Meet Team Fire/Energy

Catie - Forbidden Passions Reviews
Jeannette - Walking on Bookshelves
Blood Sweat and Books- Blood Sweat and Books
Ruth- Books are my way of Living
What's Beyond Forks- What's Beyond Forks
Lisa- Book Worm Lisa
Megan- Paperback Princess
Larissa- Teacher write book aholicohmy
Heather- Red Headed Book Worm
Mindy- books complete me
Tammy- Books, Bones & Buffy
Heather- Hezzi-D's Books and Cooks

Who is HOT Enough to Play Sykes in a Movie?

Let me start by saying that there has been nothing said about turning Betrayed into a movie.  However, it would be a fantastic one!  So, here are a few pics. of who I (Jeannette) think should play Sykes in the movie.  What are your ideas?  

Justin Hartley

All images found on different public internet sites and can be found by searching Justin Hartley images.

Justin who has played Oliver Queen aka Green Arrow on the CW's Smallville will be back as Green Arrow on his own show coming this fall.  Woo hoo!!

So tell me who you think should play who including other characters in the book.

More great pictures of SKYES

What more could you ask for?  A hottie who loves to read.

UMM.  How Yummy is this.

Look at those beautiful Hazel eyes.  I could just get lost in them.

NAMING CHARACTERS in FICTION

Somebody once asked me where I get names for my characters and I laughed. The fact is I suck at naming characters. I know of authors, who come up with unusual names like Katnis, Phury, Rhage…and I envy them. How the heck do they do it? Dream them up? J. R. Wards, author of Black Dagger Brotherhood, said she kept hearing the name Wrath in her head as she wrote her first BDB book, or was it before, I don’t remember. Stephanie M had a dream about Twilight, did she hear the names too or just teh story? Unfortunately, my characters only talk to me about their stories, not their names. Those I have to find on my own and make sure it suits their personalities. On a good day, I check names on heat list of my kids’ swim meet. Lame, I know. On a bad day, I use the local phone book. Even lamer. My teenage daughters keep telling me to use online name generators. Maybe I will for my next series.

For the Guardian Legacy series, I did something different. Since my characters are part fallen angels and part humans, I used a blend of normal names and angelic names, mythological names and demonic ones. A lot of angelic names tend to end with –iel or –el, like, Amitiel, Karael, Bariel, Eramiel, Ophiel…

Any fans of the TV series Supernatural here? If you are, you know of Cass (Castiel), the angel helping the Winchester boys.

The Winchester Boys

Angel Castiel

Lil, my MC, has a master trainer called Master Haziel, Bran’s father is Tariel and Izzy’s boyfriend is Rastiel. Demon names, on the other end, don’t have a pattern. So I make them up as I go, except Valafar. According to demonology, Valafar is a duke, commander of ten legions. Once I heard him go on and on in my head, his arrogance and contempt for humans so blatant, Valafar seemed like a perfect name for him.

Anyway, back to my main characters. Lil is short for Lilith, as in Lilith in most religious books, mythologies, and folklore. My favorite Lilith story is from Jewish folklore, which describes her as the first wife of Adam, created from the same clay. She refused to be subservient to him, left the Garden of Eden and refused to return after mating with archangel Samael. It seemed like the perfect name for a strong young lady, a conqueror, a leader.

Then there’s Bran the Blessed, son of the sea god Llyr in Celtic lore and grandson of Belenos, the Sun God. His name means Raven, and the raven was considered his symbol. How could I not name my character Bran when he has powers over water and the first time Lil saw him, he was hanging out with ravens. Sykes is Yorkshire, pretty normal, and Remy is short for Remus (named after Remus who founded Rome), and Ares, Lil’s grandfather, is named after the Greek God of War.

What unusual names in fiction have you seen? Does it frustrate you when you can’t pronounce them? Do you need authors to explain how to pronounce them?

The story behind the Guardian Legacy series

Now available wherever books are sold online



Betrayed-coming to a store near you June 2012



The Guardians’ background is a blend of various mythologies and Judeo-Christian beliefs. Before I started writing Awakened, I came across the kris dagger, an Indonesian weapon believed to be forged from an element from the heavens and one from the earth. The Indonesians/Malaysians believed that the kris has a spirit attached to it, which could be good or bad. So when owned by an evil person, it did evil things, but it did good things when owned by a good person. The kris could protect the wielder from an attack or warn them if there was going to be harmed.

The Kris Dagger became my Excalibur. I wanted a young man to wield it and even started plotting it from his POV, but I kept hearing a girl’s voice in my head—an outsider, someone who wasn’t part of the in-crowd. Intrigued, I decided to focus on the girl, who she was and her story. To do that, I went back to her background, her people. She had to be special, have the right to wield the dagger, so I focused on who might have forged the dagger and why.

I chose the fallen angel who taught humans the art of war—Azazel. Fallen angels had children with humans-Nephilim, so it was easy to come up the Guardians’ lineage from there, making my heroine part angel and part human. Weaving in the powers of the fallen angels—from the ability to teleport, clairvoyance, see into the future, control all elements (air, fire, water and earth), manipulate what people see and felt, and change shape into other beings—made everything come together.

Once I had the people in place, I researched the Nephilim in details, read books about them and scoured online resources. Comparing their abilities to those of deities from different mythologies-from the Titans to Hindu Divas, it’s easy to see why people, me included, believe most of these gods and goddesses were all Nephilim. Incorporating this into the Guardians background made sense, so was giving them names like Bran, the famous son of Sea-god Llyr from Celtic mythology. Making him have water powers just made sense.

Then there’s the biblical connection:

Genesis 6:4 “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days--and also afterward--when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.”

According to the bible, a horde of angels was sent to destroy the Nephilim because they were corrupting and enslaving humans, setting themselves as gods and goddesses so humans could worship them. But after the angels annihilated the Nephilim, some were left behind. Combining the biblical aspect with mythologies made the Guardians real in my mind and so the series was born.

Most names I use are angel names, but that's another blog post.

Meet Skyes

MEET SYKES

“What exactly do you have in common with a bunch of girls who worry more about fashion and the next episode of some contrived reality TV drama?”

“A lot. Just like Bran and I do,” I added and gave Sykes a beatific smile, knowing he hated hearing about my boyfriend.

He narrowed his eyes. “Trying to make me jealous, Red?”

“Is it working?” This time, I succeeded in pushing his arm away.

He made a face. “I still don’t get what Bran Llyr has that I don’t.”

“He sprouts wings.” I wiggled my brow. “Massive, gorgeous wings.”

“Big whoop. He’s still anal, arrogant, a cheesy dresser...”

Sykes continued to list more things he considered wrong with my boyfriend, which were all ridiculous. Bran was amazing. We were alrunes, soul-mates, the yin and the yang.

“And he has no sense of humor whatsoever,” Sykes finished with a smirk.

I laughed. “Because he doesn’t laugh at your lame jokes?”

“Lame jokes? I’m charming, witty. Ask any one of my girlfriends. He thinks I’m a threat. He knows you like me.” He tugged on a curly lock of my hair.

I pushed his hand away. “Quit messing with me.”

“You like me, Red,” he said in a sing-song tone.

Okay, so it was true that Sykes was charming and funny. He was your typical high school hottie—carefree, handsome, long blond hair, scruffily dressed in ripped jeans and tees to downplay his good looks, so girls wouldn’t be all over him. His words, not mine. But he wasn’t the only guy around that was gorgeous. Most Guardians were...

TEAM FIRE

Since I am the leader of TEAM FIRE I have decided to make this new page.  This page will contain sneak peeks, cover reveals and swags for the Guardian Legacy.  I will also be putting up lots of little odds and ins about Sykes, which is who this team is all about.