by Simon Cantan
After a long moment, she realised there was someone waiting nearby. She straightened up and saw a middle-aged woman.
Katie wiped her eyes and tried to smile. “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for the Host of Loki,” the woman said. “I heard there’s a war coming.”
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
In March of 2016, I joined a group on Facebook for fantasy authors. I’d written a fantasy series called Bytarend over the previous few years and wanted to see if there was any way to get more readers through the group. Authors’ groups like those are common on Facebook. There have always been a lot of people who want to be writers for a living, and with traditional publishing on the wane, we have to do our own promotion these days.
In the group, I found out that most of the authors wrote urban/paranormal fantasy and they proposed doing a bundle for that sub-genre. The problem was, while my Bytarend series has shifters, mages that act like vampires, and other assorted monsters, it’s not urban. It’s closer to sword and sorcery than paranormal.
Which meant I needed to write something in the urban fantasy genre. It’s a genre I’ve read a few times, but it’s not one of my favourites. Or at least, that’s what I thought. When I started to consider it, I realised I was letting a stereotype of the genre colour my thoughts.
You see, I loved Buffy, but that’s about as light as it usually gets. There are a lot of urban fantasies that border up on horror that I’ve enjoyed. So I imagined what would happen if the vampires were closer to those in 30 Days of Night. What if the vampires are truly cold and emotionless when it comes to humans?
But I couldn’t just confine myself to a horror, it had to be an urban fantasy. And one thing I’ve always liked about urban fantasy is the idea of doomed romance. That people fall in love with someone they can’t have. And, with what I had planned for my vampires, who worse than a vampire to fall in love with.
That sparked my interest and ended up with the book you hold in your hands today: a story that combines my love of the monstrous with a doomed romance. The bundle Blood Cruel had been written for fell through, but I love writing this book anyway. I have such plans for the sequel, I’m really hoping I can write it. My hope is that enough people enjoy reading this book to tell all their friends ;)
Simon Cantan, 26th August 2016
An avid reader from an early age, Simon Cantan loved to get lost in the worlds that Piers Anthony, Douglas Adams, and others created. When he read Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted at the age of thirteen, he knew he wanted to write, and has been pestering people about it ever since.
Two decades later, Simon has published several books, including the Bytarend, Black Silicon, and Kyra Sarin series. He continues to write science-fiction and fantasy, usually with a humorous slant to it.
More details about Simon and his books can be found at http://SimonCantan.com
