I’ve talked about my Triad series before this month already, but let’s take inspiration from book two today—that’d be Triad Soul—and the second main character, Anders, the lust demon. Anders the demon became something of a favourite (even for me, doing the writing) and I think mostly that comes down to the big lug being a walking Id.
Also, he’s basically filterless, and wow is that freeing to write.
Now, if you can’t spell Pride Month without “de Mon” (get it?) and so today I thought I’d shine a light on some queer books exploring demons. Sometimes we fight our demons. Sometimes we cuddle. But I think the supernatural and monstrous beings align so easily with queer culture because so very often they’re considered wrong just because they’re different.
I mean, it’s not a tough analogy to unravel, no?
Pride Month, Demon Style
I don’t often read darker-fiction, and I rarely stray near horror, but as I’ve mentioned before, I make exceptions when it comes to Christian Baines, and Skin was one such exception. Opening with Kyle, a young man coming to New Orleans without much of a net (or a plan), we watch as Kyle loses the first person who makes the city remotely welcoming for him. That death sets everything in motion. We also follow Marc, a hustler in the quarter who dances for singles and shares a room with a dangerously tempered fellow dancer, and with whom he shares a love/hate/lust/obsession tangle of dark emotion.
The intersection of the two men goes down as one of my favourite moments in prose in years, and even as I dared to hope, I knew to expect the worst of the human psyche to be explored in Baines’s writing, and Skin delivers exactly that. After all, in the hands of Baines, you know what will come of a character’s best intentions.
Give it to all your friends who want to read something shadowy and twisted and vengeful.
Kyle, a young newcomer to New Orleans, is haunted by the memory of his first lover, brutally murdered just outside the French Quarter.
Marc, a young Quarter hustler, is haunted by an eccentric spirit that shares his dreams, and by the handsome but vicious lover who shares his bed.
When the barrier between these men comes down, it will prove thinner than the veil between the living and the dead…or between justice and revenge.
Years ago, I got to be on a panel with a group of urban fantasy authors at Saints & Sinners Literary Festival, and that included Christian Baines above there, but also Marie Castle. When I’m on a panel, I try to make sure I’ve read something by all the other authors ahead of time, and as such I nabbed a copy of Hell’s Belle and… was sucked in so immediately I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning when I should have been sleeping.
I adored this book. It’s fun. It’s fast paced. It’s got strong world-building and a Southern charm (I capitalize the S as it seems appropriate) all rolled into one sassy, supernaturally tangled heroine who handles cases – off the books – about the things that go bump in the night. Cate is a flipping joy to read – a Guardian, she might have the ability to open the gates between worlds, a power that’s as frightening as it sounds in its potential danger, as well as a little “something extra” in her power repertoire that isn’t quite normal for a witchy gal like herself. That alone would be enough on her plate, but added to it is her ex-husband (their marriage annulled in a week) who is also a possessive werewolf type, girls going missing, and a simple job that turned into a very un-simple encounter with a demonically possessed corpse.
And that’s not even the worst of it…
Cate Delacy is glad she’s a witch—and you can take that any ol’ way you like.
As a very mortal woman she has a target on her back, so she has no intention of following in her mother’s footsteps as an enforcer for the Council of Supernatural Beings. She didn’t ask to be a Guardian and she has to pay her bills. Opening the Darkmirror Agency is her solution. Her clients are mostly human and they pay on time.
But one day it all goes to Hell, figuratively. Then literally.
Because that’s the day the Council’s detective Jacqueline Slone slinks her way into Cate’s life. Jacq. So alluring. So powerful. So immortal. And up to her sexy neck in a secret that will unleash Hell’s Belle.
So what about you? Got a favourite queer demon in your pocket? (Uh, phrasing. But you know what I mean.)
'Nathan Burgoine 