Spotlight & Giveaway: Soul Keeper by Cathryn Marr

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Cathryn Marr to HJ!

Hello, everyone! This is Terese Ramin and Dawn Johanson here, writing together as Cathryn Marr. We’re delighted to be with you at Harlequin Junkies today!

To start off, can you please tell us a little bit about this book?:

Luceire Garard, a fallen angel and enforcer for the Brotherhood of Shadows, has spent an eternity seeking redemption. So, when he’s given a mission to find and protect a defenseless young psychic, he jumps at the chance.
Aurora Montgomery has always had a special connection to kids with disabilities. As more and more children reach out to her in pain, she knows she has no choice but to join the darkly handsome Fallen. But when a serial killer targets innocent children, saving them may require tapping into an ancient, unexplainable gift.
As Luceire and Aurora hunt down the murderer, they discover his attempt to sacrifice souls could resurrect an ancient, indestructible darkness. And the only way to stop the end of the world may require shedding innocent blood.
 

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

Here’s a few of our favorites:

“She was a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a package so bewilderingly bright and unselfconsciously sensual and sexy that he could barely think straight.”

********

“Being truly immortal rather than just exceptionally hard to kill, he’d never thought of himself as someone with a life to live, but rather with an existence to endure.”

********

His mission is to kill her, not love her.
“She was not merely substance, he realized with sudden clarity. She was downfall, sure as the moon, bright as the sun. She was the stuff of life itself, the substance every Fallen craved. Life energy, pure and simple. Every fiber of his being wanted-no, needed-to possess, protect, surround, and invade her.
Mine.
Even as he fought against the knowledge, his feet took him toward her.”

What inspired this book?

Dawn was a counseling psychologist for 25 years and after working with many exceptional children it led her on an unexpected journey exploring the phenomenon parapsychologists refer to as the new generation of psychic children, often referred to as Crystals, Indigos, and Rainbows. Thousands of websites and numerous non-fiction books later and all with fascinating information regarding these unique children finally coalesced into the story ideas for Soul Keeper and the Brotherhood of Shadows series.
Dawn and Terese quickly discovered whether you believe in the existence of psychic children or not, it’s certainly a thought-provoking topic to explore.

How did you ‘get to know’ your main characters? Did they ever surprise you?

During our many brainstorming sessions we spent a lot of time laughing and commiserating over our often mercurial and sometimes demanding characters. We quickly discovered they delighted in surprising us and loved throwing us a curve ball every chance they could.

What was your favorite scene to write?

We loved writing the scene where Aurora Montgomery, the psychic dance movement therapist who is under Luceire Garard’s protection, experiences a parasomnia event. She sleep dances through San Francisco’s Alamo Square to her dance studio in Haight-Ashbury. Luceire Garard is in the Pier 39 area when he ‘feels’ her nightmare and races to find her.

“A few miles across town, Aurora Montgomery dashed up the stairs in her sleep.
Fleeing the flickering images and panicked whispers of children crying
out to her even in death, her somnolent body launched itself up the three
flights of stairs to her tower garret, skidded into the center of the hardwood floor, and began to stretch, twirl, spin, gyrate—fold into supple, impossible shapes, and then leap free.
Around her sparkled the same earthly sphere formed by the intercon-
necting matrix she’d drawn Luceire Garard into that afternoon. Voices—loud, soft, muted by distance—swirled around her in the grid. Face twisted in horror, she occasionally paused in mid-spin to put the tip of a forefinger on a web-like connection, cocking her head to listen before twirling on.
When the ceiling began to feel too low, the space too confining, her
still-sleeping form flung itself back to the first floor and out the front door, down the steps, out through the wrought iron gate, and across the street to the faery ring formed by a circle of spreading and slanted pine trees in Alamo Square Park. The earth-shaped matrix-grid went with her, surrounded her, inescapable. Within the sphere’s tangled lines, anguished voices pleaded with her to find them, rescue them.
Reckless and despairing, her body contorted, bare feet pounded the earth,
gathered speed—ran gracefully up the tree trunks, using them as platforms from which to launch herself end over end in moves both elegantly acrobatic and frenetically expressive.
Her feet bled, scraped raw by the rough bark, and the ring of trees grew
too confining.
Frantic for space, for movement, her unconscious form flew across the park, past the vampires—both psi and sang, human and not—that fed on the homeless persons who’d slipped by the vigilant neighborhood watch and sheltered in the buildings on the playground.
Hungry, but with blood-filled kine already in hand, the Dugo Balang
and their human counterparts watched her go.
Hungry, but unsatisfied by the low-energy signatures the homeless sent off even while the sangs fed on them, the Ekoa Krillu and the human psis reached out and latched onto the burning spill of vitality she put off, gorging on it.
Weakened, she stumbled, picked herself up, and ran on, still sleeping.

Luc felt her nightmare panic the moment he left the pulsing energy sphere surrounding Pier 39.
“Fuck!”
The cabbie he’d hired to return him to his car in the Haight eyed him
in the rearview mirror. He shook his head. “Forgot something,” he lied.
“Just drive.”
He should have risked hunger and lust, should have stayed with her— should have covered her in protection sigils the moment he realized she’d never survive her own abilities without them.
She had to survive.
He needed her to survive.
Sometimes being earthbound but not the least bit human really sucked.”

What was the most difficult scene to write?

Our most difficult scene to write was when Aurora Montgomery finds herself alone and left to her own devices on the penthouse floor of Carpe Noctem, a club that caters to supernaturals. She’s a woman of action and not used to feeling left out. We’re used to Aurora being in the thick of things, too, so it was just as challenging for us.

She shut her eyes and breathed. None of this—from Magpie to the
once-dead girl in the underground cell—was about her. It was about them, the kids, the baby. The same way that the abilities that had manifested the moment Luc had stepped into her studio were about two things: saving Magpie’s child and making sure no one hurt the children she worked with or the ones she communicated with in the nexus. They were all, everything.
Which meant she needed to learn how to control her abilities, use them
not merely by instinct but command. But how?
Letting her mind coast on the thought, she picked up a remote and
flicked on the television. Images of earthquake damage around the city dominated the screen. Closed-caption emergency information crossed the bottom of the screen while a voiceover reported:
“The governor has declared a state of emergency across San Francisco County
in the wake of a massive and strengthening earthquake swarm causing sink holes, power outages, property and structural damage, and an unprecedented number of fires in heavily populated areas. Residents in affected areas are advised to evac-
uate as quickly and safely as possible. The National Guard has been called in…”
Uneasily, she switched the set off again. The timing and strength of the
most recent quake coincided with the moment she’d jump-started the girl. There’d been a quake when she’d thrown Luc out of her studio, too.
Her breath caught. It couldn’t mean she was somehow responsible. Could it? Because she was something unnatural, doing something unnatural, both undisciplined and uncontrolled. Because she hadn’t known what she was doing before doing it.
A tremor ran through her. No, that couldn’t be right. Could. Not. Because
if it was, then she was dangerous, not only to herself and those around her, but to the entire Bay area.
Memory tweaked, belaying guilt. But no. The quake swarms had begun well before her powers had kicked in. She remembered whispers in the nexus about sizable unforeseen temblors in unexpected locations—southern Arizona along the Mexican border; Missouri and throughout the Midwest— that went back at least a couple of months.
She closed her eyes, kicked off her shoes, pressed her toes into the
floor, and splayed her fingers wide. There, insubstantial but nearly constant, the earth trembled, vibrating along her fingertips and the soles of her feet. Her insides, her bloodstream and nerves, keyed alert. Her tattoos pulsed with heat, sent premonition skittering along her spine. On the screen of her eyelids, the crisscrossed violet lines of the nexus appeared. A spot of orange blurred into existence, accompanied by a faint wail. She tilted her head back and forth, listening. Not the voice she’d come to associate with the child Magpie carried.
The sob came again, clearer, and with it the words “Help me, please. Help.” Startled, she opened her eyes. She knew that voice. She’d heard it in the cell just before she’d slammed energy back into the dead girl’s recently vacated body. Her father had once told her that saving a life made her responsible for it ever after.
She’d witnessed exactly how seriously her father had taken that belief,
seen more than once what that friendship, that responsibility, meant to him as well as the men he’d saved in Afghanistan. She took her responsibilities seriously, too.
Without pausing to think, she stepped out of her body and opened herself to the web.
The same starlit, impossible darkness that she’d experienced a few days ago, when she was weak and untried, engulfed her now. Everywhere she looked, points of light glowed or stuttered with varying degrees of strength. Without fully understanding how she did it—or knew to do it—she traced the distance between herself and the single growing red speck that indicated the cry for help. Just across the city, there. At the hospital, in the corner opposite the building that housed Kate’s clinic.
Where the kids in today’s dance movement therapy session would be arriving soon.
Damn. In the midst of everything else, she’d nearly forgotten.
She slid back into herself, gulping air. The last few days had been awash in new experiences, new abilities, new everything. Rushing into the web to get to the bodies of the children in the Neon Boneyard. What she’d done while waiting for Luc to tattoo her at his place. Her instinctive use of amethyst and quartz to protect him from his own demons. The “door” she’d opened in the world that had taken her directly to Fish, and later to Magpie.
This. Wandering about in the ether as though she knew what she
was doing.
Maybe she did. If she could astral project herself the six hundred or so miles from San Francisco to Las Vegas, surely she could astral project herself the few miles across town to the hospital to find out what was happening there before meeting with her clients.
Or she could just open a door and be there. Physically. Unhampered by
being incorporeal. Ready to do something in the flesh.
A draft from a vent in the ceiling raised gooseflesh on her arms. Rory shivered. She was still wearing the clothes she’d thrown on before leaving the house a couple of days ago. She snatched up and put on the buttery soft, teal leather jacket Solaya had shucked when she’d arrived. The canvas messenger bag Rory carried everywhere in order to be prepared for nearly anything lay underneath the jacket. She picked it up and checked to make sure it contained clean dance togs before slinging its strap across her chest so the bag hung behind her right hip. Looked down the hallway, where the door to the birthing room was still closed. She took a quick look at the digital calendar-clock below the TV screen.
“Damn.”
She had less than three hours to get to the clinic’s movement therapy
studio for today’s session. If she opened that door in the world again, she could get to the clinic early, leave her body where she could easily get back to it, then astral project across the street to the hospital to look in on the kids without being seen. And that, she gathered, from what Luc, Senn, and the sang vamp Jinx, was the point—to remain undetected. To keep anyone from finding Magpie and the child. To not lead them to the children here.
It took an instant for her to decide.
Something big, dark, and dangerous was coming, and she wasn’t sure what to do about it, only that something would have to be done. She was responsible for the teens who’d been taken to the hospital. For reviving the one. She needed to see how they were doing. Talk with them. Find out how what had happened, had happened to them. Who.
And do something about it.
Twisting about, she looked over her shoulder, trying to see the glowing aura thread in the center of her back that tied her to Luc. Made a pinching, yanking motion with her fist. The tether thinned but didn’t break. She nodded, hoping it would be enough to let Luc know what she was doing without letting him know exactly where she was doing it.
With a mouthed, “I’m going out” at the bedroom hallway, she eased
open a door in the world and left the building

Would you say this book showcases your writing style or is it a departure for you?

Terese has written in multiple genres – contemporary romance, romantic suspense, suspense/thriller, paranormal ‘silliness,’ and now paranormal romantic suspense (her current passion). The biggest challenge is in the world-building, making certain all the pieces of our world fit together and make sense to our readers.
This is an exciting new journey for Dawn and she loves the contrast she and Terese working together bring to this world-an established, award winning author and a ‘newbie.’

What do you want people to take away from reading this book?

We write to touch people – hearts, minds, giggle-buttons – as well as to entertain. Terese’s personal tagline when she’s writing as Terese Ramin is: Wicked, unpredictable, irreverent – romance, adventure, and fantasy with a bite. As Cathryn Marr, we are a little darker, but still touched with humor, kickass (and sometimes tortured) heroines, and the unsuspecting guys who fall hard for them. The humor aspect is important as we always enjoy a good laugh.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have planned?

We’re working on a Christmas novella from our Brotherhood of Shadows world, Gift of the Magpie, and the second book in our Brotherhood of Shadows series, Soul Bound.

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: Cathryn Marr is giving away a signed, advance reader copy of SOUL KEEPER and a gorgeous, Swarovski heart and wings necklace. (Giveaway is US and International). Many thanks for entering!

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Since we write about Fallen angels in Soul Keeper, book one in our Brotherhood of Shadows series, we did a lot of research on angels in general. One interesting piece of information we found was a 2011 Associated Press-GfK poll showing that 77 percent of adults in the U.S. believe angels are real. What are your thoughts about the existence of angels?

 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Excerpt from Soul Keeper:

Brooding, uneasy gaze on his blond nemesis, Luc followed Rory and Fish toward a boarded-over warehouse. The loose, dancer’s sway of her hips, the light but precise ballerina placement of her feet as she walked, mesmerized him. The laughing, almost smug glances she threw over her shoulder at him made him want to strangle her at the same time that he hungered to kiss her senseless.
He desired her body and soul—or with as much soul as he had left. But more, he needed her—her light, and her sunny, in-your-face attitude. He needed to keep her safe from the harm he instinctively knew she was rushing toward and that was rushing even faster toward her.
How the hell was he supposed to protect her if he couldn’t keep track of her? Especially when the very runes he’d applied to keep her grounded meant that she could now run through a fucking ripple in space-time.
She was a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a package so bewilderingly bright and unselfconsciously sensual and sexy that he could barely think straight. Athan’s mother had pushed his limits, but not like this. Though hardly his proudest achievement, he was pretty sure that he’d gone after Sophiel purely for the exercise. Who else, after all, had ever succeeded in corrupting—and impregnating—a seraph?
That aside, surely he’d come across other women in the span of creation who were at least similar in appearance and demeanor to the dancer who’d caused him to come all over his bathroom without even being physically in the same room with him. So why had none of them punched his buttons and tightened his trousers the way she did? Why had he not wanted to absorb them into his skin, his senses, his life the way he did Aurora Montgomery? And what the hell was that about, anyway? Being truly immortal rather than just exceptionally hard to kill, he’d never thought of himself as someone with a life to live, but rather with an existence to endure.
As though she’d heard his thoughts, Rory turned and started walking
backward, gaze on him. “Mistake.”
His guard automatically went up. “What?”
“Enduring existence rather than living. How boring is that?”
Luc snorted. It bothered him that she could read him—or more to the
point, hear his thoughts—so easily, but it wouldn’t do to give in to that idea. To recognize that he could no longer hear hers unless she let him. “You’re barely a zygote on the end of a pin by comparison. Don’t judge.”
Rory shook her head. “Just sayin’. You live a long time, apathy sets in. Could be bad”—she waggled a hand in the air between them—“for someone not you.”
Laughter huffed from his lungs. It had been decades—the 1960s, Woodstock, maybe—since anyone had taken him to task over the wages of indifference. God above, he was old.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

He’s a heavenly outcast. She’s a mortal woman with unearthly gifts. Can they ward off a rising apocalypse?
Fallen angel Luceire Garard has spent an eternity chasing redemption. So, when he’s given a mission to find and protect a defenseless young psychic, he jumps at the chance. But he never expected the beautiful woman who could help his mission to slam him in the chest with an impossible power.
Aurora Montgomery has always had a special connection to kids with disabilities. As more and more children reach out to her in pain, she knows she has no choice but to join the darkly handsome Fallen on a death-defying mission. But when a serial killer targets the innocent children, saving them may require tapping into an ancient, unexplainable gift.
As Luceire and Aurora hunt down the murderer, they discover his attempt to sacrifice souls could resurrect an ancient, indestructible darkness. And the only way to stop the end of the world may require shedding innocent blood.
If you like complex characters, high-stakes suspense, and supernatural battles, then you’ll love Cathryn Marr’s highly sensual, fast-paced tale.

Book Links: Amazon |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Cathryn Marr is the pseudonym for the writing team of Terese Ramin and Dawn Johanson.
Terese Ramin is the award winning, bestselling author of ten romance and romantic suspense novels, numerous short stories, and the creator/editor/ author of the charitable collaboration Bewitched, Bothered & BeVampyred. She co-wrote the medical-legal thriller The Whistleblower’s Daughter with David Wind. Her autobiographical essay, “Two-Puppy Theory”, is included in the anthology The Sound and the Furry, sales of which benefit the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Aside from writing, Terese has worked as an editor, a ghost writer, a book doctor, and a paranormal investigator. She resides in Michigan with her husband and (usually) four dogs.
Dawn has always been fascinated by labyrinths and is a member of the International Labyrinth Society. Number one on her bucket list is ‘walking’ as many world labyrinths as she can.
When she’s not working with her writing partner, Terese Ramin, on their paranormal romantic suspense series, Brotherhood of Shadows, Dawn can be found playing with her grandchildren and working on her labyrinth designs. Dawn lives with her husband and two dogs in northern California where she’s inspired daily by the magic of the redwoods and power of the Pacific Ocean.
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