by Tracy Cooper-Posey (a.k.a Teal Ceagh), guest blogger

I’ve made no secret of the fact that Carson’s Night was finished in a monster weekend marathon writing session. What isn’t known, until now, is that I wrote the whole story in that one weekend stint.

That’s because I was very stupid.

I originally started writing what has now become the sequel, Beauty’s Beasts, [which I found out as I wrote this post was sold to Ellora’s Cave and is now the official sequel – phew!] as I wanted to turn it in on a particular EC deadline, which had a 30,000 word maximum limit.

I was barely 12,000 words into Beauty when I knew I’d shot myself in the foot. The story was far too ambitious and the characters way too complex to fit into the 30K limit. I kept writing it and worrying in the back of my mind over what I was going to do about these fascinating charaters and their rich, convoluted histories. The two heroes in the story were simply delicious. A pair of vampires who shared nearly four thousand years of history between them, and both of them carrying horrible scars from a love barely thirty years in the past that neither of them had been aware of…and that love just happened to be the heroine’s mother.

Then my own life blew up in my face, and a few personal crises later, I was staring EC’s deadline in the eye, and this ambitious and elephant-sized story wouldn’t go away. I knew I didn’t want to cut it down or dismantle it, though. It was simply too good to break it up. It had too much potential as it was.

On the Friday night before the Sunday midnight deadline, I made the decision to push Beauty aside. There was a shorter, ready-made story just crying out to be told right there inside Beauty already. The heroine’s parents and their romance, which has such a profound impact on, well, Beauty’s (so to speak) life, and the two vampires. It sets up the Beauty story perfectly.

So I cleared the decks with my family, stocked up on coffee, and on Friday at 4 pm, started writing. I already had a good idea of the plot and the characters were almost ready-made because of the world-building I’d already done for Beauty. I kept writing for as long as my family and the world left me alone, and I stopped writing at 3.03 a.m. on the Monday morning, only slightly more than three hours over the deadline, but as I’d already got the extension, I was safe.

I hope I never have to do something so idiotic again. By two in the morning that Monday morning I was literally nodding off between sentences. The title I put on the book was so stupid I didn’t breathe it aloud to anyone until EC bought the book and I could officially change the title to something more considered and less sleep-deprived. The editing session I went through afterwards, for this book, was the most gruelling and exhausting in my life and I deserve every extra hour I spent on it.

I honestly don’t know how I pulled that marathon session off. I can only assume that after so many years of writing professionally, there are some instincts that are just ingrained, and simply don’t quit even when my brain has switched over to mere nominal functional status only.

But now the editing is over, I’m damn proud of the story. It’s a good one. My instincts were on the money.

Don’t you get the same hunches over something you’ve been doing for a long, long time? You can’t point to anything that anyone else would call proof, but you just know. And when you go with your guts and it works out after all you get that little rush?

Carson’s Night by Teal Ceagh

It’s August 1977 in New York City and the weird sculptor Moss Alex Meinhardt lies dead at the foot of an ugly gargoyle he’s half-completed. Natalia Grey’s demon hunter father is also dead, and his new partner, the astonishingly sexy Carson Connors, can’t remember how it happened.

Carson isn’t sure what role he has played in Natalia’s father’s death, but after one look at Natalia, he does know that guilty or not, he’s doomed.

Natalia must take up her father’s sword and her heritage as a demon hunter and figure out what happened this night, for the gargoyles Meinhardt carved have life they should not have without the help of dark forces she and Carson must defeat—once the gargoyles have risen, of course. But the night is hours away yet…

Excerpt

Chapter One

August 1977, New York City

Tally moved from sleeping to waking in one breath. With the next, she eased her hand under her pillow and gripped the handle of her knife as she pretended to sigh and roll onto her side in her sleep.

Iron fingers clamped onto her wrist. “It’s me, Tally. Nick.”

She opened her eyes. The dark shape in the room looked like him. “Turn on the light,” she said.

He reached for the light without hesitation, proving he knew his way around her bedroom. She stared at the person who eased himself down onto the chair beside her bed. He looked haggard and ill-used and that frightened her enough to sit up in her bed despite wearing only her Pink Floyd tee shirt and panties. She brought the knife with her. It was an automatic move, a trained move, triggered by the alarmed created by Nick’s appearance.

Nicholas Sherwood should not look tired. He was a vampire and did not need sleep or rest. Yet he blinked at her now like a man who had seen too much of the night.

She glanced at her bedside clock. The hands hovered over the two and the three. Just after three in the morning—it would be dawn in about three hours. “Nick?” she coaxed, her heart hammering.

“I need you to get dressed and come with me, Natalia,” he said softly. He reached down beside him and picked up something. He raised it and placed it vertically between his knees and rested both hands around the long hilt.

It was her father’s Japanese sword. His katana.

Nicholas looked at her over the top of the hilt. “I’m sorry, Tally. Your father died tonight. You must take his place now.”

*****

Tally was too numb to cry, which was just as well, for the cab driver was normal human and they had to guard their tongues. Nick paid off the driver. In the predawn hush the vampire looked up at the flat face of the old dockside warehouse, his expression grim. “Ready?” he asked, settling the light coat around his shoulders better. He was very tall, about six foot two and the sword made the coat hang awkwardly.

She shook her head.

He gripped her shoulder. “Neither am I,” he confessed. “But we must do this now.” He led her with gentle firmness over to a dark doorway. It stood open, a black maw she was wildly reluctant to step through. Inside was misery and death.

“Where was my father’s partner? The new one?” she asked. “Why wasn’t he watching out for him? Why didn’t he stop this?”

“Inside,” Nick told her in a murmur.

“Why were you here, anyway, Nick? You don’t usually work with my father.”

“Just wait until we get inside, Tally.”

“Why? What’s in there?” She tried to turn to look at him but Nick’s grip on her arm was too firm. He was a vampire, after all. He could rip her apart like humans can shred paper, she knew that. Still she tried to resist.

But he didn’t use his strength against her. He let her halt and face him.

“What’s inside, Nick?” she asked.

“It’s easier if you just go in and see for yourself.” He tried to smile. “It’s nothing dangerous, for now. I won’t let anything hurt you.”

She felt tears sting her eyes. “Too late, Nick.”

He made a helpless gesture. “I wasn’t here when it happened. I don’t know how he died. I need you to help me figure it out.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re your father’s daughter and I trained you. I know what you can do.”

She sniffed, trying hard to halt the tears rolling down her cheeks. “What does that mean?”

Nick swore softly, then reached over and wiped her face. “Damn, I wish you wouldn’t do that. It’s a completely unfair tactic, especially when you look the way you do, with those big green eyes of yours.”

“I thought I was just a lousy human female,” she reminded him.

“You’re a pathetic human female,” he corrected her. “But that doesn’t mean I’m completely invulnerable to your charms. And I know exactly what you are, Natalia Grey. You are one of the most powerful demon hunters of this age. You just haven’t realized it yet. I want you to see what is inside that warehouse. I think you just might be able to help me.”

“But you’re not going to tell me anything that will bias my thinking, right?”

This time his smile was unforced. “Right.”

She found she was able to approach the warehouse with less reluctance and step inside without hesitation.

It was dark inside except for the glow of a pressure lantern at the far end. Nick slid the sword out from under his coat and handed it to her. It felt too long and heavy but she hefted it and let the blade settle on her shoulder, which was a good ready position as she had no scabbard for it. She headed in the direction of the glow of the lantern, the flares of her jeans swishing softly in the silent cavern of the warehouse. It was empty and chilly.

“Tally,” came a soft murmur as she drew closer. “You grow more beautiful with each passing day.”

Damian. Nicholas’ lover. She felt the vampire’s hand on her shoulder. His lips on her temple. She looked up into Damian’s black eyes, illuminated in the soft glow of the lantern. His high cheekbones and olive skin and strong jawline were unchanging but they were touched with sadness now. His long fingers stroked her cheek.

“We’ll mourn him, Tally.”

She could feel more tears building. Vampires mourning the death of a human was a rare acknowledgment.

“Not until I find the one who did this,” she ground out, struggling to keep her voice even. “Where is he?”

Damian nodded. “I’ll turn the light up. Brace yourself, Tally.” He walked over to the lamp, bent over and turned up the gas feed on it. The light spread and brightened and more of the warehouse appeared.

And she saw her father’s body. Tally moved over to where Peter James Grey lay in a contorted, undignified and bloodied huddle, his guts ripped out, his fingers curled in pain. Tally swallowed back her revulsion and studied the remains as clinically as she could, aware in a distant way that she was shaking violently. She used the sword to prop herself up.

“G…gargoyle,” she pronounced, wiping at her eyes.

“Yes,” Nick agreed coolly, next to her. “And your father was hunting one tonight.”

“How do you know that?”

“His partner told us.”

“Where is the toad? I want to talk to him.”

“In a minute. There’s something else you should see.” Nick nodded at Damian, who picked up the lantern. They stepped to either side of her and warmth and regard flooded her. Despite the subterranean keening sounding inside her at the loss of her father, she knew that she would never truly be alone while Nick and Damian trod the earth.

They led her through the darkness, past huge wooden packing crates, into another cavernous, seemingly empty room with a concrete floor. This one was just as cool as the last. They stopped at a huge block of raw stone, something that looked like it had been blasted out of the side of a mountain and dumped on the floor, after having the bottom of it shaved smooth and flat.

At the foot of the rock lay another body. Tally crouched down next to the man. This time the cause of death was a bit harder to establish and when she found it, she grew uneasy. She stood up. “My father must have killed him. With this.” She dropped the sword so the point rested on the concrete. “But why? Who is he?”

“You don’t recognize him at all?” Nick asked.

“You don’t know him?” Tally asked. “He looks vaguely familiar to me but…” She frowned. “Is there an office around here somewhere? Something with paperwork in it? Does he have a wallet on him? A driver’s license?” She squatted again and patted the man’s pockets and found a wallet in his hip pocket. “Can one of you roll him so I can get the wallet out?”

Damian lifted the body for her and that was when they found the top of the pentacle painted on the floor beneath it.

With Damian and Nicholas’ combined strength to move the stone, they discovered the pentacle ran beneath the stone in all directions. A twenty minute search discovered other painted pentacles of the same size on the floor of the warehouse, six in all, with powerful beckoning symbols in the center of each.

The wallet told them the name of the man at the foot of the stone was Moss Alex Meinhardt, which meant nothing to either Nick or Damian. Tally knew the name but could not explain why she knew it.

After thirty minutes, she called a halt to the search. “There’s nothing here. I was hoping for an office and paperwork that might explain more but this is just a warehouse. It’s dawn. We have to give up for tonight and clean this up so the authorities have a human explanation they can draw for events.” She looked at Nick. “I want to talk to the partner now.”

Nick nodded and picked up the lantern. “Damian, you take care of the bodies. I’ll take her to Connors.” He led her back through to the other side of the warehouse, to the far end, away from the door where she had come in.

_______________________

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30k limit, back of my mind, beasts, decks, heroine, horrible scars, maximum limit, midnight deadline, monster, personal crises, phew, profound impact, sequel, stint, sunday midnight, Teal Ceagh, thirty years, tracy cooper posey, two heroes, vampires, writing session