Tuesday, July 7, 2009

This Tuesday At The Tiki Hut - Nina Pierce

This week's winner is Kytaira!!! Thanks to everyone who stopped by to keep Nina company!


Nina Pierce grew up in a house of readers. So falling in love with books was only natural. In her teen years she found her mother's romance books and became forever hooked on the journey of finding one's true love. Now, if you throw in a dead body and some mayhem, Nina is in reader nirvana.

A few years ago, reading about love wasn't enough. She is now driven to write stories of alpha-males with a chink in their armor and the kick-ass women who fall in love with them. And true to what she loves, more often than not, you'll find some suspense thread running through her plots, hopefully with enough twists to keep her readers turning the pages, staying up late, and burning dinner.

A native of Maine, Nina lives in what she affectionately calls "the great white North". She is fortunate to have married her high school sweetheart and true love twenty-five years ago. They share their lives with three grown children and a menagerie of pets.

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Welcome to the Tiki Hut Nina!
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Out of the Realm of Normalcy
by Nina Pierce

I’ll admit it. I love science fiction. I always have. When my peers were reading Judy Blume I was engrossed in the stories by Anne McCaffrey (Pern Series) and Madeline L’Engle (A Wrinkle in Time). I watched Star Trek with rapt fascination. My imagination soared with the idea of aliens and prickled with the thought of ghosts living in our attic. I hated to think of monsters under my bed, but couldn’t keep myself from watching Frankenstein movies. (I know … I’m totally aging myself here … just pretend you’re not thinking I’m ancient. *wink*) I still enjoy the fantasy. The idea that the world is bigger than my senses can detect. And from the surge of paranormal books being devoured by the reading public … I don’t think I’m alone.

So what is it? What is the allure with everything paranormal? Did this recent flood start again with the Harry Potter craze and move into Twilight or has something always fascinated us about this fantasy world? A place in our imagination where vampires stalk the night and succubi invade our dreams and everything fanciful comes to life.

For me, it’s the stretching of my imagination, the possibility that there’s another dimension that exists around me. Losing myself in a story about a band of werewolf rebels fighting unseen dark forces or a faery realm where wars are fought and babies are borne, well, it just makes me sigh. Now add a love story, a broken heart, a mended relationship and I am in reader nirvana.

This has now carried over to my writing. Paranormal stories give me the opportunity to let my muse play in a world of make believe … to fantasize what it would be like to be saved by a vampire just as I’m about to be mugged on my way home from work … or meet a lion shifter on the plains of Africa … or discover that an alien species is attracted to human females. Oh, the places I can go! And I’ve just dipped my toe in the endless sea of possibilities!

My latest release Shadows of Fire in the Hearts Afire-May anthology (Liquid Silver Books May 2009) is about a military faction of vampires known as RISEN. Their job is to seek out and eliminate rogue vampires who choose not to live complacently with humans. Reese Colton is assigned to a fire station in Northern California with his partner in hopes of discovering why humans and vampires are being burned in mysterious fires. Of course the vampire he’s falling in love with appears to be wrapped up in the crimes and Reese has no idea whether to follow the clues or his heart. The book was a blast to write. The possibilities that opened to me were just plain fun to explore. I hadn’t expected the twists and turns and quite frankly … hated to leave that world. (Pssst … between you and me … I’m thinking I may go back there some day.)

My latest project is a wolf/cougar shifter series that will include at least three books. For those of you familiar with Blue Moon Rising in the Furry, Fluffy & Wild anthology (Liquid Silver Books Sept 2008), I am using the polymorphic shifter premise of Jayda Kynslan and her heart throb of a wolf shifter, Cole Takoda, to create this erotic suspense series. I just love playing in a world unlike my own.

So what is it that fascinates you about these creatures? Or are you one to avoid the paranormal craze? I’m very curious.

Visit Nina Pierce on the web at http://www.ninapierce.com/ or follow her regular blog http://www.ninapierce.com/romanceblog. She’s also found her way to twitter and would love to have you follow her very chatty posts http://www.twitter.com/ninapierce.