I'm so very excited to be hosting the Blog Tour for Joann H Buchanan!! This is her second book in the Children of Nox Series.
I loved the excerpt so much that I HAD to share it too! :D
Excerpt from THE KISS
Twilight slashed the horizon like a blade, reaping
the magnificent, radiant day. Darkness bled, seeping, sharing the true abyss
hidden by the light. Time—past, present, and future—all converged at this
moment. Twilight—not dark, not light, but shades of grey that exist in all.
Twilight—the reaper of dusk and dawn. Blood and water, myth and legend—clichés
full of stories that back the very nature of life. It was in this moment where
Cleo found herself. This was her own twilight—the stripping of the past and
embracing of the future. Whatever that held.
Pinned, thick hair, lined with
smooth edges, moved like a single entity in the breeze, not allowing a single
strand to waver out of place. Her skin, fragile and delicate like that of a
china doll, rippled with goose bumps on her taut body. Heart pounding, palms
sweating, and a small brain worm wriggled its way through her mind. What if I don’t want to be chosen?
Like a veritable prism of
color, silent, reverent, stiff robed Elders stood eyes closed, at each of the
four corners of the sand garden containing three boulders and two smaller ones
centered within the perfect proportionally-raked lines. Palms flat against one
another and their elbows straight, the Elders took on a statuesque sight.
A gong sounded. It echoed like
the past, bouncing off the present surrounding hills. Just behind the Elders,
the rest of the already chosen took their place. They were the Shakya Clan. The
defenders of justice. Completing the scene was the rest of the villagers. Those
not chosen, who were merely witnesses to the grandiose ceremony, lined the
outer edges of the courtyard. The gong sounded again. A line of possible chosen
moved in a steady rhythmic cadence. Step together, pause together, step
together, pause together, they walked. Each member took their position between
the already chosen Shakya and the Elders. Another gong and they disrobed,
allowing the delicate clothes to drop to the ground.
“Isn’t this exciting?” Joy
whispered to Cleo.
“Shh…not really. I’m cold,”
Cleo whispered back.
Guest Post
Thank you for being
part of my blog tour for the release of The Kiss, book 2 in the Children of Nox
series.
What makes a villain
real? What makes you love to hate him and want to hug him at the same time? A
two dimensional villain has no depth. We get they are the bad guy and they have
no redeeming qualities. The fun villains to read are those who have a certain
vulnerability in them. It’s what makes us love Magneto, cheer for the bank
robbers in Ocean’s Eleven and even why we all love to read about vampires,
werewolves and things that go bump in the night. So what makes a villain fun to
read?
For me, it’s all about those simple redeeming qualities all
good bad guys have. In I Am Wolf, the bad guy was Ralph. He was a schizophrenic
poacher who was bit and from there exploded with evil. What made him fun to
write was that his hallucination was a bimbo named Gracie. He is a tragic
villain who was abused as a child and never really had any real love in his
life. In turn he didn’t know how to love or how to give it. Is that redeeming?
No, but it provides an understanding into his psyche. It allows the reader to
understand why he is who he is.
What about that so called redeeming quality? In I Am Wolf he
wanted to save the world from “aliens” he was sure invaded the planet. Yes,
it’s funny but at the same time, he had a heart and every desire to call out
what he thought were aliens. He went about it the wrong way, but he did try.
True villains are just as read as you and I. They may not
all have the capacity to love, but they do have that one thing they care about
the most and that’s what makes them real.
In The Kiss, the
villain is Ash, a demon who has been caged under a mountain for centuries. His
whole motivation is to escape his cage and get revenge on those who trapped him
and those who killed his newborn son. Some would say, “Demons can’t love” and
they would be right. However, obsession, something that is often mistaken for
love in the twisted minds of our villains—is something they can feel. So there
in rests his redeeming quality. The actions of a villain are what make him a
villain. They are the ones who don’t care who they hurt. They are also the fun
ones to write because we get to do things we have never been able to do out of
our own morality.
Villains live on a different moral compass. They are the
ones who do things we would all love to do. They are the ones who say what we,
the morally in control, wish we could say. Think about this, how many of you
have longed to tell your boss they are stupid idiots who don’t know their heads
from a hole in the wall? How many have wanted to tell your friends the clothes
they wear suck and most people view them as a joke? How many of you have wanted
to walk up to a parent on the playground and say control your child or I will?
All of us have thought things we have never said.
A villain will say and do those things without giving it
much thought. That’s what makes them fun to write and fun to read. We love to
cheer when the “asshole” is trampled by life. We love to hate that guy. We love
to hate the one who cheats on the character we love the most. We also love to
see that villain get what they deserve.
In The Kiss, the other bad guy is a girl. How many of us
have had our boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, cheat on us? How many of
us hated the person they cheated with more than we hated the one we loved? So
in something like this, who is the villain? Is it the cheating lover or the one
he’s cheating with? What if the villain thinks what they are doing is right?
Now how does that make you feel?
The truth is, any villain worth reading is going to make us
think. He or she is going to make us want to hate them even when we understand
them. We all want to see him or her get what’s coming to them because we can
relate to the wrongs they are doing.
There was a Mel Gibson film called Payback in which he plays
a bad guy. What made us cheer for him was his simple directness. All he wanted
was his money back. The people he was going after were worse than he was, so we
cheered for his character. The depth of the character was cool because we knew
we were cheering for a bad guy and that didn’t matter. A good villain will make
you feel something for him. In The Kiss, Cleo is such a person I hope you will
love to hate but feel for at the same time. She is the bad guy, or girl I
should say. She is also being manipulated by an evil. So does that make her bad
or do you feel for her? In the end, I felt sorry for her. That doesn’t mean I
make it easy on her. She will ultimately get what’s coming to her. Just not the
way you think.
The cool thing about writing a villain is it allows us to
all touch the dark side. I mean really when you think about it, we all love to
be scared, that’s why we go to horror movies. We all like to see Karma take
action on the person we love to hate. And we all want without a doubt, for that
person to make us feel something for them, no matter the outcome.
What about emotions and villains? Can they love, laugh or
even feel joy? For me the answer is yes and that’s what makes them real.
Emotions play an even more intricate roll in creating a good bad guy. They are
the heart of what makes them tick. They have a twisted moral compass and that’s
what makes them more real than some of the good guys in books. No one person is
perfect. The more flawed a villain has, combined with a redeeming quality, the
more likely he or she will be real to the reader.
That’s my take on villains. They are complex beings who are
fun to write. I can’t wait to hear what people think of Cleo. She, the
vulnerable twisted soul who makes life a living hell for the Youngling Pack,
was fun to manipulate into doing another’s bidding. Will you feel sorry for her
or will you just hate her? That is something I’m dying to find out. J
And now what you all were waiting for! The GIVEAWAY!! :D
Here is what you could win!! :D
Celeste Garrett has finally found a happy balance in her life as the Chosen One, thanks in large part to a certain hunky Irishman. But if there’s any lesson she should heed since receiving her calling it’s that everything can change in the blink of an eye. Soon a terrible new threat, unlike anything she’s ever encountered, causes her to make a gut-wrenching choice that will strip her of someone she holds dear.
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