Hi, Nara and welcome to my blog! I was really pleased when your post dropped into my inbox because I've done a lot of interviews lately so it was nice to see a post. Looking forward to reading what you have to say - all the best with your ongoing tour!
Journey
into the Next Dimension
I like to think of my writing journey as a
quest. I approach it the way I would a good adventure game. I assess current skills
and create a map going forward that plays to my strengths. Then I work through
each obstacle to reach the next level.
There are levels of skill to acquire as an
author, and there are levels of the game to complete as a storyteller. Like any
good game/story, the experience has me looking inward as I go. My author quest,
by its nature, forces me to examine who I am. It forces me to dig deep and
stretch in order to grow in my craft.
Call
to adventure
Quests begin with a call to break away from
safe routines and try something new.
As is often the case, my call to adventure
was an attempt to escape. My father was dying, that slow disintegration of
bones and organs that we call aging had reached a crisis level. He was on a
downward spiral I knew he couldn’t come back from, but he was not going down
without a fight. I was helping my sister take care of him and the emotional
toll of watching his battle was beating us both into the ground. So I came up
with an escape plan. We’d write those books we had always wanted to write. We’d
escape into our story worlds to get a break from the stress of reality.
We signed up for NanoWriMo. At the end of
Nano I polished what I had and submitted it in the Passionate Reads Stroke of
Midnight contest, hoping for a little feedback on how marketable my story idea
was.
Enter call to adventure: I won the contest and only had a few
months to finish my book. That book, The
Tiger’s Tale, was requested by Raelene Gorlinsky and became my first
published novel.
Leveling
Up
Once I had a foot in the door of the
publishing world, I wanted to head in new directions with my writing, explore
new ways to tell stories. From the time
I first saw a holodeck in Star Trek TV series, I’ve wanted the
experience of stepping into the story world and interacting as the
protagonist. Unfortunately,
publishing tends to be a rather conservative, stick-with-what-works sort of
medium. And new authors aren’t the ones they pick to blaze new trails. I knew I
wasn’t going to be able to convert publishing to switching from books to
holodecks over night and there were still a few technological details to work
out. But just because you can’t have everything you want, doesn’t mean you
can’t have some of it.
My next book, The Dungeon Gourmet, told the story of a kinky blogging French
chef, Master Bond, who blogged inside his book and after he won his HEA in the
love story, he continued to turn up in real world blogs. He’s still whipping up sensuality and heat in
the kitchen. Last summer he led
readers on a quest to rescue me after plot bunnies kidnapped me.
While Bond was entertaining readers with his Cook Naked blogs at
Passionate Reads, I was working with Orchid Games on an adventure game for
women, Spirit Walkers: Curse of the
Cypress Witch. Spirit Walkers allows the player to step into the role of
protagonist, as the heroine Maylynn, and help her save her friends and the
Cypress Witch. It’s almost like a holodeck adventure. I’m getting closer.
The Next Level
Experimenting is my addiction. It’s my
fuel. My motivation, compelling me to keep mixing things up.
I was dutifully working on the sequel to The Tiger’s Tale, when the heroine for
Snatch Me, Jolie, took over my
brain. In Snatch Me a young woman
turns to virtual reality to escape the grief of losing her father. She’s so
caught up in the game that it becomes an addiction. I bent rules, telling the story of her reality in third
person and her in-game virtual experiences in first person to convey that the
fictional world was more real to her.
Snatch
Me was another opportunity to bring the fictional
world and the real world closer together. Could I make the fiction feel more
real than the reality?
I was pretty sure my editor, Grace Bradley,
would never go along with the story as written. But she loved it was so enthusiastic about that she visited the virtual
reality model world I built of the Quarterz—the post-apocalyptic world that
served as the setting for Snatch Me. You
can check that world out yourself here: http://www.naramalone.com/p/naras-worlds.html
When a story moves people to step out of
their comfort zone and into one of my virtual worlds, I feel I’ve done my job
as a storyteller.
There’s
Always Another Story, and Another Level
Blind
Heat, my newest novel, is the sequel to The Tiger’s Tale and the second book in the Pantherian Passions
series. I envision a long series.
Because readers wanted to know more about
Pantheria, the fictional world my shifters are from, I built a model of the
main Island and posted it online for readers to visit. There are eight Islands
in the chain, one for each Pantherian tribe, so expect Pantheria to grow.
In addition to the virtual world, I made
Therianverse.com, a companion website to the series where all things related to
the Pantherian worldbuilding can be shared with readers as I go along. I have a
primer up about the Pantherian race, a lexicon, a blog, links to virtual
worlds. My next addition will be a bestiary.
You could ask, is all about gimmicks? After
all, isn’t the real power of a story the art you create with words. It is. That’s the first level. I spend
most of my time getting that level right.
Still, there is a limitation to stories that I would like to
overcome. When I write a story, or a game adventure, you can only arrive at the
happy ending I choose, with the solutions I can see. And it has to be that way
for some stories. But…
I also want to create stories that give
readers some room to take their own hero’s journey, discover their own lesson
and happy ending. And beyond that,
I want to write at least one never ending story, one that can be revisited, be
new every time it’s read.
A tall order? Impossible dream?
Augmented Reality, Google Glasses, an agent
interested in a unique twist I came up with for the old Choose Your Own
Adventure stories—are real opportunities ahead of me. New calls to adventure. I
hope to use them to prove my dreams are not so far from reality.
You can follow me and my quest in the
following places:
My Series Blogs: www.Therianverse.com,
www.Passion’s Portal.com
Twitter @nara_malone
Pinterest http://pinterest.com/naramalone/
Blind Heat
by Nara Malone
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BLURB:
Allie is determined to build an ordinary life. To survive, she needs to
be the sort of woman no one notices. She has a generic job, lives in a generic
apartment, and thinks maybe one day she’ll find an ordinary Joe who wants an
average Jane sort of woman.
Marcus is anything but an ordinary Joe. Even if humans don’t know he’s a
shifter and millennial being, he’s the sort of man women notice. A night of
passion spent with Marcus is a night any female, human or Pantherian, won’t
forget.
But Allie does forget. She repeatedly fails to recognize him even after an
intense sexual encounter. Marcus discovers the source of her problem—face
blindness, a genetic disorder with no cure. And he decides to use erotic rituals
to teach her to see with more than her eyes. What he doesn’t count on is Allie
seeing past the man—and recognizing the beast within.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EXCERPT
The greatest threats from a man were injury or death. She’d
known how to read those kinds of threats in a man before she was old enough to
read a book. She could see no intent to harm. No evil. He looked at her as if
he’d discovered something precious. A warmth seemed to reach from his eyes into
her soul, drawing her closer. She made her choice.
The red cloth shimmered with an aura of passion, dared her
to press her body to it. The thought sent her blood zinging through her veins.
There was something there, something irresistible. His eyes spoke promises she
could feel. Her feet wouldn’t let her turn away, but took the risk. Took one
step. Then the next. Her lips burned with a need to glide over his jawline,
explore planes and angles with kisses and nips. Her heart hammered so loud he
had to hear it even over the rain.
True to his word, he didn’t move an inch until she was right
there in front of him, reaching to press her hands to the shirt, feel its heat,
prove he was real. Her palms sighed with pleasure, like the fabric was a meal
to be savored. His strong fingers closed around her wrist then, not painfully
but with the finality of a manacle, reminding her that he’d said he wouldn’t
let her go until he had what he wanted.
“Good girl,” he whispered, soothing away the little trill of
fear that rose with his touch, stroking her face with the backs of his fingers.
Her body sang like chimes in the wind, notes shivering down her spine.
“I won’t stop at a kiss,” he said. “But you can start with
one. Make it sweet.”
She rose obediently to her toes, finding his lips, feeling
them firm, parting under hers. He ordered and demanded with such a low,
seductive tone. If he’d told her to go rob the jewelry store, in just the same
way, it would have seemed a good idea.
He shifted, turning quickly so she was between him and the
tree, cutting off any chance to change her mind and run. He held her face
between his hands, and her own hands felt small and fragile against the breadth
of his. He kissed his desire into her. Her mind grappled to reassert caution,
but her thoughts slipped away, formless as water spilling through fingers. He
didn’t stop kissing until she stopped thinking, until the rigidity in her
muscles softened, until she kissed him back.
He tasted like spring rain.
His hands were warm through her soggy shirt, his fingers
curved under her chilled breasts, his thumbs stroking over the tops. Thumbs and
fingers came together, squeezing until she squirmed. His lips and tongue moved
over her neck, tracing the line of her collarbone, a warm, sensual touch that
made her whimper. He split the worn cotton with a sharp twist. The ripping
sound jolted her. Her shirt split down the center, parting to offer her
breasts. A wave of fear welled in her belly. of desire trickled between her
thighs. She glanced down the puddled path. He pressed her tighter against the
tree.
“You had your chance,” he whispered. “It’s the last I’m
willing to give you for a while.”
AUTHOR Bio and
Links:
Like the heroine, Allie, in Blind Heat, Nara is face blind
and lived with the condition not knowing there was a medical explanation for
her inability to remember faces.
It’s a rare and only recently publicized condition. She hopes Blind Heat will help get the
word out about face blindness.
Nara lives on a small farm in the shadow of the Blue Ridge
Mountains. When she's not writing, she loves to run, hike, bike, and kayak.
Every story she tells incorporates her love of animals, nature, and adventure.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PLEASE MENTION THE PRIZE THAT THE AUTHOR WILL BE GIVING AWAY:
Nara will be awarding a digital copy of The Tiger's Tale, first in the Pantherian Passions series, and a $10 Ellora's Cave GC to one randomly drawn commenter during the tour, and a GC to purchase a video game targeted for female gamers written by Nara Malone with Orchid Games, Spirit Walkers: Curse of the Cypress Witch to a second randomly drawn commenter.
