A warm welcome to author E.J. Russell joining us today to talk about new release “Devouring Flame”.

Welcome E.J. 🙂

Thank you so much for helping me celebrate the release of Devouring Flame! At the end of the tour, I’ll be giving away a prize—a $25 Dreamspinner gift card plus one of my backlist titles—to one commenter (chosen at random across all the tour posts), so please be sure to join the conversation!

Devouring Flame is the second book in my series centered around the employees of Enchanted Occasions Event Planning, where the word “enchanted” is quite literally, er, literal. The EO staff are all outcast from their supernatural home realms, most of them because they’re aitchers (short for half-and-half), part human and part other, and discriminated against by Pures of all races. But they’ve found a community with their EO co-workers, and job satisfaction staging magical events for their clients.

Of course, sometimes those events get… complicated. 🙂

 

 

A Kinder, Gentler Minotaur

 

In Nudging Fate, I needed a reason for Mikos, owner of Enchanted Occasions Event Planning, to be unavailable for the Consort Race, leaving Andy in charge. The reason, which was more or less an off-the-cuff throwaway line (or so I thought at the time) was that Mikos, who’s Greek, had to return to the Athens Interstices to handle an unspecified “minotaur crisis.”

I brought back the minotaur crisis in Devouring Flame to get Mikos out of the picture again, so Smith could get pushed out of his geeky comfort zone and forced to face Hashim. (Hmmm…I wonder when poor Mikos will actually be able to stay on-page in a book about his own freaking company?)

But in addition to the minotaur crisis, I decided I wanted an actual minotaur in this story, because why not? Here are my original notes about the character (from before I renamed the Night Circus to the Twilight Carnival):

Minotaur as a co-performer at the Night Circus? He and Hashim can punch in together, share lunch times. Both of them are indentured to the Circus based on their clan/family politics. The minotaur is a vegan, something that his PR always got wrong. “I didn’t want to eat those Athenians. For one thing, they’d been on a boat for however long. They stank. Nobody asked me what I wanted. Just like now. I finally refused to go along with it. It was just my asshole father trying to punish my mother anyway. He finally gave up when he found out she didn’t give a hang about me either.”

But then I found this picture—from Etruscan pottery—which presents a completely different take on the minotaur.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pasiphae_Minotauros_Cdm_Paris_DeRidder1066_detail.jpg

Apparently the Etruscan view of the minotaur diverged wildly from the Athenian abomination-grrr-monster-augh! bias, because here, Pasiphaë is cradling the baby minotaur in her lap, because of course she is. He’s her child. She loves him, even if he has what some might consider unfortunate physical deformities.

I started thinking about my minotaur character in a different way, combining this view—a mother who loves her child regardless of his appearance—with another famous bovine: Ferdinand, the gentle bull who preferred smelling wildflowers to fighting in the bull ring.

Therefore, my original idea for the minotaur character got pulled way back. I named him Rion, because in some literary sources, the Cretan Minotaur’s name is Asterion. I made him a gentle giant, who loved nothing more than sitting in a flowered meadow with his mom, eating egg salad sandwiches, and watching the boats sail in and out of the harbor below.

His stepfather, the king, isn’t crazy about him, since he’s living evidence of the queen’s…er…extracurricular activities, and that’s how Rion ends up indentured to the Twilight Carnival where he meets Hashim. But he still dreams of returning home, seeing the sun again, and sitting amid the flowers with his mom while the boats tack across the water.

Of coure, there just may be another twist or two concerning Rion and his job in the laser tag/paintball labyrinth at the infamous Twilight Carnival! Because again—why not?  😉

 

Devouring Flame

An Enchanted Occasions story

 

Reunited and reignited.

While cutting through the Interstices—the post-creation gap between realms—Smith, half-demon tech specialist for Enchanted Occasions Event Planning, spies the person he yearns for daily but dreads seeing again: the ifrit, Hashim of the Windrider clan.

On their one literally smoldering night together, Smith, stupidly besotted, revealed his true name—a demon’s greatest vulnerability. When Hashim didn’t return the favor, then split the next morning with no word? Message received, loud and clear: Thanks but no, thanks.

Although Hashim had burned to return Smith’s trust, it was impossible. The wizard who conjured him holds his true name in secret, and unless Hashim discovers it, he’ll never be free.

When their attraction sparks once more, the two unite to search for Hashim’s hidden name—which would be a hell of a lot easier if they didn’t have to contend with a convention full of food-crazed vampires on the one day out of the century they can consume something other than blood.

But if they fail, Hashim will be doomed to eternal slavery, and their reignited love will collapse in the ashes.

Luckily Smith is the guy who gets shit done. And Hashim is never afraid to heat things up.

 

Buy links:

Amazon

Other

Publisher

 

E.J. Russell–grace, mother of three, recovering actor–writes romance in a rainbow of flavors. Count on high snark, low angst and happy endings.

 

Reality? Eh, not so much.

 

E.J.’s paranormal romantic comedy, The Druid Next Door, was a 2018 RITA® finalist. She’s married to Curmudgeonly Husband, a man who cares even less about sports than she does. Luckily, C.H. also loves to cook, or all three of their children (Lovely Daughter and Darling Sons A and B) would have survived on nothing but Cheerios, beef jerky, and Satsuma mandarins (the extent of E.J.’s culinary skill set).

 

E.J. lives in rural Oregon, enjoys visits from her wonderful adult children, and indulges in good books, red wine, and the occasional hyperbole.

 

Contact info:

Email: ejr@ejrussell.com

Website: http://ejrussell.com

Newsletter: http://ejrussell.com/newsletter

Facebook reader group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/reality.optional

Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/E.J.Russell.author

Amazon author page: http://www.amazon.com/author/ej_russell

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/e-j-russell

Twitter: http://twitter.com/ej_russell

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ej_russell_author

I’ll be giving away a prize—a $25 Dreamspinner gift card plus one of my backlist titles—to one commenter (chosen at random across all the tour posts)