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Thursday, December 12, 2019

Interview - Release Day Blitz Shifter’s Storm by Carol Van Natta


- If you were not a writer what would you be doing (or alternatively, what is your “day” job if you do both)?

I’ll always be a writer. However, because I’m fond of eating regularly and sleeping indoors, I’ve also had a variety of day jobs over the years. Some, like actor and singer, don’t pay well at all, and some, like security guard, pay the rent but are, er, not challenging. My current day job is contingency planning, which is a fancy way of saying “planning for disaster.” Chantal Hammond, the heroine of my latest paranormal romance, Chantal Hammond, is trained as a first-responder and rescuer. I’ve met a fair number of these folks in my career.

- If you wrote a book about your life what would the title be?

Too Many Plots and Too Few Cats. I’d need to live to be 200 years old to write all the story ideas I have in my Plot Bunnies folders. I write paranormal romance and space opera, and the possibilities are only limited by my imagination. SHIFTER’S STORM (Ice Age Shifters Book 5) has a dying fairy fantasyland as its setting. Writing books is kind of like making my own fantasyland, but with words instead of magic.
And life is too short to be without cats. 😉

- What is the hardest thing about being an author?

For me, the hardest thing about being an author is prioritizing the stories I want to tell. Since it seems unlikely that I’ll live to 200, I have to pick and choose the stories I want to write next. Reader requests figure in there, too.

- What is the best thing about being an author?

The best thing about being a writer is that every experience, good or bad, helps you write better stories. All my stories start with characters who needs things from each other. After that, it’s my job to get them into trouble. The second best thing is meeting readers who love the stories I write.

- Have you ever been star struck by meeting one of your favorite authors? If so who was it? 

Right after I published my first book, I lucked into meeting the fabulous S.E. (Susan) Smith at a conference. I loved her Cosmos’ Gateway science fiction romance series and her story Touch of Frost, which is a quirky blend of science fiction and paranormal romance (my favorite genres). She is a delightful, warm, and down-to-earth person with magic in her fingertips. By which I mean she puts out an amazing number of quality series in my two favorite genres. Several years later, she was kind enough to invite me to write a story in her shared world of Magic, New Mexico.

- What book changed your life?

Catseye by Andre Norton. I complained to my parents one summer about boredom because I’d read every age-appropriate book I had at the time. They gave me a speculative fiction book to read. I wanted more, so they gave me Catseye. Great characters and story in a far-future world, plus cats! That started my lifelong love of science fiction and fantasy. Then I fell in love with romance, so it seems like destiny that I now write romantic science fiction and fantasy.

- What were your some of favorite books growing up?

See above about science fiction, fantasy, and romance. I never read an Andre Norton book I didn’t love. I devoured Anne McCaffrey, Piers Anthony, many of the classic SF stories from the 1950s and 1960s. I gravitated toward Harlequin’s romantic suspense novels because the heroines were more often competent in their own right, not just the prize for the impossibly brave hero.

- What books are currently in your to be read pile?

My TBR is the size of Mt. Everest and growing like it’s a volcano about to erupt (though it never does). My guilty pleasure in paranormal romance is the various Zoe Chant paranormal romances because the characters are genuinely nice people who deserve to find each other and overcome obstacles to being together. Lindsay Buroker has a whole new space opera series out that is impatiently waiting for me to have time to binge-read them. And I just stumbled across Koko Brown’s promisingly hilarious witch series, starting with Something Witchy This Way Comes.  

- Which do you prefer ebooks, print, or audio books?

I love the kinesthetic feel of books, but even more, I love being able to take my entire TBR on the plane in one small device, as opposed to checking an entire extra suitcase full of books.

- If you could live inside the world of a book or series which world would it be and why?

I’m picking a world I developed because I designed it with things I like. In my Ice Age Shifters paranormal romance series, the world of magic is hidden from normal human life. Magical folk have sanctuary towns. Most are hidden, but Kotoyeesinay, Wyoming is different. They hide in plain sight by pretending to be a tourist town with a magical theme. Powerful spells and charms keep the non-magical tourists from realizing the car mechanic is actually an ogre and the shop owner is actually a dark elf. For the magical denizens, Kotoyeesinay is a melting pot of people and creatures that just want to live peaceably together as a community. That’s where and how I’d want to live.




Shifter’s Storm
Ice Age Shifters
Book 5
Carol Van Natta

Genre: Paranormal Romance


Publisher: Chavanch Press
Date of Publication: 12 December 2019
ISBN: 978-1946165176
ASIN: B081NPSFT9

Number of pages: 220
Word Count: 49,000

Cover Artist: Amanda Kelsey,
Razzle Dazzle Design

Tagline: In a dying fairy fantasy land, can two shifters tell if the magic between them is real?

Book Description:

In a dying fairy fantasyland, can two shifters tell if the magic between them is real?

While volunteering for hurricane cleanup, sheriff’s deputy and leopard shifter Chantal Hammond stumbles across two escapees from a fairy fantasyland. Unfortunately, when she tries to help, she ends up trapped. She quickly discovers she's lost in a mini-world of trouble, and more captives need rescuing.

Prehistoric sloth shifter Dauro de Mar and his friends have cruelly been imprisoned in their animal forms for years. His plan to lead the escape is mostly wishful thinking until an intoxicating and magical leopard shifter arrives still in her human form. She's their game changer.

It's going to take Chantal's and Dauro's combined skills, magic, and courage to evade evil hunters and greedy fairies, and get everyone out of this mess. Especially since the fairy fantasyland is disintegrating. Can they fight off danger—and their sizzling attraction—long enough to win their freedom? Or will they be destroyed by the mother of all storms when this magical land dies?

Find out today in Shifter's Storm, another sizzling hot Ice Age Shifters® paranormal romance from USA TODAY bestselling author Carol Van Natta.

Shifter's Storm is a complete story with a happily-ever-after and no cliffhanger, and can be enjoyed without having read the rest of the series.

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Excerpt:

Dauro ya Ketumino da’Nok de Mar lumbered up onto the bank of the impossible river and snorted forcefully to open his nose and ear flaps. The pretend sun was more than halfway toward the far horizon. He shook up and down to help his fur shed water.
The world shook. Even the distant orchard trees to his left swayed.
What?
Dauro’s giant aquatic sloth form was massive, but not that massive. Certainly not massive enough to shake an entire magical fairy demesne.
The world shook again, longer this time. Water sloshed onto the river’s banks, lapping at his back paws.
When Nessireth, the ancient fairy who created the demesne to house her collection of aquatic exotics like him, went on a rampage, the wind blew heat and the central castle trembled. But she’d died and turned to fairy dust two months ago.
A memory surfaced of feeling something similar a couple of hundred years ago, soon after Nessireth moved the demesne from the high, cold place to a warm island location. The demesne’s anchor had been tugged by a violent real-world storm she’d called a hurricane. After a second one a few years later, she’d used her then-abundant magic to add more anchors. That cured it.
Dauro also remembered a recent comment from Kelvin, the young pygmy hippopotamus shifter who had been Nessireth’s final acquisition. Humans were now living everywhere, and they’d been burning forests and fossils. Scientists said it changed the climate and predicted more hurricanes.
Dauro believed it. Heat and magic were similar—increased energy in a stable spell guaranteed unstable results.
More shaking. The river water surged in a wave, wetting his front paws.
Fairy demesne magic made the circular river constantly flowing to provide habitat and feeding grounds for him and the other aquatic shifters and creatures. It hadn’t ever changed… until today.
That brought home to him that he and others needed to get serious about escaping. Nessireth had bragged about spending millennia to construct her demesne, but it was decaying daily without her active magic to maintain it. The false moon wasn’t as round as it used to be, and had a noticeable pink tint. Just last week, the constant breeze had taken to gusting chaotically.
None of the captives knew what would happen if the demesne collapsed with them still inside. Dauro was certain it wouldn’t be good.
His giant sloth liked solitary peace and quiet, but his suppressed human side knew he needed to check on the rest of his friends. Nessireth’s death had given him more freedom than the others. And his limited telepathic skills as a sloth meant he had to visit them himself. Nessireth had forced each of them to remain their animal form, and the demesne would keep them that way forever… as long as the magic held.
As the oldest of Nessireth’s acquisitions, he’d become the sinchi, the temporary champion of the collection. In his opinion, formidable size, war experience, and a talent for magic while in animal form didn’t make him a leader, but he was the best they had.
Before his energy-saving sloth succumbed to the lure of a nap, he plunged back into the water. Digging his strong, clawed toes into the silty bank, he let the water flow over him for a minute while he thought. Downstream was the long way around the river, but wouldn’t tire him out as fast. So far, the magical protein-enriched sea grasses he depended on for food still grew overnight, but for how long?
He shoved off and let the current help him swim toward his friend Sunscar’s territory. The closer he got, the more the magic in the water felt as agitated as the river itself.
And no wonder, because the lake’s wall was breached. Instead of an orderly river running next to a placid pool, the whole area was now a flooded swamp. The demesne’s castle was already repairing the wall, but the water had no natural way to drain back into the lake.
Even worse, the damage had activated the water-based defensive spells, which were fighting with the castle’s defenses. Grab-weed tried to strangle the broken pieces of the wall, as if they were attackers. Two of the animated castle statues tore at the weeds so the wall could heal.

About the Author:


Carol Van Natta is a USA TODAY bestselling and award-winning science fiction and fantasy author. Series include the Central Galactic Concordance space opera series that starts with Overload Flux and Minder Rising, and the Ice Age Shifters paranormal romance series that starts with Shifter Mate Magic and Shift of Destiny. She shares her Fort Collins, CO home with a resident mad scientist and just the right number of equally mad cats.


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