Welcome Denise Golinowski

Welcome to the reading Nook, Denise. Make yourself at home. Shall we get started?

To get us started can you tell us a little about what you are working on or have coming out?

My newest release is COLLECTOR'S ITEM. It's a suspenseful paranormal romance set in a world where shapeshifters live openly among us. Not surprisingly, some humans are not comfortable with this development, but there is an illegal, underground hunt club who believes that shapeshifters are animals and the ultimate big game. This group has existed for almost as long as shapeshifters and it was the growing pressure of survival that drove shapeshifters to come out of the closet. My heroine, Katarina Teresa Marant, KT, is the female alpha of the Marant clan and she is certain that her missing aunt has been taken by the Collectors. She enlists the help of an undercover Alliance Protectorate agent and devises a crazy scheme to capture the suspected head of the Collectors. However, nothing goes quite as planned.

How would you describe yourself using only five words?

Voracious reader writing hopeful romances.

If we asked your muse to describe you using five words, what do you think they would say?

Well-intentioned but easily distracted scribe.

Coffee, tea or other drink to get you moving in the morning? 

Gotta be coffee. I love the smell of it brewing. Of course, I always doctor it up quite a bit. In fact, a Café Mocha is my idea of heaven.

What is coming up from you in 2013? Anything you want to tease us with?

I'm finishing another paranormal romance in the same world, tentatively called ACES DOWN. It's not related to COLLECTOR'S ITEM except for sharing the same world. I'm also working on a second Marant paranormal romance involving KT's older brother, Peter Marant with a third book in the wings for her younger brother.

When you begin your stories, do you go with the flow, or go with an outline?

Oh, I'm a definite "pantser." I've tried plotting, but, for some crazy reason, once I've plotted a story out, in even rough detail, I lose all interest in it. I guess I prefer discovering the story with the character as opposed to having it all set out. However, there is always a point in even a pantser's method when you have to determine what the end game is going to be so you can make sure to direct all the loose ends in that direction.

Is it hard coming up with titles or characters names?

Ah, names. Characters frequently introduce themselves to me, so their names are set. Secondary characters, not so much. I think about who they are, what role they play, and then I start looking at the spines of all the books around my desk, doodling with actual names or pieces of titles to create names.

Titles are more challenging. I find them fascinating and enjoy exploring the titles on bookshelves, reviews, etc. For my own stories, it's hit or miss. I've been lucky that no publisher has insisted I change my title yet, but I'm aware that it happens. For the most part, any good title is something from the story itself, even if it's oblique. At least that's my opinion.

Collector's Item by Denise Golinowski

Wild Rose Press

Paranormal Suspense, Romance

Buy at Publisher / Amazon

Alpha were-jaguar, Katarina "KT" Marant is trained to protect the pride so when her aunt disappears, KT naturally takes up the hunt. Her suspicion settles on the Collectors, humans who view shapeshifters as the ultimate big game.

Peyton Allers can't believe he's got to blow his cover to rescue a shapeshifter "princess." Even harder to believe is that she wants to stage her own kidnapping in order to catch the leader of the Collectors and find her aunt.

Everything goes sideways when KT is kidnapped for real and by someone she never suspected. Will Peyton find her before time runs out? Or will she become a true Collector's Item?

Excerpt:

A lone light shone above an open gate in a high chain-link fence at the far end of the hangar. Andi growled, uneasy. The shadows between the cars could hide an army. As if to compensate for the ringing in her ears from the gun battle inside coupled with the roar of jet engines, KT’s eyes and nose kicked into overdrive.

Blood! KT eased up enough to peer through the windshield of a large sedan. But whose?

The whine of jet engines faded away, and in the buzzing silence, a car engine snarled to life. Tires squealed somewhere to her left. She flinched back from the glare of headlights as a low-slung sports car spun out of a parking space.

“Stop!” Her attention snapped to her right at the sound of Peyton’s voice.

Over the hood of the sedan, she saw Peyton standing behind the front end of a pickup truck about midway down the opposite lane, a gun aimed at the car. The car accelerated, and he fired. A shot from inside the car made Peyton stagger. He held his position and fired a couple more times. The car zigzagged toward Peyton and two more shots spun Peyton around to disappear behind the truck.

“No!” She sprinted toward the truck, keeping low, and with one eye on the sports car as it raced toward the open gate in the rear fence. In the glare of the overhead light, she glimpsed Torne hunched low over the wheel. He made a sharp right turn just outside the gate and, for a split second, KT saw a face through the passenger window, staring back.

KT stumbled to a stop. Patricia? Just a flash of an oval face surrounded by a cloud of dark hair. KT’s heartbeat sped up. Patricia!