Lovesick Titans
by Amanda
Meuwissen
GENRE: Gay
Romance, Superhero
BLURB:
Not even a Titan can always stand up to a God.
Malcom Cho is in over his head, wrapped up in a love affair with his superhero
nemesis Zeus, who most people in Olympus City only know as Detective Danny
Grant.
Lovesick Titans begins where Lovesick Gods left off, after a heist gone wrong
that ended with a museum guard dead and Mal and Danny beaten and exhausted from
their fight with the new threat in town, Cassidy Ludgate—Hades.
Unaware that Ludgate’s true motivation is revenge for the death of his father
at Zeus’s hands, Mal wants only to keep Danny close, while Danny races to solve
the cases surrounding Ludgate to stop him from whatever he has planned for them
next.
What Mal doesn’t know is that Danny didn’t pursue him with the purest of
intentions but sought to break his heart in retaliation for not being there
when he needed him in the fight against Thanatos. Even though Danny no longer
seeks that end, the lies between them loom like a shadow about to descend upon
them both.
And Hades has only begun to toy with them…
Excerpt:
Danny
let Mal hold his hand in place on his arm, while his other hand strayed,
drifting down to Mal’s hip and resting at the edge of one of his larger scars.
Mal had many, from years of abuse and a hard way of living. Normally, when
Danny touched one, he pushed on with confidence, but tonight, the raised scar
tissue made him snap to his senses like he’d been in a trance.
“Sorry,”
he said and pulled both hands away.
But
Mal reached for them, hung onto them, and brought Danny’s hands back to his
skin. “It’s okay. Broken bottle one night when Dad got drunk. Now I get to add
another knife wound to the collection.” Mal smirked as he nodded at his
bandaged arm.
Danny
smiled with him, but it was a sad, shattered expression. He teased the tips of
his fingers over the scar tissue. “Are all these really from…” With a startle,
he tried to pull away again as if he’d said something he shouldn’t.
“My
father?” Mal said, refusing to let him go. “Not all. Most though. Some are from
prison. Some dumb mistakes. Fights like tonight. But most…yeah, they’re his.”
Taking
Danny’s hand still resting on his hip, Mal drew it upwards, guiding it across
his bare chest until he reached his shoulder and the faint circular scar tissue
near his clavicle.
“Freezer
burn. From his powers. Because I broke my leg when I was eight and I cried. He
wanted to teach me a lesson. Teach me how to keep pain in and never let anyone
see it. So he held the tip of a frozen finger there until it burned.”
Danny’s
brow furrowed with indignant anger.
Mal
trailed the hand lower to a particularly bad scar across his stomach—his worst
and the one he remembered the clearest. “First knife wound. Caught me with a
boy in my room. Would have killed him if I hadn’t stood in the way. I took the
brunt of it. Let him run off. Never brought a boy home again, not ‘til Dad was
gone. Brought a couple girls home,” he shrugged.
“Girls?”
Danny asked with a touch of humored skepticism bleeding through his concern. He
splayed his hand flat against Mal’s stomach, warm and intimate in his touch.
“Occasionally.
Not as often.”
Danny
nodded but his smile quickly faded, his eyes trained on the scar and the
affectionate way he traced it with his fingers. “Sometimes…I think my dad hates
me because…” he trailed and the motion of his hand slowed. “There’s something I
never told you. About the night I killed Thanatos.”
The
smile dropped from Mal’s lips as well as he waited for Danny to continue.
“He
killed my mom.”
Interview with Amanda Meuwissen
Can you tell us a
little bit about the characters in Lovesick Titans?
Lovesick Titans starts where Lovesick Gods left off and
continues through to the end of the series. The characters at this point are in
a very unstable place. As hero (Danny) and villain (Mal) in most of the city’s
eyes, the two protagonists have just finished facing off together against the
real villain of the story—Hades. Their injuries in the fight led to more
intimacy between them than they had yet shared when their relationship was
supposed to be no-strings-attached sex to blow off steam—which Danny had
actually offered as a way to get Mal back for not showing up to help him defeat
another villain 6 months earlier. Danny had planned to get Mal to fall in love
with him just to break his heart, but now that love seems to be going both
ways, and Danny feels so awful about it, he isn’t sure what to do. That conflict
combined with the threat of Hades on their tail and Danny’s constant struggle
with depression has everything on a razor’s edge. What’s tragic but exciting
about this concluding book to the series is that I have to bring our ‘heroes’
to the breaking point, rock bottom, in order to raise them back up and find
common ground once all the lies between them are out in the open. It’s very
complex, as are their feelings for each other, which I think mirrors reality
more than people might realize at first glance given the fantastical setting.
Can you tell us a
little bit about your next books or what you have planned for the future?
The current book I’m writing shares some similar setting
aspects to Lovesick, since it too deals with superheroes and villains, but the
tone, the characterizations, the themes, etc., are very different, though the
protagonist does deal with social anxiety in a very real and relatable way just
as I have Danny in Lovesick dealing with bipolar depression. That new
book—After Vertigo—is nearly complete with its first draft and then I’ll be
refining it before sending it to my publisher. It has the heroic protagonist
falling for a dastardly thief, which may seem similar at first glance to
Lovesick, but I assure readers, it is anything but. Our hero in this case has
no powers but strives to prove they aren’t necessary to stand up to the
villains threatening his city, even if he is a bit shy, socially awkward, and
unsure how to respond to the advances of the thief he blackmails into helping
him.
How long would you
say it takes you to write a book?
I wrote the first draft of the Lovesick Series, which was
ultimately split into two books, in six months, but I spent another several months
editing. The initial writing process happens very quickly for me, usually a
chapter a week, especially during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) when
I strive for close to 2000 words a day. I can write a 50k book in a month,
usually closer to two months when it’s not NaNo, though often my books are a
little longer than that. My goal is to publish at least one book a year, and
I’ve been veering closer to two lately.
What is your favorite
childhood book?
The Dark is Rising series, specifically The Grey King, which
is the fourth book in the series, but I accidentally read it first when I was
about ten. I later read the whole series from the beginning, but Bran, one of
the main characters in Grey King, remains my favorite. Maybe because of his secret
lineage, his albino coloring that set him apart, being the only Welsh main
character when the other children are English, but it was one of those fantasy
rich series that felt timeless, reading it in the 90s when it was written in
the 50s. It’s very much Harry Potter meets Lord of the Rings long before Harry
Potter existed, and adds in Arthurian legend, which is a weakness of mine.
If you could spend
the day with one of the characters from Lovesick Titans, who would it be?
Please tell us why you chose this particular character, where you would go and
what you would do.
I’d love to spend a day with Mal. He’s the thief with a
heart of gold type, and I describe his neighborhood and how important he is to
the people there (all of which know he’s a famous criminal) very in-depth, so
I’d love to accompany him on his rounds of the local businesses. It looks like
he’s checking in for protection money when he does this, but that’s not how he
works. He honestly cares and checks in to make sure no one needs anything,
isn’t being hassled, etc. In exchange, without ever having to ask, the people
keep an eye out for police and tend to give him gifts, like donuts from the
bakery, etc. I’d love to just accompany Mal while he’s out doing that, meet those
people, get to know him better too, guarded as he usually is with strangers,
and end at his favorite bar to get dinner and a drink before inevitably Danny
would join us.
What was the hardest
scene from Lovesick Titans to write?
There’s a lot of action in this second book, a lot of close
calls and big climactic fights—both physically and verbally. But I think even
more difficult was finding the right balance of emotion, what to say and not
say, when dealing with Danny’s rock bottom moment with his depression and
thoughts of suicide. It’s something we often shy away from talking about, and I
didn’t want to do that. I was very thankful for my editor who also wanted to be
sure I wasn’t avoiding saying the word—suicide—and
just implying it, which is so easy but what also often leads to erasure of the
problems we should feel comfortable discussing and not feel ashamed. So that
was particularly important to get just right and therefore the most
challenging.
What made you want to
become a writer?
I’ve answered this question a lot, often with the same
anecdote, but what it comes down to is wanting to connect with people, wanting
to reach them at their lowest and give them hope, or show them a mirror into
humanity that reminds them of how good life and other people can be. That’s what
reading has always meant to me, so that’s what I want my writing to be for
others and what makes being an author so rewarding.
Just
for fun
(a
Favorite song: Impossible for me, as it changes all the time, I consume too
much music too often, but if I had to choose a song of the moment… “Running
Home to You” performed by Grant Gustin for The Flash musical episode on the CW.
(b
Favorite book: Good Omens
(c
Favorite movie: The Fifth Element
(d
Favorite tv show: Lucifer
(e
Favorite Food: Boneless chicken wings with various sauces but blue cheese
to dip them in
(f
Favorite drink: Dr Pepper
(g
Favorite website: Archive of our Own, though I frequent Tumblr more
Thanks
so much for visiting with us today!
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Amanda
Meuwissen has been writing and posting online for many years, including
maintaining the website and blog for the software company Outsell. She is an
avid writer and consumer of fiction through film, prose, and video games, and
is the author of the paranormal romance trilogy The Incubus Saga and young
adult novel Life as a Teenage Vampire. Amanda lives in Minneapolis, MN, with
her husband, John, and their two cats.
Giveaway:
$25 Amazon/BN GC
Follow the tour and comment; the more you comment, the better your chances of winning.
6 comments:
I very much appreciate getting to find out about another book to read that my family can enjoy. Thanks so much for the info and the giveaway as well.
Love the excerpt!
Thank you so much for the stop and for the great interview questions today.
Thanks for sharing and for the great giveaway!
Are any of the characters in your book based off of real people? Congrats on the release. Bernie Wallace BWallace1980(at)hotmail(d0t)com
What is your favorite book of all time? Congrats on the release. Bernie Wallace BWallace1980(at)hotmail(d0t)com
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