Hello, everyone! I’m the McKay half of Ari McKay, and I’m pleased to have the opportunity to share some behind the scenes details about our new release, Blood Bathory: Be Not Proud.
Be Not Proud is the third and final book in the Blood Bathory trilogy. It’s a second edition, but the original edition wasn’t available long, so we hope our readers who missed it the first time will be pleased that it’s available again!
Antonio, one of the oldest living theriomorphs, has mourned the loss of his bonded mate, Raphael, a Dark Guardian who was presumed dead at the hands of a former ally turned nemesis, Thrace. But Gaia pulled Raphael back from the brink of death. In doing so, she saved his life, but at a cost. Raphael returns to Antonio at last, but with no memory of loving Antonio or being loved by him.
For centuries, Raphael has been confined to a life of solitude because of his mission. With Gaia’s guidance, he has hunted and killed countless nosferatu, including two of Thrace’s original nosferatu “children.” As the last remaining Dark Guardian, he must keep his existence a secret, which means any nosferatu that sees him must die, and any human who sees him must have their memory modified.
As such, Raphael is out of sync with the rest of the world. He’s aware of the technological advances — cell phones, televisions, computers — but he has little experience with them, and even his language lags far behind. His speech is still that of a 16th century gentleman because he’s had little opportunity to catch up on the latest vernacular.
We knew we wanted the third book to focus on Antonio, but for a while, we weren’t sure which way we were going to go with the romance. On the one hand, we’d set up a potential new lover with Jean-Paul, but on the other, we had Raphael still lingering in the background. We decided to “resurrect” Raphael after watching a genre show that featured a man displaced in time who was trying to catch up with 21st century life.
My background helped me with finding Raphael’s voice, and while it was a challenge to keep his language so archaic, I also had fun with it. Through bouts of brainstorming, writing, and revising, he turned into a character whose eloquence revealed the romantic heart hidden beneath the exterior of a hardened warrior.
His eloquence also required us to include a glossary for the readers! We wanted to make sure readers wouldn’t feel lost in trying to parse what he meant, so we added a short glossary at the back of the book, covering the archaic colloquialisms that might be more difficult to figure out even in context.
His language became as much a part of his characterization as anything else, and it helped me shape him into the character we see in the final, published draft. I hope our readers enjoy Raphael’s attempts not only to catch up with modern life but also to decide whether he wants to return to the hunt or rest his wandering feet at Antonio’s hearth at last.
Death, be not proud…
The conclusion of the war between Elizabeth Bathory and the Guardians of Gaia draws closer, but the theriomorphs and their allies are caught between vampires loyal to Elizabeth Bathory’s daughter, Anna, and humans controlled by Elizabeth and her sire, Thrace. With the forces of evil now pressing on them from two sides, the theriomorphs need help, and they need it fast!
And soonest our best men with thee do go…
It has been five hundred years since Antonio de Barajas, one of the oldest surviving theriomorphs, lost his mate at the hands of his worst enemy. But Gaia never revealed the whole truth about Raphael’s fate, and Antonio is shocked when Raphael arrives to train Evan St. John and Adam Carson as true Dark Guardians. Yet the man who returns after so long is not the same man Antonio once loved. The hard and lonely life as Gaia’s hunter has changed Raphael almost as much as his lost memories of Antonio and the love they once shared.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men…
Antonio must work with the stranger who wears his lover’s face, and while Raphael is welcomed by most of the team, one member sees his return as a threat to his own place in Antonio’s life. But Thrace has allied himself with terrorists who possess a weapon of mass destruction. Now the theriomorphs and Dark Guardians must work together in a race against time to discover Thrace’s plan. Even as Antonio and Raphael are irresistibly drawn to one another, Antonio risks losing far more than his heart this time. If he and his team fail in their mission, millions will die, for Thrace will stop at nothing to destroy Gaia once and for all.
August 7 – The Novel Approach, August 9 – Love Bytes, August 11 – MM Good Book Reviews, August 13 – Diverse Reader, August 14 – MM Good Book Reviews, August 15 – Gay Book Reviews, August 16 – Mirrigold: Mutterings & Musings, Lillian Francis, Archaeolibrarian: I Dig Good Books
Ari McKay is the professional pseudonym for Arionrhod and McKay, who have been writing together for over a decade. Their collaborations encompass a wide variety of romance genres, including contemporary, fantasy, science fiction, gothic, and action/adventure. Their work includes the Blood Bathory series of paranormal novels, the Herc’s Mercs series, as well as two historical Westerns: Heart of Stone and Finding Forgiveness. When not writing, they can often be found scheming over costume designs or binge watching TV shows together.
Arionrhod is a systems engineer by day who is eagerly looking forward to (hopefully) becoming a full time writer in the not-too-distant future. Now that she is an empty-nester, she has turned her attentions to finding the perfect piece of land to build a fortress in preparation for the zombie apocalypse, and baking (and eating) far too many cakes.
McKay is an English teacher who has been writing for one reason or another most of her life. She also enjoys knitting, reading, cooking, and playing video games. She has been known to knit in public. Given she has the survival skills of a gnat, she’s relying on Arionrhod to help her survive the zombie apocalypse.
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