Mastering the Flames
The Beacon Hill Sorcerer Series
S.J. Himes
M/M Urban Fantasy
Audio Release Date: 06.16.20
Narrator: Joel Leslie
Length: 14 hours and 52 minutes
Publisher: Tantor
Blurb
Guilt-ridden after the massacre of his family, Isaac Salvatore turned to binge drinking to escape the pain. Now twenty-four years old, Isaac is a recovering alcoholic woefully out of practice in the magical arts, leaving his fire affinity hanging on the edge of disaster. After a month of rehab, he returns to Beacon Hill and his family, determined to remain sober, learn to control his magic, and figure out a plan for his life that doesn’t involve drinking.
Constantine Batiste is the oldest, most powerful vampire in the city. Born in ancient Gaul, the bastard son of a Celtic king, his long life has been shrouded in tragedy and horrors. Recent mistakes have left him wary and determined to guard his clan from all foes. When two of his clan members fall victim to an ancient evil, he summons the Necromancer of Boston for aid. Accompanying his older brother to the Tower is the handsome young fire mage once wounded by Constantine’s arrogance, and their encounter reignites an attraction that burns within both Constantine and Isaac.
The answer to who is targeting the vampires of Boston is buried in the dark, early days of Constantine’s transition to an immortal life. Isaac finds himself saddled with a painful insight into the evil cutting a swath through the supernatural population of Boston. While his brother, Angel, takes over the hunt to find and stop the threat to the city, Isaac struggles to find a balance between helping his brother and finding his own purpose and place in the world, free from his brother’s shadow.
Falling in love wasn’t part of his plan, but mastering the flames that burn between him and Constantine soon becomes the most important thing in his life, even as an ancient evil seeks to destroy them.
Mastering the Flames is the fourth book in The Beacon Hill Sorcerer series and is not a standalone. The series should be read in order for maximum enjoyment and understanding of the plot and characters.
Thank you Love Bytes for letting spot by today.
Writing characters that are older than most modern civilizations comes with a catch: If they’re going to peak in their mother tongues, how should they sound?
My Beacon Hill Sorcerer series is set in Boston, an alternate world where magic and supernatural creatures are seen side by side with smartphones, social media and cafes. Like any major city in America, English is spoken alongside a multitude of other languages—and in this instance, languages that in our world are long dead or no longer spoken.
When dealing with creatures that are older than most civilizations, there comes the inevitable realization that the languages they grew up speaking may very well no longer be spoken by humans, and have faded from use. In our world, Latin is preserved by the Christian/Catholic Church, but it’s not the Latin spoken by Julius Caesar—Ancient Latin was pronounced differently, and we’ve only got educated guesses, and a few isolated and ancient dialects of Italian to fall back on for how words were pronounced. In merging the real world with the fictional, I’ve made it so humanity has largely moved on, while the long-lived supernatural creatures and immortals remember and preserve the old tongues.
Trouble with that lovely bit of retcon is that no one can tell me how those languages are pronounced—that’s not an issue on paper when writing the book, but when audio comes into play, that’s a bit of a bind. And since I don’t want my darling narrator to pretend that he doesn’t know who I am for future titles, I needed a compromise.
Accents form gradually and can be drastically different even within a handful of miles (see the UK and more specifically Britain for a good example of many accents occurring naturally within relatively short geographical distances. Another good example is the varying accents within New York City and its greater metropolitan area.)
The limits of human imagination tend to reveal flaws when confronted with modern practicalities. There is no way to know how ancient languages once sounded, but we can make educated guesses. To help with how long-dead languages and people would sound, we looked at where these people eventually ended up—or their descendants. A huge majority of the ancient Celts remained in what would eventually become France and Germany, and Ireland and the United Kingdom. But the influences of Gallic tribes upon ancient Gaul (Germany and France) had a deeper impact that maintained a higher degree of cultural integrity than in other lands conquered and populated by the Celts. The how and why is longer than I have to explain in a single blog post, but it was enough of a place to start.
During flashback scenes and for the ancient immortals within Mastering the Flames, my historical editor at Royal Editing Services and I looked back as far as we could in the historical record and backtracked where the Celts ended up and eventually evolved into different cultures by another name. During the time period I visit in Mastering the Flames, in 124 BCE, Southern Gaul, but most of the Celtic tribes were to the far north, trading with the southern peoples. The accents we decided upon were a combination of French and German, with a rougher edge.
If a long-lived character was less than a thousand years old, I had Joel give them accents that matched the modern accents spoken in what their birthplaces would be today. Ricon Dumond has a Spanish accent, despite the fact he was born on the Iberian Peninsula long before Spain was a country. Rory Brennan and his brother Cian are the oldest characters in my BHS series, and we’ve given them Irish accents, despite the eons they’ve been through and the countless languages they’ve learnt and had time to forget. (They are so old that I broke the trend of these two. If you’re curious as to how old they are, listen to the audiobook!)
As always, Joel Leslie’s talent, skill, and professionalism saved the day, and we pulled off something with this audiobook I feared might eb too much to handle—he nailed the characters, every one of them, and I’ve never been more proud of him, and humbled that he’s stuck with these books, even as they’ve grown more complex and varied through the years.
I love writing immortal characters who’ve been around the world a few times, but there’s also something to be said for a character with a charming and brusque Boston accent, and I know Joel appreciated the characters with the modern voices!
Audio Excerpt
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ozmqn0vnakex90z/for%20sheena.wav?dl=0
My name is Sheena, and I have more pen names than I probably should. I write as SJ Himes, Revella Hawthorne, and Sheena Himes. I reside in the mountains of Maine (closer to Canada than I am to fresh lobster) on a 300-year-old farm beside a river in the woods.
My companions are my furbabies: Micah, my large dog who hates birds; and Wolf and Silfur, two cats who love me but hate each other. I write romances with an emphasis on plot and character development, and almost all my characters are LGBTQ+ and that’s on purpose.
To keep current on what I’m working on and where to find me on social media, go to my website: www.sjhimes.com
