Vampires and Undead? Who You Gonna Call? Danica Black!

In the time after The Black, human survivors of the Southern Claw Alliance clash with vampire legions of the Ebon Cities in a constant war for survival. Earth as we know it has been forever damaged by an arcane storm that fused our world with distant realms of madness and terror. Now, things that once existed only in our nightmares stalk the earth. And they are hungry…

SOULRAZOR, Book 3 in the BLOOD SKIES series, is an apocalyptic military fantasy in which the warlock Eric Cross and his team of mercenaries must stop the Ebon Cities from acquiring a deadly and ancient magical sword. The second-in-command of the team is a former warden named Danica Black, the subject of today’s interview…

Steven: Hi, Danica!
Danica: What the hell is this supposed to be?
Steven: An interview.
Danica: You mean an interrogation.
Steven: I mean an interview. Chill out, okay?
Danica: Why are you interviewing me?
Steven: You’re a member of Cross’ mercenary team, the…wait, what are you guys called again?
Danica: We don’t have a name. I actually sort of liked Mage Gunners, but since only half of the team are mages it really doesn’t work.
Steven: Tell us about the team.
Danica: What do you want to know?
Steven: What do you do, who’s on the team…you’re not making this easy, you know that?
Danica: You should ask more closed questions. It would make it easier to respond.
Steven: [curses under his breath] Okay…what is the team’s purpose?
Danica: There you go. See, was that so hard?
Steven: Are you actually going to answer any questions?
Danica: I guess. Cross decided to form the team after the Battle of Karamanganji, when he, Kane and I put down an other-dimensional entity called The Sleeper. We take on special missions for the Southern Claw.
Steven: What sorts of missions?
Danica: Pretty much anything: rescue operations, sabotage, seek and destroy. I think we’d even go on a beer run if they were willing to pay us for that.
Steven: Who all is on the team?
Danica: Going up against the vampires and undead of the Ebon Cities is dangerous work. We’ve always tried to keep the team at six or seven members, but whenever we lose someone we have to replace them and fill whatever role they had. We’re roughly the size of a standard squad. Right now it’s me, Cross, Kane, another witch named Ash, her little brother Grissom (who’s half-Doj, so he’s actually bigger than any of us), a near-psychotic swordsman named Ronan, and our tech/pilot, Maur. He’s a Gol.
Steven: Explain what Gol and Doj are for the home audience.
Danica: The what?
Steven: Never mind. A Doj, for everyone’s information, is a giant, and a half-Doj like Grissom stands about 8-feet-tall and could win the Mr. Universe contest without even showing up. A Gol is a misshapen dwarf, crafty and devious little guys.
Danica: So what do you do for a living?
Steven: Well, when I’m not tormenting your team, I’m…wait a second, I’m the one asking the questions here.
Danica: “Tormenting the team”? What are you saying?
Steven: Let’s just get back to the interview…
Danica: Yes. Let’s. What exactly do you mean by “tormenting the team”?
Steven: Forget it. Let’s get back to you. What’s your background?
Danica: Why do you ask?
Steven: Because inquiring minds want to know?
Danica: Seriously?
Steven: Give me a break, will you?
Danica: I’d really rather not talk about it.
Steven: Talking about yourself is par for the course in an interview.
Danica: I never consented to this interview.
Steven: Oh, for $#!@ sake…
Danica: Fine, you want to know? My dad was a scumbag. My brothers were both scumbags. I joined the military to get away and got sent on a suicide mission, so I joined The Revengers. I was a warden in Black Scar for a few years before I decided to leave and join up with Cross. I mistreated and tortured prisoners for a living. I still have nightmares about it. Pretty much everything in my life until I joined up with this team was something I’d like to forget.
Steven: Um…sorry.
Danica: Whatever. Thanks for bringing it up.
Steven: Look, sorry, it’s just part of the…
Danica: No worries. I know where to find you.
Steven: Ha ha ha…wait, what?
Danica: I’m sure Cross, Kane and especially Ronan will be interested to learn how you are the one responsible for all of the trouble that we run into.
Steven: …And that concludes today’s interview with Danica Black.
Danica: You’re not getting off the hook that easily, hot shot.
Steven: Danica, Cross, Kane and the rest of the team can be found battling vampires, searching for ancient weapons and traveling through time in SOULRAZOR, Book 3 of the BLOOD SKIES series. SOULRAZOR is a dark military fantasy on sale for the Kindle on March 16th!
Danica: Write in a happy ending and I’ll pretend this never happened.


BUY LINK FOR SOULRAZOR

An Inteview with Author Steven Montano and a 2 Book Give Away!

I have the pleasure of interviewing Steven Montano today. He'll be giving away two Kindle copies of Black Scars today. Leave a comment and I'll do a drawing around midnight tonight and repost the winners.

Alisha: Yarn shop? Tell us more about your wife's business.

Steven: Liberty (my wife) started up Liberty's Yarns in 2008. She's an avid knitter, and when our son started kindergarten she fired up the business to take her hobby to the next level. The results? She's been WILDLY successful, gathering a solid body of followers who eat up both her yarn and her hand-crafted soaps. She's also an advocate of local businesses and independent entrepreneurship. I'm terribly proud of her. =D Check out her stuff at LIBERTYS YARN.

Alisha: Going to go check out her website today. Awesome! How cool is that? So, you're an accountant? Seriously? Why? Do you like being bored? Tell us more.

Steven: LOL.I had to get a job fast when my Dad took ill shortly after I graduated from college. The temp job that I managed to land had me working in the mail room for a healthcare company, but while I was there an entry-level position opened up in the Accounts Payable department. I found that I strangely had a knack for solving numbery problems, and before I knew I had a better position and a couple of years of experience under my belt, and I've been rolling with it ever since.


It's not my dream profession, by any means, but it's steady employment (I've been doing it for....God...15 years...) and it pays the bills.

Alisha: Well, you impressed the hell out of me. I'm terrible at math. Rain shelter? What the heck is that? You live in a rain shelter? Tell us more.

Steven: Actually, I kid about the rain shelter. But it rains in Washington a frickin' lot. Sometimes it feels like we need an extra tin plate over to roof to make sure we stay dry.


Alisha; What are you working on now?

Steven: Next up are the revisions for ...SOMETHING BLACK, the prequel to the BLOOD SKIES series. After that I need to get back on SOULRAZOR, Book 3 in the series, which with any luck will be finished as a Nanowrimo project.

Alisha: You have a creative writing degree? So did you actually get a diploma for that? Tell us about your classes? Maybe I should have taken some too. Tell us a cool experience or assignment or hey, tell us about a cool professor. Love those professor stories.

Steven: They do! The University of Colorado at Boulder had a heckuva good Creative Writing degree, which primarily consisted of writing workshops with local published authors. I took classes with Lucia Berlin, Steve Katz, and Ron Sukenick, each of whom offered some wonderful insight into the writing process.


The best part about the Creative Writing courses were the workshops. I still do these assignments from time to time to keep my writing brain fresh...


* Write a story with nothing but dialogue.
* Come up with your ten favorite words. Use each of them ten times in a single story.
* Steal dialogue from a conversation that you overheard. Use that dialogue as the opening to a story.
* Keep a writing journal by your nightstand. Write down the first thing that comes into your head as soon as you wake up. Go back to it from time to time and see if there's anything you can use in a story. (Note: this is how BLOOD SKIES came to be.)
* Keep a vocab notebook. Write down words you don't know from books you read. Once a week, look up their definitions and write them in.
* Keep a prose notebook. Write down passages or lines that you like from the things that you read, and use them as inspiration.

BLACK SCARS

Alisha: I've loved having you on my blog today, Steven. You're an interesting guy and an author I want to read. Thanks for being my guest this week. Come back anytime. :)

Excerpt from VAMPIRE AUTHOR, Steven Montano's BLOOD SKIES

BLACK SCARS
Blurb
Something ancient has awoken. Primordial and wholly evil, a living shadow emerges from a prison made weak by the magical cataclysm called The Black. Now the Sleeper stalks the land in search of its old enemies, leaving a trail of madness and destruction in its wake.
Eric Cross, a Southern Claw warlock, has been sent to find the Woman in the Ice, the only known means to stopping this evil. Aided by a grizzled ranger and a band of wardens and inmates from a sadistic prison, Cross’ mission will bring him into conflict with an array of foes: the barbaric Gorgoloth, vampire shock troops out of the Ebon Cities, and a cadre of mercenary nihilists called the Black Circle.
On a mission that will take him from a lost temple once ruled by insidious wolf sorcerers to the vicious gladiator games of the vampire city-state of Krul to the deadly ruins of an ice city, Cross will play a pivotal role in an ancient conflict whose outcome will determine the future of the world.
Return to the world of Blood Skies in this exciting military fantasy adventure!

Excerpt from Chapter 2: Dreadnaught
They rode quietly across the ghostly ice plains. They stepped carefully to avoid sharp stones, patches of ice, and areas too brittle to support their weight.
Hours passed in near silence. Cross would have liked to sleep in the saddle, but it wasn’t going to happen. His nerves were alight, thanks in no small part to the nagging paranoia of his spirit. But that wasn’t entirely it: Cross disliked the notion of being directed by a prophecy. The fact that Sajai seemed to have known there was going to be something there in the Reach that Cross needed to follow unnerved him. It was like a trap had been laid by the universe, and he was walking straight into it.
The plains sloped down near a cluster of bone white trees rimed with dark frost. The skeletal remains of a tall humanoid creature sat near the trees; one of its hands was frozen so that it looked like it pointed back the way Cross and Dillon had ridden from.
Cross tried not to take it as a sign.
At the bottom of the slope was a thin canyon that was maybe twenty feet across. The only apparent means to cross to the other side was to use a thin log that traversed the distance like a crude bridge. Frozen pools of blood waited at the bottom of the slope, next to the log.
A cluster of thick trees and rocks waited at the far end of the gap, and beyond the tress waited the unseen source of the streaming smoke.
“You smell that?” Cross asked. He smelled fire and fuel. “It’s an airship.” They couldn’t see any wreckage from where they were, but the smell made him certain.
“Could it be one of ours?” Dillon asked.
“I can’t think of a reason why a Southern Claw airship would be this far north,” Cross said. The Ebon Cities’ vessels used hexed organic fuel that smelled entirely different than that used by Southern Claw airships, so it was unlikely that the vessel was of vampiric origins. Cross deduced that it was probably a stolen or reconstructed vessel, like those used by smugglers and raiders.
Cross’ spirit moved ahead on her own. Thin lines of spectral essence connected them, which gave Cross an awareness of the area ahead. He felt the heat of fires and he smelled burning skin. He heard voices, and saw auras of pain. Lost and dead spirits roamed the air like predators in blood waters, but Cross’ spirit had become expert at protecting herself, and she eluded those wailing souls before they could do her harm.
Cross felt multiple living presences ahead, moving on the other side of the trees and stones. There were voids there, as well, unspaces where beings should have stood, but didn’t.
“We’ve got vampires ahead,” Cross said, and he and Dillon dismounted.
They readied their weapons.
“How many?” Dillon asked.
“I’m not sure. Two, maybe three.”
“That could be rough for just the two of us.”
His spirit bristled at that. She didn’t like Dillon not counting her as part of the group. She’d developed quite the temper.
I need to be careful of that. If she flares out of control and catches me off guard, we’ll all be in trouble.
“There’s more,” Cross said. He had his HK45 in one hand; he molded his spirit in the other, his gauntleted hand. He didn’t latch onto her form too tightly, but held her ethereal tendrils like a rein, firm enough to let her know she’d be needed back soon. She extended her form to the other side of the open canyon, but at his command she moved, smoke-like, back to him, and she surrounded his body and filled his lungs with a burning sensation. Warmth filled him, vaguely erotic and invigorating, but at the same time painful and poisonous. She was like some dread hashish.
“There are a half-dozen other life forms over there, too. Maybe more…it’s hard to say.”
Dillon chewed on that for a moment. His dark beard was cut close to his angular face, which always looked grim.
“Human?” he asked.
“Can’t say.”
“Damn.” Dillon spat. “Is there anything you are sure about?”
“I’m sure I don’t want to go over there,” Cross nodded.


About the author: Steven Montano started writing at the age of 18 and never really stopped. A graduate with distinction from the University of Colorado at Boulder, Steven took his Creative Writing degree and became an accountant, instead. He still hasn’t figured out why.

Now, Steven writes the Blood Skies series. His wife runs a popular online yarn shop, and his kids just drive him crazy. They all live in a rain shelter in Washington State.

Visit Steven’s official website, bloodskies.com