My Favorite Books by Ari of Ari McKay – Guest Blog and Giveaway


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.

Website | < a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ari-Mckay/266185570179748">Facebook Author Page | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

Buy the book at Dreamspinner Press or Amazon.

Heart of Glass by Ari McKay – Spotlight

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Long and Short Reviews welcomes Ari McKay, who is visiting with us today to celebrate the recent release of Heart of Glass, the third book in the Lawyers in Love series.

Hello, everyone! We’d like to thank everyone at Long and Short reviews for the opportunity to spend a little time with you today. We are collectively Ari McKay, and our latest release is Heart of Glass, the third story in the Lawyers in Love series from Dreamspinner Press.

If y’all don’t mind, I’m not going to say much about the story itself, because the blurb covers all the major points pretty well. Heart of Glass is our 17th story with Dreamspinner Press, and I’d like to talk about our writing, and more importantly, YOUR writing.

Like almost all authors, McKay and I were readers long before we were writers. Reading is the first place that writers learn their craft, and part of me is absolutely delighted at the thought that maybe, just maybe, someone who reads our stories might use them as the inspiration to start writing themselves. Because that, to me, is the mark of a really good writer – one whose readers look at their work and think “Hey! I could do this, too!”

That might be a little counterintuitive, I suppose. I mean, you would think it was the really great writers, like Poe, or Shakespeare, or F. Scott Fitzgerald and the like who really inspired writers. Maybe they do for some, and I personally love Shakespeare and Poe. But they weren’t who drove me to want to write. My inspiration instead came from genre writers. Asimov and Clarke. McCaffrey and Drake. Rowling and Herbert. Those are the writers I set out to emulate, because I think when it comes right down to it, McKay and I both consider ourselves less writers and more storytellers. There are plenty of literary writers whose mastery of language is a high art, but they aren’t necessarily able to touch their readers. That’s the job of a storyteller. I like to think that if I lived a thousand years ago, I’d be one of those people spinning tales by firelight to entertain my family. Because while the words are important, to me the tale itself is the real art form.

Maybe it was all my years of reading and writing fanfiction, but I’m able to look past the mechanics, even grammar and spelling, if the story is a really good one. In many ways I’m more entranced by what the author is trying to say than how they say it. I’m not claiming that spelling, grammar, and a good polish aren’t necessary to be a successful author, because they definitely are. They matter because a lot of people really are turned off by blatant errors, as they should be. But those are things that can be learned, or that a really good and patient editor can help an author find. But the spark has to come from within the writer. All the editing in the world won’t turn a bad tale into a good one, but it can make a good one great.

Every story that we’ve written has come bursting out of us because we felt the need to tell them. If you feel that need, if there is a story inside of you that you just KNOW has to be told, you should write it. Don’t tell yourself you aren’t good enough. Don’t falter because you feel you don’t have technique, or don’t know the exact right words to use. Too many people who would be wonderful authors flounder because they don’t feel they’re “good enough”. Judging your own writing can be really hard. If you want to write, write! If that story inside you is begging to get out and be shared, do it! Share what you’ve written, and be proud of it! You can do it! We did, and now, six years later, we’ve come farther than we ever thought we could. If we can do it, so can you!

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Fear of being like his unfaithful father has put high walls around senior litigator Asher Caldwell’s heart. Can former district attorney Zach Richardson knock them down to reveal the passionate man beneath the commitment-phobic workaholic, or will Zach’s own jealousy destroy what they’re trying to build?

A new life and a new love—that’s what Zach’s hoping for when he leaves the DA’s office and lets his friends give him a makeover. But the jury’s still out on whether the experiment was a success. His new look gets the attention of his boss and secret crush, Asher Caldwell, and leads to a seduction. Unfortunately, to Zach’s horror he learns that Asher assumed he was a paid escort. Asher is equally mortified to discover he had sex with an employee. Even so, the encounter meant a lot to both men, and they want to give dating a shot. Their romance born out of mistaken identity might work if Zack can trust Asher to be satisfied with the love of only one man… and if Asher can trust himself.

About 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.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

Buy the book at Dreamspinner Press or Amazon.