Interview with Karin Harlow {Enemy Mine}, Excerpt, & Giveaway

I'm thrilled to have author Karin Harlow here at AtM today discussing more about her latest L.O.S.T. book, ENEMY MINE. Haven't read the first one yet, no problem! Stick around and we'll tell you more! ...

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~*~Book Blurb~*~

Lovers from opposite worlds reunite in Karin Harlow’s explosive, erotic new L.O.S.T. adventure. .  

While tracking a hijacked cask of enriched uranium in Kyrgyzstan, L.O.S.T. operative Nikko Cruz is ambushed and left for dead. Which means he must be hallucinating when the only woman he ever loved—the woman he was sentenced to death for killing—comes to his rescue. Half-daemon Selena Guererro has secrets she’d kill for. The most important one, she’s already died to protect. Now she’ll do anything to keep her daughter safe. But she can’t just leave her lost love to perish. She injects Nikko with immortal blood serum, putting herself in grave danger.

When Nikko comes to, he is superhuman and super pissed. The mother of his daughter—the one he thought killed their child—is alive. He wants answers. He wants blood. And despite his best intentions, he wants Selena. He traces her to a mysterious terrorist cell where the cask has surfaced. First, he must retrieve the deadly material. Then he’ll take revenge on his beautiful ex. But when nothing goes as planned, Nikko and Selena find themselves burning with desire . . . and blowing the roof off their separate worlds, human and daemon alike.

Before we talk more about ENEMY MINE, can you tell readers who are not familiar with the series what the premise of the stories are about?

Last Option Special Team or L.O.S.T. The dirty dozen meets mission impossible with a paranormal twist!Paranormal and Urban Fantasy genre worlds use different rules and aspects. 

Can you share how you approached either the characters or the world building in your story?

While ENEMY MINE is set in an urban human world, it’s not an Urban Fantasy as it is a love story with a happily ever after.  My L.O.S.T. characters are humans who discover that there are immortals who walk amongst them. Immortals with emotions and ambitions very much like humans, just with a different skill set. It’s L.O.S.T.’s job to stop them from affecting the human world in a negative way.  Being human has its advantages and disadvantages when dealing with immortals who posses superhuman powers. It makes for some great conflict!  But my approach has always been, keep it simple.  I’m not a huge world builder. I read some books with large complicated worlds and my brain hurts. So writing it isn’t something I’m drawn to. Besides, I’m not that imaginative.  :/
 

With ENEMY MINE being part of a series, are there any character or story arcs that readers jumping in at book two (Enemy Mine) need to be aware of? 

ENEMY LOVER, the first book of the series introduces the L.O.S.T.. It is totally stand alone. It’s also Jax Cassidy and Marcus Cross’s story. An amazing one if I do say so myself. :) It was a lot of fun bringing the original L.O.S.T. cast back in ENEMY MINE, as well as seeing Jax and Marcus again.  Still madly in love! That said, each L.O.S.T. book is completely stand alone.There is a tremendous amount of non-stop, intricately interwoven action in ENEMY MINE. So, pantser or plotster? :)100% Panster!  

Oh, how I loved Nikko, the sexy, military-man, brooding, and broken hero. But, he also has a reason to be. In addition to the on-the-edge-of-your-seat action, ENEMY MINE has a very heartfelt sub-plot that involves both the heroine and hero. As the author, was it emotionally taxing to develop such a passionate and poignant plot?

Yes. I mean Nikko had every right to despise Selena.  He had every right to want to kill her and to think he had!  I kept wondering as I wrote their story how the hell were they ever going to get their HEA?  But, as their creator and champion, I was not going to let them not have what they both deserved. A well deserved, well earned, happily ever after!

This book is sexy, sexy, sexy!! :P  What do you think makes for believable and passionate chemistry between the hero and heroine?

First and foremost, believable people.  People with real hurts, real experiences, real emotion.  Not contrived BS.  As in real life, there has to be as you said, chemistry.  Not every couple has it.  I have begun stories where I had it in my mind that a specific heroine and hero were going to end up together if I had to force them.  Never works. I’ve often had to go back to the drawing board and dig deeper and search harder to find the right match. There has to be a natural, on page, chemical reaction when I put two people together for the first time.  As I writer, I will never jip my characters or my readers when it comes to chemistry. The Order is a governing council consisting of various supernatural creatures who govern the various supernatural creatures living in a "closed" world. 

Do you plan on exploring all the different Supes in each subsequent book in the series?

I really hope to! I’d love to do a lycan story, I also want to write Joran’s story, but I’m dying to write Rurik’s! Vampires! Yum!What do you have planned next for readers?As far as this series goes, at the moment, I’m not sure.  There is a lot riding on how well ENEMY MINE does.  That said, I have several characters’ stories bouncing around in my head.  I hope to have the opportunity to write them very soon!
 

Where can readers find you in the virtual world?

Oh, just about everywhere.  I also write as Karin Tabke so there’s Karin Tabke Author on fb and Karin Harlow on fb, both girls tweet. Both girls have websites, www.karinharlow.com and www.karintabke.com 

Can you leave readers a little teaser from ENEMY MINE?here’s an excerpt!
 

The Gold Coast at midnight had come alive. Like a living, breathing rock star high on cocaine, it pulsated with vitality and energy unlike any other.

Nikko stood across the street from Lost Souls. Scents and sounds swirled around him, blending into an indistinguishable blob. But he didn’t need to be told Selena was inside. He could smell her. Exotic and sultry, her scent overrode all others. He had thought that learning she was alive, then seeing the proof positive in pictures, had elicited a strong reaction from him at the compound, but the reality of it now created an emotional maelstrom inside him. Longing, hate, and betrayal jockeyed for the top spot in his heart. Worming itself between all of those feelings was the unmitigated desire to hold her again, to make love to her—not the cold-blooded killer she was today, but the innocent girl he’d fallen in love with so long ago, before she—Nikko mentally shook himself. He allowed the hatred and his need for vengeance to take control. That would get him through this mission. Keep him sane as his body, his mind, and his soul continued to evolve into something and someone so foreign to him, he would admit only to himself that it terrified him. He was unpredictable even to himself. He battled impulses he had always had control of. His emotions raged. It was becoming unbearable, this thing inside him. He sneered, wanting to bend her to his will, to—he squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting to acknowledge the visions of his taking her until she screamed for him to stop.

No, his desire wasn’t simply to fuck her again. Since his arrival in Miami that morning, a new hunger had taken root. For blood. Anyone’s would do, but he craved Selena’s blood most of all.

Nikko struggled for composure. He was Ice, damn it. He would not blow this mission apart. Put this team at risk. Or himself.

“You smell her?” Cross asked from Nikko’s left.

While Nikko did not have the nuances of a vampire that Cross possessed, he had enough of the primal part to make him dangerous. His senses were honed, his strength impressive, and now his desire for blood was driving the vampire in him. Once he had looked at Cross as a freak, one without feelings or humanity. Now, walking in his shoes, Nikko understood what drove him as a man and a vampire and was impressed at how Cross managed to maintain his iron control. Nikko was having extreme difficulty with that.

“Yeah.”

“Marcus and I will go in first and get the lay of the land,” Cassidy said from Nikko’s right.

He nodded, fighting the craving to get to Selena first. Get her alone. At his mercy. The things he wanted to do to her were inhuman. But hadn’t what she’d done to him made her a monster? Nikko set his jaw. What he had done to her made him every bit as much a monster.

He had dived headfirst into love with Selena. Given her every part of him. Only to be betrayed in the most heinous way a woman could betray a man. He had reacted viciously. He had paid for it with his soul. Now his only regret was that she was still alive. How long that would continue was up to him, and he wasn’t feeling particularly generous at the moment.

“Cruz, I don’t like that look,” Cassidy said, staring up at him, her face wrinkled in consternation. “Plot your revenge later. After we get what we came for.”

Nikko set his jaw. His revenge would be slow, methodical—

“Cruz, if you give in to the bloodlust, it will destroy you,” Cross quietly said. “It’s like a drug. If you don’t control it, it will control you.”

Nikko closed his eyes and only saw red. “I just want to tear her apart.”

Cassidy touched his hand. He looked down into her serious but compassionate eyes. “I know you do, Nikko. I don’t blame you. But if you can’t get a handle on your emotions, millions of lives could be on the chopping block.”

Nikko exhaled. Cassidy was right. This mission was bigger, much bigger than his hatred for the woman who owned Lost Souls.

Thank you Karin, for allowing me to take some of your valuable time to find out some more information about the fabulous installment of ENEMY MINE, this fantastic series, and what to expect next for us readers!

Thank you, Tanya for having me!!

Giveaway Details:

• Karin is generously gifting a copy of ENEMY MINE to one lucky commenter! 

• Leave a comment on the interview along with your email addy:

• Extra Entry Possibilities:

• (+1) Tweet this interview and giveaway (you can use the button at the top of the post). You must include the link to the tweet.

• (+1) Comment on the review.

• (+1) Like Karin Harlow or Karin Tabke, or both! :)

• Contest is open from 9/2 - 9/7 11:59pm EST.

• Winner will be randomly selected and notified via email.

Good Luck and thanks for stopping by to support Karin and her new release, ENEMY MINE!

Can't wait? Purchase Enemy Mine @ Amazon