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No, I will not stop missing my friend for some time but life goes on for the living and I am a firm believer in that. My late husband and I had made a pact that the survivor would live, not merely exist and I've done my best to honor that for twelve and a half years. I hope all of my departed dear ones are looking down and feel at least some pride and pleasure in my small accomplishments.

Tonight I will cover two related Amber Heat tales (that is the m/f erotica line). The first is next as I go down the list so I will cover them both. Nellie's Rogue Stallion was my ninth release and a diversion from what I had written thus far since it was my first shape shifter tale. I am not too much into werewolves and some of the other popular shifter-critters so for my first effort, I chose a horse shifter! This story is told mostly in the heroine's POV although not in first person. She's a kind of True Grit type ranch girl, not much in awe of man, nature or animals. She's been raised by her father after her mother passed away. Her daddy is very protective, a situation she chafes at almost constantly. Will she ever have a beau, much less get married?  The cover is also one of my all time favorites so here it is along with the blurb.

Blurb: Nevada-raised Nellie Campbell despairs of ever finding love because her father, Jack, fiercely guards her chastity, keeping all virile men yards away from her. When she joins the hunt to capture a rogue stallion that has been stealing valuable mares from area ranchers, she learns Rogue Red is no ordinary horse. No way can she allow her father and the cowboys to kill or geld this magnificent creature. To help him escape, Nellie soon finds herself racing across the desert on the red stallion’s back, knowing there can be no return.

Yet all her father’s care to keep Nellie pure will now be for naught—because Rogue Red is also Steven Johns, descendant of a long line of shapeshifting were-horses. And as a man, he is even more gorgeous than he is as a horse!

Grief over the brutal slaying of his family has driven Steven to live in horse form for so long, his human side has almost been forgotten. Feisty yet charmingly naïve, Nellie reminds him there is more to life than leading his mares through the wilds while fighting off predators and angry ranchers.

But will Nellie's father ever abandon the chase with the ultimate goal of seeing Steven rendered harmless? It will take a tragedy and a heroic rescue to convince Jack Campbell that the right man for Nellie and the rogue stallion are both more than they seem...

 I really got caught up in the horse-shifter clan after I had written this story. I went back in time for the second tale to France in the 1700s to team another sheltered young woman with another dashing horse-shifter in Colette's Savage Stallion. Although I envision more tales of this magical race, they are yet in the idea and a few scenes stages. The next one, if I can get it done, will be back to the beginning where a prehistoric woman in Scythia (European steppe region) saves a mare and her foal from marauding wolves and is given the shifter gift by Epona, a Celtic horse goddess. It's about a third done so there is a good maybe it will appear in time if I can rehome these two tales or otherwise get an editor's interest! Here is the blurb for Colette's Savage Stallion, my 26th AQ release. The cover appears above.

Blurb:  Colette D'Estaing has adored Gaston, the horse master's eldest son, since they were both children. Now grown and of marriageable age, she must wed Charles de Fayette, an aristocratic and influential, yet foppish and dissolute friend of her father’s.

When her fiancé assaults her in the stable intent on raping her, however, a sleek and savage stallion comes to her rescue and kills the lecherous marquis. That’s when Colette learns that Gaston has inherited the ancient gift of shapeshifting into equine form.

Shocked and fearful, Colette urges Gaston to flee before he is accused of murder or witchcraft and put to death. But first she must convince him to take her virginity in one magical night of love...