I’ve spotlighted this book before, methinks, but it is out now, everywhere, in paperback and e-book format! It’s gotten several good advance reviews and people have generally enjoyed it enough that I am going ahead with my nebulous thoughts for a sequel.
Anyway, this book got its start at a Comic-Con many years ago when the art director for Sofawolf Press’s Heat at the time told me they really wanted to feature this artist who drew great werewolves and told me, “You should write a werewolf story.” I’d wanted to for a while, and this forced me to think about what I would actually want to write.
I think that was a couple years after a Tumblr post was going around about how werewolves would actually live in today’s society (werewolf moms taking packs of cubs around to school was the kind of thing I remember from it), and I thought that was a fun idea. But of course, being for Heat, I had to put a gay romancey spin on it. For some reason I didn’t make the main character a werewolf; I think that’s because I was playing around with the idea of having an outsider trying to understand this world rather than dropping the reader right into it (to be fair, I’d used the “drop in” method with most of the furry books, but in my other werewolf book, The Silver Circle, the protagonist was an outsider as well). This might be my lazy tail putting off worldbuilding—if your character is meeting a world a bit at a time, technically you only have to write that bit at each time—but I think it was also a feeling at the time that while I am a fox, I’m not a werewolf, so I wanted to write from the point of view of someone interested in but not part of their world.
(Sometimes the story just comes into your head in a certain way and it sticks there. Occasionally—this happened with Black Angel—you get into it and then find that maybe that isn’t the best way to tell the story. But a lot of times a certain POV just clicks with you.)
Werewolves, like furries, are a good way to talk about class. Really, any time you have different populations living together, it’s a good way to talk about class. Werewolves present opportunities for a different spin on that because they are capital-D Different and are an embodiment of the wild animal we built houses to escape. So it seems reasonable to posit that, faced with an influx of werewolf refugees after a world war, cities would build big walled neighborhoods where the poor war-torn weres (called “extras” for “extranormal” in my world) could live but also where children (won’t somebody think of the children!) wouldn’t be threatened by fanged, clawed monsters on their way to school.
Of course, the extras have children too, and they are now growing up in this walled environment that is both safe and oppressive, a constant reminder that they are not welcome outside the walls. Some of them do work outside, but not many.
Anyway, that’s the world I envisioned for my werewolf story. I didn’t get to explore a lot of it in the original short story, but I put enough there that one of my beta readers said, “This is a novel, not a short story.” Still, the 9,000-word story did appear in “Heat,” though the werewolf artist was not available to illustrate it—it still got some kick-ass illustrations, never fear.
But I kept thinking that I would like to give the story more room to breathe. So I started writing it in longer form, keeping little of the actual text of the original story (just the beginning, which my editor loved). I also dropped the sex scene because it no longer fit the story as I was writing it, and without that, it felt like a book that would slot more into the catalog of my other name than this one, so I changed the author name as well.
For the cover, I tried to get a furry artist, but things didn’t work out, so I turned to Damonza.com, a professional cover design service, and I think they did a pretty good job. It definitely doesn’t look like a furry cover, but it does have a great “urban fantasy” vibe to it.
Argyll Productions, the publisher, did a really nice job getting some advance press for it, and now, finally, it is available everywhere! I’m excited for y’all to read it, if you haven’t already, and to get started on that second volume…
Bonus spotlight:
My friend Malcolm Cross, aka foozzzball, has released his second published novel: Mouse Cage. I read an advance version of this and really like what he’s doing with it. fooz does not believe in giving his characters an easy road, but he’s so good at writing their triumphs and despairs that you can’t help but go along for the ride.
Here’s the blurb:
Troy carries more secrets with him than most. A test subject for experimental surgery, a clone gengineered from modified lab mice, an addict. He tells himself that his past is behind him, but he’ll never escape his childhood in Lake North’s labs. What was done to him there, what he was made into, what he did.
Fifteen years after the Emancipation freed him, a prestigious charity invites him to speak about it at their fundraising evening. That’s where Troy meets the love of his life – Jennifer. A woman with a hundred and sixty-seven clone sisters and a past she doesn’t like talking about. Hurts that don’t show on the outside. Dark secrets she’s unwilling to even whisper.
Troy’s perfect match.
But when the past begins catching up to Troy, not even their love will be strong enough to protect him if he can’t face the agonizing truth of who he and Jennifer really are.
For a pair of experts at hiding from the truth, finding a way to stop lying to themselves and each other isn’t the happily ever after for their story. It’s the start.
I recommend checking it out. It’s out in paperback now, and e-book will be out July 13.
I am one of the people who really liked this story. I seem to remember you saying something about this not being your favorite story, but I am hoping you decide it is worth writing more about. Jae is a great protagonist, and Czoltan is a really cool sidekick. Here's hoping to see more of them in the future!