Catch of a Lifetime, Judi Fennell – Author Guest Post & Giveaway

AUTHOR GUEST POST…When I first started thinking about Catch of a Lifetime, I was in the final stages of the Gather.com/Pocket Books First Chapters Romance Contest with In Over Her Head, the first book in my Mer series. That story was one of the Top 5 Finalists in that contest and I wanted to show the final judges (two Pocket editors, Sue Grimshaw from Borders and Tom Gerace, the owner of Gather.com) that I wasn’t a one-trick pony. That there were more stories to be had in the world I created. So, I sat down and wrote a partial (three chapters and a synopsis) for the next two books in the series, and, voila! Catch of a Lifetime was created.

So, a year later when I actually had to write it, after finishing In Over Her Head and Wild Blue Under, I thought I had it all under control. I knew the world, I knew the characters and I’d been thinking about this story for over a year. Should be a piece of kelp to write, right?

Wrong.

My characters didn’t want to behave. They didn’t want to do what I wanted them to. Angel let Michael find out that she was a Mer–something I hadn’t planned on. Logan was harder to convince about letting her stay to watch his son than I’d thought he would be. Michael… well, Michael was just as adorable as I’d hoped, but he, too, didn’t listen to me. I mean, I didn’t want him to go to the beach to look for Angel, but did he listen to me? No he did not.

But the character who really didn’t listen to me was Curtis.

If you’ve read the story, or when you do, you will ask me who Curtis is. See, Curtis didn’t make it into the final version. Actually, Curtis didn’t even make it into the first version. Well, not past chapter seven anyhow.

Curtis was the villain of Catch of a Lifetime. But he was supposed to be a nice villain. By that I mean there was a reason he was going to kidnap Michael. He wasn’t going to hurt him. He just needed a way to force everyone to do what he wanted them to do for him.

When I started writing Curtis’ part, I was fine with him. Then the story kept progressing and all of a sudden, there was Curtis. In a boat. Kidnapping the little boy.

I’m a parent–it’s one of my worst nightmares. And, frankly, I couldn’t see how I could keep to the humor aspect of my stories with a kidnapper running amok.

So that was it for Curtis. Well, it wasn’t as cut and dried as that, but all of a sudden A.C. showed up out of nowhere, and, well… no spoilers here. Suffice it to say, A.C. took on Curtis’ role in a way I could live with and still keep the humor in the story.

But what a surprise. I mean, I am a pantzer when I write, meaning I don’t plot out my story. I usually know how they’ll start, who the characters are and maybe a scene or two. Sometimes I only know the ending as, “and they all lived happily ever after.” Sometimes, like in Wild Blue Under with Val’s mother’s letter which I wrote when I was working on the fourth chapter of that book, I know how it’s going to end. But I’ve never had the bad guy not only not be the bad guy, but disappear altogether.

Oh, Curtis will show up–I have too many scenes and backstory and motivation for him not to, but I don’t know where. Maybe he’ll be the hero. I can certainly use his angst and reasoning to make him heroic. Dunno. That’s the beauty and the curse of not plotting out my stories.

But the plus side is, I get to go along for the ride just like my readers do.

I hope you enjoy Angel and Logan’s–and Michael’s–ride! Here’s a sample:

***

Logan could put this day on his list of great ones. Michael had obviously had a wonderful time, and Angel…

The woman was beautiful, knew a hell of a lot about the creatures the park rescued, and Michael obviously adored her.

And, his fortune-telling mother’s prediction notwithstanding, Logan was coming to adore her as well. He honestly couldn’t say when he’d enjoyed a day—and a woman—more.

He followed Angel and his son across the parking lot and clicked the remote opener so Michael could climb in the car, wondering if Angel would sit in the back like yesterday, or the front as she’d done on the ride over.

Then she tossed her hair over her shoulder again and he wanted to ask her to sit up front. Right next to him.

Every time she’d done that today, every time her eyes crinkled with laughter or she’d sung with the birds, he’d found himself remembering last night.

“Angel.” Her name slipped out before he thought better of it.

She reached the car and looked up at him with those expressive eyes. “Yes?”

“I—”

She did that thing again with her hair where it draped over her shoulder, dancing along her arm, a curl circling forward into the inside of her elbow. “What is it, Logan?”

It was powerful.

It was intense.

It was potent.

Different than last night, but no less compelling.

He slid his fingers up the path her hair had taken, feeling the velvet smoothness of her skin, hearing the slight catch of her breath that told him he wasn’t wrong to do this. Seeing the quick, shallow rise and fall of her breasts that he wasn’t feeling any guilt about looking at.

He stepped closer.

Her chin tilted, and she shook her hair again, sending more of the silky tresses sliding over his skin. “Is there something you needed?”

Oh, yeah. There was.

© Judi Fennell, Sourcebooks Casablanca, 2010

And if you’d like the opportunity to take a boat ride around Florida, check out my website, www.JudiFennell.com, to register to win the last of three romantic beach getaways. This one will be at the Hibiscus House in West Palm Beach, Florida. Who knows, maybe you’ll run into Curtis while he’s out searching for his story.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR…Judi Fennell is an award-winning author. Her romance novels have been finalists in Gather.com’s First Chapters and First Chapters Romance contests, as well as the third American Title contest. She spends family vacations at the Jersey Shore, the setting for some of her paranormal romance series. She lives in suburban Philadelphia, PA. For More information, and a chance to win a romantic ocean getaway, visit www.judifennell.com.

CATCH OF A LIFETIME BY JUDI FENNELL—IN STORES FEBRUARY 2010!

Mermaid Angel Tritone escapes a shark by jumping into single dad Logan Hardington’s fishing boat. All his young son Michael wants for his birthday is a mermaid, and if his dad will only play his cards right, now he’ll have one…

Angel wants to give Michael his most beloved birthday gift (a real live mermaid) while also getting to know his father and getting him to help her in her mission to stop humans from destroying the oceans. Logan has never met a woman who cared as much about the same things he does, and she’s never met a man who understood her deepest commitment to humanity and nature. When an enemy of conservation shows up and tries to kill Angel, Logan has to choose between continuing the life he’s known, or following the woman he loves to the bottom of the ocean…

The third novel  in Judi Fennell’s mermaid series, a fresh, exciting, and different entry in romance fiction!

FROM THE BOOK FAERY REVIEWS…If you’d like to read more about her Mer series, click the links to read about In Over Her Head (includes an interview with Judi Fennell) and Wild Blue Under.

Thanks to Sourcebooks for sponsoring this book giveaway. TWO lucky commenters will be randomly selected and notified via e-mail. The winner will have 48 hours to reply back with their mailing address (US/Canada ONLY, NO PO Boxes) or it goes to the next person. This giveaway runs now through the end of the month.

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