Showing posts with label Nightmare Ink. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nightmare Ink. Show all posts

Friday, December 1, 2023

A Midwinter's Creepy Tale Promo

 Everyone loves A Nightmare Before Christmas, right? Right? I'm hoping so, because I bring you another nightmare. One that has nothing at all to do with Christmas. But hey. When you've had your fill of jingle bells and Hallmark movies, you can put on the Cthulhu Holiday Carols and dive into Nightmare Ink, a creepy urban fantasy.

 

When magic gets under your skin, it can devour you out from the inside out.  

 Tattoo artist Aisa Romanchzyk specializes in binding Live Ink. The Seattle Police Department’s Acts of Magic Investigative unit engages her as a consultant in investigations involving Live Ink. When they bring her a prisoner being consumed by his Live Ink, Aisa commits a fatal error in her haste to save the doomed man. His tattoo, a Chinese dragon, empowered by magic and by the man's blood, escapes into the winter streets. Aisa pursues the creature and learns the hard way that killing other Live Ink artists' creations has earned her enemies.

 Slick, handsome Daniel Alvarez, the best Live Ink artist in four states, and her former lover, kidnaps her. Over the course of six agonizing weeks, he inks another soul to her skin.

 Wearing the masterpiece of a Living Tattoo, she manages to escape. The full body suit takes the form of a winged demon with his fangs buried in her jugular. Huge wings encircle her body as if in an embrace. Only his bright emerald eyes break the black of his shape. He’s alive, and he wants freedom. Since he'd rip away her throat in the process of separating from her, his freedom means her death. It's clear to both of them. He's meant to steal her magic, kill her, take her corporeal form, and return to his maker. Daniel.

 Aisa intends to find out why and thwart to Daniel by any means possible. She names the tattoo Murmur because of the insidious way he whispers into her nightmares and into her waking mind in his bid for freedom.

 In searching for a way to capture the escaped Chinese dragon, Aisa realizes Daniel is stealing other people’s magic. He’s also stealing souls from Murmur’s world to create his Live Ink pieces and he’s not asking for volunteers.

 Murmur understands Daniel means to open a direct portal from Murmur’s hellish world into this one in a bid for power that would make him immortal, something Murmur won’t allow. For the sake of both planes.

 To defeat Daniel, Aisa and Murmur must risk trusting one another and themselves.

Friday, April 21, 2023

Throwback Promo

I'm presenting a throwback to a little UF number called Nightmare Ink.
 

With the needle of a tattoo gun, Isa Romanchzyk has the power to create and destroy. In her shop Nightmare Ink, Isa helps those in need by binding the powers embedded in their Live Ink—the magical tattoos that can enhance the life of the wearer, or end it. But binding tattoos has earned Isa the contempt of her fellow artists—including her former lover Daniel.

When a friend comes to the shop with a tattoo on the verge of killing him, Isa can’t turn him away. For the first time in years, rather than binding and destroying the tattoo, she fixes it, working Live Ink into her friend’s skin, something she'd sworn she’d never do again. Breaking her vow soon becomes the least of her problems.

Isa is horrified to discover her friend’s body in the shop, but the real nightmare begins when she’s abducted and inked with a Living Tattoo against her will. Now, as she seeks retribution from the man who betrayed her, Isa must figure out how to bind her Living Tattoo before it consumes her completely...

Excerpt:

Isa tripped, landing on the big, sharp-edged stones of a railroad grade, her foot still hooked on one rusty metal rail of the track. The pushes of strength from the alien other inside her skin had evaporated. So Isa crawled, her hair and sheet dragging through foul-smelling puddles. The raven leading her away from her prison hopped in front of her as if afraid to leave her sight. When she paused in a vain attempt to catch her breath, the bird took up a strand of her filthy hair and pulled. 

Freedom, the male voice sighed into her head. The Ink.

Isa shuddered. Her strength failed, and she folded to the ground. At least it was dry. Was she lying on sand? Or concrete? How far had she gotten? 

Far. 

Why couldn’t she remember? The raven shrieked. 

Why? the male voice in her head whispered. Why debilitate you? 

“To break my spirit,” Isa murmured. “To break my will.” 

So I could break you. 

“And break free of me, yes.” 

He intends for me to kill you. 

“Yes.” 

Release me. 

“No.” 

He didn’t break you. He couldn’t. 

“Not like that.”

Friday, June 18, 2021

How I Hook

 Hooks? We don't need no stinkin' hooks. 

I'm reading over the list of seven hooks and either I don't understand them - entirely possible because this week is the first time I'd seen them. Seems to me they lack a little imagination because I don't see an action hook. And y'all, that's my favorite! 

Though I am in a class right now that's teaching me to hook via character. This is alien territory for me, but in a romance novel, it makes total sense that you'd want your readers to connect with the characters before, or as, the story action kicks off.

  • Enemy Within: Sun glinting off the barrel of a gun stopped Captain Ari Idylle dead in her tracks. (I'm calling this the Oh, shit hook.)
  • Enemy Games: The communications panel trilled, echoing the call in the confines of the tiny cockpit. (Uhm. I dunno? This is the point where everything changes for the hero. Does that make this a why hook? Or just a weak hook?)
  • Enemy Storm: Holy Gods, don’t know what I did to piss you off, but dropping a starship on my head is overkill. (Ah, Edie. I'd like to imagine this is action and character combined, but that could be wishful thinking.)
  • Enemy Deliverance: Even though her eyes were closed, even though she’d done her best to relax in the tiny barracks pod that qualified as a bunk, even though rainwater dripped on her mattress in a lulling plip, plip, plip, Ildri Bynovan wasn’t asleep. (Character and setting.)
  • Enemy Mine: Priority Two Alert. Assassination contract for Captain Xiao Zhong verified. Guild assassin Mekise Tolenga en route.(Definitely a why)

 You can see a major change between books 1 to 3 and book 4. Also, sneak peak. You're getting to look at an opening line for a book that hasn't been published yet.

Well okay, Marcella. That's the SFR. What about the others?

Look at the fantasies.

  • Blood Knife: The sweet scent of coffee spiked with caramel syrup preceded the shadow that obscured the golden October sunshine pouring into my office. (Setting I think.)
  • Emissary: When I walked out of the Red Desert into the thin strip of fertile land I’d left as a girl, I barely recognized it. (I have no idea what this is.)
Urban Fantasy
  • Nightmare Ink: Funny how longing for something you can’t have gets blown away in the first swirl of snowflakes heralding an oncoming blizzard. (No idea what this is.)
  • Bound by Ink: Isa hadn’t intended to end up in a crowd of people so soon after getting rid of a Living Tattoo who’d wanted to kill her and take over her body for his own use. (This must be the Why.) 
The paranormal.
  • Damned if He Does: The problem with being damned was that no one would meet your eye.(Character, I think.)

Huh. Look at that. I only thought that action was my preference. Looking through my first lines, it looks like I've done far more character hooks than action hooks.

My illusions are so shattered. What is writing even?