Southwest Nights (Semiautomatic Sorceress Book 1), Kal Aaron [best books for 20 year olds txt] 📗

Samuel shook his head. “The Tribunal wants to reduce traffic to Last Remnant, not increase it, especially in times of tension. You don’t have a valid reason to go.”

“What?” Lyssa stared at him. “You won’t let me go there? It’s always tense with our kind. Oh, wait. That’s wrong. It’s only tense on any day that ends with Y.”

“Not right now.” Samuel gave her a cool look. “Things are too chaotic, especially with this incident and others in different countries.”

Lyssa frowned. “When, then?”

“Sooner than I’d like, I imagine, but longer than you would.” Samuel headed toward the door, readopting his previous disguise in a blur—the advantage of light essence. “You should give up on your brother for your own good.” He stopped and didn’t turn around. “Unless you have some new information that would suggest this quest isn’t meaningless.”

“Not yet, just a feeling,” she lied.

“Be careful, Miss Corti. These are the most interesting and dangerous times I’ve lived through since M-Day. You did well working with Miss Khatri to end the smuggling, but I suspect a woman of your predispositions knows that rot seldom occurs in isolation. I know you have your frustrations, and I have them as well, but justice doesn’t always come in a timely manner.”

“Rot?” Lyssa smiled coldly. “Sounds like I’ll be busy.”

“Most likely.” Samuel stepped outside. “I could convince certain parties to allow you travel to Last Remnant if you had, in their minds, earned it.”

“Kick more ass? Take more names?”

“I wouldn’t put it that crudely, but yes. Efficient work as a Torch benefits the Society.” Samuel headed toward the sidewalk. “Until next time, Miss Corti. Enjoy your time off.”

“Do you trust him?” Jofi asked.

“Kind of. Maybe. Probably?” Lyssa shrugged and closed the door. “I don’t think he’s at the top of the list of people trying to kill me.”

“Then what is your plan?”

“To be the best damned Torch I can be until they let me check out Last Remnant.”

“And the pictures?”

“Sometimes finesse and stealth are for the best. I need more than pictures before I make my next move.” Lyssa headed toward her kitchen. “For now, though, I’m going to have a pint of strawberry ice cream.”

Southwest Days

The story continues with book two, Southwest Days, coming March 26, 2021 to Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.

Pre-order your copy today to have it delivered as soon as it publishes!

Author Notes - Kal Arron

March 2, 2021

Years ago, I had the classic author experience of thinking of a good idea and not writing it down. I thought, “Oh, well, it’s no big deal. I’ll remember it later.” Alas, I couldn’t.

Since that fateful day, I’ve changed my strategy. Whenever I get an idea, I immediately type it into my phone, where the wonders of the cloud back it up to my computer and some mysterious hidden server that probably is sitting in the Vault of Dreams.

When I got the opportunity to pitch a cowrite idea to Michael, I worried I wouldn’t be able to come up with something that would work. It’s not that I lacked for ideas, but cowriting is a complex dance blending two distinct creative visions to ensure the central ideas and styles of the book are something both authors can get behind. After a lot of thought, I decided to use my lengthy idea list combined with a bit of book reincarnation.

Years ago, I wrote a full draft for an urban fantasy featuring a sassy sorceress fond of motorcycles, mouthing off to her superiors, and taking down demons. At the time, for reasons that escape me now, I decided to set it in Chicago, a city I had only marginal familiarity with.

Not all books deserve a final life, and although there were strong aspects of the story I enjoyed, it wasn’t ready for readership and withered away in the virtual trunk. When I was coming up with a cowrite idea, I decided to repurpose that character and shift the focus away from demons while scrapping the demon-hunting plot entirely. I went down my big list of ideas and grabbed several things I’d been dying to add into an urban fantasy book but had never gotten around to. That formed the initial skeleton for the Semiautomatic Sorceress series.

During a lengthy meeting with Michael, we hammered out details and grew excited about the current version of the story. I’d decided to focus on Phoenix, if only because I’ve lived in Arizona for a while now and I thought it’d be nice for it to get some love.

As a brief aside, I did live in Chicago between the time I thought of the previous book and this one. I’ll note between stints Wisconsin and Illinois, I grew to hate snow. You can’t slip on sunshine!

Anyway, once we finished setting the general contours of the world for Semiautomatic Sorceress, Michael made an offhand comment that he thought it’d be cool if the main character had sort of a Grim Reaper/Day of the Dead vibe to her outfit. At the time, he just liked the aesthetics of the idea.

That wasn’t originally something I’d been considering, imagining a spunkier-looking character with dyed short blue hair. We combined his aesthetic suggestion with the general setting, and that led to the idea of the regalia. It turned into a wonderful way to develop some very distinct and memorable characters both in terms of powers and costumes while also giving an in-story excuse for a sorceress to still have a secret identity in a world where the supernatural is out in the open.

Something intriguing and cool was born out of us bouncing ideas off one another, a long dead novel, and my ideas list. It just goes to show you that you should never throw any ideas away and should always write them down.

I’m excited to see where we can take these characters and setting in the future.

See you soon for book two, Southwest Days!

And thanks for reading.

Kal

Please note you can contact me at kalaaron@kalaaron.com. If you want to