Friday, December 28, 2012

Today's Special - - Pamela Palmer

The Dishes are delighted to welcome paranormal author Pamela Palmer to the blog!  A Love Untamed (Dec. 26, 2012) is the seventh book in Pamela's popular Feral Warriors series.  Pamela is joining us today to blog about experiences and how they shape the people we become.

Welcome, Pamela!










Experience Makes the Man (or Woman)

Our past experiences, whether from early childhood, our teen years, or later, can, and often do, affect our perceptions, our actions, and many times who we become as we get older. We are, in essence, a combination of nature and nurture, who we started out changed by all we’ve experienced.

I’ve often wondered who I might be today if I’d grown up in one home, going to school with the same kids from kindergarten through high school. Instead, I grew up moving constantly. My dad was an Air Force pilot until he retired when I started high school. At fourteen, we moved into the eleventh house I’d lived in. Friendships were temporary things to me, but family was everything, even though mine was small—just my parents, my brother, and me. Home meant family, period. Because the house and the city we lived in changed constantly.

Moving all the time formed me, I’m sure of it. I handle change extremely well, as you can imagine. But I was also taught to embrace the changes in our lives by a mother who loved the Air Force life. She grew up in a small town dreaming of travel and adventure. She was the perfect Air Force wife. For decades after Dad retired, Mom claimed that every three years, she and the furniture headed for the front door, ready to move again.

My nomadic childhood may have formed me, but it was happy and left me with few traumas. The only one, really, happened when I was five and we were living in Boulder, Colorado. One day the Chinook winds barreled through Boulder at over 100 mph. Mom called Dad at work—he was in Denver where the winds were mild—and said, “The winds are terrible. I think you need to come home.” Dad told one of his co-workers he was heading home and the man shook his head. “The winds are nothing.” My dad’s reply, “In the eight years we’ve been married, this is the first time Pat’s ever asked me to come home. I’m going.” By the time he entered Boulder, he could hardly keep his big old station wagon on the road. Within an hour of his getting home, the plate glass window in the living room blew out. Then other windows started to go. The house was less than a year old. By the end of the night, my brother’s room, a lower level one of our split-level, was the only one in the house with the windows still intact. We all slept in that one small room that night. I’ve never forgotten it. And to this day, when the wind starts blowing hard, I tense, subconsciously waiting for the windows to break.

Past events, past traumas, change who we are, or at the very least, affect us in ways we often neither realize nor understand. Sometimes, if we’ve been victims of violence or trauma, we know exactly what’s changed us, even if we can’t do anything but live with it.

In A Love Untamed, the heroine, Melisande, is an immortal, an Ilina mist warrior. Yes, she’s virtually indestructible, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be hurt. And she has been. Melisande is over 5000 years old. That’s a lot of time to acquire baggage. And Melisande has baggage, in spades. It’s no wonder her emotional armor is three feet thick, and no wonder no one’s been able to penetrate it. Not until Kieran, the new fox Feral Warrior, takes an interest in her and begins to burrow not just under her skin but beneath those impenetrable barriers. It hurts when defenses shatter. But sometimes that’s the only way to start healing.

The back cover blurb for A Love Untamed:

The newest member of the elite Feral Warriors brotherhood, Fox is eager to prove himself on the frontlines of battle against the Daemons. When paired with the legendary Ilina warrior, Melisande, he expects the fierce beauty to quickly fall under the spell of his quite considerable charm. Instead, he finds himself spellbound by a woman who's his match in every way.

Beneath Melisande's brittle exterior lies centuries of pain and a violent hatred of all shape-shifters--a hatred that slowly crumbles after they're caught in a deadly and cunning Mage trap and she glimpses a surprising depth in her far-too-seductive partner. Their survival demands unconditional trust--and their salvation surrender to a wild, untamed love.

Question for you: Who’s your favorite character (in a book, movie, or television show) with a tortured past? Comment for a chance to win a signed copy of Desire Untamed, the first book in my Feral Warriors series. 

20 comments:

  1. Eve and Roarke, they both have tortured pasts but together can deal with and overcome the memories.

    bacchus76 at myself dot com

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    1. Hey donnas! I love Nora Roberts, but haven't tried her JD Robb series. One of these days, when I have time, I'm going to have to dive into it. I've heard so many great things about Eve and Roarke.

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  2. Welcome, Pamela! I'm out of town but I'll check in when I can. Thanks so much for being with us today.

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  3. Thanks for having me, PJ! I'm out of town, too, and having internet connection problems, so will try to pop in when I can.

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  4. For some reason TV characters came to me first (maybe because I see them every week lol). I was thinking of Castle's partner, Beckett, with the death of her mother, or Jethro Gibbs with the death of his wife and child and The Mentalist has the same theme too. I agree that your childhood definitely has a very strong influence on who you turn out to be. My husband also was raised with his dad in the Air Force and he probably went to 30 different schools in many countries. He is also an only child. And we are total opposites lol.

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  5. Wolfe (Feral) or Vengence (Laurann Dohner's New Species) will be, still waiting on their stories. As of a story I've already read, I'd say it's a tie between Mercury and Dawn (Lora Leigh's Breeds) and both Jag and Olivia's stories (Feral). Below those, there are so many I can't list them.

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  6. Elizabeth Hoyt has a lot of great tortured heroes. One good one is Vale from To Seduce A Sinner.

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  7. Hello and welcome, Pamela! It is lovely to have you dishing with us today. Congrats on your new release! :)

    I'm with Maureen--Elizabeth Hoyt has created some of the best-written tortured heroes. The ones in her Legend of the Four Soldiers series (one of which Maureen mentioned) are especially tortured.

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  8. Thanks for a great post and congrats to Pamela on her book success :) I'm gonna have to second the Roarke nomination.

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  9. Thank for the chance to win Pamela. Congratulations on Fox's release. I will go with Kougar as he suffered for a thousand years thinking his mate was dead.

    sin39ct(at)gmail(dot)com

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  10. Ian Macclean from Brenda Joyce's Master of Time series

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  11. I think your feral warrior jag and olivia are my current favorite. His guilt over his mum, and her guilt over her dad. But love has a way to break you down and build you back up.

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  12. A series that I have been following for a while is by Lora Leigh (her breed series). They are a group of people that are trying to fit into our world. One thing that keeps getting in the way is prejudice. For years they have had to deal with that and after one is dealt with, there is someone else to follow in their footsteps. I also love following Pamela's series. I can't wait to see what else she has in store for us.

    Happy New Year,
    Lynn
    lareynolds0316@gmail.com

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  13. I've just watched WUTHERING HEIGHTS - again - with Tom Hardy as Heathcliff. Talk about tortured. A favorite book of mine & this TV production is superb.

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  14. I have to agree with Mary, Heathcliff is my favorite tortured character! The book version though.
    He is so tortured he goes crazy and takes everyone with him!

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  15. Well I really love Angel from Buffy the Vampire slayer. He is my favorite character with a tortured past.

    perla333@abv.bg

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  16. Oh, eve & roarke is my fave couple. They both have troublesome past, but succeeded in their lives. I highly recommended this series

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  17. I had to smile when you talked about your Air Force upbringing. I can certainly relate to your mom. I grew up in a small town and couldn't wait to see the world. I joined the Peace Corps and spent 3 years doing just that. I came home and married a friend from high school who was in the Air Force as was his dad. The third year we were married, he got stationed to the base in my home town where we spent the next 7 years. Not what I had envisioned. We did have some nice stateside assignments, Colorado Springs being our favorite (know all about those Front Range Winds), and were lucky not to to have to move too often. Now that we are retired, that 3 year itch for a move does kick in. I have to settle for as many trips as we can manage.

    I can't think of any particular character in books to mention. The hero or heroine with the tortured past is my favorite, so there have been many. I think most of my TBR pile fits into that category. Like Catslady, on TV Jethro Gibbs is my favorite with the Mentalist coming in second.

    I like the sound of this series. I am still in the sampling stage with paranormal/fantasy fiction. There is such a wonderful variety available. I have liked most of what I have tried with shifters being my favorite so far. I will be checking my TBR mountain to see if I have any of the earlier books in your series. If not, I will be checking them out. Best of luck with the release of A LOVE UNTAMED.

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  18. Gee - I don't recall a tortured couple - especially in a series. Haven't read Pamela's series yet nor the JD Robb In Death series - maybe that's a goal I should set for 2013.

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