Excerpt Set to Music #2

I’m back! Okay, you guys probably didn’t notice my absence, but I had visiting family for most of last week, so I was mostly offline for several days while I did some sightseeing and quality time (the mirror maze, and board games, and Rock Band, and Schlitterbahn!) with my dad, stepmother, and my two baby brothers. Only one of whom is anywhere near infancy now.

But now I’m back, and playing catch-up. I’m still organizing the Alpha blog tour, so if I haven’t answered your request to join, I swear I’m not ignoring you. I’m just behind. Perpetually.

Today (at the end of this post) I have this week’s “Countdown to Alpha extra,” another mini-excerpt set to music. But first…some other stuff.

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Last week, my publisher released got eARCs of Alpha to 22 fortunate souls as a thank you for helping promote the bus tour I was a part of in June. (And before you ask, no, I don’t have any copies, and no, it’s on up on NetGalley for general review yet. Sorry!) So, now I’m officially nervous waiting for those first few reviews to pop up. I’ve been nervous before—every release is both stressful and wonderful at the same time—but never quite like this. I’ve never ended a series before, and while I know it’s impossible to please everyone with the way everything wraps up, I can’t help wishing I could.

Along those lines, Larissa has a non-spoilery review of Shifters books 1-5 up today, and she’s promising an early review of Alpha tomorrow. No word yet on whether or not this review will contain spoilers from any of the books, so be prepared, just in case.

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Kiss Me Deadly (young adult paranormal romance anthology) officially hits the shelves tomorrow, and there are already a few reviews of it floating around, several of which mention my story, “Fearless.” I’m hoping to get my hands on a copy to give away soon, so stay tuned for giveaways of both that anthology and of early copies of Alpha, as soon as I get my hands on copies.

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And now, what you’ve probably been waiting for…

Lest you think that Alpha is all mushy romance and unbridled sexual tension, today I offer you a glimpse of one of several fight scenes from this, the last Shifters novel. Which, for the record, is also FULL of action. (Though early reports indicate that readers also recommend reading with a fresh box of tissues on hand for the emotional parts.)

So, here is a glimpse of Faythe kicking ass, but taking neither names nor prisoners:

Pain bit into my left rear thigh, and I inhaled the scent of my own blood. I swiped blindly and ripped through more flesh. Fresh pain tore through me as teeth sank into my right foreleg. I snapped my own muzzle around the back of the tom’s neck and tasted more blood.


I clenched my jaw as hard as I could. His neck broke with a crunch I felt in my own bones. His teeth fell away from my leg. He went limp beneath me.

The playlist for this scene includes:

Bodies, by Drowning Pool

I first heard this song several years ago, when # 1 recommended to me while I was writing the fight scene at the beginning of Prey. And wow, did it work. It’s now my go-to fight scene music (though there are others I also use a lot), though it’s never fit quite as well as it did during the first and last fight scenes in Alpha. The lyrics are sparse at best, but most of them seem to apply.

My favorite lines (and those most relevant to Faythe’s position in this book):

And:

Beaten why for
Can't take much more

Push me again
This is the end


Here we go...Here we go...Here we go

And, of course:

Let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor