GRAY – Local resident Debi Emmons’ romance novel, “Night of the Tiger,” is scheduled for release in February as a trade paperback by Cambridge Books of Cambridge, Md.

Emmons is currently working with the publishing firm to transfer the work from electronic format to paperback.

“Night of the Tiger” is a fast-paced tale of a young woman on the run, hiding from her abusive stepfather by working as an exotic dancer under an assumed name. In New York, she is sensuality personified under the guise of “The Lady Tigre,” a cat-woman who is never seen off-stage, drawing men from across the city who want to be the first to solve the mystery. But she makes the mistake of catching the eye of a truck driver from Maine, an ex-Navy Seal who steals her heart.

Can she trust the first man she’s ever loved with her dark secrets, or is she doomed to run forever from her past?

The characters were originally created for a short story in response to a relative’s comment about “not making money as a writer,” Emmons explained. At the time, she was having poetry published in a small newspaper in Fryeburg. Following the writer’s creed to “write what you know,” Emmons based the characters in “Night of the Tiger” on people she could interview: her sister-in-law, who had once been an exotic dancer; and the sister-in-law’s then-boyfriend, a long-haul trucker.

The short story was published in a magazine in August 1989. However, the characters seemed to take on a life of their own, resulting in “Night of the Tiger,” completed in 1998.

“Night of the Tiger” will be offered online at www.cambridgebooks.us and at www.amazon.com.

For more on Emmons’ work, visit her Web site, The Northern Bard, at galadriel_emmons.tripod.com.