Scorpio Sons – Romance Lives Forever

The character interview allows a hero or heroine to tell
readers about himself or herself. Today’s interview is with Colton Blake from Scorpio
Sons 1: Colton.

Interview with Colton Blake

Tell us about yourself, please.

What do you want to know? Talking about myself isn’t my thing.
Staying in the shadows is my thing. Okay, I guess I have to do this, don’t I? Well,
my name is Colton Blake and I’m one of a hundred genetically-engineered clone warriors
who got stuck with a heavy dose of panther DNA. I guess you could say I was a test
tube baby and when it came time for us to be hatched – I can never work out what
to call it. We weren’t born; we were just taken out of our gestation tubes. Anyway,
whatever you call it, once it happened, me and my brothers were secretly removed
from the labs and given to the Résistance, a covert organization fighting the Guild,
the monsters who created us as their own personal army.

The people who raised me were decent and loving people. Sometimes
I think I see that time in my life through rose colored glasses, because it can’t
have been as good as I remember it, can it? But compared to what came later I guess
it was pretty perfect. Anyway, my folks were killed in a car accident when I was
seven, and I was put into foster care.

I wasn’t there long before my cat got activated and I killed
my foster father. I did say I got a heavy dose of panther DNA, didn’t I? That latent
DNA gets activated in extreme situations, usually around puberty. Mine came earlier
because I’d just lost my folks, I was living with strangers, and I was watching
the bastard who called himself my foster-dad molesting one of the girls in his care.
I just cracked, and when I came back to myself there was a dead man on the floor.
I freaked and ran. After that I lived on the streets, playing vigilante like ‘Dexter’,
until Chase found me and brought me into the Scorpio Sons. For about five years
now I’ve worked covertly with my brothers to bring justice to those who consider
themselves above the law.

Authors call what you want but cannot have “the conflict”
— what is yours?

I want to protect my mate from danger. You’d think that’d be
easy, considering I could kill a man with my bare hands at seven, wouldn’t you?
But it’s not. I’m forced to stand at her side while she takes on our enemies. My
cat (that’s what we call the panther aspect of ourselves) fights me every step of
the way. See, my human side knows Lyss has her part to play in saving the world,
but my cat’s primal urge is to lock her up somewhere safe so I can get on with my
job. So far my human side has mostly won the fight.

What can you not do (but need to do) during this story?

Trust. Lyss is my world, and yet I can’t seem to trust the bond
we created. I’m a work in progress in lots of ways. Luckily, she’s okay with that.

What inner doubt causes you the most difficulty?

That Alyssa can’t possibly love someone like me; that I can’t
be good enough for her. I’m just a killer who grew up on the streets. Maybe she
just thinks she loves me because I saved her life four years ago. I don’t know.
Sometimes I feel like gelignite. I only need the smallest bump to explode. My intensity
scares me. Especially the intensity of my feelings for Lyss.

In the story world your author created, explain what it is
you fear most and why.

I fear losing Lyss. The bonds we Sons form with our genetically-engineered
mates is as close as any bond between two individuals can be. It’s instantaneous,
powerful, and all-consuming. The idea of losing Lyss guts me. So, yeah, I live everyday
afraid that she’ll wake up to herself and leave me – or she’ll be taken by the Guild
and I won’t be able to save her.

Tell us about your significant other, that person who makes
living worthwhile.

That’s Alyssa. I’ve probably raved on about her too much already.
But maybe not about her specifically; just about how I feel about her. So… yeah,
I met her, for want of a better word, when I saved her from rapists at her college.
Back then I was still doing my Dexter thing. So I let my dark passenger out on those
bastards.

As I was the first of the Sons to find my mate, I didn’t have
a clue what was going on when I came face-to-face with her. Suddenly, a sex drive
I never knew I had, came to life. So I got out of there fast, real fast, before
she ended up having to fight me off too. I didn’t see her again for four years.
But I never forgot her. That would’ve been impossible.

Okay, doing it again. You wanted me to tell you about Alyssa
herself. So, yeah, Alyssa Aimes became America’s Sweetheart after almost winning
a talent contest on TV. You’d expect that image to be artificial or something, but
there’s nothing staged about Lyss. She really is as sweet, and beautiful, and talented
as she seems on TV. America got that right, at least. (I’m Canadian, can’t you tell?)
She’s sort of fragile too, which makes me feel like I might break her if I’m not
careful. But even though she doesn’t see herself as strong and brave, she keeps
proving she is, even when I wish she didn’t have to. And did I mention she’s beautiful?
Not in a glamorous way. She’s more like the pretty girl-next-door type. Can I quit
now?

What would that person say about you?

More? You’d make a great shrink. Maybe I should’ve been lying
on a couch for all this. Okay…Lyss would say I’m intense, moody, and have a hair-trigger
temper. The first time I met her I’d just injured or killed her would-be rapists.
So she knew right from the start what I was; what I’m capable of. But she loves
me anyway. Maybe it’s my cat that attracts her cat. Maybe that’s what makes her
so accepting of me and my many faults. But yeah, if you asked her about me, she’d
end up saying something mushy like I’m everything she ever dreamed of and more.

What is your family like?

I don’t have any except for Lyss. And yeah, I guess my cloned
brothers count as family too. It’s weird, you know, having the Sons in my life–
like finding your identical twin you were separated from at birth. But not just
finding him once, but over and over again. We’ve only tracked down 40 or so of us
yet, but we’ll find the rest. That’s what we do – save the world, find our brothers
and the Mates who were made for us.

What special skills do you rely on?

Huh, where do I start? My cat DNA means I have enhanced speed,
strength, and sensual acuity, (I can see in the dark and hear things a normal human
couldn’t, that sorta stuff). I’m a super-soldier. Oh and I’m a pretty good tactician.

About the Writer

After a lifetime of teaching others to appreciate the written
word, Aussie author Nhys Glover finally decided to make the most of the Indie Book
Revolution to get her own written word out to the world. Now, with over 100,000
of her ebooks downloaded internationally and a winner of 2013 SFR Galaxy Award for
‘The Titan Drowns’, Nhys finds her words, too, are being appreciated.

Living in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales of England, Nhys these
days spends most of her time “living the dream” by looking out over the
moors from her window as she writes the kind of novels she loves to read. The ones
that are a little bit steamy, a little bit different, and wholly romantic.

What was your biggest challenge in writing this book?

Coming up with distinctly different characters for all the Sons,
who are basically all the same person. I did a lot of reading about identical twins,
because that’s what clones are. Then I drew up an astrological natal chart for the
Sons’ ‘birth’ and started assigning qualities to each from that chart. Yes, I used
to be a professional astrologer. It taught me a lot about people.

Why did you choose this character for the interview today?

Colt is wonderfully intense and complex. A real Heathcliff. I
love deep and moody. And as he’s the first of the Sons to find his mate, his was
the steepest learning curve.

When writing the book, what did you discover about this character
that surprised you?

My characters are always surprising me. I’m more reporter than
novelist. I just follow along behind my people, recording what goes on, and not
knowing what will happen in the end until I get there. So, Colt was no exception.
He handled putting Lyss in danger a lot better than I expected. He’s like Alyssa
in that way; doesn’t see how amazing he really is. But he proved it to me.

Are any sequels planned for this book?

There already are six in the series. The seventh is on pre-release
and will be available on the 20 May.

About the Book

Title Scorpio Sons 1: Colton

Genre SF/Shifter Romance

Author Nhys Glover

Book heat level (based on movie ratings): R

Staring into glowing cat-eyes, while her attackers lay like broken
dolls in the snow around her, shouldn’t have been a turn-on. But it was. She shouldn’t
consider the man who killed to save her from her rapists a hero. But she does. She
shouldn’t feel as if she belongs to that hero, mind body and soul, but there’s no
way she can deny it. And the hardest part for Alyssa Aimes to get her head around,
besides his extraordinary eyes: the knowledge that she’ll never see him again.

But four years later, Colton Blake does come back into her life,
just as dramatically as he left it. And this time she’s determined to keep him there,
even if she has to risk her recording contract and her life to do it.

For Colt, much has changed in four years. No longer a homeless
drifter with a dangerous secret, he has found his place among the Scorpio Sons,
an elite band of genetically engineered cloned warriors charged with bringing to
justice a secret cabal that has been exploiting the world for millennia. But one
thing that hasn’t changed during that time: his obsession with Alyssa, the stranger
he met just once and can’t seem to forget. But now his mission has brought Alyssa
back into his life. And with her comes a secret she doesn’t even realize she harbors;
a secret that could bring not only Colt to his knees, but the whole band of the
Scorpio Sons along with him.