Friday, January 12, 2018

Guest Blog + Giveaway: Storm Crossed by Dani Harper


UFI welcomes Author Dani Harper. Thanks for Joining us!!

Did you ever think of the setting of a story as a character by itself?

Palouse Falls becomes a faery portal in Storm Crossed Photo credit: Bigstock.com

Imagine it -- the smells, the sounds, the sights, the feel. The direction and strength of the wind, and the long light cast at sunset that caresses the land just so. The brick face of an old downtown building that’s still radiating the heat of the day after dark. There’s a tangible chemistry there that’s almost a presence.

I’ve been fortunate to live in some amazing places, so it’s been very natural for those places to appear in my paranormal novels. My first wolfen shapeshifter series took place in northern Canada and Alaska, for instance. Not only did I write my surroundings into my stories, my surroundings often inspired the stories.

There are two main settings for my new Grim Series. One is the immortal faery realm beneath the country of Wales. For that, I resort to a wealth of old legends, stories I was told as a child, my imagination and dreams, and occasionally Google Earth.

But the magical realism in any of the Grim novels—comprising most of the story—is firmly set in present-day eastern Washington State. This is where my mountain man husband and I landed when we left Alaska. I’m fascinated by the arid landscape around me, a combination of jutting rock and rolling hills, enormous boulders and silver-green sagebrush. This land was scoured by the torrential flooding of ancient inland seas and monstrous glaciers, then blanketed with soft windblown silt that grows just about anything. It’s a wonderland of fascinating geographic features in unexpected places.
And a vast new faery territory lies beneath it...

In Storm Crossed, my latest standalone in the series, the spotlight is on the incredible Palouse Falls. There, the water freefalls about 200 feet into a great round rock basin of blue-green water – a perfect portal for the fae! It’s a place I visit frequently. Sometimes for picnics, sometimes for research, but more often just to walk around and allow my characters to talk to me.

Fortunately for me, they talked a lot for this book! As in the old legends, actions in the immortal faery realm impact the mortal world. And in Storm Crossed, modern humans are not only affected but actively involved. I love to place ordinary people into extraordinary situations, and see how they respond – in fact, I think that’s why I love writing paranormal and fantasy romances so much. What do you do when the impossible is standing in front of you? Is your life changed for good or ill? Are you changed?

With this story, things have been turned around a little… What effects could a mortal have on a fae? 
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Legend, lore, love, and magic. These are the hallmarks of Dani Harper’s transformational tales of faeries, shapeshifters, ghosts, and more, for a mature audience. 
A former newspaper editor, Dani’s passion for all things supernatural led her to a second career writing fiction. There isn't anything she likes better than exploring myths and legends from many cultures, which serve to inspire her sizzling and suspenseful stories.

A longtime resident of the Canadian north and southeastern Alaska, she now lives in rural Washington with her retired mountain-man husband. Together they do battle with runaway garden gnomes, rampant fruit trees, and a roving herd of predatory chickens.

Dani Harper is the author of Storm Crossed, Storm Warned, Storm Bound, Storm Warrior (the Grim Series), as well as First Bite (Dark Wolf), for Montlake Romance. She is also the author of a Yuletide ghost story, The Holiday Spirit, plus a popular shapeshifter series, which includes Changeling Moon, Changeling Dream, and Changeling Dawn.

Find Dani and her books
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Storm Crossed
Grim #4
Amazon
The latest stand-alone novel in Dani Harper’s Grim Series will delight old and new fans alike, transporting them to the ancient fae realm beneath the modern human world, where magic rules and menace abounds…

Heir to a noble fae house, Trahern is forced to watch helplessly as his twin brother is cruelly changed into a grim—a death dog—as punishment for falling in love with the wrong person. Trahern doesn’t believe love exists, but he will do anything to keep his brother alive—even join the Wild Hunt and ride the night skies of the human world.

Lissy Santiago-Callahan believes in love but has no time for it. She’s busy juggling her career as an academic and her home life as a single mom to a young son with Asperger’s. Her hectic life in sleepy Eastern Washington is made even more chaotic with the sudden arrival of a demanding fae and his unusual “dog.”

Mortal and immortal have nothing in common, and the attraction between Lissy and Trahern surprises them both. But when their desire places Lissy and her child in the path of a deadly faery feud, will the connection last, or will their separate worlds prove too great a divide?

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22 comments:

  1. The park and waterfall, where Lissy and Trahern first crossed paths sounds beautiful. I wish there was a place like that near were I live. May be minus the Fae portal! I love all the discriptions of places and people in your stories x x

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  2. Thanks Heather! The location is very much in the proverbial "middle of nowhere", and you need a good vehicle, but there is a State Park surrounding the waterfall. I agree with you that you wouldn't really want a faery portal close by!

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  3. I love the interviews with Dani. Always interesting to hear the inspirations and research behind books. I love your blog. It's always filled with interesting research and myths etc. Looking forward to reading Storm Crossed.
    Carol Luciano
    Lucky4750 (at) aol (dot) com

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    1. Hi Carol! Thank you for commenting, and I agree, Urban Fantasy Investigations is a great blog. I read other author's interviews too because I'm curious about their process. And also because no matter how much I write, I'm a reader at heart

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  4. I'd like to visit those falls one day. So pretty.

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  5. Hi Jana! This photo is a time-lapse aerial shot, but the falls are just as fascinating by day in their arid desert-like setting. Check the Washington State Parks site at http://parks.state.wa.us/559/Palouse-Falls for daytime pics and information.

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  6. Many thanks to Urban Fantasy Investigations for inviting me for an interview. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about my new release, and in this case, the landscape that inspired some of it. {{{hugs}}}

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    1. My pleasure, thank you for visiting! I'm glad you enjoyed your visit to UFI.

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    1. I feel really lucky to have some great artists at Montlake Publishing to work with. Jason Blackburn was the cover designer for Storm Crossed and also for Storm Warned.

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  8. Love these tidbits of information! The falls are gorgeous!

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    1. They really are lovely. It's a long drive in an arid landscape to get to them, but worth it.

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  9. I did not know that your Grim series was out in audio! WooHoo! Will your other books be available in audio at some point also?

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    1. All of my Montlake books are - and will be -available as audiobooks. I feel very fortunate that actress Justine Eyre has voiced all four Grim books - she's quite wonderful! As for audio versions of my other books, all I can say is "not yet". :)

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  10. By the way, I follow Dani already via Pinterest Dani_Harper_PNR I searched for the link provided in the rafflecopter above and it gave me an error... I think you may be missing some underlines...

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    1. Thanks, Linda. I don't have access to the rafflecopter, but I'm sure the author will check in at some point again and see this. Have a good rest of the week.

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    2. OMIGOSH, I didn't know! Thank you SO much, Linda, for spotting that! I'll contact Bewitching Book Tours to change the Pinterest address on the Rafflecopter. :)

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  11. Replies
    1. My motto is "have laptop, will travel". I have an office, but I usually end up somewhere else. Most often, it's the kitchen table by the window where I can watch my chickens!

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  12. Chickens, really? I had chickens at the place we lived before moving here. It was more rural, and had a lot less coyotes. I loved my chickens. How many do you have?

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    1. I have about 30, in a wide variety of breeds. I have a soft spot for crested varieties so I have quite a few Polish and Houdan in the mix, plus several Silkies. Oh, and one of my Silkies suddenly decided to set on a clutch of eggs. She's brooding 8 right now!

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  13. What is the last novel you read that you would recommend?

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Thanks for stopping by =)