Interview & Giveaway with Marcus James

Now available to purchase on Amazon from Candiano Books is the erotic supernatural romance Rise of the Nephilim: A Blackmoore Prequel by Marcus James.

LOS ANGELES, summer of 1987.

Kathryn Blackmoore, the 26 year old heir to Blackmoore World Corp. and the future matriarch of the Blackmoore dynasty of witches has fled the haunted old monied neighborhood of South Hill in Bellingham, Washington looking to trade in a century of rumors, superstition, and her own heartache for the sun, sex, and music of the Sunset Strip.

Taking up residence in the famed and decaying Chateau Marmont hotel, Kathryn quickly finds herself in an erotic and thrilling journey into the world of Niiq, Arish, and Kuri; members of the band Nephilim, who seem to have the women of the Strip enthralled by their dark and sensuous sound. When bodies begin to turn up all over town and a mysterious and haunting figure fixates on Kathryn, she quickly learns that you can never escape your destiny.

RISE OF THE NEPHILIM is the first of a two part erotic paranormal romance/thriller revealing the beginnings of one of the most captivating characters in The Blackmoore Legacy series. It is a standalone prequel of eroticism, romance, and suspense.

The author has taken a few minutes out of his busy schedule for a Q&A about his newest novel.

When did you become interested in storytelling?

At a young age. I remember I was in the first grade and I wrote a story about a young vampire that refused to go to sleep in his coffin and was determined to try to sleep upside down as a bat, but he couldn’t figure out how to stay as a bat long enough. I was six, so I can't imagine it was that great! When I was eleven is when it came on me quite suddenly that I could do it professionally, and that really it was the only thing I was meant to do.

What was your first book/story published?

I acquired my first literary agent at the age of nineteen for a novel called Instructions In Flesh. It didn’t go anywhere and I wish I could say that it got cannibalized into other things, but it never really did. At this time I got my first short story deal with Alyson Books (for decades they were the Knopf/Random House of LGBT publishing houses) for a story titled The Politics of Gray, for an anthology called Ultimate Undies: Erotic Stories About Underwear and Lingerie. A year later, my first novella, Following The Kaehees was published after winning a writing competition. I was really out of the gates running from that point on.

What inspired you to write Rise of the Nephilim?

Well, I have this series, The Blackmoore Legacy (the first two books are Blackmoore and Symphony for the Devil) about this tormented and cursed family of witches, and one of the most popular characters is Kathryn Blackmoore, the central character's (Trevor Blackmoore) mother. I had been interested in both writing an erotic paranormal horror romance with a woman at the helm, as I normally write gay male main characters, and to tell the story of Kathryn as a young woman. A glimpse into the person she was when she was young, not a mother, and living her life somewhat carefree in the 1980’s, And Sunset Strip and that whole L.A. hair Metal-Gun’s n' Roses-partying scene was exactly where I knew she had been. It was a place of reinvention back then, and Kathryn was a young woman escaping a lot of stuff.

What character in Rise of the Nephilim is the most/least like you, and in what ways?

For the age and the sort of devil may care attitude I would say Kathryn is most like me. At 25/26 I was a live-by-night kind of person. I went to bars, saw bands play pretty much every night. I shopped and drank and rebelled. For the first part of my twenties I didn’t really act ‘my age' for a variety of reasons/circumstances that were going on, so I started living it up later in my twenties. There was a great exercise in freedom/adulthood that made life a sort of adventure every night.

The least like me would have to be Sheffield Burges-Kathryn's love interest and future husband in the main series (deceased)-he was simply everything I wasn’t in school. Popular, a jock, prom king, etc. I probably would have lusted after him growing up, but we are nothing alike.

What is your favorite part in Rise of the Nephilim?

I really love the first couple of chapters that take place eight years earlier in 1979. In Symphony for the Devil, it is mentioned that Kathryn was stalked by-and she later killed-a serial killer that had been named The Campus Slasher towards the end of her senior year. That whole scene is an homage to Halloween and to the Friday the 13th films. I had so much fun writing it, and it really plays like a classic slasher in your head, with witchcraft of course. I love Kathryn Blackmoore as my Final Girl. The Final Girl is such a great piece to the horror mythology, especially in slashers, and the fact that she is really the thing to be feared in the night because she’s a witch just makes it all the more awesome.

What was the hardest part to write?

Really just trying to capture the feeling and imagery of Los Angeles in the eighties. I wasn’t there. I was a toddler, so it required hours upon hours of research. I love research. I do it for all of my books, and I get obsessive with it. But this was about finding places/parties/shops etc. That don’t exist anymore. Like Scream, which was a goth party at the Embassy Hotel on the weekends. I had to track down flyers, dates of shows, who preformed on a specific night, etc. And that research for one thing took hours of combing through pictures and articles, and the comments on articles and so forth, to try to piece one chapter together. It’s important to me that if people who were there read Rise they will say “God, I remember that.” Or people who were at The Rainbow or The Whiskey will get the same feeling.

What would your ideal career be, if you couldn't be an author?

That’s easy. I would be a chef. I’m an excellent cook, and before the revelation of writing struck me, I wanted to be a chef. I had my whole future planned out until I was eleven. I still have a passion for cooking and the art of it. A strong passion for ingredients and creating dishes, but it is not meant for me to do professionally. Cooking is what I do to unwind.

Do you read reviews of your books? If so, do you pay any attention to them, or let them influence your writing?

I do. I don’t take them to heart, if they are negative, though my reviews (both from readers and professional reviewers for publications) are overwhelmingly positive, and the negative ones that I have seen have taken issue with the gay themes. I don’t write books about being gay, my books just happen to have a gay main character, but I give equal time to my straight characters, but many people just have issues with any type of gay content and there is nothing I can do about it. It doesn’t affect me. In the end the story isn’t up to me, it’s up to the Boys as I call them-my main characters who come to me and tell me their stories and bring the others with them. It’s all theirs and that’s how it needs to be.

What well-known writers do you admire most?

Anne Rice is at the top of my pantheon, followed by her son Christopher. There is Gore Vidal, Dickens, Truman Capote, Edmund White, Jim Grimsley, Stoker, Shelley, Woolf, Anais Nin, Henry Miller, Camus, Byron, really I could go on.

Do you have any other books/stories in the works?

Well, Rise of the Nephilim is the first of a two-part series, so right now I’m finalizing the conclusion, Fall of the Nephilim which is slated for late-autumn, then I will be starting the research process of the third book in the Blackmoore Legacy, The Beckoning One.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

About the Author

Marcus James is the author of five novels and has contributed to several anthologies with Alyson Books and has been a contributing writer for Seattle Gay News. He lives in Seattle with his husband and Staffordshire terrier. He is 32 years old.

Learn more about Marcus on his website at: https://marcusjamesbooks.com/

Folow the Marcus on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.