Today I am so pleased to welcome Layla Dorine to Joyfully Jay. Layla has come to talk to us about her latest release, Outlaw Redeemed. She has also brought along a great giveaway. Please join me in giving her a big welcome!

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Greetings and thank you so much for hosting me today and giving me a place to talk about a project that is near and dear to my heart: The Comet Lake Chronicles. Outlaw Redeemed is book four in a series of wolf shifter books that took on a life of their own back in 2021. At the time, I was home because the two jobs I’d been working had laid everyone off during the pandemic, and the one I truly enjoyed wiped our positions out completely, never to return. The worse part was that it was a job my youngest and I could do together, which gave us plenty of extra time to spend together. We’ve since solved that, as they will be starting as my PA this year and helping me with my book related endeavors.

During that time of being home, I decided I would work on the book that would eventually become Waiting for Raine, book one of the Comet Lake Chronicles. It was an idea I’d tossed around for several years, writing notes in a battered green notebook that went on road trip after road trip with me. I carried it in my bag when I went on a motorcycle run from Iowa to Washington DC, it crossed the Badlands on the way to Deadwood, and even rode with me on a trek down to South Carolina my mother and I took to research our families roots.

Each time I encountered something that reminded me of my wolf characters, I’d jot it in the book, filling all the pages and the inside of both covers too. I’d take it out to read over the plotlines and story ideas, getting a feel for the characters and their world, and when it finally came time to sit and write the story, the first draft poured onto the page in a little over three weeks.

Raine, Gabriel and Aiden really kicked the world into motion. Not only was it the way they handled their bondmarks appearing, but it was the secondary characters, like Mama D, who played a part throughout the story in helping them to see how they fit.

I’d planned to take a break when I finished writing Waiting for Raine because that was what I always did when I finished penning a book, instead, one of the characters introduced near the end of it, demanded that he not be left portrayed as a bad guy. He wanted the readers to see the reasons he did what he did when he encountered Raine, and he absolutely would not be quiet. Since I’ve never been one to silence my characters, I jumped into book two early the next morning, and began allowing that story to unfold.

Like with book one, book two spawned book three, as a mere mention of a motorcycle club of shifters and a traveling rock band of shifters got them all stirred up in my head. They wanted their stories told too, so book three, Death Growl, was born. In it, Zane got his story and his mates, though there was a great deal of angst and backstory to reveal before they could make that happen. Along the way, his best friend Emery tried, in his own way, to make things better for Zane, not understanding the importance of the bonding process or the significance of the marks Zane and his mates wore on their wrists.

He’s learned though. It is his story that is being told in Outlaw Redeemed and it wasn’t an easy story to tell, because this time around, band life and motorcycle club life collided and Emery was at the center of the mess. He pays for his mistakes, he pays for his misunderstandings, and he, out of all the characters in the previous books, helps drive home the tumultuousness of several hidden events that are transpiring in their society.

I hope you will take the chance to enter their world, which doesn’t just stop with the four books mentioned. Book five is set for release in March, and book 6 is currently being written. There are dangerous forces at work behind the scenes of some of these packs, and the wolves of Comet Lake seemed destined to get to the heart of it.


Blurb

outlaw redeemed coverTraditionally, rejecting a mate means walking away. It’s a simple thing, really, painless, except for frayed emotions and a bit of friction between families. In the history of Comet Lake, it’s never led to the level of bloodshed that comes when Emery’s mate, Tobias, decides he doesn’t want him. Not only are feelings hurt, but Emery’s life is left hanging by a thread and Onyx, the mate he finds on the same day his other rejects him, emerges from the encounter pissed off and looking for revenge.

He’ll have to wait though.

Things are brewing around Comet Lake. Things the pack has never had to deal with. There are wolves on their land that don’t belong there. Scents and footprints in the forest that don’t match any enrolled members of their pack. Intruders. Unseen invaders who slink between trees and watch from the shadows.

In addition, the Howling Devils have returned. The motorcycle club, which Onyx has long belonged to, was formed two decades before to protect the Comet Lake pack, only now it’s grown into something more. A family ready to settle in and do what family does. Stay. These loyal outlaws, brave and strong, are so unlike the outlaw club that Emery once belonged to he’s got no way to relate.

Too bad the wolves around them believe otherwise, insisting that the fates brought Emery and Tobias to Comet Lake to help unravel truth and lies, if they can get past their own history. Unfortunately, the only thing they see it as is punishment for being who they were born to be. Can they move past the legacy of hatred and violence that threatens to reclaim them and if so, are they each destined to become an Outlaw Redeemed?

Warnings: Violence.

Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/mYxKyW


Bio

layla dorine bio photoLAYLA DORINE lives among the sprawling prairies of Midwestern America, in a house with more cats than people. She loves hiking, fishing, swimming, martial arts, camping out, photography, cooking, and she traveling to visit museums, historic, and haunted places.

Layla got hooked on writing as a child and she hasn’t stopped writing since. Hard times, troubled times, the lives of her characters are never easy, but then what life is? The story is in the struggle, the journey, the triumphs and the falls. She writes about artists, musicians, loners, drifters, dreamers, hippies, bikers, truckers, hunters and all the other folks that she’s met and fallen in love with over the years. Sometimes she writes urban romance and sometimes its aliens crash landing near a roadside bar. When she isn’t writing, or wandering somewhere outdoors, she can often be found curled up with a good book and a kitty on her lap.


Giveaway

Layla has brought one eBook copy of book 1 in the series, Waiting for Raine, to give away. Follow the Rafflecopter link below to enter.

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