Marcella Burnard
Release Date: April 2014
Publisher: Intermix
Genre:Urban Fantasy
Book Description:
With the needle of a tattoo gun, Isa Romanchzyk has the power to create and destroy. In her shop Nightmare Ink, Isa helps those in need by binding the powers embedded in their Live Ink—the magical tattoos that can enhance the life of the wearer, or end it. But binding tattoos has earned Isa the contempt of her fellow artists—including her former lover Daniel.
When a friend comes to the shop with a tattoo on the verge of killing him, Isa can’t turn him away. For the first time in years, she works Live Ink into someone’s skin—something she swore she’d never do again. But breaking her vow soon becomes the least of her problems.
Isa is horrified to discover her friend’s body in the shop, but the real nightmare begins when she’s abducted and inked against her will. Now, as she seeks retribution from the man who betrayed her, Isa must figure out how to bind her Living Tattoo before it consumes her completely...
Amazon
The writing playlist leans to the creepy. Usually, I don’t want someone else’s words competing with writing, so most of the music is instrumental. Lisa Gerrard is the exception. The Myst soundtracks in my mp3 player are Myst, Riven and Exile. Exile is my favorite (Peter Gabriel had a bit of a hand in that soundtrack and that’s a huge win from my perspective.) The Halo soundtrack is usually reserved for writing science fiction, but there were scenes in NIGHTMARE INK that called for some fight music. By far, however, Nox Arcana got the most play. Nox Arcana defines creepy. Every one of their albums is a concept album built around a theme. But here. YouTube links so you can sample the music I piped directly to my brain while I wrote NIGHTMARE INK.
Lisa Gerrard from The Silver Tree | Myst III | Halo soundtrack | Nox Arcana
MRP is happy to welcome a guest blog by author Marcella Burnard ~
When No
One Is Wrong
When an author
is creating a world with a system of magic, it seems to be approached from one
of three standpoints in regards to real life theories of magic:
1 Everyone is wrong
2 One system is right
3 Everyone is right
I picked the
last one for the world of NIGHTMARE INK. But maybe I need to back up and
explain. Magic, for my purposes, means energy manipulation that results in some
kind of manifest effect. Waving a wand while saying a set of words is supposed
to be energy manipulation. The rabbit coming out of a hat in response would be
the manifest effect. Sure. In our
world that’s sleight of hand rather than evidence of some kind of arcane power.
In NIGHTMARE INK, it can be either. Though, frankly, in the novel, the rabbits
are likely to be plaid and have an appetite for blood unless you are very, very
specific with your intent when you call upon your power.
As for ‘real
life theories of magic’, I mean that in our world, most religious traditions describe
some mechanism for moving energy to achieve a result. Shamanistic cultures have
vision quests and out of body journeying. Wiccan traditions work with ritual
and spell craft. Ceremonial magicians follow a prescribed set of steps, say
specific words at a set time on set day and repeat this exact formula for a
certain number of days. That’s the long way of saying that for a world where
magic isn’t supposed to be real, we sure have a lot of different descriptions
of it that come from all kinds of cultures the world over. Maybe I’m being
unfair, too, because a number of those cultures would take me to task for
saying ‘theory’ and would instead urge me to speak in terms of experience. You
can have a number of different experiences of magic based on which traditions
you seek out and train in.
Examples of
novels that take the ‘Everyone is wrong’ approach pretty much don’t have magic
in them at all. Can you think of any novels with magic in them that don’t draw
on existing earthly descriptions? I can’t, but then I’ve hardly read every
book, ever.
The Harry
Potter novels take the ‘One system is right’ approach. Magic in that world
follows the stage magician’s wave-a-magic-wand-to-produce-a-result model.
Plenty of
books take the ‘Everyone is right’ tack, whether they mean to or not. Any book
that allows vampires and were creatures to coexist embraces at least two
different cultural traditions. For NIGHTMARE INK, I wanted the heroine, Isa, to
have trained in more than one magical tradition. I wanted people from every
nation and every experience to have to come to grips with having this twisting,
twining ability snaking through their souls. It allows Isa to come at her power
and her skill set from a perspective that’s slightly different from that of her
friends. And, more importantly, from that of her enemies. Of course, the real
question is whether that will be enough to both save her life and keep her
human.
I’ll offer one
spoiler. NIGHTMARE INK doesn’t answer both of those questions.
Thank you, Marcella!
About the Author:
Her first book, Enemy Within won the Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice award for Best Futuristic of 2010. The second book in the series, Enemy Games, released on May 3, 2011.
An erotica novella, Enemy Mine, set in the same world as the novels was released as an e-special edition by Berkley was released in April 2012. Emissary, a sword and sorcery short story released in the two volume Thunder on the Battlefield Anthology in the second half of 2013.
Author Contacts:
Website | Twitter | Amazon | Blog | Goodreads | Tumblr
Giveaway Details:
5 ecopies of Nightmare Ink by Marcella Burnard
5 ecopies of Nightmare Ink by Marcella Burnard
Thank you so much for letting me take over for a day!
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