RIVER ROAD
Sentinels of New Orleans, Book 2
by Suzanne Johnson
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Tor Books November 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0765327802
ASIN: B00842H5VI
Hard Cover and E-Book Formats, 336 pages
Word Count: approx. 92,000
Cover Artist: Cliff Nielsen
River Road at Amazon
River Road at B and N
I so enjoy Suzanne's writing. I feel she has really gotten into DJ/Drusilla's head and allowed the character to pour onto the page. The writing is mature with smart, genuine dialogue and relationships. It isn't super snarky but it is often funny.
This is a series I continue to enjoy and which is even getting better as we get to know the characters. ROYAL STREET and RIVER ROAD are musts for fans of the Rachel Morgan series (but without the tomato apocalypse). DJ's life is really getting complicated with other species coming across from the Beyond.
Suzanne has created a very complex infrastructure of agencies and species mainstreaming in a mostly unaware human world. I had a few questions for Suzanne while she is touring with Bewitching Book Tours. Please welcome Suzanne to Fangs, Wands and Fairy Dust!
Hi Suzanne,and welcome back to Fangs, Wands and Fairy Dust. I just have a couple of questions (Tee Hee).
1. Tell us, please, as her creator, does DJ look like the cover model?
I think this is often an issue for readers, ex. recently I saw a lot of complaints about the cover of last summer’s THE IMMORTAL RULES by Julie Kagawa. So, I wonder is it an issue for the author of a book when the cover and the story don’t match? I realize writers have little or no control over the cover.
Suzanne: I was worried about it before I saw the first cover. In fact, when my editor asked what I didn’t want to see on the cover of Royal Street, I had a list: no red or dark hair, no tight leather clothes, no gun, no tramp stamp. DJ is not the typical kickass urban fantasy heroine. And I was very grateful that my editor asked, because I know a lot of authors don’t get input into their covers at all, so it meant a lot.
When I finally saw the cover art, the only thing I asked them to change was DJ’s eye color, and they graciously did so. I thought artist Cliff Nielsen did a great job matching the DJ in my head with the model he used for the Royal Street cover. When the River Road cover came out, Cliff Nielsen had used a different model for DJ—she looks a little younger to me. The DJ in my head looks more like the Royal Street model than the River Road model, but on the whole I like the River Road cover better (did you see the alligator hidden in the lower right quarter?). On the UK covers, the DJ model (same one for both books) is different, but still a good DJ.
After all that, the short answer is: Yes, I’ve been really happy with my covers!
2. Does River Road to hold up on its own or do you feel the series needs to be read in order?
Suzanne: I think River Road stands alone very well, although from this point on in the series, reading in order will be more important. Royal Street gives the reader the grounding of what happens to the preternatural world around New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit: how DJ starts out really naïve and insecure; how DJ and Alex ended up partners, and their relationship’s development; Jean Lafitte’s evolution from enemy to ally; how some of the world of magic works; and how the preternatural world is organized.
But a reader could pick up River Road and catch up quickly. Three years passed between book timelines because I wanted to get my characters past the hurricane and survival mode, which I tried to be very accurate in portraying in that first book. River Road sets the tone for the rest of the series. It has the characters in place, the borders between worlds are down, the Interspecies Council is being formed, and the true fallout of the downed borders starts being felt as the different species begin jockeying for power in the post-Katrina world.
3. I really enjoyed Royal Street, but sadly it is sometime since I read it. Could you explain the world DJ, Alex, and Jake live in?
Suzanne: Yikes! The real question is, can I do it without going on and on and on….
Before Hurricane Katrina, there were two parallel worlds. Our human world, just as we live in it, and the “Beyond,” another world (outside our physical realm) where most preternaturals live, some in their own kingdoms: Elfheim; the Realm of Vampyre; Faerie; the Street of the Gods; etc. Between modern New Orleans and the Beyond is a thin strip of metaphysical space called Old Orleans—think of it as a crazed mirror version of New Orleans where different time periods coexist and species can mingle.
There are also the Historical Undead—formerly famous humans given physical immortality by the magic of human memory. As long as they’re remembered, they live on. The more they’re remembered, the stronger they are. If you or I died, or even one of the wizards like DJ or Gerry, we wouldn’t end up in the Beyond because the few dozen people who might mourn our passing—well, okay, I should just speak for myself, LOL—would not be enough to give us an immortal afterlife.
Humans don’t know preternaturals exist. A few species that can mainstream among humans live among us but keep their true natures hidden. Among those are the wizards. Wizards are the largest and most powerful of the preternaturals (and the best able to mainstream with humans), so for millennia they have been responsible for policing the borders. The wizard border guards are called Sentinels. The other species don’t like the wizards, seeing them as arrogant bullies.
Another species that can mainstream well are the weres and shifters. Werewolves, merpeople (aquatic weres), and even weregators can be found mainstreaming in South Louisiana. Shapeshifters differ from were-creatures in that shifters change instantaneously by magic, are able to shift at will, and are not tied to the cycles of the moon. They generally shift into one specific animal, are born not made, and are pretty rare. Finally, a third member of the shifter/were family—like the criminal cousin no one wants to claim—is the Loup-Garou, which is a shapeshifting legend (also called rougarou) among the old-timers in the Cajun communities. In my world, the Loup-Garou is a rogue werewolf carrying a very contagious curse. He is bigger than a regular werewolf, suffers from very poor impulse control, has anger-management issues, and totally shuns the pack structure. All Loup-Garous are alphas; they don’t play well with others and find it difficult to mainstream.
All of the major prete groups are structured. The elves have the Synod and four clans beneath them, the vampires have Regents, the Fae have the Courts, and the wizards have Elders. We haven’t met all these types of pretes in the books yet.
Wizards skilled in certain kinds of magic can take exams to be certified into one of four congresses. Red Congress wizards do physical magic, and are usually the fighters; Green Congress wizards specialize in ritual magic like potions, spells, and ceremonies; Blue Congress wizards specialize in creative magic, like recreating scenes and doing illusions; and Yellow Congress wizards do mental magic like telepathy and minor divination. In this world, witches are minor mages (often humans with a little magical talent) and much looked down on by wizards. (There are no warlocks, but there can be male witches just as there are female wizards.)
In Royal Street, Hurricane Katrina tears down the borders, or “levees,” between much of the Gulf Coast and the Beyond, especially in New Orleans, and it falls to the New Orleans Sentinels to try and keep order in the city. The senior Sentinel, Gerry St. Simon, goes missing after the storm so the job goes to his protégé, a young wizard named DJ. Since DJ is Green Congress and the Elders don’t trust her shaky physical magic, they assign an Enforcer—basically, an assassin—as her partner. DJ also is the only wizard, as far as we know, to have elven blood on both sides of her family tree, so she has inherited some elven magic that the wizards find troubling.
While DJ and Alex are trying to find Gerry and solve a string of murders, the largest non-wizard preternatural groups begin jockeying for power behind the scenes. We don’t see a lot of them in Royal Street, except to be aware of them making moves in the background, but they begin to assert themselves in River Road and subsequent books. I’m trying to introduce them slowly so this vast multiverse doesn’t get overwhelming.
In Royal Street, we meet the wizards, historical undead, shapeshifers, and Loup-Garou. In River Road, we add the merpeople and a couple of other water species, and get a brief intro to the elves. In Elysian Fields, book three, we’ll meet more species.
4. Since DJ has to have dinner with ‘Undead Jean’ in payment of a debt it got me thinking: If DJ could have dinner with one person living or dead [not Undead] who would it be?
Suzanne: I think she’d go back and have dinner with Gerry, because there are a lot of questions she’d like to ask him. She doesn’t even know whether she has extended family or not. She’d like to know why he made the decisions he did. But Gerry isn’t famous enough to have an afterlife in the Beyond, so that isn’t going to happen. Well, probably not. ☺
As for a living person, she’d loved to have dinner with Benjamin Franklin. How fun would that be?
5. Is Jean LaFitte undead like a vampire? If he lives through belief, is he actually corporeal? Or, in Star Trek TNG terms, is he just a tactile, magically produced holodeck program?
Suzanne: Ah, but our famous French pirate is warm-blooded and indistinguishable from a human, as he keeps trying to convince DJ! He is probably the most famous New Orleanian. Not only is he studied, read about, and remembered, but there are tons of places named after him—the Lafitte Wildlife Refuge, Lafitte National Historical Park, the town of Jean Lafitte, etc. Evoking his name when referring to those places also gives him strength. It’s why he can stay in the modern world for very long periods without going to the Beyond to recharge his batteries, so to speak.
3. Has DJ been in a serious relationship before this weird shifter/loup garou and undead love quadrangle?
Suzanne: DJ grew up very sheltered by Gerry. He home-schooled her in magic and regular subjects. She went to college at Tulane, but was still living with Gerry. She had a couple of flings but really has had very few opportunities for relationships. She had a brief affair with another Green Congress wizard, Dante, while she was studying for her congress license, but it didn’t end well. Her lack of experience is one reason she’s so wide-eyed when it comes to all this sudden attention from guys. Here comes Alex, whose friendship she values too much to get involved with (so far), and Jake, to whom she’s initially attracted because he’s so normal, but now she’s having to rethink that.
There wasn’t ever meant to be a love quadrangle! But Jean Lafitte really caught on with readers and suddenly he became a viable “fourth” that I hadn’t really intended. Once I started looking at him that way, I started having fun with him as a wannabe suitor.
DJ’s romantic dithering will not go on forever, though. In book three, it’s time for her to put up or shut up.
4. With whom would the reader Suzanne versus the author Suzanne like DJ to end up with?
Suzanne: The reader Suzanne would probably be pulling for the French pirate, at least for a while. I mean, he can’t get killed. He’s sexy. He’s entertaining (as long as you don’t mind a little thievery and a mercurial temper). What’s not to love? Oh, yeah, that dead and violent thing. Well, nobody’s perfect!
5. Should DJ learn to swim?
Suzanne: Uh…you think? DJ should learn to swim, and she seriously needs to learn how to aim that staff of hers. My favorite line from River Road is: “Holy crap, I’m burning down the Louisiana wetlands.”
Thanks for having me here today, Steph!
THANK YOU SUZANNE, It was our pleasure (mine and all the blog's readers' too)!!
GIVEAWAY!
TOR sent me a hard cover copy of RIVER ROAD so I could share it with one of my wonderful Readers. Please use the Rafflecopter form to enter. 18 and older and US addresses only. please. 18 and Older only, US only, Goes Through 11/30/2012. Additional rules on form. 11/29 CLARIFICATION to clarify: for an email subscription to count it must be confirmed - without confirmation you are not actually subscribed.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
ANOTHER GIVEAWAY FROM SUZANE VIA HER BEWITCHING BOOKS TOUR!
Prizes are 1. A Choice of Kindle Paperwhite, or a Nook SImple TOuch (Or 100 GC to Amazon, B&N or Book Depository)
2. 5 $10 Gift Cards to Amazon, B&N or Book Depository.
ENTER HERE! http://bewitchingbooktours.blogspot.com/2012/11/now-on-tour-river-road-by-suzanne.html
Short Excerpt from RIVER ROAD
About the Author:
Suzanne Johnson writes urban fantasy and paranormal romance from Auburn, Alabama, after a career in educational publishing that has spanned five states and six universities. She grew up halfway between the Bear Bryant Museum and Elvis' birthplace and lived in New Orleans for fifteen years, so she has a highly refined sense of the absurd and an ingrained love of SEC football and fried gator on a stick.
Website: www.suzanne-johnson.com
Blog: http://suzanne-johnson.blogspot.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Suzanne_Johnson
FB: http://www.facebook.com/Suzanne.Johnson.author
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5046525.Suzanne_Johnson
Publisher Page: http://us.macmillan.com/author/suzannejohnson
by Suzanne Johnson
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Tor Books November 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0765327802
ASIN: B00842H5VI
Hard Cover and E-Book Formats, 336 pages
Word Count: approx. 92,000
Cover Artist: Cliff Nielsen
River Road at Amazon
River Road at B and NBook Description:
Hurricane Katrina is long gone, but the preternatural storm rages on in New Orleans. New species from the Beyond moved into Louisiana after the hurricane destroyed the borders between worlds, and it falls to wizard sentinel Drusilla Jaco and her partner, Alex Warin, to keep the preternaturals peaceful and the humans unaware. But a war is brewing between two clans of Cajun merpeople in Plaquemines Parish, and down in the swamp, DJ learns, there’s more stirring than angry mermen and the threat of a were-gator.
Wizards are dying, and something—or someone—from the Beyond is poisoning the waters of the mighty Mississippi, threatening the humans who live and work along the river. DJ and Alex must figure out what unearthly source is contaminating the water and who—or what—is killing the wizards. Is it a malcontented merman, the naughty nymph, or some other critter altogether? After all, DJ’s undead suitor, the pirate Jean Lafitte, knows his way around a body or two.
It’s anything but smooth sailing on the bayou as the Sentinels of New Orleans series continues. Bewitching Book Tours Materials
I so enjoy Suzanne's writing. I feel she has really gotten into DJ/Drusilla's head and allowed the character to pour onto the page. The writing is mature with smart, genuine dialogue and relationships. It isn't super snarky but it is often funny.
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| http://bewitchingbooktours.blogspot.com |
This is a series I continue to enjoy and which is even getting better as we get to know the characters. ROYAL STREET and RIVER ROAD are musts for fans of the Rachel Morgan series (but without the tomato apocalypse). DJ's life is really getting complicated with other species coming across from the Beyond.
Suzanne has created a very complex infrastructure of agencies and species mainstreaming in a mostly unaware human world. I had a few questions for Suzanne while she is touring with Bewitching Book Tours. Please welcome Suzanne to Fangs, Wands and Fairy Dust!
Hi Suzanne,and welcome back to Fangs, Wands and Fairy Dust. I just have a couple of questions (Tee Hee).
1. Tell us, please, as her creator, does DJ look like the cover model?
I think this is often an issue for readers, ex. recently I saw a lot of complaints about the cover of last summer’s THE IMMORTAL RULES by Julie Kagawa. So, I wonder is it an issue for the author of a book when the cover and the story don’t match? I realize writers have little or no control over the cover.
Suzanne: I was worried about it before I saw the first cover. In fact, when my editor asked what I didn’t want to see on the cover of Royal Street, I had a list: no red or dark hair, no tight leather clothes, no gun, no tramp stamp. DJ is not the typical kickass urban fantasy heroine. And I was very grateful that my editor asked, because I know a lot of authors don’t get input into their covers at all, so it meant a lot.
When I finally saw the cover art, the only thing I asked them to change was DJ’s eye color, and they graciously did so. I thought artist Cliff Nielsen did a great job matching the DJ in my head with the model he used for the Royal Street cover. When the River Road cover came out, Cliff Nielsen had used a different model for DJ—she looks a little younger to me. The DJ in my head looks more like the Royal Street model than the River Road model, but on the whole I like the River Road cover better (did you see the alligator hidden in the lower right quarter?). On the UK covers, the DJ model (same one for both books) is different, but still a good DJ.
After all that, the short answer is: Yes, I’ve been really happy with my covers!
2. Does River Road to hold up on its own or do you feel the series needs to be read in order?
Suzanne: I think River Road stands alone very well, although from this point on in the series, reading in order will be more important. Royal Street gives the reader the grounding of what happens to the preternatural world around New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit: how DJ starts out really naïve and insecure; how DJ and Alex ended up partners, and their relationship’s development; Jean Lafitte’s evolution from enemy to ally; how some of the world of magic works; and how the preternatural world is organized.
But a reader could pick up River Road and catch up quickly. Three years passed between book timelines because I wanted to get my characters past the hurricane and survival mode, which I tried to be very accurate in portraying in that first book. River Road sets the tone for the rest of the series. It has the characters in place, the borders between worlds are down, the Interspecies Council is being formed, and the true fallout of the downed borders starts being felt as the different species begin jockeying for power in the post-Katrina world.
3. I really enjoyed Royal Street, but sadly it is sometime since I read it. Could you explain the world DJ, Alex, and Jake live in?
Suzanne: Yikes! The real question is, can I do it without going on and on and on….
Before Hurricane Katrina, there were two parallel worlds. Our human world, just as we live in it, and the “Beyond,” another world (outside our physical realm) where most preternaturals live, some in their own kingdoms: Elfheim; the Realm of Vampyre; Faerie; the Street of the Gods; etc. Between modern New Orleans and the Beyond is a thin strip of metaphysical space called Old Orleans—think of it as a crazed mirror version of New Orleans where different time periods coexist and species can mingle.
There are also the Historical Undead—formerly famous humans given physical immortality by the magic of human memory. As long as they’re remembered, they live on. The more they’re remembered, the stronger they are. If you or I died, or even one of the wizards like DJ or Gerry, we wouldn’t end up in the Beyond because the few dozen people who might mourn our passing—well, okay, I should just speak for myself, LOL—would not be enough to give us an immortal afterlife.
Humans don’t know preternaturals exist. A few species that can mainstream among humans live among us but keep their true natures hidden. Among those are the wizards. Wizards are the largest and most powerful of the preternaturals (and the best able to mainstream with humans), so for millennia they have been responsible for policing the borders. The wizard border guards are called Sentinels. The other species don’t like the wizards, seeing them as arrogant bullies.
Another species that can mainstream well are the weres and shifters. Werewolves, merpeople (aquatic weres), and even weregators can be found mainstreaming in South Louisiana. Shapeshifters differ from were-creatures in that shifters change instantaneously by magic, are able to shift at will, and are not tied to the cycles of the moon. They generally shift into one specific animal, are born not made, and are pretty rare. Finally, a third member of the shifter/were family—like the criminal cousin no one wants to claim—is the Loup-Garou, which is a shapeshifting legend (also called rougarou) among the old-timers in the Cajun communities. In my world, the Loup-Garou is a rogue werewolf carrying a very contagious curse. He is bigger than a regular werewolf, suffers from very poor impulse control, has anger-management issues, and totally shuns the pack structure. All Loup-Garous are alphas; they don’t play well with others and find it difficult to mainstream.
All of the major prete groups are structured. The elves have the Synod and four clans beneath them, the vampires have Regents, the Fae have the Courts, and the wizards have Elders. We haven’t met all these types of pretes in the books yet.
Wizards skilled in certain kinds of magic can take exams to be certified into one of four congresses. Red Congress wizards do physical magic, and are usually the fighters; Green Congress wizards specialize in ritual magic like potions, spells, and ceremonies; Blue Congress wizards specialize in creative magic, like recreating scenes and doing illusions; and Yellow Congress wizards do mental magic like telepathy and minor divination. In this world, witches are minor mages (often humans with a little magical talent) and much looked down on by wizards. (There are no warlocks, but there can be male witches just as there are female wizards.)
In Royal Street, Hurricane Katrina tears down the borders, or “levees,” between much of the Gulf Coast and the Beyond, especially in New Orleans, and it falls to the New Orleans Sentinels to try and keep order in the city. The senior Sentinel, Gerry St. Simon, goes missing after the storm so the job goes to his protégé, a young wizard named DJ. Since DJ is Green Congress and the Elders don’t trust her shaky physical magic, they assign an Enforcer—basically, an assassin—as her partner. DJ also is the only wizard, as far as we know, to have elven blood on both sides of her family tree, so she has inherited some elven magic that the wizards find troubling.
While DJ and Alex are trying to find Gerry and solve a string of murders, the largest non-wizard preternatural groups begin jockeying for power behind the scenes. We don’t see a lot of them in Royal Street, except to be aware of them making moves in the background, but they begin to assert themselves in River Road and subsequent books. I’m trying to introduce them slowly so this vast multiverse doesn’t get overwhelming.
In Royal Street, we meet the wizards, historical undead, shapeshifers, and Loup-Garou. In River Road, we add the merpeople and a couple of other water species, and get a brief intro to the elves. In Elysian Fields, book three, we’ll meet more species.
4. Since DJ has to have dinner with ‘Undead Jean’ in payment of a debt it got me thinking: If DJ could have dinner with one person living or dead [not Undead] who would it be?
Suzanne: I think she’d go back and have dinner with Gerry, because there are a lot of questions she’d like to ask him. She doesn’t even know whether she has extended family or not. She’d like to know why he made the decisions he did. But Gerry isn’t famous enough to have an afterlife in the Beyond, so that isn’t going to happen. Well, probably not. ☺
As for a living person, she’d loved to have dinner with Benjamin Franklin. How fun would that be?
5. Is Jean LaFitte undead like a vampire? If he lives through belief, is he actually corporeal? Or, in Star Trek TNG terms, is he just a tactile, magically produced holodeck program?
Suzanne: Ah, but our famous French pirate is warm-blooded and indistinguishable from a human, as he keeps trying to convince DJ! He is probably the most famous New Orleanian. Not only is he studied, read about, and remembered, but there are tons of places named after him—the Lafitte Wildlife Refuge, Lafitte National Historical Park, the town of Jean Lafitte, etc. Evoking his name when referring to those places also gives him strength. It’s why he can stay in the modern world for very long periods without going to the Beyond to recharge his batteries, so to speak.
3. Has DJ been in a serious relationship before this weird shifter/loup garou and undead love quadrangle?
Suzanne: DJ grew up very sheltered by Gerry. He home-schooled her in magic and regular subjects. She went to college at Tulane, but was still living with Gerry. She had a couple of flings but really has had very few opportunities for relationships. She had a brief affair with another Green Congress wizard, Dante, while she was studying for her congress license, but it didn’t end well. Her lack of experience is one reason she’s so wide-eyed when it comes to all this sudden attention from guys. Here comes Alex, whose friendship she values too much to get involved with (so far), and Jake, to whom she’s initially attracted because he’s so normal, but now she’s having to rethink that.
There wasn’t ever meant to be a love quadrangle! But Jean Lafitte really caught on with readers and suddenly he became a viable “fourth” that I hadn’t really intended. Once I started looking at him that way, I started having fun with him as a wannabe suitor.
DJ’s romantic dithering will not go on forever, though. In book three, it’s time for her to put up or shut up.
4. With whom would the reader Suzanne versus the author Suzanne like DJ to end up with?
Suzanne: The reader Suzanne would probably be pulling for the French pirate, at least for a while. I mean, he can’t get killed. He’s sexy. He’s entertaining (as long as you don’t mind a little thievery and a mercurial temper). What’s not to love? Oh, yeah, that dead and violent thing. Well, nobody’s perfect!
5. Should DJ learn to swim?
Suzanne: Uh…you think? DJ should learn to swim, and she seriously needs to learn how to aim that staff of hers. My favorite line from River Road is: “Holy crap, I’m burning down the Louisiana wetlands.”
Thanks for having me here today, Steph!
THANK YOU SUZANNE, It was our pleasure (mine and all the blog's readers' too)!!
GIVEAWAY!
TOR sent me a hard cover copy of RIVER ROAD so I could share it with one of my wonderful Readers. Please use the Rafflecopter form to enter. 18 and older and US addresses only. please. 18 and Older only, US only, Goes Through 11/30/2012. Additional rules on form. 11/29 CLARIFICATION to clarify: for an email subscription to count it must be confirmed - without confirmation you are not actually subscribed.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
ANOTHER GIVEAWAY FROM SUZANE VIA HER BEWITCHING BOOKS TOUR!
Prizes are 1. A Choice of Kindle Paperwhite, or a Nook SImple TOuch (Or 100 GC to Amazon, B&N or Book Depository)
2. 5 $10 Gift Cards to Amazon, B&N or Book Depository.
ENTER HERE! http://bewitchingbooktours.blogspot.com/2012/11/now-on-tour-river-road-by-suzanne.html
Short Excerpt from RIVER ROAD
The minute hand of the ornate grandfather clock crept like a gator stuck in swamp mud. I’d been watching it for half an hour, nursing a fizzy cocktail from my perch inside the Hotel Monteleone. The plaque on the enormous clock claimed it had been hand- carved of mahogany in 1909, about 130 years after the birth of the undead pirate waiting for me upstairs.
They were both quite handsome, but the clock was a lot safer.
The infamous Jean Lafitte had expected me at seven. He’d summoned me to his French Quarter hotel suite by courier like I was one of his early nineteenth-century wenches, and I hated to destroy his pirate-king delusions, but the historical undead don’t summon wizards. We summon them.
I’d have blown him off if my boss on the Congress of Elders hadn’t ordered me to comply and my co-sentinel, Alex, hadn’t claimed a prior engagement.
At seven thirty, I abandoned my drink, took a deep breath, and marched through the lobby toward the bank of elevators.
On the long dead-man-walking stroll down the carpeted hallway, I imagined all the horrible requests Jean might make. He’d saved my life a few years ago, after Hurricane Katrina sent the city into freefall, and I hadn’t seen him since. I’d been desperate at the time. I might have promised him unfettered access to modern New Orleans in exchange for his assistance. I might have promised him a place to live. I might have promised him things I don’t even remember. In other words, I might be totally screwed.
I reached the door of the Eudora Welty Suite and knocked, reflecting that Jean Lafitte probably had no idea who Eudora Welty was, and wouldn’t like her if he did. Ms. Welty had been a modern sort of woman who wouldn’t hop to attention when summoned by a scoundrel.
He didn’t answer immediately. I’d made him wait, after all, and Jean lived in a tit- for- tat world. I paused a few breaths and knocked harder. Finally, he flung open the door, waving me inside to a suite plush with tapestries of peach and royal blue, thick carpet that swallowed the narrow heels of my pumps, and a plasma TV he couldn’t possibly know how to operate. What a waste.
“You have many assets, Drusilla, but apparently a respect for time is not among them.” Deep, disapproving voice, French accent, broad shoulders encased in a red linen shirt, long dark hair pulled back into a tail, eyes such a cobalt blue they bordered on navy. And technically speaking, dead.
He was as sexy as ever.
About the Author:
Suzanne Johnson writes urban fantasy and paranormal romance from Auburn, Alabama, after a career in educational publishing that has spanned five states and six universities. She grew up halfway between the Bear Bryant Museum and Elvis' birthplace and lived in New Orleans for fifteen years, so she has a highly refined sense of the absurd and an ingrained love of SEC football and fried gator on a stick.
Website: www.suzanne-johnson.com
Blog: http://suzanne-johnson.blogspot.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Suzanne_Johnson
FB: http://www.facebook.com/Suzanne.Johnson.author
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5046525.Suzanne_Johnson
Publisher Page: http://us.macmillan.com/author/suzannejohnson
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