Meet Jagger & Shane from Susannah Sandlin’s Lovely, Dark and Deep
Hello Dear Readers!
I’m pleased to welcome Susannah Sandlin and two of her characters – Jagger and Shane, from Lovely, Dark, and Deep – to my blog today. I’m halfway through reading this story and let me tell you, it’s a total page-turner! Please enjoy Jagger and Shane’s banter along with an excerpt from the novel. 🙂
Lovely, Dark, and Deep – Meet Jagger and Shane
What is your name? Do you have a nickname?
Jagger: Cal Mackie, aka Jagger. Not many people even know my real name is Calvin Mackie Jr., and, well, let’s keep it that way. Since I’m always singing Rolling Stones songs—and really well, too—everyone calls me Jagger.
Shane: I can’t believe you just put your name out on a blog, CAL. Now everybody’ll know it. I’m Shane Burke, and I don’t have a nickname.
Jagger: Only popular people have nicknames.
Shane: Shove it, Calvin.
What is your hair color? Eye color?
Jagger: I have dark brown hair that’s shoulder length, but I wear it tied back most of the time, and I have brown eyes. My best friend Shane calls me a hippie, but I think he’s just jealous of my hats.
Shane: You are a hippie, and your hats smell like wet dog. I have blond hair and green eyes.
Jagger: And stubble because you’re too lazy to shave.
Where were you born? Where have you lived since then? Where do you currently call home?
Jagger: I was born in Cedar Key, Florida—it’s a little chain of barrier islands off the Gulf side of Florida west of Gainesville. Not many people know about it. But I grew up on the water, traveling all along the Eastern Seaboard and Canadian Maritime Provinces on my dad’s fishing boat. I’m happier on the water than off.
Shane: I was born in the Midwest but grew up in Southport, North Carolina, just south of Wilmington. Like Jag, I grew up on the water, going out with my uncle, who’s a commercial fisherman.
Who are the people you are closest to?
Jagger and Shane look at each other: Him.
Who is your funniest friend?
Shane and Jagger look at each other.
Both: Harley, who owns a bar in Cedar Key.
Which living person do you most despise?
Jagger: This guy we know only as Tex, who’s blackmailing Shane and our new friend Gillian and forcing us to hunt for some crazy lost treasure of the Knights Templars. So we’re sailing around freaking Nova Scotia way past diving season while Shane and Gillian try to keep their families alive. Plus Shane’s all hot for Gillian (and I think it’s mutual), so he’s distracted.
Shane: I am not hot for her and I’m not distracted.
Jagger: You let her into your private chocolate drawer.
Shane: She broke into my chocolate drawer when I wasn’t looking.
Jagger: She saw your chocolate lab underwear. She break into that too?
Shane: I have no comment.
Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
Jagger: Well, my friends would probably say I sing “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” or “Some Girls” too much, but I beg to disagree. *Breaks into a chorus of “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.”*
Shane: Shoot me now. Please.
If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
Jagger: Mick Jagger
Shane: I’d come back as the man who’s gonna kill Tex or die again trying. I’m not admitting I’m hot for Gillian, but I am gonna protect her. Unless her dog Tank chews my leg off first.
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Lovely, Dark, and Deep
The Collectors, Book 1 by Susannah Sandlin |
Genre: Romantic Thriller Heat level: moderate; language; violence Publisher: Montlake Romance ASIN: B00H27TJ6U Number of pages: 320 Word Count: 95,000 |
From award-winning author Susannah Sandlin comes a heart-pounding romantic thriller that pits a quick-witted scientist and a scarred ex–combat diver against a ruthless billionaire treasure hunter with ties to the White House.
When biologist Gillian Campbell makes an offhand comment about a family curse during a TV interview, she has no idea what her words will set in motion. Within days, Gillian finds herself at the mercy of a member of the C7, a secretive international group of power brokers with a dangerous game: competing to find the world’s most elusive treasures, no matter the cost, in money or in lives.
To save her family, Gillian teams up with Shane Burke, a former elite diver who’s lost his way, navigating the brutal “death coast” of the North Atlantic to find what the collector seeks: the legendary Ruby Cross of the Knights Templars, stolen by Gillian’s ancestor and lost at sea four hundred years ago.
Get it at Amazon
Excerpt
Good. Now he didn’t have to wonder what he’d have for breakfast.
The second thing he saw was a great pair of legs. Well, technically, a great pair of ankles above a pair of leather sandals, and then the legs.
Obviously, he was starting his Saturday morning with hallucinations.
Only one good solution for that. He dangled an arm off the side of his bed and almost had his fingers wrapped around the neck of the bottle when one of the leather sandals kicked his buddy Jack Daniel’s under the bed, clipping his hand in the process.
“Ow.” Hallucinations didn’t take his booze and kick him in the knuckles.
Ignoring the throbbing in his hand and the stabs of hangover agony behind his eyeballs, Shane rolled onto his back and squinted at the rest of his non-hallucination.
Shoulder-length hair that fell in a sheen of dark chestnut brown, fair skin, fierce brown eyes, red lips compressed in a tight line, black skirt and white blouse, big briefcase-style purse. Had he picked her up at Harley’s last night? If so, he had to cut back on the sauce.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I forgot your name.” Pity, ’cause she was a hot little number, way classier than the regulars at Harley’s. It’s not like he got laid so often that he could afford to forget it when he did.
“We haven’t met.” She propped her hands on her hips and muttered something that sounded like, “And you’re supposed to help me?”
Help her with what? Wait, maybe she was a charter. Had he chartered The Evangeline out to a tour group or fishing party today? Surely he’d remember if there was money coming in.
Color him officially confused. He struggled to a seated position and gave her another look. “What am I supposed to help you with?”
She crossed her arms and raked a ball-shriveling gaze the length of his body. “I came here to offer you a job, but I don’t think you’re up to it.”
He tugged the sheet up in self-defense. “I’m not at my best. Ever consider making an appointment? Not dropping in at the crack of dawn?” He had no idea what time it was but it couldn’t be that late.
“It’s past noon. And I didn’t figure, given your financial situation, that you’d be so picky about what time of day someone offered you money.” She shook her head. “Never mind. This was a mistake.”
She banged her head on the low doorway out of the master cabin, which served her right, the sanctimonious shrew.
About the Author
Susannah Sandlin writes paranormal romance and romantic thrillers from Auburn, Alabama, on top of a career in educational publishing that has thus far spanned five states and six universities—including both Alabama and Auburn, which makes her bilingual. She grew up in Winfield, Alabama, but was also a longtime resident of New Orleans, so she has a highly refined sense of the absurd and an ingrained love of SEC football, cheap Mardi Gras trinkets, and fried gator on a stick.
She’s the author of the award-winning Penton Legacy paranormal romance series, a spinoff novel, Storm Force, a standalone novelette, Chenoire, and a new romantic thriller series, The Collectors, beginning this month with Lovely, Dark, and Deep. Writing as Suzanne Johnson, she also is the author of the Sentinels of New Orleans urban fantasy series. Her Penton novel, Omega, is currently nominated for a 2013 Reviewer’s Choice Award in Paranormal Romance from RT Book Reviews magazine.
Celia Breslin
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