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Welcome Guest Blogger Annette McCleave

Male Bonding in Romancemccleave_pic

First off, thanks so much for having me as a guest on Muse Interrupted, Cindy. It’s such a thrill to be celebrating my debut novel and sharing my excitement with the blogworld.

One of my favorite parts of romance novels are those little glimpses you sometimes get of the hero is spending some one-on-one time with other guys. Most of the time, I’m like everyone else, desperate to read the next part when the hero and heroine are engaged in clever repartee—I’ve been known to skip over secondary romances in a book just to get back to the main couple. But those moments the hero spends with other men are ones I rarely skip.

Why?

I think it’s because I feel like I’m getting the insider view—a brief peek at what really makes the men in the story tick. The hero is usually relaxed in these scenes, just being himself and not trying to win the day. Although I love my heroes to be larger than life, I like to see them handling the smaller slices of life, too.

mccleave_drawnThere’s usually some humor in those scenes, too, and I enjoy a few lighter moments—especially if the overall story is dark. An example? Okay, I’m going to steal from TV and not a book, just because I know it’ll resonate with most of you: Scenes involving Angel and Spike in the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The push and pull between those two very determined male vampires is both fun and funny to watch, even when there are lives at stake. (Sorry, couldn’t resist the pun).

When it comes to my own writing, I find myself including some of that same interaction, in part to round out my characters, and in part for the sheer pleasure of it.

Here are a few moments between my hero, Lachlan MacGregor, and his friend Brian:

Lachlan wiped his practice sword with an oiled cloth and leaned it up against the stone fireplace. “This would be much easier had you begun training when you were a lad.”

“Yeah, well, I was too busy skateboarding and blowing my eardrums out with Pearl Jam, so that wasn’t an option.”

“Your combat skills need a lot of work.”

Brian deposited his sword and shield on the floor. Looking more like a walking sportswear advertisement than an immortal warrior, he used his arm to wipe the faint sheen off his brow and gave Lachlan a rueful smile. “All those years of corporate backstabbing and deep-sixing the competition don’t count, huh?”

“No.”

“But I’m young and I’m agile. You told me that when we started. And last week, you said I’d come a long way in five weeks. So why the long face?”

“Because you know just enough to get yourself killed.”

“Hey,” the former stockbroker protested, “I thought you said I had good instincts?”

“You need more than good instincts. You need skill.” Lachlan rubbed his shirt front to halt the trickles running down his chest. “And you need more bloody endurance. You should be training every spare minute.”

“No way. Unlike you, MacGregor, I have a life.”

“Read the cards, Webster. Things have changed.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. A year ago, the chances of being ambushed were one in fifty and now it’s more like fifty-fifty. But I’m already doing my bit. I work out with you three times a week. That’s more than most Gatherers can say.”

“Three hours a week is not enough.”

“Why not? I’m learning from the best.” Brian smiled. “Word on the Gatherer grapevine is that you once single-handedly took down a pair of martial demons.”

“Don’t believe everything you hear.”

“Oh, come on. You were ambushed by elite soldier henchies from the inner rings of hell and lived to tell the tale. I know it’s true, admit it. With you as my coach, there’s no question I’ll eventually own some demon ass.”

Shaking his head at the young man’s bravado, Lachlan strode into the kitchen.

I’m offering up a copy of DRAWN INTO DARKNESS to one lucky person today—all you need to do is comment. Do you have a favorite book or series that in your opinion does ‘the guy thing’ really well? Tell me about it.

 P.S. This is also a stop on my “Cross into Darkness” blog tour, so feel free to visit my website at www.annettemccleave.com for a chance to win the tour grand prize. If you’ve been following the tour from the beginning, here’s the clue….

Muse Interrupted clue: First word of the two-word answer is the Scottish term for valley.

Thanks for joining me today—I’ve really enjoyed my visit. Good luck in the draw!

***

To read the back cover copy of DRAWN INTO DARKNESS and Annette’s bio, please visit yesterday’s post. To learn more about Annette, please visit her website.

Annette McCleave Guest Blogs Tomorrow!

Tomorrow paranormal romance author Annette McCleave visits the blog! Annette is blogging about Male Bonding in Romance and is giving away a copy of her Signet Eclipse debut novel, DRAWN INTO DARKNESS. Here’s the back cover blurb:

For centuries Lachlan MacGregor has battled demon thieves for the souls of the dead, carrying out his pledge to deliver them into Heaven or Hell. But his greatest challenge as a Soul Gatherer is now among the living.

Struggling to connect with her troubled teenage daughter Emily, artist Rachel Lewis turns to her enigmatic yet strangely compelling neighbor Lachlan for advice. As Lachlan soon discovers, the young girl has fallen victim to a seductive demon—a specter from the past using the unsuspecting women to fulfill an ancient prophesy and settle a hellish score with Lachlan himself.

In the race to save Emily and avert a disastrous power shift among the deities, Rachel and Lachlan forge an uncommon bond. But how can Lachlan tell the mortal woman he’s falling in love with that the next soul he’s been enlisted to gather—and deliver beyond—is her daughter’s?

About Annette:mccleave_pic

Annette McCleave is the Golden Heart® award winning author of DRAWN INTO DARKNESS, the first novel in a new paranormal romance series about Soul Gatherers—immortal warriors who battle demons to protect the souls of the dead. A former marketing executive, Annette is now a full-time writer and mother of one.

For more information about Annette and her books, please visit her website.

Birdbrain

Ever had a bird in the house? Ever wondered how it got in? Ever considered that it might not be via the cat?

My family has lived in our current home for nineteen years. Sure, we’ve had birds in the house before, courtesy of cats, but those are easy to spot because they’re usually wounded. In fact, our first cat, Slink, once brought a baby owl (dead and frozen before he got to it) into a house we rented in a town about three hours drive from where we currently live. Our second cat, Seiki (a nasty, toothless Siamese I immortalized in BORROWING ALEX as Rusty), considered himself quite the Great White Hunter (one of his nicknames). He’d bring maimed birds into the house and then get much joy from watching them flap about trying to get away from him. Lucky for those birds, the family was usually on the ball and saved the bird before Seiki could further torment it. I can’t recall one single bird becoming the cat’s dinner.

Now, we’re on our third cat, Keisha. Otherwise known around the blog as The Evil Entity. She’s not actually evil. She is quite sweet. Behold, evidence:

keisha_head

Come on, admit it. She’s cute!

So, The Evil Entity has a cat door. Our cats have always had cat doors. I grew up with a cat jumping on my window screen in the middle of the night to get in the house. Not fun. Thus, the cat door. It’s accessible from the carport.

Last winter we had to close the cat door for several months, because, sweet as she is, The Evil Entity wasn’t guarding it very well. A big black cat in the neighborhood decided that sneaking into our house in the middle of the night to eat Keisha’s cat food was a fine idea.

Jump to the summer. We decided to open the cat door again. The big black cat seems to have forgotten about it. Good news. The bad news? We have a birdbrain!

Last weekend, while My Liege was busy helping Eldest Son put away his car for the winter, the kitchen door was left open. My Liege was walking by the cat door in the carport and noticed Keisha inspecting said cat door. He realized something was inside the house, pushing back on the cat door, but not strong enough to get out. Keisha wanted to get in, but was unnerved by the pushing on the door.

So. My Liege goes downstairs, and there’s a huge bird—quite healthy, totally unmaimed by a cat—pushing against the cat door in a vain effort to get out. M.L. and E.S. managed to get the bird to fly back out again (after removing a screen from a basement window), but not before the bird tried to dive-bomb E.S. the_birdsWhat, did he think we were casting for a remake of The Birds?

Okay, bird leaves the house, The Evil Entity, Not Very Evil, can now enter the house again. Everyone is happy. How did the bird enter the house, we wondered? I theorized that E.E. pushed it in through the cat door, but M.L. and E.S. maintained the bird was far too large for E.E. to catch, much less push through a cat door.

All right, I conceded, I guess the bird flew in through the open kitchen door and just happened to fly into the workshop and decide to try to get out again via a cat door.

Meanwhile, My Liege had moved a bunch of freshly chopped kindling into the carport beside the cat door, but no one, not even moi, considered that this wood might have had something to do with the birdbrained bird entering our house.

So. The other day, I take Allie McBeagle outside for a bathroom break. We pass the carport. A huge bird that at this point lives in my imagination as part crow/part magpie because I didn’t get a good look as a result of lowering my head so it wouldn’t Hitchcock me, swept up from near the cat door, wings fluttering madly, and attempted to dive-bomb my head before I screamed and scared it off. The Evil Entity was sitting at the other end of the carport, watching with interest.

That dagnabbed bird, I swear, was trying to get into our house via the cat door. What a birdbrain.

Why would it do such a thing? My guess is that it can smell the freshly cut kindling (can birds smell?), and, look, there’s an opening right next to this nice-smelling wood. Surely, the wood must be a weird tree and the opening a nice door for a bird house.

Except it’s my house, birdbrain! Get the heck out!

Tall Tales

“Truth is stranger than fiction.”

I don’t know who said that, but is it ever true! Sometimes the lives of my extended family and friends seem like something out of fiction. How about you?

On Sunday, My Liege, Eldest Son and I left Youngest Son alone for a few days while we transported E.S. to university. Y.S. had just bought a kayak, and I knew he planned to go out on the lake while we were gone. Thank God my BFF had lent him a good life jacket for the month of September….

M.L., E.S. and I hadn’t driven further than the next town when a storm blew up…just when Y.S. was supposed to be on the lake. We stopped to have lunch with a friend, and I called home to tell Y.S. to phone me to let me know he was still alive.

He was still alive. But what a hair-raising tale! He doesn’t have a skirt for the kayak yet, and the waves got choppy so the kayak began to take on water. He made it to the beach and realized he should head back home. On the way home, he capsized, losing his cell phone and his I-Pod (don’t ask me why he took either out on the lake). His shed half his clothes to make swimming easier, and by the grace of A Higher Being, he managed to rescue his kayak and himself.

It took him three tries to find a family that would help him. The first two wouldn’t give him the time of day. Okay, he was down to his skivvies, but all he wanted was a towel. He’s obviously still a teenager, wears a gold cross around his neck, the lake was very choppy by this point, and the kayak was sitting on the shore. Nope, no one had a towel to lend him.

Finally, the third family, who barely spoke a word of English, took him in. They let him have a short shower, lent him a change of clothes, gave him a cup of coffee and a snack, and let him use their phone to call the father of a friend to drive him home.

Do you believe me? Or is this a tall tale? 

Meanwhile, My Liege, Eldest Son and I made it to E.S.’s university town without incident. E.S. has been struggling for a few weeks now to receive back his deposit on the room he intended to rent in a private home. Supposedly that room had suffered damage in a fire. Among other things he was told that the landlady had (a) lost her cell phone (b) had suffered a minor nervous breakdown and was under a doctor’s care (c) wasn’t answering her home phone and might not even be there. Some of these stories came by way of an email from her, others from her supposed “very good friend,” who we now suspect was also her. Promises about the money coming “in 24 hours.” Promises that were never kept.

So. We go to her house. She’s not home. We talk to the downstairs tenant. The fire wasn’t confirmed or disapproved, but neither M.L. nor E.S. could see evidence of it. We left and moved E.S. into his new digs. Before going out to dinner, we returned to Evil Landlady’s house. I stayed in the truck (I tend to have too much compassion for people, even when they’re behaving in a despicable manner). M.L. and E.S. surprised Evil Landlady on her sundeck. She maintained she didn’t have the money and said she’d sent E.S. an email that day. Later, reading the email, E.S. reported that she’d claimed she’d moved to another city—a ferry ride and a drive away!

My son and husband said they would not leave until my son received back his deposit. What do you think—did he receive it back?

What’s his next step? Is she dumb enough to believe he won’t take it?

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Betty Vs. Veronica

Are You Like Betty Cooper or Veronica Lodge?
You are Like Betty Cooper

myspace quizzes and surveys

Like Betty, you are friendly, helpful and compassionate. You want your boyfriend to appreciate you for your qualities more than for your beauty. You may not be high on material riches, but your real wealth is your friendships, which you have created and maintained with great care.

       

Well, naturally, I am like Betty! For one thing, I’m not rich. Sure, I can get…testy, but I usually recover.

As a kid, I loved the Archie comics. My best friend was a redhead and my older sister a blonde, so a time or two we even played “Archie.” Being the brunette, I was usually cast as Veronica. And she was fun to play. 

Recently, I read on the ‘Net that Archie is proposing to Veronica in a 5-issue post-college story arc. Say what??? Okay, I admit, I can see him proposing. Let’s face it, Archie’s appeal is that he’s a bit of a noob. A dough-brain. A bean-bag-head. What else would he do? Veronica is rich and hot. She doesn’t pant after him like a cocker spaniel. She’s a challenge.

Here’s what I can’t figure out, though—Veronica says yes? Why, why, why would she want to marry Archie? To stick it to Betty? To control him? I’m not sure I understand her motivation.

So, who are you, Betty or Veronica? Would you marry Archie? If you were Betty in this scenario, how would you plot his demise?

School Daze

School starts late this year in my neck of the woods. It doesn’t even start today. Nope, the first day is tomorrow. It used to start today. By that I mean the day following Labor Day was always the first day of school, as far back as I can remember (ie. when I was in school). However, when Youngest Son was in grade 11 or grade 12, I think it was, the day after Labor Day became a Pro-Development day with school now starting the day after. This year, with school starting on the 9th, is the latest I can remember.

While I no longer have kids in school, I still have one in university. Eldest Son. He begins his last year of his B.A. tomorrow. Youngest Son is taking a year off. He survived a challenging full slate of first year sciences this last year followed by an intense three-course summer session. Next year, the plan is he’ll enrol in university in another province, but for now his brain needs a break.

It’s kind of strange not to have both my kids enrolled in some form of education. Honestly, I feel Y.S. is cheating me out of harassing him about his studies. I can’t hassle E.S., because he’s away for the year and he has it too together, anyway. Not that Y.S. doesn’t have it together, mind you. He definitely does, just in a different way.

When does school start in your part of the world? Are your kids just going back, or have they been attending for weeks? I can not fathom kids in my area of B.C. attending school in August. It’s our hottest month. To me, September = Start of School. However, I guess when you live in an area where it’s always 80 Fahrenheit or higher, it doesn’t matter when school starts, they’re gonna roast regardless.

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