The book that ate my brain…and my new me

Hi. I’m Shiloh Walker. I’m also J.C. Daniels. And I have a new book to tell you about…it’s a book that ate my brain.

Literally. Well, not literally…then it would be a zombie book, not a smart-ass warrior woman book.

But it felt like it consumed my brain.

For the past few years, I’d been wanting to expand on the world I briefly introduced with A Stroke of Dumb Luck. (click the link…when you’re done reading my post… the short story is free!)

Kit Colbana, half human, half aneira (think Amazons). All smart ass. Good with weapons, not always so good at making wise choices—after all, she’s taking a job that might get her killed. Hey, if she succeeds, she gets $50,000. But, still… the job? Not ideal. Her heart is in the right place, though and she’ll do her damnedest to see a job through.

The start of the book sat on my laptop for a couple of years.

Then, for some reason, in January, the book exploded out of my head. Literally.

Writers usually keep track of their progress by word count. 1000 words=1k, 2000 words=2k…a full-length book is about 90k, give or take, depending on the publisher.

This book went from about 5k to 85k…in the span of a week. The book would not shut up. Kit would not shut up. Damon (I’ll tell you about him in a minute) would not shut up. Jude, when he came around, he didn’t wanna shut up, either.

I would be trying to sleep and this book was clawing its way out of my skull.

It literally is the book that ate my brain.

And I was glad when it was done because I knew that wasn’t going to happen again.

Then it did.

A month later, with the second book.

But I don’t want to talk much about book 2, because it’s all about book 1 right now…previously titled Rules of the Game, the first book in the Colbana files series is releasing next week. It’s called Blade Song.

Main character…Kit. Other important character…Damon. She calls him Demon, the demonic Damon, and the asshole, depending on her mood.

Here…snippet!

The outer house of the Green Road witches met at a ramshackle old place that looked like it had been built to withstand hurricanes, wild witchcraft and werecreatures of all kinds.

And it looked like it had done all of those things and more.

I slid my sword into my sheath before I started toward the house.

“You think they’ll let you take that in there?”

“Yep.”

The disbelieving look in eyes was enough to have me biting back a laugh.

“The Green Road witches are crazier than most of them,” he said, keeping his voice low. “They only allow combat if you’re one of their warrior-trained ones, and everybody else is expected to be a pacifist. You carrying a blade in there is practically a declaration of war.”

“Really?”

He dragged his hands up and down over his face. “You just like seeing me have to fight over your cute ass.”

“Do me a favor and quit referring to my ass in any way,” I said.

He pushed around me as we reached the door.

“Damon, damn it.”

He paused and shot a look at me. “Wow. You did remember my name.”

The door blew open before…

So there ya go…the story of the book that ate my brain, written by J.C. Daniels (aka Shiloh Walker). Proof of just how much it ate my brain… I’m still trying to get over the damage it did to me.

When I came to the decision that I needed to pick up a new pen name, I was tossing things around and decided on the name in about two hours. I picked the J. C. D. thing because all of them are plays on the names of people who very, very important to me… my kids. Don’t ask…I don’t give out their names. But I wanted to use their names, in a way. And up until a few after I’d done the cover for my first J.C. Daniels book that I realized I shoulda swapped the initials. I sound like my friends Jaci Burton and JC Wilder, which was totally not intentional. I should have made myself C.J. Daniels. Sigh.

Read more about Blade Song…

Shiloh Walker/J.C. Daniels

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