Today
it’s my pleasure to welcome over Susannah Sandlin, author of Wild Man’s Curse,
Wilds of the Bayou Series, Book One.
Genre:
Romantic Suspense
Publisher:
Montlake Romance
Date
of Publication: April 5, 2016
ISBN:
978-1503934740
ASIN:
B017IKQWAG
Number
of pages: 284
Word
Count: approx. 86,000
Cover
Artist: Michael Rehder
Book
Description
The
bones said death was comin’, and the bones never lied.
While
on an early morning patrol in the swamps of Whiskey Bayou, Louisiana wildlife
agent Gentry Broussard spots a man leaving the home of voodoo priestess Eva
Savoie—a man who bears a startling resemblance to his brother, whom Gentry
thought he had killed during a drug raid three years earlier. Shaken, the agent
enters Eva’s cabin and makes a bloody discovery: the old woman has been
brutally murdered.
With
no jurisdiction over the case, he’s forced to leave the investigation to the
local sheriff, until Eva’s beautiful heir, Celestine, receives a series of
gruesome threats. As Gentry’s involvement deepens and more victims turn up, can
he untangle the secrets behind Eva’s murder and protect Celestine from the same
fate?
Or
will an old family curse finally have its way?
Giveaway! Be sure to enter the Rafflecopter after this post for a chance to win. Prizes include a $50 Amazon gift card as well as 5 $10 Amazon gift cards.
Let’s Interview Susannah!
What inspired you to write this
book?
The
tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina was coming up last summer, and I’d spent
a lot of time thinking about the storm (I had been living in New Orleans for
about twelve years at the time) and all the problems with the rescue efforts.
Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries agents were among the first on the scene.
While the state and federal politicians were arguing about who had
jurisdiction, LDWF agents were in there, plucking people out of the water and
doing search and rescue. I started researching all the difficult training and
responsibilities these officers do—their jobs can be very dangerous. So I came
up with the idea of following a team of these Wildlife and Fisheries
enforcement agents in one of Louisiana’s most challenging terrains, Terrebonne
Parish. Each book in the series will follow a particular member of the
enforcement team as he or she tackles life, crime—and love—in the marshes and
bayous of South Louisiana.
How did you come up with the
title?
For
the longest time—all the way through edits—the title was WILD MAN’S BLUFF. But
we realized at the last minute that the word “bluff” could mean different
things than a bluff in a poker game, which is what I had in mind. It also could
mean a bluff, as in a cliff (of which there are none in flat-as-a-pancake South
Louisiana), or it could mean a joke, and the bluffs in this book aren’t funny.
Both of the main characters, senior Wildlife and Fisheries enforcement agent
Gentry Broussard and singer/songwriter Celestine Savoie, are struggling with
their own forms of family curses, thus the change to WILD MAN’S CURSE was
appropriate. My publishing team came up with it (wish I could take the credit),
but it really fits the tone and plot of the book.
What made you choose the main
setting for your book?
I
lived in South Louisiana for about fifteen years, before and after Katrina, and
have extended in-laws who live in the Louisiana river parishes. It’s a part of
the country that I’ve always been drawn to, both for its untamed beauty, its
exotic landscape, and the unique blend of cultures (Cajun French, West
Indies/African/French Creole, Native American) that, for me, make it a
fascinating place with a distinctive culinary, musical, and linguistic legacy.
Tell us a little bit about the
conflict in your story.
Wildlife
enforcement agent Gentry Broussard finds the body of an elderly woman rumored
to be a voodoo practitioner, and catches a glimpse of her killer—who looks just
like Gentry’s older brother, Lang. Problem is, Lang died three years earlier in
a drug bust, and Gentry was the one who killed him. When the murder victim’s
great-niece, Celestine Savoie, returns to Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, to
settle her great-aunt’s estate, she becomes the target of threats from the same
killer—threats that grow increasingly dangerous. Murder investigations are not
in Gentry’s jurisdiction, but the deeper he’s drawn to Celestine and the hunt
for the killer (his brother’s body was never found, after all) the less he can
stay away. In the end, it will take love, determination—and a throw of the
voodoo bones—to save them all.
Are you currently working on
another story? If so, we’d love some details.
I
have just finished the second Wilds of the Bayou novel, not yet titled, which
involves Gentry’s wildlife enforcement partner, Agent Jena Sinclair. Jena, who
is fighting her own demons, is caught up in a puzzling web of cases involving a
synthetic hallucinogenic drug epidemic in Terrebonne Parish and a rash of
alligator attacks—not to mention a mysterious, antisocial—and possibly
paranoid—recluse living off the grid behind an abandoned sugarcane field. I
don’t have a release date yet, but I’m guessing late fall or winter.
What sort of personality does
your hero have?
Gentry
Broussard is, first and foremost, a law enforcement officer. The locals might
call them “game wardens,” but the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries enforcement
agents have very regimented law enforcement training, as well as special training
under extreme conditions. They can arrest you for any law violation just as
well as a police officer or a sheriff’s deputy. So Gentry’s reserved until you
get to know him, and then he’s really funny. He hides the pain he carries about
killing his brother behind a smartass attitude and a joke. But because he’s in
law enforcement, that means his nature is to be calm under pressure, see
through a lot of BS, and be overprotective. The latter trait doesn’t always sit
well with the heroine. Oh, and he has an awesome dog named Hoss, who helps us
see the funny, sweet side of him that he keeps hidden.
What sort of personality does
your heroine have?
Celestine
Savoie is a singer/songwriter who left her native Terrebonne Parish at eighteen
to try and make it in Nashville. She’s close to hitting rock bottom when she gets
the news about her great-aunt’s murder just as she’s being evicted from her
apartment. She goes back to Terrebonne Parish reluctantly, only to find, to her
surprise, that it feels like home in a way Nashville never could. She’s funny
and stubborn and smart—and she picked up a few skills from her
voodoo-practicing great-aunt that come in handy.
Are your book/books available in
audio? In other languages? If so, give us more details about where we can get
them and what languages they’re in.
WILD
MAN’S CURSE is available unabridged on digital audio and CD as well as through
Audible, from any online outlet that sells audiobooks. It’s only in English at
present, although the south-central Louisiana accent is so unique, and the
pronunciation of words so difficult (Gentry, for example, lives in Montegut,
which is pronounced “monta-gue”), that I was able to write up a pronunciation
guide and pick my narrator, actress Elizabeth Gibson. She does a really
terrific job.
What genre/genres do you prefer
to write? Are there other genres you’d like to write in the future?
I
got started in urban fantasy and paranormal romance before I began writing
romantic suspense. In fact, I came to romantic suspense after realizing the
thing my paranormal books were pretty much suspense novels with non-human
characters. It was a pretty natural transition to romantic suspense for me. I
can see me writing a straight-up thriller or suspense novel, although I can’t
seem to help putting some element of romance in whatever I’m writing.
Do you write books in series? If
so, share a bit about the series you currently have published or are coming
soon.
I
do tend to write in series. I write the four-book (soon to be five-book) Penton
Vampire Legacy series (REDEMPTION, ABSOLUTION, OMEGA, ALLEGIANCE) and a Penton
spinoff, STORM FORCE—those are all paranormal romance. My Collectors duology
(LOVELY, DARK, AND DEEP and DEADLY, CALM, AND COLD) are romantic thrillers. And
writing as Suzanne Johnson, I write the Sentinels of New Orleans urban fantasy
series whose fifth novel, BELLE CHASSE, will be coming out on November 8,
joining ROYAL STREET, RIVER ROAD, ELYSIAN FIELDS, and PIRATE’S ALLEY.
Excerpt
CHAPTER
1
The
bones said death was comin’, and the bones never lied.
Eva
Savoie leaned back in the rocking chair and pushed it into motion on the uneven
wide-plank floor of the one-room cabin. Her grandpere Julien had built the
place more than a century ago, pulling heavy cypress logs from the bayou and
sawing them, one by one, into the thick planks she still walked across every
day.
She
had never known Julien Savoie, but she knew of him. The curse that had stalked
her family for three generations had started with her grandfather and what he’d
done all those years ago.
What
he’d brought with him to Whiskey Bayou with blood on his hands.
What
had driven her daddy to shoot her mama, and then himself, before either turned
forty-five.
What
had led Eva’s brother Antoine to drown in the bayou only a half-mile from this
cabin, leaving a wife and infant son behind.
What
stalked Eva now.
The
bones said death was coming and, once Eva was gone, the curse should go with
her. No one else knew the secrets of Julien Savoie and this cabin and that box
full of sin he’d dug out of the bayou mud back in Isle de Jean Charles.
Might
take a while, but sin catches up with you. Always had. Always would. And the
curse had driven Eva to sin. Oh yes, she had sinned.
She’d
known her reckoning would catch up with her, although it had taken a good long
time. She’d turned seventy-eight yesterday, or was it eighty? She couldn’t
remember for sure, and the bones said it didn’t matter now.
On
the scarred wooden table before Eva sat three burning candles that filled the
room with the soft, soothing glow of melting tallow. She’d made them herself,
infusing them with the oil of the fragrant lilies that every spring spread a
bright green carpet over the lazy, brown water of the bayou. The tools of her
ritual sat on an ancient square of tanned hide passed down through generations
of holy ones, of those blessed by the gods with the ability to throw the bones.
A
small mound of delicate chicken bones, yellowed and fragile from age, lay
inside the circle of light cast by the candles. Daylight would come in an hour
or so, but Eva didn’t expect to last that long. Death was even now making his
way toward her.
She
leaned forward, wincing at the stab of pain in her lower back. Since the first
throw of the bones had whispered her fate two days ago, she’d been cleaning.
Scrubbed the floor, worn smooth by decades of bare feet. Washed the linens,
folding them in neat piles in a drawer at the bottom of the old pie safe.
Discarded most of the food in the little refrigerator that sat in the corner.
Dragged the bag of trash down the long, overgrown drive past LeRoy’s old 1970
Chevy pickup that she still drove up to Houma for groceries and such once a
month. Left the white bag at the side of the parish road for the weekly trash
collection.
She’d
spit on LeRoy’s truck as she passed it because she couldn’t spit on the man who
bought it. He was long gone.
Now
the cleaning had been finished. Whoever discovered her raggedy old body
wouldn’t find a mess, not in Eva Savoie’s house.
A
few minutes ago, with the old cabin as clean as she was capable of making it,
she’d thrown the bones one last time. Part of her hoped they’d read different,
hoped she’d be granted a few more days of grace.
But
the bones still whispered death. Eva accepted it, and she sat, and she waited.
At least the girl, Celestine, would inherit a cleaned-up house. The girl,
Antoine’s granddaughter, knew nothing of the secrets, nothing of the curse. Eva
had made sure of that….
Eva
waited for her heart to fail—that seemed to be her most likely way to go. As
she rocked she noted each steady beat, biding her time for the instant when the
thump-thump-thump would falter and her breath would catch, then stop. She
reckoned it would hurt a little, but what if it did? The curse had doled out
worse ends to those who came before her.
She’d
doled out worse herself.
The
buzz of a boat’s motor sounded from outside the cabin, faint but growing
louder. Wardens on patrol already, most likely.
The
boat’s engine grew louder, finally coming to an abrupt stop so near, it had to
be right outside her door. Silence filled the room once again, until through
her bones she felt the thud of someone jumping onto the porch that wrapped
around the cabin. The porch formed the platform on which the house sat, linking
it to the spit of land behind it when the water was normal. When storms blew
through, it provided an island on which the cabin could sit or, if need be,
float.
As
heavy footfalls crossed the porch, Eva struggled to her feet. Every pop and
crackle of her joints knifed streaks of pain through her limbs as they
protested the cleaning they’d done, followed by the sitting.
Prob’ly
a game warden, checkin’ on her. Too bad he hadn’t stopped a little later, after
she was gone. She didn’t like to think of her body having to bake in the hot
cabin for days before anyone found her.
But
the curse was what it was, and the bones said what they said.
The
knock, when it came, was soft, and Eva reached the door with the help of a
sturdy cane she’d carved herself. Opening the door, she squinted into the glare
of a flashlight that seemed almost blinding after the soft light of the
candles. She peered up at a young man with eyes that gleamed from beneath the
hood of a jacket. He was not a game warden, and it was too hot for a jacket.
“Who
are you?” Her voice cracked. She knew who he was. He was Death.
“The
devil come to pay you a visit, Eva.” The man’s voice was smooth as silk, smooth
as a lie, smooth as death itself. “And you know what the devil wants.”
She
knew what he wanted, and she knew the only way to end the curse was to deny
him.
She’d
been granted no easy passing by the Savoie curse after all, but she would die
today.
The
bones never lied.
About the Author
Susannah
Sandlin is the author of the award-winning Penton Vampire Legacy paranormal
romance series, including the 2013 Holt Medallion Award-winning Absolution and
Omega and Allegiance, which were nominated for the RT Book Reviews Reviewers
Choice Award in 2014 and 2015, respectively. She also writers The Collectors
romantic suspense series, including Lovely, Dark, and Deep, 2015 Holt Medallion
winner and 2015 Booksellers Best Award winner. Her new series Wilds of the
Bayou starts in 2016 with the April 5 release of Wild Man’s Curse. Writing as
Suzanne Johnson, Susannah is the author of the award-winning Sentinels of New
Orleans urban fantasy series. A displaced New Orleanian, she currently lives in
Auburn, Alabama. Susannah loves SEC football, fried gator on a stick, all
things Cajun, and redneck reality TV.
Newsletter: http://www.suzannejohnsonauthor.com/newsletter
Twitter: @SusannahSandlin
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/Susannah_Sandlin
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/sj3523/
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