Dead Wrong
Gillian St. Kevern
Thorns and Fangs, Book Four
Genre: Paranormal, LGBT, vampires, werewolves, alternate universe, demons, occult, suspense
Nate’s no supernatural expert, but even he knows a murdered man coming back to life to kill him can only mean one thing—the necromancer is back and out for revenge.
Recruited by Department Seven in a desperate attempt to stop Peter before he claims new victims, Nate quickly realizes he’s in way over his head. His powers are failing him, he’s haunted by Peter’s ghost, and he can’t even remember how he stopped Peter the first time—or why he feels that someone very important is missing from his life.
Ben is fighting for his afterlife. Trapped in the supernatural version of solitary confinement, he knows freeing himself will destroy New Camden’s fragile peace—but what choice does he have? The longer he spends in his magical prison, the harder it becomes to resist his inner vampire. But if Ben wants to help Nate prevent Peter taking over the city, he has to prove himself to his sire—Saltaire, a thousand-year-old vampire with no qualms about using his immense power to suppress Ben’s free will.
As the casualties mount and the city descends into chaos, Ben and Nate must overcome their worst fears and impossible odds—or be written out of existence entirely.
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The Pros and Cons of a Slow-Burn Romance Series.
Thanks very much for hosting me as part of the release tour for Dead Wrong (Thorns and Fangs #4). Dead Wrong represents a major milestone for me. Thorns and Fangs is not only the first book in this four book series, but it was the first novel I wrote and saw all the way through to publication.
Thorns and Fangs is the story of two very different men. Nate is an unashamed pleasure seeker who is happy to ignore the evidence that he is anything but an ordinary guy with an extraordinary job. Ben is a vampire who is so anxious to avoid becoming a monster that he doesn’t allow himself to live. In Thorns and Fangs, the first book in the series, the two of them meet, and realize that the other is the key to a different life. They take a chance on each other, jumping into a new relationship and cutting ties with their former existences, before they have even really got to know each other—to put it another way, fighting a necromancer is one hell of a first date.
In Uprooted, the second book of the series, the cracks in their relationship start to show. As soon as the pressure is off, Nate is content to lapse into his former habit of avoiding anything difficult. Ben on the other hand is searching for threats where none exist. When Ethan, Nate’s twin brother, is implicated in a murder investigation, aspects of Nate and Ben’s past that they would prefer to ignore are dragged out into the open. Facing their past makes them both aware of how far they have yet to go.
In book three, Life After Humanity, Nate and Ben have put their relationship on hold to try and get a handle on their new lives. Ben is trying to pick up the pieces of his human life where he left off, which entails distancing himself from anything supernatural. Nate, on the other hand is trying to impress Ben with how he has embraced his supernatural side. I don’t want to say too much, but they get things sorted out—just before they learn they have an even bigger problem. Dead Wrong, the fourth and final book, is Nate and Ben going after the happy ending they deserve.
As I’m sure you’ll have gathered, this is not a series that can be read out of order. Each novel builds on the relationship and events established in the previous books, so I really don’t recommend reading them out of order. Most romance authors, when plotting a series, introduce a new couple with every book, and that’s a really smart choice. It lets readers pick up the series at any stage. But I wanted to really explore not only the relationship between Ben and Nate, but their personal growth as well. I’m a huge fan of slow burn relationships, and while 400,000 words is one hell of a commitment, in my opinion, it pays off. Not only do we see Nate and Ben’s journey, but we really take that journey along with them.
Of course, there are a lot of negatives to writing a series in this way. Readers can’t pick up any book at a whim. I don’t know how many readers have picked up Uprooted or Life After Humanity and thought, “I have no clue what’s going on. I’m going onto than next thing.” Readers who want a quick, emotional read simply don’t have time for lengthy novels (I have a print copy of Thorns and Fangs. It is solid enough that it could be used as a weapon).
The other downside to this choice of storytelling is that Nate and Ben, and admittedly, a lot of the other characters in this universe, start out the series with a lot of baggage. While they do work through it in the course of the series, that also means that when you first meet them, they have the risk of coming across as unsympathetic. This is another factor that might put people of. While I am a huge sucker for the personal growth and unlikely pairings, this aspect is not every reader’s cup of tea.
Last but not least, this series really tests readers’ patience. Thorns and Fangs ends on a definite HFN ending, while Uprooted is a step back even from that. Life After Humanity… well, while I won’t say it’s a cliffhanger, it definitely ends with the storyline unresolved. While Dead Wrong delivers a solid happy ending for Nate and Ben, I would not blame anyone who didn’t have the patience to make the journey.
On the positive side, approaching the series in this way really allowed me to dig deep into what makes Nate and Ben tick, and what makes them so right for each other. One of my favourite parts of writing the series was showing how, while they both seem to be very different and to have little in common at first, those differences played into each other really well. As Nate and Ben learn each other more, they’re able to anticipate each other’s needs, and offer each other the support they need and the challenge they need. This is very important. I believe it’s really important that relationships are mutually loving but also empowering. Nate in particular was not going to accept his true supernatural potential unless he was pushed. Ben, on the other hand, just needs the reminder of what being human entails.
Since I wasn’t limited to a new book new couple structure, I was able to let the story lead me in different directions. One of the recurring comments I get in reviews is how the reader wasn’t expecting the story to go the direction it did. While this could be considered a risk, I think it’s a positive. Going in unexpected directions and exploring previously unconsidered side roads also made the journey more enjoyable for me the writer, and, as a lot of the time, these diversions were suggested by the characters themselves, more true to the themes I was trying to express with the series.
Allowing the characters to take the reins also made for increased investment in the series from readers. Those who are reading it are really strongly committed to the series. I’ve even had to reassure a reader that nothing too bad happens in Dead Wrong. She was reading it but finding it difficult to continue because she was too worried about the characters. As an anxious reader myself, I know this feeling well—and I am taking it to mean that I have done my job well.
It also means that I feel as though I’ve made this journey along with Nate and Ben. In the course of writing the series, I have transitioned from one life to another. I’ve left behind a reliable job as an Assistant Language Teacher in Japan that was making me unhappy. I’ve come back to New Zealand and embraced a lifestyle that is uncertain and unpredictable, but which has allowed me to make steps towards being the person that I am meant to be. I have grown not just as a writer but as an individual.
As you can imagine, releasing Dead Wrong, the fourth and final book in the series, brings with it mixed feelings. I don’t want this journey to end, but at the same time I’m really pleased for Nate and Ben to have come this far. I’m excited to see what readers think of this—and I’m considering how I will next return to this world.
Dead Wrong
Gillian St. Kevern © 2018
All Rights Reserved
Chapter One
The afternoon had all the gloom of a funeral. The pavement and the drab external walls of the surrounding buildings extended to the gray sky above. Nate and Aki stood in silence in the alley beside their apartment building and contemplated the dead.
Nate, at six feet tall, had to bow his head to look down at them. “You’re sure it’s not, I don’t know, some kind of vampire cat?” He winced. The question sounded even worse out in the open.
Aki looked up at Nate, his hazel eyes flat. “You’re kidding me. Have you ever heard of a vampire cat?”
Nate made a helpless gesture toward the bodies. “Look at them.” There were two desiccated rats and, nearby, a shriveled up bird. “Animals don’t eat like this.” He turned the nearest rat over, noticing what looked like a puncture wound. He crouched to get a closer look.
“Maybe they were sick. Rats are riddled with disease, and pigeons are not any better—don’t touch them!” Aki made a disgusted noise. “Ugh. Keep your gross, infected hands away from me.”
Nate set the rat down and turned his head, giving Aki a speculative look.
Aki stepped backward. “Touch me and I promise I will dump you.”
Nate snorted, turning his attention back to the dead animals. “You can’t dump me. We’re not dating.”
“I can friend dump you—and I will.”
“I co-signed the lease. You’re stuck with me.”
“I’m pretty sure Grant can find me a legal loophole involving pestilence.” Aki stuck his hands in the pockets of his plaid trousers. He drummed one foot against the pavement, the movement making his keychain rattle. “Come on. Let’s go.”
Nate stood slowly, still looking down at the animals. “There’s got to be some kind of explanation for this. Maybe we should call Department Seven?”
“They’d laugh in your face. This isn’t even a case for animal control.” Aki heaved a theatrically loud sigh. “If you’re that desperate for excitement, ask George to take you hunting. She’d jump at the chance.”
Nate frowned at Aki. “I’m not desperate for excitement.”
Aki raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you? This is the longest we’ve gone without any supernatural mishaps since you got mixed up with the necromancer, and for the last month, you’ve been glancing over your shoulder, listening to sounds that aren’t there, and watching the news for anything paranormal. If that’s not desperation, I don’t know what is.”
Nate shivered. How to explain to Aki that for the last month, he’d had the constant suspicion that there was something there, just on the edge of his awareness? “I’m not desperate.”
“Then why are we hanging out in a shadowy alley, acting like revenant bait?”
Nate blanched. Revenants were the most basic form of the undead, recently deceased with a taste for blood and no thought beyond acquiring it. Nate had been closer than he wanted to hungry revenants. “Bait implies I want to find one. I don’t.”
“Then can we please leave before one finds us—”
Something crunched in the shadows beyond the dumpster.
Nate’s breath froze in his throat. He didn’t dare turn his head to see what Aki was doing, concentrating all his attention on the shadows.
He heard a second crunch, as if something shifted on the stones beyond the dumpster. Nate stepped toward it.
“Don’t.” Aki grabbed his arm. “Please, Nate. This is a seriously bad idea.”
“Stay here.” Nate disentangled himself. “Get ready to call Department Seven.”
“And after that, I’ll call the funeral home.” Aki had his phone in hand. “I’m having them put ‘I told him not to do it’ on your gravestone.”
“Quiet.” Nate knew a revenant couldn’t kill him. At least he was pretty sure he was safe. His experience with the necromancer had woken Nate’s own supernatural side. Being part plant could be inconvenient at times, but it did mean that he was impervious to things that were fatal to ordinary humans. But being a card-carrying psychic wouldn’t protect Aki from becoming monster chow. Nate edged his way around the dumpster carefully. If it was a revenant, he’d have to act fast to stop it preying on Aki.
Nate rounded the corner.
Nothing there? The newspaper was spread out as if someone had been sleeping rough—never a good idea in New Camden, the city with the largest monster population in the world—and it crackled under foot. Was the sound just the wind rustling through its pages? Nate turned to leave and caught a dull glow out of the corner of his eyes. He grinned. “Aki, come and look at this.”
“Is it more dead animals? Because I can pass.”
Nate crouched down. “Here, kitty. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“A cat?” Aki snorted, and Nate heard his footsteps on the stone behind him. “All that over nothing.”
Nate clicked his fingers. “Come on.”
The cat watched him balefully. She stretched, displaying her claws, before taking a step into the light. She flicked her tail, watching Nate out of her one good eye. Her left eye was milky white, with the lines of an old scar above and below. She was skinny, her fur bare in patches, and her tail was crooked. Part of one ear was missing, looking like a tattered flag on a pirate ship, with her prominent ribs the hull.
“Whoa. That’s the ugliest cat I’ve ever seen.”
“She can’t help that. Poor thing. Who knows how long she’s been living out here?”
Aki smacked Nate’s hand away from the cat. “Stop risking animal diseases! Look at it. Probably crawling with fleas!”
“It’s just an old stray cat.”
Aki scoffed. “I was wrong. That’s definitely some variety of hell beast.”
Nate clicked his fingers, succeeding in drawing the cat closer to him. “You’re so mean. Just because she’s been on the losing end of a few fights…”
“More than a few. It’s probably got every disease in the book.”
Nate extended his hand, and the cat cautiously sniffed it. “I think she likes me.”
Aki leaned against the dumpster to watch. “Haven’t you learned anything from the disaster that was you adopting the last stray?”
Nate looked up. “The last stray turned out to be Grant, who we saved from his evil stepdad, getting you a boyfriend in the process.”
“We’re not dating,” Aki said immediately. “If you’re so stuck on Grant, ask him out yourself. I don’t want him.”
Nate smiled to himself, stretching out his hand to the cat’s tattered ears. She hissed, and before Nate could react, sunk her teeth into his hand. He jerked his hand back. “Ow!”
“Ha! Told you!”
Nate sat back on his heels, nursing his hand. “Are you grinning?”
“It’s called schadenfreude.” Aki nudged Nate with the toe of his sneaker. “And you deserved it.”
Nate looked back down, but at his exclamation, the cat had darted back into the shadows. She squeezed into the narrow gap between the dumpsters. All he could see of her was the gleam of her dead eye. “You’re a bad best friend.”
Aki just shrugged. “You should have checked the fine print. It’s too late now. You’re stuck with me.”
Nate stood, dusting off his hands on his jeans. “Maybe Grant will find me a legal loophole.”
Aki elbowed him. “Not allowed. It’s ‘best friends forever.’ Not best friends until Aki hurts my feelings.”
Nate draped his arm over Aki’s shoulders. “Since when is BFF legally binding?”
“Well it is. So it’s a good thing I plan on keeping you around.” He leaned comfortably against Nate’s side. “That’s your cue to say there’s no one you would rather be stuck with.”
Nate paused, guiltily conscious something wasn’t right. There was something—someone—missing.
“Nate?”
Nate realized he’d stopped walking.
Aki was watching him with an expression of concern on his face. “I was only joking.”
Nate grinned. He leaned over, tapping Aki on his shoulder. “Got you.”
“You!” Aki demonstrated his feelings of friendship by trying to kick him.
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Gillian St. Kevern is the author of the Deep Magic series, the Thorns and Fangs series, the For the Love of Christmas series, and standalone novels, The Biggest Scoop and The Wing Commander’s Curse. Gillian currently lives in her native New Zealand, but spent eleven years in Japan and has visited over twenty different countries. Her writing is a celebration of the weird and wonderful people she encounters on her journeys. She is the co-founder of the New Zealand Rainbow Romance Writers, and a member of RWNZ.
As a chronic traveller, Gillian is more interested in journeys than endings, with characters that grow and change to achieve their happy ending. She’s not afraid to let her characters make mistakes or take the story in an unexpected direction. Her stories cross genres, time-periods and continents, taking readers along for an unforgettable ride. Both Deep Magic and The Biggest Scoop were nominated for Best LOR story in the 2015 M/M Romance Groups Member’s Choice awards. Deep Magic also received nominations in Best Cover, Best Main Character and Best Paranormal, while The Biggest Scoop was nominated for Best Coming of Age. Thorns and Fangs came third in the 2016 Rainbow Awards Bisexual Paranormal/Historical category.
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