Spotlight & Giveaway: A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon by Sarah Hawley

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Sarah Hawley to HJ!

Hi Sarah and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon!

 
Thanks! I’m so excited to chat today.
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

The book follows Mariel Spark, a witch from a famed magic family who can’t seem to live up to the prophecy given at her birth that she’ll be an incredibly powerful witch. She’s amazing at nature magic, but her family prefers flashier magic like teleportation and transmogrification, and Mariel mainly blows things up or summons inappropriate things. One of those inappropriate things is a demon she accidentally summons for an unbreakable soul bargain (she meant to summon flour for a recipe–oops!). The demon, Ozroth the Ruthless, can’t leave her side until she trades away her soul–aka her magic and emotions–for a boon only he can offer. Mariel obviously doesn’t want to bargain away her soul, and in a moment of panic she explains the demon’s sudden presence to her family by claiming he’s her boyfriend. The two end up fake dating and living as awkward roommates while trying to accomplish their opposing goals. But Ozroth isn’t any normal demon–he recently acquired a soul and messy emotions himself during a bargain gone awry, and the more time he spends with pretty, chaotic, kind Mariel, the more he realizes he might want her heart, rather than her soul.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

This is hard to choose! I’m fond of these for various reasons.

“She wanted flowers and muffins and the contentment of being exactly enough for someone.”

“Admirable,” Astaroth had once said. “We could stand to learn a few things about ruthless manipulation and one-sided bargains from American healthcare insurers.”

“Then come on.” She stood and held out her hand, biting her lip at Oz’s sulky look. “You’re one step away from self-flagellation, and that’s way too medieval for a classy demon like you.”

“Keep your enemies close but not close enough to exchange fluids, that’s what I always say.”

“You only cared about one thing—demanifesting the dildo.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• I am horrible at titling books, so my initial title for this was LILIES AND LIES. Thankfully, Berkley is much better at this than I am and immediately changed it.
• After I finished drafting the trilogy I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I created a neighborhood in the Sims full of the characters from the books. Sims Mariel and Oz just got married in a lovely ceremony that did unfortunately involve one of the guests going on a werewolf rampage. While canonically there will be werewolves at their wedding in the books, no one will ruin the cake with a rampage.
• I started drafting the book on Halloween 2020!
• I actually had no idea how I was going to resolve the central conflict (the soul bargain) until I was about halfway through drafting the book. I started writing thinking “ehhhh I’ll figure it out later.” Luckily, I did.
• It’s the first book in a trilogy!
• I’m terrible at fan casting, so I’d love to hear who people would cast as the characters. If forced, I would say Oz vaguely resembles Jon Bernthal in my head, while Mariel resembles a plus-sized Emmy Rossum.
• I would love to live in Glimmer Falls. Magic on every street corner, countless weird festivals, dragons soaring in the distance… I deliberately wanted to write a town where magic is out in the open, rather than hidden in the shadows. It allowed for some really fun worldbuilding that only gets zanier in the next two books.

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

On the surface Oz and Mariel are very different–he’s grumpy, taciturn, very organized, and prone to wearing basic black. Mariel is cheerful, talkative, chaotic, and colorful. But underneath both are smarting from dysfunctional upbringings, and ultimately these differences are what draw them together so strongly–Mariel is attracted to Oz’s sincerity and reliability, just as he’s drawn to her humor and genuine kindness.

Though his biceps and tattoos and her generous hips and pretty eyes might have had something to do with the initial attraction, too….

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

Blushing would definitely be when I had to do pass pages and read my sex scenes extremely closely looking for any final typos. It’s one thing to write smut and another to reread it in excruciating detail while remembering that your friends and family are also going to read this…

Laughing would be while writing a scene where Oz and Mariel visit a hot spring. After Mariel passes out for plot-related reasons, Oz briefly considers CPR before she wakes up and startles him into falling into the pool:

Mariel was sitting up now, looking at him with wide eyes. “Are you okay?”
He was too busy coughing up a lung to answer. Fuck, that burned.
She scooted closer, reaching out to him. “Are you choking on a fish? Do you need the Heimlich?”
He wasn’t sure what the Heimlich was, but he probably didn’t want it. He shook his head. “Breathed in,” he gasped between hacking coughs.
Finally, the coughs diminished, though his throat and chest hurt. He dashed water from his eyes and pushed his sopping hair back from his forehead. “Are you all right?” he asked, wading towards the edge of the pool.
Mariel sat there, looking bemused. “I think so. What happened? All I remember is trying to heal the tree.”
“You passed out.” Ozroth coughed again. “I didn’t know what to do, so I brought you back here and put a hot compress on your forehead.”
“That was nice of you,” she said, though she was eyeing him suspiciously. “Why are you shirtless? And why were you three inches from my face when I woke up?”
He winced. “I thought… maybe CPR? And the shirt was the compress.” It was currently sitting in a sad, wet heap on the grass.
Her eyebrows shot up. “You tried CPR on me? And I missed it?”
“I wouldn’t say I tried it successfully,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do. I was thinking about it when you woke up.”
Something slithered up the leg of his jeans, and he yelped and scrambled out of the pool. He ripped the jeans off without thinking, shoving them down his thighs, then shaking them out. A tiny white snake dropped back into the water with a plop. “What was that?” he demanded.
When he turned to Mariel, though, she wasn’t looking at the pool or the snake at all. Her eyes were wide as saucers as they darted between his chest and his crotch.
Ozroth looked down at himself. Oh. The only thing he was wearing was a pair of black boxer briefs, and thanks to the drenching they’d gotten, they left little to the imagination. He turned away, not wanting to alarm her. “Sorry,” he choked out. “There was a snake in my pants.”
“I’ll say,” she muttered.

Readers should read this book….

If they want a fun, cozy paranormal read with lots of jokes and a fair amount of steam. There are themes of environmental protection and standing up to abusive family members, but overall I’d say it’s low on angst and high on smut and magical hijinks.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

The next book in the Glimmer Falls series, A Demon’s Guide to Wooing a Witch, comes out in November! Then there will be a third book next spring. These will star side characters from book 1 and explore more of Glimmer Falls, the demon plane, and the drama that occurs in a small magical town.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: A print copy of A WITCH’S GUIDE TO FAKE DATING A DEMON by Sarah Hawley

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: If you lived in a magical small town like Glimmer Falls, what sort of magical person/creature would you want to be, and what venues would you like to explore?

 
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Excerpt from A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon:

That evening, Ozroth watched as Mariel practiced summoning. She stood in the kitchen, which seemed to be her favorite room of the house, scowling at the pentagram she’d chalked onto the countertop. The kitchen, like the greenhouse, was far more orderly than the rest of the house, and Ozroth suspected Mariel only put effort in for things she cared about deeply. Why her magic wouldn’t be in that category was a mystery he planned to solve.
“The lines aren’t straight,” he said, eyeing her pentagram.
“Very helpful,” she muttered. Then she sighed and wiped the lines clean. “How does anyone do this?”
“Practice.”
She grabbed a yardstick from the pantry, then placed it on the counter and chalked along it. “I’m a joke of a witch. Can’t even draw a straight line.”
He didn’t answer, instead leaning against the fridge with his arms crossed as he waited to see what she would do or say next.
“Mom says the stars told her I have the potential to be a ruler.” She laughed bitterly. “She must have misheard. I have the potential to use a ruler.” She punctuated the words with a whack of the yardstick against the counter.
It was clear Diantha Spark had done damage to Mariel’s self-confidence. Maybe this was the key to her soul. Ozroth couldn’t use his power to make her better at magic—that would contradict the necessary requirement of taking her magic—but maybe he could seize one of those insecurities and dig until he found her breaking point. “Do you think she loves you?” he asked.
Her entire body jerked. “Of course she does.” She blinked rapidly. “Right?” The last word was whispered so quietly, he knew it wasn’t meant for him.
“Hmmm,” was all he said. He winced as an ache started in his chest. His soul was determined to have a conscience, despite the fact that Ozroth had done far worse to force a bargain in the past, from kidnapping loved ones to light torture. He ignored the emotion and focused on watching the witch work.
Mariel muttered to herself as she continued sketching the pentagram. He only caught stray words, “demon” and “prick” among them.
It was true—Ozroth was a prick. Keeping the demon plane—and his people—alive meant using any and every tactic to exploit vulnerabilities. Threats, coercion, blackmail, seduction…
He considered the last one, eyes tracing over her form. She was beautiful, there was no doubt about that. Curvaceous, too, with wide hips and thick thighs made for gripping. Did she have anyone to pleasure her? Diantha Spark had seemed to think not, so maybe that was another avenue he could exploit.
“Is anyone fucking you?” he asked.
The chalk snapped in half. Mariel turned, pointing the jagged piece at him. “That is none of your business.”
He could read the answer in the way her eyes met his, then darted away. “Would you like to be fucked?” It would be a new angle for Ozroth the Ruthless, who had built a reputation on more aggressive deals, but he didn’t mind the concept. In fact, he thought as he eyed those hips, it was more than a little appealing.
“You have terrible manners,” she said, turning back to her pentagram. Her cheeks were pink.
“So you do want to be fucked.”
“What I want,” she said, scribbling aggressively, “is for you to shut up and let me work on my spellcraft!”
“I’ll shut up if you—”
“No!” She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Honestly, it’s like having a toddler.”
That was the most offensive thing she’d said yet. “I am more than two-hundred years old,” he said, sounding pissy even to himself. “Hardly a toddler.”
She ignored him, chalking runes faster. Then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Volupto e ayorsin!”
There was a flash of light…
And a giant purple dildo manifested on the counter.
They both stared at it for a long, silent moment. Ozroth eyed the veins, the glitter, the sheer size of the thing, and decided Mariel was, if not realistic, at least ambitious. Even he was no match for that monstrosity.
“Oh no.” The words came out of Mariel’s mouth at an unnaturally high pitch. She hurriedly started erasing and reversing the symbols. “No, no, no.”
Ozroth’s lips twitched. “That answers the question of whether or not you want to be fucked.”
Chalk scraped over the counter. “We are not discussing this.” Mariel closed her eyes. “Aufrasen e volupto!”
The dildo vanished in a puff of smoke.
Mariel stared at the empty spot on the counter. “It worked,” she said, sounding shocked. “That never works.”
“Never?”
She shook her head.
“So what went differently this time?” Ozroth pressed. Dildo aside, he was fascinated by the witch’s vast magic and seeming inability to manage it.
“I really, really wanted that thing out of here,” she muttered.
“Intent,” Ozroth said. “And focus. You only cared about one thing—demanifesting the dildo.” He tapped his fingers on his bicep, considering the puzzle of the witch. She had so much raw power—perhaps the problem was that she had no ability to use it precisely. “You need to bring structure to your magic. Once your mind and rituals are more organized, you’ll be better at this.”
“I don’t want your magic advice.” She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes. “I don’t want anything from you.”
For some reason, the words stung.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

Mariel Spark knows not to trust a demon, especially one that wants her soul, but what’s a witch to do when he won’t leave her side—and she kind of doesn’t want him to?

Mariel Spark is prophesied to be the most powerful witch seen in centuries of the famed Spark family, but to the displeasure of her mother, she prefers baking to brewing potions and gardening to casting hexes. When a spell to summon flour goes very wrong, Mariel finds herself staring down a demon—one she inadvertently summoned for a soul bargain.

Ozroth the Ruthless is a legend among demons. Powerful and merciless, he drives hard bargains to collect mortal souls. But his reputation has suffered ever since a bargain went awry—if he can strike a bargain with Mariel, he will earn back his deadly reputation. Ozroth can’t leave Mariel’s side until they complete a bargain, which she refuses to do (turns out some humans are attached to their souls).

But the witch is funny. And curvy. And disgustingly yet endearingly cheerful. Becoming awkward roommates quickly escalates when Mariel, terrified to confess the inadvertent summoning to her mother, blurts out that she’s dating Ozroth. As Ozroth and Mariel struggle with their opposing goals and maintaining a fake relationship, real attraction blooms between them. But Ozroth has a limited amount of time to strike the deal, and if Mariel gives up her soul, she’ll lose all her emotions—including love—which will only spell disaster for them both.
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Meet the Author:

Sarah Hawley is an author of romance and fantasy novels. She was a winner of RevPit 2018, and her short stories and satirical articles have been published by Hooked, Slackjaw, The Belladonna Comedy, and Points in Case. She co-hosted the Wicked Wallflowers Club podcast about romance fiction, which was featured on Entertainment Weekly’s “Must List” as “a compelling reminder of why the oft-dismissed genre is a real force in cultural conversations about consent and desire.”

Sarah has an MA in archaeology and has excavated at an Inca site in Chile, a Bronze Age palace in Turkey, and a medieval abbey in England. When not dreaming up whimsical love stories, she can be found reading, dancing, or cuddling her two cats.
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