Guest Post & Excerpt by Shelly Holt, author of Tasting Fire!

Today I am turning the blog over to author Shelly Holt! :)

As a life long reader and lover of mythology and folklore, I decided to take the plunge and try my hand at writing a paranormal romance last March.  I knew from the beginning I would be competing against hundreds of other similar books and to succeed, I had to write a very different type of story. I decided on using the Asian Snow Leopard as my shape-shifter in part because it had rarely been done and also the animal itself is the most exotically beautiful and powerful high altitude predator on earth. (What can be sexier than that?)

I began writing Tasting Fire by drawing up an outline that treated shape-shifters as if they were real  and existed in our world.  I knew that I would have to devise a plot mechanism that gave
a plausible reason for their existence.  I researched methods of bacterial transmission and eventually came up with the idea that if shape-shifters throughout history were caused by an infection, it would have to be difficult to catch, otherwise everybody and their grandmother would be a shape-shifter by now.

I decided to make the infection come from a thermophilic (heat loving) bacteria that only lives in hot springs around the world.  In my story, thousands of years ago from time to time, primitive nomads from every culture on the planet would take a swim in these healing waters.  If they happened to bath in a hot spring that had this rare bacteria floating around in it and got a little water up the nose, they would temporarily have the bacteria floating around in their system.  If the nomads had just the right RNA receptors, they were at risk of having their body attach a secondary DNA code to theirs.  For example if they got bit by an angry snow leopard within a few hours after their swim, the DNA from the leopard saliva would attach to their DNA.   You can't catch the bacterial infection itself from another infected individual, as it dies quickly (within a few hours after ingestion) but you can inherit the condition from your parents once the DNA has been merged.  This method of transmission limited the outbreak, yet gives rise to the many different wonderful mythologies of shape-shifters that have evolved from every culture on the planet. 

As Dr. Rae Hales, my heroine surmises “if the Pari are real, doesn't that mean they could all be real?”  I treat shape-shifting in the book as a medical condition.  It has significant physical, social and economic side effects that arise from the condition and the thrust of the book deals with that.

In Tasting Fire my alpha male hero is handsome Kai Tenzin, a shape-shifter from Tibet who is the self appointed leader of the Pari people. He has made it his life long mission to protect his kind from discovery.  When modern science starts to get too close to the truth, he has no choice, but to find a scientist to help him try to hide his shape-shifting race from humanity.  Dr. Rae Hales is the beautiful American scientist he hires for this task and together they race around the world saving Pari and falling in love at the same time. 

Tasting Fire has strong spiritual overtones and extraordinarily well developed secondary plots that involve personal growth and fully defined characters.  All of these well designed aspects make for a truly unique paranormal romance.   I will warn readers at this point, if you want a book where the hero and heroine fall into bed within the first two minutes of meeting and have mindless sex, this is not the book for you!  If you are looking for a rich, textured romance, full of world building and character development, and if you want to lose yourself in an original, intelligent, romantic, sexy, adventure, this is your book!

My thanks to Reading With Holly for inviting me on the blog today to share my experiences writing Tasting Fire with you.

Tasting Fire by Shelly Holt

Purchase: Amazon | 

Shape-shifters have always walked the earth. Shrouded in myth and folklore, hiding in the shadows, watching and waiting. Advances in modern science are now about to reveal them to the world. Kai Tenzin is the self appointed leader of the Pari people. He and his kind evolved from the most reclusive predators on earth, the Asian Snow Leopard. They live and hunt in the most fearsome and rugged terrain known to man, the Himalayas. As a young man, Kai left his small village where the mountain touches the heavens, determined to do anything to protect his people. When he is forced to enlist the aid of the beautiful American scientist Dr. Rae Hales, the last thing he expects to find is a woman who will ensnare his heart and endanger them all. Their action-packed adventure will take them around the world to discover the truth behind the legends and reveal the future of humanity.

Excerpt

Rae took an admiring look at the vista below as she dropped her heavy pack on the ground.  The mountains in the distance looked purple and the desert brush spread out below them like a master oil painting.  It was awe inspiring to human eyes.  Rae wondered what would it look like to a snow leopard.  She suddenly realized many a biologist would sell their very soul for the opportunity she had at that moment.  Rae turned to Kai who had been sitting on the ground with his pack and fishing around for lunch and asked him  “what is it like when you're in your Shan form out in country like this?”   Kai rewarded Rae with the most brilliant smile she had yet seen to grace the handsome shape-shifter's face.  He seemed truly delighted to discuss the subject with her.  Kai stood up to answer Rae's question.  He addressed the human scientist.  “It's like nothing you can imagine Rae.  Every sense is in tune with the planet.  See that tree over there” he pointed a few yards away at an ancient gnarled pinyon.  “Yes”  Rae replied.  Kai walked up behind Rae and put his hands on her shoulders and directed her to look even closer at the tree.  He whispered intimately in her ear as if they were in a church or another sacred space “when you look at that tree with your limited human vision, the average person can certainly appreciate its form and color.   A biologist like yourself would ask what type of tree is it and how old it is.   A philosopher might ask who may have sat underneath it in the past or who might sit underneath it in the future.  All of you might even wonder when will it die.  That's the limit of your human perception.  When you're in Shan form every single leaf will bid you a glorious greeting as you walk up to the tree for the first time.  Every drop of sap tells you the history of the tree's life like an intimate biography written in the utterly sensual language of scent.  The tree itself will tell you if it's healthy or sick.  You can smell if the water that nourishes it is bitter or sweet.  If you deeply pay attention you can smell every animal that has ever been there.”  Kai looked to Rae like he was experiencing a spiritual moment and Rae suddenly realized he was.  The enthralled shape-shifter continued to explain to Rae the nuances of the animal world  “when you are ready to move on to another place you reach up with your powerful claws and dig deep into the bark to mark the tree with your scent.  It's added harmoniously to the scent of hundreds of other animals.  You do this not just to mark your hunting territory, but to tell every animal after you have left this world that you lived and breathed here at one time in the great mystery that is life.  That is your only immortality in the animal world.  There are no monuments to mark a man's ego, or family albums for a mother to remember her children by, but neither is there hate, nor fear of the future or regret of the past.  You are fully alive in each and every moment.  It's a wonderfully free existence.  I wish I could truly share it with you... words, words pale in comparison.”   Kai looked so happy at that moment.  Rae was so moved by what he had just shared with her that all she could do was reach out and touch his wrist. “Thank you!” she whispered.  Kai nodded at her in acknowledgment, but he was too emotional to even speak.

About the Author

My name is Shelly Holt and I live in the middle of the harsh and unforgiving Mojave desert. I write my stories looking out of a window that shows sweeping desert views. Outside is a barren and severe landscape, yet inside my head lives a world filled with exotic shape-shifters come to life, pulled from the pages of myth and legend, ready to entice and seduce any reader brave enough to take them on.

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