A warm welcome to author Alex Beecroft joining us today to talk about new release “Angels of Instanbul”.

Alex talks about dedications and there is a giveaway to participate in!

Welcome Alex 🙂

One of the most tricky things about preparing a new book is – for me at least – all those little fiddly things that come first before we even get to the story. It was easy thinking of a dedication for my first book – I dedicated it to my family and to the people who had encouraged me to try for publication in the first place. Done. But then I wrote a second book, and a third, and somewhere along the way I lost count of how many books I’d had published. (I think it’s around fifteen by now, in various different states of in and out of print-ness).

 

So thinking of someone to dedicate Sons of Devils and Angels of Istanbul to was difficult. It’s customary to write a little thank you note and say something profound – but saying profound things is also difficult.

 

It was made even more difficult because at the time I was being asked to write a dedication, the US election had just taken place, and Brexit was still a sharp and dreadful memory. What was I even doing, writing silly stories about an insecure young gay wizard and his companions defeating their own prejudices in time to save Istanbul from nonsensical vampire invasion, when in real life terrible people were getting themselves into a position to take all our hard fought rights away?

 

What was even the point of writing books at all? Surely I should be out there, campaigning, marching, lobbying. Civilization as we know it was in danger and what use was I, with my little escapist fantasies? What use was it to write, to make art, to create anything, to focus on anything except for making it stop right now?

 

Then I remembered Tolkien, who had fought during the Great War, but was too old to enlist during World War II. Instead, he sent his son to fight, and in what must have been daily fear and dread of hearing that his child had been killed, he wrote a book that inspired millions of people. I grew up in an atheist household. My father didn’t really believe in right and wrong. It was Tolkien who taught me my morality, when I read and re-read The Lord of the Rings over and over again for several years in my teens.

 

Illustration 1: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Карта_Одинокой_Горы_.jpg

 

It was Tolkien’s silly book about elves and hobbits and talking trees that taught me about honour and about forgiveness – about never giving up and never losing hope. It is because of Tolkien that I can now look at the world and think:

 

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

 

Remembering that gives me some hope that my silly books about LGBTQ heroes saving the world are also worth writing. I don’t claim to have the deep wisdom or humane understanding that Tolkien had, but I have a fierce belief that queer people are good and heroic and valid, and it strikes me that that kind of story needs to be told even more now than it ever did. I always hoped the fight for freedom, dignity and good over evil had been mostly won, but if that was naive and we have to fight even harder, I will hope that books with happy endings help a little, and not give up the writing just yet.

About Angels of Istanbul

 

Wallachian nobleman Radu is recently arrived in Bucharest with his vampire parents. Welcomed as an eligible bachelor, he’s introduced to the enchantress Ecaterina, whose salon is Bucharest’s centre of magical expertise.

 

But when Ecaterina’s brother dies of a mysterious new plague, it’s clear to Radu that his parents have not been idle. Soon Bucharest is in the grip of an undead epidemic—a less than ideal time for Ottoman Sultan Mahmud, Wallachia’s overlord, to call Bucharest’s nobility to assemble their armies in Istanbul for a holy war against Britain.

 

The Wallachians have long resented their Ottoman overlords, so Radu seizes the chance to eliminate them while also ridding Bucharest of the undead: he leads an army of vampires to Istanbul and sets them to feed on the Turks.

 

As Radu’s demons gut the city of Istanbul, their plans become horribly clear. This is only the start. With the Ottoman armies under their control, the undead are poised to suck the life out of the whole world. Radu, his lover Frank, and Ecaterina are appalled at what they’ve unleashed. But they may be too late to stop it.

 

Now available from

Riptide Publishing

Amazon

 

About Alex Beecroft

Alex Beecroft is an English author best known for historical fiction, notably Age of Sail, featuring gay characters and romantic storylines. Her novels and shorter works include paranormal, fantasy, and contemporary fiction.

Beecroft won Linden Bay Romance’s (now Samhain Publishing) Starlight Writing Competition in 2007 with her first novel, Captain’s Surrender, making it her first published book. On the subject of writing gay romance, Beecroft has appeared in the Charleston City Paper, LA Weekly, the New Haven Advocate, the Baltimore City Paper, and The Other Paper. She is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association of the UK and an occasional reviewer for the blog Speak Its Name, which highlights historical gay fiction.

Alex was born in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and grew up in the wild countryside of the English Peak District. She lives with her husband and two children in a little village near Cambridge and tries to avoid being mistaken for a tourist.

Alex is only intermittently present in the real world. She has led a Saxon shield wall into battle, toiled as a Georgian kitchen maid, and recently taken up an 800-year-old form of English folk dance, but she still hasn’t learned to operate a mobile phone.

She is represented by Louise Fury of the L. Perkins Literary Agency.

Connect with Alex:

• Website: alexbeecroft.com
• Blog: alexbeecroft.com/blog
• Facebook: facebook.com/AlexBeecroftAuthor
• Twitter: @Alex_Beecroft
• Goodreads: goodreads.com/Alex_Beecroft

 

To celebrate the release of Angels of Istanbul, one lucky winner will receive $10 Riptide credit and their choice of ebook from Alex’s backlist! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on April 1, 2017. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!