Long and Short Reviews welcomes Ari McKay who is celebrating yesterday’s release of Forged in Fire, book two of the Asheville Arcana series. Leave a comment for a chance to win a digital copy of the first book in the series Out of the Ashes.
Hello, everyone! I’m Ari, of Ari McKay, and I’m so glad to be here today at Long and Short Reviews. We’re celebrating the release of book two in our Asheville Arcana series, Forged in Fire from Dreamspinner Press, and we hope you’ll give it a try!
McKay and I have been writing together for a very long time now, coming close to fifteen years. We joke that the average marriage doesn’t last half as long as we have! 😀 We met through the Harry Potter fandom, then found out that even though we live in different states, we’d been going to the same Star Trek convention for years! We have so much in common, having grown up as short little geek girls with glasses who loved to read. And boy, did we both read! Since books are near and dear to our hearts — and, obviously, must be to yours as well — I’m going to talk a little bit about my favorite books of all time.
It’s hard to choose a number one, but I think for me it would have to be Dune by Frank Herbert. Accept no substitutes (or awful sequels). The original book was my formative work, I suppose. I read the same things my peers did, like Go Ask Alice, and Flowers in the Attic and such, but they were just stories. Dune was a world… no, a UNIVERSE that was so different from anything I’d ever read before, with different religions and different cultures and while the characters were human, everything else was so alien that it immediately caught my imagination. I was all of thirteen when I read it, and to this day I believe the book has been my single biggest reason for becoming an engineer.
Another book that was very important to me was We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. Forget The Lottery, I absolutely LOVED Merricat and Constance and the whole deliciously macabre gothic tale. This is the story that eventually lead me to my next love in literature, which is…
H. P. Lovecraft — everything he ever wrote. If you look carefully through our stories, there are more than a few homages to the master of horror, and if you’ve never read his works, I highly recommend them. This is horror in the old fashioned sense, in that it doesn’t rely on slashers and stalkers and blood and guts everywhere, but rather plays upon our childhood dread of the monster in the closet. We actually wrote an entire story in the vein of his works entitled Call of the Night Singers. It remains to this day on of the stories I am proudest of.
As you can see, my taste in books is sort of out there from the norm, but I read anything and everything! I love cozy mysteries, too, and ghost stories, and histories, and I’m forgetting one… I know it… Um… OH! Romances! 😀 Which I’m certain everyone reading this loves, too. 😉 Thanks for giving me a few minutes of your time today, and always feel free to email McKay and I with any questions or comments — we LOVE hearing from readers!!!
The magic touch.
Ever since Harlan Edgewood was bitten by a possessed werewolf, his monthly shifts have been agonizing. When he meets Whimsy Hickes—a mage who specializes in transformation—the attraction is mutual. But Harlan believes his curse is too great a burden to inflict on any romantic partner.
Fortunately, Whimsy thinks he can help.
When Harlan is provoked into an unexpected change, Whimsy uses his magic to help ease Harlan’s pain, but with an unexpected consequence. While he’s shifted, Harlan’s wolf claims Whimsy as his mate.
As they draw closer, suspicious events in the Asheville magical community escalate. Shifters are disappearing, others are murdered, and Harlan’s curse makes him an obvious target. It will take all of Whimsy’s magic to force back the rising evil—and if he fails, Harlan will lose not only his life, but his very soul.
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Meet the Author: Ari McKay is the professional pseudonym for Arionrhod and McKay, who have been writing together for over a decade. Their collaborations encompass a wide variety of romance genres, including contemporary, fantasy, science fiction, gothic, and action/adventure. Their work includes the Blood Bathory series of paranormal novels, the Herc’s Mercs series, as well as two historical Westerns: Heart of Stone and Finding Forgiveness. When not writing, they can often be found scheming over costume designs or binge watching TV shows together.
Arionrhod is a systems engineer by day who is eagerly looking forward to (hopefully) becoming a full time writer in the not-too-distant future. Now that she is an empty-nester, she has turned her attentions to finding the perfect piece of land to build a fortress in preparation for the zombie apocalypse, and baking (and eating) far too many cakes.
McKay is an English teacher who has been writing for one reason or another most of her life. She also enjoys knitting, reading, cooking, and playing video games. She has been known to knit in public. Given she has the survival skills of a gnat, she’s relying on Arionrhod to help her survive the zombie apocalypse.
Buy the book at Dreamspinner Press or Amazon.
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