BookWenches

Heroes

By Kimberley Troutte

Thank you, Bookwenches for inviting me to be the Author Blogger. I was blown-away by the awesome review Bobby D Whitney wrote about my debut novella, Soul Stealer.

This whole year has blown me off my feet. With two books being released from Samhain Publishing, I’m feeling pretty darn blessed. I’m living my dream while breathing fresh air without a hint of smoke in it. Blue skies have been kind of rare around here lately.

In the past two years, the county where I live has been hit by four, count ‘em four, devastating fires. One fire burned in the backcountry for eight months! The other three burned into the heart of the city taking hundreds of homes and dreams with them. The most recent was contained a few short weeks ago. My house wasn’t in the direct path of the firestorms, still I’ve lived in the area since I was a baby and my heart aches for my neighbors. But no lives were lost. Thank God and firefighters.

Firemen are real-life heroes that we all love. In my book, Soul Stealer, I introduce you to a different kind of hero—one you might not expect to like. Cain is saddled with a soul-shredding, never-ending job as Death. He hates it, but accepts the duty as just punishment. At the dawn of time Cain committed a horrific crime—he killed his brother. Back then, he hadn’t understood the consequences of striking in anger because no one had died on earth before. Now death is all he knows. The last survivor of his family, he is a man without a life, doomed to kill and live forever.

Until he comes to take the soul of the one woman he can’t live without.

Sara has been fighting death her whole life and won’t give up now. She needs two more weeks to finish a homeless shelter before winter sets in and people die on the streets. She makes a bargain with Cain that flips the Natural Order on its head. The two of them rush to finish her legacy before the Powers-That-Be take Sara's soul from the man trying to keep her alive—Death. Throw in a little humor, a few twists, Biblical characters, a race against time, soul-sucking demons and a killer worth saving and you’ve got Soul Stealer.

On August 25, Catch Me in Castile, will be released from Samhain Publishing in e-book format and in print June 2010. It is a paranormal romance/romantic suspense with yummy Spaniards, a deadly family curse, a woman willing to lose her mind for love, a 15^th Century Spanish ghost with memory disorder, and a really mad killer.

The hero in Catch Me is a Spanish surgeon who has his hands full protecting his family from a familial curse and a modern-day psychotic killer. He is the tall, dark, quiet hero who has no business saving anyone and yet can’t stop himself from running headlong into the path of danger and into the arms of an American woman who seems to attract it.

I’m open to discussion about anything—heroes, books, the writing life… I've also brought along a few topics to get the ball rolling:

1)      If Death, in the form of a deadly handsome man, showed up at your doorstep, what would you trade him to live longer?

2)      What character in the Bible would you like to see in a contemporary story?

3)      Catch Me in Castile takes place in Segovia and Salamanca. Have you been there, or anywhere else in Spain?

I look forward to your comments.

Thank you for having me!

Kimberley Troutte
www.kimberleytroutte.com