Well, we have no more ARCs to share, but Lord Panda also talked me into sharing a MAGIC BLEEDS snippet.   This was posted once before so I think we can get away with posting it again.  We’re not supposed to snippet anymore, so if it suddenly vanishes, we got in trouble with our editor.

We hope you’ll like it.

Chapter 11, in which Andrea and Raphael go to jail

The phone rang. It was probably Christy. I picked it up. “Kate Daniels.”

“I’m in lockup in Milton County Jail,” Andrea said. “Come get me.”

Chapter 11

A couple of hours later I walked into Beau Clayton’s office, carrying a long parcel wrapped in rags.

Beau grinned at me from behind his desk. In 1066, ancient Saxons met ancient Norwegians in a bloody battle over Stamford Bridge. The legend said that the Saxons surprised their enemy, and as the Norwegians tried to rally, one of their warriors, a giant of a man, stepped onto the bridge and held it by himself, killing more than forty Saxons, until someone got smart and stabbed him with a long spear from below, through the planks of the bridge. Looking at Beau, I could totally picture him on that bridge swinging a giant axe around. Hulking, six feet six, with shoulders that had trouble fitting through the door, the Milton sheriff had the face of a bone breaker. He sat behind a scarred desk that was organized to within an inch of its life. The only item out of place was a large can. The label on the can said, CANNED BOILED GREEN PEANUTS.

I sat in a chair before his desk and put the parcel on my lap. “Canned boiled peanuts. That’s pushing it.”

“With a name like Beau, a man has to be careful,” he said. “Someone might mistake me for one of them Northern boys. The peanuts help to avoid misunderstandings.”

He passed me the can. I glanced into it. Spent shell casings.

“Every time I get shot at, I drop the shells in the can,” Beau said.

The can was about halfway full. I handed it back to him.

“The last time we met, I did say you would one day need a favor from me.” He spread his huge arms. “And here we are.”

We’d worked the same case before, I from the Order’s side and he from the sheriff’s side. He’d asked me to do him a favor, arguing that one day I would need one from him, and I had agreed. You never know on whose door you might have to knock next.

“What did Andrea do?”

He opened a manila folder and glanced at it. “Ever heard of Paradise Mission?”

“No.”

“It’s a high-class hotel. Built like a Spanish mission, with the courtyard screened in. The roof is glass and they keep the temperature nice and steady.”

“Like a hothouse.”

“Basically. The courtyard is a beautiful place. Flowers everywhere, a pool, hot tubs. Favorite getaway for rich couples from the city. I took Erica there once. Costs an arm and a leg, but it’s worth it. Had to be on the waiting list for four months before we got in.”

Beau wasn’t in a hurry. Screaming at him would just make him slow down more, so I nodded.

“From what I understand, your girl was staying at the place with her significant other. I’ve got him in the cell next to hers. Now, I’m completely straight, mind you, but he was likely the prettiest man I ever seen.”

Raphael. It must’ve been their big romantic night. He had probably reserved the hotel room weeks in advance.

“Apparently, they were both in the hot tub.”

“Hot tubs are nothing but trouble,” I told him.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Beau shrugged. “With a beer and good company, they aren’t bad. Relaxing. Soothing, even. In this case, however, they failed to bring about the desired relaxation. Miss Nash got up to go to the bathroom and get some drinks. When Miss Nash came back, she found a young female talking to her significant other.” His eyes sparkled a little. He pretended to check his report. “Apparently, the interloping female was scantily clad.”

He must’ve waited years to use that in a report. “Go on.”

“According to the hotel staff, the poor man did try to discourage the femme fatale the best he could, but she was either dense or really hoped to take him for a ride. Having met her, I’d say both.”

I sighed. I knew where this was going.

“When Miss Nash approached, her fellah informed the scantily clad female that Miss Nash and he were together. He says the female appraised Miss Nash as ‘cute.’”

I put my head down and bumped it on the table a couple of times.

The two furry caterpillars Beau used as his eyebrows crept up. “Do you need a minute?”

“No, I’ll be alright. Sorry.”

“It seems that the young woman made some indelicate suggestion of a threesome. Nobody is quite sure what happened next, but everybody agrees it was damn fast. When I got there, Miss Nash was standing by the hot tub in a small bikini, pointing the business end of a SIG-Sauer P-226 at her fellah and concerned members of hotel staff, while dunking the scantily clad female’s head under the water and asking, ‘Who’s diving for clams now, bitch?’”

My pain must’ve reflected on my face, because Beau reached into his desk drawer and handed me a small bottle of aspirin. I popped two tablets into my mouth and swallowed, grimacing against the bitterness. “Then what?”

“Well, Miss Nash and I had a conversation. I bet that she wouldn’t shoot a badge and I won that bet. She had no ID on her—it was a very small bikini—so we invited her, her fellah, and the aggrieved party to be our guests here in this lovely jailhouse. Spending the night with us calmed her down.”

Oh, boy. “She had no ID, but she had a gun?”

“Brought it in a towel, from what I understand.”

Why wasn’t I surprised? “She’s a knight.”

“I figured that when she called the Order.”

I took the parcel off my lap, placed it on his desk, and carefully unwrapped the rags. Beau sucked in a lungful of air in a sharp breath.

A beautiful rapier lay in the rags.

“The schiavona,” I said. “The preferred weapon of Dalmatian Slavs, who served in the Venetian Doge Guard in the sixteenth century. Deep basket hilt.” I traced the gleaming spider web of deceptively narrow metal strips forming the sword’s guard. “Thirty-six-point-seven-inch blade, efficient for both cut and thrust. A genuine Ragnas Dream sword.”

I turned the schiavona to the side, letting the light of the feylantern catch the stylized RD on the ornate pommel. Ragnas Dream didn’t make swords, he created masterpieces. The schiavona alone would pay the mortgages on both my apartment and my father’s house in Savannah for a year. Greg, my deceased guardian, had purchased it years ago and hung it on a wall in his library, the way one would display a treasured work of art. It was the kind of sword that would make a lifelong pacifist look for tall boots and a hat with feathers.

Beau’s face acquired a greenish tint.

“Breathe, Beau.”

He exhaled in a rush. “May I?”

Every person had a weakness. Beau loved rapiers. I smiled. Once he touched it, I had him. “Feel free.”

He got up, took the rapier gently, as if it were made of glass, and slid his big hand around the leather hilt. He raised the sword point up, admiring the elegant steel blade. A deep serenity claimed his face. Beau thrust, a textbook perfect, liquid movement, elegant and precise and so completely at odds with his huge body. “Christ,” he murmured. “It’s perfect.”

“She was never here,” I told him. “Her ‘fellah’ was never here. You don’t know their names and you’ve never seen them before.”

Beau was a very good cop, because he made himself put the rapier down. “Are you trying to bribe a law enforcement official, Kate?”

“I’m trying to present a law enforcement official with a token of appreciation for his delicate handling of the Order’s personnel issues. Knights of the Order are under a lot of pressure. Andrea Nash is one of the best knights I’ve ever met.”

Beau looked at the schiavona. A minute stretched into eternity.

I gave him a wide smile. “Oh, and one more thing.” I reached over and touched the pale opal in the base of the hilt.

Three. Two.

One.

The sword hummed a single perfect chime, like a silver bell. A thin line of red grew from the hilt down the blade, branching in curling shoots like an ornate vine until it finally reached the point. Beau turned pale.

“Enchanted blade. Never needs sharpening or oiling. I forgot to mention that part,” I said.

Beau tore his haze from the schiavona. “Take them and make sure they don’t come back.”

Ten minutes later Andrea, Raphael, and I stepped out of the jailhouse into a frigid overcast day. Both Raphael and Andrea wore the orange potato sacks that passed for Milton Jail uniforms.

“Assault.” I counted off on my fingers. “Assault with a deadly weapon. Conduct unbecoming a knight. Endangerment of civilians. Reckless use of a firearm in a public place. Resisting arrest. Drunk and disorderly.”

“I was neither drunk nor disorderly.” Andrea clenched her teeth.

“No, I’m sure you were drowning her in a completely calm and professional manner. Beau Clayton is a crack shot. You’re lucky he didn’t empty his clip into your head. You brought a gun to the hot tub. Who does that?”

Andrea folded her hands on her chest. “Don’t hassle me about my guns. You drag that sword everywhere. The whole thing was his idea. I wanted to go on a weekend.”

I looked at Raphael. He hit me with a dazzling smile. If I had any capacity for swooning, I would’ve hit the floor like a log. Some men were handsome. Some were sexy. Raphael was scorching hot. Not traditionally handsome, he had dark blue eyes, intense and heated from within by a fire that instantly made you think of sheets and skin. Coupled with his long black hair and the toned, supple body of a shapeshifter, the effect was shocking to all things female. Since he was my best friend’s honey bunny, I was pretty much immune to his evil powers, but once in a while he caught me off-guard.

“It was the only night that was available in the next six months,” he said, “and I had to call in a favor to get it.”

Andrea waved her hands around. “And we spent it in a jailhouse. Do you have any idea how hard it is to go out in public with him? We can’t go anywhere, we can’t do anything, because he gets hit on all the time. Sometimes women come up to him like I’m not even there!”

“I sympathize, but you can’t drown them, Andrea. You’re trained to kill and they aren’t. It’s not exactly a fair fight.”

“Fuck fair! Fuck you and fuck him, and whatever.”

She strode off.

Raphael was grinning ear to ear.

“Well, you’re taking it well.”

His eyes shone with faint ruby sheen. “Mating frenzy.”

“What?”

“When two shapeshifters become mated, we go crazy for a few weeks. It’s all about unreasonable aggression and irrational snarling at anyone who looks at your mate a second too long.”

“And you’re loving every moment of it.”

He bobbed his head up and down. “I’ve earned it.”

Andrea reversed her course and came up to us. “I’m sorry I was an ass. Thank you. I owe you one.”

“No big,” I told her.

She looked at Raphael. “I’d like to go home.”

He bowed with an exaggerated flourish. “Your wish is my command, my lady. We need to go back to the hotel, scale the wall, and steal our car back.”

“That sounds good.”

They walked off.

Mating frenzy. The world had gone completely insane on me. I sighed and went to get Marigold. I had an appointment with a sexual deviant and I didn’t want to be late.

This is not the galleys. This is Luka, because no project involving the floor can occur without his interference.

This is not the galleys either. This is the vicious doberman hellbeast.

This is Luka and the galleys. Bonus points.

This is the first page. Click to enlarge, if so desired.

These are galleys from the side.

This is some random page with Curran on it. Click to enlarge.

Yes, I am taunting you with galleys.  Why do you ask?

We probably won’t get a lot of ARCs (advanced reader copies of the book).  So I am toying with the idea of perhaps making a copy of this mess and giving it away.  Two things stop me.

1) It’s loose leaf and hard to read.

2) I really don’t want to find it on the interwebs.  Maybe we could sign across some pages or something, so then we’d know for sure that it was our copy of the galleys that was leaked.

I shall have to consult Lord Panda.

]]> http://www.ilona-andrews.com/2010/02/25/the-galleys-the-galleys/feed/ 97 http://www.ilona-andrews.com/2010/02/13/updates-2/ http://www.ilona-andrews.com/2010/02/13/updates-2/#comments Sat, 13 Feb 2010 20:55:59 +0000 Ilona http://www.ilona-andrews.com/?p=4122 The Kate portion of the website received the long awaited face lift.  As you can see we got a fancy slider.  If you pay attention to the slider, you will see an option to read a very large excerpt of MAGIC BLEEDS.  If you followed the blog, you probably saw most of this in a snippet form.

I take NO responsibility for the release upsettingness (not a word, but I am using it anyway) this snippet will bring you.  If you choose to read it and then be all upset that the book isn’t out yet, it’s on you, not on me.

All names have been carefully removed.

On the left a living room waited with a large gray sectional sofa. Up ahead was the door to the bedroom. On the right was another door.

“Bathroom,” I said.

He carried me through the door on the right. An enormous bathtub took up most of the room.

Hot water. Heaven.

“Do you mind if I take a bath?”

He lowered me to the floor gently. “Can I get you anything?”

I shook my head and began to strip. He waited to make sure I made it into the tub and left.

I sat and ran the water so hot it was near boiling. Even with the water up to my collarbone, the tub still had a foot and a half of space left.

Sometime later he walked in, carrying a glass of water with ice.

“Do you need to be somewhere?” I asked.

He shook his head.

I scooted over to the side. He stripped his clothes off and slid into the tub with me. I leaned against his chest, with his arm around me, and we sank into the hot water.

If I missed you, you must tell me now if you want to be included in the Acknowledgments.  The stuff is going out on Monday.  If you don’t want to comment in public, please email me with your corrections.

Current list

Beatrix Kaser

Ying (How do you want to be acknowledged?)

Reece Notley

Elizabeth Hull

Chrissy P (do you want real name or the forum pseudonym?)

Jeanine R (do you want real name or the forum pseudonym?)

Becky Kyle

Has ( How do you want to be acknowledged?)

Brooke Nelissen

Ericka Brooke

Melissa Sawmiller

Susan Zhang

Megan R (How would you like to be acknowledged?)

Some people are worried that if Kate and Curran get together, the tension that makes the series interesting for many readers will disappear. To that, I say, “Trust us.”

I will say that MAGIC BLEEDS is the most relationship-heavy book of the series. I know that there will be people who will wave their arms and lament on Amazon that their favorite series has been spoiled forever, turned into paranormal romance, taken into direction of LKH, and they will Never Buy Another Book Again. (I find it highly hilarious that every single recent book by Lisa Kleypas had at least one review that proclaimed that it was the worst book evah.) They would be wrong, but that’s totally fine. I’m okay with that. We have to write the best possible book we can, which is what we did. Not everyone will like it.

The Kate series moves forward with each book. The relationship between Kate and Curran has to go somewhere as well. Eventually all prospective couples reach the point of no return: that spot in the relationship when they have to decide if they are together or not. This is the book where Kate and Curran decide. Kate’s heritage bites her in the ass, his history comes to light, and they have to pick fight or flight.

This is not a minor plot point that could’ve been negotiated in a couple of pages and shoved aside. This was a major issue that had to have its own book. In essence, Gordon and I rebooted the series, as Reece very aptly put. At the end of it, some doors are closed and others opened. People within the series find themselves in new positions and have to deal with them. MAGIC BLEEDS ends with hope. It ties the plot issues raised in the previous three books and clears the field, so the characters can move on to new stories.

So what about the tension? I can tell you that everyone, from our editor to a prominent reviewer to betas, had come away from the book happy and excited for the next one. If you were hoping for perpetual Ranger/Morelli stand off a la Janet Evanovich, I’m afraid you will be disappointed. While I love that series, the romantic thread weaving through is basically repeated in each book. Yes, the books drip with tension, but by book five, I was growling, “Just pick one, God damn it.”

We’re not going that route. We made a very fantastic world, so we have to strive for realistic human relationships to balance out all of the outlandish details. It’s just not realistic for two consenting alpha adults to dance about each other for the duration of seven books and not do anything about it. They have to either break up or be together, and in MAGIC BLEEDS one of those will happen.

As to the plot itself, as I mentioned, Kate’s heritage comes to light and the effect on her life is catastrophic. She loses everything. It’s probably one of the grimmer books we’ve written, but so far all indications are that we have managed to deliver a satisfying, if a bit bloody, ending. So there you go. The grim, romantic, bloody reboot to the series. We hope you’ll like it.

Please for all things holy write something about Magic Bleeds. I’m seriously about to die here.

I can give some interesting notes from my editor.  These are just random tidbits and I only picked the nonspoilery ones and skipped all the ones that say things like “Fix this, please.”

So I give you Magic Bleeds in Editorial notes, completely out of context.

…Poor Kate!

…really disturbing and creepy. Good job!

…Very cool.

…a naked guy wearing a cloak…

…I was wondering why Hugh was coming up now…

…Saiman says there were words on her skin

…Saiman is being such an idiot!

…liked them to kiss a little more…

…Kate was seriously wounded…

…Who is “Im”? Is this another name for Roland?..

…this final showdown against … is over with a little too quickly.

…I love seeing them happy.

Speculate in three, two, one…. Go!