{Book Tour} Betrayed by Shadows by Nancy Gideon

INSPIRATION Vs PERSPIRATION by Nancy Gideon

You’ve seen the poster: 1% Inspiration 99% Perspiration. I’ve always considered those percentages as a sliding scale.

For me, coming up with book ideas has always been the easiest part of writing. I love to plot. I can spin up a series in hour, complete with multiple worlds, a cast of characters, and interlocking story points. Buuuut, working 9-to-5 seriously limits my sweatequity time. Most of my future books are circling like the holding pattern at O’Hare. For other authors, finding the subject matter is more difficult than selecting a cereal in the breakfast aisle. They labor over plot points and sweat out character motivation as if that synopsis was like giving birth, but once its delivered, they’re off and typing like a well-oiled machine. Regardless of the percentage, it’s the combination of creativity and utility that brings a book together. Fabulous plots are meaningless if you can’t keep butt in chair to get them down in writing. All the discipline in the world can’t fill a dry well of imagination.

When I started writing, it was on a manual typewriter. Revising was a huge ordeal so you wanted that first draft to be close to perfect the first time around. By the time I tapped it out on my Smith Corolla, I’d already visualized the scene, gone through my mental self-editing process and was ready to commit under pain of correction tape. Imagine my amazement when I got a computer. You mean I can actually change things? Move them around? Play with them? What fun! Until I realized that I wasn’t making things better, I was just making them different . . . because I could. Inspiration run amok.

Part of the perspiration process is reining in that imagination - knowing what you have, what you want to do, and where you want to go with it. You’ve talked the talk, now it’s time to walk the walk. The road mapping process is what I call it in my ADD/OCD world. I need directions or I wander in the “Ooooo, Shiny!” desert. I’m an instinctive plotter with occasional pants on fire. If I had to write organically, I’d be mired in . . . natural fertilizer. I used to be so organized all my chapters would instinctive have the same number of pages. I’ve loosen up a bit since then and my blood pressure thanks me for it.

For me, time both limits and enhances my creativity. I KNOW I only have a certain number of free hours in the day and a certain number of days under deadline. Those hours have to be filled with serious cardio, not simple stretches (or Facebook). Even when the inspiration isn’t there, I’m in the chair. I’m typing toward that WPM goal because its forward momentum. My goal is to get to the end, and at that point, make corrections or changes. That’s why it’s called rewrites, because the writing has been done.

Inspiration strikes at the strangest times. I find it when vacuuming, carrying laundry up three flights of stairs, or while driving to work in the morning – always in some inconvenient place where there’s no pen and paper handy. What if his mother’s death wasn’t accidental?! What if unlike all the other females, she CAN shape-shift?! The hero is her father’s brother’s cousin’s former roommate! A miracle of loose ends tied up in a bow. Inspiration can’t be forced any more than perspiration can be avoided. But both can be appreciated by this author!

What do you do to inspire creativity?

Blurb:
Balancing a criminal empire and a preternatural clan war, reluctant front man Giles St. Clair doesn’t need a problem like Brigit MacCreedy . . . How much trouble can the head-strong and manipulative Shifter beauty get into in two weeks? Plenty when her schemes range from kidnapping to fleeing the retribution of her dead lover’s clan.

With her family’s lives on the line, Brigit is willing to do whatever it takes to save them. The only thing standing in her way is an immovable stone wall of a man she can’t bully or beguile . . . a human, no less, who has promised to protect her from the secrets and dangers she conceals.

Risking her own safety gets complicated when an honorable and annoyingly desirable man puts himself between her and her powerful enemies in a battle he can’t win in this Taming of the Shrew meets Shifter Goodfellas on the Bayou tale of consequences, redemption and finding love in all the wrong places.

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Excerpt:
Music?

Brigit slit her eyes open to the brightness of midmorning. She was alone in the bunk. Harsh-smelling coffee warmed on the hot plate, and Giles was nowhere in sight. Then she heard the unmistakable crack of ax into wood.

Feeling tired and sticky and . . . fabulous, she stretched and reached for the crimson-colored sweatshirt Giles had left folded on the edge of the mattress. Harvard? She slipped it over her head to swim in generous folds that came almost to her knees. Rolling back the cuffs, she found the shoe she’d tucked Boyd’s cell phone into, discouraged to see no message from Silas. She tucked it under the sleeping bag on the top bunk, pushed bare feet into her shoes, and went to pour coffee. Her whole body ached gloriously, making her smile as she stepped out onto the tiny back porch.

Because she could still hear his voice, rough with passion.

Bree.

Giles had his back to her, splitting wood in the glare of morning light, a beautiful sight in his revealing muscle shirt. Strong, sexy. A light sweat had broken out on his shoulders, gleaming amid scores of scratches, some nearly healed from their passionate tussle in New Orleans and some raw stripes from hours ago. Chagrined, she put a nail trim and manicure on her agenda for the day.

He’d taken the batteries out of the flashlight to power an old cassette player and was timing his swings to the raucous beat of a late-eighties hip-hop tune that probably dated back to days spent here in male bonding. Something ridiculous about Humpty Dumpty dancing? Her gaze followed the suggestive rock and bump of his hips as the sassy backup singers crooned, “Do me, baby.”

Oh, yay. Good idea.

Time to whip up something for breakfast.

She’d taken a step forward, intending to initiate some moves of her own, when the music dialed down and muted as another sound reached her.

The cup fell from her hands, shattering on the wood planking, as all her senses trembled and went taut.

And a single cry ripped from her.

“Giles, behind you!”

Giles spun, continuing his momentum with the ax so it caught his assailant midleap in the upper chest, flinging him to the ground. Even as he wrestled the blade free, his attacker was gaining his feet, falling into a menacing crouch as his lips pulled back from a mouth full of dagger-like teeth.

Alarm became coldly dangerous intentions when he recognized the disfigured Shifter from Brigit’s description.

“Brigit, get inside!”

He didn’t look around to see if she obeyed. There was no time as the creature sprang.

Driven to the ground on his back, Giles couldn’t angle for another swing as he was forced to grip the ever thickening throat to keep those deadly teeth away from him. A battle he knew he wasn’t going to win as the beast completed its change of form into something monstrous and impossibly strong.

Run, Brigit! That was all he had time to think. Run!

All he had to do was stay alive long enough for her to get a head start.

There was a deafening report from the porch, and suddenly, the figure hunching over him was plucked off and sent rolling away.

Giles risked a glance toward the cabin to see Brigit with her feet planted wide, his pistol braced in both hands. The pistol he’d wisely loaded with silver rounds.

As he scrambled to his feet, his attacker was gaining his own, obviously struggling not to revert back into human like form from the effects of the silver. Brigit’s shot had taken him in the other side of the chest. Giles’s first blow from the ax had already healed. Making him no less lethal as he sprang a second time. No less quick.

And this time Giles didn’t respond fast enough.

 

 Author Bio:

An author of over fifty novels since 1987, Nancy Gideon thrives on variety. Under her own name and several pseudonyms, she’s written award-winning series suspense, historical and paranormal bestsellers, earned a “Career Achievement for Historical Adventure”, and has had two original horror screenplays optioned for film. A Michigan native, she works full time as a legal administrative assistant and feeds a NetFlix addiction.