K&S Book Blog: Blog Tour & Giveaway - SoulShares Series by Rory Ni Coileain

Title: SoulShares Series

Author: Rory Ni Coileain

Genre: M/M Erotic Paranormal

Synopsis

The SoulShares are a four-book cycle, the first of three, telling the stories of the Fae of the Realm and their journeys to the human world. Leaving the Realm strips of Fae of half his soul, which is cast out through space and time and is reborn into a human. And when Fae and human SoulShares reunite, handle with asbestos gloves! In Hard as Stone, we meet Tiernan Guaire, a Fae Noble exiled from the Demesne of Earth for the murder of his brother, and Kevin Almstead, the human who holds the other half of his soul. Tiernan’s vowed never to love, but he can’t help his feelings for the handsome lawyer, and when they encounter the Marfach, the ancient and bloodthirsty enemy of the Fae race, they can only face it down united. In Gale Force, Conall Dary, of the Demesne of Air, the most powerful mage the Fae race has produced since the Sundering of the Fae and human worlds thousands of years ago, is sent to the human world by a vengeful and petulant Noble lady, and is accidentally stripped of his ability to channel magick in the process. Human tattoo artist Josh LaFontaine has inherited that ability, but Conall needs it back, along with the missing half of his soul, as he’s the only hope of preventing the Marfach from returning to complete the destruction of the Fae Realm. In Deep Plunge, we meet Lochlann Doran, the first Fae to come to the human world through the Pattern, the portal between the worlds. He’s been looking for his SoulShare for over two thousand years, so long that he’s lost all his magick. Garrett Lee Templar is a pole dancer at Purgatory, Tiernan Guaire’s hot-as-the-hinges-of-Hades nightclub. And unfortunately, the Marfach and its mostly dead human host have figured out that a Fae’s human SoulShare is exquisitely vulnterable… And in Firestorm, the impossible happens – two Fae paired as SoulShares. And not just any two Fae. Cuinn an Dearmad is the last surviving Loremaster, one of the original creators of the Pattern, and a walking attitude problem. Rian Aodán, known in the human world as Rian Sheridan, is the Prince Royal of the Demesne of Fire, kidnapped by Cuinn as an infant and presently trying to fill the empty space in his soul with pain and fire. Together, the two have to break the Pattern to restore magick to the dying Realm.

Excerpt from Gale Force

Slowly – too slowly, more slowly than last time – the pain loosened its grip on him. He sat motionless for a few moments, just breathing, testing to see if it was really over; then, stiffly, he got up, went to the door, and closed the locks the hard way. It’s a good thing touching magick doesn’t have the same effect on me that trying to channel it does. There was the problem. Trying to channel magick. It was supposed to be as natural as breathing, as walking; magick was what he was made of, him more than most Fae, and it was supposed to be an effort for him not to channel it. And that wasn’t supposed to change, in the human realm. Conall lay back on the bed, his weight on his elbows, staring at the window with its translucent shade. He knew more about what had happened to him, what was happening to him now, than he was willing to bet most of the luckless travelers that had passed through the Pattern in the course of two thousand years had known. Mages maintained histories after most Fae had long since forgotten about the tales the history became. He should be able to use his magick here. All the histories said so. The only problem with that was that any attempt to channel anything beyond the abilities inherent in any Fae – rapid healing, and in his case the gift of languages, the gift of the Demesne of Air – brought an agony nearly as great as what he almost remembered of the Pattern. Even after he stopped trying, his very bones remembered what a bad idea it had been. And the reminder lasted longer each time. Damn, he needed something to take his mind off this. He fell back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Mirror. Queen’s tits. An image floated unbidden into his mind, himself lying back on this bed, with Josh covering him. The way the human had in his dream. Only this time he could see, in the mirror, and the designs on Josh’s tanned back were amazing. Wings, almost real enough to fly. Conall shook his head, and the image fled; he groaned, and covered his eyes with a forearm. The pain had started the moment Josh let go of his hand. He wasn’t a romantic; no Fae was, not when you and your partner ar a lar, of the moment, were both going to live more or less forever unless someone killed you, not when attraction was never forever, and when there was no such thing as love, except the love of blood for blood, which was a different thing entirely. No, romance was not in the Fae lexicon. Much less so in his own. And yet, it had hurt when Josh released his hand. Down to the bone. Scair-anam. A Fae who passed through the Pattern had his soul torn in half. Some truths had not been preserved, and the whole truth about what happened within the Pattern was one of those truths. It was known that half of the Fae’s soul went out into the human world, to be born into a human. But as to where, and when, and how, that human was to be found, the ancient texts gave not a fucking clue. Good word. Conall rolled onto his side, curling in around the pain as another spasm seized him, waiting for it to pass. And waiting some more, his arms crossed over his abs in an attempt to stop the tremors. Trying to breathe. Damn, this time it felt like something was dragging at his very breath, trying to keep it from his lungs. He was smothering, a little bit at a time. The histories all said a Fae in the human world, without his Soulshare, could never die. But the histories were wrong about other things. Can I die? Not alone. Maybe he could. But he would not. He refused. Josh would come back. Somehow, being with the human would stop the pain. How many times had he yearned for a normal life? To be free to channel, or not. To take pleasure, with another, and not risk the destruction of that other, and everything around him. To look into the eyes of a friend, or a lover, and not wonder when he would be asked to pay in power for the gift of a moment’s closeness. Wisdom wishes not, the proverb said. For the only fate worse than to be denied a wish is to receive it.

About the Author

I majored in creative writing, back when Respectable Colleges didn’t offer such a major, so I designed it myself – being careful to ensure that I never had to take a class before nine in the morning or take a Hemingway survey course. I was lucky enough to score the wonderful P.C. Hodgell as a major advisor, too, and to spend several years in a writer’s workshop with Eleanor Arnason. I graduated Phi Beta Kappa at the age of nineteen, sent off my first short story to an anthology being assembled by an author I idolized, got one of those rejection letters that you talk about with your therapist until you’re old and gray, and found other things to do, such as corporate law and nightclub singing, for the next thirty years or so, until I discovered, entirely by chance (except that I don’t believe in chance), the world of m/m erotic romance. Now I have a day job as a legal editor that I’m aching to quit, I’m the mother of a high school senior (when did THAT happen?) and a member of my church choir and the St. Mark’s Cathedral Choral Society, and I’m trying frantically to keep up with the adventures of a group of very randy Fae and tree spirits and the humans who can’t seem to help falling in love with them.

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