A warm welcome to author A.J Marcus joining us today to talk about new release “Hoofbeats”
Welcome A.J and his co author Nicole 🙂

Finding a beat; writing Hoofbeats

by A.J. Marcus

When they asked me to write blog posts, I’m always stuck on what to write. Most folks don’t want to hear about how to write. If you’re a writer and want to know stuff like that, please drop me and email, or follow me on facebook and we can talk about it. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let me just say that this book was a lot of fun to write. I’ve known Nicole for a few years now, and watched her grow as a writer. This might be her first book published, but she’s got a lot more than this written and has more books that we’re impatiently waiting to hear news on. You’ll definitely be seeing more from her in the future. Honestly at this point, I can’t remember who first said, we need to write a book together. We did a bit of brainstorming on the ideas and decided to write about a horse shifter and a horse whisperer. It seemed like a logical thing to make Derek, our horse shifter, a Native American. I haven’t seen a lot of M/M romances with Native Americans in them, and Nicole was eager to use her heritage in her writing.

The Native American aspect of the book is really cool, we bring in some spirituality and incorporate it into shifters. It seemed like a very logical fit to both of us. Coyote, the trickster, actually has a major role in the book, but I’m not telling which characters he is.

We also wanted to bring in something about the plight of the wild horses that we’re seeing in the real world, once we had that detail figured out, we knew we had something that would touch people’s hearts. Derek is way broken and that always makes for a great character. The things he has to get through have unique spin to them and are very interesting.

Cole, our horse whisperer is a fairly classic cowboy sort. He’s got his own healing to do and I think we took the whisperer off on an interesting path. We went with a more spiritual angle on that and hope folks enjoy it. He really is a noble sort of guy who just wants what’s best for the horses under his care. The dynamic between the two of them works out great as the story unfolds.

Nicole and I are working on another book set in the same world, but with totally different characters. This time we’re looking a bit into an Asian character bringing in aspects of his spirituality and how that affects him as a shifter. We hope folks will like “Hoofbeats” enough that they’ll be interested in “Open Skies” when we get finished with it.

We’d like to do an ebook give away with this one. Leave a comment about the kinds of shifters you’d like to read about. If there’s something unusual let us know and who knows, one might pop up in a future book. We’ll do a random pick at the end of the day and get you an e-copy of “Hoofbeats”.

The green field stretched out with rolling hills and beautiful trees clustered around its border. Derek followed the movement of the herd that ran the edges and felt warmth flood him as they turned in his direction. The thunder of their hooves matched the beat of his rapid pulse.

Another pulse echoed his own. He turned his head and realized his form shrank with each beat of his heart. Eyes wide, he looked into the hazel gaze of the man beside him. Cole’s brow creased as Derek turned from a blood bay to a russet-skinned man with flowing black hair. His smile grew a bit at a time and eventually stretched as wide as it could go.

“What?” Derek couldn’t help but ask. Even in the dream, he felt off-balance being on two legs for the first time in years. It took him a few breaths to gain his equilibrium.

“I’m just marveling at my imagination. You are a very beautiful man. Which I guess means that I’m lonelier than I thought.” His smile slipped a little.

Derek shook his head. “I wish that were the case, but I’m starting to think that our connection goes deep.”

“Our connection?” Cole arched an eyebrow.

“Yes, you and I have a connection that I believe has tied our spirits together.” He looked back out at the herd of horses that now grazed below the rise they stood on. “I don’t recognize this place, though, or any of the horses.”

A palomino mare broke from the herd and trotted up the hill. She stood in front of them with her pale mane flowing and a fire in her eyes Derek recognized as an unbroken spirit.

Cole fell to his knees and tilted his head back. “That’s because we’re not in your dream. We’re in mine.”

Blurb:

After a run of bad luck, gifted horse trainer Cole Frasier thinks he’s lost his touch. When he’s offered three times his normal rate to gentle a stallion, he needs the money badly enough he jumps at the opportunity, even if his boss is of questionable morality.

Once he meets Midnight Blood, he knows there’s something special about the horse, but he doesn’t know how special until he begins sharing dreams with the magnificent steed.

Derek Dancing Hawk is a horse shifter trapped in his horse form due to guilt over losing the wild herd he was guarding. When he meets Cole, as Midnight Blood, he wants to find a way to be human again. During a fight between Cole and the ranch foreman, he manages to shift and save Cole, but his transformation from horse to human is captured on camera. This not only gives Cole’s boss blackmail material, but also creates the need to warn the horse shifter council of the threat to their anonymity. The existence of shifters is a closely guarded secret, one they will go to great lengths to keep.

Buy Links:

Dreamspinner Press

Amazon

A.J. Marcus has been writing to pass the time since high school. The stories he wrote helped him deal with life. A few years ago, he started sharing those stories with friends who enjoyed them and he has started sending his works out into the world to share with other people. He lives in the mountains with his extremely supportive husband. They have a lot of critters, including dogs, cats, birds, horses, and rabbits. When not writing, A.J. spends a lot of time hiking, trail riding or just driving in the mountains. Nature provides a lot of inspiration for his work and keeps him writing. He is also an avid photographer and falconer. Don’t get him started talking about his birds, because he won’t stop for a while.

Web Contact Info:

Website: www.ajmarcus.com

Email: andy@ajmarcus.com

Twitter: twitter.com/#!/aj_marcus

Facebook: http:// www.facebook.com/authorajmarcus

Nicole Godfrey is a writer who calls the beautiful city of Colorado Springs home, along with her fury children. She was born in Omaha, NE. and has lived in Florida and Tennessee. Her writing career started with poetry at a young age, leading to her first publication at the age of twelve. Poetry eventually evolved into the love of storytelling, and any good story, no matter the genre, is open to her creative mind. She has two short stories published through Colorado Springs Fiction Writers Group; A Page Lost in An Uncommon Collection, and The Power of the Word in Remnants and Resolutions: Tales of Survival. When she’s not writing, Nicole actively participates in Amtgard and loves to play table-top RPG’s. Art has also been a part of her life since a young age, so she spends as much time as possible playing with different mediums.

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