Blog tour time! And it's a bit of a curveball, I know, but stay with me as I saw this call on Twitter when I was on a mini-break with my Other Half last month (we wore masks all the time, washed hands a lot and followed guidelines. We were careful [though, according to the UK Prime Minister announcing a second Lockdown in England, not so much]!), and thought "Why not? This looks like fun!"
So, Vampires of Moscow is the first book in the Blood Web Chronicles series, written by Caedis Knight (the pen name of Jacqueline Silvester and NJ Simmonds), following Saskia de la Cruz is an investigator journalist for the biggest news outlet on the paranormal dark Blood web, The Blood Web Chronicle. She is, also, a Verity Witch - her only magic being that she can tell a truth from a lie.
So when drained bodies of illegal workers suddenly start appearing in Moscow, Saskia is sent to investigate a vampire crime ring that could be behind it. Saskia wants to get in, do the job and get out quickly... with her neck intact.
But ballerina Konstantin Volkov and his wildcard Lukka complicate things as the vampire brothers have their own reasons to solve the murders, reasons that conflicted Saskia's...
Basically, this sounds like the bastard love child of True Blood, Crescent City: House of Earth and Blood and Veronica Mars... so I sense you guys will LOVE it!
To celebrate the release of Vampires of Moscow and the eNovella prequel, Sirens of Los Angeles, Caedis Knight has written a special guest post and I am thrilled to share it with you! It's how Caedis Knight was created (as told by NJ Simmonds) and how Blood Web Chronicles came into being!
Now, before I hand it over to Caedis, I just want to thank them both for writing this guest post! If you want more info about the series or want to say hi to them, pop over to caedisknight.com or @CaedisKnight if you are a Twitter addict like myself!
Now, ONTO THE BIRTH OF CAEDIS KNIGHT AND THE BLOOD WEB CHRONICLES!
HOW JACQUELINE SILVESTER AND N J SIMMONDS BECAME CAEDIS KNIGHT
“This is going to sound really crazy, and you can say no if you want to, but I have a proposition for you.”
That’s how the conversation that changed my life began a year ago. I remember exactly where I was that September afternoon when author and good friend Jacqueline Silvester called me. We spoke regularly anyway, chatting about our books, the industry, other writers we know and YALC (where we’d met two years previously). I remember standing in my office, staring out at the leaves turning golden on the trees outside and wondering what the hell she was going to ask me.
Then she blurted it out. “I want to write a paranormal romance series and I want to write it with you.”
“OK,” I said.
“And I don’t mind what it’s about, happy to talk about it first of course, but I thought maybe we could have an MC called Saskia who’s a truth witch, which is really useful as she’s a reporter for the blood web – a paranormal corner of our human dark web…”
“Count me in,” I replied.
“I mean, you can say no if you want. It’s probably a stupid idea, I know you are traditionally published, and you may not want to have a go at indie writing but…”
“YES, JACKY. YESSSSS!!!!”
And that was that. The Blood Web Chronicles was born that blustery autumn day and Jacky and I have spoken every day since, creating a magical world compromising six books and two novellas (although not all written yet, give us time!).
Like Jacky, I’d never written with anyone before, but I wasn’t worried about it one bit. I knew what a fantastic writer she is, and I already write fantasy as N J Simmonds – so I figured vampires and witches wouldn’t be a huge stretch.
We agonised over a collective pen name and I suggested ‘Caedis Knight’.
“Caedes means slaughter, blood and murder in Latin,” I explained. “And Knight is, well, heroic.”
And that was easy too. We love our pen name, it’s certainly unique and easy to find online!
But like any teamwork, co-writing comes with a few challenges. The first thing we had to discuss was where we would set the books. You may not know this, but Jacky and I are the epitome of immigrants. I’m bilingual and was born in the UK, brought up in Catalunya, moved to London as a child, met my husband while living in Australia, raised my kids back in Spain and now live in the Netherlands. Jacky has lived in six countries and speaks four languages fluently. We were certainly not short of inspiration when it came to setting our books somewhere interesting.
“Russia,” she said. “Let’s have our vampires in Russia. Too many books depict my ancestral home wrong – time to show them the real Moscow.”
And that’s how all the books turned out to be set in a different city in which we’ve lived. We were going to show the REAL side of life in these countries. The romance and the grime. The light and the dark. Their food, their customs, their people and their language. We could do that because we had lived it ourselves.
“What will we call the first book?” I asked.
“Vampires of Moscow.”
Well, you can’t argue with that. You certainly know what you’re getting. I can’t tell you any more as I’ll give away the titles of the rest of the books in the series, but (paranormal) of (a very cool city) is the title of every book in the series…and we promise you a paranormal romance series like you’ve never read before.
Why? Because we are finally writing the books we’ve been wanting to read forever. As huge fans of the gore and humour of True Blood, the passion and drama in Sarah J Maas’ books, and the trope twists and boundary-pushing of the Prime series The Boys, we wanted a strong, sexually confident, bi female lead that is as flawed and vulnerable as all of us. A hedonistic risk-taker who doesn’t stumble upon paranormal troubles and needs to be rescued, but actually seeks them out and blows that shit up.
We wanted to show a diverse cast from countries and cultures you don’t tend to see in paranormal series very often. We wanted to portray safe, consensual but provocative sex where the woman is pleasured, and the partner isn’t always a tall, dark, handsome man. We wanted vampires with bite and a backstory, mermen who walk on land and ride the waves, witches and werewolves and shifters who walk among us but communicate on the blood web, where the darkest of creatures hide out.
So no virginal teens or unoriginal paranormal monsters to see here. You might get a Venice Beach tattoo artist who changes into a giant lizard, or a ballet dancing vampire who knows how to keep you in your seat at the Bolshoi, but you definitely won’t get bored.
Hand on heart, this is the most fun I have ever had working with anyone. Writing with Jacky was the easiest decision I ever made. Our prequel novella SIRENS OF LOS ANGELES and book one VAMPIRES OF MOSCOW came out 15th Oct and by day two we’d reached the heady heights of #27 in the erotica romance category on Kindle (don’t worry, it’s not that hot…well, maybe). We have all our covers designed, we even know what happens on the very last page of the last book in the series, but getting there is what has us laughing down the phone every day as we plot and write Saskia’s next escapade.
If you’d told me in the summer of 2019 that I’d be writing funny, sexy books about vampires and men who can turn into bears I wouldn’t have believed you. But this series has not only changed my life - it’s also saved my life (OK, that’s a bit dramatic, but drama is my job after all). Because back then I didn’t know we’d also be locked inside our houses during a global pandemic – and writing this series has been the best medicine for what could have been one very long, lonely, and trying year. Thankfully Jacky and I survived this year by bringing a whole new world to life while sitting in our homes in Germany and the Netherlands, imagining sunny LA beaches and snowy Christmases in Moscow. And we hope the books give you a chance to escape this world right now too.
Jacky and I have big plans. This is just the beginning, because we intend to write the books others aren’t brave enough to write. The books others can’t write because they haven’t lived where we have. And the kind of books that we’ve always wanted to read – amusing, steamy, poignant, accurate, diverse and lots and lots of fun.
So snuggle down this winter and warm up with a vamp or two. We sincerely hope you find the series as fun, exciting and amusing as we found writing them. And if you want more, wait until the end of the blog tour on the 15th November when we’ll be revealing the cover to book 2. Do you like magic? We hope so…because things are about to get very dark indeed!
“This is going to sound really crazy, and you can say no if you want to, but I have a proposition for you.”
That’s how the conversation that changed my life began a year ago. I remember exactly where I was that September afternoon when author and good friend Jacqueline Silvester called me. We spoke regularly anyway, chatting about our books, the industry, other writers we know and YALC (where we’d met two years previously). I remember standing in my office, staring out at the leaves turning golden on the trees outside and wondering what the hell she was going to ask me.
Then she blurted it out. “I want to write a paranormal romance series and I want to write it with you.”
“OK,” I said.
“And I don’t mind what it’s about, happy to talk about it first of course, but I thought maybe we could have an MC called Saskia who’s a truth witch, which is really useful as she’s a reporter for the blood web – a paranormal corner of our human dark web…”
“Count me in,” I replied.
“I mean, you can say no if you want. It’s probably a stupid idea, I know you are traditionally published, and you may not want to have a go at indie writing but…”
“YES, JACKY. YESSSSS!!!!”
And that was that. The Blood Web Chronicles was born that blustery autumn day and Jacky and I have spoken every day since, creating a magical world compromising six books and two novellas (although not all written yet, give us time!).
Like Jacky, I’d never written with anyone before, but I wasn’t worried about it one bit. I knew what a fantastic writer she is, and I already write fantasy as N J Simmonds – so I figured vampires and witches wouldn’t be a huge stretch.
We agonised over a collective pen name and I suggested ‘Caedis Knight’.
“Caedes means slaughter, blood and murder in Latin,” I explained. “And Knight is, well, heroic.”
And that was easy too. We love our pen name, it’s certainly unique and easy to find online!
But like any teamwork, co-writing comes with a few challenges. The first thing we had to discuss was where we would set the books. You may not know this, but Jacky and I are the epitome of immigrants. I’m bilingual and was born in the UK, brought up in Catalunya, moved to London as a child, met my husband while living in Australia, raised my kids back in Spain and now live in the Netherlands. Jacky has lived in six countries and speaks four languages fluently. We were certainly not short of inspiration when it came to setting our books somewhere interesting.
“Russia,” she said. “Let’s have our vampires in Russia. Too many books depict my ancestral home wrong – time to show them the real Moscow.”
And that’s how all the books turned out to be set in a different city in which we’ve lived. We were going to show the REAL side of life in these countries. The romance and the grime. The light and the dark. Their food, their customs, their people and their language. We could do that because we had lived it ourselves.
“What will we call the first book?” I asked.
“Vampires of Moscow.”
Well, you can’t argue with that. You certainly know what you’re getting. I can’t tell you any more as I’ll give away the titles of the rest of the books in the series, but (paranormal) of (a very cool city) is the title of every book in the series…and we promise you a paranormal romance series like you’ve never read before.
Why? Because we are finally writing the books we’ve been wanting to read forever. As huge fans of the gore and humour of True Blood, the passion and drama in Sarah J Maas’ books, and the trope twists and boundary-pushing of the Prime series The Boys, we wanted a strong, sexually confident, bi female lead that is as flawed and vulnerable as all of us. A hedonistic risk-taker who doesn’t stumble upon paranormal troubles and needs to be rescued, but actually seeks them out and blows that shit up.
We wanted to show a diverse cast from countries and cultures you don’t tend to see in paranormal series very often. We wanted to portray safe, consensual but provocative sex where the woman is pleasured, and the partner isn’t always a tall, dark, handsome man. We wanted vampires with bite and a backstory, mermen who walk on land and ride the waves, witches and werewolves and shifters who walk among us but communicate on the blood web, where the darkest of creatures hide out.
So no virginal teens or unoriginal paranormal monsters to see here. You might get a Venice Beach tattoo artist who changes into a giant lizard, or a ballet dancing vampire who knows how to keep you in your seat at the Bolshoi, but you definitely won’t get bored.
Hand on heart, this is the most fun I have ever had working with anyone. Writing with Jacky was the easiest decision I ever made. Our prequel novella SIRENS OF LOS ANGELES and book one VAMPIRES OF MOSCOW came out 15th Oct and by day two we’d reached the heady heights of #27 in the erotica romance category on Kindle (don’t worry, it’s not that hot…well, maybe). We have all our covers designed, we even know what happens on the very last page of the last book in the series, but getting there is what has us laughing down the phone every day as we plot and write Saskia’s next escapade.
Jacky and I have big plans. This is just the beginning, because we intend to write the books others aren’t brave enough to write. The books others can’t write because they haven’t lived where we have. And the kind of books that we’ve always wanted to read – amusing, steamy, poignant, accurate, diverse and lots and lots of fun.
So snuggle down this winter and warm up with a vamp or two. We sincerely hope you find the series as fun, exciting and amusing as we found writing them. And if you want more, wait until the end of the blog tour on the 15th November when we’ll be revealing the cover to book 2. Do you like magic? We hope so…because things are about to get very dark indeed!
No comments:
Post a Comment