Friday, March 31, 2017

SPOTLIGHT: CHAOS UNBOUND by BRIAN S. LEON


We're saying goodbye to March today and hello to a new book by Brian S. Leon. It's book two from his Metis Files series, and it's called Chaos Unbound. We had a chance to sit down with Brian, so let's have a look...

Chaos Unbound
The Metis Files
Book Two
Brian S. Leon

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Publisher: Red Adept Publishing

Date of Publication: 2/28/17

ISBN: 978-1-940215-83-9
ASIN: B06VSX4BKP

Number of pages: 356
Word Count: 122000

Cover Artist: Streetlight Graphics

Tagline: On the Run. On the Hunt.

Book Description:

The hunter becomes the hunted.

Framed for the murder of a high ranking member of the Unseelie Court of Fae, Steve Dore–also known as Diomedes, Guardian and protector of mankind–goes on the run. He’s determined to uncover the real culprit and clear his name.

But the assassination may be the beginning of a more sinister plot that involves not just the Fae and Humankind, but all the races of the world. And what if the real assassin is a boogeyman even the Fae don't believe is real?



Excerpt:
Chapter 1
San Diego, September 2011
Selkies. Thirty-five miles offshore in the Pacific Ocean, and I’m dodging freakin’ selkies in my fishing boat. It’s like they’re seagulls, and I’m dropping French fries at the beach. Man do they screw up the fishing. Worse, when they appear, bad things tend to follow. And it’s just my luck. Of all fae to show up randomly, it had to be these shapeshifters—the kind that could transform into seals and even into sea lions, which scare the crap out of the fish. Every pile of floating kelp we’d fished around so far had one of these fairies under it. Every kelp except the paddy right in front of the boat.
“Captain Dore, look! Another seal,” the woman said, reaching for her camera.
And that selkie made it a perfect five for five.
I couldn’t help but hang my head. My clients—a simple Midwestern family of Mom, Dad, and Teenage Son—considered it endearing to see a seal poke its head up from inside the kelp, but I could see their true bulbous heads, seaweed-like hair, and pudgy gray-green humanoid forms. Their giant, shiny-black eyes fixed on me as if they knew exactly who I was.
The creepy shapeshifters were part of the Unseelie Court—fairies that are decidedly unfriendly to humans—and the fact that we kept encountering them was starting to unnerve me. Encountering one in the Pacific was rare. In fact, I couldn’t recall one off Southern California since an entire tribe of them showed up around Catalina Island in the 1980s. That appearance had led to a spate of unidentified submerged object and alien sightings, not to mention a few mysterious plane crashes around the island and a heap of sunken boats.
“Hey what’s that big fin?” the father asked, pointing at the rapidly approaching triangular object sticking out of the water and heading straight at the paddy from the opposite side.
“Shark,” I said with a sudden smile. “Damn big one, too. Great white, from the looks of it. Rare for us down here in San Diego.”
“Oh, swim, seal! Swim!” the mom said as all hell broke loose around the paddy.
“Wow, really,” the kid said. “It’s like a real National Geographic moment.” He whipped out his phone to video the event.
I was the only one on the boat rooting for the shark. If they’d known what that shark was really chasing, they probably would have thought it was more like a National Enquirer moment.
Knowing the selkie-shark conflict would ruin the fishing within a mile of that paddy, I pushed farther out, always on the lookout for signs of life other than selkies. As long as we could avoid them, we found lots of small football-sized yellowfin tuna while we trolled, and I’d even managed to convince the anglers to release the little guys, in hopes of finding bigger ones. The small fish kept me blissfully busy until we made it back to the dock at around four in the afternoon—so busy, in fact, that I forgot about how screwy the presence of selkies was until I realized my buddy Ned was storming down the dock toward my boat as I pulled in.
As usual, Ned was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt with colors usually reserved for Las Vegas neon. The fact that he resembled a derelict version of Santa Claus usually drew people’s attention. It was either that or the fact that he always smelled like beer-soaked seaweed washed up on a beach. It could be worse given that Ned was in fact the Titan God of the Sea, Nereus, in self-imposed exile.
As I secured the boat to the dock, my cellphone, stashed inside my captain’s bag within the console, chirped the unique ring my buddy Geek had helped me assign to Sarah Wright. I felt guilty for avoiding her over the past two weeks. Despite scrambling to reach the annoying device before the call went to voice mail, I wasn’t quick enough. I tossed the phone on the console, thoroughly disgusted with my wishy-washy-ness regarding our relationship—or whatever we had. I was pretty sure we both wanted to take things to the next level, but I was conflicted about what that would mean for both of us since my situation wasn’t exactly normal.
I’ll call her back as soon as I can. I sighed, watching my three clients stumble off the boat, trying to adjust to sea legs on land after a full day on the water. They chatted excitedly about sharks and sea lions as they went. Ned stood down the dock, waiting, staring intently at me with his hands on his hips and one flip-flop-clad foot tapping away. The trio barely managed to get past him before he charged the boat.
“Diomedes, dude, glad to see you made it back okay.” Ned’s shoulders dropped a bit as he exhaled heavily. “Now get yer ass off the damn boat and back onto land.” He dipped his head slightly and glared over his sunglasses at me, his brow deeply furrowed.
I stopped taking rods out of the rod racks under the gunwales and stared back at him. Something had him on edge, and that was saying something. Normally, he made people on Prozac appear edgy. In over a thousand years, I’d never seen him like this before.
“Now, dude. Now!” he said, raising his voice and gesticulating wildly.
The myriad of seagulls and pelicans gathered around the boat awaiting leftover bait and fish carcasses took off in a sudden deafening and chaotic commotion.
“Whoa. Relax, Ned. What’s got your panties in a bunch?” I said, getting back to my after-charter chores. “Sheesh. Besides, I think the dad left a few beers if you want them.”
Normally, Ned’s first question to me would have involved the possible presence of abandoned beer. Instead, he fixed me with a withering stare. His hands were back on his hips, and his foot again tapped on the dock. When we’d first met a few thousand years before, he’d naturally emanated an aura of power. Though he’d since willingly given up most of his other-dimensional essence, the preternatural blue glow was now visible.
“Dude, which part of ‘now’ ain’t you understandin’?” He spoke through a clenched jaw and pointed at the dock forcefully, like a parent demanding a child’s immediate presence. Over his sunglasses, his eyes darted everywhere, keeping watch around us.
“Okay, okay,” I said, eyeing my fish-slimed gear and all the sardine scales and scuff marks marring the deck. “Who’s gonna clean all this up? You know if I let it sit, it’ll be even harder to clean later.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Ned replied. “Just get yer ass off the water. Right. Now.”
“Fine.” I kicked at my rods like a petulant child. “Let me get my damn gear bag, and I’ll leave.”
I grabbed my captain’s bag and stormed down the dock in a huff, glaring at Ned. I didn’t even bother to take off my grungy gray rubber fishing bibs. He avoided making eye contact as I passed him, which only pissed me off more. Instead, his eyes continued to dart around the marina. Whatever.
I got to my truck, threw my gear bag in the bed, then stripped off the rubber bibs. While hopping around on one leg like an idiot, trying to get the bibs off over my deck boots, I worked myself up from a huff to a tizzy. Who the hell did he think he was ordering me around like that? Athena? Throwing my bibs into the bed with the rest, I glanced over my shoulder, toward the dock.
Just as I was about to get into my truck, a more pressing question hit me: Why? Ned actually yelled at me. In over two millennia, I had never even witnessed him raise his voice. What’d I do to him?
I instantly felt like I owed him an apology, without even knowing what I’d done. I headed back down to the dock.
As I approached the top of the gangway, Ned was in a heated discussion with something in the water on the other side of the dock from my boat. I couldn’t get a clear view of who or what Ned was talking with, or hear what was being said. The only things evident were the loud and freakish sea lion-like barks and Ned’s wild and very uncharacteristic gesticulations. Instinctively, I searched for something to use as a weapon—a boat hook was leaning against the fence next to the gate down to the dock.
Then a putty-colored round female head covered in thick yellow-green hair popped up just above the dock and peered directly at me. Ned noticed me, as well, and all at once, the creature disappeared below the water’s surface creating a wake that tossed the floating dock and rocked the boats tied up nearby. She was definitely one of the selkies I had encountered earlier offshore.
I stopped dead in my tracks. Ned shook his head and stomped toward me, which couldn’t have been easy in flip-flops. His eyes were ablaze—literally. His awakened aura pulsed from white to blue like a lightning storm.
I shrugged and raised my eyebrows as his gaze fell on me. The temperature began to drop, and the water around the dock changed from a drab green to black and turned rough, as if it were about to boil. The disturbance bounced the moored boats against their bumpers and the dock, and the rigging on the sailboats began to clang. Even the remaining birds evacuated—only noiselessly.
“Boy, who did you piss off this time?” he said at me more than to me in a voice that reverberated through my skull. It wasn’t loud, but it was insistent in its tone.
“I… um… I, ah… what?” I asked, vapor trailing from my mouth in the cool air.
I couldn’t recall having done anything to anybody since chasing down that witch, Medea, a few months back, and as far as I knew, everyone I could have pissed off doing that was dead.
Ned continued up the ramp from the dock toward me, somehow appearing larger than normal. His face, especially his eyes, darkened. “Don’t play games with me. You got selkies chasin’ yer ass all over the Pacific, and they had to travel around the world to get here to do it. Nytrocyon herself is here to find you.” He pointed back down toward my boat. “She says Mab wants you. Says you killed Lord Indronivay.”
“Nytrocyon, ruler of the selkies? Seriously?” My teeth started to chatter, and my jaw muscles clenched in the frigid air. “Wait… she said I killed who? Lord Indronivay, Mab’s warmaster? Are you kidding me? Why the hell would I have killed that uptight belligerent asshole?”
I’d never even met him, but his reputation as a jerk was legendary. Even as a Guardian and protector of humanity, I knew him only through stories that suggested he was a giant at nearly eight feet tall and was about as friendly as a shark with a toothache. All I really knew about him was that he personally ran every major war and military campaign Queen Mab of the Unseelie Court had waged for tens of thousands of years. Hell, the guy might have charged into battle against Queen Titania of the Seelie Court on the back of a triceratops.
“You’re sayin’ Nytrocyon is lying?” Ned’s voice boomed through my head, shaking me back to attention.
I shrugged again. “Now why the hell would I do something like that? Honestly?”

Ned’s shoulders dropped slightly, and his pulsing aura faded. Though his face brightened and his bushy beard and mustache split, revealing his white teeth in a broad smile, the rest of him remained rigid. “Good. I didn’t think you were dumb enough to attack a member of one of the fairy royal courts. That’d be grounds for war. Only problem is then, dude”—he slowly slipped back into his normal relaxed and carefree persona—“you gotta ask yerself one question: why does she think you did?”
 
 
 

Intrigued?  We asked Brian our three fave questions:
 
SC: Tell me a little bit about your main character of this book.
BSL: Diomedes, currently going by the alias Steve Dore, is the hero from the Iliad, still alive and still working with Athena as he did in the Iliad. For those that aren’t familiar with him (and most only remember Achilles), he was one of the most feared Greeks in the Trojan War. He is also the only mortal to fight and wound, not one, but two gods in battle—Aphrodite and Ares. Yep. Ares. With Athena’s help of course. She granted Diomedes the vision to discern the gods in human form from mere mortals and then gave him the strength and speed to fight them. She chose him because of all the warriors in the battle he was the most skilled and honorable. Some myths say that in the end Athena grants Diomedes the immortality that she offered his father. I just took it from there. The price was to protect humanity from all the non-human elements that would harm it. And he’s been doing it for 3200 years now. A soldier rather than a wizard and a fisherman rather than a detective. Always the right guy in the wrong place at the right time. He’s self-deprecating but extremely capable and honorable. Loyal to a fault and dependable. He’s been part of virtually every elite fighting unit to exist throughout history and feels more and more like he’s got more in common with the monsters he hunts than the humans he protects.
SC: .Do you believe in the paranormal and if so, do you have an experience you can share?
BSL: Unfortunately I don’t. I grew up down the street from a house that was supposed to be haunted but never saw anything. I’ve been to all kinds of haunted places, like The Myrtles Plantation, The Whaley House, Lizzie Borden’s house and all over St. Augustine, Florida, New Orleans, a bunch of cemeteries and other spots, but I’ve never seen or encountered anything. I’ve had a few things happen that I can’t explain, but nothing major. I keep looking though.
SC: What titles are you working on now that you can tell us about?
BSL: I finished Book 3 in the Metis Files Series and Red Adept has it for release next year, I’m sure. It's about one of the Grigori that escaped from Tartarus and his attempt to release the other Watchers. Angles and demons and stuff. Starts in New Orleans in 1919 but quickly jumps to now. Right now I’m working on finishing Book 4. It's a story of redemption for Diomedes.It’ll involve the Count St. Germaine, Nemesis and a mess of other stuff—as usual!


About the Author:

Brian S. Leon is truly a jack of all trades and a master of none. He writes just to do something with all the useless degrees and skills he’s accumulated over the years. Most of them have no practical application in civilized society, anyway. His interests include mythology and fishing, in pursuit of which he has explored jungles and museums, oceans and seas all over the world.

His credentials include an undergraduate degree from the University of Miami and a master’s degree from San Diego State University, plus extensive postgraduate work in evolutionary biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he studied animals most people aren’t even aware exist and theories no one really cares about anyway.

Over his varied career, Brian’s articles have been published in academic journals and popular magazines that most normal people would never read. They can be found in The American Society of Primatologists, the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Proceedings of the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the like.

His more mainstream work came as an editor for Marlin and FlyFishing in Salt Waters magazines, where he published articles about fishing and fishing techniques around the world. He won a Charlie Award in 2004 from the Florida Magazine Association for Best Editorial, and several of his photographs have appeared on a number of magazine covers—almost an achievement of note, if they weren’t all fishing magazines.

Always a picky reader, Mr. Leon enjoys stories by classical masters like Homer and Jules Verne as well as modern writers like J.R.R. Tolkien, David Morrell and Jim Butcher. These books, in combination with an inordinate amount of free time, inspired him to come up with tales of his own.

Brian currently resides in San Diego, California.



Twitter: @bslauthor


Newsletter Sign Up: http://briansleon.com/newsletter/


SPOTLIGHT: CHAOS UNBOUND TOUR with author BRIAN S. LEON

We're winding up this month with a look at a new Urban Fantasy release by Brian S. Leon.

Chaos Unbound
The Metis Files
Book Two
Brian S. Leon

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Publisher: Red Adept Publishing

Date of Publication: 2/28/17

ISBN: 978-1-940215-83-9
ASIN: B06VSX4BKP

Number of pages: 356
Word Count: 122000

Cover Artist: Streetlight Graphics

Tagline: On the Run. On the Hunt.

Book Description:

The hunter becomes the hunted.

Framed for the murder of a high ranking member of the Unseelie Court of Fae, Steve Dore–also known as Diomedes, Guardian and protector of mankind–goes on the run. He’s determined to uncover the real culprit and clear his name.

But the assassination may be the beginning of a more sinister plot that involves not just the Fae and Humankind, but all the races of the world. And what if the real assassin is a boogeyman even the Fae don't believe is real?



Excerpt:
Chapter 1
San Diego, September 2011
Selkies. Thirty-five miles offshore in the Pacific Ocean, and I’m dodging freakin’ selkies in my fishing boat. It’s like they’re seagulls, and I’m dropping French fries at the beach. Man do they screw up the fishing. Worse, when they appear, bad things tend to follow. And it’s just my luck. Of all fae to show up randomly, it had to be these shapeshifters—the kind that could transform into seals and even into sea lions, which scare the crap out of the fish. Every pile of floating kelp we’d fished around so far had one of these fairies under it. Every kelp except the paddy right in front of the boat.
“Captain Dore, look! Another seal,” the woman said, reaching for her camera.
And that selkie made it a perfect five for five.
I couldn’t help but hang my head. My clients—a simple Midwestern family of Mom, Dad, and Teenage Son—considered it endearing to see a seal poke its head up from inside the kelp, but I could see their true bulbous heads, seaweed-like hair, and pudgy gray-green humanoid forms. Their giant, shiny-black eyes fixed on me as if they knew exactly who I was.
The creepy shapeshifters were part of the Unseelie Court—fairies that are decidedly unfriendly to humans—and the fact that we kept encountering them was starting to unnerve me. Encountering one in the Pacific was rare. In fact, I couldn’t recall one off Southern California since an entire tribe of them showed up around Catalina Island in the 1980s. That appearance had led to a spate of unidentified submerged object and alien sightings, not to mention a few mysterious plane crashes around the island and a heap of sunken boats.
“Hey what’s that big fin?” the father asked, pointing at the rapidly approaching triangular object sticking out of the water and heading straight at the paddy from the opposite side.
“Shark,” I said with a sudden smile. “Damn big one, too. Great white, from the looks of it. Rare for us down here in San Diego.”
“Oh, swim, seal! Swim!” the mom said as all hell broke loose around the paddy.
“Wow, really,” the kid said. “It’s like a real National Geographic moment.” He whipped out his phone to video the event.
I was the only one on the boat rooting for the shark. If they’d known what that shark was really chasing, they probably would have thought it was more like a National Enquirer moment.
Knowing the selkie-shark conflict would ruin the fishing within a mile of that paddy, I pushed farther out, always on the lookout for signs of life other than selkies. As long as we could avoid them, we found lots of small football-sized yellowfin tuna while we trolled, and I’d even managed to convince the anglers to release the little guys, in hopes of finding bigger ones. The small fish kept me blissfully busy until we made it back to the dock at around four in the afternoon—so busy, in fact, that I forgot about how screwy the presence of selkies was until I realized my buddy Ned was storming down the dock toward my boat as I pulled in.
As usual, Ned was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt with colors usually reserved for Las Vegas neon. The fact that he resembled a derelict version of Santa Claus usually drew people’s attention. It was either that or the fact that he always smelled like beer-soaked seaweed washed up on a beach. It could be worse given that Ned was in fact the Titan God of the Sea, Nereus, in self-imposed exile.
As I secured the boat to the dock, my cellphone, stashed inside my captain’s bag within the console, chirped the unique ring my buddy Geek had helped me assign to Sarah Wright. I felt guilty for avoiding her over the past two weeks. Despite scrambling to reach the annoying device before the call went to voice mail, I wasn’t quick enough. I tossed the phone on the console, thoroughly disgusted with my wishy-washy-ness regarding our relationship—or whatever we had. I was pretty sure we both wanted to take things to the next level, but I was conflicted about what that would mean for both of us since my situation wasn’t exactly normal.
I’ll call her back as soon as I can. I sighed, watching my three clients stumble off the boat, trying to adjust to sea legs on land after a full day on the water. They chatted excitedly about sharks and sea lions as they went. Ned stood down the dock, waiting, staring intently at me with his hands on his hips and one flip-flop-clad foot tapping away. The trio barely managed to get past him before he charged the boat.
“Diomedes, dude, glad to see you made it back okay.” Ned’s shoulders dropped a bit as he exhaled heavily. “Now get yer ass off the damn boat and back onto land.” He dipped his head slightly and glared over his sunglasses at me, his brow deeply furrowed.
I stopped taking rods out of the rod racks under the gunwales and stared back at him. Something had him on edge, and that was saying something. Normally, he made people on Prozac appear edgy. In over a thousand years, I’d never seen him like this before.
“Now, dude. Now!” he said, raising his voice and gesticulating wildly.
The myriad of seagulls and pelicans gathered around the boat awaiting leftover bait and fish carcasses took off in a sudden deafening and chaotic commotion.
“Whoa. Relax, Ned. What’s got your panties in a bunch?” I said, getting back to my after-charter chores. “Sheesh. Besides, I think the dad left a few beers if you want them.”
Normally, Ned’s first question to me would have involved the possible presence of abandoned beer. Instead, he fixed me with a withering stare. His hands were back on his hips, and his foot again tapped on the dock. When we’d first met a few thousand years before, he’d naturally emanated an aura of power. Though he’d since willingly given up most of his other-dimensional essence, the preternatural blue glow was now visible.
“Dude, which part of ‘now’ ain’t you understandin’?” He spoke through a clenched jaw and pointed at the dock forcefully, like a parent demanding a child’s immediate presence. Over his sunglasses, his eyes darted everywhere, keeping watch around us.
“Okay, okay,” I said, eyeing my fish-slimed gear and all the sardine scales and scuff marks marring the deck. “Who’s gonna clean all this up? You know if I let it sit, it’ll be even harder to clean later.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Ned replied. “Just get yer ass off the water. Right. Now.”
“Fine.” I kicked at my rods like a petulant child. “Let me get my damn gear bag, and I’ll leave.”
I grabbed my captain’s bag and stormed down the dock in a huff, glaring at Ned. I didn’t even bother to take off my grungy gray rubber fishing bibs. He avoided making eye contact as I passed him, which only pissed me off more. Instead, his eyes continued to dart around the marina. Whatever.
I got to my truck, threw my gear bag in the bed, then stripped off the rubber bibs. While hopping around on one leg like an idiot, trying to get the bibs off over my deck boots, I worked myself up from a huff to a tizzy. Who the hell did he think he was ordering me around like that? Athena? Throwing my bibs into the bed with the rest, I glanced over my shoulder, toward the dock.
Just as I was about to get into my truck, a more pressing question hit me: Why? Ned actually yelled at me. In over two millennia, I had never even witnessed him raise his voice. What’d I do to him?
I instantly felt like I owed him an apology, without even knowing what I’d done. I headed back down to the dock.
As I approached the top of the gangway, Ned was in a heated discussion with something in the water on the other side of the dock from my boat. I couldn’t get a clear view of who or what Ned was talking with, or hear what was being said. The only things evident were the loud and freakish sea lion-like barks and Ned’s wild and very uncharacteristic gesticulations. Instinctively, I searched for something to use as a weapon—a boat hook was leaning against the fence next to the gate down to the dock.
Then a putty-colored round female head covered in thick yellow-green hair popped up just above the dock and peered directly at me. Ned noticed me, as well, and all at once, the creature disappeared below the water’s surface creating a wake that tossed the floating dock and rocked the boats tied up nearby. She was definitely one of the selkies I had encountered earlier offshore.
I stopped dead in my tracks. Ned shook his head and stomped toward me, which couldn’t have been easy in flip-flops. His eyes were ablaze—literally. His awakened aura pulsed from white to blue like a lightning storm.
I shrugged and raised my eyebrows as his gaze fell on me. The temperature began to drop, and the water around the dock changed from a drab green to black and turned rough, as if it were about to boil. The disturbance bounced the moored boats against their bumpers and the dock, and the rigging on the sailboats began to clang. Even the remaining birds evacuated—only noiselessly.
“Boy, who did you piss off this time?” he said at me more than to me in a voice that reverberated through my skull. It wasn’t loud, but it was insistent in its tone.
“I… um… I, ah… what?” I asked, vapor trailing from my mouth in the cool air.
I couldn’t recall having done anything to anybody since chasing down that witch, Medea, a few months back, and as far as I knew, everyone I could have pissed off doing that was dead.
Ned continued up the ramp from the dock toward me, somehow appearing larger than normal. His face, especially his eyes, darkened. “Don’t play games with me. You got selkies chasin’ yer ass all over the Pacific, and they had to travel around the world to get here to do it. Nytrocyon herself is here to find you.” He pointed back down toward my boat. “She says Mab wants you. Says you killed Lord Indronivay.”
“Nytrocyon, ruler of the selkies? Seriously?” My teeth started to chatter, and my jaw muscles clenched in the frigid air. “Wait… she said I killed who? Lord Indronivay, Mab’s warmaster? Are you kidding me? Why the hell would I have killed that uptight belligerent asshole?”
I’d never even met him, but his reputation as a jerk was legendary. Even as a Guardian and protector of humanity, I knew him only through stories that suggested he was a giant at nearly eight feet tall and was about as friendly as a shark with a toothache. All I really knew about him was that he personally ran every major war and military campaign Queen Mab of the Unseelie Court had waged for tens of thousands of years. Hell, the guy might have charged into battle against Queen Titania of the Seelie Court on the back of a triceratops.
“You’re sayin’ Nytrocyon is lying?” Ned’s voice boomed through my head, shaking me back to attention.
I shrugged again. “Now why the hell would I do something like that? Honestly?”

Ned’s shoulders dropped slightly, and his pulsing aura faded. Though his face brightened and his bushy beard and mustache split, revealing his white teeth in a broad smile, the rest of him remained rigid. “Good. I didn’t think you were dumb enough to attack a member of one of the fairy royal courts. That’d be grounds for war. Only problem is then, dude”—he slowly slipped back into his normal relaxed and carefree persona—“you gotta ask yerself one question: why does she think you did?”


About the Author:

Brian S. Leon is truly a jack of all trades and a master of none. He writes just to do something with all the useless degrees and skills he’s accumulated over the years. Most of them have no practical application in civilized society, anyway. His interests include mythology and fishing, in pursuit of which he has explored jungles and museums, oceans and seas all over the world.

His credentials include an undergraduate degree from the University of Miami and a master’s degree from San Diego State University, plus extensive postgraduate work in evolutionary biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he studied animals most people aren’t even aware exist and theories no one really cares about anyway.

Over his varied career, Brian’s articles have been published in academic journals and popular magazines that most normal people would never read. They can be found in The American Society of Primatologists, the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Proceedings of the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the like.

His more mainstream work came as an editor for Marlin and FlyFishing in Salt Waters magazines, where he published articles about fishing and fishing techniques around the world. He won a Charlie Award in 2004 from the Florida Magazine Association for Best Editorial, and several of his photographs have appeared on a number of magazine covers—almost an achievement of note, if they weren’t all fishing magazines.

Always a picky reader, Mr. Leon enjoys stories by classical masters like Homer and Jules Verne as well as modern writers like J.R.R. Tolkien, David Morrell and Jim Butcher. These books, in combination with an inordinate amount of free time, inspired him to come up with tales of his own.

Brian currently resides in San Diego, California.



Twitter: @bslauthor


Newsletter Sign Up: http://briansleon.com/newsletter/


Wednesday, March 29, 2017

SPOTLIGHT: BARRY by L.M. Pruitt



Welcoming back L.M. Pruitt to Supernatural Central. Today we have the new release BARRY.


Barry
Winged
Book 14
L.M. Pruitt

Print Length: 186 pages

Publisher: SP Press

Publication Date: January 14, 2017

ASIN: B01N22VUWH

A standalone novel in the world of the international bestselling WINGED series... a glimpse in to one man's past....

It was supposed to be a simple dinner. The repayment of a debt.

I should have known Lilith would find a way to make things difficult.

Three favors. Three stories of lovers past. As Lilith said, an easy task.

I remember them all.

WARNING: THIS BOOK CONTAINS GRAPHIC LANGUAGE AND GRAPHIC SEX SCENES. READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED

Excerpt:
I leaned back, unfolding my napkin and draping it over my lap. “So, what sort of delicacy is on the menu this evening?”
“Oh, who knows. I leave those sort of things to the kitchen.” Lilith waved a hand absently, brushing the question aside as if it was no more than a fly. “It’s time for you to pay your debt.”
“And I’m here.”
“Baraquel.” Her smile was the sort usually reserved for cute animals and slow adults. “Did you really think a simple dinner would be all the repayment I required?”
“Not really but I was foolish enough to hope.” Sighing, I pulled a cigar from my coat pocket and examined the tip. “How, then, am I supposed to repay you?”
“Three favors, correct?” Her smile grew when I nodded. “Wonderful. Three stories, then.”
“I beg your pardon?” I winced, shaking my head as she laughed. “Remind me to limit my time around Joanne. I’m picking up too many of her verbal ticks for my liking.”
“If it helps, think of this as more of a series of lectures on the right and wrong way to conduct relationships.” She propped her elbows on the table, steepling her fingers as she stared at me with the sort of fascination I’d seen on cats in the instant before they pounced. “After all, you have so much advice to offer. It would be a shame to let it go to waste.”
“My personal life is my own.” I set the cigar down, hating the stiffness in my voice and yet unable to do anything to correct it. “You’ve known me long enough to know that.”
“And I’m not asking for a rundown of every person you’ve fucked in the last few millennia.” Her smile widened, the edges turning cruel. “Besides, even if I did, I doubt you could provide one.”
“I remember.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.” I clenched my fist in my lap. “I remember them all.”
“Good.” She tapped her fingers on her lower lip. “Then tell me a story.”



About the Author:

L.M. Pruitt has been reading and writing for as long as she can remember. A native of Florida with a love of New Orleans, she has the uncanny ability to find humor in most things and would probably kill a plastic plant. She knows this because she's killed bamboo. Twice.  She is the author of the Winged series, the Plaisir Coupable series, Jude Magdalyn series, the Moon Rising series, and Taken: A Frankie Post Novel.


 
L.M. PRUITT came to us today via Bewitching Book Tours. Supernatural Central did not receive compensation for this post.

Sunday, March 26, 2017

REVIEW: ROSWELL (TV Series)

I don't know what I was doing when this series originally aired. Maybe I started that sweater that I have yet to finish knitting and needed to concentrate. But somehow I missed it.


But thanks to the magic that is Netflix, I've been able to enjoy three seasons of the supernatural series. It became my guilty pleasure. My husband even watched it with me nightly.

The series focuses on the lives of teenagers Liz, Maria, Kyle, Alex and their alien friends Max, Michael and Isabel. You'll see some familiar faces in the cast.

Image result for roswell tv show

The first season is sugary sweet, almost Dawson Creek-ish, as teen romance blooms, well... everywhere. Kyle loses Liz to Max. Maria and Michael start their on again-off again romance. Alex pines over the beautiful Isabel.

As one by one select residents of the town of Roswell, NX learn the secret identities of the aliens, it becomes a mystery of friend or foe.

The second season gets a little meatier, but then takes a nose dive with one particular episode that gets the series off course for the most part, until season three. You'll know which one as soon as you watch it. Who thought that was a good idea? Bad show runner. Bad. Okay, maybe two stupid episodes. Heigl doesn't punk out very well. (But I love her in the show).

Watching the hairstyles change from season to season will make you smile. And for the record, I want Maria's wardrobe.

I don't know why it only lasted three seasons, but before you think "I don't want to watch something that short only to be let down at the end," let me assure you that it was all neatly wrapped up in a bow. The second to last episode could have been the end, but there's a bonus one that had me weepy. That's right. Weepy.

So if you're in the mood for a charming, relatively short sci-fi series, girl this one a ride.

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

SPOTLIGHT: PAID IN FULL by RACHEL RAWLINGS

How's the weather in your neck of the woods? We're socked in for a week of rain here in Vancouver. It's been a strange winter. If I didn't have to do that work thing, I'd be curled up in bed looking for a good read. Something like this, perhaps?


Paid In Full: A Jax Rhoades Novel
The Jax Rhoades Series
Book 2 Two
Rachel Rawlings 

Publication Date: March 14, 2017

ASIN: B06WRN82P6

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Publisher: R Squared Publishing

Cover Artist: Najla Qamber Designs

About the Book:

Demon hunter, Jax is back battling the beasts of Hell in Baltimore's underbelly. Dealing with the Devil is as dangerous as ever, especially when your immortal soul is on the line.

But that’s nothing compared to the Angels.

Charged with finding the one relic that can end her life, Jax puts her faith in the only man she can trust – the Sin Eater.

Dane swore to protect her, but can he save her from herself and her personal demons?

Caught between Heaven and Hell, Jax’s next move might just be her last.

Amazon     BN    Kobo



About the Author:

Rachel Rawlings was born and raised in the Baltimore Metropolitan area. Her family, originally from Rhode Island, spent summers in New England sparking her fascination with Salem, MA. She has been writing fictional stories and poems since middle school, but it wasn't until 2009 that she found the inspiration to create her heroine Maurin Kincaide and complete her first full length novel, The Morrigna.

When she isn't writing, Rachel can often be found with her nose buried in a good book. An avid reader of Paranormal/Urban Fantasy, Horror and Steampunk herself, Rachel founded Hallowread- an interactive convention for both authors and fans of those genres.

More information on Hallowread, its schedule of events and participating authors can be found at www.hallowread.blogspot.com  and www.facebook.com/Hallowread .

She still lives in Maryland with her husband and three children.







Goodreads Author Page http://goo.gl/FZW0RN


Amazon Author Page http://goo.gl/Q6Ubn1