I’ve been holding off announcing things that are happening with me and my books because a lot has been up in the air. Today I can officially tell you where things are at.

Those of you who follow the publishing industry news are aware of the changes that Dorchester made to its pub model in August. While I completely understand that this change was a business decision, it wasn’t a business decision that was particularly pro for me as an author. I’ve built my readership in mass market paperback, not ebook/trade, and I have readers who expect my books to be released in mass market format. After the change was announced I decided to pull my next three contracted books from Dorchester’s schedule. TEMPTED was scheduled to release in February 2011 and knowing that readers were going to have to wait for the third book broke my heart, but it was a decision I just had to make.

Over the last month, as excitement for the Eternal Guardians series has picked up with the release of ENTWINED, I’ve been hedging questions about when book three would release. I know I’ve left readers wondering what’s up. It really was a crazy month. Not only did I have to wait for official confirmation that my contracted books were free and clear, my agent was in New Zealand and most of New York was gone on vacation. The wait, however, paid off.

Today I accepted an offer from Sourcebooks to continue my Eternal Guardians Series. Book 3, TEMPTED, will release in October 2011. I realize this is a longer wait for readers than originally planned, but it’s something that can’t be helped when you change publishers. I am, however, really excited about this change and most importantly, THRILLED I get to work with my old editor at Dorchester, Leah Hultenschmidt, who recently moved to Sourcebooks herself. She and I have talked about my plans for books four and five and she’s totally onboard with my vision. I think readers are really going to enjoy where the series is going.

So that’s it…my big news for the day. The Eternal Guardians are definitely continuing on. When I have more info – cover copy, teasers, etc, I’ll be sure to let you know. For now I’m just really happy I get to continue this fun and exciting series.

In the meantime…if you haven’t yet read MARKED – book 1 in the Eternal Guardians Series – you can still do so for free. It’s available as a free ebook download from Amazon for another week. And if you haven’t yet read my romantic adventure series, STOLEN FURY, book one in the Stolen Series, was just made a free ebook download from Kobo. So go snag both of these free books while you can!

Happy Reading!

Most of you already know I’m a sucker for mythology. I could spend hours researching the ancient myths (and often do). I’ve taken a few liberties with my mythological links in the Eternal Guardians series, but at the end of the day I try to stay as close to the original mythology as possible. Of course, for every research book that says a myth happened one way, you can find another that contradicts it. So I read a lot, weight the differences and then pull out the pieces that work for my books. So far, I’ve been happy with the results.

One thing I went around and around about when I was developing the series was the world building. It had to make sense in my mind before I wrote MARKED. The gods as celestial beings that require worship and sacrifice didn’t fly for me. At least not in today’s day and age. I couldn’t see my modern-day Argonauts (or their race of Argoleans, for that matter) worshipping these conniving gods like the ancient Greeks did. (Because, yeah, I already knew just how conniving those gods were going to be.) So I figured the gods had to come from somewhere. And there had to be a higher power from which they garnered their strength. They didn’t just poof into existence.

Of course, when you’re talking about a higher power, you’re talking religion. And I knew I didn’t want to delve too deeply into religion. But in order for the world building to work, there had to be something…some link between the gods and this higher power. The link I came up with veers off from traditional Greek mythology, but it fits my world, so to me it works.

I have this weird habit of coming up with twists and links and finding out later that those links really do exist. Ask my CP Joan Swan. It’s freaky. This link between the gods and a higher power? One of those freaky moments. You see, when I came up with that particular link, I did so based on lots of thinking, conceptualizing and trying to figure out what sounded feasible. In my world, the gods aren’t all-powerful beings. They’re fallen angels who were sent to earth for a specific purpose and turned away from the Creator. They stayed in the human realm, mated with each other, mated with humans and continue to cause all kinds of trouble. None of them are wholly good. None of them can be because they’re fallen.

Made sense. Not in Greek mythology, but in my world? Made perfect sense.

Of course, I came up with that part of my world building over two years ago. So imagine my surprise yesterday when my mother called. She was listening to a program that talked about the Sons of God and the Nephilim. For those of you who don’t know what either of these are (like me), I’ll clue you in. Both are referenced in the Bible in Genesis:

Genesis 6:1-4
When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days – and also afterward – when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

So who were the Sons of God? And what about the Nephilim?

There are several “interpretations” but the one that is of most interest to me is the following:

“Sons of God” refers to fallen angels who lived on earth and married human women. The Nephilim are giants of extra-human strength who were the offspring of these marriages.

If you’ve read my books, then you probably just had a light bulb moment. Sounds familiar, huh? I thought so too. It’s highly possible this knowledge has been floating around in my brain for years. After all, I’ve had my fair share of religious education. But consciously, I never knew about the Sons of God or the Nephilim before yesterday.

Freaky, how it all links back together, huh?

For more info about the Sons of God & the Nephilim you can go here. (It’s really interesting reading. You can also see the other interpretations.)

And on a different note…anyone have a Kindle? Amazon is offering MARKED as a free ebook download for the Kindle starting Wednesday, September 15th! It runs for the next two weeks, August 15-30. So if you don’t already have your copy of MARKED…what are you waiting for??