SPOTLIGHT - HISTORICAL PNR - FANNING FIREFLIES by LS Delorme

Fanning Fireflies

Limerent, #3

by LS Delorme

Date of Publication: April 19th 2024

Publisher: Limerent Publishing

Cover Artist: Brittany Wilson

Genre: Romantic Historical Paranormal Mystery 

ISBN:979-8-9874880-4-1

ASIN: B0CYCQ6XCF

Number of pages: 230

Word Count: 97000

Tagline: In 1944 Harrisville, Veronica’s dangerous love ignites a flame that reveals dark secrets, awakens ghosts and threatens to destroy all she loves.

BLURB

There is something rotten in Harrisville.

It’s 1944 and Veronica works tirelessly just so she can afford to eat. Maybe one day she will save enough to own the home her family is living in, but for now, she doesn’t have time for fanciful thoughts, or much else.  She doesn’t have time for the fire whispering to her, the ghosts trying to talk to her and the son of her boss, who can’t stop staring at her.  She definitely doesn’t have time to think about Lazlo, the handsome black soldier that she processed at the draft office, but she can’t seem to stop herself. As her ability to ignore Lazlo evaporates, so does her self-imposed ignorance about her hometown. There is, and always has been, something rotten in Harrisville. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. After all, Veronica works in the cigarette factory, where corpses hide in the tobacco with the roaches. 

It’s 1944 and Veronica works tirelessly just so she can afford to eat. She doesn’t have time for fanciful thoughts, or much else.  She doesn’t have time for the fire whispering to her, the ghosts trying to talk to her and the son of her boss, who can’t stop staring at her.  She definitely doesn’t have time for love, even less for dangerous love. You see there is, and always has been, something rotten in Harrisville. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. 

After all, Veronica works in the cigarette factory, where corpses hide in the tobacco.

Amazon

Excerpt:
Veronica froze.
Lazlo began walking the very same path she had walked minutes earlier, although he looked much more graceful than she must have looked. His gate was long and easy. His eyes were down, staring at the track as he walked. Veronica sat as still as she could, terrified that he might see her, equally terrified that he wouldn’t.
As he came to the spot where she was sitting, he didn’t look up. He walked right past her, as if he hadn’t seen her. Veronica felt a stab in her heart. Before she could stop herself, she called out.
“Aren’t you Lazlo Fox?”
He turned quickly.
“That’s me,” he said, and a grin lit up his face.
Now that he was here, Veronica realized that she hadn’t planned what she would say if she saw him. For a second, she considered saying that the draft office needed more information about him, but she realized that was both stupid and an obvious lie.
“I have an extra biscuit, if you’re hungry,” was what she managed to squeak out.”
She had hoped to be able to speak with him for a just a moment. She knew that it would be dangerous for him to even be seen with her, but as he walked toward her, she held the biscuit out for him. She knew that he would have to climb up to her to get it, and despite the danger, this is what she wanted.
Instead of scrambling up the broken concrete, as she had done, he gracefully jumped from one to the next, balancing on the ball of one foot as he landed on each one. In less than a minute he was standing on the rock next to her. She expected him to take the biscuit and leave, but she wanted him to stay… how badly she wanted him to stay.
Lazlo smiled and took the proffered biscuit bag gently from her, but his eyes were on her face, not on the bag. For a moment, he paused, and then he sat down next to her. He wasn’t so close that she might accidentally touch him but his feet dangling over the edge of the rock next to hers felt weirdly intimate.  He opened the bag and pulled out the biscuit. Veronica looked down at her biscuit and took a tiny bite, pretending to be engrossed in eating but her heart was racing so hard, she almost choked on the bread.
“Lazlo, that’s an unusual name, is it a family name or something?” she asked.
Lazlo turned and smiled at her. She was suddenly afraid that she had said something wrong or stupid, although she couldn’t for the life of her think what it was.
Lazlo’s eyes suddenly got wide.
“Well, my mama named me that cause she’s a witch,” he said quickly, and then winced and shook his head.
“That sounded awful,” he said quickly. “I’m not talking bad about my mama. She’s actually a witch, so she thinks like attracts like. And if she gives me a rich-sounding name that will draw money to me.”
Lazlo then laughed and shook his head.
“I can’t believe I just told you that,” he said. “I never told anyone that before. Probably because—”
Then he stopped.
Veronica’s heart felt like it had grown to take up the whole of her chest. She was frightened of what Lazlo would see if she looked at him, so she took another bite of her biscuit. When she did look up, he was looking at her with eyes that were hopeful and wary in equal measure.
“It sounds like your mother really cares about you,” was what she finally said. And that was all.
Looking at Lazlo’s guarded yet hopeful eyes, Veronica desperately wanted to tell him that none of this stuff mattered. She wanted to say that they could be friends, or even more. Inside, her crazy heart said that they could just run away together. She longed to say this out loud, but she knew it wasn’t true. Neither of them could outrun their class or caste. Lazlo was a colored man.

She was the poor white daughter of a single mother. If he was an untouchable, she was barely one step above that. Her brain told her that, even if her heart argued otherwise.

Author Info

Lexy is the Author of the Limerent novel universe.  The first two books in this universe were Caio and Bright Midnights. They are two of the three foundation books of the Limerent Series, and as such can be read in any order. 

Bright Midnights was picked as an Editor’s Choice by Booklife and received a Golden Wizard award in the UK in the category of YA.  

Lexy has also been a travel writer and author of The Unofficial Guide to Disneyland Hong Kong and An Expat Mom’s Unofficial Guide to Disneyland Paris. She is an ex rock musician, ex science grad, recovering attorney and now an expat writer.  Her love of writing stems from an eclectic life.  As a navy brat, she grew up in various states across the U.S. until her father retired to North Carolina when she was a teenager.   

As an adult, she has continued this tumbleweed life, having since lived in 3 countries, 9 US States, and 21 cities around the world. But, through all this change, her love of writing has been the one constant. Writing the Limerent Series allows her to use her unusual past to help create new worlds.  

Lexy now lives in Paris with her husband and two very cool sons.  

 

“Writing fiction gives you a place where you can put all the attractions that you probably shouldn’t feel, all the thoughts you are afraid of saying out loud, and all the rage that you can’t vent because you would kill people.  While we live, these moments stay with us, but when we die, they die too. When you put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, you put these things out there in the world where they can be read by others.  This means that they have a life outside of you and outside of your own head, and that’s something that is really compelling to me. I like the idea that these amazing moments that I’ve had in life don’t disappear when I disappear.”  - LS Delorme 

 

“For me, writing is like therapy…just cheaper.  As most writers are not really individuals but a collection of individuals trying to find a way to live together in one brain, fiction allows them to make a home for all these people who live rent free inside their heads.  It’s also place that you can capture unique moments in life that impact you or that make you feel deeply.”  - LS Delorme  

Website:   https://www.lsdelorme.com/
Twitter: https://x.com/LexyShawDelorme
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ls_delorme/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lexyshawdelorme
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lsdelormeauthor/ 
Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7959524.LS_Delorme 

Hosted by

Presented by

SPOTLIGHT w/INTERVIEW - YA PARANORMAL FANTASY - BRIGHT MIDNIGHTS by LS Delorme

Bright Midnights

The Limerent, #3

by LS Delorme

Date of Publication:  Oct 2023

Publisher: Limerent Publishing

Cover Artist: Brittany Wilson

Genre: Paranormal Romance, YA, Urban Fantasy

ISBN:979-8-9874880-2-7

ASIN: B0CD4FTYDF

Number of pages: 301

Word Count: 119000

Tagline: "In a world where viruses possess and dreams unlock new realms, a young girl must navigate love, danger, and her own dark powers to survive."

BLURB

Most high school students find life challenging, but 17-year old Amelie has a lot more to contend with than typical teenage angst. Ever since she turned 11, others have been irresistibly, almost chemically, drawn to her-with tragic consequences. Her only escape is at night when she flies to different times and places through her "dreams". Her life begins to change when, on one of her flights, she meets Clovis, an alluring and mysterious young man who hides a secret.

As Amelie finds herself increasingly drawn to him, she learns his story, how it intertwines with her own and finally discovers how to live her life in the real world. Until her own secrets are revealed to the wrong people and that world turns upside down.

Amazon

Excerpt:
 “Everyone, could you pass your weekly journals forward,” Ms. Pryll announced. “And I think, perhaps, today I will pick a few of you to read your entries to the rest of the class. Ms. McCormick, you always have such interesting entries. How about we begin with you?”
Ms. Pryll motioned her forward. Ah, her eye rolling had been noticed. Amelie really wasn’t off to a good start today. On top of her intestinal grumbling, she was feeling the beginnings of a tension headache creeping up the back of her neck.
Just as she was standing up to assume the position at the front of the classroom, someone stumbled through the door. It was Hudson. He was slumping, holding on to the doorframe. Hudson wouldn’t be drawing attention to himself in normal circumstances. Something was wrong. Ms. Pryll was finally pulled from her flirting by the fact that the rest of the class was staring at the doorway. As they watched, Hudson slid down the doorframe into a huddled position.
“Now Mr. Crowe, please come in and sit down,” said Ms. Pryll, with exasperation.
Hudson managed to hold up a small blue object, before slumping forward.
“Dude’s been drinking?” Ryan laughed from the back.
Hudson tried one more time to raise his head and lift the thing in his hands. Everyone in the class just stared at him. The front of Amelie’s forehead suddenly exploded with images, and the lighted words from the cereal box this morning made sense.
Low. Sugar. Bad.
“He’s not drunk,” Amelie snapped. “That’s a glucose meter. He’s diabetic.”
Amelie dropped her notebook and ran to the door, falling to her knees beside Hudson. She had a vague notion that this hurt and she would be bruised later, before she grabbed Hudson’s head. She didn’t know if people in insulin shock had seizures or not, but that didn’t matter. She knew what to do. She had been told by something more reliable than memory. Low blood sugar was bad.
 What to do? Okay, Elodie had her phone. What else? Jack, he always ate breakfast at his desk. Today it was a bottle of orange juice. Thank god.
“Elodie, call 911—now! Jack, throw me your OJ,” Amelie snapped.
Jack just smirked at her, completely disengaged in the fact that another human being was in crisis. A wave of fury replaced the images in Amelie’s head, making everything around her look shiny, sharp, and red. The world began to move in slow motion. She turned, her eyes met Jack’s, and she let her well-constructed shields drop … just… drop. The energy that flowed out of her felt glorious.

“Jack, throw me your OJ, now,” she said, softly this time. She saw the shocked look on Jack’s face, but he immediately grabbed the OJ and tossed it to her. The chemical wave that seemed to be her birthright rolled over him, through him, past him and across the class … person by person, face by face.

Author Info

Lexy is the Author of the Limerent novel universe.  The first two books in this universe were Caio and Bright Midnights. They are two of the three foundation books of the Limerent Series, and as such can be read in any order. 

Bright Midnights was picked as an Editor’s Choice by Booklife and received a Golden Wizard award in the UK in the category of YA.  

Lexy has also been a travel writer and author of The Unofficial Guide to Disneyland Hong Kong and An Expat Mom’s Unofficial Guide to Disneyland Paris. She is an ex rock musician, ex science grad, recovering attorney and now an expat writer.  Her love of writing stems from an eclectic life.  As a navy brat, she grew up in various states across the U.S. until her father retired to North Carolina when she was a teenager.   

As an adult, she has continued this tumbleweed life, having since lived in 3 countries, 9 US States, and 21 cities around the world. But, through all this change, her love of writing has been the one constant. Writing the Limerent Series allows her to use her unusual past to help create new worlds.  

Lexy now lives in Paris with her husband and two very cool sons.  

 

“Writing fiction gives you a place where you can put all the attractions that you probably shouldn’t feel, all the thoughts you are afraid of saying out loud, and all the rage that you can’t vent because you would kill people.  While we live, these moments stay with us, but when we die, they die too. When you put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, you put these things out there in the world where they can be read by others.  This means that they have a life outside of you and outside of your own head, and that’s something that is really compelling to me. I like the idea that these amazing moments that I’ve had in life don’t disappear when I disappear.”  - LS Delorme 

 

“For me, writing is like therapy…just cheaper.  As most writers are not really individuals but a collection of individuals trying to find a way to live together in one brain, fiction allows them to make a home for all these people who live rent free inside their heads.  It’s also place that you can capture unique moments in life that impact you or that make you feel deeply.”  - LS Delorme  

The Book Junkie Reads . . . Interview with . . . LS Delorme . . . 

LIGHTNING ROUND

What genre do you read?

I like things that play with genre.  I’ve always read a variety of genres and love it when a single book contains a few of them. 

What genre do you write?

I write in a world that I have created.  The books tend to be cross genre.  Caio is contemporary paranormal urban fantasy.  Bright Midnights is paranormal romance YA and Fanning Fireflies is historical paranormal mystery thriller.   

What was the first book you fell in love with?

Fellowship of the Ring

What was a book you said you would never pick up again?

The Lovely Bones.  It was a great book but just too hard to ever read again.

Which fiction character do you love?

Jude, in Jude the Obscure

Which fiction character do you love to hate?

Dolores Umbidge

Which fiction character do you hate?

“Mister” from “The Color Purple”

What beverage do you drink while reading?

Tea, or soda

Thank you LS Delorme for participating in the Lightning Round. Your work is appreciated.

Website:   https://www.lsdelorme.com/
Twitter: https://x.com/LexyShawDelorme
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ls_delorme/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lexyshawdelorme
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lsdelormeauthor/ 
Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7959524.LS_Delorme

Hosted by

Presented by

SPOTLIGHT w/INTERVIEW - PNR THRILLER - CAIO (Limerent, #1) by LS Delorme

Caio

Limerent, #1

by LS Delorme

Date of Publication: February 11th 2023

Publisher: Limerent Publishing

Cover Artist: Brittany Wilson

Genre: Paranormal, Romantic, Thriller

ISBN: 979-8-9874880-1-3 Paperback

ISBN: 979-8-9874880-1-0  ebook

ASIN: BOBSGR1VB7

Number of pages: 294

Word Count: 114030

BLURB

Sarah Baker is a paralegal in a law firm in modern-day Brooklyn. Her life is bouncing between her abusive lawyer boyfriend, the voices she hears in her head and her soul sucking work at the law firm. On a New York spring day, she meets Caio as he plays basketball on a street court. He is alluring, intriguing and young. Yet that’s the least of his mystery, for Caio was beaten, thrown into a hole and left to die. In 1905.

Sarah tries to understand this enigmatic stranger while juggling the dubious ethics of her law firm and the ghosts in her head. As she struggles with loss, grief, love, beauty and lawyers, she will need to summon the strength to break all of society’s rules, save several lives and step into a new and potentially magical life.

Caio is the opening book of a new series of supernatural romantic thrillers that will pull on your heart (strings), challenge your perceptions and lead you on a singular journey of discovery and revelation.

Books2Read      Amazon     

Excerpt:
How can you be as smart as you are and have no backbone, girl? or You’re not pretty enough to be able to expect a man to take care of you, so you better find an administrative job so you can support yourself, or Self-consciousness is just another form of vanity. It’s just you thinking about yourself too much.
That simply scratched the surface of what Sarah heard on a daily basis growing up. On the positive side, she could take criticism with the best of them. She had also learned to channel her sensitivity into an awareness of people’s motivations that coworkers called “uncanny.” On the negative side, when her parents died, she had absorbed their voices into those that already spoke inside her head, and now they were the loudest ones.
It was her heightened awareness that told her that something was not quite right with the Davies case. She wasn’t sure what, and she would need to be careful about how she researched, but it tickled her curiosity.
Sarah was lost in these thoughts as she left the grocery store and made her way home, past the park and toward the basketball courts. When she realized where she was, her heart started to race a little bit at the thought of seeing the boy she had seen last week.
There were some boys playing on the court. She scanned them for someone in grungy clothes, but from a distance, they all looked like they were wearing appropriate attire.
Sarah’s heart sank a little.
Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. Although she wasn’t exactly sure what she was chiding herself about, it was nice when the voice doing the talking was her own.
As she got closer, she saw the tall, red-haired boy miss a shot and retake the ball. He was one of the regulars. When the red-haired boy landed, he jostled one of the other boys near him. That boy staggered, regained his footing, and in the process deftly stole the ball. When she saw his face, Sarah actually heard herself gasp. The boy who had been pushed, the one who now had the basketball, was the boy she had seen before. She hadn’t noticed him because his appearance was quite different. His shoulder-length dark hair had been cut. He had on a red-and-black striped shirt that didn’t look expensive, but did look brand new, as did the matching shorts. His sneakers were black with pristine white soles. And right at the moment, he was dribbling the ball down the court—straight at her.
Sarah froze. She was standing on the sidewalk behind the basket on the other side of the chain-link fence. She felt like her feet had grown roots as she watched him set up, jump, and make the basket. He came down right in front of her. As he landed, before turning to run back down the court, he stopped and caught her eye. His eyes widened ever so slightly, and he smiled.

For a moment, he looked directly in her eyes and she felt a strange dizzy feeling in seeing him and being seen by him. No one in her life ever seemed to actually see her. No one ever had.

Author Info

Lexy has lived an eclectic life.  As a 'navy brat', she grew up in various US states until her father retired to North Carolina when she was 14.   As an adult, she has continued this "tumbleweed" life, having since lived in 3 countries, 9 US states, and 21 cities around the world.  She has been a musician, scientist and attorney, and was one of the first employees at 23andMe.  But, through all this change, her love of writing has been the one constant whether it be songs, scientific writing, legal briefs, travel blogs or fiction.  Writing the Limerent Series allows her to combine all of this to help her create new worlds.  Lexy lives in Paris with her husband and two very cool sons.

Caio is book one of 8 in the upcoming Limerent Series

The Book Junkie Reads . . .Reckless Dreams  Interview with  . . . LS Delorme . . .

How would you describe your style of writing to someone that has never read your work?  

I've often been told that I write like I speak and that my "voice" is very recognizable.  I think my "style" comes from a desire to be true to the story and characters.  Personally, I don't like to read fiction where the author seems too in love with their own words.  As a result, most of my sentences tend to be short, because a reader is more likely to lose interest in something that runs on for too long. When I was studying Administrative Law, there was one opinion where the judge in question wrote a sentence that was way over 500 words long…one sentence.  It also contained more than three or four negatives.  As a result, there was always debate on its meaning, and most 1st year law students have a deep desire to murder said judge.  I never want to have someone want to kill me as a result of my writing style. 

From a stylist perspective, I like a certain level of juxtaposition when it comes to words.  So, I tend to use both sesquipedalian words and slang in the same sentence or paragraph.  I also have a very dark sense of humor, which I recommend when dealing with the storms of life and people's bullshit.    This tends to bleed into my descriptions of things and themes.  

Do you feel that writing is an ingrained process or just something that flows naturally for you?

What mindset or routine do you feel the need to set when preparing to write (in general whether you are working on a project or just free writing)?

I find that I write certain things better in certain places.   I am a serious "outliner".  When I'm outlining, I do that at my desk.  I also use a spreadsheet to keep track of the character arcs and the structure.   But I write my major "scenes" when they come to me, and that's usually when I'm walking around and listening to music.   I can also say that I have never not used a scene that I have written when waking in the middle of the night.  I tend to have "movie dreams." 

Writing description can be hard for me, as I have absolutely NO physical intelligence.  I don't see things from my knees down.  I spill cokes in my purse because I don't close them tight enough…. the list can go on and on.  So, I write descriptions and scenes from photographs.  Otherwise, I would be saying things like "there might have been a tree in the yard, but she wasn't really sure".  

Do you take your character prep to heart? Do you nurture the growth of each character all the way through to the page? Do you people watch to help with development? Or do you build upon your character during story creation?

YES!  

I'm obsessive about character prep.  It's important to me that the characters can "breathe" on their own.  You need back story and an understanding of what drives your characters to be able to create something compelling.   For example, Sarah is someone who I created to be probably pansexual, in that she isn't attracted to people because of their appearance.  What she is attracted to in Caio is how he treats her…even in the very beginning.  Later there is very much a chemical component to her attraction but it starts with his behavior toward her.   So, I need to know what behavior would really impact her and given how she has been treated in her life, it would be being "seen".   

I also really do pay attention to the backstory of almost every character I write, even the "side" characters.   This is how "Caio" was born.  Originally the character of Caio was a side character in another one of my books in this series, but his back story was so compelling that I had to pair him with Sarah, another character that I had created.  Another fact about things I write is that often when I create a character, someone with the same characteristics or even name, will show up in my life.  This has happened with events as well.  I write it and then it happens.  It's happened so often that it has become an expected occurrence in my family.  

Do you have a character that you have been working on that you can't wait to put to paper?

Can you share your next creative project(s)? If yes, can you give a few details?

"Caio" is the first book of the Limerent Series.   This series has 8 books in it, all of which are written but in different stages of editing.   I've approached this series a bit like how the Marvel Movies were made.   The first few books introduce different characters who will merge in the latter books.  The next book in the series will be released this October.  It's called "Bright Midnights".  This story exists in the same world as "Caio", but it introduces the character of "Amelie", a reserved and skittish high school senior who spends all her time banking an energy that she has which causes men to become dangerously attracted to her.   In the book, she "flies" in her mind when she sleeps.  One night, she enters a hallway, where a door leads her to being attacked, and then befriended, by a creature that she assumes is made up.  This is until he begins possessing people in her school.  This book is a paranormal, metaphysical romance. 

If you could have dinner/dinner party with 7 fictional character, who would they be?

1. Hannibal Lecter: He's intellectually brilliant, cultured, and sophisticated, with refined tastes in art, music, and cuisine.   Several people allude to the fact that he can't be diagnosed because he is too unique.  At a dinner party, if your manners were good enough, I think he would be fascinating.  
2. Eda from Owl House Series:  My kids think she's my doppelganger, so I would have to include her.
3. Hazel from Watership Down:  Even though he is a rabbit, Hazel is the quintessential leader.  He isn't as strong as Big Wig, or as smart as Blackberry, or as fast as Dandelion but becomes the leader because of his cool head, empathy, and willingness to lead from the front.  He reminds me of Jacinda Ardern from New Zealand, or she reminds me of him.  
4. Johnny Smith from the Dead Zone:  He gets visions of people simply by touching their hands.  While I wouldn't want him to touch me, I would love to ask him the nature of his visions and the physical ramifications on his life and his body.
5. Ripley from Aliens:  She's just such a badass.  I would love to get her thoughts on AI.
6. Dr Frankenstein:  Mary Shelley is female author of Frankenstein, one of the most legendary monsters.  While she deserves a seat at any table, the question is about fictional characters.  So, I would choose the monster, assuming he had learned to speak.  I would want his take on the real villain of the story…the doctor who made the monster.
7. The Narrator of "I'm a Fool" by Sherwood Anderson.  I would ask him just to tell him. "She likes you.  Just tell the truth about yourself."  Then he could be on his way.  

Author link: https://www.lsdelorme.com 
Newsletter Sign Up: https://www.lsdelorme.com/subscribe 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lsdelormeauthor 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lsdelormeauthor 
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lsdelormeauthor 

Hosted by

Presented by