Guest: J.K. Coi - Angels and Romance Trading Cards

J.K. Coi is a multi-published, award winning author of contemporary and paranormal romance and urban fantasy. She makes her home in Ontario, Canada, with her husband and son and a feisty black cat who is the uncontested head of the household. While she spends her days immersed in the litigious world of insurance law, she is very happy to spend her nights writing dark and sexy characters who leap off the page and into readers’ hearts.

Falling Hard is my July release from Carina Press. Since it’s about angels, I went through a spurt where all I did was read books and watch movies with angels in them. Research.

I had read John Milton’s Paradise Lost in university, but I read it again when the ideas for this book started to percolate. I think I must have forgotten how difficult it had been to read the first time around, but I did love how Milton made Satan’s character seem appealing and almost heroic in the beginning, proving how seductive evil can be. I knew the hero of my book would be tempted by Lucifer as well, and Milton’s characterizations helped me to visualize the path that Gabriel would have to walk.

My favorite movies by far, weren’t any of the movies which showed angels as pure, glowing creatures filled with the light of holy love and sporting a lot of ruffling white chiffon. The movies I liked best were the ones where the angels were totally bad-ass. I like angels who pick up a sword, swear like a sailor, and are about as far from angelic as you can imagine.

In Constantine, angels conspire to bring hell to earth in order to make humans suffer for their sins. The Prophecy is about angels getting humans caught up in their heavenly war (and how great is Viggo Mortensen as Lucifer?). These were great examples for me while I was writing my own book.

But the very best was Dogma. If you haven’t seen it, you need to. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon as disgruntled angels who are tired of being banished to earth as punishment for disagreeing with God, Alan Rickman as “The Voice of God”, Jason Lee as the demon “Azazel”, George Carlin as “Cardinal Glick” and “Jay and Silent Bob” helping Linda Fiorentino and Chris Rock get to church on time to meet God—played by Alanis Morissette!

OMG. First off, it was just completely hilarious. And secondly, I loved the idea that the angels were sick of answering to God. They were tired of being his flunkies and were ready to take matters into their own hands and make their own destiny. This notion formed the basis for a major conflict in Falling Hard, and all of a sudden I had a cast of angels who were on the verge of all-out war and only two people standing in their way.

Not that I’ve sold the movie rights to Falling Hard just yet, but with the last Harry Potter movie being recently released, and the Hunger Games movie being in production (I’m SO excited!), tell me what movies (from books) you’ve liked the best, and why.

I’d like to offer a set of my romance trading cards to one commenter.

J.K. Coi
website: www.jkcoi.com
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Excerpt from Falling Hard ©JK Coi 2011

At first nothing happened. He opened his mouth, but then a golden light lit the room, a glow coming from Amelia herself. He stepped back as it unfolded from her like a great mantle of warmth, revealing a beautiful pair of nebulous, willowy wings that seemed to have formed from the light itself.

“Holy shit,” he muttered.

As her true form was revealed, the bright glow intensified, creating a deep aura that surrounded her, pulsing in time with her even breaths. Then it faded again.

Gabriel let out his breath in a low groan. This couldn’t be happening. There couldn’t be an angel standing in front of him in this dingy, run-down motel room. And yet part of him wasn’t really surprised. The truth had always been within his reach, tucked in the back of his mind. Some semi-conscious part of him had known all along, or at least suspected. Ever since that first night. As he’d lain on the floor of that alley, Gabriel had seen her—the real her—but he’d let his rational mind dismiss it as impossible.

Rising from the chair, unable to take his eyes from her, Gabriel reached out. He couldn’t quite bring himself to touch the downy proof of her claims. He glanced into her face. “They don’t look…real.”

She obligingly spread the wings out behind her. Stretching from one end of the room to the other, they looked formidable and dramatic, but also ethereal, like insubstantial clouds that you could never really catch in your hand. The tips of each wing just brushed the wall on either side of the room.

She nodded her assent. “Go ahead.”

With an open hand, he gently stroked, feeling the rounded—and very real—edge of one wing, then the other. The feathers were so delicate and fine, like the softest down or the fluffiest kitten fur, but there was strength beneath them. “How did you hide these from me all this time—from everyone?”

“It isn’t all that difficult to hide things from humans that they aren’t prepared to see.” Her smile was a little sad. “A little bit of magic, a little bit of your own powers of mental rejection, and ta da. No more angels.”

“But why? Why are you here to begin with? What do you want?”

“I just want to keep you safe, Gabriel. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“Keep me safe from what? Does everyone have someone like you to watch over them? A guardian angel?”

She paused. “No.”

“Why not?” Reluctantly, he dropped his hand, which had still been caressing the softness of one wing.

“Contrary to popular belief, that’s not really what we do.”

“And yet, you’re saying that’s exactly what you’ve been doing with me. Why? Why would someone like me warrant his own personal guardian angel?” Gabriel folded his hand together into a tight fist. “Where were the angels when my baby sister was choked to death? And Leanne? Why didn’t angels do something to stop her from shooting so much coke into her body that her veins disintegrated before she’d even hit the floor?”

Why hadn’t anyone been watching out for them?

Because that was your job, the voice inside him said.

Gabriel had never avoided the truth. He knew those deaths rested squarely on his shoulders and he wasn’t about to shift the blame to anyone else—but he was angry. Goddamn. He’d been angry his entire life. The familiar rage had eaten away at his insides for so long he didn’t think there was anything left of him worth saving.

Website: www.jkcoi.com
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