Please help me welcome my friend Robin D. Owens to my blog today. Be sure to leave her a comment to be in the drawing for her prize, a copy of Feral Magic or Enchanted Ever After in PDF format, winners choice and for a second winner a $5 Starbucks card.

How did you get started writing?

I actually wrote bits and pieces of scenes since I was a child, and often felt the need to write. When a guy dumped me (I was giving 75% of my creative energy to that relationship), I took a course one spring through Colorado Free University on Writing Romantic Suspense…met my mentor and great friend, Cassie Miles (single mother who writes for Harlequin Intrigue and raised and supported two daughters on her income). Over the course of that summer (mumble, mumble years ago), I wrote a book without benefit of critique. Even after two revisions it remains terrible. Then I got sucked into Rocky Mtn Fiction Writers who taught me how to write.

Tell us about your current series.

I have three. The “Heart/Celta” books set on a world colonized by Earth people with psi 400 years before, with a Celtic/pagan society culturally and rather England Regency-like socially and politically. People have magic/psi powers I call Flair, but I’m most known for my telepathic animal companions (telepathic cats with attitude = redundant). Berkley publishes that series which has eleven books and one novella collection, starting with HeartMate and as far as Heart Secret…

I JUST published my first enovella, Feral Magic, which is a contemporary paranormal shapeshifter work, set in Denver. My heroine, Brandy, recently had a near death experience and “awoke” to find that she was now telepathic with cats (see a theme here? My readers love my animals, and I love writing them). Brandy is informed that there is a “lost one,” when she finds a cub instead of a kitten, she takes him home then is stunned when he transforms into a human baby, and even more thrill—uh, surprised—when his sexy uncle shows up in jaguar form to retrieve his nephew. This is a sexy romantic enovella.

My series published by Luna is more fantasy for women with romantic subplot. Enchanted Ever After (new) has a human woman becoming a magical being…merfolk. The Mystic Circle cul-de-sac is again in Denver, a magical place of brownies and djinns and treefolk and airsprites…

What inspired your latest book?

For Enchanted Ever After, it was the movie The Last Starfighter, or Ender’s Game (book), By Orson Scott Card. For Feral Magic – I don’t know, I had the idea and sat down writing a couple of years ago – a missing baby and a woman who finds a jaguar in her back alley… but I didn’t think I could sell it, and so it sat in my computer files until epublishing came around.

What is your favorite part of writing?

Waiting to hear something from a traditional publisher.

Do you have critique partners?
I couldn’t function without my critique partners. They tell me when something is cliché, when what is in my head didn’t make it onto the page, when I’ve repeated a plot twist in the last three books. They are invaluable, especially helping with back cover copy, blurbs, etc.

How likely are people you meet to end up in your next book? Well, if you subject me to the worst humiliation I’ve ever felt in my life, you will find yourself in an evil rain of wormlike frinks (first Luna Summoning series), swallow them and explode. If you make an impression you might become a helper or a friend or an acquaintance to hero or heroine.

Do you have a view in your writing space? What does your space look like?

I once looked at offices of writers. on the net. The only person’s whose desk was messier than mine was Jennifer Crusie. I won’t be posting shots.

Excerpt from Feral Magic, Dak is the hero, black werejaguar, Brandy is the heroine, human:

Purrs roused Dak near dawn and he tensed, stared at the small, black female cat who’d awoken him. He’d gotten no more than a couple of hours of sleep and weariness dragged at him.

After a disrespectful conversation, the cat led him to food. She slunk over to a few bites in a dish set outside a wooden fence. Dak’s nose twitched. He hadn’t eaten for a long time. He stared at the cat. He supposed it would be rude to eat her. No matter how irritating she’d been, she’d helped him. And he really didn’t eat felines. Except after battle with his enemies.

He caught a whiff of something and his heavy mane lifted along his spine. His nephew, Favel!

With one leap he was over the fence…and hit by two small and plump cat bodies.

This is OUR house, go away! said the black and white one.

Go, go, go! said the long-haired black.

I have come for my kit, Dak snarled, putting vibrato into his threat.

The thing. He has come for the thing! the younger, long-haired cat said.

Good. He can have the thing. He is another thing. Black-and-white cat was older and dominant. Dak sensed that though the two lived together they weren’t family or friendly.
The black-and-white cat lifted his lip to show tiny fangs.

Dak let his growl rumble all the way from his gut.

The damn black cat shrieked. Neither of the small ones backed down. He could admire their courage even as their foolhardiness disgusted him.

Creaking door, stomping feet. The hopeful and wonderful smell of Dark Panther Klatch shit and urine – Favel!

“What’s going on here?” A woman walked out, holding the baby who wore a cloth on his nethers!

Dak bounded over the small cats, sending them tumbling with his tail.

*~*~*
Brandy froze, angled her body to protect the baby. Her heart pounded. The one step back into the house and closing the door would be too slow.

The threatening black jaguar pinned her with his glare. His head was taller than her waist. She’d viewed a lot of photos of wild cats on the internet, and though the cat had a jaguar’s facial features and build, his mane was a lion’s, long and growing nearly halfway down his back.

Huge, bigger than any of the “largest” stats. Longer, heavier. Bigger teeth.

His upper lip had risen, showing really scary fangs. A dangerous, predatory, intelligent purple gaze watched her.

She managed a tiny swallow. She’d known Stanley had been well cared for. But why hadn’t she thought someone – something – would come for him?

The adult version of Stanley tilted his head back and his nostrils flared. His plumeless tail lashed.

Don’t run. Don’t run. Don’t run. Mountain lions. Make yourself appear bigger! Yell! She didn’t think that would work with this beast. She supposed she was lucky seeing him at all instead of being ambushed and killed. She took a step back. Didn’t stumble over the threshold.

He prowled forward.

BIO

RITA® Award Winning novelist Robin D. Owens credits the telepathic cat with attitude in selling her first futuristic/fantasy romance, HeartMate, published in December 2001. Since then she has written eleven books in the series. Her five book Luna series included average American women Summoned into another dimension to save a world. Her new Mystic Circle series is a mixture of contemporary urban and romantic fantasy set in Denver. She is profoundly thankful to be recipient of the 2004 Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ Writer of the Year award as well as the 2011 Writer of the Year Award, the Colorado Romance Writers Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2010 Best Paranormal and Best of the Best Daphne Du Maurier Award.