HOST: Today I have as my guest, Ceto, mother of all sea monsters and a frightening monster in her own right. Please help me welcome Ceto to Monsters of the Month.

(Audience claps as Ceto is carried onto the dais by her majordomo, Concord, a large jellyfish. He carries her in two of his tentacles as the rest walk him across the floor. Concord sets her down on the Love Sac chair we’ve brought in to mimic her customary sea sponge throne.)

HOST: Welcome, Ceto. Thank you for joining us.

CETO (twin mermaid tails rippling between red, blue and purple): Monsters of the Month? That’s why you’ve brought me here from my underwater palace? Are you serious? A monster? You think I’m a monster???

HOST: Oh… Um, you don’t? I understand you’re the mother of all sea monsters, from Scylla to Medusa, and, according to author Judi Fennell, the Kraken as well.

CETO: (arranges a red velvet corset more comfortably over her “shell-fillers”) Well, yes, that is true. Every leviathan you can come up with is mine. And I’m very proud of my children, but not the bad rap they’ve gotten in your mythology. I just tried to be the best mother I could.

HOST: So what happened with Kraken that he went after the hero of In Over Her Head and tried to kill him?

CETO: See? That’s where you’ve got it wrong. Krak wasn’t trying to kill Reel. He wanted to play with him.

HOST: (taken aback) That’s, um, not quite the way I heard it.

CETO: Well, of course you didn’t. Where would the story be in that? Honestly, the poor child was bored and went in search of a new friend to play with. That’s all there was to it. Trust me, if I’d wanted to create a problem for Reel, I wouldn’t have picked Krak to do it.

HOST: Yet you got involved with the villain of the second book in the series, Wild Blue Under, to cause more havoc.

CETO: Um… no. If you read the story, you’ll see that I backed away from that little matter. I have enough trouble with The Oceanic Council than to go threatening Rod, the heir to the throne. If you ask me, their parents are the ones who get the nod for causing havoc naming them Rod & Reel. Seriously, do they want people to laugh?

HOST: Actually, yes, you are supposed to laugh when reading the stories. That’s why they’re called humorous paranormals.

CETO: (flicks one of her flukes) As long as they aren’t laughing at me, I guess that’s the author’s prerogative then.

HOST: So, Ceto, I hear you take another shot at disrupting the royal family in the third story, Catch of a Lifetime.

CETO: (tosses her malachite curls off her forehead and straightens her shoulders) Where are you getting your information because they need to get a few things straight. First, I had absolutely no involvement with Angel and her little land sojourn. I was out of that. Hammerhead Harry was the one who got me involved, and it wasn’t even because of the royal family. Angel didn’t care about the child Harry brought to me. I was the one who would love him, not her. I would never have left him. He was mine.

HOST: So you maintain your innocence?

CETO: Of course I do! And Zeus exonerated me. If you read the series, you’ll see that I get what’s rightfully mine in the end and help everyone end up happily ever after. Would a real sea monster do that? I think not. (she sniffs and turns up her nose) I think this interview is over.

HOST: Do you have any final thoughts you’d like to share with our audience?

CETO: (somewhat mollified). Yes, I do, and they’ll prove that I’m not the villain of Wild Blue Under with heroine Valerie Dumere, hero Rod Tritone, and the director of the Air Security Agency, Livingston. In this scene they’re on the run from the villain’s henchman, or should I say, henchbird, trying to out-drive his dive-bombing arsenal. You’ll see that I’m not the one they accuse.

“Incoming!” Livingston screeched in all his seagull glory. “Turn us around! Get this thing moving! Now!”

The “oh shit” screech was effective. Val fumbled with the clutch after Rod plucked the bird out of the way. Jamming the stick shift into first, she tore back onto the road with a spray of gravel, grinding the gears as she forced the transmission into a quick shift to second.

Livingston flew back to the rear seat, leaving feathers scattered in her lap and one sticking to her bottom lip. Val overcompensated for the heavy wrench of the steering wheel to the left with a sudden swerve to the right, spitting the feather out as she tried to look out her window.

Incoming what?

A huge splat! on her windshield answered that question.

What looked to have once been a fish obscured her view and left a lovely spider vein across the glass to match the diamond’s. Val rolled up her window, then groped for the windshield wiper while Livingston screeched from behind, giving a whole new meaning to the term “backseat driver.”

“Go left!”

Rod twisted the wheel that way before Val had a chance to process the directive. Another fish ricocheted off her side mirror.

“Right!”

Rod turned the wheel right as Val finally switched the windshield wipers on. The next fish bounced off the fender, followed by the mess of the first one.

“What’s going on?” Val hollered.

“He’s trying to run us off the road.” Rod’s voice was tight. “We’re too open. We need cover.”

“No way,” Livingston directed. “If we stop, we’ll never get rid of him. You’re going to have to do some fancy driving, Valerie.”

“I’m trying,” she muttered, zigzagging the car back and forth across the road. Thank God there was no oncoming traffic, a plus to living in the middle of nowhere that she’d never appreciated until right now, but she wouldn’t mind a tunnel or two.

“How long can he keep this up?” she asked, dodging yet another fish bomb.

“JR can fly for hours, but I can’t imagine he’s got too many missiles left. There’s a limit to how many he can carry.” Livingston hopped from one side of the backseat to the other, his beak pointed northward, scanning the sky.

“You’ve done studies?” Rod asked while she veered farther right, dodging another pothole and a few dozen cornstalks that had probably been plowed into the road by teenagers on a late-night joyride.

Stupid kids… didn’t they know she’d have to dodge an angry albatross?

“Not studies. Personal experience.” Livingston glanced out the back window. “He’s got two, maybe three left.”

Number five hit the road ahead of them, jarring the car as the tire flattened it into the asphalt.

“Son of a Mer!” Rod said. “We’re sitting ducks on this road.”

“Son-of-a-what?” Val asked, her fingers wrapped so tightly around the steering wheel they were starting to ache. “What do you suggest I do? Drive through the corn?”

Rod opened his mouth, but Val cut him off. “No way. The shocks could never take it, plus I’m not about to plow through someone’s livelihood. I’ll see how fast I can get her to go. Maybe we can outrun him. At the very least, his aim should be off.”

Wait. Had she really just said that?

She worked the car into fifth gear… and another fish bounced off the trunk.

“One left, if he had the energy,” Livingston reported from the backseat.

Val maneuvered the car back and forth across the yellow lines in no discernable pattern, hoping to prevent her windshield from cracking. Well, any more than it had. That spider vein had meandered across her line of vision.

“I can’t see him anymore.” Livingston sounded out of breath. “Rod? You?”

Rod peered through the raindrops on the windshield, then out his side window. “No. Too many clouds, but that doesn’t mean he’s not there. We have to find some way to lose him until we get to the airport.”

“Um… Rod.” Livingston hopped up to resume his feather-tip hanging position beneath the back window. “About that. I’m not so sure we want to go that route.”

“I thought the way a crow flies is the quickest way to the coast?”

“Crow, yes—especially if it’s being chased by an albatross. But people…? JR’s going to expect it, and with his state of mind these days, who knows what he’ll do?”

“State of mind? What are you talking about?” Val interrupted. Could an albatross even have a state of mind? Another feathered ability she didn’t want to contemplate.

Rod leaned toward her to look out the driver’s side window. “JR hasn’t been himself since he lost his mate in a trawling incident.”

“Trawling incident?” She tried not to take her eyes off the road to look at him—and was proud of herself for almost succeeding.

The pothole she hit signified she hadn’t completely succeeded. What did municipalities do with tax money anyway? Road repair didn’t seem to be on that list. It burned her up that the money she was racing off to get wouldn’t even benefit her.

“After that incident, JR snapped,” Livingston said. “Like a sailboat mast in a hurricane. Now he does whatever he feels like doing and doesn’t care who he hurts.”

“He’s a mercenary?” Val asked, dodging another pothole. And what was wrong with that question?

Rod, fully upright in his seat (damn), covered her hand on the stick shift (yay) and nodded. “Among other things, Valerie. He’s smart; he’s wily; and he’s got nothing to live for. A dangerous combination.”

“Which is why we can’t put anything past him.” Livingston huffed, dropping back onto the seat. “He set up an impressive network in a short time. I’ve got to come up with a way to outwit him.” The bird started pacing across the backseat and muttering to himself.

Biologists, bird experts, Darwin… they’d all have a field day with what was happening in her backseat. Her? Not so much.

She’d come home to escape the drama. To stop running from a situation the minute it wasn’t to her liking. To settle down and get her life in order.

Some order. A talking seagull, an angry albatross, and a prince—of all things—who could kiss like nobody’s business.

Somehow, settling down wasn’t quite what she’d expected it to be.

Wild Blue Under

Judi Fennell

Sourcebooks, Inc.

November, 2009

ISBN#:9781402224270

Rod Tritone is all set to take over the Mer kingdom when his father retires, until the ruling council tells him he has to marry first. The council gives him legs for the duration of his mission, as well as his future queen’s address and phone number.

She’s Valerie Dumere, the daughter of a Mer father and a human mother who raised her in landlocked Kansas. When devastatingly handsome Rod Tritone shows up and tries to tell her about the kingdom under the sea, not only does she think he’s crazy, she’s determined that’s the last place she’d ever want to go.

Then a vicious squad of seagulls tries to stop the Mer Prince from inheriting his throne and Val finds out about her true nature. Now she has to make the choice of a lifetime—stay on land, or follow Rod to his underwater world…

***

What people are saying about Wild Blue Under:

“Fennell returns with another underwater adventure, her second story about the Tritone brothers. She’s proving herself to be a solid storyteller, and this tale is an enjoyable and pleasant read.”

-Devon Paige, RT BookReviews Magazine.com

“Wild Blue Under” is the second book of author, Judi Fennell’s Mer Trilogy, and the first of hers I have read and definitely won’t be the last! This book was such a fun, delightful read.”

-Jaime, Revenge of the Book Nerds

“Judi Fennell is a bright star on the horizon of romance.

–Judi McCoy, author of Hounding the Pavement

“The best Mer book I’ve ever read.”

–Rowena Cherry, author of Knight’s Fork

“Bubbly fun! Judi Fennell whips together talking birds, princely peril and a sexy Mer man in this sparkling ‘under the sea’ tale.”

–Virginia Kantra, USA Today best-selling author

About The Author:

Judi Fennell has had her nose in a book and her head in some celestial realm all her life, including those early years when her mom would exhort her to “get outside!” instead of watching Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie on television. So she did–right into Dad’s hammock with her Nancy Drew books.

These days she’s more likely to have her nose in her laptop and her head (and the rest of her body) at her favorite bookstore, but she’s still reading, whether it be her latest manuscript or friends’ books.

A three-time finalist in online contests, Judi has enjoyed the reader feedback she’s received and would love to hear what you think about her Mer series. Check out her website at www.JudiFennell.com for excerpts, reviews and fun pictures from reader and writer conferences, and the chance to “dive in” to her stories.

Contest

To celebrate the release of each of her books, Judi Fennell and the Atlantis Inn (www.AtlantisInn.com) and the Hibiscus House (www.HibiscusHouse.com) bed and breakfasts are raffling off three romantic beach getaway weekends. All information is on Judi’s website, www.JudiFennell.com

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