Interview With Sam Cheever
I sat down (virtually) with Sam Cheever for a short interview. Sam Cheever’s latest release is Bedeviled & Beguiled, an awesome SciFi Paranormal!
Cynthia Sax: What makes Dialle so freakin’ sexy?
Sam Cheever: Dialle is the ultimate bad boy. He’s dark and dangerous and constantly fighting his devilish nature. But since the heroine is part devil too, when they’re naughty, they’re very naughty!
Cynthia Sax: What is your favorite line from Bedeviled & Beguiled?
Sam Cheever: Demon King Abrine says to Astra:
“somehow I expected someone a little more…shall we say, imposing?”
And she responds:
“Me too. I’m always a little surprised when I look in a mirror. I feel so much bigger and meaner to myself.”
I get a kick out of this because it’s the perfect representation of small woman syndrome. LOL I resemble that statement! Like Astra, I’m not nearly as big as my ’tude.
Cynthia Sax: How does Bedeviled & Beguiled start?
Sam Cheever: Astra Q Phelps runs the universe’s only demon exterminating company. So it made sense to me to start there. In the opening scene, Astra’s doing a training exercise with her partner, Emo. Emo is a halfling like she is, but unlike Astra, he was cursed in his youth to look like the traditional representation of a devil, red and scaly with horns. Here’s a bit of that scene:
I mentally cursed myself and forced my mind back to the present. My mind always wanders during training. Especially when my training partner is Emo, my longtime partner and fellow perfectionist in thuggery. Like me, Emo takes our little training sessions very seriously. Unlike me however, Emo doesn’t have any trouble concentrating on what he’s doing. I have a lot of trouble concentrating unless my life is in peril. Which certainly happens often enough, since I make my living hunting devils and demons.
Closing off my wayward thoughts, I cocked my head and tried to focus all of my energies into sensing Emo in the pitch-black space. I heard tiny pattering feet to the left, skittering along the wall that stretched across my back. My head swiveled just in time to spot the shimmering red aura of a large, black rat that was returning to his den with a tiny chunk of bread. I watched him closely to make sure he didn’t even think about coming my way.
I really hate rats.
When the rat was safely tucked into his little rat shack in the wall, I made a conscious effort to refocus my attention to the task at hand. I took a deep breath, tilted my head back and expanded my nostrils to scent Emo, but he was apparently using his masking power and I couldn’t get a fix on him.
Unfortunately, I did get a pretty good whiff of the Chinese takeout place on the corner up the street and I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t eaten any lunch and it was well past dinnertime. I closed my eyes and took a deep cleansing breath, shaking my head in an effort to regain my concentration. I focused on sensitizing my power to overcome the block Emo was apparently using. My power slid around the room, searching, but not finding my skulking partner. I clutched the object I held in my hand a little more tightly as my nose began to tingle and the skin on my back started to crawl.
I suddenly realized there was something standing just behind me. I jerked my head around but it was too late. A big, leathery paw with long, sharp claws clamped itself around my upper arm and tore me off my feet.
Angry with myself that I’d allowed him to sneak up on me, I used the momentum of his attack to turn my body so that I faced the wall. Then I pushed my feet into the wall and launched myself backward, flipping over his head and landing on the balls of my feet a short distance behind him. He turned with a snarl and dove toward my legs, tackling me to the ground and covering me with his thick, solid body. The wind left me in a rush but I managed to jam my knee deeply into the spot between his legs where he would least like me to wedge my bony limb. He growled as I connected with something squishy and heavy and one of his club-like arms jerked toward the ceiling and started to come down toward my head. It stopped in mid-air as I pushed the object I held in my hand into the middle of his chest. The object gave off burning sparks as it hit his leathery skin. He yelped and sprang off me.
Gasping to refill my lungs, I tucked my feet beneath my butt and launched myself off the floor. As soon as my toes hit the floor again, I pushed off and sprang toward the retreating devil. I hit him hard, knocking him back against the wall and holding him there with the cross. It began to vibrate in my hand and give off tiny, stinging, electric shocks that I forced myself to ignore.
Emo went completely still, as only his kind can do, and stopped breathing. The only sound in the lightless space came from my panting breath in his ear.
“You give?”
Emo gave a slight nod and slowly dropped his arms in surrender. I reluctantly lowered the cross, knowing all too well that devils weren’t to be trusted. Even if they were part angel.
I moved across the room on the balls of my feet, stepping sideways so I could keep an eye on his aura. When I’d managed to put about twenty feet between us, his icy, blue aura suddenly flickered and disappeared and I felt a whoosh of hot air as he moved, with a speed I hadn’t known he possessed, to a spot somewhere behind me. I turned to meet him head on, but he was faster. He hit me with a full body block that dropped us to the floor with me on the bottom, knocking all of the wind out of my lungs and sending us both skittering across the floor. I ended up with my head just inches from the rat hole and, like a reluctant gawker at a particularly grizzly air bus accident, I tipped my head back to see if the rat was anywhere near. To my vast chagrin, I came eyeball to eyeball with the disgusting thing. It opened its pointed, disease ridden mouth and hissed at me, lunging toward my face as if it would attack.
I screamed and leaped to my feet, dislodging a hilarious devil and jumping around like a moron as I convulsed in hysterical disgust. I did the revulsion dance across the room until there was a lot of space between me and that twitchy nosed, red-eyed attack rodent.
Emo lay in a giggling puddle on the floor as I commanded lights on full and returned the cross I’d used against him to my pocket. He finally wound down and, taking a deep breath, reached up to rub the spot on his scaled chest where the cross had rested. My sparring partner climbed heavily to his feet. “Damn, Astra. You promised me you wouldn’t use the platinum cross anymore. That sonofabitch hurts like hell!”
Forgetting my near death experience with the rat for a moment, I narrowed my eyes at him and grinned. “You would know.”
Cynthia Sax: Is Bedeviled & Beguiled a series and will you be writing more stories in this series?
Sam Cheever: This is a series I received my rights back on several months ago. I’m in the process of re-editing and re-releasing them right now. Currently the first 3 of the 6 books are available on Amazon and I’m working on number 4. They should all be available by the end of the year. I’m also working on a book of fun Christmas short stories based in this world. I anticipate releasing the book for sale in November. Will I write more in this series? I’m definitely open to the idea. I’ll wait to see if there’s reader demand for more books.
Thank you, Sam Cheever, for joining us today!
Sam Cheever’s Website: http://www.samcheever.com/
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Astra Q Phelps is on the side of the good guys in the war between good and evil. Unfortunately for her, the bad guys have been making inroads on her soul. And when a particularly dark and sexy dark worlder fixes his heated gaze on Astra, the lighter side of her nature quickly finds itself kicked to the curb by her slut-monkey side. But Astra doesn’t have time to deal with her love life. She’s in the middle of a war between two dark factions…a war that just might mean the end of the human population…and it seems the fate of the world rests uneasily on her shoulders. It’s a lot of pressure to put on one feisty halfling…but Astra Q Phelps is definitely…erm…certainly…ahh…possibly up to the challenge.
Buy Now:
On Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0145TLCN0
On Amazon.ca: http://www.amazon.ca/Bedeviled-Beguiled-Beyond-Book-ebook/dp/B0145TLCN0
On Amazon.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bedeviled-Beguiled-Beyond-Book-ebook/dp/B0145TLCN0
On Amazon.au: http://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/B0145TLCN0
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