This is an epilogue we’d intended to use at the end of Grave Mercy, then decided it detracted too much from the story’s closure. So, we offer it now to whet your appetites for Dark Triumph. Enjoy!

Grave Mercy Epilogue

After the coronation we all gather in the private rooms set aside for the duchess. She is anxious to speak with Duval and Francois, and eager also to meet the abbess of St. Mortain. Plus, we must plan what to do about Chancellor Crunard. Captain Dunois’s scouts have returned from Guerande, and we are all eager to hear their report.

“Beast is alive,” Dunois says. “Many saw him taken. He was gravely wounded, but he was alive.”

“How do you be sure they have not killed him?” the abbess asks.

“If so, they would have hung his body on the wall as warning, or stuck his head on a spike. Our scouts report this is not so.”

“Of all the men they could have taken, why Beast? Why alive? What can he do that others cannot?” the reverend mother asks.

Dunois pulls at his chin as he mulls this over. “He is best known for the battle fever that comes over him and makes him nearly invincible.”

Duval’s eyes narrow, realization dawning. “To keep him from rallying the countryside.”

When Anne frowns in question, he continues.  “It was Beast who went through the countryside and rallied the peasants and farmers to our cause last time we had no money to pay soldiers. If not for him, we would never have driven the French from our soil. Marshal Rieux knows that. Indeed, he was most put out that Beast could do what he could not.”

“So they took Beast to keep him from raising the peasantry once more?”

“Exactly so. Now more than ever we need every pair of able arms to help fend off the French. With Beast captured, no one else comes close to the popularity he holds with the people.”

“Then why not just kill him?” the abbess asks.

“Because it would raise the ire of those very people Marshal Rieux wishes to keep happy. He does not want Beast martyred to the duchess’s cause, nor does he want to be burned in effigy for killing such a well-loved hero.”

“And so our brave Baron de Waroch will rot in their prison,” the duchess says, “When he should receive a hero’s welcome. Is there nothing we can do?” she turns her distressed gaze to her brother.

Duval is loath to break her heart. “We have no way into the city to get him any aid or break him free,” he explains gently.

At his words, I shift my gaze to the reverend mother who sits oh-so-silently, listening, watching, collecting information to her like a squirrel collecting nuts for the winter. Our eyes meet, and still she says nothing. Slowly, I turn to the others. “But we do,” I say.

All eyes in the room look to me. I pause, hoping the abbess will step into the silence, but she does not. So I do. “We have someone in Nantes who could help him, do we not, Reverend Mother?”

Her cold blue gaze meets mine. She is not happy, not at all happy, that I have offered this information, but she cannot say so in front of the duchess and her closest advisors, whom she is supposed to serve. “Yes,” she says at last. “We do have someone inside Nantes. Someone we could use if the cause is great enough. What would you have Sybella do?”

The duchess clenches her fists and leans forward in her chair, her urgency etched upon her young face. “Rescue Beast for us, dear abbess. Break him out of his prison so the entire countryside can rally to his cause and help us drive the French from our country.”

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Like what you read? Then be sure to check out the exclusive Dark Triumph ebook which is out tomorrow and is available for two whole months before the paperback is out in June!

For more awesome content, reviews, interviews, and giveaways, check out the other tour stops!

Hey guys! As you may know, Hannah Harrington’s brand new book SPEECHLESS has just been released and we for one loved it! We’re sure you will all feel the same and hope you will check out it out! Below we have a short Q&A with the author as well as a giveaway for you to be in with a chance of winning a copy of the book!

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What provided your inspiration for Speechless?

I get asked a lot about the inspiration behind Speechless. I wish I could boil it down to one light bulb moment, but all I remember is one day thinking of what it would be like to take an oath of silence.

For some of us that might not be such a challenge. But I wanted to write about someone who would have a very difficult time with such a decision—someone who depended on speaking as part of their identity. Enter Chelsea Knot, the protagonist of Speechless: she’s a gossip queen who is always airing dirty secrets as a form of social currency. Getting into other people’s business and spreading it around makes her feel better about herself, for all the wrong reasons.

Do you think it’s ever more powerful to stay silent than it is to speak up?

I think when you have the impulse to say something that you know better not to—something that is either untrue, or just hurtful and destructive—it’s important to think about what you say and curb that impulse. It may feel justified or right in the moment, but later you’ll regret it. I think figuring out how to speak up at the most important moments is much harder, since many times there is a lot of pressure to not rock the boat.

Have you ever taken a vow of silence? How long did you last? Was it hard?

I get asked this a lot, but no, I have never taken a vow of silence! I’m not sure how hard it would be for me. I’m not an extremely talkative person, but just getting through the day would be difficult. And sometimes my favorite part of the day is when I get a chance to talk to family members or friends and catch up on how we’re doing, so cutting that down would be a challenge.

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Hannah Harrington’s debut novel Saving June was published in 2012 by Mira Ink, and her second novel,Speechless, is out now! Visit www.hannahharrington.com for more.

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If you would like the chance to win a copy of SPEECHLESS and live in the UK, all you have to do is simply fill in the form below! We have two copies to giveaway thanks to the lovely people at MIRA Ink, so you have double the chance of winning!

Good luck everyone! The winners will be announced on the 14th of March!

When writing high fantasy, you want to give your readers pieces of the real world to hold onto—that way they don’t have too much culture shock. For the Witch Song series, I wanted to resonate with the Salem Witch trials, as that’s the most famous example of Witches in America. So I used a similar landscape and technology to what you’d find in 17^th century New England—rolling forested hills, muskets, Spanish galleons, and flintlock muskets.

There are obvious differences though. Witches then were thought to be evil chanters in league with the devil. I wanted to take that preconceived notion and flip it, so my Witches’ beautiful songs control nature. One song can grow a plant from a seed and then control that plant (think whomping willow from Harry Potter). They have some pretty fun hybrid plants too—some that grow razor sharp leaves or whose pollen puts people to sleep. Read the rest of this entry »

The first time I wrote something for myself I was about 14.  It was a long prose poem (don’t ask, but it was unfinished and is long lost) about a vampire.  Perhaps unusually, I treated the vampire as a sympathetic character and asked my (non-existent) readers to appreciate how lonely and desolate his existence was.

Vampires have continued to interest me ever since, and though I wrote thrillers with no supernatural element, I’d long kept a newspaper cutting about an ancient Irish vampire, thinking one day I could use it.  That day came six years ago.  I happened to visit an abandoned church, and later the same week was diverted and drove past an ancient hill fort which I’d seen countless times from a different angle without realizing what it was.

That got me thinking about what was hidden right in front of our eyes, and the story emerged almost fully formed there and then.  I went home, wrote, “We burned the witches in 1256 – it was the last time I really enjoyed a fire,” and I just kept writing.  Six weeks later, “Blood” was finished, and I also knew how the trilogy would end, too.  It was as if the story had been waiting for me to write it my whole life.

My agent loved it and sent it out immediately.  I feared I might be accused of jumping on the “Buffy” bandwagon, but what actually happened was several editors who loved the book felt that vampires were on the way out (we still have those emails).  Then over the next year we had to sit and watch as the “Twilight” phenomenon broke into the open.

I was busy on other projects, but a couple of years later (and now in the midst of “Twilight” mania) we took the book out again.  For a second time, we were assured by several editors that vampires were on their way out.  Fortunately, not everyone agreed, Egmont secured the rights for both the UK and the USA, and so far I’ve been thrilled with the response from readers to both “Blood” and “Alchemy” (“Death” comes out next year).

So for those among you who might be writing your own vampire story, worrying if you’ve missed the boat, I leave you with something a publishing friend said to me when all those editors were turning the book down –

“Vampires are like lighthouses – they never go out.”  In other words, keep writing, because there’s always room for one more vampire novel.

Why do writers write what they do? What influences the content of their stories? Where do ideas come from? How should I know? I’m not keeping track of them, I can only speak for myself. And for me, it comes down to that old adage of “Write what you know,” the interpretation of which varies wildly. My take is this: people, over the course of a life, gather a specific, very individualistic set of experiences, which flavor the way they see the world and how they react to it. When I write, I don’t write about the experiences per se—I don’t think garbage men should write about garbage any more than I think it’s necessary for aging psychotherapists like me to write about counseling—what I try to focus on is the reactions. Those thoughts, mannerisms, and actions are the skeleton of my “voice.” They are what I “know.” Read the rest of this entry »

I loved to write as a kid and I poured my sappy little heart out in my diary, in notebooks of poetry and in letters.  I had a passion for editorial pieces meant to combat the injustice I saw in the world.  Almost every emotion I had found its way into words and it made me feel really good–until I got a little older.  That’s when I realized that writing down my inner feelings was synonymous with standing naked in front of a crowd.  It’s when I discovered that just because I had questions, didn’t mean other people were comfortable hearing them.  It was a pivotal time for me.  This was when a lot of teens stretch their limbs, tested their limits and discover what they’re made of.

I didn’t do that.

I was a people pleaser.

I was afraid.

I silenced my voice.

Without the ability to express who I really was, my writing didn’t mean anything–so I stopped.  Until…

My father died.   I’m not sure I would be a writer if my father hadn’t died at the age of 57.  (I was 35) He died of an inoperable brain tumor on his optic nerve. He also died of want. Most people don’t expect someone like my dad to die of want, but it’s the sunny ones that are the trickiest. On the outside he was beloved by almost everyone who met him. He was a wonderful husband and father.  He was a volunteer fire fighter, a coach, a counselor, friend. He was an all-around good guy. In fact, there was a two-hour wait at his wake. The line was out the door and around the block in 20-degree weather. How does a man like that die of want and even if he had, how could I possibly know?

I know because when I watched him die, I was afraid that one day I might die of want too. I was afraid of what we both knew… that you could live your whole life being what you are without ever being who you are.

There is value in being good at what you are, but there is loneliness in never being good at who you are.

I lost so much the night my father died, but I found something too. I found the courage that he left behind. It wasn’t enough courage to take him to the places that he wanted to go, but when combined with the bit that I’d been given for myself…it has become enough. Its let me find my voice. It has allowed me to write the things that are in my heart and soul. Through my writing I say things aloud that I’d barely allowed myself to think in the past. When I write, I am who I am. I picture him standing behind me, reading over my shoulder, knowing that I will never die of want because of who he is.

TOUCHING THE SURFACE was born from a need to know.  My father left me a gift when he moved on, but he also gave me a lot of work to do.  I didn’t like the idea that he’d exited this world without working through some of the same stuff that I now had to tackle.  I wanted to believe that dying wasn’t so different from living, that we always have a chance to be present and accountable for our journey.  TOUCHING THE SURFACE is the story behind my story.  It’s about how life-altering mistakes are meant to alter lives.

Suzanne’s debut novel INNOCENT DARKNESS, Book 1 THE AETHER CHRONICLES came out yesterday from Flux.

Ever since graduate school I’ve wanted to write a story about a girl who moves to Sylmar and gets sucked into the realm of faerie though an elf-mound in her back yard.  I’ve tried to write that story twice, and both times it morphed into something entirely different.  Innocent Darkness started off as attempt number two.  Titled QUEEN OF THE BROKEN TREE (as it’s always been), it was about a girl named Magnolia who moves to Sylmar after her parents’ divorce and is lured into the realm of faerie.  I had a full outline for the story, but I only wrote the very first scene. Read the rest of this entry »

Writing is easy to put off. I mean, if you put off doing laundry or taxes, eventually there are consequences: you be wearing your very last ratty t-shirt when the government knocks at your door demanding money. If you put off writing, however, no one will notice but you.

I had always believed I would be a writer, ever since a beloved teacher told me I had a knack for writing, but it took me a long time to get around to actually doing it. I was busy. I had a marriage and a bookstore job and a passionate hobby making comic books (technically, the latter involved writing, but it involved more drawing and nearly as much stapling). There were errands to run and friends to play games with and the entire internet just sitting there with my name on it. There was always something. Read the rest of this entry »

When people ask me where I got the idea for a certain book, it’s often difficult for me to remember the moment of inspiration. Stories tend to bounce around in my mind and percolate for years, and it’s rare that I’ll be reading a newspaper article (well, okay: a website post) and think “Eureka! There’s a novel in there!” When I was cleaning out my garage earlier this year, I found a few pages of a never-completed screenplay that eventually became my novel The Sinister Mr. Corpse, and I’d completely forgotten that the book had started out as a script!

The faint speck of a germ of an idea for A Bad Day For Voodoo also came from one of the dozens of screenplays I started and abandoned while I was learning to write. This one was called Searching For Yourself, and it was a bizarre comedy about a guy who dies, and then is told by a sorceress that he wasn’t supposed to die yet, so she’s put him in a temporary body, and if he brings her his real body, she can put his soul in that body and he can go on living, but, uh-oh, his real body is currently… Read the rest of this entry »