NIGHT FALLS DARKLY by Kim Lenox

Looks like I found myself a new author! Check out her site here. Isn’t the cover fantastic?? Release date is October 7!

Death is inevitable.
But there are some souls, more wicked and disobedient than most, who defy Death’s claim.
Rebellious souls who must be called to heel.

ARCHER, Lord Black, returns to England at the behest of Queen Victoria to immerse himself in the dark, hellish streets of London’s East End. Among the immortal Shadow Guard, he is the most prolific and cunning of the Reclaimers. He revels in the hunt of his current prey: an ill-mannered, reluctant soul reviled in the daily newspapers as Jack the Ripper. Archer has only one weakness … one distraction … the young woman he spared from death two years before.

ELENA WHITNEY has never wanted for anything – not since coming under the protection of her mysterious and absent guardian, Lord Black, who has gifted her with everything a young woman of quality could ever hope for, including an enviable address, an unlimited income and entrée into the drawing rooms of high society. But now, after nearly two years of indifference, he believes he can sweep into her life and rid himself of her by marrying her off. If he knew anything about her – anything at all – he’d know she had greater aspirations than that.

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Blog Pimping :)

Hi Ladies! Fatin was kind enough to grant me a post on her blog to pimp a Book Giveaway for October I’m having on my blog Romance Book Wyrm. All you need do is leave a comment on the Giveaway post and you’ll be entered to win one of three prizes.

I figured what better way to clear up some shelf space than to have book giveaway and it’s also my birthday month and I thought I’d celebrate by sharing some books! The first prize, the winner gets to choose seven books of the 14 up for grabs along with a Borders Tote bag!

The second prize will be the remaining 7 books.

And the third prize is a Simi Oven Mitt and a Lords of Avalon comic book!

All of the books are like brand new! And some of them have never been read! I have a list of all the books as well as a few pics over on the post.

The contest will run until the morning of October 30th. I’ll draw names and announce the winners later that morning. I hope to see you there :).

Thank you again, Fatin!

AmyC

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Rowena Cherry Talks about Myths

Oh, Troy!!! Another myth to twist.

I’m not talking about Brad Pitt’s movie. I’m thinking of Helen, and how she has inspired at least two of my alien romance heroines… the young Helispeta as depicted in Mating Net, and Electra-Djerroldina, the reluctant heroine of Knight’s Fork.

There’s nothing new under the sun (or any other star). What goes around comes around. If you live long enough, you can be original again. Every story ever told has already been told. In other words, there are only two, or twenty, or thirty-six plots –depending on which plotters’ manual you prefer– and someone has already explored them and drawn on them, whether in fairy tales, the Arabian Nights, Arthurian legends or classical myths, or Nordic sagas, or Chaucer, or Shakespeare.

These timeless tales of magic, morality and universal truths adapt very well to most genres of Romance fiction. Obviously, in Fantasy the faeries may or may not have wings, and the Elves may be tall and royal and very Legolas. In Erotica the dragons may have the hots for smooth-skinned maidens, and the dungeons may come with beds. In Paranormal and Goth and Dark the old morality of the fairy tales turns on its head, and the horrors become the heroes.

It must be the secret barrister in me, or a hangover from my debating society days, but I love such challenges as re-writing the story of Odysseus’s encounter with the Cyclops from Polyphemus’s point of view.

Biological challenges appeal to me, too. I was chatting on the radio with Cindy Spencer Pape last weekend, and I fastened with great tenacity and glee on a thorough modern twist she’d given to one of her werewolf heroes in “Curses”. He’d had a vasectomy, but there was a problem.

I love that stuff. Biology is one of the three sciences. My idea of sci-fi romance embraces biology with enthusiasm…. that, and forensics. Cindy’s werewolf had preternatural powers of regeneration, so his body re-grew the vas deferens, and he became potent with alarming rapidity, and got someone into trouble.

To think that I thought it was cool when a vet (Josh Artemeier, “Pet Hates”) told me that werewolves can’t –or shouldn’t—eat chocolates! It isn’t good for their tempers or their irritable bowels.

There were no were-wolves in the Odyssey or the Iliad. But there were were-pigs! The sorceress, Circe, turned Odysseus’s shipmates into swine, which was probably a highly appropriate thing to do… if a feminist had been telling the story.

Mass shouldn’t have been too much of a problem, so that was a very plausible—well, relatively plausible—bit of shapeshifting.

So, back to the legend of Helen of Troy, and why I felt compelled to twist it (and also to latch onto testicles right from the first line).

The problem with Helen of Troy as a heroine is that New York Romance editors tend to frown on a happy ending for adulterers. How to get around that? She could have been entranced… but the Stockholm syndrome doesn’t make the hero look good. She could have been abused.

That has so been done! Besides, that automatically makes her husband the villain, and dooms him to a necessary death in order to make possible the happy ending.

Instead, I made her husband, the King, genetically incompatible. He is an alien, so that is absolutely logical, and a point too seldom dealt with in futuristic romance. I gave him really strange genitalia (but in the best possible taste), and obliged her to go after a specific public figure to ask him to be her sperm donor.

Imagine. Without putting names or faces to any particular world leader, just suppose the world’s paparazzi happened to be staking out the gentleman’s hotel room. Imagine the scandal…

Which is how you might have a perfectly innocent Paris and a relatively innocent Helen on the run.

*****Leave a comment for the chance to win a $20 gift card to Rowena’s favorite online bookstore! Good Luck!

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KNIGHT’S FORK by Rowena Cherry

“Carpe Scrotum. Seize Life by the Testicles.” –Electra-Djerroldina

The Queen Consort of the Volnoth needs a sperm donor, and only one green-eyed god has the right stuff. Little does she know she has pinned all her hopes on the crown jewels of the fabled Royal Saurian Djinn. Not only is he the son of her greatest enemy, but he has taken a vow of chastity.

“When forced to choose between two evils, pick the one you’ve never tried before….SEX.” –‘Rhett

The Saurian Knight is caught between a problem father who has all the mortal integrity of a Mafia Don, and a married Princess who would stop at nothing to have his seed in her belly. No matter which way he turns, he’s “forked.”

“Why would a male both hope for and fear a lover? …Ah! Inecperience perhaps? — Tarrant-Arragon

Taking the wrong lover…in the wrong place, at the wrong time….is dangerous. And when the High and Mighty intervene, it can be fatal. Can true love and a pure White Knight’s virtue triumph, when society loves a right royal scandal?

Excerpts of KNIGHT’S FORK after the jump!

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