Guest Lynn Cahoon

Lynn Cahoon is back and she talks about one of my favorite topics.

Welcome back, Lynn.

Five Reasons I Love Paranormal

by

Lynn Cahoon

We’ve got spirits, yes we do, we’ve got spirits, how about you?

Change up the old high school cheerleading chant and you have a call to the paranormal or urban fantasy authors of the world.  I love my other worldly characters, especially if they live in a world that mirrors my own.  Ghosts, witches, trolls, or even the fae can make appearances on the small town streets of a mysterious Idaho town or the city streets of St. Louis.  So what is it about paranormal that draws us in, even if it’s for a sparkly vampire? 

Here’s my top five reasons.

#5 – Paranormal appeases the different in all of us. We don’t have to be the head cheerleader or the quarterback to be cool, we can be the witch who doesn’t know her power or the one with an imaginary friend who’s a fairy.  My favorite books growing up fed the fact that the main characters and I just didn’t fit in. 

#4 – Dark Shadows. The original. Give me a creepy run down castle surrounded by rocky cliffs (the better to throw yourself off my dear) add in a sweet, innocent governess, and you have me hooked. 

#3 – LOTR – Add in a quest, one to save the world or just your family, and, anyone can be a hero, even a big footed hobbit.  The fact there were very hot, human heroes in the mix didn’t hurt. 

#2 – It’s a fantasy. If someone gets killed, it’s not the neighbor who seemed to be such a nice man who fed his roses his own secret fertilizer. Or the guy who thinks it’s okay to shoot up a theater full of people. Sometimes I think there is too much reality in reality. 

#1 – Anything’s possible. That’s the best reason to read (and write) paranormal.  I love the promise of a happy ever after with my romance and the tease of another world with my paranormal.  Love reading Heinlein and Asimov as a teenager, they made me think.

So there’s my top five. What are your reasons? 

Lynn Cahoon is a contemporary romance author with a love of hot, sexy men, real and imagined. Her alpha heroes range from rogue witch hunters, modern cowboys, or hot doctors, sexy in scrubs. And her heroines all have one thing in common, their strong need for independence. Or at least that’s what they think they want.  She blogs at her website www.lynncahoon.wordpress.com

Lynn can also be found at:

Goodreads -http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5857424.Lynn_Cahoon

Twitter - https://twitter.com/LynnCahoon

Facebook -https://www.facebook.com/LynnCahoonAuthor

website - http://lynncahoon.wordpress.com/

Now about Lynn's latest book.

 

Blurb for A Member of the Council

A rogue hunter, a clueless witch and a mission to save an unknowing world.

Parris McCall, owner of the dive bar, The Alibi, has finally constructed a life where her little quirks don’t show or matter to anyone. As for her grandmother's warnings that she’s different, well, she'll cross that bridge if she comes to it. But when Ty walks into her bar, both lives are instantly changed.

Ty Wallace loves his life. How could he not? He’s a powerful human lawyer by day and the Magic Council's rogue witch hunter by night. But after he agrees to substitute on his secretary’s dart team, all hell breaks loose. Now Ty has to help Parris admit who she is before her long-lost relatives kill her. 

A Member of the Council is available at:

 

Lyrical press - http://lyricalpress.com/a-member-of-the-council/

e -Book http://www.amazon.com/A-Member-Council-ebook/dp/B00A262YW4

Looking for Aliens

On our way home from Arizona, we took a side trip to Roswell, New Mexico. I’ve heard of Roswell for years. Okay, who hasn’t heard of the “Roswell UFO Incident” in 1947 when a spacecraft containing E.T.’s buddies crashed in the nearby desert? True or not? Stories of conspiracies and cover-ups abound. Since I write science fiction romance, I had to see the town for myself. So I convinced Hubs to make the detour. Like the good guy he is, he indulged my whimsy.

After all the stories about Roswell, I’m not sure what I expected—certainly not a rather large city that looked like any other city. Then I saw for a sign at fast food restaurant proclaiming “Aliens Welcome” and gift shops selling “UFO and Alien Stuff” and little green guys with big heads and huge eyes decorating businesses. What fun!

When I discovered the UFO Museum and Research Center, I knew we had to go there. The amount of newspaper clippings, first-, second- and third-hand accounts of the incident was astounding. After reading a few, my eyes started to glaze over. Did a spaceship from another planet (or even another galaxy) really crash there? Sure makes you wonder. Then you have to wonder why would extraterrestrials want to visit Earth in the first place? If we aren’t capable of traveling beyond our own moon, we sure don’t have technology they could use. Or maybe they were tourists, checking out neighboring planets. Anyway, the museum was fun. I found one alcove particularly interesting. It contained statements from famous people—like Presidents Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter who believe in life elsewhere in the universe. See, I am not alone.

Prior to that little side trip, we saw the National Radio Astronomy Observatory Very Large Array. While Hubs wasn’t impressed with the UFO Museum, the VLA really piqued his interest. Again, I’d heard of it or rather one like it in the movie Contact. Finding it was a challenge. The observatory could benefit from better signs. That being said, it was worth turning around twice.

What’s so special about—or rather what is—the VLA? It’s 27 radio antennas that look like huge (each 82 feet in diameter and weighs 230 tons!) satellite dishes all pointed at the sky. Now that was impressive. The antennas collect and combine radio waves from celestial objects (stars, planets, asteroids, etc.). Now I’m not a scientist and I don’t understand how they do it, but just seeing the array in person was truly awesome. How I wish we’d visited on the first Saturday of the month for a tour. Are they listening for communication from extraterrestrials? Are they sending out signals to the extraterrestrials? Again, that reminded me of a movie. (If you follow my blog, you know I’m a movie-aholic. lol) In Battleship, alien scouts try to use an array in Hawaii to “call home” and tell their friends and relatives to come invade Earth.

Kidding aside, I’m glad we got off the Interstate for the first two days of our journey home. Along with Roswell and the VLA, we saw vistas like the Salt River Canyon in Arizona, the high desert complete with dust storms in New Mexico and the tallest grain elevators I’ve ever seen in Texas. 

Unfortunately, no aliens came out to play.

Sneak Peek Sunday - Switched, Too

Welcome to Sneak Peek Sunday where we share six paragraphs to pique your interest. Here's a peek at my second sci-fi romance, Switched, Too. But first, a tiny bit of background. Downsized astronaut candidate Scott Cherella gets the chance of a lifetime--to go into space. He just has to pretend to be his twin, a starship captain.

     Scott Cherella forced himself to stay calm while all hell broke loose. He’d barely recovered from being yanked off Earth, sliced-and-diced into microscopic particles by a transport beam then reassembled aboard a starship—all particles, hopefully, in their appropriate places.

     He took a deep breath and willed his excitement not to show. The command center was larger than he expected, approximately three hundred square feet in area, wider across and sloping from aft to fore.

     Holy Moley. He couldn’t get over it. He was on the bridge of a starship.

     His heart raced. The tension in the room was palpable. The ship was in danger of attack and all he could think about was how thrilled he was to be there. He had to pull himself together, put into practice his military training and assess the situation like the commander he was supposed to be.

     He quickly scanned the room. The science station was aft and to port, communications starboard. Just as the diagrams indicated. Helm was fore and center. Directly in front of the helm—navigation—position was an enormous viewscreen.

     Oh, my God. Space, up close and personal.

Switched, Too is available at: Amazon ~ Barnes & Noble ~ Kobo  ~  Smashwords

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