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.

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.”

Fantasy Genres - the Creepier, the Better

This is going to read rough. I'm coming down off a weird viral thing (not Covid, believe me, I tested more than once) that had me asleep for 36 hours straight. Today is the first day I've been upright without tipping over. No warranty express or implied, I'm afraid. I have the mental acuity of a lettuce.

Genre Love

How am I supposed to pick my favorite fantasy genres? I like them all. I grew up consuming mostly epic, other worldly fantasy. You know the kind. Knights, horses, swords, vast spooky forests to cross before the evil on the other side can be conquered. Sprinkled into that were the contemporary world colliding with inexplicable bits of magic. These were usually YA books.

Interestingly, there was no urban fantasy when I was reading in my youth. If a fictional world spoke of the future near or far at all, it was in terms of science. I don't know where the switch in the zeitgeist came about but I know that urban fantasy hit my radar while I was still in high school in the early 80s. Charles de Lint introduced me to the bare edges of the urban fantasy map. Then through an odd confluence of events, strange brain chemistry, and neurodivergence, I slid from my intended life path into working in technology. And I slid more firmly across the threshold into urban fantasy.

I don't know what it is about those of us who were born into a world well before personal computers and cells phones. I find a startling number of us still harbor this sneaking suspicion that our world is held aloft by  tenuous threads woven by a cabal of technowizards somewhere. More than half of us admit to talking to our technology - and I don't mean Siri. We speak to our machines as if they held some sentience. Some of us of pagan persuasion insist that all objects, animate or inanimate, contain a kind of spirit even if we wouldn't entirely call it a soul. I say this not so much so you can worry after my sanity (far too late, y'all) as to say that perhaps you can see how the world of technology melded with the fantasy world of curious magics and curiouser sprites, Fae, and spirits.

Urban fantasy seems to happen at the point where humanity risks being subsumed by everything humanity has wrought - whether it's technology or an unfeeling city that's threatening to swallow up the main character. Magic in an urban fantasy context seems to either act as a flicker of hope, or yet another dehumanizing obstacle to be overcome. I think, though, that I like urban fantasy for the experience of marking out the people who can see what lies underneath and those who can only see what's presented on the surface. There's a story Charles de Lint did called Crow Girls. One of his characters can see the young human sisters in the crows who come to the yard every day. Everyone else just sees ragged crows. Eventually, the girls shapeshift for the POV character and everyone helps solve everyone else's issues where they can. There's a story about perception being told there and it feels familiar to me.

Not to mention that I get the chance to play with creepy imagery. I might not have the chops for horror and that's fine. But I do love a good skin crawling creep out and it's in fantasy - especially urban fantasy - that I get the chance to play with giving myself the heebie jeebies.

Stay Warm This Winter, Take Home an Immortal Spy

 As the temperatures outside dip, curl up in a snuggly blanket with a steaming cuppa at hand and enjoy the completed Urban Fantasy series The Immortal Spy. From the Norse Under World to the alleys of Washington D.C., adventure alongside a cosmic gatekeeper as she recruits Fates, gods, dragons, and angels to defend the Mid World from foreign invaders. 

Buy The Series Now In eBook or Paperback from:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B079VT94GZ

Other leading retailers: https://books2read.com/b/BurnedSpy

New #UrbanFantasy: THE SHACKLED SPY by K.A. Krantz

Snow is falling and so must the old cosmic moat surrounding the Mid Worlds in the latest installment of The Immortal Spy series. Yep, that's right, Bix and the Berserkers are back, trudging through the ick of winter on another mission to save the Mids. 

THE SHACKLED SPY

The Immortal Spy: Book 6 

Sometimes the strongest chains are the ones we craft for ourselves.

The Mid World defense system is finally ready to launch, but the millennia-old barrier of highly destructive ether must be removed first. Only one very special artifact can hold such a powerful force. To take down the old and make way for the new, Bix and her team race to locate and reassemble the pieces of the containment device scattered across the Mids.

Alas, they’re not the only ones searching for the shards. In the wrong hands, the fragments are weapons of mass destruction. Fearful magical races and fearsome deities alike scramble to claim the pieces, but lurking in the ether are entities who will not go quietly…and who will stop at nothing to keep Bix from interfering in the burgeoning war.

Darkness will fall and armies perish when manacles break from the shackled spy. 

Buy The Shackled Spy Now in eBook or Paperback
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New to The Immortal Spy series? Start here.

The Burned Spy: The Book That Launched an Urban Fantasy Series

As I work through the edits of Book 6 in the Immortal Spy series, it's only fitting that I bring "from the boneyard" Book 1, the story that introduced us to a gatekeeper on a mission from Hel.

THE BURNED SPY
The Immortal Spy: Book 1

Gods. Always ready to screw you.

When Bix the Gatekeeper is summoned from exile a hundred and seventy years early by the goddess of the Norse Under World, the former Dark Ops agent knows there’s a catch. On the surface, the terms of the deal are simple. Someone attacked the pantheon’s ambassador to the Mid Worlds and left the ambassador in a coma. In exchange for early parole, Bix must identify the perpetrator and drag their soul to Hel.

It’d be a sweet contract, if not for the details. The ambassador is Bix’s ex-girlfriend, the lead suspect is the key witness from Bix’s trial, and the organization leading the official investigation is the same intelligence guild that disavowed Bix when a covert op went pear-shaped. Undeterred, Bix returns to her old stomping grounds where clues in the smoldering woods of Centralia, Pennsylvania, lead to the waterfront of Washington, DC, and Worlds beyond.

Once valued for her skills creating passageways as small as a capillary or as large as a continent, Bix’s success now depends on the relationships she was forced to abandon. As she squares off against friends who betrayed her and enemies keen to destroy her, Bix follows a trail of secrets, torture, and treason that leads to the very superpowers who banished her. With her freedom on the line and revenge within reach, this highly-trained operative will take on Fates, dragons, angels, and gods to get exactly what she wants.

Hel hath no fury like a burned spy.

BUY IT NOW (the eBook is 50% off!):

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GoodReads

Screwing with Your Characters' Heads

Apologies for a slightly tardy post. The entire development lost internet and the ISP spent the bulk of the day and night setting that straight. I hesitate to say much more lest this brief window of stability shatter.

Sex in my novels. Yes. I do write sex into most of my novels. The intensity varies based on the needs of the characters and their stories. So far my sex scenes swing from sweet to just shy of erotica.

As to when and how I use sex scenes, my intent when I write them is usually to mark passing a trust milestone for hero and heroine. But. When I look back at the scenes I've written, they almost always slant into being a means of prying up the edges of my characters' defenses in ways they never imagined or intended, especially in the SFRs. I like a lot of action in my stories. I'm all about the good guys being chased by bad guys with guns. Into that action, a lull must come. A tiny space suspended between conflicts where two people who've been forced to learn to work together while battling insurmountable odds can finally explore the physical attraction that's brewed throughout the story. Yes. In the SFRs I make them wait. Mainly because most of those books are enemy to lovers stories and building trust to the point of a sex scene not being forced takes a little time. Still. In each of those sex scenes, there's a power dynamic in play and that enemy to lovers energy is never far from the surface. It's because when something like sex, intimacy, and vulnerability break a character open, it's the perfect lead in to shattering the trust that's been built. It's the perfect time to force these two changed characters back into the enemy roll they'd once fit into so easily - only now it pinches in the worst way. So yes. If my characters are gonna get it on, I'm going to use it to fuck with their heads and their hearts. Always.

In the urban fantasy books, sex is a means of establishing control. It's a little more graphic, but, I hope, not rape-y. The heroine absolutely buys into the activity and gives enthusiastic consent, but she's also possessed by a demon who's tried using sex to debase and humiliate her. Isa manages to turn the tables on him. When the demon possessing you doesn't consent to sex but you do, what is that?? Regardless, the point of that scene was to complicate relationships and up emotional stakes for all three characters involved.

So sex scenes. When? When the characters and the story need them. When a sex scene would enhance or heighten conflict or increase stakes. How graphic? Depends entirely on the needs of the story. I know we all keep saying that. But everything that isn't sex scene in your story has a specific tone that dictates what you can and cannot get away with in sex scenes. If you read widely, you very likely already recognize this. How does it change my characters? Sex scenes usually break my people open. They demonstrate both to the reader and to the characters that they've passed a threshold and can't go back to what they once were.

What World May Be

In no way can I tell you where I got the bug put into my author brain, but here it is. We can dissect it if you wish.

The bug has many legs. It's tiny and hard to see, but it likes to talk. It says that the way to build a believable world/universe/magic system is to limit your change to one major concept. In UF that's easy. Magic happens. The details of how/why/consequences are where the interesting stuff comes in. In SF(R) the major accepted thing is generally space flight. Then it's a matter of what happens when our heroes encounter aliens or aliens encounter them or what happens when the onboard computer says, "I'm sorry, Dave. I afraid I can't do that."

For the most part, the broad strokes don't need a lot of research in my experience. It's the details that do. Take the space flight thing. We're in a space ship! We're getting away from the bad guys! Until they blow out our engine (right before you take the shot that destroys them - thanks for that.) And now we're adrift. We're inside a solar system. So hey! Solar sail! No problem! Uh. Wait. So. Exactly WHAT can I use as a solar sail? Oh hey look. NASA has a position paper out about a theoretical new kind of sail called an e-sail. Hey. That looks cool! So. How fast could we go with that? How far?

Funny. That summary white paper can't answer those questions. And neither can I. So off to ask people with actual training. You do know there are Reddits and forums and message boards where actual rocket scientists hang out? There're even a bunch on Facebook. A few of them will point and laugh when I ask newbie questions, but 99% of the folks really want the rest of us to be science-literate and will offer encyclopedic answers to questions about what kind of acceleration can I expect a ship to put on with a sail blah, blah, red giant, post helium flash, blah. 

Jeffe saw that question go up in one forum and can attest to the awesome answers I got from a handful of really bright people. Made me wish the solar sail figured into more of the story, but alas. We have aliens to vanquish yet. 

Yes. Searching the interwebs for stuff first is the right thing to do - I do find that I can usually garner a broad base understanding of something like nano - technology, but when it comes to how someone would harness nanotech to weaponize it, I didn't have anyone to ask. I had to read and read and then make some guesses. Guesses that I might have gotten dead wrong (though no one has said anything about it yet if I did.) 

And there's the other thing the bug likes to whisper. Don't get so caught up in the research and in being RIGHT that you sacrifice story. Readers will forgive a lot if they're shown a good time inside a story. 

So sure. Research. But make sure you get out there after those villians at great cost to your heroes and heroines. 

You Tell Me: Urban Fantasy Covers--People or Objects

Since we're riffing this week about what's on our minds, I'll go with...covers.

I'm a fixin' to start work on the covers for my new Urban Fantasy series: The Immortal Spies.  I'm torn between using the traditional protagonist on the cover and the less common thematic art piece.


Examples of Protagonist-Centric Covers:

Examples of No People on the Covers:

For fans of Urban Fantasy, what are your thoughts? Preferences?  Strong feelings on either front?