Hello, I’m Rob Rosen. I’ve written romantic-comedy novels about zombies and werewolves, vampires and any number of assorted bad-ass drag queens, but for my 11^th novel, Fierce, I decided to touch on the superhero genre, only with a decidedly different twist. Lucas, my novel’s hero, has major super powers, powers that he wants to use to do good in the world. He’s tall and handsome, and has one hell of an awesome crime-fighting costume. On the surface of things, he’s your standard superhero. This book veers into newer territory in that Lucas must face the realities of actual life, that to do good you sometimes have to do bad, that to put the criminal away, you might have to hurt people, even innocent people. Life is not black and white; crime-fighting isn’t either. What if you have to kill the bad guy? What if you have to put someone you know in jail? What if your powers were actually meant do evil things? Tack on trying to protect the world and your family at the same time, all while going to college, leaving home for the first time, trying to find love as you try and find yourself, and Fierce, I hope, really does sail the genre into uncharted superhero waters.

 

For some more background, here’s a little blurb for you:

Lucas has a typical life — apart from being abandoned as a baby, raised by wolves, and having super powers. Still, inside, he feels like two people, both vying for control of himself. He’s a superhero and a nerdy college freshman. He’s both feral and tame. He wants to do good in the world and, at the same time, he wants to do nothing. And most of all, he wants to find his birth parents.

 

In this comedic tale of romance, mystery, and adventure, our hero is joined by his hunky boyfriend, his acerbic boss, an uptight college science professor, and his ex-boyfriend/once crime-fighting partner — not to mention a whole pack of wolves — to help foil his nemesis and uncover the secrets of his past to save his future.

 

If you find the above intriguing, I hope you’ll pick up a copy of the book, which is available in all e-formats and as a paperback. Here are a few purchase links:

Amazon

JMS

Goodreads

 

Oh, and if you need some further persuading, here’s a little bit of the very beginning of Fierce:

“Help!”

I know, strange way to start a story, me screaming at you like that, but they say you need to grab the reader’s attention right off the bat. Help! I figured would do just that. Plus, you know, help was just what I needed. I mean, I was locked in a cage, my life in jeopardy of being snuffed out—which was par for the course, but still. In any case, help! seemed right on up there with the greats: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; Call me Ishmael; Are you there, God? It’s me, Margaret. And I only needed four little letters to get my point across. Take that, Judy Blume!

Anyway, back to that aforementioned help I was shouting for. No, it wasn’t my best moment, to be certain, what with me being a superhero and all. Fierce. That’s my name; pleased to meet you. Though I’m guessing you’ve probably already heard of me, me being famous and all. And yes, that’s me blowing my own horn. Louis Armstrong should blow a horn so well, in fact.

All that being said, and in case you’ve been living under a rock and have yet to hear of my, you know, greatness, here’s my story in a nutshell:

As a baby, I was raised by wolves in the mountainous wilds of Montana.

I have super powers. Like, seriously super.

I catch bad guys for a living. For free! Minus, of course, the well-merited and desperately sought-after publicity.

But, you ask, raised by wolves? Come on now, Fierce, really? Does that actually happen? Wolves eat babies, don’t they? I mean dingoes do—or so I’ve heard, a la one Miss Meryl Streep—so it stands to reason that wolves do, too. Though not these wolves. These were tame wolves. Well, tameish. They were zoo wolves, hand-raised by humans. Except, they escaped during a freak storm, back to the wilds from whence their ancestors came, never to be seen again.

I saw them right off the bat, though. Well, sawish. I mean, I was a baby at the time, my eyesight not what it is today—which is freakishly strong, by the way. And yes, toot, toot, my horn doth bloweth, yet again. Gabriel in the heavens up above turns green with envy at my tooting abilities. Oh, and in case you hadn’t already surmised it, superhero, at least in my case, equates to super ego. Freud missed out big time on the likes of yours truly.

But I digress. Back to the wolves.

Best I could figure it—seeing as, again, I was just a baby at the time—the initial wolf pack consisted of ten wolves that once inhabited a small zoo on the outskirts of Billings, Montana. One fateful day, a tornado hit. A big one. Huge even! Dorothy would’ve shit her panties it was so friggin’ massive. Anyway, from what I’ve read, the storm struck quite suddenly, too suddenly for the folks at the zoo to be able to corral all the animals beforehand, so, when the fencing to the wolves’ enclosure twisted and uprooted, out they sped. The zoo figured they died in the storm, except, well, duh, they didn’t. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be hearing this account right now, right? Then help! would’ve been lost to the cosmos. A truly sad thought, I know.

Now then, wolves, it should be noted, are wily and smart creatures, so the first thing they did was run. Free at last, free at last! In other words, once the storm broke, they found themselves as far away from humans as they could get. Eventually, they wound up along the outskirts of Granite Peak, which is the highest natural point in all of Montana, the tenth highest state highpoint in the nation. Granite Peak is also the second most difficult state highpoint to climb because of the generally poor weather and equally poor delineated pathways. Montana being so sparsely populated to begin with, the wolves could easily escape and literally never again be spotted. Which is just what they did, until, ultimately, they were spotted by the tiny likes of me. Fate! Or, you know, simply pure dumb luck. Depends on if your glass is half full, I suppose.

 

Enjoy!

 

Rob Rosen

www.therobrosen.com

 

Rob is generously giving away a copy of his new release “Fierce”.

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