Paperback Alert: Hell Theory

 

He sipped his drink, and after a few long moments she saw the line of his shoulders relax; saw him sink down deeper in his chair. His fingers drummed on his glass, and his nostrils flared as he let out a deep breath that had the firelight leaping down the holster straps on his chest.

Then he turned to her. With eyes that weren’t honey, or burnt sugar, no, not now. Gold eyes. Lion’s eyes. The firelight licked over them, carved dark shadows beneath his cheekbones. His hair was already starting to dry, faintly curling at the ends, framing his sharp jaw.

“Are you alright?” she asked, softly.

He dipped his head, a nod of thanks. “Yes. It just takes me a moment – after.”

After what? She didn’t ask.

First released in 2020 and 2021, my Hell Theory trilogy, and its novella, Mystical Wonderful, are now finally available in paperback! 

This series was very much an impulse project rather than a long-planned goal, but it was a lot of fun to swerve into a whole new lane and write something out of character. I've described it as a blended homage to Anne Rice, Thomas Harris, and the tales of King Arthur. It's near-future dystopian erotica, and a nice dark and rainy escape from hot, sunny June days. 

You can grab the paperbacks on Amazon, and the reading order is:

King Among the Dead

Night In A Waste Land

Mystic Wonderful 

Vanish Into Light

The trilogy is complete! And each book is around 75k words, two rarities for me! Binge ready for your summer reading needs.  

A Walk Through the Backlist: Hell Theory

Footfalls: light, precise.

A clink, a rattle; sound of the lock on the pie safe falling, and then the cabinet doors swung open, the dim lamplight washed over her, and she saw a man, crouched there in front of her.

Her first instinct was to scream. Miss Tabitha invited men over sometimes, men who…

But this man didn’t look like any of them. No, he looked far different.

His eyes caught her first, and held her attention, a warm honey color, green-brown like river water. His hair, silk-soft and wheaten, fell to his shoulders, artful across his brow, behind his ears. He had a face of sharp angles: cheeks, jaw, chin.

“Hello, little one,” he said, and his voice was velvet, was silk, was sinuous and slippery and good. He tipped his head to the side, which sent his hair sliding over his shoulder with a soft rustle. “What are you doing in here?”

Strangers always meant danger in this city, and fine tremors had hold of her. But Rose swallowed, and managed to say, “Miss Tabitha…”

“Ah. She won’t be locking anyone else in a cabinet, I don’t think.”

Rose shifted as much as she dared, skin prickling with goosebumps, and peeked over his shoulder. He even shifted, obliging her, and she saw Miss Tabitha at her kitchen table: slumped forward, eyes open, unseeing. Red on the table, all down her front; a puddle in her lap, dripping down onto the floor. Blood. Rose could smell it.

“Tabby and I go way back,” the man said. “I can’t say we were ever friends.” He held out a hand, palm-up, in offering. It was speckled with blood. When Rose looked closer, she saw that he wore a stippling of red on his face, across the bridge of his nose. “Would you like to get out of here, darling?”

Rose swallowed. Considered. Placed her hand in his. “I’m Rose.”

“Simon Becket,” he said, and drew her forward, and up, out of the cabinet. When her knees threatened to give out, he steadied her with a hand at each of her elbows.

He was very tall, she noticed. Very lean. He smelled like dusty old books.

“Can you walk?” he asked.

“Yes.” And she did. 

I think we can all admit that the early days of the 2020 lockdown were a bit of a surreal acid trip for everyone. It spawned not one, but two new series for me: wacky side projects meant as distractions for my racing anxieties, and which quickly went from lightning-strike inspiration to fully-fleshed narratives. I talked about the Drakes in my last backlist post, but I wrote it in the back half of the year. 

In June of 2020, heavily inspired by a Hannibal rewatch, I released the first in a now-complete dystopian/supernatural/erotica/horror trilogy that's a blend of The War of Heaven and King Arthur legend.  I think it's the weirdest thing I've ever written, but it was delightfully fun to work on at the time. 

Despite having plenty of books to keep me busy, notably Dartmoor and Sons of Rome, I wanted to do something different. Hell Theory felt like a chance to shake off the rules of my previously established series and be creatively indulgent and off-the-wall for a little bit. 

Book one, King Among the Dead, opens with Rose Greer, meek and abused orphan, who's been locked in a pie safe by her foster mother. She hears a scuffle, and strange footfalls, and the pie safe opens to reveal her savior: Simon Becket. 

What follows is a post-modern, post-apocalyptic retelling of the Arthur/Guinevere/ Lancelot  love triangle, told through the lens of death, resurrection, little known Welsh saints, and a military installation that fights demons and angels both. There's some big who's-who reveals that I won't spoil here for anyone who hasn't read it yet, but it's equal parts action/horror thriller, mystery, and erotic romance, with an eventual OT3, rather than a hard choice when it comes to the love triangle. 

Each book is titled after a line in the Lord Tennyson poem "Idylls of the King," and the Arthur metaphors resonate throughout the trilogy. There's also a novella that falls between books two and three, highlighting the romance of two side characters, Gallo and Tristan. It's certainly different from my other offerings, but should be a definite win for readers who like dark stories, like the aforementioned Hannibal, also films like Legion and Constantine. 

The trilogy - and its novella - are complete! So they can be binged all at once. One of my goals this year is to make it available in paperback, and I'm thinking of compiling it all into one large volume, as opposed to three small ones. For now, you can find it in digital format here: 

Hell Theory 

"Mystic Wonderful" 

Bookshelf 411

 

Greetings from a very rainy and stormy Friday here on the farm. I'm getting new followers across all my SM accounts, and am frequently asked about my series: reading order, number of books, content, that sort of thing. I thought I'd create a master post for organizational purposes. So, in no particular order, here's the 411 on (almost) all of my books:

The Dartmoor Series

By far my most popular, this series is an ongoing saga about an outlaw Motorcycle Club based in Knoxville, TN. Book one is an intentionally sprawling character epic told in a meandering, lush manner reminiscent of the classic Southern authors of decades past. But, centering around a criminal enterprise, it's full of action, graphic violence, and explicit sex. A family saga at its heart, though, each book features a central romance - or two - and a plethora of family drama and interactions. It has a three-book spinoff series, "The Lean Dogs Legacy Series," that ties back into the main storyline in book seven, and is included below. Each book is meant to be read in the order of publication date, as follows:

Fearless

Price of Angels

Half My Blood

The Skeleton King

Secondhand Smoke

Snow in Texas

Tastes Like Candy 

Loverboy

American Hellhound 

Shaman

Prodigal Son

Lone Star

Homecoming

The Wild Charge (in progress)

The series must be read in order and the books are not standalones. 

Sons of Rome Series

This series is my big, loud, freaking stressful baby that I love so much. It started as a collection of drabbles in the margins of my high school algebra notes, and turned into over a decade of research, dreaming, and finagling. It finally premiered in 2017 with book one, White Wolf, and it's safe to say this series was not what my established audience was expecting from me. Book five is taking five forevers to write, but it's still my favorite series. 

I call it "paranormal fantasy," because it's a blend of paranormal and urban fantasy told on the grand scale of an epic fantasy series. The books are fat, unhurried, and very character focused. The premise, in short, is that certain important figures from history - Romulus and Remus of Rome, Rasputin, Alexei Romanov, Vlad Tepes, Richard I - are vampires, immortal, still living (some of them anyway), and werewolves and mages serve as their Familiars. Vlad Tepes, his brother Val, and their merry band of misfits are on a (somewhat) reluctant mission to save the world from the machinations of their Uncle Romulus. The main action is contemporary, but there are lots of historical scenes; the stories of how our immortals found their way to the modern world is every bit as essential as the overarching plot. 

While the series definitely can't be classified as genre romance - don't come looking for another BDB - the slow-burn love stories throughout the series are important and focused-on. M/F, M/M, be prepared for explicit sex and darker themes, like sexual abuse, child slavery (Ottoman Empire, you know?) and bloody, gory violence in general. The series leans hard into the paranormal elements, with all the erotic blood-drinking, brain-washing, and wolf-shifting you could want. It's ongoing, with at least eight planned books, though I'm leaving the door open for more.

White Wolf

Red Rooster

Dragon Slayer
Golden Eagle 

The Winter Palace (in progress)

Lionheart (in progress)

Hell Theory Trilogy

You mean I actually wrote and completed a series? It's a trilogy, really, but, who's counting? This is an odd, niche little post-apocalyptic erotica series which features a rift in the heavens, a rift in hell, and a battle taking place on the mortal plane, all of it loosely inspired by the King Arthur legends. Featuring an eventual OT3, and a winged, horned anti-hero, it also includes a side-story novella. 

King Among the Dead

Night In A Waste Land

Mystic Wonderful (novella)

Vanish Into Light 

The Drake Chronicles  

Epic fantasy in its purest form, the Drake Chronicles take place in an imaginary realm where dragons, shifters, and other forms of magic rule the day. There's several main romances and more to come, M/M and M/F. Despite its "softer, gentler" feel compared to my other work, this is most definitely a series meant for adults, with explicit sex and graphic violence. It's ongoing (currently working on book four), and I don't know how long it will end up being - could be 8, 9, 10 books, who knows. I'm having fun with it. 

Heart of Winter

Edge of the Wild 

Blood of Wolves

Demon of the Dead (in progress)

I have other series, yes, but they were published so long ago they feel like an entirely different person wrote them. I won't talk about them here, but the Walkers and Russells are out there for some sweet (Walkers), and salty (Russells) family drama action.

New Book: Vanish Into Light

 And with that, the trilogy is complete! 

The final installment of the Hell Theory trilogy, Vanish Into Light, is now live, and you can grab it HERE.

The series began last year on a bit of a whim. In Hilary Mantel's The Mirror & The Light, she details Thomas Cromwell's confiscation of Catholic relics across England, one of which being the figure of Saint Derfel astride his stag, one of King Arthur's lesser-known knights. Derfel - post-death, in his saintly form - was said to be able to venture down into the depths of hell and retrieve souls. 

In the novel, the line reads:

He thinks about Derfel, his powers. Why would you want the damned fetched back from Hell? There's a reason God put them where they are.

Immediately, I decided I HAD to write about that. What resulted was our funky little tale about murderers, and lovers, and angels and demons wearing human skins. Beck is a very loose, modern interpretation of King Arthur, though his name - his last name - is a reference to Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was brutally murdered by knights in the service of King Henry II...King Richard I's father. (Will I ever stop twisting and circling back to certain figures and themes? Never.) And whose skull was (possibly) dug up and desecrated by Cromwell. 

As for the other characters: Rose is of course Guinevere, and Lance is Lancelot. Gallo is Galahad, and Tris is Tristan. Gavin is Gawain - again, loosely interpreted. Captain Bedlam is Bedivere. Kay is a stand-in for Arthur's brother Kay. And Morgan is Merlin.  

I've always toyed with the idea of writing a King Arthur book - a proper one, in which, as fabled, he returns in service to his country at its time of need. But this, friends, is not that book. This is weird, and dark, and fun, and I hope you'll enjoy the conclusion. I'll leave the door cracked, in case I ever want to return, but for now, here's where we leave our trio.

(Side note, just for fun: I always have a tertiary character to whom I become attached, someone I end up liking much more than I should, and in this book, that's Damien.)

Reading Order:

King Among the Dead

Night In A Waste Land

Mystic Wonderful

Vanish Into Light

The titles are all lifted bit of Lord Alfred Tennyson's poem.

Mystic Wonderful: A Hell Theory Novella

 New book available now: Mystic Wonderful: A Hell Theory Novella. The story runs concurrent with book two in the Hell Theory Series, Night In A Waste Land, and focuses on Gallo and Tristan. 

It should be live for Nook later today!

New Book: Night In A Waste Land

 Book Two in my paranormal/urban fantasy/erotica series based loosely on the tales of King Arthur, set in a not-too-distant future, is now live. 

You can grab Night In A Waste Land HERE for Kindle, and HERE for Nook.