Samhain Publishing

And no, that isn’t a typo. I’m not talking about the Tasmanian Devil so made famous by Looney Tunes I really am blogging about a creature called the Tasmanian Tiger. So what is a Tasmanian Tiger and why am I blogging about it? Well….

The Tasmanian Tiger, or Thylacine, was a beautiful carnivorous marsupial similar in appearance to a large dog living in Australia over five millennia ago. It earned its name thanks to its sandy yellow-brown fur and distinct fifteen to twenty black stripes across its back from shoulder to tail.

While the Thylacine was almost non-existent on the mainland of the country by the time of European colonisation, it did live in large numbers on the small island state of Tasmania. However, the Tasmanian Tiger was deemed a threat to sheep and chicken farmers – an unlikely scenario – and a large bounty was placed on its head. As a sad consequence, the Thylacine was hunted to extinction – a beautiful creature lost to the world forever. The last of the Thylacine died in a Tasmanian zoo in September, 1936, alone and pacing its concrete and metal cage, no doubt longing for its freedom.

There have been numerous unconfirmed sightings of Tasmanian Tigers in Tasmania to this day, however most believe these sightings are fake or attempts to gain personal notoriety and the Thylacine is still considered extinct by all official agencies and government bodies.

The Tasmanian Tiger is also the star of my next release, Savage Transformation, the loooong overdue sequel to Savage Retribution. Savage Transformation (out sometime later this year) sees Sydney Detective, Jackie Huddart’s return home to visit her childhood friend in Tasmania, the smallest state in Australia. The trouble is, her childhood friend seems to be missing, and someone wants Jackie to find her. Someone who knows exactly what Jackie is – the last of the “extinct” Tasmanian Tigers. And a shape-shifter.

As Jackie begins the hunt to find her friend, she is joined by the very mysterious and way-too-sexy Marshall Rourke, a man who seems to have just as many secrets as she. Which may explain why Jackie feels like she is the one being hunted. But by who? And why?

I had lots of fun researching Savage Transformation. For starters, I convinced my husband we needed to visit Tasmania and discovered it to be one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been in my life. Secondly, I got lost in the research of the Tassie Tiger. Just about every Aussie knows the basic story of the Tasmanian Tiger, but when you really begin to delve deeply into the animal’s sad tale, it makes you wish you could go back in time and change history (well, it made me wish that. I am after all, a major animal rights activist). Savage Transformation is, in part, my apology to the Tasmanian Tiger for what happened to it.

But writing the book got me thinking…what other extinct or unexpected creatures or animals would I like to see in a romantic novel? Believe it or not, I ponder (quite hard) the idea of writing a dinosaur shape-shifter tale (I think a T-Rex would make a pretty awesome hero, don’t you?) before wondering if a Great White Shark would make an interesting hero (this one has been itching my mind ever since.) The possibilities are only limited by the number of extinct and unusual animals in our world, quite a large number when you think about it.

So tell me, what completely unexpected or extinct animal would you like to see in a shape-shifter romance?

(Oh, you can check out Savage Retribution here if you want to see what happens to an Irish werewolf in Australia)

(Oh – again – did you hear my other paranormal romance set in Australia, Death, The Vamp and his Brother WON THE CAPA FOR BEST PARANORMAL EROTIC ROMANCE!!??? WOW!!!)