ROAR
Haunted by a tragic accident that yanked his beloved wife from his side, Kristoffer Roar Larson has been going through the motions in life. But when he meets the dedicated surgeon and humanitarian, Pamela Jeffrey, he feels an undeniable connection to her, stirring feelings he’d buried long ago. After encountering her in a compromising position on a tour of a BDSM academy, he realizes there’s more to her than meets the eye. Fascinated by her assertive alpha personality, coupled with her desire to submit and serve, Pamela intrigues him.
As Pamela shines light once more into the dark corners of his life, Kristoffer finds himself struggling between remaining in his safe and lonely world or emotionally opening himself up to a vibrant woman, who asks for nothing more than he’s able to give. Guiding her in mind-training exercises to prepare her for some future Dom, Kristoffer finds his body awakening as well. Will Kristoffer be able to close the door to his past and open his heart to the ginger-haired sprite who makes him question everything he once believed?
SPECIAL NOTE:
Roar
is a standalone novel that has some familiar secondary characters from Rescue Me Saga, but the main characters are new. You don’t have to read the series to fully enjoy this book.
Kallypso Masters
Copyright © 2016
Ka-thunk! Publishing
ROAR
Kallypso Masters
Copyright © 2016
Ka-thunk! Publishing
Kindle Edition
E-book ISBN: 978-1941060230
Original e-book version: June 2016
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Edited by Meredith Bowery, Rebecca Cartee, and Jacy Mackin
Editing Consulting by Ekatarina Sayanova
Cover design by Michelle Preast
Exclusive rights to cover photos granted by CJ Gwin Photography
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To discover more about this book and others, see the
Other Books By Kallypso Masters
section at the end of this book. For more about Kallypso Masters, please go to the
About the Author
section.
Rescue Me Saga
The first seven
Rescue Me Saga
titles are available in the following six books in e-book and print formats:
Masters at Arms & Nobody’s Angel (Combined Volume)
Standalone Title
(With Secondary Characters from the
Rescue Me Saga
)
To Dave, who shared with me insights into his his
more than twenty-two year experience to help me
understand Kristoffer’s mindset and pain.
To Toymaker and Corie, whose frightening ordeal
with a different type of brain injury that
might very well have turned out so badly if not for
one very insistent and stubborn subbie who
wouldn’t let her Dom go there. You inspired us all!
Bringing my eighth novel,
Roar
, to you has been a labor of love—and sometimes great frustration—but I’m so happy to place it in your hands. I couldn’t have done so without the help of many who on my team or with whom I consulted, so I want to acknowledge them now.
A huge thanks to author Red Phoenix who came up with the idea for our characters to crossover into each other’s worlds. In this case, my characters visited Brie’s world in
Brie Masters Love In Submission
. You’ll see where my characters (Pamela, Kristoffer, and even Adam) make appearances or are mentioned at The Denver Academy, run by Master Brad Anderson in the Brie series. Our intention was to release simultaneously last September, but I knew
Roar
wasn’t right yet and it took me this much longer to make it so. Better late than never! We didn’t co-write, but merely collaborated on a scene idea and then made sure each other’s mentions were true to our worlds. It was fun—although I’m not sure anyone would want to do this with me again given my quirky writing style and inability to meet a deadline! You have great patience, Red!
As you know, I love to research and learn about new things, but the learning curve on this book was monumental and sometimes heartbreaking. But I can’t get it right without having a number of subject experts, too. So I’d like to thank Dave (see dedication) for sharing his story, which hit so close to Kristoffer’s in ROAR. I also want to thank those who helped me with various detail facts, including Trish and Bill Bowers on some of the early BDSM scenes in the book, Cassandra Caress who corrected my bar maid’s German, Tymber Dalton for BDSM insights and references to others I might use, Christine Mulcair for her last-minute medical expertise during proofing, Ruth Reid and Lisa Simo-Kinzer for their their help with the psychological aspects, and Ekatarina Sayanova and her Sir (Mr. Sayanova) who helped me finally understand why Pamela was not cut out to be a slave, which led me to finally nailing the story on my third attempt. It flowed so well, thanks to my brainstorming partners—among them Meredith Bowery and Lisa Simo-Kinzer—that in early April I knew I was on the right track.
My editorial team for ROAR includes content and line editors Meredith Bowery, Rebecca Cartee, and Jacy Mackin. I also had in-person and over-the-phone consultation edits and a BDSM scene edit from Ekatarina Sayanova and Mr. Sayanova (her Sir). Writing a story so unique to the Romance genre required a lot of discussion and soul-searching!
My awesome beta readers came through again for me (and you)! Some worked with me since last summer on earlier versions of ROAR that just didn’t work right through to the beautiful version you’re holding now. First, those who worked with me on the final version, my thanks to Margie Dees, Iliana Gkioni, Ruth Reid, and Lisa Simo-Kinzer—each of whom read through the entire book
many
times over. I also had early beta help on earlier versions from Khriste Close, Treini Joris-Johnson, and Kelly Mueller. Ladies, you aren’t even going to recognize the book!
I also had five amazing proofreaders who found typos and errors galore (usually not the same ones): Barb Jack, Alison K., Eva Meyers, Christine Sullivan Mulcair, Lisa Simo-Kinzer.
Of course, I’m always changing something
after
my editorial team and subject experts sign off on a book and that invariably leads to new errors. As always, all new and remaining typos and errors are solely
my
responsibility.
This is one reason why I delay the print version a couple of months in order to find them. (I’ll be having a virtual signing where you can order signed and personalized copies of ROAR in September, so please stay tuned. If you see something you think needs correcting, never hesitate to let my assistant, Charlotte Oliver, know by e-mailing her at
[email protected]
or messaging her on Facebook.)
To the members of the Rescue Me Saga Discussion Group on Facebook who kept me writing by answering questions about past books that might have sent me researching for an hour or more. Usually, they had my answers within half an hour.
To Charlotte Oliver, my amazing personal and executive assistant, who keeps growing into this position she began in August 2013. Her help in bringing the book together, as well as dealing with all the other matters we have going on, from are invaluable. And, as always, she takes a lot of the stress of being a self-published author away from me and let’s me focus on the fun parts like writing and engaging with readers and my fellow authors.
To say that
Roar
was a total and complete surprise for me is an understatement. It certainly wasn’t the BDSM and sexual romp I intended to write in my first spinoff book from the
Rescue Me Saga
. I’d never met him before and only new Pamela Jeffrey on the surface level from her brief scene with Marc D’Alessio in
Somebody’s Angel
. (Marc didn’t even scratch the surface with this woman including knowing her profession!)
There were so many other characters I’d promised stories about or you were screaming for, including Angelina’s firefighter brothers, and a trilogy with an overarching romantic suspense theme featuring Patrick Gallagher, Mistress V. Grant, and Gunnar Larson. But those characters didn’t come to me with their stories—although the last three are all in
Roar
as is Patrick’s lady (Maribeth!).
Instead, when asked by Red Phoenix in fall 2014 about doing a fun crossover with characters from our two worlds, out of the blue comes Gunnar’s cousin, Kristoffer Roar Larson. I don’t plot, plan, or mold my characters in any way, so in April 2015, when I wrote a collaborative scene for Red’s series involving Kristoffer unexpectedly seeing a colleague naked in a classroom in Master Brad Anderson’s The Denver Academy in Red’s Brie world, my thinking was that this would be a lighthearted, fun story. And as I tend to do, there are as lots of such moments throughout the book. Away I went to write from the shared scenes from my characters’ perspectives to mesh with Red’s story from Brie’s point of view. Only those of you who follow us on social media or in our newsletters probably even knew Kristoffer and Pamela were from my world when it came out in one of her serial installments last spring or when it was later published in her third full-length Brie novel,
Brie Masters Love In Submission
, in September 2015. If things had gone as planned, I was supposed to release
Roar
that same month. Here I am nine months later finally birthing
Roar
. (For this reason alone, I’ve learned that any type of collaboration in another author’s world is strictly off limits for me if they’re on a deadline and used to sticking to them! My apologies, Red, for screwing up what could have been a wonderful simultaneous crossover! I hope some of my readers will now go grab Brie’s stories and get to dive in for another great read.)
A month later, I was struggling and worrying about how my readers would accept this different type of Romance. I fought with Kristoffer for a full month starting when he threw me an enormous curve that had no place in a Romance genre. Of course, Kristoffer won; he is a Dominant, after all. But trying to write a happy ending that has never been done before presented me with a lot of challenges. It was during a two-hour editorial intervention just before KallypsoCon 2015 kicked off in New Hampshire last October, where Ekatarina Sayanova and Rebecca Cartee reminded me that I have to tell the story I’m given and listen to the characters rather than worry about how some readers might take my one-of-a-kind happy ending. That discussion and brainstorming session led to me rewriting the book (that would be the second version for those keeping score). But by March 2016 when I was supposed to be finishing up, the story had stalled out again. This is usually a sign that I’ve taken a wrong turn. Saya once again to the rescue, along with her Sir, and they helped me see that Marc and I had Pamela incorrectly pegged as a slave. Far from it—she’s an alpha submissive (with some dominant traits of her own that won’t be surrendered) and a physician to boot as my other brainstorming buddies (Meredith Bowery, Lisa Simo-Kinzer, and Ruth Reid) showed me. Away I went and third time was the charm. With pre-conceived notions already in published books, though, I had to tread carefully and try not to contradict what was already out about their story. I think I’ve managed to do that. Once I hit my groove, the words poured out of me in under three months—to become my second-longest novel to date (surpassing Marc and Angelina’s
Somebody’s Angel
). Surprisingly, a lot of the scenes I’d written in the first two
Roar
attempts still worked with major or minor revisions, which helped.