Blog Tour: Razor Wire Featuring an Author Interview with Lauren Gallagher with GiveAway [f/f]

Welcome to the Riptide Publishing/Lauren Gallagher blog tour for Razor Wire!

                          

Every comment on this blog tour enters you in a drawing for a choice of two eBooks off my backlist (as L.A. Witt or Lauren Gallagher; excludes Razor Wire) and a $10 Riptide Publishing store credit. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on December 28^th, and winners will be announced on December 29^th.  Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries.

We are very happy to welcome Lauren Gallagher to the Smoocher’s Voice blog today. Lauren’s latest novel Razor Wire is available on Riptide Publishing.

Lauren Gallagher is an abnormal romance writer who has recently been exiled from the glittering utopia of Omaha, Nebraska, to an undisclosed location in South America. Along with her husband, a harem of concubines, and a phosphorescent porcupine, she remains, as always, in hiding from the Polynesian Mafia. For the moment, she seems to have eluded her nemesis, M/M romance author L.A. Witt, but figures L.A. will eventually become bored with the wilds of Spain and come looking for her. And when that time comes, Lauren will be ready. Assuming L.A. doesn’t have her hands full keeping track of Lori A. Witt and Ann Gallagher, which she probably will.

·       Website

·       Author Blog

·       Twitter

·       Facebook

·       Goodreads

Jodi:          Thank you Lauren for taking the time to answer some questions for our readers. I have to admit I am a long-time fan of L.A. Witt’s writing. This is the first book I have read penned by Lauren Gallagher, and it was as intense and intriguing as the male/male novels. Kim Lockhoff has been the victim of a brutal crime, and she is the victim of psychological and verbal abuse from her fellow sailors and her superiors. She is trapped in a situation that seems insurmountable. Tell us a little about Lockhoff’s character.

Lauren:    Lockhoff is an amalgamation of several woman I’ve met in the military. They’re brushed off as stupid and useless because they’re women, but when they don’t *act* stupid and useless, they’re brushed off as bitches. They really can’t win. Lockhoff is hell-bent on making a career in the military, even if it means playing games she can’t win, but she never expected it to blow up in her face the way it did.

Jodi:          When readers first meet Reese Marion, we are presented with a hard-as-nails Navy officer who seems to instantly dislike Lockhoff. Why does Marion dislike Lockhoff and not trust her?

Lauren:    Like Lockhoff, Reese is similar to some real people. She’s a woman in a male-dominated environment, and refuses to play their games. When women come along who use their looks (especially specific “assets”) to get promoted or to get out of disciplinary situations, she has no patience for it. As such, she can’t stand Lockhoff, who appears to be the epitome of everything Reese can’t stand in a female colleague. Reese has also become jaded by the idea of the “rape card” – a woman wants to blackmail a man or doesn’t want to get strung up for adultery/fraternization/etc, so she falsely claims she was raped. Right or wrong, that is an attitude that I’ve seen crop up many times in the military. That’s actually part of why I wanted to write this book – because I’ve seen and heard those very conversations in real life.  It’s part of why, at least with people I’ve spoken to, women are afraid to report sexual assault, and some men and women are reluctant to take the reports seriously.

Jodi:          Tell us a little about Lieutenant Stanton and how he is able to get away with his misogynist and criminal behavior for so long.

Lauren:    I really wish I could say that Lieutenant Stanton was, unlike Reese and Lockhoff, a figment of my imagination. Sadly, he is also an amalgamation of very real people who abuse their power and their subordinates. His specific actions are fiction, but his attitudes and the attitudes of those around him? Definitely real. The “charming to your face and creepy behind closed doors” persona? Seen it in the flesh, and it’s very difficult for women to convince others (especially their male superiors who think Stanton is a good guy) that he’s done or said something horrible. Lieutenant Stanton’s wife is even based on reality, as sad as that sounds.

Jodi:          As a Navy wife, did you base this story on your personal experiences or is the story complete fiction?

Lauren: The story itself is complete fiction, but like its characters, it’s made up of pieces of reality. Some are things I witnessed myself, some came to me second, third, and fourth hand. Criminal actions being swept under the rug, higher ups abusing their authority and subordinates, sexual assault being either unreported or ignored, people being threatened with their careers, etc. These are all unfortunate realities of the military, but realities nonetheless.

Also, for the record, this book isn’t intended to single out military cops. I wrote it about military cops because that’s what I’m around mostly (my husband is a master-at-arms), so it’s what I’m most familiar with. This scenario could have happened within any rate on any base, but using cops for this one was partly “write what you know” and partly a way to keep the cast reasonably small (since the characters involved would also be involved in the investigation). I chose Okinawa because of its geographical isolation, not because of any nasty feelings toward that base.

Jodi:          What kind of research did you do for this book?

Lauren:    I mostly picked the brains of military cops and a couple of military lawyers. The really sad part? Upon hearing the summary of the story I intended to write, they all agreed that Razor Wire was definitely a plausible scenario.

Jodi:          Rape is a violent crime in any circumstances. Somehow the crime seems more brutal based on the fact that Lockhoff is a lesbian who has never had sex with a man. Was it difficult writing about this issue?

Lauren:    It was definitely difficult, yes.  

Jodi:          Both Lockhoff and Marion struggle for acceptance in a historically male-dominated world, and the men in this novel seem especially intolerant and crass. Tell us a little about Alejandro who also is conflicted throughout the novel.

Lauren:    Like all the others, the guys are based on real people. Most of the comments they made are comments I’ve heard, and I was aiming to replicate the “locker room” atmosphere that sometimes shows up on bases. It’s generally brushed off as “boys will be boys,” but it can get pretty crass.

As for Alejandro, I think he’s representative of a lot of men in the military. He engages in the crass locker room stuff, but he’s also empathetic and generally tries to be a good person and a good leader. He’s also dealt with women who use their “assets” to advance and men who act like “if she’s pretty, she’s asking for it,” so he’s never quite sure what the reality of a situation is until he’s delved a bit deeper.  He wants to do the right thing, though.

Jodi:          At the end of the novel, Lockhoff mentions, “It felt good to be back in my own skin.” She is a dynamic character who evolves a great deal through the course of the book. The one thing that has not changed though is her inner strength, which is obvious even when she appears weak. Was this a difficult characteristic to develop?

Lauren:    It really wasn’t. I had actually envisioned her as being a bit more fragile for the first part of the book, but once I started writing, it became obvious that she wasn’t having it. I really liked her because of that.

Jodi:           Will there be any more books with these characters?

Lauren:    It’s entirely possible. I don’t have anything planned at the moment, but I definitely haven’t ruled it out.

Jodi:          Both Lauren Gallaher and L.A. Witt write in the romance genre, but while Gallagher writes male/female (including lesbian and bisexual) romance, Witt focuses on m/m romance. What are some of the challenges when focusing on two male protagonists as opposed to a male and a female or two females?

Lauren:    In general, there’s really no difference. In a military setting, though, that’s not quite true. You tend to have a very high ratio of men to women. There are attitudes within the ranks that haven’t caught up with the rest of society, including victim-blaming and rape apology. So going into a lesbian military romance is going to have some different dynamics than a civilian romance or a gay male military romance. You tend to have women who’ve been fighting an uphill battle since boot camp, and they’ll be fighting that uphill battle for the duration of their careers.  Is that true for all women in the military? Maybe not, but I can’t say I’ve ever encountered a female service member whose gender hasn’t come into play at some point in her career.

Military aside, I don’t find it too difficult to switch between lesbian, gay, bisexual, and straight relationships.

Jodi:          What is the main difference in the sex scenes when writing about two men together and two women together (besides the body parts)?

Lauren:    It really does just come down to body parts. I’ve heard it said that women focus more on emotions and men focus more on the physical, but I don’t really buy that. Women can get just as primal as men, and men can get just as emotional – it just depends on what the sex scene calls for.

Jodi:          Although Razor Wire is not the first romance you have written focusing on two lesbian characters – the short story “What This Woman Wants” is available at Riptide Publishing – it is your first full-length f/f book. Will you be writing more novels with two women protagonists?

Lauren:    Definitely. For whatever reason, I find it harder to come up with stories for two women than I do for two men (I seriously have no explanation for that), but I will absolutely be writing more.

Jodi:          You mentioned in our previous interview that you are writing Anna Maxwell’s book. Anna is a character in L.A. Witt’s Starstruck, which is part of the Bluewater Bay series. When is that book tentatively scheduled to publish?

Lauren:    It’s hard to say. Probably sometime in 2016. I’ll be writing that one very soon, though.

Jodi:          What is your next project?

Lauren:    I’m currently on a bit of a ménage kick. I’m working on a few bisexual books at the moment, and I’ll hopefully be taking a little detour in 2015 to write some more mainstream science fiction. At the moment, I’m finishing a ménage story and the sequel to Aleksandr Voinov’s Dark Soul. After that…well, it depends on how long it takes to settle into Spain. LOL

Razor Wire

Two women. One terrible crime. Zero allies.

After being raped by a superior officer, MA3 Kim Lockhoff wants to leave the whole thing in the past. A cop herself, she knows all too well that it’s her word—and slutty reputation—against that of a respected Navy officer.

MA2 Reese Marion, a tough cop hiding her own trauma behind a hard-as-nails exterior, has no patience for pretty little princesses who use their cleavage to win favor with the guys. But when Reese is partnered with Kim, she slowly realizes that reputations can lie. Kim is whip-smart, ambitious—and scared. The man who attacked her won’t let anything damage his career, least of all Kim . . . or the baby she’s carrying as a result.

Isolated on Okinawa, thousands of miles away from home, the two women lean hard on each other. But when Kim confides in Reese, she unwittingly puts her new lover—and both of their careers—in the line of fire. Now her attacker just might have the leverage he needs to keep her quiet for good.

Buy Links

Riptide Publishing

Author Interview and GIveaway: Shira Anthony on Blood and Rain.

It is our pleasure to welcome back Shira Anthony to the Smoocher’s Voice blog today. Shira’s new book, Blood and Rain, is available on Dreamspinner Press, is the first book in a new Blood series.

Shira Anthony is a complete sucker for a happily-ever-after, and rarely reads or writes a story without one. Never a fan of instalove, Shira likes to write stories about real men with real issues making real relationships work.

In her last incarnation, Shira was a professional opera singer, performing roles in such operas as “Tosca,” “Pagliacci,” and “La Traviata,” among others. Her Blue Notes Series is loosely based upon her own experiences as a professional musician.

Shira is married with two children and two insane dogs and when she’s not writing, she is usually in a courtroom trying to make the world safer for children. When she’s not working, she can be found aboard a 36’ catamaran at the Carolina coast with her favorite sexy captain at the wheel. She’s given up TV for evenings spent with her laptop, and she never goes anywhere without a pile of unread M/M romance on her Kindle.

You can learn more about Shira and her writing on her website.

You can also follow her on Social Media: 

Facebook
     Goodreads
     Twitter: @WriterShira
     E-mail: shiraanthony@hotmail.com

Jodi:           Hi Shira. Thank you for agreeing to answer some questions about your newest series. As you know, I am a big fan of your writing. This new book, although very different in subject matter from the Blue Notes and Mermen of Ea series, still contains the patented Shira Anthony character depth and intense plot development.  Tell us a little about your inspiration for this vampire-focused series.

Shira:        Thanks so much, Jodi! I grew up reading the Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles series, and I loved the dark, sexiness of those books. I also grew up reading high fantasy and sci fi. So when I considered writing a story about vampires, I think I naturally gravitated to those genres, with the dark, angsty overtones I loved in Anne Rice’s books. As a reader, I loved to escape into fantasy universes. As a writer, I write what I loved to read: fantasy with characters I can fall in love with, who learn and grow throughout the story as the plot grows and develops.

Jodi:           In this book we meet five intense male characters: Nicolas, Charles, Adrien, Francois and Jean. They are all troubled in their own ways. Adrien is the only non-vampire. Like the men in your other books, all of these men have flaws and intensity that draws readers into the story.  Tell us a little about your process for developing these characters. Why did you choose to have all of the men introduced in the first book of the series?

Shira:        Wow, that’s a great question! I’ll try to answer as briefly as I can, or we may be here all day! When I create characters, I often have big picture tension in mind. So in creating couples, I consider what makes for an interesting combination of personalities and issues that drive the characters. I introduced all of the big players in the first book because the book seemed to call for that. There are several interwoven plotlines in the story, and the characters are integral to each.

While I do have a general outline of the story before I start to write, I tend to let the story take me where I need to go. In this case, the entire story begins because Adrien’s older brother, François, also a vampire hunter, falls for a vampire, Charles Duvalier. That attraction and its consequences set up the framework for Adrien’s journey and the intrigue. So right off the bat, we meet François and Charles. François is bold and powerful, but he’s also young and impulsive. In contrast (and that’s where you get the wonderful tension to build on!), Charles is angsty, and lives with a bit of a dark cloud over his head. He never wanted to be a vampire, and he can’t understand why François might want to become one.

With Adrien Gilbert, the vampire hunter, and Nicolas Lambert, the ancient vampire (born a vampire, not created from a human), their relationship is the focal point of the series, and I’m not spoiling it to say their HEA doesn’t happen until all of the action around them is resolved in the last book. Again, I tried to create a pairing that has tension built into it. Adrien is young, naïve, and he despises vampires. Who wouldn’t, in his shoes? They killed his mother and, he believes, his brother. Nicolas is gentle and kind, but he’s incredibly powerful as well. Nicolas wins over Adrien’s heart, but it takes Adrien some time to come to terms with his feelings for Nicolas, given his history.

Jean Lambert, Nicolas’s older brother, is probably my favorite character of the series. He sacrificed much of himself, and he let the man (vampire) he loves go in order to protect his family. He’s noble, and on the surface he seems cold and distant, but beneath the cool exterior, he is a deeply caring man. He, more than anyone, keeps Adrien focused when things go awry.

Jodi:           It is difficult to read this first book and not being immediately drawn to Nicolas. Tell us a little about his character.

Shira:        Nicolas is a man of quiet strength. He’s incredibly powerful, although when we first get to know him, he seems to allow himself to be dominated by his older brother. As the story progresses, we learn that isn’t quite the case. I tried to introduce Nicolas to the reader through Adrien’s eyes. And Adrien, naïve and young, assumes many things about Nicolas that simply aren’t true. Nicolas is the rock, and Adrien is that quick-moving river that encounters the rock and must change its course.

Jodi:           Adrien and Nicolas have an immediate chemistry, which both men recognize but neither wants to act on, while Francois and Charles also have chemistry, Charles keeps fighting his feelings for Francois. Can you tell us a little about why Charles is so reluctant to let go with Francois?

Shira:        We’ll learn more about Charles in the last book, but there are bits of him we come to see in the first two books, as well. He’s very old, but he isn’t an ancient vampire—he was created by an ancient. He didn’t want to become a vampire. He has the soul of a poet or artist, and the knowledge of what he’s done over the centuries eats away at him. He doesn’t believe himself worthy of love or even life itself. He certainly doesn’t believe he deserves someone like François, who is a breath of fresh air in Charles’s dark world.

Jodi:           Adrien and Francois are brothers. Their mother was killed by a vampire, but Adrien and Francois do not feel the same way about these beings. Why do these brothers have different views, even though they share a similar negative experience?

Shira:        Adrien witnesses his mother’s death. In fact, he kills the vampire who killed her. Witnessing that act of violence makes all the difference for Adrien. Also, François travels outside the small village where their family has its vineyard, so he gets to see a bit of the world, whereas Adrien is not tapped by the Council of Hunters to work as a hunter until he’s a bit more set in his ways. Adrien’s world is smaller, at least to begin with. So is his perspective.

Jodi:           Adrien is stubborn, hard-headed, and he seems to be a bit arrogant. He doesn’t really listen to what his father and Roland are trying to teach him. Is his arrogance the result of youth or is it something deeper?

Shira:        Adrien’s arrogance is a mask that hides his deep insecurity and grief. He comes from a long line of hunters who were celebrated throughout Europe, but he feels unworthy of his hunter sword, and he is convinced he will never life up to his family’s name. He blames himself for his mother’s death, and he sees François as the stronger hunter. It’s easier for him not to feel the pain of loss, and it’s easier for him to avoid the understanding of the greater world around him and come to terms with the truth about hunters and vampires. Adrien is thrust into a much larger universe, but he’d rather have stayed at the vineyard. He, more than any other character in the story, grows and changes in ways he couldn’t have imagined.

Jodi:           The power struggle within the Council plays a major role in this book. Tell us about the Council and its role in society.

Shira:        The Council of Hunters is the governing body of hunters worldwide, and it’s headquartered in Paris. The Council was created as a result of a treaty between the ancient vampires and the hunters, and is sort of a police force with the power to execute vampires who harm humans. The Council is supported by payments from human towns and cities (like a tax, really), although the only humans who know about the Council’s existence are those who are in the government.

Jodi:           Although the characters in this book are in the fantasy vein (no pun intended), they are similar in some ways to the male characters in the Blue Notes series, specifically, in relationship to their brooding natures and strong willed natures. What is it that draws you to this type of character?

Shira:        I really do love men who fight their emotions and try to be something they aren’t. I know a lot of men like that, I guess--the strong, silent type who seems impenetrable, but is really very loving or caring beneath the mask. I’m a romantic, of course, and I believe that love can give people the safe place they need to be able to open up and express emotions. In my experience, the people who appear the least accessible are those who have built the strongest walls around their heart.

Jodi:           Was it a challenge creating men who are advanced in maturity and age and yet look so young?

Shira:        Not really. The funny thing is that I really didn’t think about them as young as I was writing, except at the beginning when Adrien really is about 20 years old. It wasn’t until I got the draft of the cover that it really struck me how young 20 really is!

Jodi:           There will be three books in this series. Is that correct? Have you already written the second and third book?

Shira:        The second book, Blood and Ghosts, is already written and in edits. Tentative release is March/April 2015. The third book, Blood and Eternity, is partly written. Not sure of a tentative release date yet, though, but probably by the end of 2015.

Jodi:           What is your process for writing a series? Do you outline the entire series from the start, or does the plot develop into a series as you begin writing?

Shira:        I outline the basics of the plot for a series. The bones. I have the beginning, middle, and end clearly in my brain when I start to write. But as I go along, I’m always tweaking the plot. Sometimes when you think of something, it turns out very differently on paper, and you realize there’s another, better way of handling a plot point or scene. So I try to stay flexible. So I know how the 3 HEAs in this story will turn out, but how I get there may not exactly be what I had in mind to begin with.

In this series, especially, I’ve done some serious rewriting. The second book introduces a new power Adrien comes to possess, but that he can’t quite control: time travel. Writing time travel is really tricky, and my ideas didn’t always make sense on paper in the big picture sense, so I worked and reworked the story until I was satisfied with it (and my head didn’t spin as badly!). I also often re-order parts of a book, or even rework a scene in another character’s point of view as I go along.

Jodi:           What is your next project?

Shira:        My next release will be Blood and Ghosts (Blood #2). I’m just about finished writing Running with the Wind (Mermen of Ea #3). After that, I have a joint project with my good friend, Cody Kennedy, a contemporary novel about a cop and a DA. After that, I’ll be finishing Blood and Eternity (Blood #3). I’m busy! But that’s a good thing.

Excerpt: 

Adrien licked the skin of Cole’s neck, feeling the blood pulse there, hearing it call to him. Cole tilted his head in anticipation, opening himself to Adrien.
Adrien buried his teeth in Cole’s skin. Blood flooded his mouth and danced on his tongue, sweet and salty. Too long. His body was far more vampire-like in its craving for blood than when he’d first been given the gift of an ancient vampire’s soul. He wondered if it was the same for other immortals.
Adrien tried to ignore the images that flashed through his mind—the sound of silvery laughter, a mother’s loving caress. Cole’s memories. Adrien despised this forced intimacy, but he’d come to see it as the price of blood. Something to be tolerated.
It hadn’t always been that way. When he’d shared Nicolas’s blood, Adrien had experienced great joy. He’d seen himself through Nicolas’s eyes and felt the depth of Nicolas’s love. Each drop of that precious liquid had opened new doors. Each taste offered insight into Nicolas’s heart and soul. A beloved memory. A mystery—the mystery of Nicolas—unfolding with every swallow.
Adrien drank his fill, then claimed Cole’s mouth. This kind of contact he could stomach. He didn’t need sex to survive, but he enjoyed the release. Cole unbuttoned Adrien’s black silk shirt and his cock swelled against Adrien’s thigh. Adrien moaned as Cole skated his fingertips over his chest.
“I have never known a hunter to crave blood,” Cole whispered in his ear. “I thought only we experienced the bloodlust.”
“You were wrong,” Adrien said as he pulled Cole’s shirt over his head and mouthed a pretty pink nipple. Sex was always better after he fed, and Adrien’s cock was already hard at the thought of fucking such a lovely ass. He drew Cole’s body against his, walked backward into the living room, and pulled Cole with him onto the rug. Soon they were naked and he was no longer a hunter or an immortal, he was simply a man, seeking release, seeking pleasure.

For at least an hour after, Adrien lay on the floor and allowed the night air to caress his bare skin. He closed his eyes and dozed.
“Adrien.”
The voice awakened him. Nicolas’s voice again. Why sleep if it only served to reawaken the pain he sought to suppress?
He stood and pulled on his jeans. He walked onto the balcony in his bare feet, then climbed to the roof of the penthouse.
Pathetic.

Having reached the edge, he spread his arms. He leaned forward and fell unimpeded, riding the wind like a sigh. The glass of the building sailed by him, the breeze buffeting his face. He hit the water and sank into the cold blackness. He wished he could die.

Buy Links

Dreamspinner Press

Amazon

All Romance eBooks

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Tour Dates:/Tour Stops:

15-Dec

Joyfully Jay

16-Dec

Prism Book Alliance

17-Dec

Rebecca Cohen Writes

Rainbow Gold Reviews

18-Dec

Love Bytes

19-Dec

Scattered Thoughts & Rogue Words

22-Dec

Amanda C. Stone

23-Dec

Book Reviews, Rants, and Raves

24-Dec

Emotion in Motion

25-Dec

Molly Lolly

26-Dec

Book Suburbia

Blog Tour & Interview with Laylah Hunter

We are very happy to welcome Layla Hunter to the Smoocher’s Voice blog today. Layla’s latest novel Gabriel's City: A Tale of Fables and Fortunes is available at Riptide Publishing.

Laylah Hunter is a third-gendered butch queer who writes true stories about imaginary people in worlds that never were. Most of hir work deals with queer characters, erotic themes, and the search for happy endings in unfavorable circumstances.

Hir mild-mannered alter ego lives in Seattle, at the mercy of the requisite cats and cultivating the requisite caffeine habit, and dreams of a day when telling stories will pay all the bills.

Connect with Layla.:

·       Website

·       Twitter

·       Goodreads

Jodi:           Thank you for taking the time to answer some questions for our readers. Tell us a little about yourself.

Layla:       Hi, everyone, thanks for having me on this tour for Gabriel's City! Don't forget to leave a comment at the end of this post to win a chance at the ZOMG Smells giveaway!

I’m a 35-year-old queer nerd, living at the edge of Seattle with one human friend and a menagerie of pets. In non-writing hobbies, I’m learning to grow food, homebrew, and knit. My favorite coffee flavor is lavender, and I’m more comfortable in rooms where the furniture doesn’t all match.

Jodi:           Are your characters complete fiction, or are they modeled after real people?

Layla:       I suspect we always pull from people we know a little bit, even if we don’t mean to. The writing mind is a hungry thing, and everything around it is potential food. None of my characters are modeled after people in the straight-up “I’m going to change Steve’s name and write a book about him” sense, but they probably all have little tells and habits that I’ve absorbed from people around me. The most crucial of those in this book is probably the way Gabriel makes storytelling a part of his life, which was influenced a lot by one of my earliest hopeless crushes (though in other ways she was nothing like him at all).

Jodi:           When you start a book, do you already have the whole story in your head or is it built progressively?

Layla:       Definitely more the latter! Though it’s a little of both. I’ll have the basic idea of where I want the characters to wind up, and usually a few key scenes I want them to hit on the way there, but then I’m improvising some of the process that gets them from one key point to another. For example, I knew that Gabriel’s City needed to have the scene where Gabriel is telling Drake not to leave, giving him the “I don’t need you but it’s better with you here” line as he fails to clearly express his feelings. But I didn’t know that needed to happen in the aftermath of Sebastian’s party until I got there, and realized that yes, good, now they’ve reached the point where the emotional tension is right for that exchange.

Jodi:           What do you like to read?

Layla:       Lately I’m reading a lot of nonfiction! It’s helpful for a writer, I think, to keep learning new things and exposing yourself to new ideas. It’s especially important to do some of your reading outside the genre(s) that you write, so that you don’t wind up just internalizing all of the tropes that are getting overdone in that genre. Lately I’ve been reading things about city infrastructure and how civilizations collapse.

Jodi:           What is for you the perfect book hero?

Layla:       What an excellent question this is. For me, the perfect hero is someone who grows as a person over the course of the story, someone who has realistic flaws and overcomes them in some crucial way to make the story work out. They may not even be terribly likable at the start, but they win over the reader’s sympathy as their journey unfolds. (Colin is definitely a spoiled jerk in Chapter One—I promise if you can stick with him he’ll get the selfishness knocked out of him!)

Jodi:           Will you write more about these characters?

Layla:       I don’t think so. I’m really happy with the ending they’ve earned by the time they get to the last page. I’d like to write more set in the same city, but those would be stories that looked at other characters’ adventures. I suspect Sebastian would be a lot of fun for readers, but he’ll need some pretty straight-laced and stubborn supporting cast to balance out what a shameless hedonist he is.

Jodi: How much of the book and characters is realistic?

Layla:       This is also a really neat question for a story that isn’t set in the real world. So, confession time: despite being largely a fantasy writer, I am always uncomfortable writing magic. Casmile is a city that never existed, on a world that is more like our own than not, and inhabited by people with hopes, fears, and abilities that I hope will seem recognizable and real. There’s no magic of the shapeshifting, fireball-throwing, demon-summoning sort. There may be a little divine intervention here and there, but—like in the real world—a skeptic could argue that was just coincidence. Figuring out how much to believe is an important issue for Colin to confront as he gets closer to Gabriel.

Jodi:           What is your next project?

Layla:       I’m always poking at a few things simultaneously, because my attention span is a sad little thing, but the front-runner now is a near-future dystopia featuring characters who meet as inmates of a prison labor camp and have to go on the run in search of someplace they can be safe and try to build new lives for themselves. It’ll be an adventure.

Gabriel's City: A Tale of Fables and Fortunes

For spoiled young aristocrat Colin Harwood, the port city of Casmile is a buffet of easy pleasures. But when he steps into a pub brawl to help a dangerously outnumbered young man, he is drawn into the seedy underbelly of the city the young man calls home.

Gabriel is a cutpurse and a knife for hire, practically an urban legend. His vision of Casmile is touched by a strange combination of faith and madness, driven by fairytale logic and a capacity for love that he often must suppress to survive. He’s always worked alone, but when a dashing dragon who calls himself Colin saves him in a bar fight, he pulls Colin into his world.

Gabriel’s city is nothing like the refined, socialite existence that bored Colin senseless. Colin finds adventure and excitement there—and maybe even love. But with his layers of finery stripped away, nothing remains to protect him from poverty or danger—except Gabriel. So he must choose: go back to the civilized young man he once was, or fly free as Gabriel’s dragon.

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Riptide Publishing