The Sand Prince: An Epic Fantasy Adventure The Demon Door Book One
Sword & Sorcery Fantasy (Books), Epic Fantasy (Kindle Store)
338 pages
Two worlds. Bound by magic. Divided by a door.
On the barren, war-ravaged demon world of Eriis, the fierce queen Hellne fights to keep her people alive and her son Rhuun's heritage a secret.
On the green and gentle human world of Mistra, demons have faded into myth. Only a handful of old men and fanatical children still guard The Door between the worlds.
Different and shunned by his demon kin, Rhuun finds refuge in a book that tells of a human world of water and wonder. Forced by his mother's enemies to flee Eriis, he finds himself trapped on the other side of The Door in the very place he has read and dreamed about—Mistra.
Chained to the deadly whims of a child who guards The Door, Rhuun must balance serving and surviving, even at the risk of exposing his true identity. Riskiest of all is his task of kidnapping an infuriating young woman who is about to find out that the demons of Eriis are much, much more than just an old bedtime story.
Kim Alexander has had quite a few interesting jobs to her credit including stints as a traffic reporter, a DJ in Key West, and a radio show host on Sirius. Luckily for us, she’s turned to writing. Kim’s here this month as the Paranormal Romance Guild FEATURED AUTHOR. You can get to know her better with “The Sand Prince” It’s on sale for $1.99 during March, across all platforms.
A little Paranormal Romance Guild fun with Kim Alexander:
| First of all, I want to thank the Paranormal Romance Guild for giving me the opportunity to ramble on about my favorite topic—myself! I grew up on Long Island and drifted south until I reached Key West, where I worked as a DJ and according to the police report, had a really good time. When I came to, I worked my way back north, finally landing here in Washington D.C., which is an absolute treasure of a city and has a whole lot more going for it than the Feds. (More on that later.) I stayed behind the mike for a while, working as a traffic reporter (there is, in fact, a backup on the beltway) and even got up in the helicopter a couple of times. It was both excruciatingly boring, and quite difficult! When I got the opportunity to move to Book Radio on Sirius XM, I was grateful to say the least. My entire job was reading books, interviewing authors, and going to things like Comic Con and the Miami Book Fair. When my channel went off the air, I soaked my pillow with tears and set about figuring out what to do next, considering I had literally no marketable skills. My husband reminded me I’d been writing my whole life, and my job at Sirius XM had been a sort of master class in How To Do It. So I did it. Now it’s almost ten years later and I have nine books out in the world, with many more (I hope!) on the way. I write epic fantasy and paranormal romance and am eyeing historical fantasy as my next project. I share my house with my lovely husband, my cat Frida, who is an absolute demon, and Onion, my sweet darling boy. (I’ll let you look at the pics and decide who’s who.) |
Favorite Books that I Wrote:
Well, The Sand Prince was my debut novel. I started it in a notebook in my dear friend’s lake house in northern Louisiana right after I left Sirius XM. For some reason I thought two worlds, two conflicting timelines, and over 40 named characters was a great idea for a first go. At some point Carly Hayward swooped in and edited my ass into shape, as she continues to do to this very day.
The Sand Prince is the first book in The Demon Door series, and I love it to bits. I got to create two complete universes and found out how much I love worldbuilding. I created Rhuun and Lelet, my main characters, and turned them into people who are as real to me as I am to myself. He’s the half human demon prince of a destroyed kingdom, has severe social anxiety and self-medicates with alcohol. He’s also kind, clever, and can’t tell a joke. Lelet is an heiress with too much time on her hands who dreams of adventure. She goes from party girl to warrior. We also meet their families, friends, lovers, frenemies and enemies as they try to bring their two worlds together. There’s also a secret book—an in-world romance novel. (It’s pretty dirty.) I’m spotlighting The Sand Prince and The River King, which is the fourth and final book in the series, partly because I absolutely love the cover—and I’m pretty proud of how I brought it all home.
After writing eighty billion words in The Demon Door, my brains needed a break! I wanted to see if I could write something in the first person, contemporary, and short. I also wanted to adapt a fairy tale, and I decided to write about unicorns. (More on that later!) I set Pure in my hometown of D.C. because I wanted there to be a story set in Washington without a politician and a dead hooker! So I started writing in Ruby’s voice, and it was a treat. She’s a bartender with a dry wit and a dark past, she has no interest in the affairs of the fairy-tale creatures who announced their presence in our world. But she winds up saving the life of March, a unicorn shifter, who becomes our Unicorn in Captivity. In this case, he is captive–trapped in the form of a human man—maybe forever. But whoever tried to take his horn is still out there, so the two go on the run, helped and hindered by folks both mortal and magical.
Pure is a short novel, but I had a lot more story to tell and each book gets longer—I can’t help myself. As the story progresses, the fae get involved, and the action moves to the Unseelie Court. Ruby’s friends are put to the test, and her relationship with March (who is a ray of sunshine) is tested as well. There are currently four books in this series, and here are the first, Pure, and the most recent, A Poisoned Garden, which just came out this past January. I’m working on the next, due sometime late this year as I am still in the staring-out-the-window part of writing it.
Favorite Books by People who Aren’t Me:
I’ll leave out the obvious Stephen King and Anne Rice!
I have recommended Chris Buehlman’s Between Two Fires so often I might as well be his agent. It’s the story of a disgraced knight journeying across plague ridden France with a young woman who might be a saint. It’s the scariest book I’ve ever read and also one of the most beautiful.
Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall is so good, it’s like a magic trick. Her use of perspective and her language had me enthralled and made me a Thomas Cromwell fangirl.
The Once and Future King by TH White is a classic for obvious reasons. I think it’s so amusing the first part is a children’s story—Wart getting to turn into animals and learn how to be a person. And then the second part is all incest and murder! Everything you need to learn about the human condition, it’s in this book.
The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle was one of my first books. I still have it—it’s too fragile to read but I’ll never part with it. It’s sad and lovely and funny and I guess it planted the seeds of Pure. Also, Peter Beagle was kind to me at a terrible time and I wish I could thank him.
FOLLOW THE PRG FEATURED AUTHOR KIM ALEXANDER ON THESE LINKS: If you’d like to ask Kim a question, feel free to leave a comment on this post, and we’ll make sure she sees it.
Kim Alexander’s Amazon Author Page