Guest Post and Giveaway: The King and the Criminal by Charlotte Ashe

Lisa: We’re so pleased to welcome author Charlotte Ashe to TNA today, on the blog tour for book two in The Heart of All Worlds series, The King and the Criminal.

Hi, Charlotte, thanks so much for joining us. Let’s start by having you tell us a little about yourself and your book.

Charlotte: Hello, and thank you so much for having me! I’m excited to be here!

I have been a writer since I was in elementary school. It has always been among my greatest passions.  However, it was only quite recently that I finally decided it was time to pursue my writing in a professional capacity. My first novel, The Heart of All Worlds, Book 1: The Sidhe was published in 2015, and The King and the Criminal is the second book in the series. It is a love story at its heart, about an elfin king, and his uneasy alliance with criminal he was supposed to bring to justice, but ends up caring about in a way he never anticipated.

Q: Do you have any pets? If so, tell us all about them.

A: I have always been a cat lady. I wouldn’t even get offended if you called me a crazy cat lady. I like animals in general, but I adore cats. I happily serve them regardless of whether or not they have any respect for me (spoiler alert: they often don’t). I am not a subservient person in general, but when it comes to my fur babies, I definitely make an exception.

Right now I have two cats, because my apartment only allows up to two cats. In the future, there will absolutely be more.

My older cat is named Pepper. He also goes by Mr. Baby, which is what I call him more often than not.  He is the sweetest, silliest cat on the planet.

I got him as a kitten, when I had two much older cats and was not planning on a third. But I was at a local Peace Festival organized by my very politically active grandmother, and someone brought a litter of stray kittens to see if anyone would take them. The moment I laid eyes on this little black fluff puddle, my heart was GONE.

Pepper is 11 years old now, and he’s just as energetic as he was when he was a kitten. His older two sisters passed away several years ago at ages 15 and 18 respectively, and I began to notice that he seemed lonely. He would pace around the house yowling, and he didn’t want to play as much as he had before. So I decided it was time to bring home a new sibling for him.

I got Matilda, who mostly goes by Tilly, from my local Animal Refuge League. She was six months old, and an absolute spitfire. While Pepper is skittish and easily frightened, Tilly is intensely curious and nearly fearless. She is social and friendly, but very protective of her personal space (trying to pick her up will earn you a bite or a hiss or both). After the initial I’m not sure about you period, they became fast friends. They run around the house at top speed, chase each other, wrestle, and then curl up near each other. Tilly is three now, and the change in Pepper since she came to live with us has been incredible. He is like a kitten again, and the two of them are frighteningly good at ganging up on me when they want treats.

Also, Tilly loves boxes. Even more than your average box-loving cat. She loves them. If a box comes into our home, she is inside of it in less than ten seconds every time. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen her as excited as she was here, when a new mattress was delivered in the biggest box she’d ever seen.

Mr. Baby likes boxes too, of course. He is, after all, a cat.

Mr. Baby also likes my book!

One thing they do not like is when I travel. When I was packing for the RT Booklovers Convention last year, they both decided that I could either pack them in my suitcase, or the suitcase was going to stay put. It did not go over well when I packed it up without them.

Though it might sound silly, my cats really are my muses in so many ways. When I am writing about sphinxes, I study the way that they move. When I am writing about royalty, I do all I can to capture that indefinable, regal something that all cats seem to possess. And when I need to figure out where to go with a story, I never think more clearly than when there’s a purring cat in my lap.

I can’t imagine a world without cats, and I would never want to.

About the Book

What happens when the fairytale ends but the journey continues?

Book II of the Heart of All Worlds series inds Sehrys and Brieden living peacefully in Khryslee until King Firae must cross The Border in pursuit of a convicted criminal, one who has violated a magical doctrine and so threatened the stability

of their world. When Firae’s plan goes awry and he becomes trapped in Villalu, he is faced with a choice between allegiance to the Council or allegiance to Brissa, the ierce young human queen who is determined to bring justice to Villalu. Firae discovers he must rely on the very criminal he was seeking to help him get home alive—a man he exiled long ago, but who awakens something in his heart more potent than his sworn duties as king.

Meanwhile, Sehrys is forced to ascend the throne in Firae’s absence, thus taking a role he was once groomed for, but one that Brieden fears could destroy their life together.

As each man struggles to understand his own destiny, devotion, and legacy, deeper and more urgent truths confront them all: Their world is in far greater danger than they realized, and each of them plays an integral part in its fate.

Buy the Book: Interlude Press || Amazon || All Romance eBooks || Kobo

About the Author

Charlotte Ashe works in the nonprofit world by day and writes romantic fantasy by night. A long-time fan of speculative fiction that skews feminist and features LGBT characters, Charlotte loves writing stories that are sexy, heartfelt, and full of magic and adventure. She has put her BA in literature and creative writing to use over the years as a writer of fan fiction, and her most popular work has drawn more than one million readers worldwide, been translated into several languages, and been featured in online publications including The Backlot. Her first novel, The Sidhe, was published in 2015 by Interlude Press and named a finalist for a Foreword Reviews’ INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award.

The King & The Crikminal will be published by Interlude Press on December 8, 2016. Connect with author Charlotte Ashe at CharlotteAshe.com, on Facebook at facebook.com/charlotteashewrites and on Twitter at @CobwebsandAshes

The Giveaway

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