Freaksville

Part Two of all things shifter and werewolfy brings us to Kitty Keswick, author of Freaksville (cool title or what?).

It's the first book in a brand new YA Paranormal Romance series from Leap Books wwwleapbks.com.
The story is told through the sixteen-year-old heroine’s blog.

High school is hard enough when you’re normal. There’s peer pressure, book reports, the in crowd and the enormous zit that has a life of its own. Having a family whose skeletons in the closet lean toward the paranormal is not a topper on anyone’s list. Sophomore Kasey Maxwell is busy juggling the typical teen angst. Add visions, ghosts and hairy four-legged monsters into the mix and you get FREAKSVILLE. It’s a wonder Kasey has survived.

Every woman in the Maxwell family has the gift of sight. A talent sixteen-year-old Kasey would gladly give up. All she wants is a normal life. Shopping and talking about boys with her best friend and long-time sidekick Gillie Godshall consume her days. Until Kasey has a vision about Josh Johnstone, the foreign exchange student from England. The vision leads her into new waters, a lead in a play, a haunted theater…and into the arms of the Josh. Yet, both Kasey and Josh have secrets lurking in dark corners. Can Kasey’s new romance survive FREAKSVILLE?

Kasey’s Blog:

Ack! I’m in Freaksville! On my sixteenth birthday what did I get? A car? A pony? No. I got the gift of sight. Soooo not fair! It’s a gift I totally wish I had a receipt for…I’d return to sender. I didn’t ask to be freak girl. The kicker is if I touch something I get visions. Now why couldn’t I turn invisible? That’s a gift I could use. Sheesh. If it wasn’t for my BFF Gillie I’d go insane. That was until I touched a pencil belonging to Josh-Hottie-Foreign-Exchange-Student-from-England. He’s sooo cute, jet-black hair, bright blue eyes…whenever I’m around him my stomach does backflips.


Kasey’s Fab Five Favs
1. The British accent…and snogging. It sounds gross, but believe me it isn’t.
2. Cute guy in English class. (Josh)
3. Snogging…again, believe me, it rocks!
4. Shopping ’til I melt into the mall. (A given.)
5. Oh yes and snogging, smooching, kissing Josh!

XOXOX - Kasey

Great, don't you think? Well, in addition to fantasising about snogging English dudes I asked Kitty about werewolves; her faves, her fears, her furry delights.

1.What's your favourite werewolf book?
The first book I read that had Weres was Laurel K. Hamilton's, Guilty Pleasure, in the Anita Blake series. I wouldn't say they were scary, I've never read a scary werewolf book.
2. Favourite wereewolf movie?
I saw American Werewolf in London, when I was a kid and was terrified. I didn't sleep at all that night. I recently had the opportunity to see it again, and realized how funny it actually was. It's strange how things scare the bejesus out of you as a kid ...and now, well, are almost comical. I always liked horror flicks,even though I'd watched them through my fingers.
3. And tell us a bit about your weres.
I have Lycans in my book. They shift into wolves. Only the males shift, the females have visions. The young males shift at the full moon. As they get older they can control when and how long. But the packs are basically male shifters....Until, Kasey comes along and everything is tossed up and swirled around. She's a half-breed mixed with Valkyrie. (a type of Fae)
4. Cheers, my dear. Any last words to your fans in Blighty?
My books aren't really horror, there's humor, paranormal, suspense, romance...etc. My first book Freaksville is a lot lighter than the second book, Furry and Freaked. I was afforded more freedom in book two, it's darker and has more shifting. I mix the werewolf up with ghost and other creatures to give it a different edge.

Kitty shares her blog with alpha female Judith, so do check them both out on wolfychicks. You know it's the right thing to do.

It's werewolf season!

Recently, I joined a pack. A pack of writers who write about werewolves.
It's about time we took a stand against all those pale, suklking vampire types who've frankly been hogging the limelight for way, way too long.
So, over the rest of June I will be introducing you to other members of the pack, letting them tell you a bit about themselves, their books and why werewolves ROCK.
So, without any further ado, meet alpha female Judith Graves, the writer of Under My Skin.


All her parents wanted was for Eryn to live a normal life...

Redgrave had its share of monsters before Eryn moved to town. Mauled pets, missing children. The Delacroix family is taking the blame, but Eryn knows the truth. Something stalks the night. Wade, the police chief's son and Redgrave High's resident hottie, warns her the Delacroix are dangerous. But then so is Eryn--in fact, she's lethal. But she can't help falling for one of the Delacroix boys, dark, brooding--human Alec. And then her world falls apart.

A normal life? Now that's the real fairytale.

Now, the question is what led this Canadian writer to embrace the curse of lycanthropy? So, I put a few questions to her.

1. Most scary book you read with werewolves/shifters?

Dracula would have to be the scariest. Now, he’s not a werewolf, but he was able to shift. I find it fascinating that the modern version of the vampire has lost its shapeshifting abilities. In the original Dracula, the Count assumed multiple forms – human, bat and wolf.

Totally agree. What's so great about Dracula is his uncanny nature. He's weird and so's everything about him. One of the things that's arisen out of the supernatural protagonist genre is we see how they operate. The curtain's been pulled back and the things that used to be frightening disappear under the harsh spotlight. Their mystery has gone. Dracula is preternatural, beyond nature. He doens't play by any rules and that's the essense of him, his utter alien-ness.

2. Most scary werewolf movie?

American Werewolf in London (AWIL) for being a brilliant scare and yet having such wonderful dark humour. A close second - Ginger Snaps 1, 2 and the prequel. All three are great Canadian films that harken to AWIL with just the right combo of gore, horror, and laughs.

LOVED AWIL, still do. It's one of the few movies that stands the test of time and remains as scary now as it was when I first watched it (or half-watched it. I must admit, I did spend half of it with my eyes closed.

3. Any dos and don't about werewolves you'd like to share? Top tips?

In Under My Skin, my actual “werewolves” are forged of dark magic and are soulless beasts – so they aren’t supposed to be sympathetic except in the sense that they were innocent humans turned against their will. However, my wolven characters are more lycan-ish and loveable (wolves with the ability to assume human form).

When writing werewolves, wolven and shifter characters it’s easy to get trapped in the “snorted/sniffed/snarled/huffed” verbage. It’s challenging to find other descriptive / active verbs for these beasties. So watch for overuse of those verbs.

Last point's well made. I know I've slipped into that more than once, just ask my editor.

So, that's a taste of the other werewolf fiction lurking in the bookshops. If you want more on Judith and her delightful tale of slaughter in the woods of Canada, check out her website and her cool blog called (what else?) but wolfychicks.

Ivan Alexeivich Romanov

Dark Goddess introduces us to Billi's new beau, the Russian prince (or tsarevich as they say over there) Ivan Romanov.
I hope I'm not putting in a spoiler here by saying Billi's early attempts at relationships in Devil's Kiss didn't turn out well, and as a result, has become emotionally cold.
She's worried about being close to another person, because it's dangerous for them and she's not sure she's strong enough to take the pain of losing someone, again.
Ivan's very different from Kay and Mike, he had to be. Kay wasn't a warrior, and Mike, well, Mike was just wrong on so many levels.
Ivan's from old, old nobility. He's extremely wealthy, not a little arrogance (that happens when everyone you meets bows to you) and was born to command. But he doubts himself. He carries a lot of responsibilty and everyone looks to him for the answer. That's what being a leader is all about. Below is Billi's first sight of Ivan. They're up on Sparrow Hills, where the rich and beautiful of Moscow gather.

The passenger door opened and a young man jumped out. He had short-cropped dark hair, wide cheekbones and a broken nose that only enhanced the icy look of his aristocratic face. He swept his hand across a non-existent crease on his black coat, a coat that probably cost more than most of the cars on the street. He spotted one of the posing girls and smile flickered over his lips, easy, charming and arrogant. The boyfriend moved instinctively in front of the girl, glowering back. Billi half-expected them to start beating their chests at one another, the rivalry was animal. Instead he touched the diamond stud in his left ear and turned away, dismissing them both. He had the confidence of a person who’d found life way, way too easy. Gorgeous and didn’t he just know it. His driver leaned against the door, lighting up a smoke. Tough and nasty. Definitely a bodyguard. The young man gazed around the crowds like he owned them. Like he owned Moscow.
Their eyes met and he stopped. Billi was something new.
The guy’s attention was uncomfortably intense. But Billi wasn’t going to flinch either. She watched him spread his gloved hand out and he lowered his head to give the slightest of bows, but his eyes near left hers. There wasn’t even a hint of a smile, like that would be too much. Billi’s heartbeat went double time as she watched him straighten, hand still out.

The YA genre has enough bad boys. Rough, crude, sullen and with chips on their shoulders. That's great, but that's been done. Ivan's almost old-fashioned. Elegant, highly educated and extremely deadly. After all, he's been taught by the best. Like I said before in an earlier blog, he is old school royalty and knows that thrones, power, privilege are claimed through blood, sweat and tears.
There will be plenty of that in Dark Goddess.

Dark Goddess COMPETITION!!

Frankly I never tire of seeing that cover, do you? Hopefully you'll be seeing more of it in full 3D life at bookshops all over the UK this time next month EXACTLY.
But, for those of you who cannot wait, I have five signed copies to give away, like right now!
So, where were we?
In Devil's Kiss you met Billi SanGreal, 15 years old and mighty reluctant to follow in her father's footsteps and join the Knights Templar in their neverending war against the Unholy.
Throat-ripping vampires? Check.
Twisted, chilling life-sucking ghosts? Check.
The Devil himself? Double-check.
The Dark Angels? Oh yes indeed.
Devil's Kiss opened up Billi's world and it was one of violence, twisted ambition and the choice between doing the right thing, no matter the cost, even true love. We met Billi, her psycho father Arthur and the other knights. We met Mike, the very definition of bad, mad and dangerous to know and finally we met Kay, the love of Billi's life and the greastest hero of them all.
Dark Goddess brings us back to Billi, three months later. She's thrown herself wholeheartedly into the Templar life and has become her father's daughter. Utterly ruthless and dedicated to their holy war, the Bataille Tenebreuse.
We meet the knights again and new members of the Order, Mordred and Lance. We also meet Vasilisa, nine years old and potentially the Templars' newest Oracle. But she has powers even the knights cannot comprehend and they're not the only ones after her.
The ancient witch, Baba Yaga, has unleashed her Polenitsy, a tribe of female werewolves. She has plans for Vasilisa and they're drastic. She wants to cull humanity for the harm its done to the natural world and Vasilisa is the key to creating a global catastrophe that will reduce mankind to more 'manageable' levels.
The Polenitsy are old school lycanthropes. If you've read Devil's Kiss you've met my vampires. They're not dark anti-heroes. They are your nightmares. No hanging around nightclubs looking all angsty and brooding. They hate, they hunt, they feed, they kill. Like real vampires should.
My werewolves are cut from a similar cloth. You will not want to be lost in the woods when they come stalking.
Led by Old Grey, the werewolves have come to London for Vasilisa and will not let anyone stand in their way.
Dark Goddess is about being a human and how easy it is to become a beast. Billi faces the two sides of her soul, the side that pities, loves and carries compassion and the side that thrives on anger, revenge and passion. Billi, Baba Yaga and Vasilisa, they're all the Dark Goddess, in their own way.
To defeat Baba Yaga she goes to Russia and meets Ivan Alexeivish Romanov. Sixteen. Heir to the Russian throne. Suits from Saville Row, guns from Heckler and Koch. You'll like him, I guarantee it.
Right, has that whet your appetite? Want a copy early? All you have to do is enter. To make this more fun I'm doing the old 'points makes prizes'. The more you spread the word, the greater your likelihood of winning, and there may be a few extra special goodies too.
+1 vote if you follow my blog
+1 if you follow my Tweets (don't worry, I won't overload you with a million tweets a day about my lunch and what colour nail polish I'm wearing*)
+1 if you tweet my competition yourself (we want everyone joining in!)
+2 if you link my competition onto your blog/ website/ side of house
+5 if you paste my countdown widget onto your blog/website/side of house/granny's forehead
+3 if you comment here about your favourite literary heroine AND WHY. I'll kick off with Hester from Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines. Why? Because she kicks ass and her best friend is a terminator.
-10 if this heroine is in ANYWAY involved with a vampire! (Only joking but you can't all put Bella Swan, okay?)
-50 if you're name is, or ever was, Jon Mayhew.

(*black, obviously)