Sarah Beth Durst Guest Post

I would like to welcome Sarah Beth Durst to my blog today. I recently read and really enjoyed The Queen of Blood which begins a new fantasy trilogy. You can see my review here.

Why I'm Writing a Series

My new book, THE QUEEN OF BLOOD, is the first book in a new epic fantasy series from Harper Voyager called THE QUEENS OF RENTHIA.  It is a complete story -- no cliffhanger -- but it's not a standalone.

I do love writing standalones.  You get a complete meal: appetizer, entree, and dessert, all at once.  Mmm, dessert...  I've written several of them (DRINK SLAY LOVE, VESSEL, CONJURED, etc.) and plan to do more (my upcoming MG novel JOURNEY ACROSS THE HIDDEN ISLANDS, for example).  But while I love writing standalones, there's one thing that's particularly hard about them: saying goodbye.  After living in a world and falling in love with its characters, it's so hard to leave when the book is done.

I'm not very good at saying goodbye.  Not even to fictional people.

So I've been wanting to write a series, to sink into a world and not have to leave for a long while. And epic fantasy is the perfect way to do that, because, pretty much by definition, it's large enough to hold multiple storylines with many characters.

I also happen to truly love epic fantasy.  It's the subgenre that made me fall in love with fantasy in the first place.  I must have read David Eddings's Belgariad at least a dozen times between the ages of 10 and 20.  Ditto for Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series and Terry Brooks's Shannara books.  I spent a not-insignificant chunk of my childhood drawing maps of imaginary lands on scrap pieces of paper.

A couple summers ago, I decided that I would brainstorm an idea for my first epic fantasy series while I was at a writing retreat in the Poconos.  I wasn't expecting the idea to grab me within ten minutes of my arrival.

It was a beautiful place: forested hills in every direction.  Each writer had his or her own adorable wood cabin nestled beneath the towering pine trees.  I'd just arrived and was walking up to mine -- marveling at the trees, basking in the bird song, and not watching where I was going.  My foot caught on the step up to the door, and I fell flat on my face.  Cut my lip.  And suddenly the idea for my epic fantasy was born: bloodthirsty nature spirits.

THE QUEEN OF BLOOD is set in a world filled with nature spirits.  But these aren't sweet, frolicking pastoral sprites.  These spirits want to kill all humans.  And only certain women -- queens -- have the power to control them.  Book one is about an idealistic young student and a banished warrior who join forces against a rising number of spirit attacks.

It was so much fun to write!  And the best part is that I don't have to say goodbye!  Book two (THE RELUCTANT QUEEN) will be out next summer, and book three (THE QUEEN OF SORROW) will be out ten months after that.

I hope you'll join me in saying hello to Renthia.  It's a beautiful place!  Just watch out for the trees. They bite.

Kendra Elliot's BONE SECRETS Sunday

Author Message - Kendra Elliot

KNOWN is the hardest book I've ever written. I think it's because my fans had such a fantastic reaction to the first appearance of the hero, Chris Jacobs, in BURIED as a secondary character. I've never received so much email about a character. I put a lot of pressure on myself to create a story worth this honorable character. 

Chris was abducted as a child and held in an underground bunker with his schoolmates by a sadistic serial killer. After two years, Chris and another boy escaped, but his friend died before reaching safety. Chris assumed his dead friend's identity, knowing his own family could be killed if they discovered he was alive. 

In BURIED, Chris is reunited with his real family, but the novel belongs to his brother, Michael Brody. Readers clamored for Chris to have his HEA and I knew he needed his own novel, not a novella. I worked hard to come up with a love interest that was worthy of Chris. 

Gianna Trask is a forensic pathologist with a teen daughter and a background that slightly echoes Chris's past. They have both been through hell and are drawn together by their shared pain. Everything Gianna believes about her past is turned on its side when a dead body shows up after her remote cabin catches fire. She and her daughter are trapped outside the cabin in a snowstorm until Chris appears. 

During every word I wrote, I felt like I had my fans looking over my shoulder, wanting the best for Chris. It had a tendency to make me second guess every decision, drawing out the creative process. But I now feel like I did him justice. I hope my fans love Gianna as much as they adore Chris and agree that they are perfect for each other.  

Excerpt - KNOWN

Chris’s brain shot into fifth gear. 

It had been at a full stop as he told Gianna that he remembered everything about his captivity with the Ghostman. He hadn’t shared his memories with anyone since Brian’s mother, Elena. His secrets had died with her. Early on, Michael and Jamie had asked a few leading questions, but he’d shut them down. He didn’t want their minds polluted with images from his past. They had imaginations; they could use them. 

But with Gianna it was different. She’d moved toward him when he alluded to the horrors that had been done to him. She hadn’t run. She hadn’t rejected him. For one terrifying, heart-stopping moment he’d thought she’d look away; instead she’d reached out. 

He’d grabbed her offering and clamped on like a man dying of thirst. 

As he kissed her, he acknowledged that he’d been closed off for years. Gianna had gently touched his surface, sending small waves across his senses. The waves had rippled over the black memories that’d risen to the surface and calmed them, buried them. He hadn’t fought his usual internal struggle to make the images vanish; they’d simply dissolved. 

He wasn’t a fool. They weren’t magically gone. But they’d never fallen away into the background with such ease. 

Since he’d first seen her, Gianna had soothed his environment. Usually he escaped to his cabin to find that calm; yesterday he’d discovered it’d followed him back home on two legs. Two petite legs attached to one of the most gorgeous women he’d ever seen. 

And she accepted him. She’d looked right into his nightmare and not shied away. 

Her heart beat against his and he ran his hand up into her hair, cradling her skull. She felt so small under his fingertips. Her hand was still clutched in his, gripping like she was scared to let go, and he held their clasped hands against her back, feeling the soft give of her skin and the harder bumps of her spine. With her arm behind her she was open and vulnerable to him, but she didn’t seem to care. He tightened his hold on her, causing her to exhale, and she turned her lips from his, her breath brushing over his cheek. He moved his lips up her face to her cheekbones and her eyelids, to her forehead. A soft scent of coconut shampoo entered his senses, and he abruptly wished they were alone on a tropical island, not standing in her violated home in a rainy city. 

He went back to her lips and her doorbell rang. 

“Holy crap,” she uttered. 

“We’re not done here.” He held her gaze, turning his statement into a question. Once again he placed the decision in her hands. 

“Definitely not.” She pulled back; her eyes were dark, but her lips curved in a promising smile that made his heart painfully contract. In a good way. 

“I’ll get the door.”

***

About the Book

Title: Known

Author: Kendra Elliot

Release Date: January 19, 2016

Genre: Romantic Suspense

Publisher: Montlake Romance

Summary

After a brutal snowstorm in the Cascade Mountains, Chris Jacobs discovers two things he never expected to see: the charred shell of a cabin, and Gianna Trask and her sixteen-year-old daughter huddled in an SUV, having barely escaped from their burning vacation rental.

Still scarred from a childhood ordeal, Chris knows there’s something sinister about the scene—it’s the stench of burned flesh.

Forced to wait out the blizzard in their rescuer’s retreat, medical examiner Gianna Trask wonders if her hidden past has finally caught up with her. When a body is found in the destroyed cabin’s ashes and a forest ranger is brutally murdered, both Gianna and Chris must confront their secrets if they want to escape the violent threat lurking outside.

In the fifth book in the Bone Secrets series, Kendra Elliot leads readers on a dangerous, twisting journey of two lives forever changed by a fiery snowstorm in the mountains.

Buy Link

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00Y0PIEZY/ 

About the Author

Kendra Elliot won the 2015 and 2014 Daphne du Maurier awards for Romantic Suspense. She was also an International Thriller Writers finalist for Best Paperback Original and a Romantic Times finalist for Romantic Suspense. She grew up in the lush Pacific Northwest and still lives there with her husband, three daughters, two cats, and a Pomeranian. She’s always been fascinated with forensics, refuses to eat anything green, and loves a strong mai tai on the beach on Kauai. Visit Kendra at www.kendraelliot.com.

Social Media Links

Website: http://www.kendraelliot.com/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Kendra-Elliot-514442348582003/ 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/KendraElliot 

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6150778.Kendra_Elliot

There is also a giveaway. Here is the link:

https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/248343f66df40259

Cover Reveal: Unholy Blue (Stag Lord #2) by Darby Kaye

I am pleased to be one of the blogs that get to reveal the cover for the next book in the series that began with The Stag Lord. I really love anything that Darby Karchut writes and can't wait to get my hands on this one.

Unholy Blue is the sequel to The Stag Lord and is written by Darby Kaye (a pen name for Darby Karchut).  Unholy Blue is adult urban fantasy. 

Unholy Blue will be out in December from Spence City, an imprint of Spencer Hill Press.  (There's not a specific date yet.)

http://www.darbykarchut.com/  author website

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23500275-unholy-blue?from_search=true 

Jacket copy:

Strong and Rare and Irish.

That’s how Shay Doyle likes her whiskey. And men. As Healer to a clan of immortal Celtic warriors living in modern-day Colorado, she has been gifted with such a man: Bannerman “Bann” Boru. The only problem is keeping the stubborn warrior alive. For Fate seems to have it in for Bann, and his son, Cor, descendants of the kings of Ireland, and recipient of an ancient grudge from the mad god, Cernunnos.

But, with a bit o’ luck, Shay, Bann, and the rest of the Doyle clan—along with the aid of a legendary huntsman known as the Black Hand—might just suss out how to kill a shapeshifter that refuses to stay dead, prevent clan warfare, and make a choice that could change their lives.

If they don’t lose them first.

Praise for THE STAG LORD:

“A passionate story with a strong romance…Darby Kaye’s Tuatha Dé Danann shouldn’t be missed.” -- M.D. Waters, author of Archetype and Prototype

“A refreshing glimpse into the world of Celtic mythology and tradition…and give us heroes we want to root for—and reasons to keep turning the pages.”
            -- Walter H. Hunt, author of the Dark Wing Universe and Elements of Mind

“Delightful tale filled with action, mystery, and romance.” -- Rabid Reads

“…highly recommend for fans of urban fantasy who are looking for brilliant characters to fall head-over-heels for.” -- A Belle’s Tales.

This one should be on your wishlist if you are a fan of great urban fantasy.