Monday 1 December 2014

Guest Catherine Lievens!

Hi everyone!
 
I have no idea what I’m doing, just so you know. I’m a fairly new author and I’ve never done a blog host post, so I hope I won’t annoy anyone, and if I do, well, sorry.
 
What can I say about me? I’m 29, mother of a two and a half year old boy. I live in Italy, but I’m from Belgium, and I write in English (obviously). Weird mix, uh? I used to write when I was a kid, but I stopped for a long time. After I graduated from college last year and had to stay home with my son, I read a lot, and I still do, and I remember I was reading Charlie Richards’ series Wolves of Stone Ridge and I thought “Hey, I could write something like that too!” The Whitedell Pride and its members were born!
 
I sent the first book, Jamie, to the publisher, and I got to work on Derick right away, and by the time Jamie was published I already had ten more books done. I know that’s a lot, but I just need to write. The characters just won’t shut up if I don’t, and even when I do, they still try to make me write their stories first! It takes me anywhere from a week to three to finish a book, and I’m working on a spin off series too, the Gillham Pack, where we meet Zach and Kameron, the wolves introduced in Derick, again.
 
 
But since Nolan is coming out today, I’m going to leave you with an excerpt of that one! It’s the very beginning of the book, when we first meet Nolan.
 
Nolan peeked around the dumpster he was hiding behind. Damn, that woman was still there, calling for him! He had been hungry, and since it was impossible for him to shift back to his human form, he had had to try and catch mice for dinner. He hated mice.
    But he had no clothes, no money, no anything, and he had to eat. The snow was sticking to his fur, making it hard for him to move around the alley since no one had bothered to shovel it, but at least it didn’t take much for him to be sated when he was in his cat form. A couple of mice and he was good to go for the day, even if he hated eating them raw.
    He was still hungry, though, since that woman had seen him in the alley behind the supermarket and had tried to take him. It was just his luck to be seen by a cat lady who wanted to take him home and probably add him to her cat collection. It would be fun to shift in front of her just to see her face when he did, but that was only wishful thinking. Nolan had no intentions of being caught and pent-up again, not after spending the last months in that creepy laboratory. He still had the scars to prove how bad that had been.
    He had been lucky one of the guards had decided he had a conscience after all and had helped him escape. Being the smaller animal in the lab had been Nolan’s luck for once. Not only he was a dull domestic cat when he shifted, but he wasn’t even bigger than his animal counterpart like shifters usually were. That’s why he could pass for a stray like he had been doing for the days since the guard had dropped him out of his car in this godforsaken town.
Sure, Nolan should thank the man for getting him out, but was it too much to ask to be left somewhere safe? He could have taken Nolan home with him and given him a change of clothes at least, maybe even let him make a phone call. Nolan could have called home and he would be with his family right now instead of eating mice and hiding behind dumpsters.
    “Come here, kitty, kitty.”
    She wasn’t going away. To be honest, that woman was starting to look good to Nolan. Maybe he could let her take him home. At least she would feed him and he could get a good night of sleep before trying to find a change of clothes in her closet and sneaking out before she woke up in the morning. Nolan was already too tired to run away and he couldn’t do much in his cat form. It’s not like he could walk home all the way to Colorado Springs, especially since he was about three hundred miles away from there.
    “Come on, kitty cat, where are you?”
    Nolan would have groaned if he was in human form. Kitty cat? Couldn’t the cat lady find a better name to call him? Anyway, it was time for Nolan to come out and let her see him. He let out a small meow, trying his best to look cute and scared.
    “Here you are!” The woman crouched beside him and tentatively reached out to him. He sniffed at her hand and immediately wanted to run away, but she caught him and bunched him up in the blanket she held in her hand. God, he could smell lynx shifter all over her! He was so going to be eaten if he let her take him home, and not only because he was a smaller shifter. Common shifters like cats, rabbits and such were looked down by the bigger ones. They considered them beneath the big predators, even if cats were predators. It was just a size thing, really, but it didn’t mean whoever the woman knew that changed into a lynx would simply let Nolan go once he was found, even though lynx weren’t that much bigger than a normal cat.
    “Sweetheart, stay still, you’re going to hurt yourself. I’ll let you go once we get home and I’m sure you will fit right in at the mansion. God knows we have a lot of cats there.”
    Another woman Nolan hadn’t noticed laughed at what the cat lady said. “You couldn’t resist, uh?Don’t you think we have enough of these at home?”
    “I know, but he’s so cute! I’ve always wanted a real pet.”
    “He’s a boy?”
    The cat lady manhandled Nolan and he hissed, swiping his paw at her. Who the heck did she think she was looking at his family jewels like that!
    “Bad kitty!” She bundled him back in the blanket before answering her friend. “Yup, male. We’ll have to have him neutered I think.”
    Oh, fuck no! Nolan started squirming, trying to fight his way out of the soft fabric that surrounded him, but the cat lady held him too tight. There was no way Nolan was losing his balls to her! What had he got himself to?
 
 
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