Today, I am super excited to have a blog trade with the wonderful A.J. Llewellyn. So without further ado.. Enjoy!.♥ -Katey
How
Tame Should a Man Be? By A.J. Llewellyn
I adore research. I love ferreting out the unusual and
the absurd… then five years ago I hit the literary jackpot when I researched
werewolves for a story I’d committed to writing for Amber Quill Press.
I agonized for
days over how to come up with something fresh and original in a genre that is
frankly saturated with werewolf stories. I didn’t want to conform to the
“norms” associated with the legend, but I wanted to make sure my story wasn’t
so outlandish that people would say, “Oh, come on!” when they read it.
And then I struck gold.
I found an old newspaper article online from 1907 about
a small town in Argentina that once had strong rumors about male babies turning
into werewolves. The seventh son born to a family was doomed to become a
werewolf, according to the article I read.
Mass hysteria created a horrible solution. The town’s
residents began killing every seventh male baby born to families, hoping to
ward off the curse. The killings got so bad that the mayor of the town stepped
in at the urging on the local police. He offered to be the godfather to these
boys, to both protect them and bless them.
To this day, the mayor of the town is still the
godfather to every seventh son… And even the country’s president is often asked
to step in if the mayor is busy!
This legend is entwined with another: that boys who
swim across a certain lake emerge on the other side emerge as werewolves. Those
who do “turn” have to live for nine years without killing a human and by
swimming back across the lake in the opposite direction can break the curse. Of
course, boys being boys are said to challenge each other, and the curse, and
swim across the lake.
I loved these two stories!
They gave me the idea for Tame and its sequel, Savage:
Tame 2.
Tame
was one of the biggest-selling stories of my career. Interestingly, I received
some awful emails from people in Argentina who were upset about the book and
how dare I write such nonsense? I pointed them in the direction of the article
I’d read and they were shocked. I was amazed how few people knew of the legend.
And even if the myth didn’t exist, fiction isn’t
supposed to be real, but I like to ground all my stories in reality. Recently,
Amber Quill Press shuttered and the rights to Tame and Savage: Tame 2 returned
to me. I’ve contracted them with MLR Press.
Tame
releases On October 28, just in time for Halloween! These two books remain
among my favorites and I am so glad they are being rereleased. I hope you’ll
check them out!
Tame
By A.J. Llewellyn
Logline:
Ludo might be the most magnificent man
Cavan's ever met...but why does he say he's...tame?
Blurb:
It's Halloween and LAPD cop Cavan
Carmichael is expecting spooky things...this is LA, after all. But who could
have predicted a late night animal abuse call would reveal a beaten, chained-up
man in a garden shed?
Cavan rescues the bruised and bloodied man
who rasps the mysterious words, "Don't worry I'm tame."
But is he? Nothing about him adds up. For
every medical test the doctors perform, come only more questions. When Ludo is
admitted to the hospital he has grievous injuries inflicted by a despicable
assailant via antique instruments of torture.
Unbelievably, these injuries heal fast and
Cavan, who visits the recuperating man finds he is attracted and intrigued. But
can he overlook such oddities as bristles under the man's tongue or strange
wolf hairs in his wounds?
Is the most beautiful man Cavan has ever
seen, really...tame?
Excerpt:
…“There’s nothing in the shed. I don’t keep my dogs in
there.” The man kept babbling. “You can’t go in there. That’s private.”
They inched toward it, the
big silver bolt on it glinting under the flashlights’ beams. Cavan saw a dark
stain on the door. He was sure it was blood.
“Unlock this please,” Ben
insisted.
“No. There’s no dogs in
there. Come back with a search warrant.”
They reached the shack, Cavan
touching the lock. The padlock had not been pushed all the way down.
Inside the house, the dogs
started barking like crazy, as if sensing something was very wrong. Cavan
pulled out his iPhone with his free hand and surreptitiously began recording.
“The lock,” Ben said again.
Unbelievably, Luke Masterson
took off running.
Cavan heard Ben shouting
something to him, but he didn’t respond. He wondered what horrors awaited him
as he lifted the lock off the hinge, slid back the bolt and prepared to enter
the shack. He heard Ben running and realized he’d gone after their suspect.
Cavan braced himself as he got the door open and, flashlight in one hand,
camera phone activated, began searching the small room. There in the corner sat
a huddled creature chained to the wall, shackles on…his feet. It wasn’t a dog.
It was a beaten, shivering, shaking, bloodied man. Cavan would never forget how
the man tried to make himself smaller. Defenseless. Petrified.
Suddenly, his head came up.
His swollen eyes looked right at Cavan.
Holy shit.
“Don’t worry,” the man said.
“I’m tame…”
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