Today it’s my pleasure to welcome over Anna Lowe, author of Desert
Moon, Book One in The Wolves of Twin Moon Ranch.
Genre: PNR
Publisher: Twin Moon Press
Date of Publication: March 4, 2015
ASIN: B00TEEHDPS
Number of pages: 133
Word Count: 38,800 (roughly 40k)
Cover Artist: Fiona Jayde
Book Description
Lana Dixon knows well enough to steer clear of alpha males,
but Ty Hawthorne is as impossible to avoid as the sizzling Arizona sun. Her
inner wolf just won’t give up on the alpha who’s tall, dark, and more than a
little dangerous. One midnight romp under the full moon is enough for Lana to
know she’ll risk her life for him — but what about her pride?
Ty puts duty above everything — even the overwhelming
instinct that says Lana’s the one. She’s the Juliet to his Romeo: forbidden.
And with a pack of poaching rogues closing in, it’s hardly the time to yield to
his desires. Or is love just what this lonely alpha needs to set his spirit
free?
There’s more than meets the eye on Twin Moon Ranch, home to
a pack of shapeshifting wolves willing to battle for life and love.
Giveaway! Be sure to enter the Rafflecopter after this post for a chance to win 3 ebook copies Desert Moon.
Let’s Interview!
How did you come up with the title?
The title comes right out of the setting and the story.
There's something magical about the desert at night, and a full moon brings out
the impulsive and unpredictable side in all of us. It's a perfect place to
throw a destined mates together – just let them try to resist the temptation!
(And they do try, silly things.)
What made you choose the main setting for your book?
I wanted a strong, moody location that could act as a
character in itself and immediately knew Arizona would be the perfect setting
for my dark and dangerous series. I come from the East Coast (like the heroine
of Book 1, Lana) but I fell in love with Arizona the minute I arrived there for
a job on a ranch. That special place quickly inspired the Twin Moon Ranch of
the books, from the gateway to the dining hall with its massive stone
fireplace, in addition to the overall ranch layout and the overall issues that
influence the ranch management (land and water rights, environmental issues,
etc). It didn't take long for my imagination to sprinkle werewolves and hot
alpha heroes into a place I love and make it even better!
Tell us a little bit about the conflict in your story.
Desert Moon is a second chance love story between a
thorny Romeo and his stubborn Juliet.
Lana Dixon knows well enough to steer clear of alpha males,
but Ty Hawthorne is as impossible to avoid as the sizzling Arizona sun. Her inner
wolf just won’t give up on the alpha who’s tall, dark, and more than a little
dangerous. One midnight romp under the full moon is enough for Lana to know
she’ll risk her life for him — but what about her pride?
Ty puts duty above everything — even the overwhelming instinct that says Lana’s
the one. She’s the Juliet to his Romeo: forbidden. And with a pack of poaching
rogues closing in, it’s hardly the time to yield to his desires. Or is love
just what this lonely alpha needs to set his spirit free?
If you had to sell your book based on one run of dialogue
(start quote to end quote), which would it be?
This is one of my favorite scenes, when Ty and Lana talk for
the first time in the ranch's dining hall, where everyone shares meals a couple
of times a week:
“Hi, she mumbled,
her eyes meeting his. The blue hues of her irises were so varied and vivid, he
could swear they were swirling and changing as he looked on.
“Hi,” he said.
Well, he tried to. His lips moved but the sound didn’t quite make it out. He
struggled to remember where he was and why.
Right, dessert. He
reached for a piece of pie exactly when Lana did. Their hands froze halfway to
the platter, both wavering over the key lime pie. The last slice.
“Cody!” He cursed
his brother under his breath.
Lana pulled back.
“You take it.”
“No, you.”
Her eyes narrowed
at him. Crap. He hadn’t meant for it to come out as an order, but she was
already gritting her teeth.
“No, you,” she
ground out.
“I’m good.” He
tried taking the edge off his voice, but he was badly out of practice.
Lana studied him
so closely he would swear she could see into his childhood memories. Her
nostrils flared, and he saw her catch a breath and hold it. Then she slowly
exhaled and turned to the platter, scooping the last piece onto the last plate.
She forked it roughly in half and held it between them with icy determination.
“We’ll share,” she
growled.
The alpha in him
both bristled and admired her pluck. The wolf licked his lips — and not for the
pie.
Her eyes
flickered, focusing on something in his. He noticed an outer edge of green in
her eyes that he’d missed before, like the foam that slid off the crests of
waves.
“Trouble today?”
she asked, keeping her voice down.
Trouble? So she’d
noticed the meeting. “No trouble,” he insisted.
She snorted. “I do
that, too.”
“Do what?”
“Pretend.”
Ty blinked. “I
don’t pretend.”
“Then what’s the
trouble?” She took a bite of pie and licked a smudge of cream off her lips.
A breath caught in
his throat, and a word slipped past his lips before he could catch it.
“Rogues.”
Her face hardened
as some dark memory rocketed through her eyes. “Confirmed report?”
“Not yet, but…”
She nodded,
letting him trail off. In an absent movement, her right arm rubbed briefly over
her left, where a wicked scar trailed out of her sleeve.
“Trouble?” he
murmured, eyes on the scar. For a shifter to scar, it must have been bad.
She yanked the
sleeve down. “No trouble.”
I
do that, too, he wanted to say. Pretend.
His gut warmed with something strangely close to pride. This East Coast wolf
wasn’t just sassy; she was tough, too.
What genre/genres do you prefer to write? Are there other
genres you’d like to write in the future?
I loves putting the “hero” back into heroine and letting
location ignite a passionate romance, whether that's in my dark and dangerous
werewolf series or the exotic and exciting travel and adventure romances I will
release starting in July. In all cases, I like creating a heroine who is
independent, intelligent, and imperfect – a woman who’s doing just fine on her
own. But give her a good man – not to mention a chance to overcome her own
inhibitions – and she’ll never turn down the chance for adventure, nor shy away
from danger.
Do you prefer to write short stories, novellas or novels?
Why?
I love variety, so I write a bit of everything. The Twin
Moon Ranch stories are all long novellas (about 40,000 words each) while my
travel romances are short novels, and the adventure romances are fast-paced
novellas of 30,000 words. In between, I love writing short stories that show
couples living their Happily Ever After – whether that's Lana bringing Ty home
to meet her parents in Desert Wolf, or a marriage proposal up a New Zealand
mountaintop between the hero and heroine of Island Fantasies (a travel
romance set on a tropical island near Bora Bora). As a reader, I like variety
too: sometimes I prefer a long saga, other times a weekend read, and sometimes
just a quick escape into a world and characters I love.
Do you write books in series? If so, share a bit about the
series you currently have published or are coming soon.
Desert Moon is the first of the Twin Moon Ranch series. Book
1 focuses on Ty, the ruling alpha's oldest son – a man whose life is heavy in
responsibility and light on privilege. In Book 2, Desert Blood, his brother
Cody gets center stage. The brothers are opposites: if Ty is a thundercloud,
Cody is a ray of sunshine, and his life is the other way around: heavy on
privilege but light on responsibility. Cody yearns to be trusted with more –
and gets his chance when his destined mate Heather comes along, on the run from
vampires. Book 3 is about Kyle, a cop turned shapeshifter in a biker brawl who
was taken in by Twin Moon Ranch. He's still not quite settled into pack life
until childhood buddy Stefanie comes along and gives him something to believe
in again. Books 4 and 5 are about Ty and Cody's sisters, and you'll love them,
too. All the story have different villains and different outside conflicts,
such as land rights, inter-pack rivalries, and rogue incursions. And all end in
sweet epilogues (I just can't resist those).
The adventure romance series I'm writing right now is set
around a group of six cousins who inherit their grandfather's sailboat, Serendipity.
The grandfather's last wish was for each set of siblings to reconnect by
going sailing together in the Caribbean. In Uncharted Waters,
responsible Seth is sailing among the gorgeous reefs of Belize with his
party-boy brother Tobin when he meets Julie, an archaeologist on the run. In Uncharted
Territory, Tobin gets his second chance at the woman who turned him down at
the altar six years before. Now Cara is stuck in a remote Panamanian village,
and Tobin's the only one who can get her out. The question is, will she let him
back into her life? The series continues with Tobin and Seth's cousins as they
get their turn to sail the boat, two at a time. The sailboat lives up to its
name as it brings each cousin to true love through serendipito
Excerpt
“One of Tyrone’s boys is coming to get us,” Jean said,
looking up and down the road.
Lana
looked too, gnawing her lip. It figured the kid would be late. While the two
older women stood in the shade of a bus stop, catching up on twelve years of
news, she paced. Out into the piercing sun, then back into the muted shade. Out
and back, out and back again, each footfall a step into the past, then a
determined about-face into the future. She tried to numb her senses, but they
kept darting around, tasting the arid flavor of this place, listening to its
emptiness. Everything felt so familiar, yet so strange, like visiting a
childhood home after someone else had moved in.
That
was the strange part. Arizona had never been her home and it never would be.
She’d only visited once before. She went stiff at the memory, as if the old
emotions might creep up and carry her away. Emotions like hope and love and
unexpected passion, blazing bright. She’d been so young and impressionable back
then — only twenty, and that was the problem. Too young to know better than to
fall in love with a vague scent in the hills. For a while, she’d even imagined
the scent came with a man.
But it
had been a siren song at best, and it had ruined her. There was no man, no
promise, only a ceaseless whisper that stirred her during the day and haunted
her at night. And now she was back again, right in the thick of it: the heat,
the dust, the lying air.
“Oh,
there he is,” Jean called.
A faded
Jeep Wagoneer pulled up to the curb and creaked to a stop. From what Jean had
said, Lana had been expecting the driver to be a newly licensed teen — a kid
delighted for any excuse to get out on four wheels. The type with narrow
shoulders, a pocked complexion, and gangly limbs.
She was
not expecting this.
Lana
gaped as the “boy” emerged from the car with a smooth, easy step. Evidently the
state of Arizona was now issuing driver’s licenses to rugged, six-foot-two
slabs of muscle and raw power. Authority bristled off him in waves, as if he
were facing an entire platoon and not just a couple of guests. Dark. Sensual.
More than a little dangerous. This was their ride?
“Hello,
sweetie.” Old Jean gave him a cheery peck on the cheek. The gesture made Lana’s
inner wolf hiss so fiercely that she wobbled and took a step back. Since when
did a man affect her like that?
Since
right now, apparently.
But why?
She didn’t want or need a man in her life, especially one who was so…so…alpha.
And yet
every molecule in her body was screaming Mine!
About the Author
Anna Lowe loves putting the "hero" back into
heroine and letting location ignite a passionate romance. She likes a heroine
who is independent, intelligent, and imperfect — a woman who's doing just fine
on her own. But give the heroine a good man (not to mention a chance to
overcome her own inhibitions) and she'll never turn down the chance for
adventure, nor shy away from danger.
Anna is a middle school teacher who divides her time between
coastal Maine and a village in view of the Austrian Alps. She loves dogs,
sports, and travel — and letting those inspire her fiction.
Once upon a time, she was a long-distance triathlete and
soccer player. Nowadays, she finds her balance with yoga, writing, and family
time with her husband and young children. On any given weekend, you might find
her hiking in the mountains or hunched over her laptop, working on her latest
story. Either way, the day will end with a chunk of dark chocolate and a good
read.
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