EXPLORING NEW WORLDS

It's my pleasure to again have Bestselling author, Terry Spear, visiting with the first book in her new series about Jaguars! Savage Hunger made me purr in contentment. I'm looking forward to book 2, Jaguar Fever.

Have you ever been somewhere really different that you couldn't see enough of because you just didn't have the time, but you would have liked to have just sat down and soaked up the essence of the place? Every sensory detail from the way it looked, to smelled, the feel of the place, the sounds there, even the way the air tastes?

I’m so excited to take you to the jungle, where I set this month’s release, Savage Hunger and some of the next story, Jaguar Fever (Aug 2013)!

I used to live across from one—not called a jungle on the map, but what do mapmakers know when you live across the street from one and can find all the neat jungle-like stuff right there!

The heat, the humidity, the giant mosquitoes, the poisonous snakes—water moccasins, rattlesnakes, alligators, no-see-ums, snapping turtles, feral pigs, tortoises, you name it, we had it. We explored the jungle-like swamps when I was a kid seeking adventure and making up worlds as I went.

I never imagined I’d write about the Amazon or the rainforest in Belize and draw on some of those “feelings” I’d experienced while living in Florida. I read where one visitor to the Amazon said he never saw as many venomous or harmless snakes in the Amazon as he did in Central Florida!

But no monkeys where I lived. Bears, yes. No cats, though in the Everglades, the panther roams the swamps.

Wilkimedia

My jungle was filled with the raucous sound of insects and of birds calling to one another, the same as in the jungle in South and Central America. One year, we had a flock of colorful parrots land in our tree! Just as though we were living in the South American jungle. They rested there for a few minutes, and then took off again on their migratory flight to somewhere else.

I've been to Busch Gardens in Florida. I've seen the parrot shows, which are remarkable, and floated down a river on a glass bottom boat filled with alligator, the boat moving under low hanging branches, one with a snake coiled around a sturdy limb. The boatman brought us close so we could see the massive snake. The branch was dripping with Spanish moss and I worried to death the snake would fall off into the boat and we’d all have to jump into the alligator-filled river. I made reference to such an idea when Kat, the heroine of Savage Hunger, was thinking about what would happen if she shifted into a jaguar on a river boat and all the people made a hasty retreat into the caiman-filled water. See where I get my ideas from? Real life!

It was NOT a Disney excursion either where the snakes, and alligators, and pirates are pretend.

Oh, sure, you say—but did you ever see a water moccasin or a rattlesnake where you lived? My father once pulled a minnow bucket from our canal, intending to go fishing with his buddies. No minnows were inside, but he did one cottonmouth with venomous fangs curled up inside the bucket. Cottonmouth is another name for water moccasin. And a rattlesnake? A couple of boys came pounding on our door, showed us the five-foot long rattlesnake they’d killed in our front yard and asked if they could keep it.

I guess they figured since it was on our property, it was ours. We figured they’d killed it, it was THEIRS, and by all means, take it AWAY!

Those are just a few experiences from my “jungle” growing up. 

• What about you? Are you prepared to take a wild trip to the jungle?

Thanks so much, Sia, for having me here today, and one lucky person that answers my question will have a chance to win a copy of Savage Hunger.US/Canada Addresses Only.

 

BUY: AMAZON, B&N, INDIBOUND

SAVAGE HUNGER 

As a jaguar he is graceful and gorgeous...

Speedy and stealthy...

Fierce, independent, and wild...

As a man he is passionate and powerful...

Willful and wonderful...

And he'll stop at nothing to protect what's his...

The Amazon jungle holds many dangers, as Kathleen McKnight well knows after her mission to bring down a drug cartel goes horribly wrong, leaving her the only survivor on her team. Determined to find the mysterious man who saved her, she returns to the jungle a year later only to find it holds more secrets than she could have ever imagined. 

Since saving Kathleen, jaguar shifter Connor Anderson hasn't been able to get her out of his mind. When she returns to the jungle to seek him out, he only knows one thing: that he must claim her for his own. 

USA Today bestselling author Terry Spear has captured hearts worldwide by wrapping the realities of nature into the glorious romance of the wild. Now, she turns her award—winning imagination from the sexy werewolf hunt to the intense sizzle of jaguar shape-shifters.

Terry Spear has written a couple of dozen paranormal romance novels and two medieval Highland historical romances. Her first werewolf romance, Heart of the Wolf, was named a 2008 Publishers Weekly’s Best Book of the Year, and her subsequent titles have garnered high praise and hit the USA Today bestseller list. A retired officer of the U.S. Army Reserves, Terry lives in Crawford, Texas, where she is working on her next werewolf romance and continuing her new series about shapeshifting jaguars. For more information, please visit www.terryspear.com, or follow her on Twitter, @TerrySpear. She is also on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/terry.spear .