CONTEST TODAY!!! One Lucky Commenting Bella (LCB) wins a copy of "
Midnight Cravings" courtesy of the Ladies of Midnight!
From Michelle: Please welcome with your wildest Bella buongiorno Bella friends "old," Michele, Vivi and Lori, and new! I love this anthology. If'n you're thinkin' on trying on some paras for size, this is a good place to start. Ladies? Please take the stage...
From the Ladies of Midnight: In the mood for sexy, paranormal heroes? For the first time in print, six Nocturne Bites stories have been gathered into the "
Midnight Cravings" anthology. We’ve got werewolves, garms, shapeshifters, and more to fascinate and titillate you. Here’s a bit on each of the stories:
“
Racing The Moon” by
Michele Hauf: I had a weird dream one night, about a werewolf stranded in the middle of nowhere, who is rescued by a cat-shifting familiar. The only thing weird about that dream is that, at the time, I did not like werewolves. But to pair a wolf with a cat? Fun, right? And sexy, and decidedly dangerous if the only way to keep the werewolf at bay is through sexual healing. But what's that I hear about familiars? When a familiar has sex she brings demons to this realm? Ok, so that makes sex a little...risky. But if the hero doesn't have sex before the full moon, he's going to wolf out, and in that form, let me tell you, he does not like cats one bit. I fell in love with werewolves writing this short interlude. Go, hairy dudes!
“
Mate of the Wolf” by
Karen Whiddon. I always swore I'd never write a vampire. No, I

told my agent. Definitely not, I swore to my friends. Then, when I was working on the synopsis for Mate of the Wolf, and wrote the scene where the heroine meets the hero, turned out he was a vampire. And so sexy, I didn't resist writing him at all. In my shape-shifter, Pack world, I never thought about that kind of inter-species relationship. Human and shifter, definitely. I'd had vamps for minor characters before, walk-ons, mostly. But this was different. I'd love to hear what readers think.
“
Captured” by
Lori Devoti: When I first heard about the Nocturne Bites, I knew immediately whosestory I wanted to tell. In my first Nocturne, "Unbound," the hero, Risk, had a son that he hadn't known about. Both Risk and his son, Venge, thought the mother was dead, but I knew she wasn't. I knew the witch, Lusse, who had owned her had seen her as expendable and sold her off. I'd had this in my mind all along, but her story didn't seem to fit for a full length novel. So, the Bite was perfect. In "Captured," we meet Leve and see what happened to her. We also see that she is much stronger than the witch who sold her gave her credit, but understandably Leve's view of the world is not a trusting one. She needed a very special hero, and I think Gray is perfect for her. He is strong and alpha, like all my hellhound heros, but he also has an almost mystical side. He has learned to control the basic hellhound urges that people like Lusse and Leve's new owners use against hellhounds. Together they find a new strength and manage to escape a hell no one before them has.
“
Dreamcatcher” by
Anna Leonard.
"And then the prince saved the princess...and she saved him right back."It's one of my favorite endings, and I knew when I started to write my story for Nocturne that even though my hero was the one with the supernatural background, my heroine was going to be the strong one, the moving force of the story. A woman who doesn't know the depths of her own ability, matched with a man who needs sex, and yet fears it... oh yes. That had
definite possibilities. The idea that sex would be both strength and weakness intrigued me, and once I had the folklore that explained it, the story took a life of its own....
“
Mahina’s Storm” by
Vivi Anna: When asked to write a short for the BITE program, a story from my Valorian Chronicles, the first character I thought of was police captain Mahina Garner. She’s a tough as nails lycan and I really wanted to explore her character. At first I had no idea who to match her up with. Who in the OCU could keep up with her? No one came to mind, not immediately anyway. Then I thought about a very minor character in "
Blood Secrets," a cop named Ren Calder. It comes out that he and Mahina had worked together and I knew then that I found my hero. Two lycans, both cops, both hard-headed and tough—perfect situation for a lot of chemistry.
“
Broken Souls” by
Bonnie Vanak: Destined mates are common as fangs in paranormal romance. But what happens to those who lose their destined mates? Are they doomed to live without love? That’s why I wrote Broken Souls. Baylor and Katia's destined mates were killed in childhood. I tossed in the pack loyalty of werewolves, evil Morphs that can shapeshift into any animal or insect form, and gave Baylor and Katia obstacles to keep them apart. Yet in the end, they find true happiness, because nothing, not even the forces of evil, can separate those determined to make their own destiny by sharing their lives and their love.
So let’s talk paranormal heroes and heroines! What’s your favorite? Werewolves? Dragons? Wild slinky cats? Vampires? Incubuses? And which sexy silver screen hero is your fav? Hugh as Wolverine? Michael Sheen as Lucien? Gary Oldman as Dracula?