Hmm.... It has a NAME?

It's the strangest thing. I didn't know until just now there was a word for 'fear of failure'. Yep, it's ATHEHIPHOBIA. Okay, I can't pronounce it but at least I can recognize it now when I see it. Oddly enough, I recognize the symptoms of 'fear of failure' in myself just about every day.

There was a time, back when publishing anything at all, seemed a distant dream. I was pretty fearless in hammering out story after story and submitting them knowing the odds of anything good happening were pretty much slim to none. The twinge of fear was there but I wasn't expecting much so that sharp edge wasn't there like it is now.

Now it's different. Each time I write a new story or try a new thing I worry that my readers won't like it or won't accept this "different" thing that I've done. Just an eensy weensy ego thing maybe? Or maybe it's just that with each book I write, I try like hell to make it better than the last one I wrote. The other day, I talked with a friend about this and I've been thinking about it a lot since then. Recently I thought about how much we want to give the reader something wonderful, unique, full of emotion, wit, action...you name it. As writers we want to provide. Today Highland Beast releases at Ellora's Cave. This is the first book in a shifter series. Book two is contracted and book three is finished but sitting on my editor's desk awaiting the verdict.

It's seriously nerve-racking to venture into something new. The High Plains shifters have their own world smack dab in the middle of desolate west Texas. The cowboy/shifters are hot and their women are cool in a crisis. I absolutely loved writing these stories but I found as I moved from one story to the next, that I slowed down. A LOT. I now believe that in the back of my mind I wanted each book to be better than the last. I wanted my readers to love these tragic heroes as much as I did. Over and over I applied pressure to myself and realized that in the end my biggest problem was a fear of failure.

I firmly believe it plagues us all. We struggle to do a good job and make each effort the best it can be. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't but in the end, there's a certain satisfaction in knowing we've done our best.

Right?

I like to think so.

In honor of the release of Highland Beast, Book One in my Texas shifters series, I'm hosting a contest. Please leave a comment here and then head over to my Regina Blog and leave me a little something there too. Mention Highland Beast on both blogs and I'll enter you in a drawing for an ebook copy of my new book! How's that sound?

Buy Highland Beast HERE!

Blurb:

From the moment she looked through the antique mirror and saw him change from beast to man, Martha wanted him. The brawny Highlander, sexy and dark, made her body burn for his possession. But when he reached through the glass to yank her straight into the past, her fantasy became reality.

Trapped by an evil curse, Silas MacAdam, the lycan king, yearned for the modern woman who stared so innocently at him through the mirror. The need to take, to claim, to possess her on the furs in his ancient castle, burned him. Only she can help him return to his rightful place among his people. Upon their arrival in modern-day Texas, it becomes his mission to convince the lady that she belongs to him—as his mate.

Excerpt: (Adult)

An Excerpt From: HIGHLAND BEAST
Copyright © REGINA CARLYSLE, 2009
All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave Publishing, Inc.

Martha struggled to her feet and stared in amazement. Finally she shook her head. If this was a bizarre dream, she wasn’t going to participate. No way. His grin widened as he stepped closer, still separated from her by the mirror. “Come to me,” he said again. The deep baritone voice was laced with impatience and a touch of humor that she found oddly appealing. When he moved closer, she sent her eyes down his heavily muscled torso and gasped at the size of his erect cock. It rose against his belly, thick and heavily veined and topped with a dark, thick head. Between his thighs, his balls were hard and drawn up high against his body.
Arousal hit her like a punch.
She wasn’t the kind of woman who succumbed to men who oozed testosterone, but this man was something different, something more. More than man. He was also a beast. His gaze swept her body and his expression went hard with lust.
Lust?
Impossible. There was nothing remotely enticing about the simple white nightgown covering her more-than-generous curves, but he loved what he saw. His feelings whipped through her mind and suddenly she saw herself as he did, tall and full-figured with high, generous breasts and a mop of curly dark hair that brushed her shoulders. His nostrils flared as if he were breathing her in and Martha’s body reacted. Her thighs quivered, her pulsed sped.
The man, who moments ago had been a huge black wolf, reached down and fisted his hand around the base of his erection. Martha watched, mesmerized, as he dragged it up the thick length and slowly down again. “Come to me, wench.”
Courage to refuse him abandoned her and she licked her lips as he pleasured himself. She swallowed and flicked her gaze up to find him watching with a strange intensity. “Who are you?”
“The MacAdam.”
“The MacAdam? Who is named The MacAdam?”
“I am. It is my name. Say it again. I like the sound of it on your tongue.”
Martha licked suddenly dry lips. “MacAdam,” she whispered.
Loneliness swept her and she knew it was his. Lust too. His and hers. He stepped to the mirror’s surface and lifted his palm, settling it on the other side of the mirror. His lips were beautiful, full and sculpted, the lower slightly larger than the top. His smile was soft. His eyes at half-mast. “Give me your hand.”
Without thinking, she lifted her palm and settled it against his, expecting to feel the cool glass of the mirror, but felt warm skin instead. Martha gasped. Sparks sizzled from where their flesh touched and then suddenly his big hand snaked around her wrist and he gave her a yank. As if she were in the midst of a stranger-than-hell dream, she fell like Alice down the rabbit hole through the mirror and straight into his arms.
He caught her up against him, wrapped her in his brawny arms and then looked into her eyes. His mouth took hers with savage intensity. His tongue swept inside her mouth to taste her deeply. It ghosted the insides of her cheeks and thrust in a lusty parody of hotter-than-hell sex before he pulled back and gave her a wicked grin.
Dizzy and disoriented, Martha had just started to breathe again when he tightened his hold and settled his mouth against her ear. “I have you now,” he whispered. “Thank the gods the curse is broken and you are mine.”