My Guest Today: Paranormal Romantic Suspense Author Mickey Flagg

Please welcome paranormal romantic suspense author Mickey Flagg. She’s just released His Soul to Keep, the third book in The Champion Chronicles. Let’s find out a bit about her before we ask her questions. 

Bio

Always an avid reader, the realm of paranormal fiction is the perfect landing point for Mickey Flagg. After a successful career as a music teacher and an urban school administrator, she continues to spin stories of passion, love and redemption. She’s been a contributor in a book on urban music education and has also authored an article for Still Standing, a web-magazine about loss and healing. Named a Distinguished Music Educator at the 2010 Yale Music Symposium, Mickey is a life-long New Jersey resident, a member of Liberty States Fiction Writers and NJRW, and has served as a Professor in Residence with a local university.

A number of writers I know are or have been teachers, but you’re the first I’ve met from the field of music instruction. Tell us, what inspired you to write fiction? And what drew you to the paranormal romance genre, specifically the vampire sub-genre?

I love doing puzzles. The more pieces the better. Writing is like putting a puzzle together and creating a vivid picture. I simply choose to make my vivid picture with vampires, witches, and mystical warriors. 

One of the first pieces of advice an aspiring author gets is write what you love. In my case, that’s paranormal fiction. When you add a heady dose of romance and some gut-wrenching suspense, the sub-genre becomes paranormal romance suspense. I write in a broad genre that is crowded with so many twists and turns that your head could spin. Focusing my stories on a cast of characters, the world I create consistently pits evil against good. Writing dark fantasy enables an author to bend the rules to meet his or her own criteria. I like that perk. It places my characters in situations that have roots in real-world relationships with more than a splash of other-world drama. 

Oh, I like that rule-bending perk too. Tell us more about the drama inherent in your stories.

My main character in The Champion Chronicles is a mystically enhanced vampire who regained his soul with some Heavenly help. Writing someone who should be intrinsically evil but chooses the most difficult path to redemption creates fascinating possibilities for him and for me as the writer. By giving him a soulmate who should have destroyed him and a troubled human son who shouldn’t exist complicates his world. Add to the mix a host of secondary characters that he must interact with, and my paranormal world is complete.

Some authors choose to write cozy mysteries, young adult, or second-chance romance. I choose to write tales of love and redemption in the realm of the paranormal. I’ve always been drawn to the genre because of the vampire trope. Be it Anne Rice or J.R. Ward, various writing styles intrigue me. So do story lines that involve all the fantastical what-ifs, like Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander Series. So, I write what I like. Strong characters who value love and family above all else. They just happen to be mystical or magical and live in a world that is always threatened by something evil. I build a story where good always wins, and whether mystical, magical, or human, my characters must face his or her demon within and do some soul-searching along the way. 

For me, writing paranormal fiction is like a giant jigsaw puzzle. I’m just never sure of the vivid, completed picture until I type: The End. 

I like the puzzle imagery, working the pieces until the image/story is complete. Let’s take a look now at what you’ve completed in His Soul to Keep.

Blurb

Too many questions. Too many doubts. Michael Malone’s new existence is not only shocking but beyond puzzling. Keeping his distance from his soulmate and his troubled son only makes matters worse. When his beast-within is resurrected by dark magic and implanted in a teenage girl, he feels the aberration, feels responsible. But he isn’t a commanding, mystically enhanced vampire anymore. Will he be able to destroy the evil entity, or will he be forced to take it back within his soul to save an innocent? First, he must locate who inspired this heinous act, the wicked wizard and a beautiful but cunning female vampire he knew centuries ago. His new reality, his very human life hangs in the balance and he will face unparalleled evil. Many innocent lives are at stake—should he not succeed.

Excerpt

In a familiar way, Alana settled between his long legs. Pulling out of the steamy kiss, her head rested on his heart, and every thump filled her with wonder. No ordinary man could wear snug black jeans and a simple black shirt with its sleeves rolled up the way Michael did. Dark colors enhanced his singular, intense look. Even with her eyes closed, she could see only him. She could sense strength in his soul, in his muscular body. His embrace was a place of comfort as well as erotic joy.

Years apart, and then realizing how much she loved him... What he had put himself through ten months ago had reshaped their destiny, and now, the possibility of a long life together had real meaning. She felt him deep in her soul. Being with him made her very core ache with a lover’s need. In an intimate way, she studied his day-old beard, the width of his shoulders, the lines of his face. Her hands weren’t willing to leave his chest. He shifted, and she drifted farther away to sit on her heels, to drown in the full vision of him. His eyes shimmered as his warm fingers threaded hers.

“How’d it go with Lu? Did you get a chance to talk?”

“Jeez, Mom, that’s a tough one. Couldn’t we start with something easier?”

She chuckled. “I think Mom sounds sweet. He lets me call him Lu.”

“If you’re okay with it, so am I.”

“Where is he?”

“Anywhere I’m not, apparently.” He groaned in a frustrated way and pushed back to sit up against the padded arm. His hands slipped out of her hold, and he laced them to his chest.  When he blew out a slow breath, shivers ran down her spine.

“Did something happen?”

“I expected non-stop questions, not a sudden shutdown.”

“Do you have any idea how unbelievable this is? How unexpected—”

“No, really,” he said with a touch of sarcasm. A distant look she’d never seen before settled on his face. “I asked for an end to my existence. I didn’t ask for life.”

His eyes dulled while hers blazed. Sucking in a breath, she held it. Maybe she’d misunderstood. “You wanted an end to your existence? Meaning… the forever kind of death?”

“Alana, I’m not about to lie.”

“Nope, rewind and talk. Talk fast.” The proverbial romantic, rose-tinted glasses had just ripped right off her eyes.

“What I did in undeath, unexpected questions fired at me by twelve individuals to explain or clarify… then sitting in the church after a six-hour inquisition—which took place a full month after I completed their Document of Atonement. I…came undone. Before I left you last May, I had no right to ask for your love.” He looked at the wall, down the hall, at anything but her.

“Michael—”

“And whose idea was it to have my son here, waiting for my return?”

“We all thought—”

“I told him I’d come for him when I was ready. That was the deal. He should have been forced to stay at school in England. I had no right believing I could teach him how to deal with life, either.”

“Michael, stop,” she managed to whisper. Illogical words came from a most rational man. She couldn’t swallow, didn’t recognize the chill in his tone.

Now that you have us hooked, let’s share contact info and buy links:

Contact links:

Website info: http://mflagg-author.com

Social Media links:

Facebook:    (1) M. Flagg | Facebook

Twitter:   https://twitter.com/flagg_michele

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mickeyflagg

Buy Links:

Amazon.com: His Soul to Keep (The Champion Chronicles Book 3) eBook : Flagg, M. : Books

His Soul to Keep by M. Flagg, Paperback | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com)

I’m so grateful Mickey was kind enough to visit today. Please take some time to check out her series, The Champion Chronicles and her latest release His Soul to Keep.