Demon Lover By Jeri Westerson

I love writing complex characters. At first, they might seem pretty simple, even tropey. My heroine is “feisty” which in itself is a trope of the genre, but is she just an ordinary person who steps up to the plate…or is there more to her and her history?

My heroine Kylie Strange moves from California to Maine to start a new life and open Strange Herbs & Teas. But when doing some renovations, she accidentally breaks through a wall and finds an ancient book called “Booke of the Hidden.” When she opens it she unwittingly releases deadly creatures into the world that she is tasked with hunting down and returning to the booke. But along with the creatures of supernatural lore, the Guardian of the Booke is awakened, a demon called Erasmus Dark.

What happens when a four-thousand-year-old demon who is only awakened for a few days every several hundred years, finds himself confronted with someone like Kylie for the first time in his life, a woman of the 21^st century who befriends a misfit coven of Wiccans to help her, and refuses to go down fighting? And what happens when this demon, who has a deadly relationship with all those in the past who opened the booke, finds himself falling for a human?

When I devise my characters, I like to give them full backstories, some of which the reader will never know about. It flavors their reactions to stress and gives them reasons for doing what they do. And an important part of that is their name, or the meaning behind the name. Character names are important to me. The names have to sound and look right on the page, and they have to mean something. Sometimes that’s just my little secret, but at other times, they can get downright Dickensian. Kylie Strange has a surname that might seem a little over the top at first, but having done the research, I found the “Strange” surname has been in New England since it was New England.

As for Erasmus Dark, well, the “Dark” name is self-explanatory. But the “Erasmus” part I chose for two reasons. One, it’s old and sounds out of date, much like he is himself. He’s a fish out of water. The last time he was awake, it was 1720. Now there are cars, computers, and women who aren’t afraid to go toe to toe with him. He certainly was no virgin for four thousand years but there were never any emotions involved. And now there is. Kylie seems to be his match and the big and bad demon must come to terms with what he has been required to do to the ones who opened the booke, but now there are feelings of protectiveness for this human. Being a deadly demon, he has walked alone and now he finds he no longer wants that. So his name was perfect. It means “worthy to be loved.” Is he? Does his past get in the way of that? Can he be worthy to be loved?

Kylie isn’t so sure she wants to get involved with Erasmus, but his broodiness and exoticism is very alluring. But so is the handsome sheriff in town. Kylie is a woman of her time and can’t decide, and does she have to? I guess readers will find out.

Purchase Deadly Rising at: https://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Rising-Booke-Hidden-Book/dp/1635764602/

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Award-winning author Jeri Westerson likes to make the fur fly in her new paranormal series Booke of the Hidden. The second book in the series, DEADLY RISING, will release October 23rd. See her “booke” trailer, friend her on Facebook, and sign up for her quarterly newsletter on her website BOOKEoftheHIDDEN.com.

Because I’m just recovering from the flight back from GRL 2018… I thought I’d drop a bit of Kai Gracen’s THIRD book for the morning cup of coffee….

This is from Jacked Cat Jive. Out in March 2019 AND in mass market. I’ll be sharing those ISBNs soon so you can order from your local bookstore and bring LGBTQ fantasy to your area!

Excerpt from Jacked Cat Jive….

“Kai, I’m going to try to get the transport open,” Ryder yelled at me as he sprinted across the cave floor toward our trusty centipede, where, by the brief glance I got, Kerrick was fighting to open the door and Mink was screaming his head off inside. Brief glance. For all I knew, they were in a rap battle and Kerrick was winning. “I saw a flamethrower.”

Not what I wanted to hear while clinging to an overgrown mutant white land lobster, but it was the least of my worries, especially when Cari opened fire at its underbelly. All that did was piss the worm off, and I was off on another round of trying to hold on while attempting to get my other knife loose.

The worm’s head was slick—too slick for me to grab—and when Cari’s shotgun blasts to its belly angered it, the worm reared up, nearly knocking me free. My hands were damp with sweat, and my fingers fumbled to unlatch the strap that held my knife in its sheath. Up close the worm smelled worse than an ainmhi dubh, but at that point, so did I. Ryder’s shouting joined Kerrick’s, and I heard the unmistakable hiss of the transport’s hydraulic doors opening.

“Great,” I ground out. “Now I’ve got to worry about a flamethrower. Let’s kill you quick before they make me a marshmallow.”

https://www.amazon.com/Jacked-Cat-Jive-Kai-Gracen/dp/1641081368/

Kindle version to follow….

Join me and the other authors in the Devil Take Me anthology as we embarked on a week-ish blog tour leading up to the book’s release!

Today’s Stop is at….

It’s About the Book

and our featured author is:
TA Moore

Be sure to grab yourself a copy of the anthology and strap yourself down for the wildest of rides!

Purchase Devil Take Me at: DSP Publications, Amazon and other fine bookstores.

Tour Stops are:
10-10: Jordan L Hawk at My Fiction Nook
10-11: TA Moore at It’s About the Book
10-12: Ginn Hale at Love Bytes
10-13: C.S. Poe at Joyfully Jay
10-15: Rhys Ford at Two Chicks Obsessed
10-16: Jordan Castillo Price at The Novel Approach

Devil Take Me
Temptation lurks around every corner in worlds sometimes dark, sometimes lurid. Giving in is both dangerous and satisfying, though never in the ways one expects. While these enticements offer a vast range of benefits and boons, the cost is a soul and the devil expects his due. Sometimes suave and charming or calculating and cruel, these devils have schemes and desires of their own. They can be creatures to run away from… or toward.

Join me and the other authors in the Devil Take Me anthology as we embarked on a week-ish blog tour leading up to the book’s release!

Today’s Stop is at….

My Fiction Nook

and our featured author is: Jordan L. Hawk.

Be sure to grab yourself a copy of the anthology and strap yourself down for the wildest of rides!

Purchase Devil Take Me at: DSP Publications, Amazon and other fine bookstores.

Tour Stops are:
10-10: Jordan L Hawk at My Fiction Nook
10-11: TA Moore at It’s About the Book
10-12: Ginn Hale at Love Bytes
10-13: C.S. Poe at Joyfully Jay
10-15: Rhys Ford at Two Chicks Obsessed
10-16: Jordan Castillo Price at The Novel Approach

Devil Take Me
Temptation lurks around every corner in worlds sometimes dark, sometimes lurid. Giving in is both dangerous and satisfying, though never in the ways one expects. While these enticements offer a vast range of benefits and boons, the cost is a soul and the devil expects his due. Sometimes suave and charming or calculating and cruel, these devils have schemes and desires of their own. They can be creatures to run away from… or toward.

You’d Be Pretty If You’d Only…

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard these words.

Usually while growing up.

But still sometimes as an adult.

I grew up being told I wasn’t the pretty one. The one who’d have to settle for whomever wanted me. I would never get a top-shelf boyfriend, as it were. Not anyone worth anything. I would have to take what I got.

Sometimes the word pretty would be substituted for Cute, lowering my potential even more.

My family would talk about how smart I was to other people but at home, I was rising above my worth, acting like I was better than they were because of one thing or another. My love of books was dangerous and I can’t count the number of times I was hit because I was reading.

But I’d be worth something if only I’d tried.

I grew wary of compliments. Wary of people trying to be nice to me. Wary of affection. It was a tactic used to draw me in close. Being drawn in close meant bruises and sometimes broken bones. I have chips of bone running along the inside of my jawbone, beneath my teeth and under my skin. I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to have those. I can’t remember not having uneven chips and divots there.

My right ring finger is deformed at the first joint. I did that to myself. Writing. Writing continuously. Because you see, in hearing I would never be pretty, would have to settle, never be worth anything… I buried myself into words.

Both reading them and writing them.

Books brought me into worlds I never knew existed. I created words out of the oddities forming in my brain. I wrote about faces that looked like mine but I rarely read words that echoed my face, my experiences, my cultures.

I learned not to be worried about being pretty. It was easier to shed that expectation because I was never going to be more than cute, even if I tried my hardest. But what I could do was sculpt my own worlds out of paper and ink… which could be pretty if I tried.

I love writing pretty but that’s not my world. I grew up in violence, grit and a manufactured paradise with a bit of rot behind the stage dressing and some laughter here and there. I’ve loved and lost. And I’ve been loved by family members who were taken from me too soon. I never heard damning words from my grandfathers, not the kind of hatred-hardened rocks used to break my bones. I was told it was okay to be smart or even not be good at something. So long as I tried.

So I guess that’s really the best bit of advice I use to guide me.

Try.

Try to be a person you can be with. Try to form your own worlds or reach into someone else’s. Wear what makes you feel pretty or handsome. Be what you admire. Remember people are sometimes assholes but for the most part, they want to help you.

Just be.

And just try.