Today I am so pleased to welcome Tia Fielding to Joyfully Jay. Tia has come to talk to us about her latest release, Arran. Please join me in giving her a big welcome!

How the Wolfy!verse Came to Be

There was this random idea of a shifter stuck in his wolf form in my head for ages, I think. Eventually, my brain gave me this idea of “what if he woke up in a cage at a pound?”

In 2017, I traveled from Finland to England for a vacation and a writing workshop. While there, during a writing exercise, I finally managed to put the scattered first thoughts into something more coherent.

That didn’t mean I would write much of the story yet, but the idea solidified more and more, and it sank its hooks into my muses like a few things ever had before. At this point, I’ve been writing LGBTQ+ romance for over a decade. The fact that Wolfy made such an impression to my own mind meant that there would become a time to finish it.

I wrote other things, I collaborated on books, I wrote solo things, and I struggled with health issues. Then the pandemic happened and we all, collectively as humankind, struggled even more.

For me, the ability to write has always been deeply tied to my mental health. If I am too depressed, I can’t write, and when I can’t write, I get more depressed. When you add the pandemic stress over all that, and then the fact that I somehow got Covid in Dec 2020 myself, well, you can understand how things might’ve gone from there on with my writing.

By the end of the summer of 2021, I was done not writing. I needed to finish something. So I turned to my muses and they pointed me toward the WIP that was Wolfy. I’d added a sentence or a few to it here and there over the years, but it was maybe halfway done, if that. To keep myself on task, in August of 2021, I asked for my publisher for a deadline.

That led to me finishing Wolfy almost on time for that deadline, and then the story was out there for you to read on Halloween.

Somewhere along the line, this badass problem solver who loved to wind people up as a defense mechanism, Arran, had entered my brain and made himself a home there. People seemed to love the character in Wolfy, and as these things so often work, he ended up wanting his own book.

Arran’s story is different from Mateo and Wes’, as they found each other for the first time in Wolfy. In Arran, our brave human heads back to the wolf who once gave him the mating bite before sending him packing. Marek, Arran’s mate, has issues of his own, so their road won’t be easy, either.

Oh, and there’s a new pairing popping up in Arran who might get a little short story of their own sooner than you think….

Arran, Wolfy #2, is out on wide release on January 22^nd !

Excerpt

Arran’s story about what had happened to Elena’s pack made Marek think, though. What if someone like that mage would come and try to do something? Sure, the pack had resolved the situation without much going wrong, but it could’ve been so much worse.

When Arran left Marek’s office and said he’d go have lunch with Stefan in town since he was going to go mail the sample, Marek didn’t say anything.

What could he have said? “Don’t have lunch with another alpha, even if it’s your friend and my brother?” No.

There was nothing Marek could do that would make the situation better. Besides, they had more pressing issues right now. Someone had hurt one of his babies. They would have to pay, and Arran would help him.

“Daddy?” Aspen peered into the study.

Marek smiled. “What do you need, sunshine?”

She came into the room with the usual confidence her alpha status naturally gave her, but she looked troubled.

“I have a question, but I don’t know if I can ask it,” she finally said as she inched closer.

“Okay. Well, how about you come here and sit with me, and we can figure it out together?” He held his arm out for her to grasp as she climbed onto his lap and settled in.

When she didn’t speak more, he tugged at her ponytail. “What is it? We’ve talked about how you can ask whatever you want to know, right? So, ask away.”

“But what if what I want to ask about is something I wasn’t supposed to hear?” she whispered.

Marek didn’t know what this was about, but he could make an educated guess. He didn’t want to say she could ask anything, not about this, but she was also going to be the next Alpha and he had to lead by example, no matter how painful it would be for him.

“You still ask. I’m your daddy and your Alpha, and you can always ask me anything at all,” he promised, his heart panging painfully in his chest.

She nodded slowly, then took in a deep breath, and exhaled loudly. “Okay.” She turned her big brown eyes to him and asked, “Daddy, what does ‘mates’ mean?”

Blurb

Trauma and heartache have followed Arran his whole life. Raised by wolf hunters, he was lucky to escape Washington State and that life at his first chance. Becoming a liaison between wolf packs and hunters across the United States was Arran’s way of healing his soul from what he’d seen his family do.

A decade ago, he met Marek, the alpha son of a small pack in Montana. The pair quickly realized they were mates, fell in love, and had plans for a future where Arran being a liaison would make a real difference. But then, everything changed when Marek had to step up as the Alpha.

Since that day, Arran has been running from his past, solving problems for other people while his mating bite throbs in time with his broken heart. He’s had lovers, but everyone who sees the scar on his wrist knows that he belongs to another.

Fresh off one job, Arran receives a late-night call from Marek’s wife—his replacement—begging for help, and there’s nothing he can do but head back to the Alpha he never wanted to face again. Not after he learns that the events from New Mexico are connected to what’s happening to Marek’s pack. Someone is threatening two packs he’s been involved with, and that can’t be ignored.

Showing up on Marek’s doorstep is its own complication with plenty of surprises in store for both men. Not only does Arran have secrets from his hunter past, but Marek has been bearing his own all these years. Old hurts and new revelations mix in a cocktail of hurt and comfort as the pack figures out how to move forward and be happy again.

Buy Link: Amazon

Bio

Tia Fielding is a Finnish author who loves witty people, words, peppermint, sarcasm, autumn, and the tiny beautiful things in life.

Tia identifies as genderqueer but isn’t strict about pronouns. Why? Because luckily, in her native language there aren’t gender-specific pronouns.

These days, preferring to live in the middle of nowhere with her fur babies is as big of a part of her psyche as writing. Tia likes to recharge in nature and tends to watch where she’s going through her cell phone’s camera.

In 2013 Tia’s novel Falling Into Place was recognized by the industry’s Rainbow Awards in the Best LGBT Erotic Romance (Bobby Michaels Award) category.

In 2019, her novel Four (Love by Numbers #2) won a Rainbow Award in the Best Transgender Contemporary category.

Facebook Reader Group: facebook.com/groups/spoondrawer/
Twitter: @tiafielding
Email: tiafielding@gmail.com