January 2023 Newsletter Reprint – Meet the author, and her muse
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Helloooooooooo, Keiti, and welcome back to my camo-painted jeep, and if you’ve recently joined Club Untamed, a double heartwarming ‘hello.’ Thrilled to have you aboard for our monthly safari!
While we’re gearing up to learn new things about animals we might be lucky enough to see on our trip today, I want to share the theme for my prequel and 5 book series. Time Flies is a hybrid of genres including time travel, paranormal, midlife romance and even some historical fiction.
The common theme running through all the books is: You do have a second chance to make a first impression! This lends itself to so many facets within each of my stories. I’m ridiculously excited to share them with you.
UNTAMED!
I confess my muse – she, the mythical cause who affects the words I write, she, the actress who becomes my various characters and whispers their words into my ear – left me for a while. Without her I am rendered useless and uncreative. At last, she’s back, albeit drunk on someone else’s wine, but I’m celebrating her return.
I call her by her Greek name, Peitho. PEITHO was the goddess or personified spirit of persuasion, seduction and charming speech. How apt, don’t you think?
Peitho is indeed UNTAMED!
Here she is in her heyday on Mount Olympus, looking very dolled up if I may say. Bangles, baubles, beads, frills, doves and all!
These days she’s still braless, but wears faded jeans, a t-shirt, flipflops, a sunhat, blood red lipstick and very strong opinions. She’s fabulous and impetuous, always right and mostly fun, but she has a dark side (and I need darkness in my stories to make their light shine brighter at The End.) Peitho is a budding alcoholic who smokes like she’s a 1940’a movie star paid by Lucky Strike. Since I’m not one for booze or weed, she leaves me on occasion for other writers who feed her addiction. I’m not judge-y, just lone-ly without her. But she knows I love her to pieces and need her desperately, so she eventually finds her way home to me. It’s because I treat her kindly. Most of the time.
Raise your glass (found in the seat pocket in front of you) to Peitho, my muse.
Without whom, Time Flies is just an ambition.
UNEXPECTED!
Today we’re on a myth-busting tour.
MYTH #1
FEMALE HYHENAS ALWAYS RANK HIGHER THAN ANY MALES IN THE CLAN!
Though its true that a hyena clan is almost always led by a formidable matriarch figure and their societies are predominantly matriarchal, the familiar adage that even the lowest ranked female outranks the highest-ranked male, is nonsense. Rank is inherited. So, the son of a high-ranking female will outrank any of the females below his mother and a young male can even lead a clan if his matriarch mother dies.
I’m all about following whoever gets the job done best, you?
MYTH #2
GIRAFFES FORM NO LASTING BONDS OVER THEIR LIFESPAN
Giraffe social structure has long been described as a loose society where females randomly move between herds. But recent studies have revealed a far greater complexity to giraffe sociality – one almost similar to those of the elephant. Many of the matrilineal groups researched consisted of three generations of grandmothers, mothers and daughters and these associations remained stable for years.
UNFORGETTABLE!
JOIN ME, PLEASE!
If you live near to Cocoa Village on the Space Coast of Florida, MARK YOUR CALENDARS! With dips into my Lucky Elephant for goodies to take home, and chats about books and writing and all things that inspire, not to mention the fab give-away I’ve planned, it sure to be an UNFORGETTABLE and fun time.
NOTE: The book signing has already happened. Sign up for my Club Untamed Newsletter and never miss the news!
I hope to see many of you at Hello Again Books on the 11th February,
(my lovely girlchild’s birthday) between 1 and 3pm.
Those who can’t make it, I’ll miss you, but there will be many more such gatherings, and I’m warmed by the fact that we have such effective communications tools at our disposal in 2023. Getting emails from you AND cards (thank you Maureen Mulligan) are real treats, every
one I open – electronic or paper, makes it feel like I’m unwrapping a Christmas present. Your thoughts, ideas and wishes, always inject my typing fingers with speed and a blazing desire for the author in me to please the reader in you. Thank you for that.
Meantime, tell your friends to join my Readers Group, CLUB UNTAMED.
There’s a secret web page only members can see, which is about to be bombarded with my olde airline photos to help remind me of that time in my life.
I need to reminisce so I can write richly and reliably, while revealing the revelry we air crew relished during the raw 80’s. Whew! What fun, alliteration!
And if winter has you in her icy claws where you live, cuddle up with a romance.
Get lost in WAR SERENADE – Iris and Pietro are sure to warm your heart (and other parts too!) Or if you want action and a complex friendship,
then ZEBRA should be burning a hole in your bookshelf.
Did you know Zebra was recently a finalist in the Action & Adventure Category of Killer Nashville’s Falchion Awards? What a glorious honor that was!
Or listen to my books on Audible (or your favorite audio retailer) on your way to and from work, while you do your laundry or dye your hair and eyebrows.
Let Peter Noble, the award-winning narrator,
take you on a trip to a faraway land with his wonderful voice and masterful accents.
Until next time, don’t believe everything you hear…it could be a myth or an old wives’ tale (personally I think the latter are often true) but do hear everything you want to believe. Believing in something keeps our spirit buoyant and our hearts light. Strive always, to believe in yourself. I think you’re amazing!
I wish you glorious surprises will until next we meet.
Cheers, cheers!
Love,
Jill
P.S. I’d like you to check out these new books by authors I love!
Purchase Beguiled by Bourbon
Now available by Kerry Evelyn – sweet romance contemporary to tug at your heartstrings.
Purchase Small-Town Christmas
Available 7th February by the always wildly entertaining Cassandra Chandler
Purchase The Krampus
Coming 16 February by the funny-as-hell Winnie Winkle:
Purchase Bongo & Delilah ain’t Saints
Coming 16 February by the brilliant Pauline Baird Jones:
Purchase Cosmic Boom
If you haven’t yet, meet author Kyndra Hatch.
She makes you fall in love with robots! I kid you not.
Cath her first enthralling story in The Fracture War out 14th February!
Purchase Fracture