Spotlight & Giveaway: Animal Attraction by Patricia Rosemoor

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Patricia Rosemoor to HJ!

Hi Patricia and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Animal Attraction!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Detective Ethan Grainger has already dealt with Chicago’s supernatural underground when another murder case seems most like a shifter kill. This takes his investigation to The Ark, a casino boat run by the Kindred, and to Nuala Lazare, pregnant by his late partner/best friend/brother-in-spirit, who was killed on the job.
 

Please share the opening lines of this book:

Bleating and squawking and roaring filled the air. Two of every mammal and bird and reptile as far as the eye could see fought the savage winds. More rumbling from the heavens and then ragged lightning strikes surrounded us with an eerie blue glow as the skies opened and water flooded the land.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• Animal Attraction is the second in a series about some unusual predatory animal shifters – the Lazares are black panthers. Note that a “black panther” is mythological, not its own species—but it refers to any big cat with a black coat, typically black jaguars and black leopards.
• Book 1 was Animal Instincts and Book 3 will be Animal Magnetism. My inspiration for the series was my love of animals – cats, dogs, horses, wolves, and especially big cats of every kind. I volunteer at Lincoln Park Zoo in the VEG or Volunteer Enrichment Group, making “toys” of a sort that often have food hidden in them so the animals can forage. LPZ inspired a similar zoo in the stories, and there is a fun scene in Animal Attraction when a pregnant Nuala makes a late-night visit to the Zoo.

Please tell us a little about the characters in your book. As you wrote your protagonist was there anything about them that surprised you?

Ethan is a human who hates the idea of the Kindred shifters and doesn’t trust them in general. Nuala dislikes Ethan because she holds him responsible for the death of his partner and the father of her child. Both protagonists make a surprising turn in the story, becoming something they never would have believed… but saying more than that would ruin the surprise.

If your book was optioned for a movie, what scene would you use for the audition of the main characters and why?

The first scene between Ethan and Nuala sets up the story, some of the background and most of all, their conflict:

“I thought you wanted to talk,” she finally snapped. “I don’t have all day.”
Ethan sighed and dived right in. “All right. Why are you still here?”
She appeared surprised. “I’m working. Or will be as soon as we’re finished here.”
“I didn’t mean the work.” One thing at a time. “I understand you’re still living here.” Ethan knew there were lower decks, also cloaked, where the Lazares and other high-ranking Kindred had quarters. “Skye told me she invited you to move in with her.” Skye and Shade Cross had inherited a two-flat in the Lakeview neighborhood from their grandmother and had claimed separate apartments. “Shade’s place is still empty.”
“I already told her I couldn’t live there without Shade.” Nuala frowned.
“Skye thought it might give you some comfort to be around his things. You might want keepsakes for your child. You are still pregnant, aren’t you? And she wants to get to know you—”
“Whoa! What kind of question is that? You don’t think I want Shade’s child?”
He could feel her sudden outrage. “Just that you don’t look pregnant.”
“Don’t believe everything you see.”
Her image shimmered and her shape changed. Now she definitely looked pregnant. Very pregnant. Too pregnant, considering she’d met Shade a little more than three months ago.
“Nearly to term,” she told him.
“I can see that. So whose baby is it?”
“Shade’s, of course!” she snapped.
And in the blink of an eye, she regained her slender yet curvy shape.
Refusing to be affected by her obvious charms, he looked straight into her eyes. “Thirty-five weeks would be nearly to term.”
“For a human,” she agreed. “Panther gestation is ninety-six days. Give or take a few. I’m nearly thirteen weeks pregnant now.”
Ethan nearly choked on that. She had what? A week to go? Maybe less? Of course he knew she was a panther shifter, but he hadn’t thought that had anything to do with the pregnancy. “You’re going to give birth to a panther cub?”

What do you want people to take away from reading this book?

I hope readers will suspend their disbelief in my Kindred world and come away realizing there is good and bad in every segment of society. And that love can inspire the greatest sacrifices two people can make for each other.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have planned?

I am re-releasing Triggered Response, Book 3 in the Security Breach series, coming in March. And I’m writing Animal Magnetism, Book 3 of Kindred Souls.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: A Tule tote, an e-copy of Animal Attraction and Tule swag

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: If you were suddenly a shifter, what animal would you choose to be your other half – and why?

 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Excerpt from Animal Attraction:

“Good Lord, what happened to him?”
Detective Ethan Grainger gave his new partner a disbelieving stare. Homicides were rarely easy to look at, but Isabeau DeClercq was showing her inexperience. Her face had paled and she’d pressed her lips together. Hard. Her first day in Violent Crimes. Lucky him. He’d been saddled with a wet-behind-the-ears detective, and that after losing the best partner he’d ever had, and one he’d thought of as a brother.
“If you’re going to be sick, move away from the victim.” A shocking sight, he had to admit, so he wouldn’t blame her, but he couldn’t let the scene be contaminated.
Isabeau straightened her spine and swiped a strand of thick blonde hair behind one ear. Standing at six feet in thick-heeled boots, she made him feel the glare of her luminous blue eyes and the irritation now tightening her angelic face. “I am not going to throw up.”
“Good.”
He hadn’t meant to be so gruff, but the familiarity of this guy’s death got him in the gut, leaving him with a really sick feeling, that it was happening again…
He focused on the positive. The area was controlled, the cops who’d taken the call having already made perimeters, containing the growing crowd east of the crime-scene tape. Early Sunday morning joggers and bikers who took the lake route had gathered to watch. The cops had called in reinforcements, including forensic personnel already on their way to process the crime scene. Ethan had been drinking his morning coffee when the call came in. He and Isabeau had arrived at the same time, he in his official vehicle, she on her Harley.
He crouched next to the body for a closer look at the guy’s face. The dead man’s caramel skin was definitely bloody and his features were distended a bit, but Ethan had the horrible feeling he recognized him. “DeAndre Booker, an alderman from the west side,” he said in a low tone, wondering what the politician had been doing so far from home. The man wasn’t dressed for a night out at one of the local clubs, nor for an early morning run along the lake. The front of his shirt was ripped in bloody streaks, but that hadn’t killed him. The gaping wound on his neck had bled out, forming a pool around his head and shoulders.
“Alderman, huh? That’s going to hit the fan,” Isabeau muttered.
“Not only is he an alderman, but the city council elected him as the vice mayor.”
“I didn’t know there was one.”
Not surprising since she was originally from Wisconsin. “Most Chicagoans probably don’t know we have a vice mayor who would serve as interim mayor if there’s a vacancy for any reason.” Booker had been elected to the position by his peers after spending the last several years working on getting jobs for inner city kids, believing it was the only way to keep them from the gangs. Ethan had respected him for that, as well.
Giving the dead man an intent once over, Isabeau asked, “So what kind of an animal did this?” Stooping, she pointed to a chunk of fur near the body. “That looks like dog fur, but not pit bull or rottweiler. Maybe a wolf hybrid.” She reached out as if she was going to touch it, then came to her senses and pulled her hand back. “Or one of the coyotes roaming the city.”
“Coyotes attack rats, maybe pets, not people,” Ethan said.
Not even one of the coyote shapeshifters in Cezar Lazare’s menagerie. Lazare was CEO of The Company, a supernatural mob called the Kindred who ran Chicago’s secret underground. Unfortunately, Ethan was well acquainted with him. He might be the only cop still alive who was.
Just then, a vehicle with flashing lights pulled up, interrupting his thoughts, and the forensic team rolled out to join them. “Here are the people who can figure it out,” he said, “although the fur might just be from a couple of dogs playing in this area. I’m sure the autopsy will determine whatever killed the victim.”
“Could be a big cat.” Isabeau pulled out her cell phone and moved away, saying, “I’ll check Lakeside Zoo to see if they had any big animal escape.”
“Good idea. You do that.” Something to keep her suspicions from wandering too close to the truth.
What was he thinking? Hell, she would never believe what he could tell her! Several months ago, he wouldn’t have believed it, either.
Ethan stood and backed off, giving the forensic team a nod. He wasn’t the only one to recognize the alderman. The buzz went through the team, though they kept their voices low to keep the joggers and bikers who’d stopped to gawk from picking up the unofficial information.
While forensics got to work, Ethan’s mind raced. It looked to him like a tiger or lion could have killed the alderman. Coyotes weren’t the only predator-shifters working for Lazare. The mobster had plenty of big cats, including his own family. And Ethan doubted anyone else in the Chicago Police Department knew about the Kindred or the true nature of their casino. Well, not unless they’d been invited to The Ark’s lower deck which was cloaked to the unsuspecting by some kind of magic.
As much as he hated the idea, that was where he needed to go. To the casino boat docked at Northerly Island. Most of the former nature preserve was now turned into a thriving entertainment venue due to Cezar Lazare being able to influence local politicians into doing his bidding.
Ethan had been avoiding the place, avoiding shapeshifting Kindred, avoiding direct contact with Lazare’s daughter, Nuala, despite his vow to his late partner he would make sure she and the baby were all right. He was still reluctant to face her. Other than the fact she’d blamed him for Shade’s death—he couldn’t forget that accusation, couldn’t shake the guilt she was right—she was one of them. He would like to forget her kind existed, which warred with an unexpected and unseemly attraction to the woman.
So far, he’d checked on Nuala through Shade’s twin sister Skye, who had an ongoing relationship with Nuala’s half-brother Luc. That was who he needed to talk to about this new murder. Luc Lazare had helped nail the bastard who’d murdered Shade.
Not that anyone could ever know what happened.
Ethan’s nightmare was keeping that secret.
As far as the CPD and the human world was concerned, Detective Shade Cross’s murder would eventually and forever be considered a cold case.
All the while Ethan tried to concentrate, he kept getting distracted by thoughts of Nuala, of the baby she was carrying—Shade’s child, who would be both human and Kindred like Luc.
What the hell was he supposed to do with that?

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

Detective Ethan Grainger is horrified when a public official is found dead in the park, killed by an animal. He immediately fears it’s a shifter kill and heads for The Ark, where he seeks out Nuala Lazare, a Kindred pregnant by Ethan’s late partner Shade. He’d come to terms with Chicago’s supernatural underground, but because Nuala holds him responsible for Shade’s death—and because he is attracted to her—he’s avoided her until now.

Ethan is the last man Nuala wants to see, and she has enough to deal with being near term and realizing her fatherless child will be a half-breed like her brother Luc, who experienced tremendous prejudice and guilt while growing up. She plans to move from The Ark to live like a human for her daughter.

Ethan must keep Shade’s child from being corrupted by the criminal element of the Kindred Lazare clan. Which means he must get close to Nuala—not an easy task. As they get to know each other, their attraction becomes unbearable. Will Ethan keep his loyalty to his murdered partner or succumb to the irresistible temptation of his chemistry with Nuala?

Book Links: Amazon | B&N | iTunes | Kobo | Google |
 
 

Meet the Author:

New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Patricia Rosemoor has written 100 novels for 8 publishers, has more than 7 million books in print and is fascinated with watching, reading and writing about dangerous love. Patricia won a Golden Heart from Romance Writers of America and two Reviewers Choice and two Career Achievement Awards from Romantic Times BOOKreviews, and in her other life, she taught Popular Fiction and Suspense-Thriller Writing at Columbia College Chicago.
Website | Facebook | Twitter | GoodReads |