Author Archives: Susan Illene

About Susan Illene

Susan Illene served in the US Army for eleven years and worked as a human resources specialist and an Arabic linguist. She served two deployments to Iraq, and after leaving the army, she studied history at the University of Oklahoma. She currently lives with her husband and two sons.

Cast by Flames sneak peek and pre-order

I have good news that Cast by Flames (ebook version) is now available for pre-order on all major retailers. Links are below.

For those who’d like to get a peek at the novel, I’m posting the first chapter as well. Keep in mind that it’s with the editor, so some minor changes may be made to the final version. I hope everyone’s week is going great!

B&N/NOOK KOBO

GOOGLE PLAY ITUNES


Chapter 1

Bailey

The massive green dragon lay on its side with its tongue lolling from its mouth, having expelled its final breath moments before. A puddle of blood pooled under its chest. I’d hardly had to try when I killed it despite the fact it likely weighed twenty times as much as me.

The beast and two of its buddies had been chasing down a group of kids, hoping to snack on them. Their prey looked like preteen orphans who’d formed a gang—not all that uncommon after more than six years of living with dragons in our world.

So many people had died in that time.

According to very rough estimates, the Earth had lost at least half its population. Of course, an official census was impossible, but many of us suspected the percentage was far greater than that. Lack of modern medicine, clean water, law and order, changed landscapes, and numerous other factors steadily eroded mankind.

My friends and I had intervened in this latest attack, using magically enhanced bullets and arrows we’d acquired from sorcerers to shoot at our targets and bring them to the ground, but my part in the fight had ended too soon for my liking. The dragon I’d attacked hadn’t even recovered from its fall before I stuck a sword in its heart. Any true slayer wanted a bit of a challenge before the battle ended.

At least the kids we’d saved had the sense to run away the moment we intervened.

I glanced over at one of my hunting partners, Rayna. “Any trouble with yours?”

“Nope.” She blew a lock of her long, coppery brown hair from her face. She’d put it in a tight braid, but her wavy strands often came loose while fighting. “It’s annoyingly disappointing.”

“It seems like only the weakest and dumbest members of the Shadowan hang around here anymore.”

She nodded with resignation in her hazel eyes.

We were currently on a hunt in south Oklahoma City. As slayers, Rayna and I had to fight at least once a week to quell our dragon-killing urges, but even that pushed our limits if we spent a lot of time around our innate enemies. Considering I was mated to the pendragon of the Taugud—a shifter clan—and lived in his castle with him and our son, I tried not to wait that long.

Rayna lived away from the fortress but still ran into enough dragon shifters while residing in their territory that she needed to play it safe, too. No matter how hard we fought it, our hard-wired instincts would win if we weren’t careful despite the fact the Taugud could take on human form. We had to stay on our allies’ good side with a much larger war looming against a powerful force to the West.

She wiped her sword clean and slid it into the scabbard strapped to her belt. “It is getting annoying. We haven’t had a decent fight in over a month, and our prey used to be tougher when we first started hunting here. These days, they don’t even hurt me before I finish them.”

“Yeah,” I said, humor and sarcasm lacing my voice. “It’s terribly frustrating when you walk away from a battle without a scratch.”

She grinned. “Right?”

Grunting and cursing came from about a hundred feet away, where Conrad still fought to finish his dragon. He wanted to be a slayer like me and Rayna. He’d been gifted with immunity to flames almost six years ago and used that advantage to fight our fiery-mouthed foes. I suspected he’d eaten a couple of hundred dragon hearts over that period, hoping to make the transition as we did. It was part of the initiation process for those of us born with the gene who accepted our duty. Conrad’s distasteful diet had made him stronger and faster, so I supposed he was on to something, but I was glad I only had to eat the heart once to become a full slayer. He was attempting it the hard way as a regular human.

Also, unlike us, he took his time with his prey and killed them slowly with sword strikes and verbal mockery. I’d begun to feel sorry for whichever dragon he targeted since it would die a slow and ignoble death. Conrad really enjoyed the job for someone not born into it.

Continue reading

Cast by Flames coming soon

I know the wait was longer than expected, but I wanted to let everyone know Cast by Flames is coming late next month. I’m currently getting final beta reader feedback. The manuscript is due to the editor at the end of this week.

Currently, it stands at nearly 158,000 words. To put it in perspective, the longest novel in this series was the last one, Torn in Flames, at 109,000 words. I hope this helps make up for the long wait.

I had to put a lot of my military knowledge into this one, along with research, to fill in the gaps where I had less experience. Writing was very fun as I wrapped up the story for the main characters. Of course, there is one spin-off with Galadon, so you will get to see several of them in that, but otherwise, this is the end of Aidan and Bailey’s journey.

Those of you who are members of my Facebook fan group have been getting regular updates for some time, but for those who haven’t, I’m going ahead and revealing the book cover below. You’ll also find the summary, which I just finalized, so that’s new.

I plan to get the pre-order up over the weekend, and once it’s live, I’ll post the links (likely early next week). As for the release date, I’ve got that set to December 30th to give time for the editor and my final revisions.

In the coming weeks, I’ll also share excerpts and the first chapter to give you a taste.

Hope everyone’s week is going well!

Malicious forces are coming for Bailey, Aidan, and everyone they know.  The Kandoran are cunning and ruthless when conquering land and all the beings who live in it.  They infect everyone they touch with evil magic, assimilating them for their own dark purposes.

With a massive army coming they cannot hope to match, the best Bailey and Aidan can do is court as many allies as possible to form an unlikely coalition of pure dragons, shifters, sorcerers, slayers, and humans bound together with the single purpose of preserving their way of life.  They will have to form strategies and fight back in both modern and magical ways their adversary could never anticipate.  Even then, the odds are against them, but with everything they love on the line, they’ll do whatever it takes to survive.

The Sensor Series is now in Kindle Unlimited!

For anyone who doesn’t already own the series, but has been considering trying it, this is your chance to read all the books and novellas for free if you’ve got KU membership. I’ve never had the Sensor Series in Kindle Unlimited before, so this was a big step for me to pull all the novels from the other retailers and do this.

I should warn my Dragon’s Breath only readers that aside from Darkness Haunts (the first novel), this series has much stronger romantic elements and steamy bits. It’s also set in a different place, Alaska, which is its own kind of character.

If you’re unsure if it’s for you, borrow it and give it a try. You can always return it with KU and have only lost a little time. I’m putting the Amazon series page links below.

RETAILER LINKS

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Amazon CA

Amazon AU

Amazon DE

*****

Hope you enjoy!

Kerbasi spin-off series

I’m going to get down to the nitty gritty of my thoughts over the years on this topic for those who have been hoping Kerbasi would get a full novel or series. Of course, he did get a holiday novella from his perspective (Sensor Series book 4.5) and a short story included at the end of Darkness Wanes (book 6), but those were shorter reads. Not to mention, a lot has happened to him since those were written, especially at the end of the Dark Destiny Series. I won’t spoil that twist for anyone who isn’t caught up, but it was a game changer for Kerbasi.

Anyway, since I finished the last spin-off with Cori and Bartol, I’ve been pondering how to handle the next chapter in that universe. There were a lot of ways to go with it. I could do a PNR single-novel spinoff, but I honestly think only the hardcore fans of the Sensor Series would pick that up, and I’d be lucky if I made my money back on the publishing expenses.

Next, I considered Kerbasi being the main lead for 2-3 books with a female side character who he’d eventually fall for in the story. She would get little or no time told from her perspective. This sounded better, but it still didn’t get me very excited. I have a lot of ideas for brand new series in my head I’d love to write, so if I want to do something with Kerbasi next year and keep those on the back burner, it has to be an angle that is super motivating for me to focus.

Then it came to me that I need to create an urban fantasy female lead who has some sort of interesting power but also a lot of issues that will get Kerbasi’s wings in a twist and instigate the event where they meet. I want them to clash hard against each other somewhat similar to how Lucas and Melena did (with their own unique journey, of course). It’s gotta be slow-burn, yet explosive so I could go four to five books and give them time to settle into a true relationship. There will be hot, spicy elements when the time is right for it as well, so it’s not going to be clean. Just giving fair warning for those who might need it.

Something about starting the story with the female but also giving Kerbasi his fair perspective (similar to how it goes between Bailey and Aidan in the Dragon’s Breath Series) is what feels right to me. That’s generally my happy writing place where I feel my best for writing. Also, it will work for any new readers who want to jump into this new series without knowing all the backstory of the two previous series.

So this is the tentative plan. As soon as I’ve finished the Galadon novel at the end of this year, I’ll do a deep dive back into the Sensor World because I need to refresh myself after the long break. After that, I’ll begin writing and give you all a tentative book release timeline and hopefully have figured out a series title by that point. I’m sure I’ll also share some excerpts to tide you over during the wait.

And for those wondering, I will squeeze in some appearances of the other Sensor Series characters, but they won’t feature heavily due to the fact Kerbasi will be in Melbourne, Australia. The long distance will make those opportunities more limited (I know from experience it’s a super long flight and none of the nephilim can flash that far). Having said that, ten years will have passed since events in Destined for Eternity (Kerbasi needed time to settle into his new life), so I definitely want readers to have a chance to see how the crew in Alaska is doing.

That’s the update. Hope this gets you excited for the next chapter in that universe and feel free to ask questions!

Publishing timeline, KU, and other updates

Things have been hectic for me lately. Both of my sons have had some rare/unusual health problems, and my oldest spent several days in the hospital a couple of weeks ago. It was a similar issue to what happened to him last September when a virus triggered rhabdomyolysis (mentioned in this post), but it hit him even harder this time even though it was only a cold. I detailed what has been going on to my Facebook fan group if you’re interested in finding out more. We have begun to recover from that (the adults in the family got sick right after the boys began getting better and it was brutal on us too), but at least I can start catching up on author-related matters again.

The health issues did set me back a few weeks on my writing/book release schedule. I’d hoped to have Cast by Flames out by the end of July, but it’s now looking like mid-October (updated). Sorry for the delay, but I’ll be working hard to get it done and out to you all. After that, I’ll begin work on the Galadon novel with the hope of releasing it early 2024.

Kindle Unlimited News

I originally planned to pull the Dragon’s Breath Series from Kindle Unlimited early next month when the current 90-day term expires. Having said that, in recent weeks the ebooks have been getting borrowed and read at an increased rate that makes me hesitate to pull them. I’d hate to catch people in the middle of the series and cause them to be unable to borrow the rest, so I may leave the ebooks in the program for the rest of the year. The series would have gone back to KU around the time Cast by Flames released anyway.

Also, I am considering putting the Sensor Series in Kindle Unlimited for the very first time. Sales have slowed down for those books on the other retailers, so it would be a good chance to let readers try it in KU. This is also in anticipation of my returning to that universe next year (after I’m done with the Dragon’s Breath books, of course) when I begin work on a fresh spin-off series with Kerbasi and an all-new heroine.

For those of you who haven’t tried the Sensor Series and have no idea who Kerbasi is, let’s just say he’s the super powerful antihero who you fantasize about murdering in terrible ways only to find him growing on you later down the line. I continue to have readers email me about him getting his own books, and I’ve been brainstorming how to make them work best for a while now. I’ll post more on that early next week. For now, I’ll probably start moving the Sensor novels and novellas over to KU in late May or early June. I’ll let you all know for sure soon.

Really excited about the ideas percolating in my head and all the writing to come. Feel free to let me know your thoughts!