On the Contrary with Guest Blogger: Melanie Card

Win a copy of Ward Against Death and meet paranormal author Melanie Card today at the Book Boost!

She's here to chat all about opposites and here's what she had to say...



Thank you Book Boost for inviting me to be your guest. I'm so excited to be here. Today I'm chatting about opposites. They say opposites attract and the hero and heroine in my novel, Ward Against Death, couldn't be more opposite.


My hero, Ward de'Ath, is your average kind of guy (if your average guy could bring people back from the dead and lived in a fantastical Renaissance-type world). He's a bookworm, and has spent most of his life studying either necromancy (for his family) or medicine (for himself). He's spent the last six years studying to be a physician but became fascinated with surgery (which is considered sacrilege in the word of the book). He was expelled from the Physicians' Academy for digging up corpses and performing necropsies on them and now doesn’t know what to do with his career. He's fluent in multiple languages, well-read and well-traveled, and—save for the whole digging up corpse thing—adheres to the law.


My heroine, Celia Carlyle, on the other hand is completely opposite. All she's known is a criminal's life. Her father is the head of all organized crime in the city, her mother was an assassin in the Assassins' Guild. Celia has followed in her mother's footsteps and become an assassin and for the last six years she's honed her martial abilities, fighting, tumbling, sneaking, acting, everything she's needs to do her job well. The law doesn't apply to her, only the rules of the Assassins' Guild and that of the criminal underworld: that the strong control the weak.


When I throw Ward and Celia together something happens to them. At the beginning Celia doesn't recognize Ward's true strength: his mind, and Ward thinks Celia is out to kill him—which she is. But they need each other, not only to solve Celia's murder and clear Ward's name with her family, but to become better people. Working together makes them see the strengths and weaknesses in each other and in themselves. They complete each other.


Of course neither is going to admit that to the other, they're not even entirely sure why they're compelled to be with each other.


But that’s the thing with opposites. Often it looks like a bad match on paper, but what you find is that they really are “opposite sides” of the same coin. They need each other in order to be challenged and grow into better people, the people they need to become.


Thanks for joining me today. Ward and Celia really are a case of opposites being attracted to each other (even if they haven’t figured out why yet). Who’s your favorite “opposite” couple?


A Note from the Book Boost: My favorite opposite couple is myself and my hubby. We simply couldn't be more opposite. I'm an artist, a writer, a musician. Hubby is a scientist, an engineer, a mathematician. But somehow we work! Thanks for joining us today, Melanie. Please tell us more about your book.


Blurb:


Twenty-year-old Ward de’Ath expected this to be a simple job—bring a nobleman’s daughter back from the dead for fifteen minutes, let her family say good?bye, and launch his fledgling career as a necromancer.

Goddess knows he can’t be a surgeon—the Quayestri already branded him a criminal for trying—so bringing people back from the dead it is.

But when Ward wakes the beautiful Celia Carlyle, he gets more than he bargained for. Insistent that she’s been murdered, Celia begs Ward to keep her alive and help her find justice. By the time she drags him out her bedroom window and into the sewers, Ward can’t bring himself to break his damned physician’s Oath and desert her.

However, nothing is as it seems—including Celia. One second, she’s
treating Ward like sewage, the next she’s kissing him. And for a nobleman’s daughter, she sure has a lot of enemies. If he could just convince his heart to give up on the infuriating beauty, he might get out of this alive…


Excerpt:

Her eyes narrowed and her hand snaked under the pillow. “It’s not wise to enter a lady’s bedchamber without her consent.”

Ward plastered on his calmest, gentlest expression. The newly wakened dead often assumed they had just roused from sleep. “You’ve been unwell.”

Her icy blue eyes examined him, her gaze jumping from his face, to his wig, to his jacket, and back to his face. “Unwell? Is that what my father told you?”

“In a manner of speaking.” She wasn’t acting the way she was supposed to.

Noblewomen, particularly those around his age, were usually demure or aloof—not suspicious.

“Well, I’m fine, and I’m sorry my father troubled you.” She threw back the covers, sat up, and stepped onto the thick rug. “Now go, be a good doctor, and tell my family I’m healthy and sleeping.” She punctuated her last word by pulling her nightdress over her head, revealing a slim waist, athletic muscles, and pale skin marked with the purple bruises of livor mortis along her back. And no other clothes.

“But—” He flushed and spun around to face the wall. “What are you doing?” No. Wait.

What was he doing? He’d seen a dead naked woman before. Just never like this.

She chuckled. “I’m going for a walk.”

“A what? No—You can’t.” She really wasn’t acting the way she was supposed to.

“I beg to differ.”

The situation was spiraling out of hand. Damn it, he had to take control. He was the necromancer, she the newly awakened. She was supposed to listen to him.

He turned to confront her. Thankfully, she was fully dressed—in men’s clothes, but at least she was dressed. “Listen, I—”

She slipped her hand under her pillow and removed a sheathed dagger.

Great Goddess! She kept a dagger under her pillow? Ward inched toward the door to block her escape without appearing obvious, although he had no idea what he’d do if she fought him. Why did he always get stuck with the difficult corpses?

Want More Melanie?

Visit her website here: http://melaniecard.com/

Follow her on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/melaniecard

Available August 2nd from Entangled Publishing!
Pick up your copy here.

Contest Time:

Enter to win a copy of Ward Against Death (Chronicles of a Reluctant Necromancer) by leaving a question or comment for Melanie.


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