AWESOME AUTHOR, Danita Minnis

WELCOME DANITA MINNIS TO AWESOME AUTHOR

 

If you asked Danita Minnis which is easier, writing songs or writing novels, she would say it was the former. Melodies and rhymes are second nature. What her characters want is another thing entirely. With her debut novel, Falcon’s Angel, she learned to listen toher spunky heroine and sinfully confident hero. They’re funny and in danger, and that’s just the way they want it. Lesson learned: don’t try to save them.

When she’s not writing, Danita exercises her lungs at her son’s soccer matches and their favorite theme park, because everyone knows it’s easier on the stomach to scream your way down a roller coaster.

My debut paranormal romance Falcon’s Angel is a story of reincarnation, mystery and passion, all the elements that I love to write about. It is a suspenseful journey from the verdant land of eighteenth century Italy to modern-day England as Falcon and his Angel combat the devil-worshipping cult who’s wanted their blood for two hundred years.

 This was a story I had to write for many reasons. Love, for one thing, is the best high one can feel. And I’m a hopeless romantic, match-making my friends up and all. My hero and heroine also had a lot to do with it. They wouldn’t leave me alone!

Between Falcon dodging a serrated blade and Angel dodging the lustful il Dragone, I lost a lot of sleep. These two didn’t let up until I wrote it all down. I might go a few days without a character attack, but my guilty conscience knows I have unfinished business. I can’t leave Angel in the clutches of a sex-crazed devil-worshipper, can I?

 Hmm…well, I better not. Falcon would put me on his hit list after that. 

I had all these scenes coming at me – usually around 3:00 a.m. – how do I get it down in order to Falcon and Angel’s liking? For me, building the framework of the story is the most important part of writing it. It also takes me the longest. I changed the premise more than halfway through the novel. And that’s with an outline. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out. I’m a big believer in killing your darlings if need be!

 Once the premise was final, and Falcon and Angel gave their approval, the fun began! I love the worlds I am able to create as a writer. It’s an alternate reality, a place I can go to contemplate fantasies and make them happen. That’s exactly what I did with Falcon’s Angel. In this story you will see my love the all things medieval, haunting and witchy.

 Writing is a labor of love for me as singing was once. I’m a singer-turned-writer. Having worked the New York City nightclub circuit I couldn’t leave my love of music out of this debut novel.

Who knows, maybe nightclub singing might end up in one of my books. It’s an interesting vampire-like existence to wake up at 9:00 pm and call your friends and family to say goodnight before you go to work. I’m very attracted to the prowling darkness of a vampire’s life. More of that to come in Book Three of the Cardiff Family series when Angel’s uncle Xavier has to decide between love and his human existence.

 Classical music, Angel whispers in my ear. Since I can’t sleep when Angel’s talking, and since  I love classical music as much as contemporary, classical music it is. In Falcon’s Angel, she plays the violin and Falcon is an accomplished pianist.

 

EXCERPT

 

They were walking through the ancient Roman marketplace, which was deserted now. When the girl got closer to the church built on the site of an old temple, the man began to close the distance between them.

Falcon shook his head as she reached the church corner. She never noticed the man who was just a few feet behind her now. When the man pushed her into the gloom around the church corner, they were lost from his sight. The girl screamed.

Sprinting, he rounded the corner. About ten feet away, the man was trying to wrestle the violin case from her against the wall.

Falcon pulled out his gun and aimed. “Let her go.”

The man turned toward him, and the girl pulled at his ear. The man bent, holding his stomach. He made an inarticulate sound before running away along the side of the building into the darkness.

Falcon darted past the girl and followed the man into the shadows.

What the hell?

 

Something flitted overhead, darker than the darkness in which he now stood alone. He pointed the Glock upward even as a figure walked up the side of the building. It looked like a black cloud but more solid than it should be.

Before he could get off a shot, the darkness disappeared over the side of the roof.

Staring at the dead end in front of him, Falcon put his gun away. No doors or windows on either side.

Where is the guy? Must be a hidden door somewhere, he’d check it out later.

Falcon turned back toward the girl. Beyond her, across the street, the man he had been chasing got into a car.

“No way,” he murmured as the car sped off. No way could the man have gotten past him in the alley.

The girl had both arms wrapped around the violin case in front of her. She was leaning against the church wall, crying.

A street lamp flickered on above them, belatedly bathing the passage in revealing light. She did not seem to realize that he was there.

“Did he hurt you, Signorina?”

She looked up. He lifted his gaze from her heaving chest.

“Grazie,” she whispered, wiping her face with the back of her hand. She shook her head. “I am fine.”

“You should not be walking alone at night.” The harsh reprimand in his voice surprised him. She was very young. Her tears wrought such vulnerability that he softened his tone when he came to stand in front of her. “Do you know that man?”

“No, I have never seen him before. But … he knew me.”

“What did he say to you?”

She looked down at the violin.

He stared at her until she looked up. Ah, she had just found her story. It was in her eyes, and it was not the truth. The fear in her eyes told him that story would never change.

 

BLURB

Angelina wants to go unrecognized when she leaves her family’s Yorkshire estate to play in a symphony in Italy. When she starts running she has no idea just how much she is running from: a stolen Stradivarius, a birthright of mysterious powers and a past that got her killed over two hundred years ago.

Falcon wants the Stradivarius in her possession, and goes undercover to track down a thief. But he is not the only killer in search of the violin.

il Dragone, a devil-worshiping cult, wants revenge for a past only they can remember.

 Falcon’s Angel is a paranormal romance of love that ended in tragedy in eighteenth century France. That love is tested in a fight of good versus evil some two hundred years later. This time around Falcon and Angel have an opportunity to put a stop to the cycle of murder and mayhem, if only they can remember.

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