Guest Blogger A. Catherine Noon - A Cold Winter’s Storm Made Warmer With Dwarven Romance

It’s winter, and much of the Midwest and North are frozen or in the process of freezing. In honor of the cold, frigid weather, I figured I’d warm us up with some thoughts on movie-making, dwarves, and romance.

Peter Jackson’s second Hobbit movie is now out in theaters, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. If you managed to miss all the hype, the story follows one Bilbo Baggins as he joins a band of merry men – well, dwarves – on an adventure to retake the dwarves ancestral homeland from a fire-breathing dragon. In the process of making the movie, Jackson decided to highlight the romance between one of the dwarves, named Kili, and an Elven captain of the guard, Tauriel.

Now, in the book by J.R.R. Tolkien, no such romance exists. Nor does the potential love triangle between the elf Legolas, whom you may remember from the Lord of the Rings saga. (And in an ironic twist, the actor that plays Legolas’ father, King Thranduil, is actually two years YOUNGER than the actor playing Legolas.) In the movie, Legolas fancies Tauriel and follows her as she sets out to rescue Kili, who has been shot by a poisoned arrow.

Purists would argue that such apocryphal storytelling is anathema. To that I say, hogwash! The romance adds a spice and zest to the movie and I found myself rooting for Kili and hoping that he got to at least have a date with Tauriel (no such luck, he has to satisfy himself with merely letting her save his life from the poison – maybe in the third movie?). It added something special to the movie that I really enjoyed.

I remember once sitting at a roundtable where two of the participants got into a wrangle over literature vs. genre romance. The book the literature person espoused was Doctor Zhivago. My friend the romance author smiled sweetly and said, “Ah, but Doctor Zhivago is a romance.”

Case closed.

And for the record? Kili would make any woman consider a Dwarf. Happy moviegoing!

When you grab a tiger by the tail, sometimes he bites back.

Tiger, Tiger

Chicagoland Shifters, Book 2

Veterinary trauma surgeon and animal empath Sasha Soskoff has found everything he ever wanted with his new partners Neal, Steve and Carlos. Life feels as safe and secure as it can be among a group of ex-Marine tiger shifters. Until a homeless man is found, gruesomely mauled and murdered, near Neal’s BDSM club.

When it’s determined a rogue tiger did the deed, the jaguars’ accusing eyes turn toward Sasha’s lovers. The precarious balance of peace tips dangerously toward war.

Neal knows damned well none of his tigers committed the crime. Someone must be in Chicago without his knowledge or permission, and they’d better find him fast before uncertainty and conflict rip the tight-knit band apart from the inside.

As Sasha struggles to heal the stress fractures forming among his tiger family, he begins to wonder if his dreams of a home, and love, were too good to be true. And it’s precisely that moment the killer strikes at the heart of the tiger clan—Sasha himself

Warning: This continuing story contains more hot man-on-man and men-on-more-men ménage action than you can shake a cat at.