The Quid Pro Quo: The Border Magic Universe

Hello there everyone! Thank you so much to Dani for letting me drop in to Lovebytes today to tell you all about my latest release.

The Quid Pro Quo is the second in the Bradfield trilogy, although it does work as a stand alone. It’s set a few months after the end of The Fog of War. It stars Sylvia’s friend Walter Kennett and Simon Frost, a detective who comes to Bradfield to investigate a murder. It’s a gay, historical, paranormal, romantic murder-mystery with a m/transm couple set in rural England in 1920. Think Agatha Christie but gay. With monsters.

My paranormal-tinged books are all set within the same system, the Border Magic universe. It’s a world very like our own—it could be our own, honestly!—except there’s another world behind the one that most people inhabit. It’s separated from ours by a magical waterfall or wall of energy that those in the know call the border or the shimmer. People in our world, who think of themselves as workers, can use the magical energy to make things happen. Things as small as lighting a match and as big as sending someone through time.

Behind the shimmer is a world where the inhabitants know a lot more about what they’re doing with the energy than we humans do. We get peeks at it (and them) in various books, but I don’t really want to get into writing high fantasy, so it’s always going to stay just that, glimpses.

On this side of the border, if you take too much energy from it, it makes holes or weakens it sufficiently for people and/or things to slip through from the other side. Sometimes workers do this knowingly and sometimes they do it unknowingly and mess things up so badly people die. The people behind the shimmer can work with the energy with much more accuracy and safety than we can.

I really enjoy writing the magic-and-monsters side of things. I think there’s a good touch of horror in that part of my stories…creatures that dissolves bodies and take on their shape, creatures that dissolve brains. I sometimes feel that I have too much going on in my books…there’s the historical component, the romantic component and then the magical component. But I really enjoy writing all three of them.

Someone a little while ago said they liked the way my books are about ordinary people trying to work out what’s going on around them and I think that’s a fair description. But it’s  not just in the ordinary day-to-day way most of us are trying to get a handle on life, but also in the ‘oh my god, this is so weird, what’s going on, why is this stuff happening?’ way that my characters need to address when spooky stuff begins to happen.

For me, the fact that sometimes they never find out why the spooky stuff happened, or what it was makes the story more realistic. I’ve never heard anyone tell me a ghost story or recount a paranormal happening where they were utterly sure what had gone on. So I often leave that part of things open-ended in each book. Readers who have read more than one story may even know more about what’s going on than the characters.

Some of my characters become obsessed with magic. And some of them put a pin in it, shrug their shoulders and get on with cooking supper. The stories are much more about human nature than they are grand magical sagas.

Having said all that—here’s a bit about The Quid Pro Quo for you. I really hope you like it!

Publisher: JMS Books LLC

Editor: Lourenza Adlem

Release date: 20 Nov 2021

Word Count: 50,000 words

Genre: gay, transgender, m/transm, found-family, historical, paranormal romantic murder mystery set in 1920s England.

 

Awaiting UBL: Universal Link : Amazon : Publisher  :  Add on Goodreads : Find on author-website

 

Village nurse Walter Kennett is content with his makeshift found-family in tiny Bradfield. However one midsummer morning a body is found floating in the village duck pond, dead by magical means.

Detective Simon Frost arrives in Bradfield to investigate a inexplicable murder. The evidence seems to point to Lucille Hall-Bridges, who lives with doctor Sylvia Marks and nurse Walter Kennett at Courtfield House. Simon isn’t happy—he doesn’t believe Lucy is a murderer but  he’s sure the three of them are hiding something. In the meantime, the draw he feels toward Walter takes him by surprise.

Walter is in a dilemma, concealing Sylvia and Lucy’s relationship and not knowing how much to tell Frost about the paranormal possibilities of the murder. He isn’t interested in going to bed with anyone—he’s got a complicated life and has to know someone really well before he falls between the sheets. He’s taken aback by his own attraction to Detective Frost and angry when Frost appears to twist the spark between them to something transactional in nature.

Will Walter be satisfied to stay on the periphery of Lucy and Sylvia’s love affair, a welcome friend but never quite included? Or is it time for him to strike out and embark on  a relationship of his own?

The second in the Bradfield trilogy, set in the Border Magic universe. With a transm/m couple.

About A. L. Lester

Writer of queer, paranormal, historical, romantic suspense, mostly. Lives in the South West of England with Mr AL, two children, a terrifying cat, some hens and the duckettes. Likes gardening but doesn’t really have time or energy. Not musical. Doesn’t much like telly. Non-binary. Chronically disabled. Has tedious fits.

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As Simon was replacing the device on the telephone table a pretty young woman put her head out of a door at toward the end of the hall. “Sylv!” she said, “Do you want tea? I’ve boiled the kettle.” and then when she realised he wasn’t who she thought he was, “Oh, I do beg your pardon! I thought you were Dr Marks!”.

“She’s still in the surgery,” Simon nodded across the hall.

The woman emerged into the hall. “Lucille Hall-Bridges,” she said, extending a hand. “I’m a friend of Sylvia’s. I help with the house.”

Simon took her hand in his. Her grip was sure and warm. “Detective Frost,” he replied. “Nice to meet you, Miss Hall-Bridges. She had a recent bruise running from her jaw to just below her eye, entering the black-and-purple stage.

“I’ve made a pot of tea,” she was saying. “I don’t know whether anyone will want any, but I do like to feel useful and tea is so…normal-making, isn’t it?”

He nodded, slightly bemused at her chatter. “Yes, indeed,” he said. “Very normal.”

She gave a perfunctory tap on the surgery door, opened it and disappeared inside without waiting for a response. “Sylv, Walter, I’ve made tea. Would you and your detective like to come into the drawing room?” Her voice faded, presumably as she joined them in the examination room.

There was a pause. Then, “Oh!” he heard her say. “Oh.” She sounded a little shocked. “What’s happened to her hands?” she asked.

“Scraped on the bottom on the pond I think,” Simon heard Dr Marks say. “She was face-down in the water.”

“Oh.” Miss Hall-Bridges’ voice was small. “Sylvia…there’s…she’s…I can feel…do you think…?” Her voice trailed off and Dr Marks spoke over her, clearly away they might be overhead.

“Let’s not worry about that now, shall we? The policeman is sending her down to Taunton to a postmortem. You go and take the tea-things into the drawing room. We’ll just cover her up.”