Happy Birthday!

Happy 6th Birthday to my Amazing Son. How did you get to be six??

The Sounds Of Our Life

One of the millions of things that have stuck with me since the unexpected passing of my father-in-law earlier this year, was the statements my sisters-in-law made about the absence of certain sounds from his house. The way he cleared his throat could be heard echoing through the whole house. The way he brewed coffee in the morning.

For some reason, this has been resonating with me and in my day-to-day life I seem to be preoccupied with focusing on the noises I hear everywhere. For example, when I spent the day at my own parents' house last week I started to listen to the sounds my father made from across the house or the way their dishwasher has always sounded, even when I was a child.

In my house, as I sit here right now, I can hear my baby (who is not really a baby anymore at nearly 2 years old) saying 'All Done' and the sound of cleaning fluid being sprayed on the counter (thank you honey!) in the kitchen. I was awoken this morning by the sound of the cat meowing for food before any of us had gotten up.

I don't include sound in my writing all that often. Smell, taste, touch--yes. But sound, not as much and it is a pivotal sense. Usually, if its important that a character hear something, I write it in. Otherwise, I haven't spent that much time thinking about it.

From now on, there will be sound in my books as this writer has discovered how much she counts on hearing certain things every day.

How about all of you? What do you hear?

Six Sentence Sunday

This week is from my re-issued and re-worked Love Beyond Time. Available here. Please join all the authors from Six Sentence Sunday as we celebrate and share our writing.

She belongs to you, and I leave her in your care, Kal.

The thought came from nowhere and he quickly pushed it away. Kal had no time for anything else that could be construed as strange at that moment. She was not his, she was human and she was, at the very least, pushing every protective urge in his body. He had to be careful or he might start howling at the sky.

"Whoever chased you has left."

Release Day! Love Beyond Time!

Yay! So I'm so excited to introduce all of you to The Outsiders! The first book in the series, Love Beyond Time, has released today! If you are interested, you can buy it here. Or from Third Party sellers.

Born one half of a perfect pair, Kal has spent his life believing his other half is gone. But when fate thrusts Isabelle into his arms, he will have no choice but to become the man he was destined to be. That is, if he can battle his own demons first.



Not willing to accept her heritage as an Outsider, Isabelle tries to hide from the truth. But when Kal’s life is on the line, she will have to step forward and embrace her powers or watch everything she has come to love disappear.

Excerpt--

Abraxas Moore stared one more time at the unforgiving clouds forming above him. The weather would soon become perilous, and he knew he had very little time until they caught him. Even the Green Hills, the place that had sheltered him and his kind for centuries--their home--was no longer safe.

The rain that he was sure would start at any moment would not be life renewing. It was not a sign of rebirth, and he knew with a near perfect certainty it was not even natural in its origins. Rather, it had been conjured by those who sought to kill him as a means to draw him out into the open. They hoped he would make a mistake and fail at his task. Then they would be able to trap and kill him.

Most disturbing, however, was he knew they would succeed in their task.

His role as leader of his people, not one he ever truly sought, weighed heavily on him that night, and he knew not even the love of his wife, Niki, would sustain him through what was to come. The prophecy was no longer something that would eventually happen, but was actually occurring in front of his eyes.

Time had finally caught up with them.

After centuries of very little change, his people were facing almost immediate destruction, and it had fallen to him to somehow find a way to help them survive what would be certain annihilation.

Ironically, the storm that had come out of nowhere this evening had been the final sign he needed to indicate their impending doom. When an Outsider stopped being able to predict the weather then it really was the end of the world.

How would humanity last even another decade without them around to silently keep the balance of lightness and darkness in order? His people had thrived, for centuries by walking the lines of grey that fell between the two extremes of Good and Evil. They kept order and balance in their little space in the universe.

They always had and he had hoped they always would.

Oh sure, they may have slightly pushed things towards the side of Good whenever possible. They were, after all, not Gods or Deities who could see the fabric of time and know the outcome of decisions they made before they made them. They were humans--of a sort--with another power, another layer, to their minds that allowed them to see what most humans could not--all things were connected.

Time, energy, life, and even death all flowed on the same strings of current, like a sound wave or an electrical wire, and they had been used or manipulated by his people since the dawn of time to keep things in order. This had been their sacred duty since creation, and it was the obligation they would all be forfeiting with their deaths in no short amount of time.

Without them, it was likely there would be chaos. Humanity would fall in this dimension. Chaos. Enslavement. Famine. Death. Evil would finally win its battle to control all things. Good would stand no chance of prevailing because they wouldn't see the 'bad guys' coming until it was too late to stop them.

His people had forgotten they were not Gods. He was to blame for this, as he was to blame for so many other mistakes over his short reign. If there was a way to fix things, he would gladly do whatever it took to complete the task. But alas, the chanting had stopped for him, and he knew he was out of the precious currency known as time.

Even transporting backwards into the past seemed to be out of the question. It was as if a wall had been erected to keep his kind from reaching back to that moment when all things had gone awry.

He should have been paying better attention.

Clenching his fists at his side, Abraxas stomped across the grass from his small cottage home towards the top of Windfelt Hill. What would the local population think when the barriers fell and they suddenly realized they had been living side by side with unknown people for generations?

The wind blew, pushing his blond hair into his face and since he couldn't see, it made it exceptionally hard to proceed to his destination.

It was absolutely essential he get up the hill before the sun went down and he was plunged into darkness. He needed to place his ritual staff upon the hill and call to the heavens for help. That is if they hadn't abandoned him and could still hear his pleas for his people. Was anyone up there still listening to the Outsiders or was it too late?

The grass chomped below his feet. It was still winter, and spring hadn't made its first pushes to thaw out his part of the world. Ice sat atop the grass, changing its color from its natural green to a more transparent blue. It crunched below his well-worn boots. Niki had started mending them, begging him to actually acquire a new pair, before she had taken off with their daughter to hide with the others.

Perhaps he should have stopped her, but it had seemed futile. Let them go. Let them all go and see if we can hide the children was what he had ultimately decided.

Finally reaching his destination, Abraxas stopped to look around him. He had known the top of this hill intimately since he was a child.

Windfelt Hill was the outer ring of their boundary. To cross over the top of the barrier and over to the other side was to cross into the land of humanity. No amount of power, his or anyone else's, could shield his people for very long from the humans if they crossed this hill, which was why in the past only a select few were chosen to make the trek.

Last month, all of his people, with the exception of him, had opted to cross. His job wasn't done. He didn't have the luxury of leaving. Not until he had exhausted every option. If the Darkness knew where they were, then it was time to be somewhere else. They had decided their strength no longer held in numbers but in small hidden groups that were far from each other, far from the hills and woods that had hidden them and nourished them. It was their last desperate attempt to keep this annihilation of their people at bay and it made him crazier than he cared to dwell on that the whole of their society had opted to run away than stay and fight. Why was he the only one who could see it was better to stay and fight than turn and run?

He wondered how they were all faring out there in the world and once again he felt the pull to Niki and the unrelenting desire to throw away all of his responsibilities and join her in her hiding place. So maybe he wasn't that different from the others when it came down to it. He wanted the family life too. Their daughter was a month older and she aged without him there to watch her do it. A lump formed in his throat and he swallowed it away. He had thought they would never have children. They should have been too old. One lone tear slipped from his left eye and he brushed it away. She was growing up without him and it truly made his insides burn.

CONTEST!! NAME TWO CHARACTERS!

Have you read my YA series? Yes? AWESOME. No? Well, now would be the time. Why you might ask? Because I am running a contest. E-mail me and tell me who the love of Rachel's life is and why. I will enter you in a contest to name in the third book in the series. Two major characters. A male and a female and only YOU will know who they are ahead of time.

Interested. E-mail me at rebecca@rebeccaroyce.com Winners will be selected randomly from the answers received.

How Much is Too Much?

Right now, I am currently writing four series. One of them has two books left in it (Westervelt). One of them has three books to go. (Warrior). One of them has six books (Outsiders) and one has an indefinite amount (Conditioned.)

What is my problem, you might ask? My muse always wants to be writing all of them at the same time. Realistically, this doesn't work for me. I have to concentrate on one thing at a time or everything goes askew. Its just too much for me to handle that degree of focus.

How about all of you? If you write, can you write more than one thing at a time? Can you read more than one book?

Two Releases To Announce

July 30th...

August 5th...