Spotlight & Giveaway: Succubus by Kate Fox

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Kate Fox to HJ!

Hi Kate and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Succubus!

 
Hi! I’m so excited to share my debut novel with you!
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Succubus is the story of a lonely, normal-seeming 30-something woman in the New Jersey suburbs who really wishes she could find love, but unfortunately she has accidentally killed every man she’s ever tried to date. When she realized she’s a succubus, she took a vow of celibacy, which is now being very seriously challenged by a gorgeous, perfect-seeming doctor she can hardly resist. If only she hadn’t dated (and caused the death of) his brother. If only she wasn’t being tracked down by a “demon hunter,” who she suspects she’ll have to sleep with in order to stop. If only she wasn’t so busy just trying to get through the day caretaking for her seven-year-old niece and making it over to Costco for groceries. Life isn’t easy for a suburban succubus, but she’s trying her best!

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

Readers keep telling me they love the line “No. I won’t shave my fucking armpits,” which the FMC uses when she’s on her way to sleep with/murder her enemy.

I love the line, where she says of love: “Maybe I will die for having it. But I can’t help myself; I can’t help choosing it anyway.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• There is a magical battle set at a historic Revolutionary War battlefield.
• It’s set in Princeton, NJ, and has scenes from the real town, including the university. I wrote it when I’d just moved to the suburbs from NYC and was recovering from a long illness, so I was SO EXCITED to get to do life and the suburbs felt very magical to me.
• My publisher asked me to change the season from spring to fall, so if I’ve left a flip flop or a tank top in there somewhere, I’m sorry! But also, I now can’t imagine this story not being set in the fall!

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

He’s drawn to her immediately because she’s warm and kind. She’s a labor doula, and she’s caring for a client in distress when they meet in the hospital, where he works as a doctor. But there’s also something otherworldly about her that he doesn’t understand and will lead to a lot of suffering for him, but also…maybe great joy.

He’s big and has glasses and curly hair and capable hands. She’s helplessly attracted to him from the start, almost magically so. The reason for this will be revealed in the book, but he has a power of his own and it makes him absolutely irresistable to her. But when she gets to know him as a person, she falls in love with his kindness, his sense of humor, his musical ability (he plays cello), his willingness to adopt the sweet cat she’s forced to give up.

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

Oh yeah. Every sex scene makes me blush a little! I’m really sensitive and these scenes are so intense and hypercharged. And I work really hard on them to try to get the dynamics right. Here’s a bit:

“I seize hold of his hands that are so gentle on me–I push them over my breasts, I press them against my heart. I want my skin to absorb his touch, to soak him into me. I want his touch to live in me, to be permanent, inextricable.”
(You’ll have to read the book to find out who exactly she’s touching here, why he isn’t dying, and why she is herself in danger in this scene)

Readers should read this book….

if they like a high stakes love story with twists. If they love enemies-to-lovers. And if they’re interested to see if I can turn a lover into an enemy into a lover again!
Also if they like books that are a little over the top and funny, feature kids and pets and messy family stuff, and want to meet a pain demon named Al who drives an RV.

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

I have a speculative rom com coming out next fall called Spellsick that’s about a love spell gone wrong at the Jersey shore. A twenty-something who has missed a lot of her life due to severe chronic illness is doing better on a new medication and she and a friend cast a love spell from a bargain basement spellbook they find, not expecting it to work. It works on her crush, but also seems to work on her online enemy. Uh oh…

I’m working on another project about a woman whose hormones from her last failed IVF cycle are changing her body and her desires in strange ways in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. She meets a gorgeous, angry, younger man– a hunter who seems to be trying to hunt the dangerous mountain lion shifters she is only just learning are real. Meanwhile she is…maybe starting to turn into a mountain lion herself. The book is called Cougar 🙂
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: My publisher is giving away four copies of SUCCUBUS: A Love Story by Kate Fox <3

To enter Giveaway, please share this post on your Socials and Leave a comment below to this Q: If you were a succubus, would you be willing to use your dark power to destroy an enemy? Would it ever be…fun?

🎉 Giveaway Rules 🎉
✨ Must be 18 years or older to enter.
✨ MUST leave a comment answering the giveaway question.
✨ Bonus Entry:Share this post on your social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) 
and drop a comment below letting me know you've shared it.
✨ Winner(s) will be selected at random.
✨ No purchase necessary—just enter and cross your fingers!
✨ If you win, I'll need your full name and mailing address to send your prize. 
This information will be shared with the author, publisher, or publicist solely for prize fulfillment purposes.
✨ Giveaway closes 3 days from the date this post is published.  
 

Excerpt from Succubus:

“I really like you, Tempest.” Everything shifts instantly into gold and fire, and my moronic heart is pumping scald-ing hot joy. “I know what I said the other night, and I know you said you aren’t looking for something right now. But I think I left that part out.”
I hear my own strangled breath.
He is about to touch me; I can feel the space closing be-tween our fingertips.
*Maybe I didn’t kill Adam. Maybe I didn’t kill Adam.*
I snatch my hand back. Joel follows it with his eyes, his brow creasing. He withdraws his own hand, blinks. He’s so transparent, the hope folding up behind his eyes. “Sorry,” he says. “Did I misread—”
I stand up with such force I knock my chair backward and it rocks. I catch it before it can fall. He rises, too, me-chanically. “I think I’ve really embarrassed myself here.” He pushes an agitated hand into his hair. “Please just forget—”
“No,” I interrupt, barely above a whisper.
His eyes go to mine, searching. Why does he have to look at me like this? Why does he have to look like this? The gentle kindness in his face that makes me want, with depraved compulsiveness, to see him orgasm, to see him grit his teeth against it, to push him to some frantic limit of pleasure and watch him lose his mind.
“No,” I say again. “You didn’t. I just. I can’t.” Don’t say it, I tell myself. I say it: “I want to.”
*More than I’ve ever wanted anything,* I think. *I am in love with you.* Goddammit. I need to stop thinking that.
“Then maybe—” he starts.
I shake my head fiercely, cutting him off. He gives a quick respectful nod. But he steps toward me. I step toward him. We are a foot apart, the smooth side of the table sliding itself against my jeans.
His eyes slip, weighted, from my eyes to my mouth, where I feel his attention pressing like it is a mouth itself.
*Stop it stop it,* shrieks my brain, a banshee’s warning.
Oh God, I can’t help it, I move reflexively toward him, tipping my face up. I want to be drunk, to be oblivious. I want to fall into him, to forfeit my awareness, to be someone else. I want it so badly it possesses me, claims my limbs, commandeers my frontal lobe. I am ravenous, drowning. I am not responsible for what I’m about to do.
He bends down. As though he is being pulled by the force of my need.
There is nothing stopping him. Nothing between us except for a useless inch of air. I feel all my good intentions, the work of these past years, funnel through a terrible, narrowing chute.
*You love him? *something in me asks. Too quietly. But I still hear it.
*You really love him? Then how can you risk his life? Monster.
Murderer.
They would still be alive now. But you killed them.
And you haven’t learned.*
I wrench myself away.
I am responsible. I will always be responsible. Otherwise I’m unforgivable. Otherwise all of them—even if Adam somehow escaped, the rest of them will have died for nothing.
I’m already unforgivable. But I have to be able to live with myself.
I turn and flee, leaving Joel at the table, strangers glancing up as I rush past.
I think I can feel his surprised gaze on my back. I must look ridiculous. Overwrought and childish. Cowardly. What kind of grown woman runs away from a kiss like it’s poison?
The kind of woman whose kisses are poison.
The kind of woman who will die without knowing what it feels like to kiss the man she loves, to feel his hands on her skin.
The kind of woman who is trying with all her fucking strength to do the right thing.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

HER TOUCH KILLS. HIS SAVES THE DYING. ARE THEY FATED–OR FORBIDDEN?

Tempest Dunlap loves romance novels, but she knows she’ll never have her own happily-ever-after. She’s a sweatpants wearing doula who homeschools her niece in suburban New Jersey. Unfortunately, she’s also a succubus: Every man she’s ever kissed has died. But Tempest is a good person who never intended to be a murderer, so she’s sworn off lover forever.

Then she meets Joel Tav, a gorgeous, gentle doctor who seems to save more lives than makes sense. Suddenly, celibacy feels all but impossible. Tempest can’t touch him–or tell him that his brother was the last man she dated and accidentally killed.

Meanwhile, a vigilante is hunting people with dark powers, and Tempest is next. Should she keep hiding in her safe, lonely life, or should she embrace the darkness she fears and risk the ultimate forbidden romance?

Maybe Tempest will get her love story after all…or maybe she’ll become its villain.
Book Links: Amazon | B&N |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Kate Fox lives in an old house in an old town in the universally admired state of New Jersey with her husband, daughters, and two fluffy cats. She’s always looking for magic in mundane places. Succubus is her debut.
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