Believe it or not, urban fantasy can be traced as far back as the 19th century. Even the great Charles Dickens wrote about an imaginary dinosaur ‘waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill’ at the start of Bleak House. In Baudelaire’s poetry, Paris became a fantastical caricature of the real city. His protagonist is tormented by doppelgangers, apparitions, and strange objects of desire. Sound familiar?
Before this, fantasy had always had a rural setting. Folklore offered us heroes that fought the evil villains in woodlands and mountains. The creatures the hero must overcome were from the deep forest, from an older age when we shared the land with the preternatural. When knowledge of the nighttime prowlers was a matter of survival.
As the industrial age transformed our pastoral landscape with its brick monoliths and dirty streets into something ugly, burning with furnaces and ironworks, we turned to story to help us translate this encroaching change and reconcile the new starker world with an older, richer time.
We brought the fantastical with us, combined our ancient folklore with the new age. We invented creatures that made the brick landscape their own, slinking through the dark streets between shadows, and plaguing unsuspecting damsels with their deadly bite. We peopled the neighborhood with witches. The hags who had once lived in creepy cottages in the woods, now lived in dark and eerie side streets. We brought the fairies from their circles in the glades and gave them a place in the thoroughfare of London, creating half-breed protagonists that took this integration deeper. Wolves became the next-door neighbor. The man attempting to live his life in secret, battling his inner demon and the moon that brought it forth.
We basically combined new with old. Gave the stark world we found ourselves in the same mystery and intrigue the untamed forest had once held. And we’re still doing it. The paranormal has moved nearer still, transformed from its roots in horror into something far more romanticized and approachable. The heroes are now the feared creatures themselves. The love interest is the tortured villain. The vampires and the wolves we once fled are now in our beds.
And as a writer who gets to explore and create new worlds, I love it. I love bringing mystery to the everyday, combining street with forest, integrating folklore with modern life, but also interpreting the classic stories of old with a streetwise perspective. And I also love romance, the hotter the better, courageous heroes and mysterious villains, the endless struggle with our darker side.
So this is what I explore in the world of the Flame Born. The supernatural, the magical, the mysterious. Though Michael has never known anything but the ordinary urban world, he channels the Flame. An energy from the deepest forest. The energy that sustains all supernatural life. His days are about to get interesting. Luckily there’s a stoic werewolf, and an intriguing vampire prince to show him the way. Pity they both want to chain him.
Torn between finding answers and escaping chains, can Michael trust his werewolf lover or is the devious vampire prince the only one truly on his side?
Book Title: Dark Fate: An MM urban fantasy romance (Flame Born Book 2)
Author: Kat Silver
Publisher: Kat Silver
Cover Artist: Bookfly
Release Date: November 12, 2021
Genres: Urban fantasy romance
Tropes: Enemies to lovers
Themes: Self-discovery and empowerment, finding home, freedom, good vs evil
Length: 117 000 words
It is not a standalone book, but part of a series (Flame Born Book 2)
This story ends on a satisfying cliffhanger.
Buy Links – Available in Kindle Unlimited
Blurb
“And if I am a monster? Will you want me then?”
Ten days after the battle at Blackriver, Michael struggles with new forbidden desires, with his rampant Flame, and a deepening relationship with the taciturn werewolf, Commander Gabriel Flanagan.
Feeling responsible for their loss, Michael longs to rescue the students stolen by the manipulative vampire prince, Alexei Vasiliev. But the High Council refuses to free Michael from his chains. They fear the whisperer — the half-breed who decimated an entire company of soldiers and came back from the dead. Yet, Michael still yearns for a future among the Guardians. For a place beside his Finnish, silver-eyed giant. For a home within the crazy supernatural world he’s now bound to.
But does Michael still have a future? He’s a descendent of the Warlock — from a bloodline that produces only monsters. If discovered, not even his protective lover can save him from certain execution. He may not want to.
Dark Fate is the second book in the Flame Born series. This MM urban fantasy/paranormal romance is action packed, featuring steaming hot scenes, a hunk of an alpha love interest, a chocolate scented snarky vampire prince, a clever best friend who can kill a man with her little finger, and one too many shady characters to count. See inside for trigger warnings on both books.
I grip the sink edge, knuckles white, and glare at the contents of the glass vial lying beside the tap. The viscous liquid, the color of a fine bottled wine, looks so innocuous. Innocent. A random sample of blood.
There’s nothing innocent about this vial’s contents.
Every time I see it, my mouth salivates with the need for a taste. Whenever I take the vial from my pocket to caress the cool glass in my hand, a clamoring monster of desire rips through me like a fire.
Not this time.
I swipe up the tube, twist out the cork, and prepare to pour the blood away. Metal clanks against ceramic, echoing through the small bathroom, as the chain between my wrist manacles knocks the sink. A heady smell of cocoa and figs hits my nostrils. My hand falters. God, that scent.
His scent.
An urgency to inhale the smell deep into my lungs, to press the glass into my lips and lick the rim, almost takes control.
Alexei. That devious vampire. He knew exactly what he was doing when he left me with this. His blood constantly tugs at me like an unfinished song. Like a broken tooth my tongue won’t leave alone.
I could wash temptation away. Watch clear water turn burgundy as the vile substance slides into the drain.
I won’t.
I’ve faced this trial for ten days, and the result never changes.
I’ve tried to show the vial to Flanagan. Tried to hand it over so he can smash the glass and destroy the contents. Somehow, it always returns to my hiding places. A dirty secret.
I’m a simple northern English lass with an addiction to writing, as well as all things romance. Also addicted to cats, cat videos, and anything with, you know, cats in it. And there’s chocolate, and tea, coffee too, and rainy Sundays. Okay, I have many addictions. But my first love has always been story in all its forms, from movies to books to anecdotes told over a beer at the local pub. If we’re sharing a story, I’m all ears. And if it’s fantasy with sexy heroes and vampires and lots of angsty luuurve, I’m probably drooling. Come in, pour yourself a tea, and kick your shoes off. Let me tell you a story.
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