Angel Martinez is visiting the clubhouse for a chat about being an author and to share an excerpt from her re-release, Lime Gelatin and Other Monsters. We also reviewed it here!
Publisher: Pride Publishing
Author: Angel Martinez
Cover Artist: Emmy Ellis
Length: 30,000 words
Format: ebook
Release Date: pre-order 7/5/16, Pride store release 7/19/16, General release 8/16/16
Pairing: M/M
Price: $4.50
Blurb
Kyle Monroe’s encounter with a strange gelatinous creature in an alley leaves him scarred and forever changed, revealing odd abilities he wishes he didn’t have and earning him reassignment to a precinct where all the cops have defective paranormal abilities.
Just as he’s starting to adjust to his fellow misfit squad mates, Kyle’s new partner arrives. Tall, physically perfect, reserved, and claiming he has no broken psychic talents, Vikash Soren irritates Kyle in every way. But as much as he’d like to hate Vikash, Kyle finds himself oddly drawn to him, their non-abilities meshing in unexpected ways. If they can learn to work together, they might be able to stop the mysterious killer who has been leaving mutilated bodies along the banks of the Schuylkill.
Series Info
Offbeat Crimes:
Every region has them, but no police department talks about them—the weird crimes, the encounters with creatures out of nightmares. The 77th Precincts exist in certain cities to handle paranormal crime and containment, usually staffed with experienced officers exhibiting psychic abilities.
In Philadelphia, through an odd mix of budget issues and circumstance, the 77th is manned entirely by officers with bizarre or severely limited psychic talents. The firestarter who can’t get a spark when it’s humid. The vampire who can’t drink whole blood. These are the stories of the misfits, the outcasts from even the strangeness of the paranormal community. Call them freaks, but they’re police officers first, serving and protecting, even if their methods aren’t always normal procedure.
Excerpt
Kyle sat up straighter, shifting to see between the heads in front of him. Soren looked like a poster boy for the model police officer, tall and straight, uniform crisp and sharp. He stood at parade rest beside the lieutenant impassively surveying his new colleagues. A little knot of resentment lodged in Kyle’s stomach. At his own introduction to the Seventy-seventh, he’d been nervous and fidgety, freaked out by the collection of…freaks. How can he be so calm?
“Officer Soren transferred from the Harrisburg PD—”
“Don’t they have enough freaky shit of their own up there?” Wolf called out in his rasping growl.
“—since Harrisburg is in our jurisdiction,” she continued with a quelling glance. “He’ll start out partnered with Monroe.”
“What does he do, ma’am? That it’s safe to put him with Kirby, er, Kyle?” Shira Lourdes asked as she flicked nervous glances across the room at Kyle. An empty chair slid away from her and fell over. Her partner, Greg Santos, shook his head and righted the unfortunate piece of furniture.
“Officer Soren’s abilities are his business, which he may or may not choose to share if you ask. And don’t bully him about it either, any of you.” Lieutenant Dunfee swept the room again, pinning each of her officers with her needle-laser gaze like captive butterflies. “Monroe, my office after briefing. Info on your current case.”
She dismissed them, stalking from the room with thunderclouds in her eyes. Kyle found himself approaching the new guy and trying his best not to be awkward. Did he offer to shake hands? Was it safe? Would the guy flinch like so many people did at the sight of Kyle’s scarred hands? Soren was even taller up close, six-foot-three of lean inscrutability, his blue eyes startlingly bright against smoky bronze skin.
“Um, hi, I’m Kyle Monroe.” Kyle fidgeted when Soren didn’t offer his hand either. “You’re with me, I guess. I’ll show you our spot in the squad room.”
Soren followed him silently and Kyle was starting to wonder if he was like Krisk in the not-speaking department until he finally spoke in a smooth, soft baritone, making Kyle startle and miss a step. “Why do they call you Kirby?”
“You’d hear it sooner or later, I guess.” Kyle shrugged. “It’s this thing I do, absorbing other people’s talents temporarily. If they’re close to me. Or touch me. Like Kirby, the little pink dude in the video game.”
“Ah.”
Just that? Soren didn’t edge away, or change expression at all. Was he made of stone? “It’s a thing. Everyone here has a thing.”
After a few more steps, Soren asked, “Always?”
“What…oh, was I always like this? Who knows? I mean, maybe I’ve picked up stray thoughts or something, but no. It’s pretty recent. Knowing that I do this.”
Kyle took a wide arc around Vance as he entered the squad room, pointing to the double desk in the far corner, well removed from everyone else. “That’s ours. Coffee’s over there, but you might not want that coffee. Let me grab my file and we’ll go see the lieutenant.”
“So what’s your story, Soren?” Vance called across the squad room. “What flies your freak flag?”
“Yeah, what do you do?” Jeff Gatling stopped ’porting his banana from one corner of his desk to the other.
“I don’t really do anything,” Soren answered as he hefted the empty coffee pot. “Guess I’ll make fresh since I’m the new guy.”
He opened the top to remove the filter and every human voice in the squad room yelled out, “No!”
Most people would have startled, maybe dropped the carafe. Soren just blinked at the roomful of people gesturing wildly. He took the filter out and emptied it over the trashcan. “Why not?”
“You don’t want to do that.” Kyle stayed by his desk, a nice safe distance from the coffee station. “That’s Larry’s job.”
“Larry’s not keeping up then.”
The container of sweetener packets began to rattle. It shivered across the counter and leaped to a messy end, ceramic shards skittering across the floor. The desk that Krisk and Wolf shared rose from the floor several inches and slammed back down. Wolf fled with a squeaking yelp just before the desk flipped on its side.
Soren glanced toward Kyle. “Larry’s not a cop, is he?”
“He is…he was! A dead cop. Larry’s a ghost. He gets ticked if anyone else makes the coffee. Put the stuff back, please!”
“Larry?” Soren raised his voice but to all appearances remained completely unruffled. “I’m new here. I’m very sorry I invaded your jurisdiction. See? I’m putting the carafe back. Closing the top. Are we good, Larry?”
A breeze ruffled through a stack of papers, but no further mayhem ensued. The carafe slid from its pad on the coffeemaker and floated to the water cooler where Larry, who never manifested in a visible form, whistled tunelessly while he filled the carafe.
From his dim corner of the room, Carrington said in his dry, genteel way, “Welcome to the Island of Misfit Freaks.”
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The Five Worst Things About Being an Author
- The question "What do you write?"
OK, I know you're not really asking because you're interested, person at party, hair stylist, or family member who doesn't live with me. You're asking so you can either follow that up with "Anything I've heard of?" or to tell me you've never seen my work in a bookstore. Alternatively, you could just be waiting to pounce and tell me all about the novel you've been thinking about writing for the past ten years but never got around to. I'm sure it will be great and a best seller once you write it. I say that with all sincerity. Really. Stop looking at me like that.
- The brain demons
Brain demons live in every writer's head. They are some strange defense mechanism put there by our primitive hindbrain because it becomes concerned that we're spending too much time making words and not enough time doing things to sustain life. Like eating. The brain demons will convince you that you must, absolutely must, do other things besides writing. That snack is suddenly terribly urgent, as is the unfolded laundry, and the stain on the counter that you haven't been able to get out for the last six years.
- Exterior distractions
These are the distant relations to brain demons, the kind that came to stay for a couple of days to sleep on your brain's couch until they could get back on their feet but they never even try to get a job and just slouch there on the brain couch all day eating chips. They can range from the neighbors' lawn machines, one of the greatest contributors to writer hair loss, to the writer's own spawn who have a knack for knowing just when a sentence is coming together. The perfect timing of an ear-piercing shriek for parental assistance is an art form that few appreciate fully.
- Plot Bunnies
When you're first starting out, plot bunnies are a welcome addition to the family. The new author is relieved that they've arrived and everyone thinks they're so cute! While the relationship between plot bunny and fiction writer is a vital symbiosis, there is no birth control for these vermin. Once you start rolling with stories, they will continue to multiply until they occupy most of the floor space. If a writer neglects to institute some sort of tagging program to identify the ones that will actually help writing the next story, the writer risks being drowned in partial manuscripts and three-sentence startups that go nowhere. Plus, the fur gets everywhere.
- The Internet
If used properly, the internet can be heaven sent for a writer. No more needing to run to a hundred different sources to find out how tall a traffic light is and how high it's usually suspended above the street for when it falls on a character. It's all there at the writer's fingertips. However, the internet is not what it seems. It is not a shining beacon of shared knowledge and connectivity. No. It is an evil denizen of hell, sent to drag the writer through sneak-attack time warps. The writer goes down that rabbit hole for information and seven Huffpost articles, three Facebook postings, several sites on DeviantArt and twelve YouTube videos of cats and songs the writer hasn't heard in years later? The entire afternoon is gone. *fwip* Just like that. The internet's evil has swept it away. Garlic worn around the neck, chanting to certain dragon gods and possibly a small blood sacrifice will prevent this, but no one will confirm or deny it.
So why would anyone subject themselves to such a life? Because we can't help it, crazy sods that we are, and because we know there are readers on the other end who might actually read this stuff. And for that, we would walk over glass.
Author Bio
The unlikely black sheep of an ivory tower intellectual family, Angel Martinez has managed to make her way through life reasonably unscathed. Despite a wildly misspent youth, she snagged a degree in English Lit, married once and did it right the first time, gave birth to one amazing son, and realized at some point that she could get paid for writing.
Published since 2006, Angel's cynical heart cloaks a desperate romantic. You'll find drama and humor given equal weight in her writing and don't expect sad endings. Life is sad enough.
She currently lives in Delaware in a drinking town with a college problem and writes Science Fiction and Fantasy centered around gay heroes.
Author Links:
Website: angelmartinezauthor.weebly.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/amartinez2
Twitter: @AngelMartinezrr
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/angelwritesmm
Email (if you want it to be included): angelmartinezauthor@gmail.com
Oh, that's good! And so true!
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