SERIES REVIEW TOUR
Death's Embrace Series by H.L. Moore
Series Blurb
Doran had a problem, and it wasn’t that he’d been stabbed.
Doran Ó Seanáin, leader of the Black Lung Gang and former Foreman of the mines, is at war with Iole's City's tyrannical ruler for his brutal treatment of the miners. Doran is losing, badly, and he fears his relationship with his estranged daughter Grace will never heal following the death of his wife two years prior.
Nathaniel Morgenstern, an apotheker with a mysterious past to whom Doran owes his life, seems to offer salvation. But Nathaniel has secrets of his own that may just tear them apart before they have a chance to give in to each other.
The stories are best read in order.
BOOK DETAILS
BOOK 1
Book Title: Heart of Dust
Author: H. L. Moore
Publisher: Self- Published
Cover Artist: Designed by Damonza
Length: 59 000 words / 250 pages
Release Date: February 19, 2018
Genre: Fantasy M/M Romance
Trope: Slow Burn
Themes: Revolution, Addiction
Heat Rating: 2 flames
It is book 1 in the series.
Buy Links
Special offer - Heart of Dust reduced to 99c for a limited time
Doran had a problem, and it wasn’t that he’d been stabbed.
BlurbIole City is in turmoil. Doran Ó Seanáin, leader of the Black Lung Gang, is determined to bring the Lord Archon – Iole's tyrannical ruler – down for his brutal treatment of the miners. But Doran has more to deal with than getting stabbed, a stalemate and city-wide lockdown that’s seeing his gang of ex-miners being slowly starved out of their base – his daughter Grace has turned against him, and the weight of his wife’s death two years prior haunts them both.
Things start to look up when he’s inexplicably drawn to Nathaniel Morgenstern, the apotheker with a mysterious past he owes his life to, but Doran is in way over his head. The fate of the mines hangs in the balance; the clock is ticking and the Archon is closing in. Doran’s plan to break the cycle may very well be his last.
Excerpt
Heart of Dust
Everything hurt.
This wasn’t out of the ordinary; Doran was accustomed to waking up any given morning with his head aching, his body bruised, his feet swollen, his bones fractured and muscles torn. But this time he couldn’t move, not even to open his eyes. He dimly wondered if he was hungover.
He felt someone prodding at his body. He grunted and forced his eyes open, regretting it immediately at the resulting implosion of pain in his head.
The culprit was a young man – a child, really – who yelped and jumped backwards with wide eyes, clutching a bandage.
“Sir?” the boy called out, over his shoulder. Doran flinched, the sound reverberating through his skull, and clenched his eyes shut again. “Sir, he’s waking up.”
“Leave us.”
The boy’s voice responded. “But –”
“Gerald.”
A heavy sigh. “Yes, sir.”
He could hear murmuring somewhere in the background but he couldn’t focus on the words. Instead he let the subtle but heady scent of pinewood and elderflower calm his aching mind.
There were light footsteps – the boy, Gerald – shuffling indignantly up a staircase somewhere to the right, then there was nothing but the sound of his own breathing.
His mind was so sluggish that an eon and a half had passed by the time he felt a cool glass press gently against his lower lip. A strong hand moved under the back of his head to guide him up. He managed a few sips of sweet, crystalline water. It tasted like it was sent from Lady Sionann herself to soothe his parched and aching mouth.
Doran swallowed, then gulped. Water spilled from his hungry lips and the glass was pulled away. He protested, or tried to, but the hand supporting his head guided him back down.
He realised he was lying on a table. It wasn’t hard enough to be stone, or cold enough to be metal. He could feel the grains of smooth wood beneath the tips of his fingers and against his skin, and his head rested on something soft. A jacket, perhaps, or even a pillow.
Consciousness filtered back to him, not quickly enough for his liking. Finally he managed to pry his eyes open.
The man leaning over him couldn’t have been more than a few years older than Doran, in his early forties perhaps, but if Doran thought he carried his own age badly, this man outrivalled him.
The stranger’s brown hair was peppered grey, completely silver at the temples; his face was hard, weathered and lined from years of trauma or poor life choices. A scar extended from the corner of his right eye to the middle of his cheek, destroying any chance of symmetry. Doran couldn’t call him good-looking, not by a long shot, but there was something incredibly striking about his features, in an offensive sort of way.
Doran swallowed thickly. “How long…” he tried to say, the words coming out in a harsh whisper.
“All night.”
The man had a low, coarse voice, like a miner after years of inhaling cigarette smoke and coal dust, but his words were soft.
“Shit.” Doran pushed himself to a sitting position. “What time is it?”
“Early, still,” the man replied, pressing his hand to Doran’s shoulder. His hand was bound in a black band of mourning, not unlike the one Doran wore around his upper arm. “Move slowly. You don’t want to tear those stitches.”
“Stitches –?”
Doran glanced down at himself, and his memory of the previous day flooded back in an instant.
His hand found his side, and instead of a gaping wound his fingers met a firm bandage. He also couldn’t help but notice a distinct lack of blood and – apart from his underwear – clothing.
“…You helped me,” Doran said.
“You were bleeding all over my doorstep.”
“Ah. Apologies.”
The man grunted, though whether this was in dismay or to brush off the apology, Doran couldn’t tell. “Stab wounds do that. You’re lucky it wasn’t deeper.”
Doran thought of Rhian, bleeding to death in his arms while their daughter wept. “Yeah,” he echoed. “Lucky.”
The man moved away, then returned with a bowl of steaming broth and two slices of bread. Doran accepted the meal gratefully. The broth was hot but not enough to burn his tongue. He found himself draining the bowl with desperate gulps, then attacking the bread like a starving wolf. It was better than anything he’d eaten in moons. The bread was warm and fresh, and he used it to soak up the last of the salt and rosemary broth from the bowl.
The man offered Doran a bundle of clothes when he was done.
“These should fit you,” he said, passing them over. “I had to burn yours.”
Doran’s heart seized, a spike of pure panic gripping his body. His hand shot to his chest to clutch for the chain around his neck, calming only when his fingers curled around the locket. He exhaled.
The man’s head tilted at the sudden movement, a small frown creasing his brow as the flash of bronze caught his eye, but the locket vanished underneath the shirt Doran hastily pulled over his body.
“Thanks.” Doran swung his legs over the edge of the table, wincing when he moved too quickly.
“I’d tell you not to engage in strenuous activity for at least a week, but I doubt you’ll listen and the Archon won’t care,” the man said. “Try not to reopen the wound when you’re working the mines.”
That told Doran two things – there had been no revolution, and the mines were still open.
He swallowed his disappointment. “What makes you think I’m a miner?”
“Hands.”
Doran glanced down at his hands, the cuticles of his nails and the skin of his palms permanently stained black. He clenched his calloused fists together and tried to keep his tone non-committal. “I hear it’s a hard life.”
“One I don’t envy.”
BOOK 2
Book Title: Soul of Ash
Author: H. L. Moore
Publisher: Self-Published
Cover Artist: Designed by Damonza
Length: 85 000 words/ 336 pages
Release Date: September 2020
Genre/s: Fantasy M/M Romance
Trope/s: Slow Burn
Themes: Addiction, Dark Pasts, Atonement, Forgiveness
Heat Rating: 2 flames
Buy Links - reduced to USD$4.99 for a limited time
You can run, but you will never be free.
BlurbHalf a year after the events of Heart of Dust, Doran Ó Seanáin now finds himself trapped between two worlds while belonging to neither. Held in contempt by the upper class for the turmoil he caused during Archon Bryson’s reign and resented by the miners for selling out, Leonora Darkwater’s bid to purchase the mines from the crown may be his salvation. But the offer is far more complicated than it appears, and the only person Doran trusts is the same man who threw his life into chaos.
Haunted by his past, held hostage by his debt to the Archon, and a slave to the poison that keeps him alive, atonement feels perpetually out of reach for Nathaniel Morgenstern. Too much damage has been done and too much has gone unsaid for time alone to heal the wounds between him and Doran.
Unfortunately, time is the one thing they don’t have as their lives collide once more. There are vipers in Arajon; the mines aren’t finished with Doran, and the sand in Nathaniel’s hourglass is running out.
Excerpt
Soul of Ash
He was led down a mining shaft illuminated by coal-lit lamps, until they began pushing through a crowd of murmuring men and women held back by other miners. As Lien and Nathaniel were permitted to pass, he heard a hoarse, slightly damaged voice murmuring reassurances beside a derailed dumper tractor raised off the ground by a few metal supporting bars.
“Just hold on,” he heard Doran saying, from where he knelt beside the tractor. “He’ll be here any moment –”
“Doran,” Lien said.
Doran turned.
The past few months had seen Nathaniel frequent the mines to deliver his wares or receive miners in his shop where he would be asked to render assistance. Trivial things, usually – scrapes and cuts, the occasional broken bone or beginnings of black lung. But since that day in winter, Doran himself had not returned to the shop, nor had Nathaniel seen Doran in the mines, no doubt by design.
“Good, you’re here,” Doran said when he saw Nathaniel. It was a warmer welcome than Nathaniel had expected or hoped for. “Can you help her?”
On the sooty ground, a woman, with half of her right leg pinned under the full weight of the truck, groaned.
If a woman’s leg been crushed under a truck in the glistening streets of the Bronze, the citizens would probably have thrown up or fainted or run away screaming. At the back of the cavern, the doctor was surrounded by men and women of the mines. They didn’t flinch at the horror scene that was her crushed leg; they’d seen worse. By the looks on their faces, most didn’t expect a happy outcome.
“I’d say good morning,” Nathaniel said as he too knelt beside the doctor, “but you don’t seem to be having one.”
The doctor had dark skin, betraying her as a member of the upper classes like the Harringtons, whose ancestors had emigrated not from the Valley but from the equatorial nations of Pontecorvo and Kedrossos, south of Vaison. She wore a circlet bracelet depicting the Lady Sionann, like many of the descendants of secular immigrants who’d made their fortunes did, embracing the culture of Arajon and generating both prosperity and poverty, while earning the disdain of the Valley population who clung to the old ways out of tradition or spite.
The doctor assessed Nathaniel as he set his bag down and pulled out the sterile cloths and alcohol.
“I don’t recognise this man,” she said to Doran, one hand braced against the tractor looming over her head, the other gripping the thigh of her right leg. Sweat beaded on her clammy forehead. “I know every person who has – nngh – passed through medicine at the Conservatorium. Who is this?”
“This is Nathaniel Morgenstern,” Doran replied. “He’s an apotheker in Methyr – the one who produces our remedies. He’s the closest thing to a healer we could find, given the urgency.”
“Morgenst— an apotheker?” the doctor spat. She arched her neck to glower at Doran through her tears of pain. “You’ve b-brought me some Helvetian herbalist! Are you mad? Those backwards fools didn’t even learn how to wipe their asses until a century ago!”
She was oddly coherent for a woman whose leg was currently crushed under a tractor.
“My mother had surgical training in Haderach,” Nathaniel said. “Her people discovered hygiene thousands of years ago. You’ll live.”
If anything, the doctor’s expression turned fouler. “A mev,” she muttered.
Doran’s hand clamped down hard on his shoulder.
“Mr Morgenstern is here to save your life,” he said, tersely. “Adrian, bring Doctor Lancaster some water.”
The one named Adrian scurried away.
Nathaniel felt Doran’s eyes burning into his shoulders as he examined what he could of the crushed leg under the twisted metal of the tractor. He cut the pant fabric from around Lancaster’s knee, and prodded his finger into the exposed flesh of the leg just below the kneecap, avoiding the bone jutting out like shards. There was no return of blood to her dark skin, and the doctor didn’t jerk with pain.
No blood flow. No feeling. The leg below the knee was as good as dead.
“Well?” Doran asked quietly.
Nathaniel shook his head. Doran uttered a soft swear.
“It would be better if the truck could be lifted so I can remove the limb safely,” Nathaniel said. “This area isn’t sterile.”
“We tried,” Doran said. “It’s too dangerous. The whole thing could collapse on her and crush her in an instant. She needs to be freed first before we can safely dismantle it.”
“All right.”
“How long will the procedure take?” Doran asked.
Nathaniel tilted his head at Lancaster. “Forty-odd years ago, the barber-surgeons in the Helvetic would hold down a patient and hack off their limb in thirty seconds. This was before numbing agents had been introduced, of course – time was of the essence for the patients, to minimise the pain so they wouldn’t go into shock. The wound would then be cauterised with either hot iron or boiling oil.”
“You barbarian,” Lancaster choked, “don’t you dare.”
Barbarian. That was a new one.
Surgery wasn’t his forte. He hadn’t lied – he could amputate limbs. In his time, he’d successfully amputated both limbs and heads, though the appendages usually belonged to different people and certainly hadn’t been for the purpose of saving their lives. If one was strictly speaking about life-saving amputation, his mother had taught him the technique and guided his hand through the procedure.
On cadavers.
When he was twelve.
“I can do it that quickly,” Nathaniel said, “but you’ll either bleed to death or die of shock. Caution over speed is preferable. Do you want to be unconscious, or numbed?”
“Numbed,” Lancaster said. “You have done this before, haven’t you?”
“Six times.”
“How many of your patients died?”
Nathaniel pulled out Professor Kaufman’s tome on Human Anatomy and Physiology from his bag and opened it to the chapter on amputation techniques. “They were all already dead.”
Interview
Questions for Authors
AUTHOR NAME: H.
L. Moore
Introduce yourself and your writing:
I’m an Australian Jewish lesbian author,
nearing 30 and currently working full-time as a public servant. I hold a
Bachelor of Media in Communications and Journalism, and a Master of Arts in
International Relations, though I can’t say I’ve had to put either of those
degrees into practical use yet. I love sci-fi/fantasy, video games, and I’m a
VERY big fan of LGBT+ speculative and genre literature. I am the author of the Death’s
Embrace series, a low-fantasy with a slow-burn m/m romance. So far there
are two books out in the series (Heart Of Dust and Soul Of Ash),
with the third book currently in the planning process.
Summary:
Doran Ó Seanáin, leader of the Black Lung Gang
and former Foreman of the mines, is at war with Iole's City's tyrannical ruler
for his brutal treatment of the miners. Doran is losing, badly, and he fears
his relationship with his estranged daughter Grace will never heal following
the death of his wife two years prior.
Nathaniel Morgenstern, an apotheker with a
mysterious past to whom Doran owes his life, seems to offer salvation. But
Nathaniel has secrets of his own that may just tear them apart before they have
a chance to give in to each other.
How long have you been an author? I’ve
been a writer since I was old enough to hold a pencil, but I’ve been an author
since 2018 when I self-published my first book, Heart Of Dust. I did
have a couple of short stories published in collections, but those are under my
given name rather than my penname... so I don’t really count that!
Tell us about your new release. What inspired
you to write it? It was thematically inspired by a
fanfic series I wrote in 2017. I’d just completed one of the stories when I was
struck by the urge to create something of my own, something original, that
evoked the same sort of emotional highs I received when writing my fanfic.
Obviously, Death’s Embrace is entirely original, from the characters to
the setting to the plot to the romance. But the themes of loss, struggles
against a corrupt system and personal atonement resonated so strongly with me
that I found myself channeling them through my characters, and the story just
took on a life of its own. I was also inspired – or spitefully inspired? –
after reading multiple m/m romance books where the characters had to deal with homophobia,
or were shocked to find themselves attracted to the same sex, or where women
were non-existent or completely sidelined in the narrative. I wanted to
challenge those tropes in m/m novels by creating a world where queerness is
entirely normalised; by following a main character who was completely
comfortable with his own bisexuality; by immersing this m/m romance in a world
where women are present in every aspect of their lives, and whose lives to do
not revolve around the men. The Death’s Embrace books might follow a
main m/m romance, but the series is very much for the queer community at large.
How did you decide on the title? Heart
Of Dust was decided with the help of a friend. The book was still in its
early concept stages, and I was just searching for an interesting title that
captured the, well, heart of the book – and it ended up getting title-dropped
in the text, so it ended up fitting! Soul Of Ash was actually originally
announced as The Song of Seasons Gone, but partway through writing the book
I realised that it didn’t match quite as perfectly as I’d hoped it would... so
I retitled it to match the naming scheme of the first book, and still managed
to allude to the original title in the text.
What
are you working on at present? Would you like to share a snippet? I’m
currently working on Book 3 of the Death’s Embrace series, Throne Of
Lies. It's still very much in the draft/planning stage, so the only snippet
I have to share at this stage is done so with the disclaimer that it is subject
to change and/or may not even make it to the final version:
“What a year, huh,” Doran murmured.
“Mm.”
Doran stepped closer. He settled his hands
upon Nathaniel’s firm waist. Nathaniel turned his head slightly, enough for
Doran to catch the hint of a smile. Doran grinned back and stepped closer again
until he was pressed against Nathaniel from behind, and tilted his head to gain
access to Nathaniel’s neck. He pressed his lips to the skin exposed near the
collar of his shirt and inhaled his pine and elderwood scent.
What
was the hardest part of writing your book? For Soul
Of Ash, it was definitely letting go of my preconceptions of how the plot
needed to go. I was so sure the plot needed to take a particular direction, and
I was forcing the characters into certain situations – but it just wasn’t
working. So I took a knife to the draft, sliced out the plot I had intended for
the book, and started again. It trimmed out about 20,000 words from my
wordcount, and it was one of the hardest things I had to do... but at the end
of the day, it was 100% the right decision. Soul Of Ash wouldn’t be what
it is, if I hadn’t been brave enough to gut my own work!
Did you learn anything from writing your book?
What was it? Following on from the preceding question – I
learned that sometimes, I just can’t force my characters into situations that
they aren’t read for. When something isn’t working, I know what to do now – and
that’s to remove the characters from the preconceived plot, return the focus to
them, and then try again in a way that is true to their personalities, motives,
and emotions.
Do you have any advice for other writers? You
are not a failure for not writing every single day. You are not a failure for
lacking the motivation to write something. And most importantly – you do not
have to go on your writing journey alone. I was once told – by someone who
wasn’t even a writer! - that if I wanted to write a book then I shouldn’t tell
people about it, and just do it. That advice hindered me for years, until I
connected with like-minded people and found the right friends to bounce ideas
off of. Find your cheerleader – find the people who love your ideas and works
in progress as much as you do. Make writing fun, not a chore.
Is there a book you wish you had written? Yes
– I wish I’d written Children Of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Or rather,
I wish I possessed the imagination and talent to write something even half as
incredible as that book!
Why M/M? M/M
fanfiction was one of the first steps on my journey to realising/accepting
myself as a lesbian. As a teenager, I would find myself watching shows and
movies or reading books, and not being able to connect with the M/F pairing on
screen. While I’m sure there was some internalised misogyny at the time that
contributed to my lack of interest in the het romance, I would later realise it
was because these M/F romances put so much more character weight into the man,
and the woman was so often his ‘reward’... when the male character’s
relationship(s) with his best friend, or his rival, was so much more
compelling. I didn’t know why I connected with the intensities of those
dynamics when I was a teenager; all I knew was that the M/M fanfiction that I
read was more emotional, complex and compelling than most mainstream M/F works
I’d been exposed to. These days I’m far more critical of the industries and
creators behind the shows and movies and books, and I am a massive advocate for
F/F stories (and indeed, I’m planning to write an F/F series in the future!),
but I will never lose my love for the M/M romances that started me on my
journey to figuring out my own sexuality.
Do
you have a favourite character and/or book you've written? Who, what and why? I am
extremely proud of two characters in a short story I’ve self-published on Kobo
and Kindle – a science-fiction tale that follows Veracity Veran, a cyborg
survivor of a war that raged between cyborgs and humans, and Anne Shapiro, a
human with a dark past of her own. Veracity is bitter, angry, and dangerous –
Anne is tired, grim, and equally dangerous. I love this story because it gave
me an opportunity to explore the darker natures of two female characters whose
lives and experiences have intersected and affected each other; two women who
should by all accounts be bitter, hateful enemies, now forced to get to know
each other and rethink everything they thought they knew about each other. It’s
called Can You Ever Forgive Me, and it is the first short story in a
planned science fiction short story collection.
Do
characters and stories just pop into your head, or do you take your time
thinking about and planning them? Characters
first, story second, and worldbuilding is something I get dragged into kicking
and screaming. I will often come up with a concept for a character, and the
character will just take on a life of their own... the story gets structured
around them, and then the story is impacted by them. I try to plan, but
plans are always at the mercy of my characters.
What
are your writing and personal goals for 2020 and beyond? For
the remainder of 2020, all I want to do is settle on an outline for Throne
Of Lies... which I will no doubt promptly ignore when my characters decide
to go their own direction. Beyond, though? I would like to complete the Death’s
Embrace series by 2025, so I can free myself up to focus on a science
fiction trilogy with a slow-burn F/F romance.
Author Links
Blog/Website | Tumblr | Facebook
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