Promo Tour wGiveaway: WASP by Fiona Quinn

WASP (Uncommon Enemies, Book 1) by Fiona Quinn

Date of Publication: April 11, 2017

Blurb

Why is Zoe hiding beneath her bed?
Zoe Kealoha is a military research scientist. Her work is aimed at saving lives. Then why are there intruders looking for her inside her very own home. Most friends yawn at Zoe's conversations about micro-robotics. It must have struck a nerve with someone, and they don't sound friendly at all. As she hears the heavy crunch of footfalls creep closer, she realizes her quiet, orderly world is about to be upended.
Unlike Zoe's orderly world of hypothesis and laboratory-controlled environments, Gage Harrison loves the rush of risk. A Marine Raider, Gage is a warrior in every sense of the word. His soft spot is Zoe.
When he hears desperate screams from inside her home, his instinct and training switch from lover to guardian. He'll stop at nothing to save her from whatever evil lurks behind her bedroom door.
While Gage may have thwarted an attempt on Zoe's life, he recognizes the skill of the men sent to abduct her. They, like he, were trained killers. And Gage knows they'll be back.
Who is after Zoe and what does she know that's worth abducting her? Gage and his team are willing to risk everything to protect Zoe. If her research is that vital to saving lives, she and Gage will stop at nothing to untangle the sticky web of intrigue traps politicians, lovers, schemers, spies, and those willing to put money over loyalty.

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Q & A with Fiona Quinn

How did you come up with the idea for this story?

This novel started out as a short story I wrote as a thank you gift to those who signed up for my newsletter. My readers enjoyed it so much, there was an overwhelming demand to know more. WASP is the “more.”

I based the heroine Zoe Kealoha on my youngest daughter who is studying to go into scientific research. I wanted to portray an intelligent young woman who wasn’t afraid to be herself even if she was mixed up in terrifying circumstances.

Where do you find your inspiration?

I am intrigued by women in science who are pushing the boundaries. My daughter was homeschooled until she was sixteen when I sent her to college. Her friends were in the public school system’s STEM program. Some of these young ladies were the only females in their class; I find breaking new ground very brave.

I wanted to highlight women in science in my Uncommon Enemies series - smart capable women finding themselves in extreme situations that their scientific background didn’t prepare them for and the military men who step in with their own set of expertise to help them. Their strengths come together as they work through the circumstances.

WASP was inspired when I was watching YouTube videos on spy snakes, of all things. And I wondered what I’d like to develop and how it would help to keep our country secure.

Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?

I love each step of the writing process. I start with research. Lots of research. And then I try to take the information and explain it in an interesting and seamless way. I’ve taught for over twenty years, so I think that’s something I do well. It’s a challenge. But a fun one.

What are your current projects?

WASP is the first book of the Uncommon Enemies Series. There are two books that follow this spring. Also, I have started the Strike Force Series and the first two books will be coming out late summer. It’s a busy year.

Tell us about your first book. What would readers find different about the first one and your most recent published work?

I started to build the Iniquus world with the Lynx Series. Lynx has a role in WASP, as well. Lynx depends a lot on her unusual background growing up as a homeschooled girl and using her trained psychic abilities. There is a decided paranormal thread in the Lynx books that is not in WASP.

I enjoy writing about the sixth sense. In my books my heroes come from a military background. In reading autobiographies and speaking with soldiers returning from the war zones, I have found that they develop all their senses to stay alive. And since my books put my characters in danger, I like to see that playing out. This shows up in the second book in the series RELIC (May, 2017 SilverHart Publishing)

What books have influenced your life most?

Books are a huge part of my life. I tease my children by telling them I only homeschooled them so I could read aloud all day long. The classics: Narnia, Little House on the Prairie, all of the Newbery prize winners…

I remember reading the Bridge to Terabithia and crying so hard that my oldest had to take the book from me and continue reading.

I think some of my best family memories center around books. I aspire to write books where my readers think of the characters as friends and really care about them, just like I did when I sobbed over the pages of The Bridge to Terabithia.

Are there any new authors that have grasped your interest?

I read widely different genres, different authors, fiction and non-fiction. I have really been enjoying JT Sawyer’s Combat Tracker series; Judith Lucci who holds a doctorate in nursing and writes medical thrillers; John Gilstrap since I have a literary crush on Digger Graves. I enjoy the classics especially Pride and Prejudice. As well as the funny and familiar like Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series. I just like to read. 

Can you share a little of your current work with us?

From WASP:

Zoe twisted her body into a new position under her blankets. Tugging the covers up under her chin, she desperately wished for sleep to overtake her anxious, over caffeinated mind. She squinted at the clock readout glowing from her bedside table, calculating. It had been forty-two hours since she’d last closed her eyes. And even that had been a nightmare-driven sleep, leaving her worse off than when she’d gone to bed. That night, her flip-flopping and moaning had propelled Gage from her side. He’d stomped across her room, pulled on his pants, and headed home to “actually get a little shut-eye.” She hadn’t heard from him since. Zoe rolled over to punch at her pillow, trying to find a restful position to curl her body.

He didn’t answer my text.

Her friends had warned Zoe about seeing a new guy just as she’d signed contracts to start a lab project, especially one this big and this time sensitive. But first off, Zoe didn’t like to be told what to do. And second? Gage was a Marine Raider, an elite special operator, with a highly capable warrior’s body. Why shouldn’t she have a little indulgent pleasure to balance out the stresses of her day? Days. She hadn’t slept for days.

Metal on metal, a scrape sounded at Zoe’s front door, followed by the slow moan of unoiled hinges. A smile curved her lips as she imagined Gage sauntering in to her apartment to answer her request for some stress relief.

Good. This is exactly what I need.

She sat up, regretting having pulled on Gage’s sweats to wear to bed. She flipped her covers to the side. It would be nicer if he found her in something lacy…or maybe nothing at all. Zoe gathered the hem of the black hoodie to tug it off, but whispers from the living room stilled her hands. More than one set of heavily booted footsteps stole over the wooden floor, followed by the scratch of a drawer sliding open.

Zoe froze. Her mind was on fast forward, but the joints of her body held tight, as if rusted and ineffectual. Her brain screamed at her arms and legs to move, to grab a weapon, to hide. Something. Anything.

As she cowered there, her ears worked to dissect the moth-like movements down the hall. She registered the sound of each leaf of paper as it was lifted and rejected. She had a good idea why someone had broken into her condo. Her liaison, Colonel Guthrie from DARPA—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the R and D arm of the US military—had warned her to take extra security precautions, but she had scoffed at the idea. Few people actually knew what Zoe did for a living, and as long as she was tight-lipped, she thought she was safe. She was foolish, was more like it.

How can readers discover more about you and your work?

If you’d like to know more about me and my books, please visit my website, www.fionaquinnbooks.com. There, you’ll find contact information and a sign up for my newsletter so you can get all the new intel.

Also, I do a lot of research, which I find fascinating. This ranges from interviews with fellow authors, technical interviews with the experts who are in the field actually doing what I’m writing about as well as the hands-on experiences I need to try it to write it right. For my books, I’ve had from run a mud race, been a mock victim in a plane crash, and hid on a mountain in the middle of a December night waiting for search and rescue dogs to find me. All of this I put up on my blog www.ThrillWriting.blogspot.com Come read the truth about duct tape and how to escape from a car trunk.

Do you have a special time to write? How is your day structured writing-wise?

My day is all about stories. If I’m not writing, I’m researching, I’m plotting, I’m having conversations with my characters. From the time I wake up until I go to bed, I’m training, or reading, or otherwise involved with stories. Stories are as integrated in my life as breathing. There is no special time, only story-time.

As far as writing my books. I always take time between books to fill the well. I read, read, read, and read some more. I listen to music and talk to people. When I sit down to write, I write ever day until the project is done. I write a minimum of three thousand words each day. Somedays, it takes me until midnight. Other days, it comes as if by divine intervention. And then I start the process of edit and review.

Each of these steps is important, I think, to giving my readers a good experience.

I am so grateful that readers are investing their time and money in my writing, I want to make sure that I honor them with my best possible effort.

Why did you choose to write romantic suspense stories?

I am the mother of four children, all of whom I homeschooled. As my oldest two grew older and moved out of the house and on to their adult lives, it was now quiet enough to hear myself think. I have always been a storyteller, but I had always thought that my writing would take me into the realm of explanatory writing. Teaching for twenty years, I had developed the skills to take a buffet of complex information and make it a manageable plate for understanding.

One day, I put my youngest two kids and my daughter’s medical alert dog into our pale-blue minivan, and we started driving around the United States. We spent six weeks exploring culture, eco-systems, history, and literature in all the states we passed through. Experiential learning, I believe to be the best kind of learning. On this trip, I had planned to start writing about my experience “unschooling”—a term for homeschooling that focuses on hands-on immersion in a subject—how I planned curriculum, and how I took advantage of opportunities as they presented themselves.

Lo and behold, that’s not what happened. On this nine-thousand-mile adventure, I thought about the effect unschooling would have on my adult children, how their thought processes and their approaches to life’s questions would be impacted. I imagined this in a character. I gave Lexi Sobado (AKA Lynx) the skillsets of my oldest daughter, who was the same age as Lexi as I wrote the story, then I threw everything at her, except maybe a kitchen sink. And I watched how she did. I am pretty darned proud of Lexi. As I am of my children.

After that first book, the characters kept telling me that they wanted their stories shared. In all the books I’ve written without a co-author, I have continued to build the Iniquus community, starting with the Lynx series, sharing more stories about Panther Force in the Uncommon Enemies series, and the upcoming Strike Force series. I will continue to tell Iniquus stories as long as the characters are clamoring to be heard.

What is for you the perfect book hero?

I spend a lot of time with the heroes in my books – so all of them are heroes that please me. They are intelligent, courageous, morally strong and live by a strong code. They are respectful, supportive and fiercely protective of those they care about. They do what is needed, putting all their skillsets into play to get their missions accomplished and protect America and her interests. They’re often funny and always fit and very fine to look at.

When you start a book, do you already have the whole story in your head or is it built progressively?

In the writing world, you will often hear people talk about plotters, those who develop their whole book in advance and pantsers, those who sit down and start typing.

I am what I would term a planter – a combination of plotter and pantser. I have the story trajectory and an outline. I sit down to tell that story. Once the seeds of the book are planted they start to grow, sometimes I’m surprised by what emerges. I’m usually surprised by what emerges. I eventually tell the story that I had outlined, but it always comes out in a way that I could never have predicted.

When and why did you begin writing?

I was born a storyteller – it comes from my Irish heritage. I have kissed the Blarney Stone three times, though Hubby believes I bit off a chunk that last time. I write to tell the stories in my head. I write because it is what I am compelled to do all day every day. It’s not a choice, but it is a pleasure.

Tell us something that people would be surprised you know how to do.

For people who follow me, I probably couldn’t surprise them. I have a philosophy that life is about building a tool box. Every opportunity to learn something new means you have a new tool in your box to pull out as required. If given the opportunity to learn, I do my best to take it. I have a bunch of college degrees, I am a trained martial artist. I am skilled with weapons. I’m a search and rescue team member, a CERT member, and I volunteer with the Medical Reserve Corps in mental health crises. I’ve travelled the world and ridden elephants, camels, and horses (though the horses just laugh at me when I try). I’m willing to attempt (barring huge risk to life or limb) and willing to fail (as in skiing – where I’ve fallen down a glacier, and all subsequent ski stories only go downhill from there).

I think the only thing that ever shocks people about my personal story is that as a teen, I was in a convent to become a nun. When I realized that I really liked kissing boys, that came to an end.

Other than that, folks just wait for me to tell them about my newest explorations. Life is after all one great big wonderful adventure.

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About Fiona Quinn

Canadian born, Fiona Quinn is now rooted in the Old Dominion outside of D.C. with her husband and four children. There, she homeschools, pops chocolates, devours books, and taps continuously on her laptop.

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