Hi all!! Welcome to my inaugural blog tour. I’m incredibly excited to be here, introducing you to my new book, Where Death Meets the Devil!! It’s full of action and suspense and two damaged men who shouldn’t be friends—or more—coming together to uncover a common enemy—and more. I’d love to have you join me on the tour where I’ll be dorking… ah hem, talking about the importance of titles, the dangers of research, theme songs and other stuff. And if watching while I potentially embarrass myself isn’t enticement enough, there’s a chance to win a $10 Riptide gift card!

Character theme songs

Individual songs mean different things to different people, usually depending on where you were, physically, spiritually, mentally, when you first heard it. And sometimes, songs take on new meaning as your experiences change. The following songs were two of my favourites from each band, as well as being overall favourites, but during the writing of Where Death Meets the Devil, they developed extra symbolism for me.

Incubus’s “Surface to Air” is Jack’s theme.

Do you read me, mayday

Aeronaut to base

I confess I’m a mess

No egress

Alone, hovering in space

Jack spends a lot of the book lost, literally and figuratively. This is his plea for connection when everything around him fees so very, very distant. He has to find something to ground him before he spins completely off the rails.

Ethan’s theme is Muse’s “Undisclosed Desires.”

You trick your lovers

That you’re wicked and divine

You may be a sinner

But your innocence is mine

Ethan is good at hiding behind a calm and collected paid-killer demeanour. However, he can’t keep up the façade if he expects Jack to trust him, so parts of his true self are exposed. It’s the flashes of past trauma, damaged conscious and innocence that draw Jack in.

About Where Death Meets the Devil

Jack Reardon, former SAS soldier and current Australian Meta-State asset, has seen some messy battles. But “messy” takes on a whole new meaning when he finds himself tied to a chair in a torture shack, his cover blown wide open, all thanks to notorious killer-for-hire Ethan Blade.

Blade is everything Jack doesn’t believe in: remorseless, detached, lawless. Yet, Jack’s only chance to survive is to strike a bargain with the devil and join forces with Blade. As they trek across a hostile desert, Jack learns that Blade is much more than a dead-eyed killer—and harder to resist than he should be.

A year later, Jack is home and finally getting his life on track. Then Ethan Blade reappears and throws it all into chaos once more. It’s impossible to trust the assassin, especially when his presence casts doubts on Jack’s loyalty to his country, but Jack cannot ignore what Blade’s return means: the mess that brought them together is far from over, and Ethan might just bring back the piece of Jack’s soul he thought he’d lost forever.

Available now from Riptide Publishing!
Amazon

About L.J. Hayward

L.J. Hayward has been telling stories for most of her life. Granted, a good deal of them have been of the tall variety, but who’s counting? Parents and teachers notwithstanding, of course. These days, the vast majority of her story telling has been in an honest attempt to create fun and exciting ways of entertaining others (and making money).

As such, she is still a mad (always provoked!) scientist in a dungeon laboratory (it has no windows—seriously, the zombie apocalypse could be going on outside and she’d have nary a clue) who, on the rare occasions she emerges into the light, does so under extreme protest and with the potential hazard of bursting into flames under the Southeast Queensland sun.

Connect with L.J.:

• Webiste: http://www.ljhayward.com/
• Twitter: @lj_hayward

To celebrate the release of Where Death Meets the Devil, one lucky winner will receive a $10 Riptide credit! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on March 3, 2018. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!