Hello and welcome to Weekend Writing Warriors, the blog hop where writers from a wide variety of genres share from their work in excerpts of ten sentences or less.

Today I’m shifting gears (and centuries, and continents, and genres) to begin sharing from Wild, Jacqui the Cat Mysteries #4.   Don’t ask me why this took so long. Sometime about a year ago I went completely off the rails, writing-wise, and so Wild had been much delayed. But now, I’m oh-so-close!  Besides, it morphed from a novella into a novel! That’s a good thing, right? Today’s snippet is from the opening of the book, which I shared once before but that was like a hundred thousand snippets ago, so hopefully no one minds.

***

The Dog Men Cometh.

Of that, Jacqui had no doubt. They would come with their fangs, their drool and their fleas, armed with tranquilizer guns and iron cat traps. The only question was when.

Jacqui slid open the door to Wyatt’s back patio and stepped out, shivering as the cool night air hit his bare skin. He pulled the quilt he’d snagged from the foot of the bed tighter around his shoulders. 3:37 a.m. and he couldn’t sleep—hadn’t been able to sleep since his encounter with the dog men—didn’t wantto sleep. Sleep meant nightmares and vulnerability and an unleashed subconscious that filled every dark corner with snarling canines.

He wanted to shift and prowl the moon-drenched streets of Friday Harbor. He wanted to scour every yard for enemies, dig in gardens for buried threats, howl at the top of his lungs—Come and get me, Dogs.

***

The return of Jacqui and Cat. © David Dirga | Dreamstime.com

Wild: Jacqui the Cat Mysteries #4 Blurb-in-progress-

Jacqui Corleone has finally met his fated mate (Wyatt, in case you hadn’t figure it out yet), but unlike a romance novel, reality has other plans. The dog men are back, and along with their slobber and their drool they bring a new level of danger to Jacqui’s life, and to Wyatt’s, as Jacqui meets other cat shifters for the first time and is tantalized by a glimpse into their strange new world.  Only cats aren’t much nicer than dogs, and soon Jacqui must choose if he’s going to run again, or stand and fight against an enemy more powerful than he ever imagined. And that’s saying a lot.