𝗦𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗘𝗦 𝐓𝐎𝐔𝐑 & Author Interview ➜ DEATH’S EMBRACE a Slow Burn MM Fantasy series by Author H. L. Moore
DEATH’S EMBRACE SERIES TOUR
Author and Publisher: H. L. Moore
Cover Artist: Damonza
Pairing: MM (slow burn)
Genres: Fantasy (coalpunk)
The stories are best read in order.
Universal Buy Links for the Series
DEATH’S EMBRACE SERIES BLURB
Doran Ó Seanáin, former miner and leader of the Black Lung Gang, and his best friend, Lien, are almost at a breaking point in their ongoing conflict with the city of Arajon’s tyrannical ruler. Just as things are spiralling out of control, Doran crosses paths with Nathaniel Morgenstern, an apotheker with a mysterious past. As their relationship develops against the backdrop of the ongoing social turmoil, the secrets Nathaniel is keeping might threaten to destroy them all…
BOOK DETAILS
BOOK 1
Book Title: Heart of Dust
Length: 59 000 words
Release Date: 2019
Tense/POV: Third person, past tense, single POV
Tropes: Stabbing leading to meet-cute, yearning, slow burn romance
Themes: Bisexual romance, dark pasts including alcoholism, drug addiction, atonement, forgiveness, worker’s rights
Heat Rating: 2 flames
It does not end on a cliffhanger, but leaves plot threads unresolved that are resolved in the next 3 books.
Doran had a problem, and it wasn’t that he’d been stabbed.
Blurb
Iole City is in turmoil.
Doran Ó Seanáin, leader of the Black Lung Gang, is determined to challenge the Archon, Arajon’s tyrannical ruler, for his brutal treatment of the miners. But Doran has more to deal with than getting stabbed and a city-wide lockdown that’s seeing his gang of ex-miners slowly starved out of their base. His daughter Grace has turned against him, and the death of his wife haunts them both.
Although he finds reprieve in Nathaniel Morgenstern, the apotheker with a mysterious past to whom he owes his life, the clock is ticking. The fate of the mines hangs in the balance and the Archon is closing in.
Doran’s plan to break the cycle may very well be his last.
BOOK 2
Book Title: Soul of Ash
Length: 86 000 words
Release Date: September 2020
Tense/POV: Third person, past tense, two POVs (alternating)
Tropes: Yearning, former assassin, slow-burn romance
Themes: Bisexual romance, dark pasts including alcoholism, drug addiction, atonement, forgiveness, worker’s rights
Heat Rating: 1 flame
It does not end on a cliffhanger, but some plot elements are unresolved (resolved in books 3 and 4)
You can run, but you will never be free.
Blurb
Half a year after the events of Heart of Dust, Doran Ó Seanáin now finds himself trapped between two worlds while belonging to neither: held in contempt by the Bronze for the turmoil he caused during Archon Bryson’s reign, and resented by the miners for selling out. Leonora Darkwater’s pursuit to own the mines may be the answer to all of his problems, but the offer is far more complicated than it appears, and the only person Doran trusts is the same man who threw his life into chaos.
Haunted by his past, hostage to a debt that cannot be repaid, and a slave to the poison that keeps him alive, atonement has never felt further out of reach for Nathaniel Morgenstern. Though the damage between him and Doran is too devastating to begin to mend, they have no choice but to face each other as their lives collide once more.
There is a rot in Iole City. The mines aren’t finished with Doran, and the sand in Nathaniel’s hourglass is running out.
BOOK 3
Book Title: Throne of Lies
Length: 63 000 words
Release Date: December 2024
Pairing: MM with hints of developing into MMF (slow burn)
Tense/POV: Third person, past tense, three POVs (alternating)
Trope/s: Political intrigue, forbidden romance, former assassin turned apotheker/healer
Themes: Bisexual romance, dark pasts including alcoholism, drug addiction, atonement, forgiveness, worker’s rights, political intrigue, coup.
Heat Rating: 3 flames
This book ends on a cliffhanger.
There are vipers in Arajon, from the Valley to the Bronze.
Blurb
Grace Harrington, the Dowager Archon of Arajon, is approaching her first anniversary on the throne she claimed following the death of her husband, slain at her own hands.
But her position is so precarious that even the unwelcome presence of the former assassin Nathaniel Morgenstern, watching over her at her father’s behest, cannot protect her from her enemies. The city’s press has turned against her, the Bronze is rallying behind Odessa White, and her last hope of support from the Druids has gone up in smoke.
The lies are adding up. A coup is coming for Grace, and she is running out of people in the city to trust…
BOOK 4
Book Title: Valley of Secrets
Length: 123 000 words
Release Date: January 2025
Pairing: MM that develops into MMF (polyam), and a separate FF fast-burn relationship (femme/butch)
Tense/POV: Third person, past tense, four POVs (alternating)
Trope/s: Political intrigue, resistance against military coup, forbidden romance, former assassin turned apotheker/healer
Themes: Lesbian romance, polyam romance, dark pasts including alcoholism, drug addiction, atonement, forgiveness, worker’s rights, political intrigue, coup.
Heat Rating: 3 flames
Most plot threads are wrapped up. Two further books are planned in the series but the series can also be finished here.
This city of fools will be brought to order!
Blurb
Deposed, her father presumed dead, her friends slaughtered and the cavern in chaos, Grace Harrington is on the run and entirely alone. The only ally she has left is the man she hates most in the world: Nathaniel Morgenstern, the assassin who murdered her mother and seduced her father.
Grace’s only hope of reclaiming the throne and saving her people is to seek the aid of Éamon Tadhg, the High Druid of Arajon. But she needs to survive the hostile streets of Iole City before she can even think about fleeing to the Violet Valley.
Nathaniel made a vow to Doran to protect Grace, but he could never have imagined how quickly and horrifically their lives would fall apart.
Grieving the dual losses of the man he loved and his new friend Tsa Lien, Nathaniel devotes himself to the service of the overthrown Lady Archon who despises him – even if it costs him everything he is.
Excerpt from THRONE OF LIES (Book #3 of Death’s Embrace)
“I’m sorry. I, uh… I guess you probably want me to –”
Nathaniel braced his hand against the frame, using his arm to pause Doran’s advancement towards the door.
“Stay,” he said quietly.
He did not suggest it to continue what had been derailed by Leonora’s presence; neither he nor Doran seemed to be much in the mood for it any longer.
But Doran must have needed Nathaniel’s request, for instead of shaking his head and leaving, he closed his eyes and sighed.
“This wasn’t how I imagined the evening going,” Doran said.
Nathaniel laid a hand upon Doran’s chest. “Rest here tonight,” he said, and started to gesture to the main room where the couch was. “I can –”
Doran shook his head, opening his eyes again. “I’m not going to throw you out of your own room,” he said, a small smile finally returning to ease his features.
Nathaniel became sharply aware of the bed behind him, the darkness outside the windows, Doran’s hands that moved to rest upon his waist. The room was dim, illuminated only by a small oil lamp set upon the desk under the window that overlooked Arkadia Lane. Under the faint glow of the light, he held his breath while Doran moved his hands up his body then down his arms, urging his jacket off. It fell to the floor with a soft thump.
Nathaniel raised an eyebrow. “I have a wardrobe, you know,” he murmured.
“Maybe I want to see your clothes on the floor,” Doran replied.
The sudden rush of desire that gripped Nathaniel’s body rendered him speechless. Doran smirked, then kissed him.
It was deep and tender, slow and heated; milk and honey on Nathaniel’s tongue after years wandering the desert, finally stepping foot in the promised land he had denied himself. In that moment, Nathaniel felt there was nothing between them – neither pasts nor crimes, neither guilt nor regret; just them, their souls laid bare, and a barrier of clothes of which Doran was stripping away with barely restrained desperation.
He relished the gentle scrape of Doran’s evening stubble across his chin, groaned when Doran moved along his jawline and kissed his neck, urging him to tilt his head back and bare his throat, which Doran used to break for air and run his hand up Nathaniel’s chest. Then, with the flickering lamplight reflected in Doran’s eyes, his fingers began working the buttons of Nathaniel’s shirt undone one by one. He slid his hands inside under the fabric and around to Nathaniel’s back, up his shoulder blades, his fingers tracing the scars that latticed his skin.
Nathaniel allowed Doran to undress him, stripping his shirt to the floor beside his jacket, and moved backwards when Doran guided him until the backs of his legs collided with the edge of the bed.
“Sit,” Doran ordered.
Nathaniel sank down upon the mattress, his mouth dry as Doran knelt before him and began to unfasten the straps of his boots. He pulled off Nathaniel’s left boot first, then the right, leaving them askew on the floor – then Nathaniel’s hands clenched on the bedcovers and he groaned as Doran ran his hands up Nathaniel’s legs, curving around his calves, then over his knees, and all the way up his thighs and the strained fabric of his pants to reach for the buckle of the belt.
Hoarsely, Nathaniel said, “You don’t have to –”
“But I want to,” Doran interrupted, his voice low and heated. He rose to his feet now and stood between Nathaniel’s legs, gazing down at him through heavy-lidded eyes. “Do you?”
It had been years since Nathaniel’s last intimate encounter; longer still that it had been with someone for whom he had feelings that were not muted by the fog of Embrace. Such a thing was lost to him during his time with the Nameless. The physicality of sex had been heightened, certainly, while he himself was rendered as numb to the act as someone was used to the basic function of washing their hands. With a clear mind, he recalled of himself that some deep part not lost to the drug and his lifestyle must have found the experience undesirable, for he could count the number of unions he had engaged in during his adulthood on one hand.
Doran’s touch was more potent, more electric, than anything Nathaniel had ever experienced under the thrall of Embrace. He felt he would die if he went one more night without knowing how Doran’s body felt against his.
“God, yes,” Nathaniel rasped, and Doran closed the distance between them.
Author Interview:
I’m hard at work on drafting the next book in the Death’s Embrace series, Shadow of Vengeance (working title). The previous book acts as a satisfying conclusion for readers, but there are plenty more stories to be told and arcs to be completed. Shadow of Vengeance will take a much darker turn than previous books (and previous books have gone to dark places!) and force several characters to reckon with their pasts and relationships in brutal ways. In addition to the regular POVs of Doran, Nathaniel, and Lien, I introduce a new POV… Gerald, Nathaniel’s assistant/adopted son. I can’t wait to get underway with it.
I have an abridged draft snippet to share, with the caveat that anything could change between now and when it’s finished!
[Begin snippet]
There were few things in the world deadlier than a Nameless assassin. Lien considered it a singular honour to witness Nathaniel Morgenstern in action – a privilege that she had faced his blade, and he had allowed her to live. Watching him from the corner of the rehabilitation clinic private exercise room was less for observation and more for her own pleasure: he was a dichotomy; fluid and in his movements yet brutal in his strikes. Lien could not deny that she was stirred by the way he moved like flowing water, each strike precise and his footwork a deadly dance. It was but a glimpse of what he must have looked like in his prime – a twenty-year-old man, his muscles like iron and his strikes like serpents. He must have been incredible. His opponent was less skilled. Gerald wasn’t skinny anymore – far from it – but compared to Nathaniel he was too lithe to pull off the same hard strikes. What he lacked in sheer physicality he made up for in swiftness – ducking, dodging, striking back quickly and sharply before retreating – and he scowled the entire time. He blocked and hit Nathaniel back hard with the palm of his hand against his side, which Nathaniel returned with a pulled blow to the young man’s chest, driving him staggering backwards and winded. “Again,” Nathaniel ordered. Gerald shook his head and stepped backwards. A small cut on the corner of his lip had reopened; a blotch of red stained his chin as he swiped his hand across his face to slick the sweat away. “I don’t want to do this anymore!” Lien watched Nathaniel prowl the training floor, his footwork slow and deliberate as he circled Gerald. “Do you want to keep working at the apothecary?” he demanded. “Do you want to keep living with me, eating my food, walking around with my last name? Do not think for a moment I will ever be free from my past. I don’t care if you don’t want to do this. I’m not giving you a choice. Again.” Gerald growled and launched himself at Nathaniel.
What is the hardest part of writing any book?
Starting it, hands down. Once I’m on a roll and I’m on the right track, the words just pour out of me. I’ve smashed out 120k words in a matter of months when the story is flowing! But when I’m starting a new book and staring at a blank page, I sit there and I think to myself, good grief, have I forgotten how to write?! The paralysis of a blank document eventually fades, but the opening scene has to be right for me to keep going. If I get that right, everything else falls into place.
Did you learn anything from writing your recent book? What was it?
I learned to trust myself and my gut instinct. The first draft that I had of the book – which was Throne of Lies (I ended up cutting it into two books because it was too big!) – was 40,000 words… and I was absolutely stuck. I knew the arcs of the characters, I knew the general plot, but I had written myself into a corner and the characters were not driving the storyline. I didn’t touch the draft for a few years, then when I came back to it, I reread it all, realised that I hated the draft, and deleted all 40,000 words so I could start fresh with a blank document. Once I freed myself from the draft that wasn’t working, the words started to flow again, and this time the characters were in control to drive the story. Whenever I get stuck now, I don’t force the words – I reread, delete what isn’t working, and trust the characters to guide me to write their story.
Are there any genres you prefer to write, and if so, why?
Fantasy and science fiction. While I do often read literary fiction and general fiction set in the real world, I tie myself into knots trying to write it myself because I get too obsessed with making it historically or socially accurate. I don’t have to worry about that when I write sci-fi or fantasy – I’m in control of the world building, and make believe land has anything I want!
What book/s are you reading at the moment?
I’m taking a break from tradpub stories this year and focusing on reading books by fellow authors in the SPFBO11 competition. I’m honoured for Heart of Dust to have made it through the lottery stage to go up for judging, and I wish all my fellow contestants the best of luck! As for what I’m reading right now, I’ve started with In Ice We Steel by Ayleen K. Kyrstin, a 1984-esque steampunk world where a soldier and a vagabond must rise up against an evil regime.
What novels do you adore/re-read?
My favourite book of all time is a classic I read when I was in high school – The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. I love how subversive it was for its time (1860) and how it started the gothic sensationalism genre of the Victorian-era, and tackled the injustice that women faced in marriage. It’s a brilliant story, beautifully written, and the characters live rent-free in my brain to this day.
A close second would have to be The Will of the Many by James Islington. I read that book in 3 days flat and it permanently altered my brain chemistry. I wish I could write like that!
Which other writers do you follow?
My new favourite author I am doggedly watching for a new release is R. Sinclair, author of Fracture (Shattered Numbers I). Another author I always read is J. Scott Coatsworth, who wowed me with his Tharassas Cycle novels and River City Chronicles. And finally, Nicola Zhang, whose Celestia Trilogy was spectacular – I can’t wait to read more from her in the future.
Do you have a favourite character and/or book you've written? Who, what and why?
Noooo don’t make me choose just one character or book from my repertoire! But if I absolutely must… my favourite character is actually a side character who has not (yet) had a POV in the series: Professor Meirav Kaufman, the cranky octogenarian physician/physicist/inventor and Albert Einstein-equivalent of the Death’s Embrace series. She’s old, she’s snarky, she’s done with everyone’s shit, and her inventions and contributions to science have essentially shaped the world as it is. And despite her age, she isn’t slowing down yet! (That said, she does plan to retire to a beach so she can enjoy her final years with the warmth of the sun on her old saggy tiddies.)
Do characters and stories just pop into your head, or do you take your time thinking about and planning them?
A bit of both. Sometimes I’ll come up with a concept of a character and take my time working them out, planning their backstory and personality… but most of the time, someone walks into my head fully-formed and demands that a story be written around them. All of my books are character-driven – meaning that their lives and personal arcs and choices (often bad) are the catalysts for the major events of the series. The worldbuilding is constructed around them!
A. L. Moore (she/they) is the author of the Death’s Embrace fantasy series and the Tales from the Jovian Empiresci-fi novella series.
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