Today I am so pleased to welcome TA Moore to Joyfully Jay. TA has come to talk to us about her latest release, Dead Man Stalking. She has also brought along a great tour wide giveaway. Please join me in giving her a big welcome!

 

First of all, thank you so much for having me! I’m thrilled to be here with my new urban fantasy Dead Man Stalking. This is the first book in the Blood and Bone series and I am thrilled to put it out there into the world. I was meant to be writing an entirely different book, but then Took and Madoc took up residence in my head and I had to give in and let them have their say.

I had a blast creating this world and these characters, and I hope you enjoy them too. I’ve included a chapter of a prequel short story that you can follow through the blog tour.


Excerpt

Chapter Four

Once inside, out of the glare of the afternoon sun, Madoc plucked his glasses off his face. He folded the arms in and tucked them into his pocket as he glanced around the room. His eyes lingered briefly on the bed, a hint of amusement around his mouth, and then he decided to use the room’s small desk as a perch. He shuffled through the stack of stapled reports the local cops had, reluctantly, provided with pale fingers.

“Three dead?” he said.

Luke nodded as he buttoned his shirt. It felt like putting on a uniform, his susceptible underbelly hidden under the crisp linen and neatly fastened cuffs.

Dress for the job you want people to pay for, that had been his Dad’s advice too.

“The first was found by the river,” he said as he grabbed the tie from the bed and strung it through his collar. “Loretta Johnson, a 33 year old swimming coach at the University. She died from severe blunt force trauma to the head.”

“People do,” Madoc said. He flicked the page and regarded the mess that someone had made of the pretty woman. “Almost anyone would die of that.”

“Tomas Schmidt was the second victim,” Luke said. “He was found in his bedroom with a broken neck.”

“And then they found a boy strung up like meat to age,” Madoc drawled. He paused as he caught up with Luke’s point. He flicked back through the photos of Schmidt, his face slack and neck oddly loose, and the splatter of gore and curls that was all that was left of Loretta’s head. “His neck was wrung, her brains bashed in–”

“Gaffed, that’s what you do to a fish” Luke said. He’d done enough of it as a kid, sent out to scavenge a meal from the countryside because they couldn’t go to the local store. A clean kill splattered, the fish dispatched with brutal quickness. “And today they field dressed the victim, and strung him up away from predators.”

“A ritual,” Madoc said. “Sorcery?”

Luke paused halfway through tying his tie. “The killer thinks it is,” he said cautiously. Technically even the suspicion of a sorcerer should be passed over to the Scholomance for oversight. “But the sacrifices hadn’t been starved or purified. And the sites themselves were high traffic areas, so there’s no way to consecrate and control them. This isn’t sorcery, it’s…”

“Compulsive?” Madoc interrupted. He still sounded sceptical, but there was a hint of interest to his voice. “Go on.”

Luke grinned. He left his tie to dangle, half-knotted, as he loped over to the desk to hunt through the paperwork.

“The accepted theory on compulsion killers is that they’re rare,” Luke explained. That was an understatement. Five confirmed in the US, chronicled extensively in true crime, fiction, and academic papers…including one by Quantico’s most successful profiler, and ten in Europe. Maybe twenty if you believed some of the odder stories that filtered out of remote spots in rural Russia or Ireland. He caught his thumb on the edge of the paper and hissed absently as it slit under his nail. “And that they are frenzied, berserkers who kill until they’re killed. Like foxes in a henhouse.”

“I do read,” Madoc said. “You don’t agree?”

“Yes and no,” Luke said. “They won’t stop killing until they’re killed, but they aren’t necessarily out of control. To them what they are doing makes sense, and if you accept that framework they function normally. Look at this. Two years ago a teenage girl was kidnapped from a nearby pig farm, found with her throat slit and her stomach full of acorns. Six months ago there was a poisoning in a local cafe, it was called accidental but the dead man was a CI for Vice.”

“You poison a rat,” Madoc said. He hesitated for a second and then made an exasperated noise. “This sounds like a folk tale, Bennett. If you’re right, why haven’t we seen more of them?”

Luke pushed damp curls out of his face and gave Madoc a surprised look.

“Apex predators don’t share territory,” he said. “These people function on the outskirts of society, they stalk their prey, and they probably don’t have a lot of use for anyone who isn’t part of their framework belief. No friends, in other words. What does that sound like to you?”

They both knew the answer. Madoc reached out and tugged Luke’s tie free with a precise yank. His fingers, already cooled from their earlier heat, brushed Luke’s chin as he reknotted the strip of silk. A firm yank snugged it up against Luke’s collar, a little too tight as he swallowed.

“An easy meal,” Madoc said, with a slow smile.

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Tomorrow’s installment on Blogger Girls! All the blog tour posts will also be linked here: http://tamoorewrites.com/deadmanstalking/


Blurb

Agent Luke Bennett proved that humans could rise just as high in the ranks as their vampire colleagues—until a kidnapper held him captive for a year and turned him without his consent.

Now he’s Took: a reluctant monster afraid to bite anyone, broke, and about to be discharged from his elite BITERs unit.

When an old colleague suggests he consult on a BITERs case, Took has little to lose. The case is open and shut… but nothing is ever that easy. As he digs deeper, he discovers a lot more than one cold case is at stake, and if he wants to solve this one, he’ll need the help of the BITERs team. Even if that brings his old commander, Madoc, back into his life.


Bio

TA Moore is a Northern Irish writer of romantic suspense, urban fantasy, and contemporary romance novels. A childhood in a rural, seaside town fostered in her a suspicious nature, a love of mystery, and a streak of black humour a mile wide. As her grandmother always said, ‘she’d laugh at a bad thing that one’, mind you, that was the pot calling the kettle black. TA Moore studied History, Irish mythology, English at University, mostly because she has always loved a good story. She has worked as a journalist, a finance manager, and in the arts sectors before she finally gave in to a lifelong desire to write.

Coffee, Doc Marten boots, and good friends are the essential things in life. Spiders, mayo, and heels are to be avoided.


Giveaway

TA has brought along a great tour wide giveaway. Just follow the Rafflecopter below to enter. 

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