SWEAR WORDS

Gorgeous! Breathtaking! Freaking amazing! And my personal favorite: OOOOHHH!!! Just some of the reactions sent by Swoonies on my mailing list when I shared a sneak peek at the cover of SWEAR, the sequel to SWOON. I gotta agree—and can without coming off conceited since I had absolutely nothing to do with the design. (That would be the enormously talented Cara Petrus at Simon & Schuster. Hail, Cara!)

Since SWOON arrived in the spring of 2009, I’ve been bombarded by reader questions, the most insistent being: Will there be a sequel? Now, with the cover of SWEAR on my hot little computer, I actually believe there will be. Which leads me to the subject of this blargh: To address a number of pressing issues about SWOON, SWEAR and the novels’ sorta-kinda hero, SINCLAIR YOUNGBLOOD POWERS. You asked, so here I go…

When will SWEAR be out?
The exact date? Dunno. But S&S say late August, early September.

What? Waaaahhh! Why so %$&#^@! long?
Actually, there’s a good reason. SWOON was a risky venture. It’s not your typical by-the-numbers paranormal novel, it deals frankly with sexual matters, and there might even be a word or two requiring a dictionary consult. So before committing to a sequel, the publisher wisely wanted to see how SWOON did. Well, it did okay. It’s currently in something like its tenth printing, popping up all over the world from Turkey to Brazil. And whom do I have to thank for that? YOU!!! Readers who longed to be challenged as well as entertained, who could fall for a torn and twisted guy like Sin and champion a heroine like Dice. You who love SWOON made SWEAR possible.

Yeah. Great. Then I had to write it…

What happened to Sin at the end of SWOON?
I get this question a lot. Too bad I still can’t answer it. Neither can he…exactly. The subject of Sin’s disappearance is certainly addressed in SWEAR, but the universe is a mysterious place. Sometimes we mere mortals go through stuff we can’t fully explain, so imagine the experiences of a ghost-turned-golem. Trippy. And as you’ll discover in SWEAR, Sin’s not the only one to vanish into thin air.


But he will be back?!
Yes. Of course. Absolutely. Although he’s…changed. So has Dice. And Pen? Let me just tell the Swoonie who wondered if that's meant to be Pen on the cover of SWEAR, unequivocally, no. What Sinclair Youngblood Powers did in the town of Swoon that fateful autumn left virtually no one unscathed.

Still, that has very little bearing on what goes down this time around.

Which begs the question: What’s SWEAR about?
It’s not polite to tease, but I can’t give away too much. I will say that the story opens with Dice doing a decent job dealing with Sin’s abandonment—except for the deep and abiding sense that he’s not really gone. Then she gets distracted by a different presence, a spirit driven by dark, destructive motives she cannot fathom. But she’s got to figure it out. Fast. Since as the cover hints: Some love bonds. Some love destroys.

How about a sample of SWEAR?
Soon, I swear! In the coming months, there’ll be an excerpt on ninamalkin.com. Plus, advanced reader copies as well as e-galleys will be made available by S&S for qualifying reviewers. And of course I’ll do contests and giveaways and such, so if you’re a book blogger who’d like to do an event with SWEAR around its pub date, please hit me with your ideas. Like I mentioned, if not for readers like you, SWEAR wouldn’t exist. For a wordy woman, I’m stymied to express just how much your support means…

Yeesh, I’m getting sappy so I’d better sign off….

SWOON on!