The Devil's Bargain - a new series by Terri Garey!

The dark side is calling, and it's hard to resist... particularly when it appears in the form of a smokin' hot guy wearing tight jeans and a leather jacket! I'm thrilled to announce a brand-new series based on my favorite bad boy from the Nicki Styx series, Sammy (Satan) Divine! Here's the official announcement from Publisher's Weekly:

The Devil's Bargain trilogy, a spin-off of Rita Award-winning Terri Garey's Nicki Styx series, featuring the ultimate fallen angel, Sammy (Satan) Divine, and the souls of three lost women, again to Erika Tsang at Avon by Annelise Robey and Christina Hogrebe at Jane Rotrosen Agency. (World English)

Yes, the Nicki Styx series continues with a deeper look into the dark side as the world's most diabolical bad boy takes on the job for which he was originally created... that of a guardian angel. Blond-haired, blue-eyed and sinfully sexy, Sammy is hotter than Hell, and lives there, too. Once divine, now cast down, forever blamed for the seduction of Eve and the destruction of Paradise, the angel once known as Samael has his own version of mankind's fall from grace, believing temptation goes both ways. For centuries he's made it his business to lurk the shadows, wreaking havoc in the lives of humans.

Now offered a chance to step into the Light, will he take it, or remain forever trapped by the darkness he himself created?

No, that's not Sammy's picture above, but it's a very good likeness of Finn, who'll you'll also meet in this upcoming series! Those of you who are familiar with the character of Sammy Divine know that he looks a bit more like Simon Baker from The Mentalist, only hotter, with some Billy Idol thrown in. :-) Sammy doesn't like to share the spotlight with anyone, so sparks may fly!

Having always been fascinated by legends and stories surrounding Satan's Biblical fall from grace, I'm excited to be able to tell it from a whole new perspective, from the side of the arrogant fallen angel whose lust for the flesh led him to defy his creator. In The Devil's Bargain, I'll get to delve more deeply into Sammy's world: Where does he go when he's not tempting or tormenting Nicki Styx? Who (and what) are the creatures that surround him in his kingdom of darkness?

Even more intriguing, how do they feel when their Dark Prince is the one being tempted?

I hope you'll enjoy reading more about Sammy, Finn and a host of other interesting characters when the first book in this new series, The Devil's Bargain, is released in 2010!

Zombies Need Love, Too (apparently)

You may have heard about a book that's evidently pretty popular right now, called PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES, which is billed as: "The Classic Regency Romance - Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!". (Talk about your classic twist, hm?)

At any rate, the success of this book has apparently re-animated the formerly dead genre - ok, that was bad! :-) - of zombie romance. Yes, boys and ghouls, some publishers are apparently looking for zombie love stories, as evidenced by this call from the editor of an electronic press called Ravenous Romance: http://ravenousromance.blogspot.com/2009/07/call-for-zombie-love.html (Big honking disclaimer: I do not write for Ravenous Romance, I know very little about Ravenous Romance, and this is not a plug for Ravenous Romance. I just found it interesting, and thought I'd share.)

So, as I read this call for romantic tales of the living dead, I took a moment to imagine how in the world one could mix love with lividity, and came up with this short little tale I like to call:

LOVE STINKS, AND SO DOES YOUR BREATH by Terri Garey

“Is that a femur in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”

Donna snuggled in closer to Derek, brushing the dark hair from his eyes with one hand. Unfortunately, a clump of it remained in her fingers, and she knew this particular boy toy’s time was limited. That was the problem with zombies—their shelf life was much too short, the pesky problem of decomposition being one she hadn’t solved yet.

Even embalming didn’t help, and she didn’t care for waxy buildup on her fingers any more than she did her floors.

“Brought you a present,” Derek murmured, with a lopsided grin, “for our two-week anniversary.” His breath reeked of blood and sausages, which made sense considering his job at the local meat packing plant. With a flourish, he whipped a hand from behind his back, and offered her his prize.

“How sweet,” Donna squealed. “It’s a heart!”

“Yeah, baby,” he answered smugly, blood dripping between his fingers. “A fresh one. Nothing but the best for my girl.”

“Awww,” Donna said, “I got you a present, too.” She let go of him long enough snatch her purse up from the bed. Digging inside, she brought up an object about three inches long. Picking off a piece of lint before handing it to him, she announced, “I usually wait at least a month before giving my boyfriend the finger!”

Derek and Donna both died laughing, which was long overdue, considering Donna had been dead for two centuries, and Derek for two weeks.

She eyed him with regret as she giggled, knowing his laughter would soon be a thing of the past, much like Horatio’s, the guy who’d gotten her into this fix. It had been Horatio’s idea to visit the cemetery in Edinburgh that night two hundred years ago. Bodysnatching had been a good way to earn some quick cash back then, unless your body happened to be the one that got snatched, of course.

Poor Horatio, she’d known him well, until that shovel had come out of nowhere, and smashed his head in. The doctor who’d done it hadn’t hit her hard enough, though, and she’d woken up in his laboratory to find him on top of her. After that, what was a ghoul to do except defend herself? It was only after she’d killed the doc with his own dirt-encrusted shovel that she’d found the secret book lying on his desk, in plain sight, and learned the ancient grimoire’s secrets about how to reanimate the dead.

“Hey, baby,” Derek said, interrupting her musings. “I got a perfectly good boner going to waste here.” He grabbed her hips and pulled her close again. “What say we get naked and put it to good use, hm?”

Donna smiled. She’d learned a few secrets about herself that night, too, including how her brush with death and her newfound ability to reanimate dead flesh left her with a taste for more of it. Immortality had cost her soul, but she was pretty sure she didn’t need it where she was going.

“Absolutely,” she answered, with a smile that revealed her own teeth, pearly white and perfect. Her eyes glowed red as she began to tug his shirt from his pants. “No use letting a good piece of meat go to waste."

Yes, I have a weird sense of humor, but if you didn't know that by now, then welcome to my world. :-)

Life Is Strange, and Then You Die

Ok, I apologize for the weird blog title, but that's a bit how I feel today.

I woke up this morning to a front page article in the Sunday paper about a big, multi-author booksigning I attended recently, where I and my fellow authors were interviewed for the local newspaper (see post below). While the article itself was all about the fact that book sales of the type I write are booming, and that authors like me are not only normal people, but can make a decent living at what we do, the lead-in photo was of a plus, plus-size woman in a muu-muu holding a bunch of books and wad of cash.

I apologize, anonymous woman in the photo, for what I'm about to say, but this was a plus-size tactic designed to not only draw the eye, but to denigrate what I do for a living by implying that the only people who read what I write are overweight, lonely, and can't "get any" any other way except reading about it. And that, quite frankly, troubles me.

I could go off on a rant about the statistics (which quite frankly, are impressive). I could point out that I am neither overweight, nor wear a muu-muu (which if I did, would have nothing to do with my writing ability, or my taste in reading material. Oh, and I get plenty, thank you very much, as do many others like me who value love and genuine feeling over the occasional, meaningless sexual hook-up.) I could also point out of that if the photo were of, say... Angelina Jolie... holding a bunch of books and a wad of cash, the tone of the article would be competely different even though the words written were exactly the same.

I'm a writer. I know the value of a well-placed word or photograph, and that photograph ruined the whole point of the article. It made what would have been a "high", into a "low".

And then there was the afternoon, which fell along the same lines. I got together with an old friend from high school, who I was thrilled to hear from. We had a wonderful time catching up about our families and our life experiences, who we'd kept up with and who we hadn't, and the years rolled away as though they'd never been.

Except that during the course of our conversation, I learned that all these years, my friend had been operating under a major misconception about me. An unflattering misconception, that I'd been completely unaware of. Worse yet, one of those misconceptions that not only had I been unable to defend, but even today - when I did - never goes away, because hey... once that seed's been planted, it's kind of hard to uproot.

Kind of like the misconception that romance is only for plus-sized women in muu-muus who can't "get any" any other way.

At any rate, I don't mean to imply that I had anything other than a wonderful time with my friend, because I did. Eye-opening, a little bit "WTF?" but wonderful. :-) She deserves an award for contacting me after all this time given the fact she was operating under such a major misconception, and my hat's off to her.

The article in the newspaper? Not so much.

A Video Excerpt for Tampa Bay Online

DISCLAIMER: I had no time to rehearse for this, and reading an excerpt of your own work on camera is harder than you think! :-) (I'm also unclear as to why every time I'm in a video, the stillframe always shows me with a goofy expression on my face!)

At a booksigning last month, Tampa Tribune reporter Rich Mullins asked if he could make a video of me reading aloud from my current release, You're the One That I Haunt.

Here's the result: http://tiny.cc/b5WtV

Rich was doing a story on how sales of romance novels have risen, while book sales in general have declined (take that! o-ye-literary snobs!), which will appear in this week's Sunday paper. Sex sells, as do hopes of happily-ever-afters, silver linings, hot hunks, and the dream of finding your soul mate - who, after having met you - decides that no other woman will do.

I ask you, is that so wrong? I think not. (Particularly if there are ghosts, sexy devils and evil spirits involved, but no actual danger to you, the reader.)

Anyway, I'll put away my soapbox for now, and hope you enjoy this little glimpse into my little world. (And hey, it ain't Hollywood. If it was, the lighting would've been better!) :-)

Win An Advance Reader Copy of Silent Night, Haunted Night!

Advance Reader Copies of Book #4 in the Nicki Styx series, Silent Night, Haunted Night are now available! This is the first book not to feature Nicki on the cover, but somehow I just don't seem to mind! :-) If you're familiar with the series (and I hope you are!) you'll recognize this hunk of burnin' love as none other than Joe Bascombe, Nicki's main squeeze. Joe plays a bigger role in this book than he has in the past, so he got his own cover! Here's a little blurb about the book:

All I haunt for Christmas is you...

Joe Bascombe is no stranger to desire, but when a sexy spirit begins haunting his dreams, he finds himself ensnared by dark passions. What he doesn't realize is that the devious demon and her two sisters, otherwise known as the Three Fates, are out to teach the woman he loves a lesson...

Unwilling psychic Nicki Styx survived a near-death experience to find herself able to see and hear the dead, but she only has eyes for Joe. Together they've conquered evil spirits, saved lost souls, and beaten back the Devil himself, but they're about to learn that there are more things in Heaven and Hell than they ever imagined. As far as Nicki is concerned, Joe is the man of her dreams, but now they're at the mercy of the creature who's invaded his.

It'll be a Christmas to remember... and it could be Joe and Nicki's last.

The book itself won't be release to bookstores until October 27th, 2009 but you can find out what happens before anyone else! All you have to do to be entered to win an autographed ARC is to go to my Contest Excerpt Page and correctly answer the question:

What was Joe wearing? :-)

Then send me an EMAIL* with the answer.

Drawing will be held August 31st, 2009.

(*Entering this contest will automatically add you to my quarterly newsletter list, to keep you informed of new releases.)