Hey guys! First up, I want to apologise for the late post, it completely slipped my mind!
In Like A Lion
Dangerous and forbidden...
Research scientist, Dr. Anjali Mehta, lost her beloved family in an earthquake. Only her work cuts through the paralyzingly grief, but when she finds her new research subject, reputed mass murderer, Jake Finn, maddeningly uncooperative and inexplicably sexy she's tempted to run away. How can she burn to touch a killer--a man behind bars?
What she doesn't know is that Jake is a chimera, a shapeshifter who can change into a lion or a dragon with all the strengths of both even in human form, who believes his ability to shape shift is nothing but a terrifying hallucination, and his overpowering attraction to his new doctor proof positive he’s finally gone over the edge.
And the employer she trusts has an agenda all his own. If she can't believe the impossible, neither she nor Jake may make it out alive.
Karin Shah
I live in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio and worship Jeni's Ice Cream, JK Rowling, Jayne Ann Krentz, the tv show Supernatural, and the movies, Hunt For Red October and The Princess Bride(though not necessarily in that order.)
I am a fanatical reader of Romance, particularly Sci-Fi Romance, Fantasy Romance and Paranormal Romance. I always write the book I want to read, so I tend to jump sub-genre a bit. My husband and I are the parents of two kids (a girl and a boy) and slaves to two dogs ( a basenji and a vizsla)
I was born in Rochester, NY, attended SUNY Oswego and got my Master's in Information and Library Science at the University of Buffalo. I was a School Librarian in Webster, NY for five years before starting my writing career. (I still miss my students.)
Time for a short excerpt!
As Anjali stepped out into the corridor, a shout made her freeze.
The exclamation’s guttural force spurred her heartbeat into double time. What the hell?
She tracked the alarming sound to a door with a glass window and peered inside.
In the center of a large room, a shirtless man moved with fluid grace on exercise mats. Karate? Or Tae Kwon Do? That explained the shout. She shrugged.
Before she could slip away, the man turned and came closer. She ducked to the side so he couldn’t catch her watching.
Her breath caught as she saw his lean face.
She swallowed, pulse leaping. God, he was gorgeous. Staring much, Anjali? she admonished herself, scraping together the remnants of logic blown away by the sight of him.
This was just a man, his face, just a pleasing arrangement of features.
Papers on the appeal of symmetry to the human mind had been mandatory reading in some of her classes.
His movements took him deeper into the room and she inched closer again, her long exhale fogging the window in front of her. She didn’t need calipers to know when God had handed out facial symmetry, this man had pushed to the front of the line.
Odd shadows lent the suggestion of a tiger’s stripes to the man’s elegant cheekbones and clean jaw. She glanced at the ceiling and noticed metal baskets caging the fluorescent light fixtures, throwing voids into the harsh glare.
Her attention zeroed back to the man.
His hair—raven black with the sheen of a crow’s feather—hung past his chin and fell forward, masking his eyes. She caught herself wishing he would raise his head so she could see them. Her gaze drifted downward, following the delicious curve of his shoulder.
His large body was a work of art, each muscle defined and chiseled, as if Michelangelo had carved him from a piece of granite. The impish light played more tricks, lending his golden skin the sheen of satin as he defended against the attacks of invisible adversaries.
Her mouth dry, she watched him flow through the movement, muscles rippling beneath that flawless skin. Who was he? A guard?
Given his size and superior musculature, if he was a doctor, he was nothing like the doctors and researchers she’d worked with in the past.
Goose flesh pimpled the back of her arms. There was just something about a man that big that called to her most basic instincts.
A disparaging laugh huffed from her chest. She’d been living like a nun for years and now she was drooling over a man so out of her league he might as well have been a movie star.
What sounded like a voice—short and harsh, but indistinct—reverberated through the thick, metal-reinforced glass. The man halted mid-move and glared over his powerful shoulder.
For the first time, Anjali noticed there were other people in the room; uniformed men with sleek, ugly rifles, not only drawn, but leveled at the man as if prepared to shoot him at the slightest misstep.
She gasped as an awful realization washed over her. This man—the first man to draw her interest since her loss—was not a guard or a doctor.
He was Jake Finn, her subject, and a stone-cold killer.
The exclamation’s guttural force spurred her heartbeat into double time. What the hell?
She tracked the alarming sound to a door with a glass window and peered inside.
In the center of a large room, a shirtless man moved with fluid grace on exercise mats. Karate? Or Tae Kwon Do? That explained the shout. She shrugged.
Before she could slip away, the man turned and came closer. She ducked to the side so he couldn’t catch her watching.
Her breath caught as she saw his lean face.
She swallowed, pulse leaping. God, he was gorgeous. Staring much, Anjali? she admonished herself, scraping together the remnants of logic blown away by the sight of him.
This was just a man, his face, just a pleasing arrangement of features.
Papers on the appeal of symmetry to the human mind had been mandatory reading in some of her classes.
His movements took him deeper into the room and she inched closer again, her long exhale fogging the window in front of her. She didn’t need calipers to know when God had handed out facial symmetry, this man had pushed to the front of the line.
Odd shadows lent the suggestion of a tiger’s stripes to the man’s elegant cheekbones and clean jaw. She glanced at the ceiling and noticed metal baskets caging the fluorescent light fixtures, throwing voids into the harsh glare.
Her attention zeroed back to the man.
His hair—raven black with the sheen of a crow’s feather—hung past his chin and fell forward, masking his eyes. She caught herself wishing he would raise his head so she could see them. Her gaze drifted downward, following the delicious curve of his shoulder.
His large body was a work of art, each muscle defined and chiseled, as if Michelangelo had carved him from a piece of granite. The impish light played more tricks, lending his golden skin the sheen of satin as he defended against the attacks of invisible adversaries.
Her mouth dry, she watched him flow through the movement, muscles rippling beneath that flawless skin. Who was he? A guard?
Given his size and superior musculature, if he was a doctor, he was nothing like the doctors and researchers she’d worked with in the past.
Goose flesh pimpled the back of her arms. There was just something about a man that big that called to her most basic instincts.
A disparaging laugh huffed from her chest. She’d been living like a nun for years and now she was drooling over a man so out of her league he might as well have been a movie star.
What sounded like a voice—short and harsh, but indistinct—reverberated through the thick, metal-reinforced glass. The man halted mid-move and glared over his powerful shoulder.
For the first time, Anjali noticed there were other people in the room; uniformed men with sleek, ugly rifles, not only drawn, but leveled at the man as if prepared to shoot him at the slightest misstep.
She gasped as an awful realization washed over her. This man—the first man to draw her interest since her loss—was not a guard or a doctor.
He was Jake Finn, her subject, and a stone-cold killer.
And now, let's welcome Karin to the blog!
How I Came To Write Multi-Cultural Characters
The first book I ever wrote was in essence Multi-cultural. It was a Science Fiction Romance and the hero and the heroine were literally from two different worlds. That book has never been published, but I went on to write STARJACKED and it was. Again the hero and heroine were from different worlds, and this time, the hero was not plain human stock. He was an Amalan. Stronger, faster, tougher, than ordinary humans.
I don't make a big deal out of it in BLOOD AND KISSES, my vampire/witch romance, but Gideon the hero is from the Middle East, from when before it was the fertile crescent and the cradle of early civilization. Thalia is just a witch from common European-American stock.
IN LIKE A LION is more overt. Anjali, the heroine, is from Mumbai, India. She's not just Indian, she's Gujarati. Her Grand-parents come from the western state of Gujarat and speak Gujarati at home, not Hindi. Gujaratis have a distinct culture separate from other Indian groups. They have their own foods, festivals, and even way of wearing their saris. Writing Anjali was a delicate balancing act. As a product of her culture, she had to believe and act in a certain way, but I couldn't explain things to the reader too much. I couldn't even use as much Gujarati as I would have liked to. If your first language isn't English, it's perfectly natural to slip into that tongue, especially when under stress, but there's something called the "strangeness budget." A reader can only take so many foreign or alien words without being pulled from the story. The concept comes from Science Fiction, but it works as well with characters of foreign origin.
I didn't set out to write multi-cultural Romances, and I really only just realized I do. The US and Canada are full of people from all over the world, and it just seemed natural that people would fall in love. There are wide cultural differences between my characters, but underneath, they, like everyone else, have doubts, desires, and a deep longing for love and somewhere to belong.
The Backstreet Boys said it, "I don't care who you are, what you did, where you're from, as long as you love me."
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So yep, that's about it for today! Thanks for visiting!
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2 comments:
This seems like a fresh, new concept in paranormal fiction; meaning not overused....Sounds very interesting...I;m excited about checking this story out:) Good luck on tour!
That sounds interesting. I'll be sharing.
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