Blog Tour: Guestpost incl Exclusive Excerpt & Giveaway TA Moore – Dog Days

A warm welcome to author T.A Moore joining us today to talk about new release “Dog Days”.

TA shares some toughts on their new release , shares an exclusive excerpt and there is a giveaway to participate in!

Welcome TA 🙂

Title: Dog Days

Author: TA Moore

Publisher: Dreamspinner Press

Cover Artist: Anne Cain

Genre: Paranormal Romance

Release Date: Sept 9th, 2016

Buy the Book on Amazon or Dreamspinner

 

The world ends not with a bang, but with a downpour. Tornadoes spin through the heart of London, New York cooks in a heat wave that melts tarmac, and Russia freezes under an ever-thickening layer of permafrost. People rally at first—organizing aid drops and evacuating populations—but the weather is only getting worse.

In Durham, mild-mannered academic Danny Fennick has battened down to sit out the storm. He grew up in the Scottish Highlands, so he’s seen harsh winters before. Besides, he has an advantage. He’s a werewolf. Or, to be precise, a weredog. Less impressive, but still useful.

Except the other werewolves don’t believe this is any ordinary winter, and they’re coming down over the Wall to mark their new territory. Including Danny’s ex, Jack—the Crown Prince Pup of the Numitor’s pack—and the prince’s brother, who wants to kill him.

A wolf winter isn’t white. It’s red as blood.

 

Cover Artist: Anne Cain

 

I suppose it is a bit predictable for a Brit to write a book about weather, but there you go! Dog Days is my first shifter novel and I had a blast writing it. I love the characters, obstreperous little sods though they could be when I needed them to behave, and the setting in Durham is one I have a lot of time for. So, welcome to my dystopian Winter Wonderland, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.

And to whet your appetite, here’s an exclusive ‘Dog Treat’ set before the events of Dog Days.

Jack sprawled on the old stone, sunning himself under the pale, early autumn sun in jeans and nothing else. Fresh rank ink stained his skin, picking the hard lines of his ribs in raised, shiny welts. He could feel the poison itching in the ink, the gall scraping his skin as he sweated it out of his pores.

He was seventeen and the heir-presumptive of the Pack, the only challengers of rank left his da and his brother. Life was good. He twisted, scratching his shoulder-blades against the stone, and let himself enjoy the sun, the smell of heather, and the idle thought of getting up and chasing a rabbit.

Or — his ears twitched — a dog.

He rolled off the stone onto his feet, the grass damp against his soles, and waited for Danny to make the rest of the way up the hill.

“I beat Black Mac,”  Jack crowed, hooking an arm around Danny’s neck in a rough hug. Since the night on the beach, Danny had gained two inches on Jack. It made Danny slope and slouch, but Jack just ignored it. “Did you see me, Danny-dog?”

Danny laughed and staggered against Jack, leaning into the embrace. “Everyone saw you.”

“I asked you.”

“Yeah, I saw you,” Danny said. “You stole that knee move from me.”

Jack snorted and shoved Danny away, scruffing his hand over his hair. “There’s not a lot of rules in a wolf fight, Danny, but I think Da would have words if I fought as dirty as you.”

In four years he’d never seen Danny win a fight. Half the time he didn’t even walk away from them, he was dragged. But the wolf clutching his rock-smashed balls, or trying to hold his ear in place long enough for it to grow together, never seemed to think they’d won either.

Danny laughed and then squirmed away, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking serious.

“Jack-”

It wasn’t the first time he’d said Jack’s name with that blend of reluctance and determination. The sort of voice that meant serious talks and having to point out that, while this’d had fun, Danny was still a dog.

This time Danny didn’t give Jack the chance to dodge the hook. He shoved a crumbled square of paper out. “Here.”

It was obvious that Danny had been carrying the letter in his pocket for a while. The paper was creased and recreased, lettering worn off along the folds, and it smelled of Danny’s sweat and skin. Jack gripped it by the corners, ignoring the wind’s attempt to pull it out of his hands, and scanned it impatiently.

“Why are you showing me this?”

Danny shoved his hands into his pockets, hunching his shoulders so they were sharp as wings. “I’ve been offered a place at Leeds University, Jack,” he said.

“So you’re clever,” Jack said, letting the wind take the paper. It kited away, flapping like an injured bird. Danny took a half-step after it and stopped himself. “I didn’t need some humans in a school to tell me that. No one did. Too clever for his own good, that’s what they say about you, Danny.”

He looked down, glasses sliding down along his nose, and grimaced unhappily. “I’m going.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Jack said. “What is there for you, down there?”

Muscles flexed along the sharp line of Danny’s jaw, working under the tanned skin. He shrugged awkwardly and glanced up, eyes bouncing off Jack’s cheekbones. He poked his glasses up his nose, hiding behind the smudged lens. As if, all of a sudden, they were back to strangers playing dominance games.

“A life,” Danny said.

“You’ve a life here.”

The corner of Danny’s mouth tucked up in a rueful grimace. “It’s a wolf’s life,” he said. “I’m not a wolf.”

“Yeah? Well, in case you haven’t noticed, you aren’t human either,” Jack snapped. There was a growl in his voice, the wolf scraping his vocal cords rough. “You can’t go.”

Danny looked up finally, meeting his eyes. There was something almost frantic behind his face as he asked, “Why not?”

“Da won’t let you.”

“He can’t stop me.”

Jack snorted. “If you really think that, you haven’t been paying attention, Danny Dog.”

The wind skirled around them, rattling the long grass and sending a crow tumbling across the sky as it tried to right itself. It had caught Jack’s mood, his black temper chasing clouds in from the north.

Danny looked up and shivered. He couldn’t see the Wild like Jack did, couldn’t pick out the long bodied hounds in the clouds as they harried the North Wind’s heels, but he could feel it. He shivered and shifted, scuffing his battered old trainers over the ground.

“He can’t stop me leaving the pack. That’s in the catechism.”

It was. Of course it was. Danny paid more attention than most who believed. It just wasn’t something anyone did. Wolves crawled up over the wall to beg the old man to take them in, to make them part of his pack, or were banished howling down south for their sins. No one just up and left.

He wasn’t saying the right things. It wasn’t working. He could see that in Danny’s face, the crack in his resolve sealing as he made up his mind. Whatever Danny had wanted when he gave Jack that letter, he wasn’t getting it.

“You’re not going,” Jack said.

Danny set his jaw. “I am.”

Jack could have asked. He could have admitted he didn’t want Danny to go. Not yet. Except the old man’s favourite son didn’t beg a dog for anything. It was weakness. The first step to being tame

“Have you forgotten your place?” Jack asked, stepping into Danny’s space. “You’ll do what I tell you; and I told you: you’re not going.”

The words still weren’t right. Jack gave up on them, and dragged Danny into a rough, hard kiss. It was all teeth and impatience, hands grabbing roughly at each other as they tumbled to the ground. Silvery heather smelled like dust and herbs as they rolled in it, the still raw ink stinging sharply as Danny’s hands scraped over it.

Afterwards, he stretched out on the bed of crushed heather smug that he’d made his point. Danny was going nowhere.

Two days later he was gone.

 

TA Moore genuinely believed that she was a Cabbage Patch Kid when she was a small child. This was the start of a lifelong attachment to the weird and fantastic. These days she lives in a market town on the Northern Irish coast and her friends have a rule that she can only send them three weird and disturbing links a month (although she still holds that a DIY penis bifurcation guide is interesting, not disturbing). She believes that adding ‘in space!’ to anything makes it at least 40% cooler, will try to pet pretty much any animal she meets (this includes snakes, excludes bugs), and once lied to her friend that she had climbed all the way up to Tintagel Castle in Cornwall, when actually she’d only gotten to the beach, realized it was really high, and chickened out.

She aspires to being a cynical misanthrope, but is unfortunately held back by a sunny disposition and an inability to be mean to strangers. If TA Moore is mean to you, that means you’re friends now.

 

Website: www.nevertobetold.co.uk

Facebook: www.facebook.com/TA.Moores

Twitter: @tammy_moore

Dog Days Blog Tour Dates

September 2 – The Novel Approach

September 4 – MM Good Book Reviews –

September 5 – Oh My Shelves

September 6 – Joyfully Jay

September 7 – It’s About the Book

September 8 – Molly Lolly and Kimi-Chan Experience

September 9 – Prism Book Alliance

September 11 – Love Bytes Reviews

September 13 – Boy Meets Boy

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