special occassion celebration take place? One commenter will win a copy of HER FIERCE WARROR.
About Paige Tyler
Paige Tyler is the USA Today bestselling author of sexy, romantic fiction. She and her very own military hero (also known as her husband) live on the beautiful Florida coast with their adorable fur baby (also known as their dog). Paige graduated with a degree in education, but decided to pursue her passion and write books about hunky alpha males and the kickbutt heroines who fall in love with them.
She is represented by Bob Mecoy.
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About HER FIERCE WARROR
The woman tensed. As anger and fear ricocheted across her face, her eyes changed from red to green to brown in a dizzying display like nothing he’d ever seen.
Every instinct in Angelo’s body screamed at him to lunge for his weapon. Instead he set his feet for impact, blocking her slashing claws. Unbelievably, after a few moments of struggling, she went still, all the fight gone…
Minka isn’t sure she should trust the sexy Special Forces soldier who found her. Subjected to horrors, on the run from scientists set on locking her in a cage, Minka is terrified of the monster she’s becoming…and somehow, Angelo is the only one who can calm the beast inside her and make her feel safe.
But can she trust the way he makes her feel when she’s not even sure she can trust herself?
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