Changeling: Of Elves and Men. Excerpt Two

It's been a little while since I posted an excerpt from my urban fantasy novel Changeling: Of Elves and Men, so I might just take this occasion to do that now. For anyone new to this blog since the last time I posted one, you can click on the 'excerpt' tag to take you to the last excerpt.

Shane and Ivy are my main characters in this novel, and their love/hate relationship is one I got great entertainment out of writing. I'm in a particularly fluffy mood today, so here is a rather amorous scene between the two of them. Hopefully you will get some entertainment out of them too.

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Changeling: Of Elves and Men. Available Now! from New Concepts Publishing.

Shane never once looked over his shoulder to acknowledge Ivy there so close behind him. Only once he strode in through the French doors and into the hall where the bedrooms were located, did he spin around to face her.

“Damnit, Ivy. I told you you weren’t to come tonight.”

“And I told you what you want has nothing at all to do with me!”

Looking up into his raging eyes, Ivy lifted her head higher and reminded herself that she was not afraid of his fury. She had just followed him back here to tell him that he had no right to tell her what to do, that was all.

With a growl, Shane took a step forward and wrapped an arm around her waist before she could step back nimbly to avoid him. As his lips crushed hers, he felt any resistance she felt toward him wavering. This hadn’t been what he had planned to have happen at all. When they pulled away from each other, Shane’s eyes raked over her body, taking in her reddened lips that looked like they had been well kissed.

His jaw tightened, as he told himself to stand away from her.

“If you followed me just because you wanted to sleep with me, there were better ways of doing that,” he said, trying to turn his frustration into sardonic amusement.

This time, it was Ivy’s turn to growl her frustration. “You stupid, stupid man!” she told him, though Shane noted with interest that it was not exactly a denial of his supposition.

With the hint of a smile playing the edges of his lips, he stepped toward her again, curious to see if she would dodge him the second time around. His fingers found her hand, and silkily, laced their way between her fingers. The simmering heat in his eyes drew her in despite herself, and when the door closed soundly, Shane wasn’t the only one behind it.

Again, he swept towards her, and ravaged her lips, forcing them to move under his as he wished them to, claiming them for his own. Ivy would have moaned if she had been given the breath to do so. As it was, she had to press her body against his to keep herself upright. The rising bulge at the crotch of his jeans told her he didn’t seem to mind. Eventually, she would have to go back to using her own balance to keep her upright. She wasn’t quite sure how she felt about that.

Shane maneuvered them slowly around in a half circle, directing them ever intentionally toward the bed where they would make their consummation of this union. Ivy’s eyes fluttered shut, and she allowed him to guide her where he would. Within the strength of his arms around her, the thought occurred to her that she had never felt safer.

Her breath rushed out of her when Shane picked her up. A second later, she was placed reverently on the bed, a throw back, she thought, of the injuries he was so convinced he needed to protect her from. Before she could complain, Shane began to undo the buttons of her shirt. She arched up a moment later, so that he could cast first it, and then her bra, aside, somewhere between the bed and the door. Then she was reaching up to him, and his kisses moved down from her lips, to her neck, in an unrelenting trail to the waistband of her pants.

He looked up at her for a moment, as if waiting for Ivy’s signal that it was okay for him to go on. Willingly, she gave it to him, and her tight, black pants were unbuttoned, then eased down her shapely legs, and forgotten on the floor beside the bed.

Morning found the two bodies still entwined around each other. It was Shane who woke up first, lifting his finger to flick a strand of Ivy’s dark hair out of her face, which in turn woke her up, too. He had a ready smile on his features, even as Ivy looked around herself in disorientation.

“What I want has nothing to do with you, huh?” Shane asked. It was the ill-timedness of her comment, just before they had fallen into bed with each other, that amused him.

Because it so clearly amused him, it angered her, and Ivy immediately pushed him away from her, as much as she could with their legs still entwined. Another moments’ trouble took care of that problem, too. She sat up, grabbing the pale sheet against her chest.

The smile never left Shane’s lips. “I reckon it’s too late to do that now,” he said to her with a wink that made her flush with embarrassment and anger at the same time.

Buy Changeling: Of Elves and Men here!

World building and submissions

For my works in progress, I have lately been working on the next series of stories that I plan to release after the three Of Elves and Men titles are released and doing well. :)

I have said before that the Of Elves and Men trilogy was based on the idea of following the passage of magic through the ages: -- contemporary, Dark Ages, and Georgian Age. I've done that, and I'm very pleased with the mythology and characters created around that idea. I also think that that series has opened the way for what I'm working on now.

The books I am working on now do not share the same world as Of Elves and Men. I think this is a good idea, because there always gets to a point in a series of an author's books where the reader just starts to lose interest, and so stops buying. I think three or four books in a series is the perfect amount, before the author should pick up his or her pen and start on a new idea.

It has also crossed my mind that one of my new series of fairy stories might fit in with Tease Publishing's Dark Tarot submissions call. There is one big reason why this tempts me, and I'll tell you what it is: If I get accepted by Tease, this book might be released sooner than it would with New Concepts Publishing after my books Ascent and Haunted come out with them. Tease's Tarot submission call is open till March 31st of this year, which means that I am likely to hear back from them regarding an acceptance or rejection before I hear back from New Concepts even hinting that they might be ready for a new title from me.

This new idea I currently have is not so structured as Of Elves and Men. I had such trouble in finishing the third book in that trilogy, and didn't want to put myself in the situation again where I had an obligation to the publishing house, and to myself, and my readers, to finish what I had started. This series is open ended. In just choosing to follow through an established mythology, I feel as though I am going to take a leaf out of Canadian urban fantasy author, Charles de Lint's, writing style.


As I like his books set in Newford, and the world building evident in these books, I can't complain.

Changeling: Of Elves and Men. Excerpt One

It seems like this post has been waiting for ages to get posted. I've been meaning to put up an excerpt of my writing since my third post. Of course, as this is my fifth post in this blog, that's almost twice the length of time I expected it to take.

I've been talking a lot about my new release Changeling: Of Elves and Men, which I suppose is fair enough, since I would ideally like it to be well enough publicized that it makes me at least a little bit of money. ;) I have a couple of excerpts from the novel floating around. Looking through them, I don't think any of those is completely right for the community I'm starting to set up here. So I'm going to post a new excerpt, one before now unseen unless you have picked up the book. :)

This is my take on fairy and magic culture meeting a present day setting. As promised, in my last post, I give you one excerpt from Changeling: Of Elves and Men.

Changeling: Of Elves and Men



The inside of 'Omniscience' was like no other place she had seen before. Her eyes widened even as Rhys led her around the small clusters of people who were already inside. There was no one dancing in the room Emily entered. People milled around the stage where there were mistresses in high stiletto boots circling those who had volunteered to be bound. In a cage, in the corner of the room, three men lay on their backs, while a woman walked and danced and swung all over their half naked bodies as they writhed in pleasure and brazenly begged for her to dig her heels into the crevices of their bodies, which she did. Emily walked passively through the myriad of pleasures, her eyes taking in all the beauty of the forms around her, while Rhys walked with a predator-like grace at her front.

She didn't ask any questions on what she was seeing. She wouldn't have known where to start.

"Do you want to dance?" Rhys asked her.

There was still nobody dancing. Emily leaned a shy glance toward the area where she thought there would be dancing when people started doing it. Without Rhys by her side, she would never have considered being the first one to go up there. It must have been his confidence that encouraged her to throw away her precautions.

They danced, at first, with a small expanse between them. As the music groaned on, Emily hardly noticed the distance between them lessening. His fingers started slowly kneading her back, and she leaned her body into his. They were not the only two dancing for long, if what each of them were doing could still be termed as 'dancing'. Rhys had an expression of dark delight on his features, an expression which Emily could not help but mimic herself.

When Mark arrived at the club, it was not his aim to do more than locate Emily first up. His decision of a stiff drink had already been made before he arrived. From the position he took on a bar stool, he could quite clearly make out the close proximity with which Rhys and Emily were dancing, could all but see the weaves of empathy and coercion that Rhys was spinning around the two of them. Without knowing why— probably without ever noticing—none of those dancing around them ever bumped into the two changelings Mark watched.

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"Changeling: Of Elves and Men" Now Available at NCP
http://www.newconceptspublishing.com/changeling.htm

Fairy Folklore

I don't know when it was that my interest in the fantasy genre became a little bit more particular. I remember it wasn't that long ago that I couldn't conceive of a workable urban or mythical fantasy story. It was like the perfect vampire story. I'm intrigued by the idea of writing an epic vampire novel. I just don't think that what I could put out there could compete with the multitudes of vampire fiction already in circulation. Maybe one day...

When I started with my "Of Elves and Men" trilogy, I remember taking a very loose look at the difference between such a magical race as the elves, in comparison to the men who perhaps were less magically inclined, and how the interrelation between the two kinds would work in a modern setting. That was the premise for "Changeling". I spent hardly any time going into the background of the magic used. I gave more time to the background mythology, which I suppose was why I couldn't leave it there, and soon went back in time, to approximately the Dark Ages, where "Ascent" starts. I endeavored to write a story over how magic was first passed between elves and men and how it was kept from being abused. "Haunted" will be the third book in that trilogy, and that tells of how the magic was lost in the rush forward of technology, within a Georgian setting.

I only ever meant for that to be a standalone trilogy of three books, but this idea of another race existing alongside our one is something that still fascinates me, even now I've finished writing the "Of Elves and Men" books. There is still so much on the subject to be said. Not to mention read about, and researched, and explored. All things I delight in doing every time I find an interesting subject! :D

In Celtic mythology, the Sidhe (pronounced "shee") are seen almost as gods, or spirits of ancestors and nature of that culture. European folklore sees fairy kind as the sort who would steal human children and sometimes leave one of their own in their place. There have been countless stories and poems written around this folklore, including

"The Stolen Child" by Keith Donohue, based on the William Butler Yeats' poem of the same name. William Butler Yeats wrote "The Stolen Child" in 1886 and it was not the only thing he wrote on the Fairy Folk. "Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry" and "Fairy Folk Tales of Ireland" were written in 1888 and 1892 respectively. He was an Irish poet who grew up in Sligo.

Nikki Watson.
http://nikkiwatson.blogspot.com/

"Changeling: Of Elves and Men" Now Available at NCP
http://www.newconceptspublishing.com/changeling.htm

First Post.

So here I am at blogger. This site comes highly recommended to me by my friend, Katrina Strauss. I figure I might give it a try, considering as how I have a blogger account from my gmail address.

Hi, all! I'm Nikki Watson and you can find my work over at http://www.newconceptspublishing.com I currently have one book out with them, called "Changeling: Of Elves and Men" and have just contracted my second book with NCP, called "Ascent: Of Elves and Men".

As you can tell from the titles, I'm a bit of a fan of the fantasy elements. I'm not quite sure when that started. I could probably blame it on the multitudes of beautiful artwork I am a fan of.


John William Waterhouse perhaps.

No, truthfully, I just like fantasy. Let's face it, you can get away with more within the constraints of a fantasy world. The lines of good and evil are blurred. That gives the writer a lot to play with.

So, this is my blog at blogger. I hope that I'll end up using it productively, instead of as a procrastinating tactic when I'm at a loss at what to write in my current novel. I guess we'll see.

Until next time, my sweets.