Our guest blogger today is Sarwat Chadda, the author of DEVIL'S KISS and DARK GODDESS, “two novels about the only girl squire in the Knight's Templar. If you like your romance tragic and bloody, and your fairy tales dark and filled with howling wolves, you've come to the right place.” My reviews for both books will be up next week.  Thanks to Disney Hyperion, we’re giving away a set of both DEVIL’S KISS & DARK GODDESS.  See details below. 

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Spooky Cities
by
Sarwat Chadda

I love cities. London. New York. Barcelona. Varanasi. I could go on and on. I have never been to a city I didn’t like. Countryside, for me, is the bit in between you sleep through while you’re on the train.  So, yeah, I have to write urban fantasy.

Devil’s Kiss is set in London, my home city. It’s ancient and modern, spacious with hundreds of parks yet fed through with veins of alleyways and hidden courtyards. It’s been the scene of massacres, of plagues, of coronations and assassinations. It’s been home to royalty, scientists and serial killers.  What’s not to love?

You trend on any street and you’re walking on over two thousand year of history. So ghosts linger and Londoners think nothing of it. It’s the sort of city where people disappear, fall between the cracks, and no-one would ever notice or even care.  It’s beautiful and brutal. Just like Billi’s world.

Billi SanGreal’s a Knight Templar. She’s the first girl ever to enter the order and not all the Templars are particularly happy about it. The Templars have been in London since the 12th Century. The Temple Church still stands in the heart of the city, like it always has. The Templars still control it, like they always have.

Billi’s a reflection of the city. She’s grown up in it and it’s part of her as much as her skin and blood.  She’s a modern 21st Century girl but one who’s been steeped in medieval lore. She can read the ancient Latin inscriptions on the church walls while she tweets her mates from school. She takes the underground to fight the Unholy horrors that crawl out of the forgotten plague pits and necropolis that surround the city.

To me, it’s a given my stories would be set in real places. The fantasy’s stronger the more reality you put into it. By making my nightmares and heroes walk the same streets I walk make the transition from this world into the other so much easier. I’ve seen the alleyways that Jack the Ripper worked. I’ve stood in the place of the Tyburn tree where they once hung children. Wandered lanes where the plague carts rolled and where innocent queens died under the axe.

If Devil’s Kiss is about London, then Dark Goddess is about Moscow. After the first book, I needed to take Billi out of her comfort zone. London’s her home. No matter the danger she’s got family, allies and safe havens here.  Moscow’s different. The scale of it is mindboggling. It’s immense. The underground stations are works of art with crystal chandeliers, bronze statues and gold mosaics. Red Square has a cathedral at one end, the Kremlin at the other, and a huge department store. Religion, war and commerce. Moscow’s almost as old as London but if anything, it’s history is even more bloody and that’s saying something. It’s a city of priests, tsars and gangsters. The churches have golden roofs paid for with blood money.  I do hope you’ll take the time to explore Billi’s world. You won’t forget it.

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Writer of Young Adult fiction and general house-spouse. I did some engineering in an earlier life and worked on the Channel Tunnel. That may be why I always take the ferry. My first book, DEVIL'S KISS, is out in the US, UK, Netherlands, Germany and Japan. The sequel, Dark Goddess, came out in the UK in July, and January in the US.

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Visit Sarwat Chadda online:
Website | Blog | Twitter

Giveaway

One winner will receive the first two books in the Billi SanGreal series: DEVIL’S KISS & DARK GODDESS by Sarwat Chadda

DEVIL’S KISS

Billi SanGreal is the first girl in the Knights Templar, and the most kick ass weapon-wielding heroine around. At fifteen, her life is a rigorous and brutal round of weapons practice, demon killing and occult lore – and a whole lot of bruises. But then, she didn’t have much choice. Her father, the Templar Master, forced her to take this path. There is no sacrifice Arthur will not make in his war against the Unholy. But Billi hates the Order, and she hates him too. Tempted by a chance to live a different kind of life and reject everything her father wants her to be, she learns to her horror that she may unwittingly have brought down the Tenth Plague upon humanity – the death of all first born. Faced with choosing her destiny, she must make sacrifices greater than she could have imagined.

DARK GODDESS

THE DARK GODDESS will take Billi to Russia to rescue Vasilisa, a young girl Billi’s promised to protect. To save her, Billi must defeat the werewolves that serve the witch Baba Yaga – and the Dark Goddess herself.  Baba Yaga is sickened by the destruction and corruption humanity has spread across the natural world. She recognises mankind has become a plague upon the Earth, and her duty is clear: to cleanse the planet and rid it of the pestilence of Man. Billi is sent to stop her, but does she have the right?
Betrayed and alone, Billi faces a final mighty battle in the abandoned ruins of Chernobyl.

GIVEAWAY GUIDELINES

1. Open to US and CA
2. Leave a comment or question for Sarwat
3. Entries must be received by Midnight MST on Saturday Feb 12th

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