New Release of Fair Game by Taylor Keating w/Guest blog post and review

This week's new release feature I've asked our author(s) to provide a guest blog post. Tyalor Keating is a pseudonym for the writing team of Catherine Verge and Paula Attenburg who each have their individual writing careers as well.

Fair Game is the third in their Guardian series and is available as of today.
And here's a little tidbit that's not well known I came up with the title for this book.

Pretty cool huh  

So Happy Release day ladies

Here's the guest blog

What Were We Thinking?

By Taylor Keating

Taylor Keating is a pseudonym we use because in real life, we’re two separate people.  

More often than you’d think, one of us gets asked about our writing process—usually by someone who knows us both and can’t believe we made it through three books together.  (Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mom…)

Just as in storytelling, we’ve found it’s easiest to show rather than tell.

I’ve selected an excerpt from our newest release in the Guardian series, Fair Game, to illustrate how we work together, and I’m going to explain what was happening as we were putting it together. I opted not to use the book’s opening scene here because my writing partner, who I’ll call WP, is a backstory dumper whereas I’m a sprinkler, and it was a bit of a struggle for both of us to get the right combination. (The only things going through my head were possible locations for hiding her body.) I also worried we’d give away too many spoilers for anyone who might want to read Game Over andMind Games before tackling Fair Game.

Our actual process is fairly straightforward. WP is fastest so she usually writes first, and I’ll take her pages and rework them.  We try for thirty new pages a week. Of those, she’ll write twenty. I’m then adding to what she wrote, or playing with it, and if that doesn’t give us ten more pages, I write a new scene.

This excerpt, however, is something I wrote and WP edited. 

First, a little background.

Our hero, Chase Hawkins, has been pulled out of stasis and back to his body, and he’s been separated from our heroine, River Weston. He’s desperate to find her. After finally receiving the authorization he needs to return to her, he comes home to his apartment to prepare for the journey and finds two intruders waiting for him.

This is Hawk’s first scene in Fair Game.

Dr. Jennings leapt to his feet, clearly uncertain about the welcome he was about to receive. He was slight and wiry, with a boyish face under a trim beard, the kind of man who looked odd with graying hair. He had a true scientist’s fascination with life and possessed an air of innocence that couldn’t be faked. His entire adult years had been spent in classrooms and labs.

“Could he BE any more boring?” WP moaned when she read that.

I love this guy. I admit it, I like smart people. I always hope some of it will rub off on me. He’s the nicest person in the whole story, too. And okay, yes, he’s a bit dull. But Hawk really needed someone in his corner he could trust.

“Spence.” Hawk injected warmth into his greeting to put the scientist at ease. He was still pissed at being left in stasis longer than planned—he didn’t like being a lab rat—but at the same time, it was how he’d met River so he was willing to forgive and forget. But only Spence, who had never in his life done deliberate harm to anyone or anything. The rest of the cryonics world could kiss Hawk’s ass.

“Which one of you has the potty mouth?” our editor asked when she read the original copy. WP looked smugly at me.

Hawk needs to swear, damn it. I’m sure you can sense by now that he’s a bit disillusioned with how this particular experiment has played out. After some discussion, WP and I agreed that we wanted him mad at the world and a little bitter, but not so much so that it blinds him. Spencer Jennings gives that little touch of humanity to his life that keeps him from breaking. If Hawk can’t see the good in people, how can he make sacrifices for them?

But I finally agreed to cut out some of the more superfluous F-bombs throughout. And maybe a few other superfluous words. (Okay, I’ve just discovered a new euphemism I like.)

So far, however, all is still good between WP and me. Let’s skip ahead...

They were here about River. There could be no other explanation.

Wary now, Hawk did not offer his hand. No one touched a Fae unless he was willing to have his thoughts read, and that was something Hawk would never again permit without good reason. (“Ooh!” WP squealed. “Foreshadowing!” Because you know them’s fighting words anytime anyone says “never again.” That’s like begging Karma to bitch slap you.) It had taken him the entire four months since he’d been brought out of stasis to regain the ability to sleep uninterrupted, and even now, he sometimes awoke in the night in a blind rage, ready to fight off whatever new mental torture the Dark Lord had decided to inflict on him.

And that, folks, was the passage that inspired the fight. You have no idea what torture it was to get a passing grade from the info-dumper on that one. What started off as something straightforward and simple turned into a full chapter of useful information.  I refused to reveal too much in dialogue. She wouldn’t let me act it all out. In the end, the editor had her say, too. I think, out of the whole series, this one chapter took the most effort to get it to a point where everyone was happy.  There’s a lot going on. (We laughed, we cried...) You get the idea.

All of which raises a question for both WP and me that we hope you can answer. How many of you prefer dumpers, and how many like sprinklers?

Because the answers will factor into the next series we co-author. ;-)

Happy reading!

here are links to my reviews of the first Game Over and the second Mind Games in the series and a link to their Taylor Keating website.  

So please enjoy the blog post and the reviews of the first two and now my review of Fair Game

My Review of Fair Game

On his Guardian home world after having been released from stasis Chase Hawkins is anxious to return to Earth and to River, his superiors have decided that Earth isn’t ethically ready for the technology they have, the so Chase and his team are ordered to “defuse” it, he now has to not only get to her but to explain what is going to happen.
Before he leaves Chase discovers a insidious plot for Earth and a secret about River’s lineage which leads him to an uneasy alliance with the spiritual leader of the Fae, but he’ll do whatever it takes to get to her.
Earth is on the brink of total destruction after pandemic, war and corrupt malevolent leaders and River is just trying to bide her time until Chase returns by protecting those she cares for, but she’s loosing this battle too when she not only has to worry about the evil military villain still pursing her but now a new virus is spreading and she’s afraid it may have something to do with the hologram program she’s created.
Will Chase and River find each other and the answers to save her world or will it all be lost in the blink of an eye.

The incredibly talented writing team known as Taylor Keating has done it again, blown it out of the sky with this the third in their fantasy/sci-fi/romance Guardian series. They continue to amaze this fan by the imaginative on going storyline which crosses not only genre boundaries but galaxies and planets as well. In this installment they continue the epic romantic saga of their protagonists River and Chase, who’s love for each other and righteous beliefs are stand outs,  but it’s all the minor actors in their play that make the differences too from the evilest of fiends to the purest of hearts and all in between who bring the images and voices from the pages onto the screen in my mind. Her romance continues with an against all odds feel and her love scenes would brighten any dark night.
But to enjoy the full scope of this series they’re best read in order.
Buy the book here visit the author(s) website here

Catherine Verge                                                Paula Attenburg