Series: The Lalassu
Author: Jennifer Carole Lewis
Genres: New Adult, Paranormal Romance
Publication date: January 30th 2015
BLURB supplied by Xpresso Tours
For millennia,
the lalassu have existed at the fringes of society, hiding in the shadows.
But someone is determined to drag them into the light.
Dani has spent years fighting against her family’s urges to take on the mantle of High Priestess for the lalassu. Stronger and faster than any ordinary human, she has no interest in being a guide for her people. She likes being independent and enjoys her night-job as a burlesque dancer. But a darker secret lurks inside of her, one which threatens everyone around her.
Isolated and idealistic, Michael works as a developmental therapist for children, using his psychometric gifts to discover the secrets they can’t share with anyone else. When one of his clients is kidnapped, he will do almost anything to rescue her. The investigation leads him to a seedy little performance club where he is shocked and thrilled to discover a genuine live superhero.
Michael and Dani must join forces to save those they care about from becoming the latest victims of a decades-long hunt. But the fiery chemistry between them threatens to unlock a millennia-old secret which could devour them both.
The clock is ticking and they will be faced with the ultimate hero’s choice: save the world or save each other?
She is a devoted comic book geek and Marvel movie enthusiast. She spends far too much of her precious free time watching TV, especially police procedural dramas. Her enthusiasm outstrips her talent in karaoke, cross-stitch and jigsaw puzzles. She is a voracious reader of a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction and always enjoys seeking out new suggestions.
AUTHOR LINKS
EXCERPT
Moving slowly over
the ground, disturbing the air as little as possible, she swung her head back
and forth, trying to track where the blood scent came from. Her artfully
disheveled coiffure and two inch heels were a nuisance now, so she kicked off
her shoes and whipped her hair back into a practical ponytail as she skimmed
back and forth close to the ground, inhaling deeply like a bloodhound. There. Off to the side and partially in
shadow, a pile of old pumps and fragments of broken machinery was the only
cover available near the cold bright lights. With Vincent hurt, they would have
hidden rather than fight.
Studying the jumbled bits of metal,
Dani noticed something that didn’t belong. Fresh flakes of rust and scratches
dotting the concrete in a six foot swath in front of the pile. Picking up a
cracked alternator, she found fresh marks in the metal. The pile had been
disturbed and then put back to avoid leaving obvious signs of a struggle. She
shoved the junk aside and revealed something she’d hoped not to find.
Fresh blood smeared on the ground.
Dipping her fingers, she brought it
close to her nose. At this range, there could be no doubt. It was Vincent’s: an
unmistakable blend of liquor, old smoke, and leather. After years of living in the
next room, she knew his scent better than her own. Fury blazed, tightening her
arms, back, and teeth. The alternator clenched in her fist groaned as her
fingers dented the pitted metal.
Rising, she was about to stalk back
to the car when she noticed a stray cat staring at her from the edge of the
weedy field. Its eyes were glowing green and its fur was a patchwork of colors.
Above it, a slim crescent of moon rose over the fields.
GUEST POST
Finding My Revelations
This novel started with two inspirations
which quickly became intertwined. The
first were stories about the Babylonian temple harlots. The second was the idea of using superheroes
as my main characters.
Religions have always fascinated
me. There is a huge variety in beliefs
and cultural attitudes out there, all with people equally devoted to them. I believe humans may be drawn to different
religions but begin their search for the same reason, to explain their personal
experiences and sense of something beyond themselves.
I first learned about the Babylonian
temple harlots in high school. They were
initially presented as prostitutes, a way for corrupt priests to make
money. However, as I started doing my
own research and learned more, it became clear that this was a perfectly
socially acceptable form of worship. The
French refer to the moment of orgasm as le petit mors, the little death. It is implied that it is a moment of
spiritual and emotional transfiguration and awareness. The temple harlots were trained to help
worshippers achieve that moment.
The idea of sex as something sacred
which could be pursued openly intrigued me.
It is such a radical difference from our “don’t ask, don’t tell” social policy. More research led me to the myth of the
succubus, a demon which comes to virtuous men and has sex with them in their
sleep, causing them to sin and lose their souls to the devil. The two ideas became paired in my mind. Many pagan beliefs and deities became
demonized by the Roman Catholic Church (such as the Celtic god of the
woodlands, Cernunnos, who was remodeled as the devil). I wondered, could the temple harlots have
been demonized as succubi? There’s absolutely
no evidence for it, but the idea stuck with me.
The second part of my inspiration was to
use a superhero as my heroine. I grew up
in during the revitalization of comics, when stories moved out of childhood and
into maturity. I devoured stories
plumbing the depth of the human/superhuman experience, such as Chris
Claremont’s Phoenix and Dark Phoenix sagas and Frank Miller’s Dark Knight
Returns series. Heroes weren’t
infallible, they made mistakes and questionable moral decisions. I wanted to create a heroine who felt the
weight of her supernatural gifts, who didn’t want the life of sacrifice which
was required of a hero.
Dani was born out of a mixture of
defiance and desperation, ready to go down fighting to her last breath but
still denying there was anything good or worthwhile about her. She would be descended from the temple
harlots, able to open her lover’s mind to the infinite majesty of the divine
cosmos. But what would that kind of
awareness do to someone’s mind? People
are quite happy in their delusions most of the time. Those without self-sustaining delusions are
the clinically depressed.
Dani needed an appropriate hero to match
her, which let me explore another idea of mine.
A hero who was not more badass than his heroine but who inspired her
instead. It’s a bit of a flip on the
traditional match of the romance hero and heroine, where the goodness of the
heroine inspires the aggressive hero to become more than he has been. While Dani emerged as a full-fledged (and
opinionated!) character in moments, Michael took a little more time to come
fully to light. I had to coax him to
share his secrets with me.
He began his fictional existence as a
youth counsellor, but that didn’t quite sit right, no matter how I tried to
make it work. Then one day I met a
little boy with an attendant in tow. His
parents explained that the boy had severe autism and the attendant was his
therapist, who worked with him every day.
Lightning struck and I suddenly understood Michael’s true role. He was a developmental therapist who worked
with children and he had psychometric gifts which allowed him to peer into otherwise
silent children and find out what they were feeling. Like discovering that the previous
half-hour’s tantrum was because of an itchy clothing tag. His big-hearted kindness and optimism came
into focus and I finally understood how he fit into the story.
After I had my hero and heroine, then I
needed an appropriate villain. Someone
who was the antithesis of them both, combining their worst qualities and fears. André deigned to explain it to me. Some people are given supernatural gifts, and
those people have the god-given right to rule over the non-gifted. Ruthless, driven and sociopathically
practical, he is simply doing what anyone else would do, given the opportunity:
making sure he is not out-gunned in the drive to acquire people with special
gifts.
The three of them quickly took over the
story and pulled me into a new world filled with strange powers and secret
societies. I’ve only begun to scratch
the surface in Revelations and I’m looking forward to telling many more stories
of the lalassu, the hidden people.
Jennifer Carole Lewis
Revelations
www.pastthemirror.com
***GIVEAWAY***
Tour wide giveaway
Prize: $20 Amazon gift Card
www.pastthemirror.com
***GIVEAWAY***
Tour wide giveaway
Prize: $20 Amazon gift Card
Thank you for being part of my book tour. It's been very exciting getting to see all the postings. (It's my first time, I'm taking it all in to enjoy.)
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