Pre-Release Bonaza: Omens!

Hey all!! In order to celebrate the release of Kelley Armstrong's newest series The Cainsville Series, I decided to do a little pre-release bonaza since I got a review copy which I already devoured and loved!!

With it came some interesting deets that I am going to share over the next few days with my own personal Q&A with Kelley ending with my review on release day!

So let's get to it! To top off this little 4-day bonaza is a piece Kelley wrote:

Why I wrote Omens, the beginning of the Cainsville Series by Kelley Armstrong:

When I wrote Bitten fifteen years ago, I did it for fun. I'd written a few books in genres that others said were "highly marketable" and they didn't sell, so I deiced I'd write one just for me, with everything I wanted in a story. When it sold, I don't thin anyone was more shocked than I was.

Now I've ended the series after thirteen books. Starting over is a daunting task, and it's been very tempting to analyze the market and try to game my chances. But are those the stories I want to tell? And keep telling? No.

So when I started a new series, once again I asked myself, "What story do I really want to tell?"

I knew the basic premise. It would be a reverse Cinderella story, with a heroine who has it all and loses it, but instead of chasing what she's lost, she's happy for the excuse to flee her gilded cage. And what forces this character, Olivia to flee? Oh, not much. Just finding out that she's adopted...and the daughter of convicted serial killers. Yes, I do like my stories dark and dramatic, and you don't get much more life-shattering--or identity shattering--than that.

Since Bitten, I've been fascinated by issues of identity and the darkness within, and this premise is perfect for further exploring that. If you found out you were the child of serial killers, how would it change you? How would you re-examine your own dark side and behavior? How would the world see you and treat you?

That's an interesting premise, but it still needs more. I want deeper secrets. Deeper mysteries. I want a strange little town with its own dark side, bound tightly to mysteries and questions of Olivia's past.

And of course I want my story with a side order of the supernatural. Not werewolves and vampires. For this story, I want omens and superstitions, portents and second sight, folklore and legend.

Then I want to take this world and fill it with characters who have lives and backstories as complicated as Olivia's. Characters unlike the people she's grown up with. Men and women with very different codes of conduct and morality and ethics, who can be allies and enemies, and more often than not, a little of both.

That's what I wanted from my new series. That and more, and I could go on, but I'll stop now and give you the book instead. Here's Omens. I hope you enjoy it.