Goddess, Inflamed - The Goddess Connection 2, paranormal/fantasy with mythology elements

Some promises were made to be broken...

When your life is hell, visiting the Underworld doesn’t seem much of a leap. On her twenty-first birthday, Lily MacInnis learns the hard way—by meeting relatives who not only live there, they own the place. And expect her to move there to marry Zeveriah, Archduke of Section Six and Hades’ up and coming CFO. Suddenly, Lily’s life doesn’t look so bad, but how can she make sure she doesn’t get trapped there in a marriage to a demon?

Bodie can’t let Lily fulfill that destiny. As Ruling Prince of the Sixth Heaven, he’s waited an eternity for the chance to bring down his nemesis, Zeveriah. Seems like he’s wanted Lily for an eternity too. But once he saves her, will she be his downfall?

Before her birthday, Lily didn’t know a damned thing. She’s about to learn all about The Damned, and find out everything she thought she knew was a lie…

Goddess, Inflamed*

The Goddess Connection, Book 2

Fantasy/paranormal romance novel

Heat level: Hot as Hades

About 66,300 words

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ISBN: 9781310921919

Casting Call (coming soon)

Reviews

I am so in love with this series.  I love the characters and the way the various other entities interact with them.  They are all brought into the modern world and to life with such amazing personalities and motivations.  Lily is a dancer - yes the exotic type that uses a pole.  But she doesn't do it just because it's a good way to make money.  The music calls to her and if she doesn't dance she will probably go crazy.  Her life changes on her 21st birthday when some very interesting men enter her life.
Bodie and Zev are about as different as they could possible be.  It's to be expected when one is an angel and the other a demon.  But they both want Lily.  She is a very special person with some tough decisions to make.  As her life is turned upside down, she is thrown into a spiral of confusion that was incredibly well written.  She knows what she wants to decide, she just needs to find the courage to do so - and stay out of all the traps set to keep her where she doesn't want to be.
There were lots of surprises in this book as her lineage is slowly revealed.  I loved exploring all the skeletons in the closet of Hades' and Persephone's family.  There are quite a few of them, and we all love a good bit of juicy gossip.  The end was a fantastic adventure with just enough action to get my heart racing paired with some wonderful moments of true love.
The characters in the series are so real, I almost expect to run into them on the street some day.  It just seems natural that they are a part of the "real world" and we just don't know it yet.

5 Stars – Bitten by Romance http://www.bittenbyromance.com/2014/11/review-goddess-inflamed-goddess.html

The Goddess Connection Series

Every woman should embrace her inner goddess. What’s your connection?

In each novel of The Goddess Connection series, the heroine is somehow connected to a goddess. Her lifelong quirks will become strengths once she finds her true place in the world, and accepts herself for who she really is.

*Revised version of Dancing With the Devil

SSS: Zev's busted

Yay, it's Six Sentence Sunday again. Thanks so much for visiting, and for your comments, which I always appreciate.

Here's another six from Dancing with the Devil, my dark paranormal, in which Lily realizes Zev is actually a demon:

The longer she held the pendant, the more her hand shook. From her glazed, wild-eyed look, she either joined the ranks of the zombies or some deep truth had just hit home.

Her lip quivered. “You’re… a….”

He sighed, then slammed back his martini. Oh yeah, definitely the latter.

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SSS: Bodie clues Lily in

Such a crazy week, it got away from me and I didn't sign up for Six Sentence Sunday, but here's my contribution anyway.

From Dancing With the Devil, my dark paranormal that made it to #38 on the Amazon bestseller list for romance! Woot!

“Seriously, you’re an angel.” On a Harley. Or maybe just a Springsteen fan like her who loved the idea of it.

“You can Google me. I show up as Bodiel, Ruling Angel of the Sixth Heaven. I prefer Bodie.”

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Story Elements: Dancing with the Devil

I love sharing the background of my stories. It usually takes me anywhere from many months to several years to finish a story. I always have about a dozen in the WIP queue, and work on them as time permits. Research is sometimes a holdup. I love it a little too much.

For my dark paranormals, research involves everything from The Underworld to Greek mythology to goddesses to angels.

Dancing with the Devil was no different. The myth of Persephone and Hades has always intrigued me. The gods and goddesses were a strange and incestuous bunch (Persephone was Hades' niece, in fact). I wasn't about to touch that aspect of it. 

But that aside, Hades is, after all, the devil. The ultimate bad guy. The guy you can never trust, never be friends with, never turn your back on. Yet somehow, he managed to make Persephone fall in love with him. After their marriage, her mother Demeter protested and basically earned Persephone a Get Out of Hell card for at least part of the year. Persephone ultimately chose to return to Hades.

Why? Did Hades have some redeeming qualities? He wasn't a faithful husband. He spent a little too much time with the nymph Minthe. Persephone took notice, and violently murdered Minthe. Maybe a little of her husband rubbed off on the goddess, eh?

Much of the story is set in The Underworld. Not many have visited and returned to describe the setting, but there are plenty of resources to make up for that. 

Hades refers to both the ruler of The Underworld and Hell itself. For the most part, it refers to the ruler in Dancing With the Devil.  Tartarus is the least desirable of the realms, where the damned souls reside, and where Hades keeps his main castle in my story.

As far as the realm being broken into sections, well, that was something I imagined. Each section has its own archduke, chosen by Hades. For Section Six, Zeveriah is archduke, and has fallen into Hades' favor with his financial expertise. Hades is about to appoint Zeveriah as CFO. As an extra perk, he's throwing in his granddaughter Lily.

Carrying on in the tradition of Hades and Persephone, the two arrange the marriages of their offspring with prominent figures in The Underworld. Persephone's daughter Illiana, however, chose to buck that tradition and instead married an angel, Zacharel. Their daughter Lily was kidnapped as an infant and placed into the care of a woman who turned out to be a double agent - friendly to the angels, she secretly worked for The Underworld, and helped set up Lily on her 21st birthday. 

When she steps into the waiting limousine, Lily has no clue she's taken the first step toward fulfilling her role as The Destined One.

It's funny how elements come together in a story. When I first began Dancing With the Devil, Lily's a pole dancer. Not your stereotypical exotic dancer, she just loves to dance. So it seemed natural to include a scene in which Persephone and Hades arrange a performance during Lily's visit. As a starting point, I researched belly dancing and stumbled across information on slave dances, which I'd never heard of, but which fit the story perfectly.

Slaves dance performances tell a story in and of themselves. They might be a woman's personal story, or it might be a traditional dance which relays a part of the culture.

In Dancing With the Devil, the performance depicts the origin of The Destined One, and shows how the woman will fulfill her role. Lily's enamored of the dancing itself, and asks to learn the method. I'd never understood much about it, but apparently using the finger cymbals, or zills, is extremely difficult to master.

Not for Lily, of course. :)

Angels provided another reason for research. I dusted off my copy of A Dictionary of Angels and searched through it for what might be an appropriate angel. The one who caught my eye was Bodiel.

As The Ruling Angel of the Sixth Heaven, Bodiel would seem to be in a position of direct opposition to the archduke of Hades Section Six, Zeveriah. A good excuse to make them foes since the beginning of existence.

Bodiel's also part of the Sixth Order of Angel, known as Thrones. The array of angels is astounding, in fact - one for every month, every day, and every hour of the day. And more beyond that. But that's all for another story. :)

Literally, Bodiel means "The Enlightenment of the Source of the Whole of Existence." For my story, he focuses on enlightening Lily. He understands the risk in becoming personally involved, yet it doesn't stop him. Besides being a warrior angel, he also rides a motorcycle. True hero material.

My research files for this story go on for many, many more pages. I'll wrap it up with Lilith, who's somewhat of a mystery. Apparently much of what was formerly recorded about Lilith was stricken from history. Some referred to her as the first goddess, and the first wife of Adam - in fact, created alongside Adam rather than Eve, who came later to replace Lilith. It seems Lilith was somewhat of a party girl, and liked to keep her options open rather than commit to one guy. She "mated" with the archangel Samael (who became the original fallen angel, or Satan). So some referred to her as a demoness, and she may or may not have been the serpent who tempted Eve with the apple in the Garden of Eden.

It seems to be the general concensus that Lilith was banished. So she became the go-to goddess for desperate Veronica, who's in love with Zeveriah, who's determined to make Lily fall in love with him. But he also is addicted to relieving the pain of waiting for Lily by, ahem, spending time with Veronica.

As I've mentioned before, Dancing with the Devil is a much higher heat level than I normally write. I think I mentioned I stopped writing it a few times because of it. But then I realized the sex was not gratuitous. In Dancing With the Devil, it's more of a power struggle than anything. It made perfect sense, so I stopped trying to limit my characters and let them tell their story.

The most important element of all.

SSS: Zeveriah, Archduke of Hades Section Six

Wow, what a crazy good week! Sizzling Hot Book Reviews rated Dancing with the Devil 4 hearts, and Night Owl Reviews rated The Magic of Lavender, the first book in the Goddess Connection series, as a Top Pick! I am still over the moon, happy dancin'. I hope you grabbed your free copy of Dancing With the Devil from Amazon this week!

So on to the snippet. In Dancing With the Devil, the heroine's family promised her in marriage to the Archduke of Hades Section Six, Zeveriah. Zev's nervous about winning Lily's heart:

His laid-back demeanor belied the intensity beneath, the furious drive to succeed propelling him through millennia.

I’ll woo her. Yes, ridiculous as it sounded, he would stoop that low, charm the girl into loving him as The Prince had with Persephone.

The Prince had no angelic counterparts to thwart his plan, however. Bodiel had been a thorn in Zev’s side for too long. The Ruling Angel of the Sixth Heaven better stay the hell out of this, or he’d meet his counterpart face to face, sword to sword.

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