Today I've got the awesome Chrystalla Thoma here to talk about her latest Urban Fantasy.... Take it away, Chrys!
Hi Katie, thanks for hosting me
today to talk about my urban fantasy series “Boreal and John Grey”.
I love elves – have done ever since
I read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit as a teenager. Beautiful and
wise, in tune with nature and its energy, ancient and timeless.
And I admit a certain fascination
with those “leaf-shaped” ears as described by Tolkien.
However, when I went back to
Tolkien’s sources, such as the old Norse (old Icelandic) Edda – epic poems and
tales – I realized he’d changed the aelfar (the elves”) to fit his world. Sure,
the elves were said to have magic, and sometimes they were mentioned in the
same breath as the aesir (the gods), but they were wicked tricksters who
brought misfortune and illness, and exchanged healthy children with sickly
changelings.
Tall and pale – their name means
‘white’ – these beings were not peaceful and distant but meddlesome and wanted
something from us humans.
But what?
Well, the Edda say that the elves
lived in another world – called Aelfheim (Elfhame = Elf home), one of the nine
worlds hanging on the world tree Ygdrasil. So what the heck were they doing in
our world all the way to the Middle Ages when the stories were written down?
Tada, inspiration flash. The elves
had come here, had traveled through a Gate to our world, intent on conquering
it. No tree-hugging, peace-loving elves, but tech-savvy, ambitious and not-so-nice
elves, who wanted this world for their own.
But how did they fail?
The
Edda tells us that apart from the Light Elves, living on the surface of their
world, Dark Elves living underground. So what if the Dark elves were the wise,
peaceful ones, and what if they had managed to stop their Light brethren and
locked the Gates?
And
what if now, today, the Light elves had finally found a way to cross once more
and take over our world?
Enter Ella Benson, Paranormal Bureau
agent, who fights all that crosses between worlds – shades and shadows. But
something has changed: increasingly dangerous creatures are slipping into her
city, her work partner has just gone missing, and a mysterious – and, frankly,
quite hot — guy saves her life. His name is Finn and, as it turns out, he’s a
natural when it comes to fighting the Shades.
With the Gates opening and her partner gone, Ella needs a new ally. Enlisting the mysterious Finn is her first thought and seems to work quite well, until she realizes Finn has some dangerous secrets of his own.
Together with Finn, and the fate of the world on her shoulders, what’s Ella to do but grab her weapons and figure it all out, one way or another.
Read the complete First Season of
the series Boreal and John Grey, books 1-5 (The Encounter, The Gate, The
Dragon, The Dream and The Truth) at a special price with an Author’s Note at
the end.
The
first episode in the series is free so you can sample it – here:
Amazon Amazon
Where to find the complete season 1 boxset:
Amazon
Amazon
Excerpt:
The goblin crouched down and drew its huge fist back. Time
slowed. She saw it coming at her like a dark wave, about to smash her face.
The fist stopped an inch from her face. The goblin groaned.
Its yellow eyes widened, the lumbering body shuddered and pitched sideways.
Ella blinked up at the scaffolds and beams, then sat up
slowly, her head spinning. Her knife lay a few feet away. She reached for it,
her other hand going to her gun, still in its hip holster.
The kobolds advanced over the half-built wall, clawed hands
extended, and she cocked the gun, taking aim.
Something pale streaked her vision and she blinked. Hallucinations? She must have hit her
head harder than she thought. Because a man was there, blades flashing in the
moonlight. He fell on the kobolds, twirling and delivering heavy blows, his
blond hair flying under a green bandana. Like a hurricane, he pivoted and
kicked, then cut and stabbed, until the Shades fell back, raising spindly hands
to cover their faces.
Okay, what the hell?
The man didn’t stop. He spun closer to the kobolds, hacking
at them with his blades — bowie knives, long and wicked, covered in symbols —
marking one on the arm. The kobold shrieked and flickered in and out of
existence. The other one cowered and whimpered. Ella narrowed her eyes. Why did
they fear his knives but not hers? The blades were dark. Iron?
A bellow from the left reminded her the goblin was still
present. Crap. Her hand felt too heavy, her head too light, filled with sharp
pebbles that bounced inside her skull. The goblin pushed itself upright and
turned to her.
“Oh no, you don’t,” she whispered and took aim. She fired
one, two, three bullets into its chest. The goblin staggered back but didn’t
fall. Cursing, she reversed her grip on the knife and threw it at the
creature’s head. It hit it smack in the forehead.
The goblin fell and fizzled, its limbs melting away, its
torso and head going last, a grizzly Cheshire cat grin on its face — finally
returning to the place behind the Veil.
Ella blinked at the empty spot the goblin had occupied, then
turned to see the man dispatch the last kobold. Suddenly there was ringing
quiet, punctuated by the guy’s hissing breaths. He looked up.
“Are you okay?” he asked. He had a strange accent, a way of
drawing out the vowels. Russian, perhaps. He was handsome in a lean and austere
sort of way — thin face, high cheekbones, a small mouth, and hooded ice-blue
eyes. His chest rose and fell, stretching the black material of his dirty white
t-shirt. He wore a green bandana under which his ash-blond hair fluttered down
to his shoulders. “Hey, can you hear me?”
“Yeah, sorry. I’m fine.” To prove it, she clicked the safety
of her gun on and stood, wobbling only a little. “Thank you. You’re...?”
“You should get out of here. More Vaettir may arrive.”
“Vaettir? You mean
Shades?” That had sounded Nordic. Maybe not Russian then.
He nodded, eyes darting around the place, knives held
loosely at his sides, ichor dripping steadily to the floor. Silvery designs
flashed on his bare forearms — tattoos?
Or paint?
“Yes, Shades.” He walked to the half-finished wall and
checked behind it, every movement graceful like a panther’s.
Ella shook her head dazedly. What was wrong with her? “I’m
Ella, working for the Investigations Bureau.” She didn’t normally recruit
people, but he saw Shades, and the way he fought ... “Finding someone with your
abilities is rare and we could really use another... Wait!” He was backing away
and she didn’t even know his name. She took a step toward him as the police
sirens sounded in the distance. “Don’t go!”
About
the author:
