Primal Bonds releases tomorrow!

MMMMMM!!!!

Primal Bonds
by Jennifer Ashley
Berkley Sensation

When half-Fae, half-Shifter Andrea Gray flees an abusive would-be mate, the only way she is allowed to relocate to the Austin Shiftertown is if a Shifter there claims her as mate.

Sean Morrissey, the Guardian of his clan and all of Shiftertown has a tough job--to send the souls of deceased
Shifters into the afterworld. He volunteers to claim her, but doesn't realize that one look at the gray-eyed, dark-haired Andrea will stir the mating frenzy in him. Even though the mate-claim isn't finalized, Sean will do anything to get Andrea into his life and keep her there, forever.

To read an excerpt, click here.

Excerpt to THE SHADOW WOLF

Here's a sample of my next Nocturne, in bookstores August 25. This is Gabriel's story, THE SHADOW WOLF. (copyright 2011 by Bonnie Vanak)

"The roar of a powerful motorcycle drew her attention to the hotel entrance. A man parked the Harley, drew off a black helmet and swung a muscled leg over the saddle. Megan’s heart raced. The rider’s face was permanently stamped into memory from the photos circulated among Shadows of their worst enemies.

Black liquid sloshed as she slammed down her coffee cup. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping for oxygen.

Gabriel Robichaux.

Oh God. She’d walked straight into a trap. Immobilized, she searched for an exit as he entered the garden’s stone pathway leading to the terrace.

Megan looked around, desperate to escape, but it was too late. If they left now, surely he’d see them. She slid down her seat.

The power and raw charisma he exuded felt like a tornado as he ambled onto the terrace. Tight black leather pants hugged each inch of his rock hard thighs and taut buttocks. A Harley Davidson T-shirt and steel-toed scuffed boots gave him a dangerous air. Stubble shadowing his angular jaw contrasted with his classical good looks, like a biker with the face of an angel. Dark brown hair curled down to his wide shoulders. His mouth was sultry and mobile. Four women sitting at a nearby table gave him the twice-over.

If they only knew what exactly he was, they’d run away screaming. Draicon, like her. Only not like her. Not Shadow, outcast and shunned. He was an Enforcer, who returned escaped Shadow Wolves to their island prison. "

To read the entire excerpt, click here.

More photos from Haiti

From my trip last week. They include a mother living with her children in a tent in the Central Plateau, an area far from the earthquake's epicenter, a modern and sparkling two-story supermarket that had me nervous riding in the elevator after I saw what the earthquake did to the Caribbean Supermarket, where hundreds died, a destroyed building that still lingers like a painful scar in the capital city of Port-au-Prince...

A little girl holding a sapling that is part of a reforestation project, a typical street scene in the city, a child in a warehouse that now serves as a school after the school was destroyed, and a peaceful farming scene in an area where we will be helping farmers with irrigation during the dry season.

Just another crazy day in Haiti...

We started out on the road at 7 a.m. Drove 3 hours north to Grande Saline, visited communities, a water project we installed to combat cholera, talked with families who will be receiving houses from us. One mother watched her house get swept away by last year's hurricane Thomas. Her entire house was swallowed by the ocean and now she lives in a tent.

Drove all over, visited the Central Plateau. We were on so many bad roads and bouncing up and down for so long that I joked that I felt like a pin ball. sprong, sprong, sprong!

That is the key to Haiti. A sense of humor. Haitians have it and use it to survive. And you do it as well when you are on the road, in the field, visiting families, seeing the suffering and the seemingly overwhelming problems. You have little light moments in which you laugh and joke because the work is so hard and the days are so long and you have to laugh. Especially when you return to your hotel 13 hours later and grab a late dinner, after eating nothing all day (when I know I will be on the road in remote areas I do not eat) only to find out the chicken resembles something that was run over by your 4x4 and the french fries are cold.

So you laugh, eat the cold, dead chicken and remember how grateful you are to live in the United States and have a job where you try, not always succeeding, but you try, to make life better for people who only want the same things everyone else has. A decent life, a job, a solid home in which to raise their children, enough to eat, education for their kids, and hope for the future.

Haiti

Been reports of aftershocks, but we haven't felt any. This week we visited a community in the Central Plateau that suffered earthquake damage. People are still living in tents as this area has received little attention.

There are several sand pits used to quarry sand for concrete. During the earthquake, there were slides and 9 men were buried alive.

We will be building houses in one community. The entire area has no water, except for the rainy season when they catch the water in barrels. They have to ride to the next town to purchase water for about $1 for five gallons. The area we visited where one family lives is covered in white salty dust. It looks like snow and creates this eerie vista of dry, ghostly shrubs and trees.

We also visited a reforestation project where they are growing moringa trees, great trees that are being cultivated globally to combat poverty and malnutrition. The leaves can be crushed into a powder and used for baking to increase the nutritional content of food, as they contain vitamins a,b,c and protein. The people maintaining the nursery are all volunteers who want to save their crops and homes from floods. They understand the importance of reforestation.

Today we are going about the town to do food and medical distributions. Saw the palace yesterday, it's still crumbled and leaning, a sad reminder that many things have not changed since the quake last year.

A plane of starving children in Haiti

Leaving for Haiti tomorrow. I have to get up at 3 a.m. to catch the early flight. Gulp.

One thing on the agenda, we are returning to the area in the Artibonite region where the cholera outbreak first began. This photo is a graveyard with unmarked graves of some of the cholera victims.

A relative asked me this weekend what good I have accomplished in my 17+ years of helping Haiti's poor? Why do I keep working at this day job? The country looks like it's getting worse and worse.

I honestly had no real concrete answers. It's a question that haunts me each time I return from a trip. All I could say was that I have to keep trying. For every starving child I meet who ends up dying soon after I leave, there is a another who IS saved.

Someone, I forget whom, put it this way... the amount of children in this world who die from hunger equals nearly 200 plane crashes per day. Can you imagine 200 plane crashes a day? The media would crawl all over the story. Yet each day, airplanes filled with starving children crash all over the world and they die in silent suffering. We can't save them all. But we can save some.

Even one is worth the effort, isn't it? If you were the mother of that child, I know what your answer would be.

Have a good week, all. Also, if you are in the Boca Raton area, be sure to check out a terrific booksigning by authors in my Florida Romance Writers chapter this Saturday, Feb. 12. Glades Road Branch Library, 20701 95th Avenue South, Boca Raton, FL. The event starts at 12:30 p.m.

Authors include Heather Graham, Allison Chase, Nancy Cohen, Linda Conrad, Marcia King-Gamble, Traci Hall, Karen Kendall, Michael Meeske, Aleka Nakis, Kathy Pickering, Sue Peek, Mary Ricksen, Mona Risk, Carol Stephenson, Cynthia Thomason, Jan Washburn, Patrice Wilton and Pearl Wolf.

For more information, click here.

The "Lost" manuscript

Finished with my deadline, woo hoo! Turned in all three Nocturne short stories yesterday. Three connected stories written in three months. Now I understand and empathize with authors who write back to back books.

I'm taking a writing break, and went through some computer files. I found an old manuscript of an Egyptian historical never published before. It's called The Lynx and the Lost Mummy. The hero is Lord Smithfield, Katherine's father from The Tiger & the Tomb. The heroine is a secondary character in The Tiger & the Tomb.

Reading over it now to make revisions and trying to decide what to do with it. I'll let you know when I do!