New Release The Necromancer's Betrayal

Bad boys reign…at least this month on our blog and in my necromancer books. Book two, The Necromancer’s Betrayal, was released last week and contains two of my favorite bad boys that vie for Ruby, my necromancer’s, attention. They don’t play nice, but demons and vampires aren’t exactly boy scouts. Ewan March, the demon warrior, and Lysander, the powerful vampire, struggle against impossible external circumstances, their own frayed friendship, and their conflicted emotions over Ruby. They recognize their behavior borders on obnoxious Alpha (which Ruby calls them on), recognize they were once friends, but neither can seem to control the powerful emotions surging through them. Their conflicts in Necromancer’s Betrayal were fun to write, as are all powerfully emotional scenes, but ultimately it’s their dedication to their supernatural races and deep feelings for Ruby that keep them in check…sort of J

Back cover copy for Necromancer's Betrayal:

Her powers have been hobbled. Her enemies are growing stronger. Old loves challenge her. And her worst betrayer may be herself.

Necromancer Ruby Montagne is battling for her life in the realm of demons. Unfairly branded for the death of a fellow necromancer, she’s got to prove her innocence without the full use of her magic. And the real culprit is still on the loose.

While someone is stalking her friends among the witches, Ruby searches for answers inside the dark intrigues of both the demon and necromancer worlds. Ruby must confront this new, sinister threat while reconciling her feelings for her former lover, a demon warrior. Only it’s difficult . . . because a sexy vampire is making it clear that he’d like to be a lot more than just friends.

The competition for Ruby’s trust heats up as the enemy pushes her toward a dark side that could threaten the entire realm. Yet what can Ruby do when she’s not even sure what she is? With the fabric separating the realms at stake, she must decide whom to trust. But will the ultimate betrayal be her own?

Please check out the Goodreads link below to enter a giveaway for The Necromancer's Betrayal!

Mimi Sebastian

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Halloween Memories from Our Authors

Veronica sez: We thought it would be fun to share a few of our own favorite Halloween memories with you today. This little ghost guy is a favorite pin of mine, that my Dad gave me when I was a kid - have a safe and sane (but spooky!) holiday!!!

Robert C. Roman:

Mine is a mix of funny and little-kid-sweet-romantic. 

Three Halloweens ago, my wife stayed home to give out candy, and I took our little boys (aged 2 and 5, respectively) trick-or-treating for the first time in our new neighborhood. Our older boy, Lucien, had been trick or treating once before, but this was the younger, Viktor's, first time ever.

 Our neighborhood is four cul-de-sacs and two half-block dead end streets all connected by a single lane, and we're nearly at one end of all of it. We started through our cul-de-sac, picking up a few pieces of candy every few houses, as most of them were dark. After one lap of the cul-de-sac, the boys were a little dispirited by all the closed houses, and we were considering going back in, but after waving to Mommy, the little ones decided to press on.

 Ah, such a fateful decision. Halfway to the next cul-de-sac, we ran into a strange procession. Every child in the neighborhood, from my older son's bus stop partners to the few trick-or-treating teenagers, being led along the street by a tiny moppet no bigger than my two year old. She took one look at the boys, grabbed Lucien by the hand, and said 'C'mon! We're gonna get free candy!'
 And so my son met his first girlfriend, Carter, the tiny force of nature. She towed him around the neighborhood not once, but twice, and thereafter to innumerable play-dates and parties for the next two-and-a-half years, including one spur-of-the-moment Halloween party (she grabbed kids and pulled them inside when they trick-or-treated her house).

Diane Burton:

I was a young single and went to a girlfriend’s house to watch movies on Halloween. She wanted to watch a movie that I think was called “The Hand” about a dismembered hand that crawled around and killed people. In one scene, it crept up the back of the driver’s seat and strangled the driver.  It was in black and white, which made it that much more creepy, made in the 1930s I think. Anyway, after the movie was over I had to drive home. I just knew that hand would creep up the back of the seat and strangle me.  Fastest I ever drove home.

Heather Long:

When my daughter was 4 years old, we took her to Disney World. She dressed up like Belle and we went to the Mickey's Very Scary Halloween Party. All of the characters at the park bowed to the 'princess' and she trick or treated at the different attractions, we also got to watch the Boo To You Halloween Parade which is opened by a headless horseman racing up the street--and my daughter declared after it raced past--that poor horse, he needs a better rider. That man couldn't keep his head.

It's as hysterical to me today as it was then.

Jessica Subject:

My Halloween memory is...

We used to live on a street perpendicular to Elm St. And one Halloween, one of the residents had decked his house out, and he dressed up like Freddy Krueger. I didn't get scared, but a lot of the parents did when he jumped out at them. It was more funny than anything.

Maureen Bonatch:

One of my favorite memories was when I was pretty young and my older sister, Kathy, took me through a 'haunted house'.  I'm sure it was probably pretty lame as haunted houses go, since it was done by the church bazaar, but not when you're about seven.   A group of us were walking through it and we were at the end of the line, I turned around and Frankenstein was right behind us, arms outstretched, moaning and coming right for us! I became slightly hysterical, as seven year olds can, and Frankenstein ended up having to 'ditch the scary monster act' and kneel down to console me, lol.  

(P.S.  my parents home, where I grew up was and still is Elm Street..after I reluctantly watched the first Nightmare on Elm Street movie I slept with the lamp on for a week...  umm..I was probably about twenty years old, lol)

Mimi Sebastian:

Here's my memory from childhood. I was at my uncle's house in New York and like many of the brownstone type houses, all the backs faced an alley. My cousins and I used to play on the alley street with the neighbor kids, but one night around Halloween, all the adults had gone back inside the house and I stayed outside alone, leaning against the fence, glancing down the street. It was particularly dark. Suddenly, I saw a light appear in the middle of the street about ten yards away from me, almost like a flashlight or lantern, approaching slowly, but I didn't see anyone holding the light. I was somewhat frozen to the spot until I heard laughter coming from the same direction as the light. That pretty much unstuck my feet and I raced back into the house. I don't know what the heck it was, if it just a neighbor taking a stroll, but in my child's mind, it's provided a scary memory to this day!

Stephanie Beck:

My favorite costume is a tiny cow sleeper that all my kids wore when they were babies on their first Halloweens. I've never been big on the holiday, but who doesn't like candy and tiny adorable cows?

Virginia Nelson:

Back when I was a young teen, I got with a bunch of other kids who wanted to set up a haunted farm house (mostly  boys who wanted to scare their girlfriends), so we went out to the old deserted place, decorated it then several of us took our positions in the house... I was lying on the bed with a phony knife in my chest, fake blood all over the room... everyone set the stage and the kids coming out to the house got the scare of a life time...

Afterwards, we all left, went out for something to eat then returned to the old deserted farm house to clean up. The joke was on us because this time the girls who we had scared came back, cleaned up our mess and rearranged everything including the killing scenes. Scared the dickens out of this 13 year old and others when we walked in and saw three people lying on the floor in a pile of fresh blood and a hobo looking guy standing over them.

That was the last time I set up a haunted house for anyone...

New Contributor Onboard

You may have caught previous posts by other new contributors introducing themselves, so I thought I’d take their leads and do the same. I’m excited about participating with such a diverse and interesting group of writers on Paranormal Romantics.

I write as Mimi Sebastian, but my real name is Noemi Ghirghi. Mimi is actually my childhood nickname, and Sebastian came from a place we used to fish when I was a kid growing up in Florida called Sebastian Inlet on the Atlantic Coast. I spent some great times with family fishing and camping on the coast and definitely miss the ocean. I spent entire days with my brother floating on a raft out past the breaking waves, and now I live in the desert. Not sure how that happened, but here I am in Phoenix, Arizona with my family, working my day job in addition to juggling this writing gig.

Before coming to Phoenix, I lived and worked in Brazil, and before that, I served in the Peace Corps in West Africa. I love immersing myself in other cultures. It’s an amazing world with amazing people. I often include little tidbits from my travels in my stories. A short story that I’m going to release this month, based off my Necromancer Series, is set in Brazil where I worked. The story, titled The Werewolf’s Devotion, focuses on one of the minor characters, a werewolf named Brandon.

I’m pretty much a geek, and aside from coffee, have a serious addiction to movies, fantasy, sci fi, comics, and the paranormal. I have always loved a good atmospheric horror story or movie. Before cable tv, I used to watch these crazy horror movies on Saturday mornings after the cartoons on the local non-network channels. I’d close myself off in our guest room and watch them while gnawing on my fingernails.

I’m drawn to the paranormal because we know very little about our world, and maybe I watched too much Scooby Doo and read too much Nancy Drew, yet we’ve only scratched the surface of understanding about this planet and the greater universe. Animals have senses that we don’t have and can see the world differently. (I have this fantastic Amazon parrot and she has this sixth sense about things.) Mysteries about our planet are fascinating. (Remember In Search Of??? Leonard Nimoy!!) What are UFOs? What are ghosts? What do these mysteries tell us about our world? These questions inform much of my writing.

Since I can remember, as a kid, I always wrote in journals, wrote short stories, and always had movies playing out in my head. I guess it was inevitable that I’d eventually write out one of those stories and that it would involve the paranormal. I didn’t think I’d write about a necromancer, but as Ruby, the necromancer, spoke to me, I found her and her power intriguing. Her power almost has a mind of its own and influences her in negative ways. And there are definitely limits set, lines that a necromancer should never cross, because it warps them, so it’s fun to explore what happens to her when she crosses those lines. In my mythology, without giving too much away, necromancers were born from the interference of the demons in the human realm and have the ability to reanimate the dead, create zombies and revenants.

In addition to demons, witches, and zombies, the series also involves vampires. I wanted to include them because they form part of that greater mystery, that creepiness, but also represent dangerous passion. Look at how Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, Bela Lugosi’s portrayal, and Anne Rice’s Lestat. (I also love the original Fright Night movie!! Chris Sarandon is awesome as the vampire Jerry Dandrige.) They were dangerously attractive to both their male and female victims. I don’t like how some modern interpretations have stripped them of this primal passion, which stems a lot from the blood drinking, stealing that vital life force. When you take away the blood drinking, you take away part of what makes a vampire dangerous and primal.

However, I don’t write only paranormal. In between the necromancer books, I’m trying to fit in a pirate historical, titled Devil’s Island. I can’t wait to get it out because it was such fun to write. In addition to watching scary movies, I also loved the Errol Flynn and Tyrone Powers pirate movies, which spurred my imagination for romantic adventure. The more I read about pirates, the more intriguing they become. They were the rebels of their age, and I tried to bring that out in Devil’s Island.

So that’s me in a nutshell, I guess :). Oh, I’m also a Romance Writers of America member, belong to the local Desert Rose chapter, and the Fantasy, Futuristic, and Paranormal chapter. Thanks for spending these few moments with me and I look forward to engaging with this great group of writers and with readers who stop by!