A warm welcome to author Cari Z stopping by our blog to talk about new release “Where There’s Smoke”
Welcome Cari 🙂

I love Steve Rogers. He’s got to be one of my all-time favorite superheroes. He’s just the sort of plucky, strong-willed, good-hearted person who should be a hero, and thanks to a little luck and some mad science, Steve Rogers got to become Captain America and live up to the potential we all thought he should have. I mean, he’s punching Nazis and taking out Hydra and standing up for what he believes in in the face of disapproval from his superiors. That last bit is what really gets me about Steve. He’s no one’s mouthpiece. He just so happens to believe in a lot of the things that we as Americans hold up as ideals, and embodies them better than even some of his colleagues would like. Steve Rogers? Great superhero.

As much as I love Steve though, I also have to say: my heart goes out to Bucky. Similar circumstances, but instead of the support and approbation of an entire nation, he gets the torture and subversion of a secret society. Bucky could have been another Steve, but he didn’t get that kind of backup. Instead he got turned into an assassin, the Winter Soldier. Heartless, ruthless, he does what he’s told and then he gets put back to sleep. Not much of a heroic arc there.

If you’ve seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier, then you know that at the end *spoiler alert, but seriously, who hasn’t seen this movie, it’s amazing* he saves Steve from drowning. Which, yay! Steve lives and Bucky lives and now we’ve set Bucky back on the heroic path, huzzah! Except, I don’t really see it like that. I think he made a selfish decision to save someone who means something to him, not to save Steve because he’s Captain America, or even just because it’s the right thing to do. He doesn’t care about the “right” thing to do. He cares about getting answers for himself, and if that means saving Steve then great. I bet if it meant killing someone else, he’d be okay with that too. And I respect that. No, it’s not heroic in the modern sense, but it does make him more interesting. No one cares about a whitewashed Bucky who follows his captain’s every directive. He’s not a black-and-white character, and that makes him interesting.

That’s what I’m shooting for with the Villains in Where There’s Smoke. There are reasons for them to act the way they do, reasons that mean just as much to them as any hero’s reliance on justice and goodness and protectiveness. Are they always rational reasons? No, not at all. But they certainly are interesting ones.

Blurb

Panopolis is a rough place to be an average Joe. I came here looking for adventure and excitement, but nobody cares about one more normal guy in a city filled with super-powered heroes. The closest I’ve come to glory is working in a bank that villains often rob.

But then I maybe accidentally-on-purpose helped a villain escape the hero who was trying to save the day. Imagine my shock when, a week later, that villain asked me out for coffee. One date turned into more, and now I’m head over heels in love with Raul.

Falling in love with the guy dubbed the Mad Bombardier isn’t without its downsides, though. I’ve had to deal with near-death encounters with other villains, awkwardly flirtatious heroes who won’t take no for an answer, and a lover I’m not sure I can trust. It’s getting to the point where I know I’ll have to make a choice: side with the heroes, or stand fast by my villain.

Either way, I think my days as a normal guy are over.

Buy Links:

Riptide

Amazon

Cari Z was a bookworm as a child and remains one to this day. In an effort to combat her antisocial reading behavior, she did all sorts of crazy things, from competitive gymnastics to alligator wresting (who even knew that was legal!) to finally joining the Peace Corps, which promptly sent her and her husband to the wilds of West Africa, stuck them in a hut, and said, “See ya!” She also started writing in earnest then, because when you have no television, no car and nothing to read other than a French translation of Twilight, you find ways of entertaining yourself. She’s been back in Colorado for a while now, but stuck with the writing.

Cari posts a free weekly serial on her blog at carizerotica.blogspot.com. Come read, come say hi, or check out her other works at cari-z.net.

Twitter: author_cariz

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008212125132

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/CariZ

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