Hello friend! I am excited to host author and fellow reviewer Jennifer deBie again! Previously, we had learned of her favorite indie reads, today, we will focus on her book, Heretic. Let’s learn more about her and her journey to write this book. Book excerpt included!

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Get to know the author: Jennifer deBie

Welcome back to Armed with A Book, Jennifer! Tell me and my readers a bit about yourself!

Hi! Wow! Lovely to be here!

So, I’m a native Texan, born and raised under piny woods and on red dirt, now living and working in Cork, Ireland. I just finished a PhD last year, studying British Romantic literature in general, and Mary Shelley and Frankenstein in particular. Love me, love my research and my accidental-on-purpose enthusiasm for weird, wacky, and horrifying medical history. Want to hear about a severed head? I know stories…

I’m also a poet, novelist, and general literature enthusiast. I’ve been lucky to fall into multiple reading and writing communities, both in person and online. I review for Rosie Amber Reviews, I volunteer with an annual literary festival here in Cork, I participate in a regular poetry meet-up, and now I’m here hoping to entice people to give my little book a look-see. 

What inspired you to write this book?

I’m not sure where most of your readers are based, or what their experiences were back in 2020, but here in Ireland we locked down hard. My university sent students away and researchers went home to work from our houses, stores closed, people were only allowed to move within a 5km radius of their houses, and every day more and more news about this big scary thing that we didn’t, couldn’t yet understand, was pouring through every app, every news site, every facet of our online lives. 

I needed to get away from it. I couldn’t deal with living in that paralyzed, numbing, terror all day every day, so I wrote a story instead. A novel where characters can see each other, meet people, travel the world, get into brawls and banter with each other and make cannibalism jokes and work steadily towards a concrete solution to the mystery that kicks the whole novel off.

2020 was a dark, scary year where we all stayed home there seemed to be no answers, so I took a few months and wrote a dark, twisty, funny, sexy novel about traveling the world and solving a mystery. It’s really a very logical reaction, when you think about it.

How long did it take you to write this book, from the first idea to the last edit?

I started writing Heretic in late summer 2020, and it was accepted for publication in January 2022. First draft was completed in late 2020, second draft was read and edited by early 2021. It went out to my beta readers by early summer (May/June, I think?). Beta readers got back to my in July (there were capital T Thoughts on my portrayal of Ireland from one reader in particular) and by August/September 2021 I was sending out sample chapters and query letters to various publishers and agents.

January 2022 saw Wild Wolf Publishing give me the green light, and then it was time to collaborate with my cover artist (and oldest friend) on the clothes my little book would wear, while waiting for edits from the publisher. I finished my last round of recommended edits in mid-March 2022, my delightfully meticulous artist finally okayed the design, and we were off to the races with Heretic hitting Kindle “shelves” on March 29, 2022.

What makes your story unique?

I like to think that Heretic is unique because of its two protagonists. One of them is essentially a happy psychopath, all id and hunger, and the other embodies the nervous cleric from your D&D party. The way they grate against each other, deal with their mutual attraction, and eventually learn to work together, is the driving force Heretic. 

Writing these two characters, whose personalities are so outside my own, and adding nuance to the way they think about themselves, each other, and their shared mission, was so much fun, and adds a dimension to the story that I haven’t seen in too many other novels.

Who would enjoy reading your book? 

Readers of Ilona Andrews and Patricia Briggs should find something to latch on to in Heretic, also fans of Meljean Brook, Max Gladstone, and (hopefully) Mary Shelley.

Heretic is a little more mature than YA, and a lot bloodier than most “grown up literature”. This is for lovers of fantasy that verges on horror, who aren’t afraid of a little blood on the page, and can stomach characters with screwy moral compasses.

What’s something you hope readers would take away from it?

Have fun! There was a time when I was younger that I wanted to write the next Great American Novel, and then I read a few GANs. They’re fine, but by and large they’re not my brand of fun. I write for my own pleasure, and to hopefully bring pleasure to my readers. So have fun with your library, and I hope you have fun with Heretic.

Do you have a favourite quote or scene in the book that you find yourself going back to?

There’s this moment when my two leads are staring off into the distance at the Tower of Babel. They’re in another dimension and Sira, who I previously described as a nervous cleric in D&D, asks Jana, the happy psychopath, what happened to all of the people who were in the Tower when it was dragged away from earth. Jana looks at him and says: 

“Nothing stays mortal here, sweet Sira. They died or they adapted. Today, Hellmage houses are proud to trace their lines back to Babelites who dared and fell.” She glanced up at him. “You know how we love the daring and the fallen.”

It’s a moment that encapsulates a lot of what Jana feels and thinks about her partner, and I love it! 

What is something you have learned on your debut author journey so far?

Learn to love your red pen. You can always edit and make it better, but you’ve got to get it on the page first.

What’s the best piece of advice you have received?

Daily, weekly, or monthly word goals are horsecrap. Some weeks you write two sentences, some days you write 5,000 words. It’s okay to take those ebbs and flows as they come, rather than trying to force the stream and just making yourself crazy.

If you could give a shout out to someone(s) who has helped in your writer journey, please feel free to mention them below!

Oh! Oh! Oh!

So many people, but I’ll restrict myself to 3 for today. Mentor, friend, fellow poet Graham Allen (check out his ongoing, daily poem Holes at http://holesbygrahamallen.org/#read), Eimear and the entire team at the West Cork Literary Festival (@westcorkliteraryfestival) and Rosie and her book review team (@therosieamber)!

You mentioned this is the first book of a series. How many books are there? Do you have ideas for another series or story?

Yes, Heretic is the first in a series entitled The Hellmage Chronicles. I am about 1/3 of the way through a first draft of the second in the series, and have a third loosely planned in my head and on an excel spreadsheet. Heretic is a complete story in and of itself, but there’s an entire world to be explored beyond it, and I would love to spend the next several years crafting it.

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Book Excerpt from
Heretic

Jana threw the light mage onto a substantial bit of flotsam, and pulled herself up beside him, eyeing the man thoughtfully.

The monster didn’t want him. 

At least, he didn’t want him yet.

Not when he realized how weakened, how tainted the sweet paladin was. 

Between the sin-eating and a dip in Ava’s dark currents, he really didn’t look good. Manhandling him onto their raft had only warmed her hands, not burned them.

Jana ran her fingers through her hair, feeling salt-water tangles, jet fuel, and the grit of ocean filth. Eating Ava had replenished her to an extent, but she would need better sustenance if she wanted to go much longer. The Princeson had always been small chum in deep waters anyway, he couldn’t have known she carried Leviathan, but that didn’t make him less stupid for this attempt.

Or less dead.

With deft movements, she tied her hair into a knot and staked it into place with a slim, bloodiron stick. She needed a plan to get herself out of this. A plan that didn’t end with her washing up in Hawaii, since a fair percentage of the island chain was sacred enough to off her in her present condition and she didn’t know enough to know which islands were safe and which weren’t. 

There had to be other islands in the Pacific besides Hawaii, right? She couldn’t name them, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

Could Leviathan swim as far as Australia and its international airports with jets for steal or charter?

Inside her, the monster rumbled disgust at her doubt.

  Could Leviathan do it without eating the light mage along the way?

This time the rumble was less certain.

If she had to eat him it was fine, but she’d really prefer to keep him alive until she could preserve his corpse properly. She could do so many interesting things with it. So many new glyphs to write in his blood, so many divinations to cast with his knuckle bones. With his eyes, she’d never have to worry about being blind to a sneaky, purification glyph. With his tendons, she could reinforce the protections surrounding her club, and bind her thralls without them dying so quickly. 

Would Leviathan be satisfied eating a piece? Just one leg to keep them all afloat?

The second monster shook her bones with displeasure at the inequity.

Was she willing to sacrifice both legs to this cause?

The light mage was stirring and Jana realized she’d been hovering over him, measuring his meat and bones. When he opened his eyes, she smiled like they weren’t floating on a chunk of cabin wall in the middle of the ocean. “I was just wondering how attached you are to your legs.”

***

Sira scrambled away from her, as far away as he could without upsetting their raft. 

It wasn’t far enough. 

“What was that? What are you? Where’s that Hellmage?”

He wretched, heaving water and brine out of his sore throat. It still felt like there was a stone lodged in his stomach.

“Boring questions, little light mage. The more interesting one is, how are we going to get out of this?”

This was water as far as the eye could see. Sira coughed again, tasting more salt and bile on his tongue. Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. He had no concept of where they’d gone down. He had no idea why they were still alive.

“How are we still alive?”

“Because we are, focus Lightkeeper, how are we getting out of this?”

“That—there was a sea monster.”

“Yes, and now it’s gone.”

“Where’d it go?”

“Back to its bindings.” Her tone was impatient, her words rapid. “How are we getting out of this?”

Back to its bindings.

Bindings.

Her sleeves had unrolled at some point, covering the marks inside her elbows, but he remembered. Could almost see them through the water-thinned fabric of her shirt. Those bindings, entwinings of light and dark glyphs. Old glyphs. Glyphs more ancient than the skin that carried them. “You’re the sea monster.” His voice was a rough rasp.

Her smile was tight. “I carry the sea monster. I am not Leviathan.”

Leviathan. Swallower of ships. Spitter of storms. A god? A monster? The offspring of either or both or nothing at all. As old as the sea itself. Older than seafarers by millennia. Leviathan lived in her glyphs?

“Leviathan lives in my bones, not my glyphs. Focus Lightkeeper.”

He’d described the creature out loud. 

“Can he swim us out? Your sea monster?”

The smile loosened. “Well…” the pause wasn’t good. He didn’t like her dramatic pauses. “How attached are you to your legs?”

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Interested?

Find this book on Goodreads, IndieStoryGeek and Amazon.

Thank you for hanging out with us today. Connect with Jennifer on Twitter, Instagram and her website. You can get updates of her latest books on Goodreads and Amazon.

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