Monthly Archives: February 2013
Keri Lake – Soul Avenged (Sons of Wrath, #1)
Today I have the privilege and honour to introduce a friend of mine, Keri Lake. Keri is an incredible writer who released her new book, Soul Avenged on the 6th Feb. So, without further ado, I give you Soul Avenged.
Soul Avenged Blurb:
Passion is blind in vengeance and love …
Ayden’s suburban home was invaded by a pack of Lycans.
The brutal attack is the only memory she carries of her former life.
Now, one motive burns in her soul:
KILL THEM ALL.
The Sons of Wrath—a brood of vengeance-dealing warrior demons—band with Ayden to hunt the Lycans on Detroit’s most deadly feeding grounds.
Kane Walker should’ve been her easiest kill.
Unfortunately, the newly bitten Lycan has something she wants—clues that may finally lay her past to rest. To reach them, she must be willing to submit to the sensual pleasures awakened by his touch.
Time is running out.
In seven days, Kane will become what Ayden despises most. She can halt his transformation but the antidote requires the ultimate sacrifice. As the beast takes hold, Kane becomes more of a threat.
Ayden must choose between her lust for revenge, or surrender to her enemy and discover a horrible truth.
And now for a excerpt:
CHAPTER ONE
Ice water.
The frigid sensation sliced through Ayden’s veins, leaving a numb trail in its wake as she stepped through the remains of the abandoned factory—one of many havens for the crack addicts and prostitutes. The old Packard Plant had become no more than a ghostly haunt for tormented souls.
Shitholes were cropping up everywhere, much more rapidly than ever before. Detroit, once a thriving city, brought to ruins. Gray and lifeless like the suffocating overcast that loomed during daylight.
A vile stench assaulted her nose, a potent blend of piss, sex and rotted meat, as garbage crunched beneath her boots. Foundation had collapsed all around where she stood, crumbled as if the building would fold into the depths of hell.
The graffiti spattering the walls gave the impression that gangs were the real threat—‘We don’t die, we multiply.’
Right. Like gangs own any part of this city, anymore.
A Beretta, loaded with silver bullets and a silver parrying dagger rested at one of Ayden’s hips, a silver bullwhip at another, as she moved past comatose bodies and decaying corpses.
Feeding grounds, like a bait pile.
Deadened eyes slowly tracked her movement in the darkness, squinting, as though craving the light that hers didn’t need to see. Humans so strung out on drugs, they failed to recognize the half-eaten carrion were once their own kind.
Not that knowing would stop them. They’d apparently chosen to face danger rather than kick their addiction, roaming the streets every night in search of their next high.
Lambs.
They were already dead. Death just hadn’t come to collect yet.
The blissful sigh of a hopped-up junkie reached her ears. She snarled her lip. “Enjoy it while it lasts, asshole.”
It’d be one thing if they were homeless. Hell, she might’ve fired a warning shot to evacuate.
The homeless didn’t come here, though.
Neither did the police—making it the perfect spot to get wasted and hustle some money.
Shots fired would’ve been nothing more than a momentary distraction before their minds slipped back into their ignorant state of euphoria.
Screw ‘em.
For any other girl, the place promised very bad things—an opportunity for a sadist to live out wild fantasies without ever getting caught.
For Ayden? Humans posed no threat. Their fragile bodies would shred like paper dolls against the work of her hands. Luckily for them, she sought something else to sate her thirst for bloodshed, something far more threatening than their most psychopathic criminal—and she’d tracked it right to the surrounding cornucopia of human flesh.
A thin, black mesh hoodie beneath her jacket concealed her face while the shiny black leather covering her body acted as a beacon in the moon’s light.
Full moon.
It didn’t matter.
Contrary to the fairytales and movies, they didn’t need a full moon to change.
Werewolves, some called them—like a supernatural Bigfoot on the loose. Nothing more than fodder for the tabloids, not to be taken seriously.
Lycans is how those ‘in the know’ referred to them.
The bastards could transform at will. In the middle of the day, if they wanted. Though, like a true predator, they’d evolved throughout the centuries, eluding humans by hunting them at night, catching their prey in their most vulnerable state.
Ayden reached a door in a darkened corner. The stubborn panel held stiff against the push of her palm, giving way only beneath one heave backed by exceptional strength. Beyond, a spiral of stairs wound above and below. Visuals flashed through her mind as she imagined the stairwell bustling with men in suits who passed each other with carefree visages—every one of them ghosts that roamed the destruction.
A quick scan showed no movement.
She tipped her head back and inhaled the repugnant scent the beasts had left behind.
They’re close.
Her feet took light steps, hardly making a sound against the concrete as she descended further into the pit of hell otherwise known as the lycan’s lair.
With each step, she wished her heart would pound wildly in her chest, or that her pulse rate would surge—both human reactions to fear. Neither of them did.
What fragments of her human soul remained had been stripped bare the night the Alexi made her one of their own. Even that, as tortuous as the unrelenting pain that seared through her body while it underwent its transformation, was a memory she could hardly summon anymore. Only a silent blackness dwelled in the place where snapshots of her life would have roamed free, a void that she couldn’t see beyond, separating her present from past.
She’d become one of them: an Alexi soldier. A cold and remorseless killer designed to eradicate in one sweep.
A noise piqued her sensitive ears.
Two flights below.
It could’ve been the skittering feet of a mouse beating against her skull like a base drum.
The thirst for blood moved like a dark storm cloud through her veins, a mix of raw adrenaline and something else—the something that came with her transformation.
Destroy.
Her feet moved on impulse, carrying her closer to whatever it was, rendering it nothing more than a thread-width away from its death.
In the corner of a landing, he sat hunched over on himself, body convulsing.
A grin skated across her face as she approached her first kill of the night.
So, if you want to read more (and why wouldn’t you?), here are the links to get hold of your very own copy.
I’d like to thank Keri for letting me be part of her blog tour, but before I go, here’s a little more about the lady in question.
Keri Lake is a married mother of two living in Michigan. She writes paranormal romance, urban fantasy and loves a good, tragic love story. Though novels tend to be her focus, she also writes short stories and flash fiction whenever distraction manages to suck her in to the Land of Shiny Things.
When she isn’t toiling away on plots and protagonists, she enjoys reading, music and travel. If she could create mystical powers for herself, she’d have the ability to flash to anywhere in the world. And if she could flash to anywhere in the world at this very moment, she’d be staring at the ocean from her adirondack chair on the shores of North Carolina.
My Wife
My wife isn’t really someone who’s all that bothered about Valentines Day, which is fortunate because I feel the same way. I find it odd that someone picked one arbitrary day that people should be all romantic. It helps that our anniversary of the start of our relationship is the day after (it certainly makes it easy to remember).
I’ve also never been someone to make big grand gestures of romance; getting a bunch of people to perform a flashmob declaring my love feels like a hell of a lot of time and effort for such a simple act. I’m also not much of a poet, and writing about my undying love for someone makes me sound like a country song, so I think I’ll skip that.
But Valentines Day is as good as any other for singing the praises of my wife, so, I’d like to take a moment to thank her. Everyone else can look away now if they like:
Vanessa, without your support and unwavering faith in my abilities, I wouldn’t be here right now with two successful books under my belt. I certainly wouldn’t be writing my third with an eye to being able to go fulltime. I know my writing sometimes gets in the way of you actually getting things done around the house. I know having to look after three kids while I lock myself away can be exhausting. That’s why I always feel bad when I get so little done. You’re giving me time, and that’s one of the most important things a writer can have. And without that time away from distraction, I’d have never gotten anything done.
When I wrote Crimes Against Magic, I said in the dedication that you were my better half, and that couldn’t have been truer.
So thank you. Thank you for being there for me. For giving me a kick up the ass when I need it and for ranting about the 1 or 2 star reviews I get (usually with liberal swearing about the author and/or requests to commit violence about their person), thanks for understanding that, yeah I can be grumpy when I don’t get enough work done. But most of all, thanks for being you, for loving this comic book reading, anime watching, videogame playing, tattooed geek. I love you, and it doesn’t matter how many times I say that, it will always be true.
Seeing how my wife would probably bludgeon me if I posted a picture of her, here’s some cute puppies. Because everyone loves puppies.
So, there you have it. Me being soppy. It doesn’t happen too often in public, but if you have a partner who is supportive and always there to help you in your writing or art or whatever it is that takes up a lot of your time. Tell them thank you. You don’t have to do it today; you can, and should, do it any day you choose. But do it often. Because they’re some of the most important people you will ever have beside you.
The Year Ahead
For those of you who have been reading my blog, or indeed read my acknowledgements in the back of Born of Hatred, you’d know that 2012 was a bit of a crazy year for me. 1 baby daughter, 2 published books (and their subsequent ‘success’) and a house move was quite a lot to go through in what amounted to a six-month period.
So, I thought I’d make everyone aware of what my writing plans are for this year (considering the unlikely event of more children or a house move, I think I may also get some sleep too).
With Silent Screams – Hellequin Chronicles Book 3.
I’m writing this at the moment. And I’m about 1/3 of the way through. It’s set almost totally in North America, and introduces a few new characters and species.
Release – Probably summer, at least that’s the plan at the moment.
Prison of Hope – Hellequin Chronicles Book 4.
I’ve made some fairly intensive notes for it and will get round to starting it when the current draft of book 3 is done. I don’t want to say too much about it, but I’ve been looking forward to writing this one for a while.
Release – Hopefully before Christmas.
Short Stories
I also have plans to write several short stories. Most of these will be a few thousand words at most, and will be available to read on my blog for free. When I have enough of them to actually put a book out, I’ll collect them and do just that as I know some people would like to have a copy they can read wherever they like. And anytime I can get Eamon to do another cover for me usually works out well.
Some of these short stories are:
Infamous Reign – Nate’s meeting with Richard 3rd just after the disappearance of the two princes in the tower of London.
Frozen Rage – Nate and Tommy investigate the murder of several werewolves as a peace treaty is being signed in Milan 1709.
A short story that deals with what happened between the end of book 1 and beginning of book 2. I don’t have a title for it yet.
I’ve got ideas for several others too, but no more than just whispers of details for them at the moment. So, if I get time, or if the day becomes about 12 hours longer, I’ll probably figure out more details.
So that’s my writing plan for 2013. Which is a lot now that it’s written down. Things might get moved around, or added, but for the moment I’m happy with it.
And then 2014 will hopefully have more Hellequin chronicles, books 5 and 6 already have a lot of notes (and titles), so I don’t think there’s any worry about not being busy for a while.
Steve McHugh 