werewolves

Release… the PURITY!

~ JP Marshman ~ Leave a comment

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The time has come—

Purity is upon us!

Caitlyn is a bright, headstrong girl with a twisted past she unconsciously smothers into lost memories. When she is only eleven, she is kidnapped by her father’s business rival in hopes of giving up much-needed information. Refusing to talk – and knowing nothing of use – she is placed in the Silver Room, a desperate man’s sinister torture chamber, where she meets the monsters who inhabit her nightmares. 

A lifetime later, on an innocent summer vacation to her paternal relatives in Romania’s notorious province Transylvania, these memories return in a flood when she meets strangers with an aversion to sunlight and bloodstained smiles. 

As prisoner to a condemned prince, Caitlyn becomes privy to an underground world where myth and nightmare are all too real, and where at every turn, a new threat emerges. 

With dogs waging war and men bent on bloodshed, Caitlyn must team up with the unlikeliest of people to save what is theirs, while standing on the precipice of destruction.

Are vampires your thing? Werewolves? Dark magic, mythology, and a world only dreamed of? Heroines out of their element, brooding heroes, and allies who toe the line; blood and bones and an internal struggle; business and politics, scheming and plotting – Purity has all this and more.

 PURITY is now available for sale on Amazon, for a scant $4.99

Postscript: Final formatting for Apple Books, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble will happen over the weekend, and she will be for sale in those places sometime next week. Keep your eyes peeled for further updates!

I’m so excited I can barely function right now 😀

The dogs of war: Purity teaser

~ JP Marshman ~ Leave a comment

He could feel anger radiating from Vanessa like steam. He understood why, of course. He had ample opportunity to shoot Heinrich in a fatal zone—the heart, the head—and end this foolish war without further bloodshed.

But Vanessa didn’t understand. Vanessa had never been truly lost and alone in her darkest time of need, had never found that one person with whom to seek solace. In truth, Vanessa had no friends. Only allies.

No matter what happened, Heinrich had been a friend.

Fane gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on the pistol at his side. Joachim was right. He wasn’t strong enough to kill the man who had been his pillar of strength after the deaths of his father and Verity.

Heinrich snarled another curse in German. He released his injured arm and, before Fane could even move to react, grabbed a fistful of Joan Gwyther’s hair, yanking her upright. She shrieked, thrashing, but Heinrich held tight. “See what you have done, Fane!” he roared, loud enough to startle birds from their roosts. “This is the end! Everything you have fought so hard to protect will die today!” Continue reading →

Old Friends: Purity teaser

~ JP Marshman ~ Leave a comment

“I do not want to kill you, Heinrich,” he breathed. His hair was tousled around his shoulder, spilling over Heinrich’s wet snout. The wolf was panting heavily from their short battle. The hot dog breath made Fane wrinkle his nose, and he could feel the ribs moving beneath him as the lungs made an effort to breathe.

Heinrich growled. Fane didn’t understand what he was trying to say.

They remained that way, trapped on the forest floor as the strigoi morţi and vârcolaci around them slashed and snarled at each other. An echoing boom made the trees shake and the reek of gunpowder suddenly tore through the cool calm of rain.

Distracted, Fane glanced up. The movement tore at the scratches on his chest, and he inhaled sharply against the pain. Before he could look around to see who had fired the gun—honestly, the fight had only just started—Heinrich snarled and kicked him off.

Fane tumbled back and rolled down a slight slope, coming to rest at the base of a large evergreen. Woozy, he pushed off the leaves and onto his fingers and toes, squinting through the dark.

Heinrich stalked toward him, tail swishing in the dirt. His lips pulled back from his long, filthy teeth as a low growl issued up from his throat.

Fane stared, waiting.

Saliva dripped from the fangs. Deadly teeth in a powerful jaw, ready to snap. Sharp claws, already proved to draw blood even from a vampires. Heavy yet agile. Fane was almost intimidated. Werewolves were worthy foes.

Or at least, Heinrich Abendroth was a worthy foe.

Just as the wolf was about to pounce again, Fane lunged and grappled him to the ground. The rain was picking up, washing the dirt and blood from flesh and fur. Heavy, muscled legs thrashed out, slicing claws in all directions. Fane snarled and rolled to the side to grab Heinrich’s flailing legs; the wolf’s filthy, matted fur pressed into the open wounds on Fane’s chest, making the jagged edges sting.

Heinrich wriggled away and snapped his drooling fangs at his opponent. Pain blossomed in Fane’s shoulder; thick blood pooled down his flesh and ruined shirt.

He had not been bested in a true fight in years, not since the 1970s, when he had been briefly killed by his father’s former friend, mind lost.

He leaped forward, batting Heinrich’s sharp claws and bloodstained maw out of the way. The wolf roared, but Fane dodged his next attack by feigning to the left, and leaped at his object of desire: his black frock coat, cast so carelessly on the leafy carpet, soaked by the waterfall of raindrops. In one quick motion, he bent and swiped up his coat, unearthed his revolver, clicked back the hammer, and aimed it at the approaching vârcolac.

Heinrich stopped.

“Silver alloy ammunition, Heinrich,” he hissed.

All around them, the strigoi morţi and vârcolaci still fought with snarls and awry gunshots, oblivious to their leaders’ halt. Rain soaked his hair, his shirt, watering down the coagulated blood on his chest and shoulder and sending it in thin rivulets down his stiff body.

The wolf stared at him, tail swishing over the damp leaves.

“Take one more step toward me and it shall be your last. That is a promise, Heinrich. You know I do not make empty promises.”

Cowardice: Purity teaser

~ JP Marshman ~ 2 Comments

Crispin Kramer would not be one to call himself a coward. But when he had seen Evangeline Moreau picking wildflowers a few kilometres away from Le Vallon, prickly fear had instantly overwhelmed him.

That fear had turned into outright panic when Belle Baudelaire leaned in close to his hear and whispered, “Why not kill her, Crispin? Write a message in her blood. Heinrich would be proud.”

He didn’t want to tell her what he thought. He was sure Heinrich already doubted him, and sent him as the leader of the revolt in Auvergne to test his loyalties. Heinrich Abendroth was no fool. Crispin figured he was a genius, but of the unhinged, unstable variety.

Outright panic turned into sweaty palms and shallow breaths when Samantha Boulanger and Genji Lee captured Moreau with ease and brought her to the rebels.

When that goddamned harlot Baudelaire circled him with that dark gaze on him, silently taunted him. When Ivan Petrov and his wife, Katarzyna, cooed taunts in English and Russian, prodding their prisoner and scratching her unmarked skin.

And when he felt a hand slide slowly up his back and curl over his shoulder, and when he felt breath touch his face when Belle murmured, “Kill her, Crispin. Show the Arsenaults just who they’re dealing with.”

He couldn’t bear to look at Moreau. He could hear her stifled cries, her desperate pleas in a choked mixture of English and French. And when she struggled against her captors, Regina Carter had viciously slapped her, hard enough to shut her up and make Manfred Gottschalk grunt something about how pitiful the Arsenaults truly were.

Standing still, unable to move or speak, Crispin had done nothing when the aptly named Jezebel Baudelaire slithered up to him and lightly touched his cheek, grazing his skin with her pointed nails.

“You can’t do it?” she had purred, giving him a particular pouting look that every man—even Heinrich Abendroth—melt and become a doting puppy to her every whim. “Too bad.”

And sweaty palms, shallow breaths, terror at what in the hell he was doing—it all became an indifferent haze when Belle ruthlessly kicked down Evangeline Moreau and crushed her skull with a single well-aimed stomp.

While everyone else hooted and laughed at the grotesque execution, Crispin had been the only one to spot Evangeline’s husband, Claude, near a copse of trees in the near distance.

He had witnessed the entire thing.

Belle spotted him next. Crispin, along with Samantha, Regina, Katarzyna, Ivan, and Iris Santos, waited at their makeshift camp as the others—Belle, Manfred, Genji, and Alex Hanson—stalked up to the panic-stricken Claude in hopes of giving him the same ending as his wife.

But while Manfred managed to cut Moreau’s chest, he escaped.

And now, after waiting until day broke to launch the official attack on Le Vallon, Crispin sat on a hill overlooking the town, watching as the nine under his command shrieked and shouted and destroyed everything they could.

Bartending and generalness

~ JP Marshman ~ 2 Comments

I feel like I haven’t updated in an age, even though it’s not really been that long. On the 19th, I started my bartending practicum, the final stage in the course I took last month. I just finished the practicum last night. I spent every evening, 5 to 10, at the local Boston Pizza restaurant, and I think I was cursed with the most awkward days in BP history. They’re normally busy, but I was plagued with really slow days, except Friday, in which there was a half hour where four of us were behind the bar and we still weren’t up on the chits. But it was pretty fun, aside from nervousness (I got a stress coldsore by the third day) and unpaidness. I learned how to better pour beer, make general drinks like Caesars and Long Island iced teas, etc, and put away glasses. How exciting, yes? I decided that while I didn’t mind bartending, I never want to work in the food service industry as a server – which is what the bartenders at BP do as well. I don’t have the energy, patience, or hand-eye coordination for a job like that. Thank God I was only tending the bar while I was there.

So that was interesting. Enjoyable, but am I ever glad it’s over. I have much better things to do with my time – ie, sell books and be paid for it, and write my stories.

On that related note, Elisa has persisted and convinced me that I do need to finish the story/rewrites of my first major work of fiction, a little vampire ditty named Purity. Hatred for Twilight and what it turned vampires/vampire fans into made me subsequently hate Purity. I made some huge changes to make it more unique and more to mythological lore than urban fantasy, but I just couldn’t do it. So it sat on the backburner while I wrote OtArb and Changeling.

But something roused it, and Elisa convinced me that Purity had merit, and that yes, it is unique, but it’s also a vampire story in this new revival of vampires. While I hate the idea of notoriety of a subject made uber popular because of Twilight, it is not in the slightest like Twilight. While I’m going to fight to get OtArb traditionally published, I was convinced that Purity would sell well as a self-published ebook, and that I would have expert help getting it ready for sale. Maybe it’ll be well-off and end up lovingly taken in by a publishing house like the ridiculous and shameful Fifty Shades of Grey by EL James. So I’ve begun my third and final because if I have to do this again I’m going to murder someone rewrite of Purity. It’s more serious, less stupidly angsty and dark, with more rounded characters. The story is pretty solid from my last rewrite, and the mythological races are pretty close to lore, with some alterations because I do want to make this my own.

I’ll do a further update on Purity at a later date, with more character information and races and whatnot. And I guess I’ve got to create a folder/page for it now. Le sigh.

So that’s pretty exciting. Thanks to a recent illogical computer crash, I lost several thousand unsaved words of OtK on MS Word, but have since regained my lust for it and am rewriting that part, so further progress has been made in that department. Changeling has hit her second major roadblock – I have the future mapped out, but I need a bridge to get there. I’ll get it in due time.

I’ve also felt like barfing for the past several days. Not sure why, but it is the worst feeling evar. And my wireless mouse finally ate it after probably four years in loyal service, so I’ve got to use the mousepad of my laptop until I get a new one. Bummer.

How are things elsewhere in the blogosphere? Has anything exciting happened in my brief absence?