Darkness, Demons, and Devotion. An Author Interview…by Ripley Proserpina

This month I am featuring paranormal romance authors, and this week, I want to introduce you to Canadian writer, Marina Simcoe. Over the summer, I read her wonderful dark and moving romance, Demon Mine. She agreed to answer my questions, and share the artwork her story inspired. Enjoy!!!

Your first book, Demon Mine, released this year. How long have you been writing and how’d you make the leap to publishing? 

Demon Mine is my very first book, and I have been trilled by the response I have been getting from people who read it and loved it! Somebody told me once that your books are like your children: you spend so much time nurturing the idea and putting it down on the paper, but then you have to release the books into the world and hope that they make it out there on their own. I feel so good for Demon Mine because it had managed to find its readers, the people who love it.

It took me about four months to write it, and I’d had the idea brewing in my head for months before that. I wanted to write an out-of-this-world love story that starts in a very dark place, but thrives despite the circumstances. I’ve heard some positive responses on world-building in Demon Mine, but really it was meant to be a love story first and foremost.

I didn’t even think about publishing it at first. I just wanted to write a book that I would like to read myself. Once the story was complete, however, I thought that maybe others would like to read it as well and looked into publishing it then. I was amazed to find how straight-forward the self-publishing process has become. It brought so many new books directly to readers. There are books for everyone out there, in every niche and genre. Now, the main challenge for any book is to find its own readers. I am very glad that Demon Mine seems to be doing it.

You have a beautiful cover, and I’ve seen artwork associated with your book. Where did you get the beautiful portrait? 

With small exceptions here and there, all artwork for my books is done by the Canadian artist Marina Thompson. She considers herself a hobbyist and doesn’t work on commission right now. She’s just started to learn digital painting, and I was lucky enough to have her “practice” digital art by illustrating my books. Our vision on style and characters seem to be similar enough for it to work very well so far.

https://marinathompson.deviantart.com

Demon Mine is about an incubus who falls in love with a human. What interested you about this sort of creature? 

Incubus is a sex demon! He feeds on sexual energy and has only one way to obtain it – by providing pleasure to the person he is feeding off. This alone makes an incubus an intriguing hero for a romance story, doesn’t it? Far more exciting and much less intimidating than sucking blood from a woman he loves, like vampires tend to do, right? Yet, there are so many romance books about vampires. Surprisingly, there isn’t that many romance books with incubus as a main character. Incubi are mostly depicted as villains in horror and erotica books. I thought I could try to change that. Who doesn’t like a good redemption story where the bad guy finally sees the light?

One of my favorite things about this book is that your female MC, Alyssa, falls in love with her demon without ever seeing his face. This is such a unique idea, what prompted it? 

In Demon Mine, the conflict between demons and people effectively isolates both groups from one another. The main characters have to overcome many obstacles even before they can have a real conversation: Alyssa can’t see her demon’s face; he is not allowed to talk to her or to touch her skin without gloves. Personally, I love slow-burning romances, and this allowed me to focus on other things first – before any dialogue took place – on how their actions and behaviours towards each other ignited the first sparks of caring and attraction. Both, Alyssa and Sytrius are forced to appreciate what they are for each other before they get to meet face to face and have a talk.

Tell us about the world of Demon Mine. It’s pretty dark. 

It is, especially at the beginning. The main idea of the book is the light of love born from the darkness. My intention was to have the darkness at the beginning make the light shine that much brighter for the rest of the book. It also shows Alyssa’s perseverance under the circumstances. On the very first page, she is the closest to lose all hope. She’d given up and is ready to die. Her state of mind is what triggers the tiny flicker of compassion in Sytrius, the first glimpse of humanity in him. He gives her hope, and she holds on to it no matter how grim her situation is at the time. Hope and love are the light that conquers the darkness at the end.

Your next book, The Real Thing, is about a magician. What can you tell us about this story? 

The Real Thing is a love story as well. It is lighter than Demon Mine, but I hope it does have the same feel of love and acceptance as I was trying to convey in Demon Mine.

The Real Thing reads more like a contemporary romance with some paranormal elements. The characters, relationships and conflicts of the story come from our world. The theme of family love and support is also strong in this book, as well as the topic of being different from the norm.

However, like all my books, The Real Thing is first and foremost a larger-than-life love story. This one has a mysterious man, magical sex and an evil villain!

The Real Thing is to be released in November 2017. It is now on Goodreads. Here you can read the synopsis, see Ms. Thompson’s illustrations and add it to your TBR list:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36375796-the-real-thing

Finally, it’s October and Halloween is coming up. What would we find your demon and magician doing this Halloween? 

This one is easy! They both will spend Halloween with the women they love. Sytrius and Alyssa are travelling, so I’m not sure where Halloween would catch them exactly, maybe some very exotic place? Well, Marcus and Angela will most definitely have one of their stay-in dates at the ranch house. They’ll cuddle on the porch and watch the sunset.

Links

Demon Mine: www.amazon.com/dp/B071YRFQCZ

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36060680-demon-mine

The Real Thing: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36375796-the-real-thing

Follow:

https://www.facebook.com/MarinaSimcoeAuthor/

http://www.amazon.com/author/marinasimcoe

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16797219.Marina_Simcoe

Bio:

Marina Simcoe likes to write sweet and sexy love stories with characters that may or may not be entirely human. She firmly believes that our contemporary world could use a little bit of extraordinary!

She has lots of fun exploring how her out-of-this-world characters with their own set of beliefs, values and aspirations fit into our everyday life.

The Real Thing Excerpt!!!!

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“Move it, Angela, if you don’t want to get lost! I’m not going to spend New Year’s Eve searching for you in this city!”

We were in New York, almost in the middle of Times Square now. My brother Evan moved forward like an icebreaker, parting the crown with his wide shoulders and pulling Lily by her arm in his wake.

My best friend Emily and her fiancé Mikey were so far ahead of us already that I could no longer see them.

Evan was right; it was way too easy to get lost here in the crowd. It seemed it was just as easy to get crushed or trampled to death, especially if you were a girl of an average height with an average muscle tone. The four-inch heels of my fabulous boots weren’t helping my speed either.

“I’m coming! Just slow down a little!” I yelled out to Evan, ignoring the annoyed look Lily was giving me over her shoulder.

I didn’t want to remind her that I didn’t have a manly wide back parting the crowd in front of me and had to rely on my very own elbow power, which wasn’t much. I didn’t want to admit that I actually really missed Matt right now, for the first time since we broke up last month. I wasn’t even sure if I missed him specifically, or just the feeling of having someone by my side to share the moment.

I knew it wouldn’t be easy to go on this trip as the fifth wheel with two couples, but Evan and Emily had been my best friends and, lately, my only friends.  They, along with their significant others, were the only people I ever did anything with whenever I could squeeze any social life between my two jobs.

I wasn’t regretting coming along. I just couldn’t help feeling a little lonely surrounded by couples in love. I knew it would only get worse once the ball dropped and everyone started kissing…

Well, it could have been worse. I could have been sitting on the couch in my empty apartment with only Lannister, my cat, for company.

Finally, using my own shoulders and elbows and throwing a good cursing here and there, I made my way through the crowd and caught up with Evan and Lily in front of the Olive Garden building at 2 Times Square, right across from the huge bright billboards. Mikey and Emily were already there, waiting by the metal fence at the edge of the crowd of people, squeezed between the fence and the skyscrapers.

The crowd, the loud noise and the bright lights were a little overwhelming even for me. I lived, worked and studied in downtown Toronto and was used to living in a big city, dodging traffic and ignoring construction noise every day. What was happening here right now, though, equaled all my experiences multiplied by a hundred!

“There he is! Look!” shouted somebody in the crowd, and I cranked my neck up, following everyone else around me.

The biggest of the billboards across from us shimmered with dancing lights, and his masked face appeared on the screen.

Marcus the Magnificent, the up-and-coming magician – or illusionist as I heard they preferred to be called – the newest Internet sensation, according to my brother, who was generally easily influenced and liked everything new and shiny. I, on the other hand, believed that I inherited the more pragmatic mind from our father, the retired math teacher.

Marcus the Magnificent was the opening act of this year’s show in Times Squares, followed by the concert and the traditional ball drop.

Marcus was going to walk between the rooftops of two buildings on Times Square, on nothing but air.

I heard gasps in the crowd and realized that it had gotten significantly quieter. The noise had subdued. I squinted my eyes to see a dark figure standing on the edge of the roof, hundreds of feet up above us.

From down here, I could only see his dark silhouette backlit by several spotlights. I could just make out the long mane of his dark hair whipping in the wind and the outline of his long coat.

I could see him much more clearly on the screen above us, though. He was dressed in black: a long trench coat, leather pants and tall heavy boots. His straight jet-black hair was much longer than I had seen on any man in person. It must have reached his waist at least. His hair was unbound, and the long strands lashed in the wind across his face. A black half-mask covered the upper half of his face, from the top of his forehead down past the cheekbones.

He stood on the very edge of the roof, on the outer side of the railings, with the toes of his leather boots extending past the edge.

There was no introduction, not even a pre-show to create tension and build anticipation. He didn’t say anything and didn’t even care to wait until all attention was on him. He simply placed his foot forward and moved off the roof into the abyss.

The crowd gasped as one physical entity. The breath caught in my own throat, as I half expected him to fall over the edge and hit the ground in a bloody mess.

He didn’t fall, though. He remained where he was, suspended in the air, halfway between the sky and the earth.

He took another step forward, slowly but without hesitation. Then another step. And another.

In slow, measured steps he made his way across the sky between the two buildings, above the thousands of people below. The cold winter wind caught the ends of his trench coat and made them flap violently against his boots. The hair flew across his face, completely obstructing his eyes at times. Nothing seemed to faze him.  He kept taking slow, confident steps on nothing but air for support.

The crowd below seemed to have found its voice again. People shouted encouragements and offered their guesses on how the illusion was accomplished. Most snapped pictures and took bad videos with their cellphones.

“Isn’t it cool, dude!” I heard the excited voice of my brother shouting in my ear.

“He should have put his hair into a ponytail,” came the aloof voice of Lily. “It’s a mess. How can he see where he is going?”

“He is so hot! Angela, isn’t he hot?” Emily hugged me by the shoulders.

“It’s the mask,” boomed Mikey’s deep voice next to me. “Everyone looks hot in a black mask. Even I would look hot and mysterious if I wore one.”

“Sure you would, honey!” laughed Emily and got on her tiptoes to place a quick kiss on Mikey’s chin. It was as far as she could reach, even when standing on her tiptoes: well over six feet tall, Mikey towered over all of us.

I didn’t say anything. I kept watching Marcus as he walked on air. It was a perfectly done illusion. So perfect in fact that it didn’t even feel like an illusion at all. It felt real. I had an elated feeling of wonder and awe as if in the presence of real magic, and I was afraid to breathe, lest I scared it away.

I watched his face, trying to make out his expression behind the mask. What was he thinking at this moment? What would it feel like to create a miracle in front of thousands of people?

The camera zoomed in on his face then, and I got a clear view of his eyes through the slits of the mask.

Suddenly, I knew exactly what he was feeling. His eyes said it all: he was bored!

His head was tilted slightly to the side, and his eyes weren’t focused on anything in particular. He wasn’t looking at the edge of the opposite roof – his destination – nor was he looking down, watching his steps. His eyes had that vacant look, as if he was stuck in traffic or was standing in a grocery checkout line, waiting for the time to pass.

How could he not feel what everyone else was feeling at that moment? My own skin buzzed with excitement for him. He was literally on top of the world right now! He should be enjoying the highest high possible in his occupation! Surely, weeks or even months of planning were spent to bring him to this point. He was pulling off the perfect illusion in front of hundreds of thousands of live spectators and numerous TV cameras! Why did he look like he would rather be somewhere else?

Once the question entered my head, it refused to leave. Instead, it continued to buzz at the back of my mind all through the night – like an annoying fly – demanding to be answered.

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Filed under: Author Interviews, New Release, Ripley Proserpina, romance