Nite Fire Series by C.L. Schneider - Book Tour + Giveaway
Flash Point
Nite Fire Book 1
by C.L. Schneider
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Slated for execution, shapeshifting assassin, Dahlia Nite, flees her world to hide in the human realm. As payment for the shelter they unknowingly provide, Dahlia dedicates herself to protecting humans from what truly lives in the shadows. Moving from town to town, she hunts the creatures that threaten an unsuspecting human race; burying the truth that could destroy them all.
But the shadows are shifting. The lies are adding up. And when Sentinel City is threatened by a series of bizarre brutal murders, light is shed on what should never be seen. The secrets that have kept humanity in the dark for centuries are in danger of being exposed.
Wrestling with a lifetime of her own deceptions, Dahlia investigates the killings while simultaneously working to conceal their circumstances. But with each new murder, the little bit of peace she has found in this world begins to crumble. Each new clue leads her to the one place she thought to never go again. Home.
Flash Point is the first book in the Nite Fire Series.
**Get it FREE Aug 1 – 4 !!**
Book Trailer
Nite Fire Book 2
If anyone can tell the difference between monsters and humans, it’s Dahlia Nite. For nearly a century, she’s hunted one to protect the other; safeguarding humanity from the creatures that slip through the torn veil between the worlds—creatures like her. But the lines are blurring. As people begin mutating and combusting on the streets, Dahlia realizes a strange affliction has descended upon Sentinel City. The mysterious ailment strikes all walks of life, from the posh, high-end nightclub district to the homeless community. Its victims, driven to random acts of savagery, are drawing attention too fast to cover up.
Assigned to the case, Dahlia and her human partner, Detective Alex Creed, investigate the deaths. But all they have are questions and bodies, and a public on the verge of panic. Working behind the scenes with her self-appointed sidekick, Casey Evans, Dahlia struggles to discover what, or who, is behind the alarming transformations. As the violence spreads and the mystery unfolds, she wonders: are the victims still human? Were they ever?
Chain Reaction is the second book in the Nite Fire Series.
**Only .99 cents Aug 1- 8!!**
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Chapter 1
Murky, black tendrils of pain slithered up
my ankle. They wrapped around my legs, anxious and cold and begging to be felt.
The ghost they spawned from was an old one. Shed in the last moments before
death, the tattered remnant of human trauma had been drifting here for years.
It was forever a part of this place now, forgotten and abandoned like the
building it was trapped in.
Regret,
I thought, processing the emotion’s distinctive touch. It was sad, but it
wasn’t the trauma I was looking for. I shook my leg, dislodging the shadow, and
moved on.
My quick dismissal wasn’t as callous as it
appeared. As an empath, I understood: no matter the species, the age, or the
cause, every hurt was significant to the soul that owned it.
This one wasn’t significant enough, not
tonight. Not for what I needed.
Shivering, I yanked the zipper up on my
hoodie. It was late. The building was drafty. But my sudden chill wasn’t
sparked by cold. If it was, exchanging my human skin for scales was far more
efficient. Being a half-dragon shapeshifter had its perks. Generating heat was
one of them. But it was the end of August. There was plenty of heat to go
around. It was disgust that had me trembling.
I
shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be doing this. I’m terrible, I thought.
At least, I would be if I continued on my
current slippery slope. It was a figurative decline. The crumbling concrete
floor of the derelict apartment building I was trespassing in was as flat and
unwavering as it should be. My morals, however, were careening steadily
downward. If shifter-hell was a place, it was a sure bet I had a standing
reservation carved in stone.
Of course, the name Dahlia Nite had been
on that list for a while now. A former executioner for the dragon-queen,
Naalish, there was no way my elevator had ever been going up. Not even the last
ninety-seven years I’d spent performing (mostly) good deeds in the human realm
could change my eternal destination. But this… Trolling the slums, looking to loot the trauma from whatever poor
souls I could find and use it for target practice—this was going to plummet me
straight to the bottom.
But I had to do something. My
empathic abilities had been a mystery from day one. Over the years, they’d
grown to become an important part of my life. The clues my empathic glimpses
provided were mostly reliable, even if the results were inconsistent. Since
moving back to Sentinel City three months ago, that inconsistency had flown off
the freaking chart.
I’d tried not using my empathy, but I didn’t like being limited. I solved
crimes and hunted monsters for a living. I needed every edge I could get.
Unfortunately, this edge had become
too unpredictable to be trusted. Hurting an enemy with an involuntary psychic
attack was one thing. Sending an innocent man into cardiac arrest was a
near-fatal mistake. I wanted it to be my last. If absorbing and reassigning
pain was something I could do now, I needed to get a handle on it.
Yet, the last four weeks, I’d been
dragging my feet. Because there was only one way to train my sixth sense. I
needed pain. I needed to feel it and play with it, and doing so, for the sake
of my own gain, made me feel no better than the creatures I hunted.
Ignoring the issue, though, was dangerous,
which was why I was spending my Monday night touring one of the city’s most
notorious buildings in the old waterfront district.
The Fletcher had been condemned for years.
Rumors of spirits and ghouls fed into the city’s love of legends, but the only
activity in the ramshackle structure was the unseemly kind. There was no
electricity. Most of the rooms were missing doors. Grime coated the few
remaining broken window panes. Termites and humans had riddled the interior
walls with holes. Fire had scorched the rest. Graffiti bubbles colored nearly
every surface. A few surviving furnishings were coated in layers of filth. Just
looking at them warranted a shower.
The kids who snuck in to party
mostly stuck to the lower levels. The junkies who stumbled in to forget their
lives for a few hours or days favored the solitude of the higher floors.
Runaways and vagrants, however, made use of the entire six stories. Most would
crash for a while, then get smart and move on. Some graduated into permanent
residency. Now and then, the city came in and cleaned the place out, rounding
up the runaways, busting the dealers and the junkies.
They came right back.
Curling up in dark corners and old
closets, hiding from the world, shooting up and fading away; their decaying
souls shed trauma like autumn leaves in a perpetual windstorm.
There were certain places empaths
preferred to avoid. Hospitals, nursing homes, cemeteries, prisons, the sites of
ancient battles, all made the top ten. I wasn’t sure where drug den fell on the
list, but I couldn’t walk five feet without someone’s suffering reaching out to
me. It was everywhere: darkening the fissured concrete, drifting over the
decomposing garbage and mold-infested blankets—clinging to the hunched human
forms that had moved past unfortunate to wretched a damn long time ago.
What I saw and felt wasn’t your typical
ghost, but I’d found no other word to describe the residue that haunted a soul.
It grew with each new trauma, polluting humanity’s insides. Eventually, it
manifested into a shadowy form that clung to their bodies; tainting, suffocating,
sloughing off bits of trauma with each step. Sometimes, after death, their
ghosts stayed behind. Here, so many had stayed, not even a spotlight could have
penetrated the layers.
Nite Fire Book 3
Secrets are a dragon’s best friend. Deception is a close second. Both provide a sturdy armor, allowing half-dragon shapeshifter, Dahlia Nite, to live undetected among the humans. Walking in two worlds, belonging in neither, she wraps herself in a shroud of lies to hide in plain sight. But nothing stays hidden forever.
When dismembered bodies of multiple species are dumped on the riverbank, the case falls to Dahlia and Detective Alex Creed. Backed by Sentinel City’s new task force, the pair find themselves urged along by clues that seem too good to be true. Bouncing from one crime scene to the next, they hunt for a clear motive in a murky sea of conflicting evidence. Already on edge from the recent string of unexplained crimes, the city begins to unravel.
Drowning in missing creatures, slaughtered remains, masked men—and the search for her sidekick’s missing sister—Dahlia burns the candle at both ends. Seeking answers, she employs her empathic abilities, and uncovers something deeper and more sinister than a simple serial killer’s web. As the dots connect, and worlds collide, she struggles to shields her friends from the truth. But secrets can be deadly. And Dahlia’s not the only one who keeps them.
Smoke & Mirrors is the third book in the Nite Fire Series.
**Only .99 cents Aug 1- 8!!**
C. L. Schneider was born in a small Kansas town on the Missouri River. Growing up in a family of readers, all with diverse interests, she developed an early and avid love for the written word. Her fascination with science fiction stories and anything supernatural, as well as a keen interest in the Middle Ages, drew her to fantasy. At the age of sixteen, she wrote her first, full-length novel on a typewriter in her parents' living room. While her primary focus is adult epic and urban fantasy, she dabbles in the occasional science fiction or post-apocalyptic story.
Schneider's debut novel was The Crown of Stones: Magic-Price, the first book in her epic fantasy trilogy. The Crown of Stones is a gripping account of one man's struggle to accept who and what he is. It's the journey of a flawed hero, a fallen race, and a land at war. A page-turning tale of prejudice, betrayal, secrets, and lies.
"The Crown of Stones Trilogy evolved from the creation of my protagonist, Ian Troy. I wanted to construct not just a character, but a person that I, as a reader, would want to get lost in. One that would embody the characters I’d come to love from the stories I read in my childhood home, so many years ago. My goal was to develop a character that was capable of being both a cowboy and an outlaw, a detective when he needs to be, a monster when he can’t help it, and a hero even when he tries not to be."
Her new series, Nite Fire, is a gritty, action-packed, urban fantasy featuring shapeshifters, dragons, parallel worlds, and various creatures of myth and legend.
C. L. Schneider lives in New York's Hudson Valley with her husband and two sons. An active member of the indie author community, you can often find her on social media chatting about the daily ups and downs of a writer's life.
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4 Comments
Looks like interesting books.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the contest.
You're very welcome! I'm so glad the series caught your eye :)
DeleteThank you for being a part of the Nite Fire Series Blog Tour!
ReplyDeleteYou're very welcome! :)
DeletePlease try not to spam posts with the same comments over and over again. Authors like seeing thoughtful comments about their books, not the same old, "I like the cover" or "sounds good" comments. While that is nice, putting some real thought and effort in is appreciated. Thank you.