Title: Breath
Author: Jean Lowe Carlson
Series: Three Days of Oblenite, #1
Genres: Dark Fantasy, Paranormal Romance
Release Date: 23 March 2015
Book Blitz Dates: 5-7 October 2015
Summary
Gryffine Toulunnet is cursed to steal life with her kiss.
Repressed and miserable, she is free of her curse but once a year, upon the
heady death-festival of Rollows. Until her curse marks dashing barman Jessup
Rohalle as her soulmate in a single night of passion. Destined to meet again,
Jessup finds Gryffine and opens her restricted life into pleasure, causing
Gryffine to fight her curse's isolation. But Gryffine's dark draw to kill is
shared by another, a man bitterly cursed like she, a secret that Jessup can
never know. And only her dark lover understands her suffering.
Potential Triggers: Menage a trois, murder
Excerpt
Jessup chewed his lip a moment. “Some of the old stories are
true, Gryffine. And I think yours is one of them. Though I admit… it’s a very
strange version of what I traditionally hear.”
Gryffine frowned. “What have you heard?”
“The tale of the Boy and the Bones. It’s the traditional
story of Rollows. A young boy touches some bones and is cursed with the Kiss of
Death, with which he kills his own mother. It’s where the Rollows toast comes
from.”
“I’ve heard the story.”
Jessup looked at her oddly. “You have?”
Gryffine nodded. “The evening we first met. I was with my
mother at the Gypsun market that afternoon, and I heard an old raglady telling
it to a group of youths at one of the bonfires.”
“So you know how it goes.”
She nodded again. “But I’m a woman. And my curse didn’t
start from touching some old bones.”
He shrugged. “Other than that… don’t you think the story
describes your situation perfectly?”
Gryffine lifted an eyebrow.
“Come on.” Jessup pinched out the incense and stood. “Let’s
have dinner in the Gypsun Quarter. I’ll take you to Aeshe and then we can find
Rennet and talk to him about your manse.”
Gryffine took his proffered hand and stood, then made for
the outer door of the sepulcher. “This way. I’ll show you the backyard before
we go.”
They pushed through the heavy stone door and into the
sunlight, flooding down on what was turning out to be a perfect spring
afternoon. The air was moist and refreshing after the dry musk of the
sepulcher, and Gryffine’s mood lifted to the radiant sun and the
bright-tempered man at her side. They shoved the stone door shut and traipsed
the gravel walk through the verge to the back porch. She was already tripping
up the steps with a much lighter heart when a small pull came at her hand from
Jessup.
“Hold on a tic. What’s that?”
“What?” Gryffine glanced over, then followed his gaze to a
small fenced-off area with a wrought-iron railing that contained a fixture of
the manse she had come to accept as one of its many oddities. Inside the
railing, upon an extra side-swath of the stone back porch, sat an ancient
wrought-iron coffin, its vellum gone and the bones inside long turned to dust
under the protection of the gables and eaves. But as Gryffine glanced at it,
she, too, noticed something about the coffin that made the hair of her neck
stand on end.
Within the confines of the wrought-iron, right where a
corpse’s chest would once have been, grew a single, perfect yellow day-flower,
nodding its sunburst head to the light spring breeze.
Gryffine blinked.
Jessup grinned at her. “Should I sneak through the bars of
the railing and go touch it?”
But a rush of alarm went through Gryffine just then, and she
hastily gripped Jessup’s arm, drawing him back. “No! Leave it alone.”
“It’s just a day-flower. They probably grow there every
spring.”
Gryffine shook her head. “There have never been any lowers
there. Mother tried every spring to grow some. She hated the coffin but was too
superstitious to move it. She sprinkled lenou-seeds in the bone-dust,
flush-horn seeds, pennybright. Everything she could think of. Nothing ever
grew.
“Huh. Must have sprinkled day-flower seeds at some point and
one finally took.” But even Gryffine could tell that Jessup’s teasing tone had
gone to one of wary caution. “I’ll speak to Rennet about getting that whole
thing off the porch and putting it in the sepulcher where it belongs.”
Gryffine swallowed and nodded. “That would be best, I
think.” She tore her eyes away from the nodding yellow flower and tugged him up
the porch, trying to put it from her mind.
*******************************
Other Books in This Series
ABOUT THE SERIES - Three Days of Oblenite (3 novels)
This darkly romantic, gothic paranormal fantasy series is rife with superstition, piety, and the devious nature of the mystic. The three novels take place in a dark version of Victorian-era Paris, and feature three characters cursed with the gifts of a dead saint. Swept up in the torturous undercurrents of their desperate curses, their lives collide in desire, lust, power, obsession, addiction, fervor, desperation, and death.
“Breath” features a young woman cursed to celibacy and unable to find love because her kiss kills, all except one night a year.
“Tears” tells the story of a young man cursed to feel bliss when he is whipped, and the religious conflict he feels as he finds himself in a relationship with the man who brings him release.
While in “Blood”, a brilliant surgeon cursed with blood that heals descends into a desperate underworld, addicted to working miracles. And in the seedy Gypsun Quarter at the edge of the Saints Commons, there is no blessing that can save those cursed to depravity, darkness, and permission. They can only save themselves
Title: Tears
Series: Three Days of Oblenite #2
Release Date: 4 May 2015
Pious half-Gypsun Phillip d’Auvery is tortured by sorrow.
His soul is pledged to the Immaculate, but Phillip’s life has a darker aspect,
that drives him to the scourging lash of the Padrenne of Saint Sommes Cathedral
year after year upon Pentriant, the Second Day of Oblenite. For Phillip’s curse
is bliss, a bliss that can only be found when pain smites his flesh until his
tears are shed. A desired curse, it alienates him from others, until Phillip is
pushed from his life and into the arms of a man who understands pain and power,
the stern Baronne Oruthane d’Iver. As Phillip’s love for Oruthane grows, the
two are exposed, and danger begins to follow their every step. But there is no
greater danger than what lies smoldering in Phillip’s heart, a pain that binds
him deep and threatens everything dear to him.
BUY LINKS
Title: Blood
Series: Three Days of Oblenite #3
Release Date: 26 June 2015
Aulen Gregoire, a young and brilliant surgeon at the Hospital of Saint Sommes
BUY LINKS
About the Author
Jean Lowe Carlson is a writer of dark supernatural romance
and epic fantasy fiction, but her novels vary widely into dystopian fantasy and
even into supernatural westerns with some erotic content. Jean writes
genre-bending and genderqueer fantasy, mixing a keen and gritty blend of epic,
romantic, erotic, dark, supernatural, and dystopian fantasy. Her sensual, raw
worlds remind one of Jacqueline Carey, Clive Barker’s Imajica, Anne Rice, and
Robin Hobb.
Jean holds a doctorate in Naturopathic Medicine from Bastyr University
in Seattle
Not afraid of exploring all kinds of relationships, including LGBTQ and BDSM, her
novels are exciting, passionate, challenging, and lush.
You can contact her at:
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Thanks for posting, MJ!
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