This is going to be the author blathering about her current project, so you’ve been duly warned. If you want funny, go read Shannon’s post about chicken feet. (Let me just warn you right now to put down anything you might have in your hands before reading that one. Especially do not hold a coffee cup over your keyboard.)

The Gripping Beast is alive and dancing in my head, full of scenes and ideas and how to fix the things I’ve screwed up already. I looked up the name on the internet this morning to see some images because the art history book I got the idea from was returned to the library long ago, and lo, there’s another book of the same name. Horrors! But it’s a mystery about Viking treasure, and mine is a fantasy, so they are nothing at all alike in plot or theme or setting or even genre. Whew.

When I first started writing this book, long, long ago on a desk far away, I thought it was a straight romance at first. Time-travel romance, sure, but still just a romance. And then all these things cropped up that I didn’t know what to do with. And the sex, let’s just say that reviewers who were offended by Dangerous Games had better not touch this one with a ten-foot pole. I said before it’s an odd book, and I meant it. It’s cross-genre fantasy/erotic/romance. Once I made peace with what it was, as opposed to what I thought it was supposed to be, I could see where I’d been too controlling and where I’d panicked and clamped down on things that were actually important.

I’m now very excited about being back at work on it, because it’s full of so many things that I’m wildly enthusiastic about. Legends and myths, music, Viking history mixed heavily with what-ifs and maybes, true love, and some pretty steamy stuff.

This is probably the project that could most properly be called “the book of my heart” and it’s been languishing for years for lack of the right home. I am nearly speechless over the fact that this story is at last becoming a reality. I got the cover art request form today and that brought it home to me that the cover image I’ve had in my head for years is going to happen.