Nazi-Punching New Release for the Holidays (and a Devilish Cover Reveal!) by Jane Kindred

My slightly dumb but gorgeous Viking dragon shifter, Leo, is on the loose! Leo is hot AF and does not like Nazis. That is all you need to know.

But I’ll tell you more anyway, because I’m awesome like that. When I wrote Leo, I had two versions of Chris Hemsworth in mind: Hemsworth as Thor and Hemsworth as Kevin in the 2016 Ghostbusters remake. And because Leo himself has more than two versions, this makes sense. (Boy, am I on a cryptic roll tonight.) Both are totally adorable. He also has multiple Norse tattoos, which, as Leo and I discovered together, can give people the wrong idea, because certain deplorables have coopted the Norse gods for their own purposes over the years. Leo is not down with that.

Rhea, the heroine, is also adorable, tattooed (and a tattoo artist), with Riot Grrl (is that still a thing?) “mermaid” hair, and, as my editor commented, she is salty AF. (I added the AF, but I know that’s what she meant.) Particularly to Leo. But he kind of has it coming.

And all of this is just in time for the holidays, as the Wild Hunt, which Leo leads, rides from the Day of the Dead (or rather the Norse equivalent, Álfablót, a sacrifice to the elves) through Yuletide. Leo just happens to lead his Hunt through the Arizona desert among the snow-capped red rocks of Sedona, inspired by Johnny Cash’s Ghostriders in the Sky.

So, to recap, Leo looks like Thor, can be not-so-bright on occasion like Kevin, leads Odin’s Wild Hunt, has more than one personality, can shift into a Norse dragon, punches Nazis, and wears a cowboy hat and boots with a brown leather duster while riding through Sedona’s snowy nights. And Rhea has the blood of Lilith in her veins (oh, did I not mention that?), can read people’s fates in their tattoos, looks like a Riot Grrl (cuz I'm old), and is salty.

Oh, and for readers who like “Easter eggs” in their books (of a sort):

Dressler means Turner in German.

And that reference is timely right now, but that’s all I have to say about that, or I’ll just have a rage fit.

Never mind me; it’s been that kind of a year.

The Dragon’s Hunt, Book 3 in the Sisters in Sin series from Harlequin Nocturne, is available now from the following retailers:

Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble
BookDepository.com
BAM
Booktopia
iBooks
Kobo

Note that this series should be read in order! You can find the series order and buy links on my website.

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As a special bonus, I’ve just received the cover for Book 4 in the series, Seducing the Dark Prince:

Hell Might Be Heavenly...for One of the Sisters in Sin

Lucien Smok is heir to the Smok fortune. He's also the crown prince of Hell, a legacy he despises. Clairvoyant Theia Dawn tries to convince herself that she's only interested in Lucien because of his family's role in the persecution of her ancestor, not because he's the most beguiling man she's ever met. The attraction that burns between them might be her downfall. Or it might be his salvation.

Seducing the Dark Prince is available now for pre-order from the following retailers:

Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble | Booktopia | iBooks | Kobo

On Punching Nazis and a Cover Reveal by Jane Kindred

If you follow my posts or tweets, you may have noticed a recent theme of mine, and that is punching Nazis. I am unequivocally in favor of it. There are plenty of people who are better at explaining why Nazis need punching, but suffice it to say, I don’t believe in tolerating intolerance. Anyone calling for the genocide of others has already thrown the first punch. 

My ancestors came from Sweden and the British Isles, so Vikings are in my blood. Perhaps that’s why I’ve always found them so fascinating. My hero in The Dragon’s Hunt, Leo Ström, is a Viking warrior lost in time. And as I discovered along with Leo, the gods of the Vikings suffer from an unfortunate association with certain deplorable groups in the modern age. I’ve recently begun to embrace my Norse heritage, and, like Leo, I don’t take kindly to having anyone pervert that heritage for their own racist agenda.

In a way, writing The Dragon’s Hunt was a way of reclaiming Norse symbolism. It was also a catharsis. The villain in Hunt is a bonafide Nazi from the Third Reich, a "Red Skull," if you will, who’s used magic to prolong his life. And he’s also obsessed with Norse mythology. Through Leo (and Rhea, the heroine), I got to experience the satisfaction of punching Nazis.

As it happens, my publisher surprised me with the finished cover art for Hunt just as the Nazis were marching on Charlottsville, where their violent ideology resulted in the murder of activist Heather Heyer. It’s too late to add an official dedication to The Dragon’s Hunt, but Heather, this one’s for you.

The Dragon's Hunt

Coming December 5, 2017

Awakening the dragon...

By day, Leo Ström works as an assistant in a tattoo parlor. By night… Well, he isn’t quite sure what happens at night. He just knows that it’s best if he restrains himself.

Ink is more than just superficial decoration to Rhea Carlisle. Her ability to read her clients’ souls in their tattoos gives her work its special magic—and it allows her to see that there’s more to Leo than his brilliant blue eyes.

The passion that kindles between them might be Leo’s salvation. Or it might be the end of the world…

Available for pre-order now from the following vendors:

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | BAM! | Booktopia | iBooks | Kobo

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Excerpt:

Blood ran into his eyes as he struggled to his feet. The groans of the maimed and the dying around him were eclipsed by the battle cries of his comrades who remained, and by the crack of iron against leather and wood—and against flesh and bone. They never should have followed their enemy into the woods. They’d been set upon by forces they couldn’t count, swarming out from behind every tree and every rock like a band of brigands, surrounding them with no room to maneuver, no way to stand in shield formation. It quickly became every man for himself.

Through the blood and mud caking his vision, he caught sight of the sudden arc of a battle-axe swinging down on him from his left. He’d lost his shield, and he turned and parried with his sword, but he’d taken a fierce blow to his sword arm from the last man he’d killed, and he stumbled back under the force, pain radiating like fire through his arm to the shoulder. The next swing from his opponent’s axe he couldn’t evade, and the blade caught him under the ribs, hooking in the links of his hauberk. He prayed to the Allfather as he went down that he might take one more enemy with him as he died. Let him die an honorable death. The axe descended, and he summoned all his strength, thrusting his sword to meet the bastard’s gut as his enemy fell on him.

The blade should have split his skull. He thought he’d felt the blow. But he was blind as a newborn kitten in the muck and mud. And then he realized he must have gone deaf as well. Silence fell over him like an oncoming bank of fog, muting the clangs and cries, engulfing him in an utter lack of sensation. Perhaps he’d died. But this was no Valhalla. This was…nothing. Had Odin not chosen him after all? Could this be Fólkvangr, the field of the slain in Freyja’s domain? Or was he in cold and empty Helheim? Surely he’d not been consigned to the Shore of Corpses. He was no oath-breaker; and murder—it didn’t count in war.

A hand, cool and feminine, touched his forehead. Perhaps this was only the in-between place where warriors waited for the Valkyries to come for them. He tried to clasp the hand but found he couldn’t make his limbs work. A cool kiss now brushed his forehead.

“Beautiful one.” The whisper at his ear was a soothing breeze, quieting the fire in his veins with the beauty of its cadence. “You shall not die.”

Was he to go back out to the battle? He must be in the tent being tended by his father’s slave girl. He’d lost consciousness.

“Did I kill him?” His voice came out in not much more of a whisper than his benefactor’s, though much rougher. His throat still felt the fire that had eased from the rest of him. A fever, no doubt, had taken him. He’d lain delirious and was only now coming around. Yes, this made sense. “Did I send my foe to Hel?”

“You were victorious. And I have claimed you.”

Before he could ask her to repeat the odd phrase, a searing pain encircled his heart, not fire this time, but the burn of ice, accompanied by the sensation of pins and needles in the flesh of his forearms. He could neither move nor speak, and the pain was becoming intense.

“Hush, beautiful one. Now they cannot have you.”

“They?” He managed to croak out the single word, though his tongue felt like wool batting.

Soft lips breathed against his. “That Which Became, That Which is Happening, That Which Must Become.”

The Persistence of Wonder by Jane Kindred

As I hinted in my last post, there are times in a writer’s life when the words don’t come easily. The months during which I wrote The Dragon’s Hunt, beginning in November 2016, were some of the worst. When I finished Hunt, I assumed I was over that hurdle, that slogging through mental mud for words. But the next book in the Sisters in Sin series is proving to be just as difficult to write.

But as I said before, writer’s write, regardless of whether the words come easily and regardless of what’s going on in the world around them—and sometimes they write because it’s the only thing they can do.

After my first and second novels got rejection after rejection, I spent eight years in a creative depression, writing nothing. Well, not exactly nothing; I revised both books incessantly. And that did finally come to something with my first break in publishing with my novella The Devil’s Garden; and later, one of my endlessly revised novels was published as the Looking Glass Gods trilogy. But those breaks didn't come until I’d finally written something new. And those years of not creating anything felt like not being truly alive.

It’s the main reason I keep going even when I’m not feeling it. Like Buffy Summers sang in Once More With Feeling, sometimes going through the motions is all you can do, with the hope that you’ll feel alive again at some point and regain that sense of wonder that makes you create in the first place.

On Saturday, I was lucky enough to see someone else’s wonderful creation: the new Wonder Woman movie. There were a lot of moments in this fantastic movie that reminded me how important even the smallest acts of resistance are in a dark world. As Steve Trevor said when Diana asked him why he was bothering to do his small part to end the war, “You can do nothing, or you can do something. I tried doing nothing.” Me too, Steve Trevor. Me too. There’s one particular moment later in the film when Diana takes that advice to heart and makes an effort against the darkness that seems impossible, and that impossible effort inspires everyone around her to do the same.

So we do what we can do, even if it may not change the world, and my little bit of something, my act of resistance—against my own darkness and the darkness in the world—is writing about love…and occasionally about punching Nazis.

Writing romance can be a revolutionary act, believing in love and hope when they seem almost impossible. As Diana discovers in Wonder Woman, “only love can truly save the world.” And I am still on the side of love.