I love television shows like The X-Files, Lost, Highlander, and Roswell. Ah, the romance, the action, the group dynamics, and those delicious paranormal elements! So I created a series that rolls all of what I miss into one package.

I became fascinated when I read about the classified experiments the government undertook that explored using psychic abilities. Even though it’s been declassified, much of what the various agencies did has been kept secret. I thought, “Wow, this stuff is real!” (See the links below for more). Then, of course, my devious literary mind started spinning. What if the subjects of those programs were given something that altered their DNA and enhanced their abilities? What if their offspring inherited it? And what if…? Well, you get the idea.

I came up with a group of people who must come together out of necessity, who bond, grow, encounter terrifying danger, and fall in love. Each book features a different couple, but we get to see all of the Offspring, because they’re working with (and sometimes against) each other.

Books and Websites about psychic abilities:

• Psychic Warrior by David Morehouse
• The X-Files Book of the Unexplained, Volumes 1 and 2 by Jane Goldman

• Super Powers of the Human Biomind
• Remote Viewing and Spiritual Healing
• RV Instruction
• American Society for Psychical Research

Meet the Offspring!

Amy Shane is an introverted loner who balances feelings of inadequacy by saving people’s data—and their sanity.  Owner of the one-woman Disc Angel, she rarely has to leave her house. Armed with her dark sense of humor and tragic view of life, she’s convinced herself it’s easier to be alone. Well, most of the time. She was orphaned when her father committed suicide, the source of her inadequacy complex.

Though she doesn’t much like it, she has read people’s feelings by seeing their auras since she hit puberty, and it’s becoming more pervasive each year.  She doesn’t, in fact, know that this is an extrasensory ability until Lucas busts into her life—and her heart.  As the stakes rise, so does her strength and courage to accept and further develop this ability, as well as ones she doesn’t know she has yet.

Amy’s Abilities: Seeing people’s auras, Talking to the dead

Lucas Vanderwyck, intensely private and guarded, has long been plagued by premonitions that manifest in sketches he has no memory of drawing.  Recently his ability has gone one step farther; he is tuning into the dreams and vivid fantasies of murderers, a phenomenon he understood after seeing in the news a murder of which he dreamed.  Either the murderer or potential victim is always someone with whom he has had contact.  The next time he tuned into a murderous dream, he tried to manipulate it.  The man violently pushed him out.  Desperate to stop him, Lucas killed the man in the dream.  Except a person’s body experiences dreams as though they are really happening, and the guy died.  Lucas has killed three violent offenders but considers himself no hero.

Because he fears he brings death to those around him, he closes himself to any connection but the one that is safe: Amy.  Since their shared childhood, he has had a connection to her, able to “see” her during emotional moments in her life.  He then began tuning into her dreams and manipulating them in romantic ways.  Living in darkness makes him cherish Amy’s innocence and joys.  When he must involve her in their quest for the truth, he will sacrifice everything—even himself—to keep her safe.

Luca’s Abilities: Dreamweaver, has premonition through dreams and flashes

Eric Aruda, volatile, edgy, paranoid, he distrusts everyone and suspects conspiracy everywhere.  Now that he has discovered there is a conspiracy, he has no qualms in using his destructive powers to find the truth—and seek revenge.  He has been setting fires with his mind for years but only now knows why.  He can remote view to other places.  He seeks to learn the full depth of his abilities, becoming ravenous for control.

Eric’s Abilities: Pyrokinesis, Remote Viewing

Petra Aruda, insecure, overshadowed by her own beauty, she aches with unspoken love for Lucas and fierce loyalty to her brother, Eric. She didn’t know though she knew about Eric’s and Lucas’s abilities, she didn’t know she also has two special skills. She is able to use her hearing ability to hear what others cannot, and her healing ability to save those she loves…but at a cost.

Petra’s Abilities: Hearing, Healing

Gerard Warwick (CIA) has clawed his way up the ranks and is not above using whatever means necessary.  He craves power, for himself and his country, and uses his loyalty as justification for crossing the ethical line.  Twenty-five years ago he co-founded the BLUE EYES project. His tunnel vision focused on the end results and not the high cost to the participants.  He was forced to abandon the project to protect government interests, but now that he has a chance to revive it, he sees only his credo: Death to the enemy, at any cost, even to the innocent.

Gerard’s Abilities: He wishes!

Sam Robinson (CIA) was involved in the original project.  His humanity has prevented him from climbing high in the ranks, but he is satisfied with his position.  Unfortunately, Warwick yanks him out of his complacency to revive the project.  Is he a reluctant participant or will his doubts get him killed?

Sam’s Abilities: None

Richard Wallace only cares about science, especially as it pertains to the metaphysical.  Straddling both sides of logic, he has been fascinated by things that have no explanation.  His own psychic abilities spurred him to experiment with the parapsychological.  A mysterious incident enhanced Wallace’s own abilities. He has long mastered his own powers.

Richard’s Abilities: Unknown

All her life, when Zoe Stoker got emotionally charged up, things started flying.  Her mother convinced Zoe she inherited the same demonic streak that caused her father to go mad and kill three people twenty years earlier.  Zoe returned from a trip to New Orleans with an acceptance that she’s just a freak with “crazy energy,” the desire to be a tattoo artist, and a sexy she-devil tattoo that severed her relationship with her mother.  Zoe tightly controls her emotions while keeping people at a distance.  Dragged into the conspiracy and danger of the Offspring, she discovers she has telekinesis, the ability to move objects with her mind. She must learn to control her ability if she wants to survive, and to save the only people she has ever been accepted by.

Zoe’s Abilities: Telekinesis

Rand Brandenburg is a loner who’s been using his skills to see ten seconds ahead to up his odds at the casinos.  His only friends are the graffiti artists he occasionally sees when he paints cartoons that poke fun at local politics.  Those cartoons, done under the pseudonym Freedom, have made Baltimore’s anti-hero. To Rand’s grandmother, who raised him, he plays the successful sales rep who sweeps into her assisted-living facility with gifts for her and her friends, as close to being a hero as he’s ever gotten.

Olivia Demarest works for Gerard Darkwell, and though she’s not privy to exactly what he’s up to, she’s in on one secret and has another of her own. Raised by her father when her mother left, Olivia has always been Daddy’s good girl. Her self-worth is tied to her wealthy and venerable family, but she’s about to learn that taking a stand may cost her her life.

Olivia’s Abilities: None, not an Offspring

Nicholas Braden’s psychic talent for finding things landed him in a covert government program, but growing doubts about his shady boss tear at his sense of right and wrong. He’s a black-and-white kind of guy, but Olivia, the one woman who touches his soul, who can help him find the truth, will teach him that it sometimes lies in shades of gray.

Nicholas’s Abilities: Locating and Remote Viewing

Fonda Raine may be five-foot-two, but she’s learned to be tough. Losing her mother to suicide when she was very young and growing up with a father who was strung out more often than not, Fonda learned she had to be willing to fight back to protect herself…no one else would. Her only escape was when she discovered she could leave her body and astral project elsewhere. Hired by Darkwell to use her skill against the enemy, the Rogues, she finally finds a purpose for her life—until Eric Aruda takes it all away. Now her purpose is to find him, and kill him.

Fonda’s Abilities: Astral projections with the ability to touch objects at her target location.

Cheveyo Kee is the mysterious shapeshifter who saved Zoe in Out of the Darkness, and who touched Petra’s heart. Though he has saved Petra’s life, and kissed her crazy, he vows that he cannot be in her life. He has good reason to stay away, for his legacy is to fight darker forces. When those forces threaten Petra and her people, his biggest fight will be to keep his heart closed to the one woman he loves.

Cheveyo’s Abilities: Shapeshift to a jaguar

Lachlan McLeod is Richard Wallace’s son. He overdosed on his psychic ability of astral projection and accidentally killed someone dear to him. In taking the antidote his father spent years working on, he lost his psychic abilities. Now he lives like a monk, devoid of passion and desire…or so he thinks.

Lachlan’s Abilities: Could astral project

Jessie Belandre harbors something dark and terrifying within her, but not as scary as the man who is hunting her down. She is passionate for life in those moments when she feels safe, but falling in love is out of the question.

Jessie’s Abilities: Darkness (use of dark power to repel, etc.)

Magnus McLeod is finally free to live his life fully now that the man who has been hunting his family is dead. But a cruel twist of fate infects the happy-go-lucky Magnus with a dark energy that makes him violent and possessive. Now he must keep a careful hold on what makes him human and good while he fights the darkest enemy he has ever faced.

Magnus’s Abilities: Read people’s minds, Darkness (shapeshifting)

Erica Evrard knows her power will someday kill her, but she’s willing to pay that price to take out murderers. Exacting justice gives her purpose in a pain-filled life, and she’s convinced herself that’s all she needs. Finding herself drawn to a man who can turn into an otherworldly mountain lion definitely doesn’t play into her plans. But while Magnus can kill, he becomes her biggest ally … and the greatest threat to her guarded heart.

Erica’s Abilities: can direct power to shock and kill