Book Spotlight and Giveaway: "The Dark Man's Son" by Meg Whitlock

Finding Love When You’re the Personification of Evil

            Whoa, that’s quite a title. Sets the stage for something a little…different, I guess. I kind of had the idea of writing a personal ad from the point of view of Cassius, one of the main characters in my book The Dark Man’s Son, but then I decided that was cheesy. So here’s what’s happening instead….

            Love is a major theme of Dark Man. Alex, the Guardian of Light, is all about it. She loves everyone and she always looks for the best in anyone she meets. Cassius, the Guardian of Evil, is the opposite. He finds and discards lovers the way most of us change our socks. He never even gives them another thought, unless he decides they can serve him in other ways.

            You might be asking yourself what a guy like that is doing with a kid. I mean, he doesn’t exactly sound like father of the year material, right? That’s kind of a funny story, and you’ll learn a good deal more about it if you read the book, so I won’t go into it here. What I’m here to talk about is more the mythology behind it all.

            When I set out to create the Guardians, eventually one of the ideas I had to wrestle with was progeny. Would they have any? If so, how would that work? They’ve existed since almost the beginning of time, and over the eons they’ve both had a lot of lovers. Birth control wasn’t exactly reliable back in the day, so, what? Some sort of Guardian magic trick that prevented conception? Or did they have hundreds of little half-Guardian hybrid babies running hither and yon?

            None of those solutions worked for me. Instead I decided that each Guardian could have one child, just one, and the conditions for that child’s conception had to be just right. First and foremost, the parents had to be in love. We’re talking big-L love here, Princess Bride style True Love. Alex falls in love really easily, but that type of love is rare.

            Her kid, in case you’re wondering, was born about three-thousand years ago and met an untimely end. Again, read the book! You can learn a whole lot more about Vanant, her son, and Arad, his father, in the forthcoming sequel to Dark Man. I’m planning to make the Arad/Alex love story a central storyline of it.

            Anyway. You can imagine for someone like Cassius, falling in love is much trickier. How can a creature who is, quite literally, the personification of evil fall in love? Honestly I’m not entirely sure.

            He met the right woman. He was in the right place in his existence. The long, long years have mellowed him somewhat.

            All of those answers are right, I think, but none of them tell the whole story. None of them are the answer.

            Simply put, it was inevitable. Not destined, like his fate wasn’t his own, but rather eventually even a creature whose sole purpose is to spread destruction and discord was bound to meet the one person he couldn’t treat like old socks. Was she some sort of demigod super woman? Nope. She was an ordinary person. A regular chica. She just refused to put up with his nonsense.

            Eventually she did leave him to protect her son. And Cassius let her go. To the Dark Guardian, that act of letting her walk away was the ultimate gesture of love. That’s how he knew she was the one.

            The sad part for Cassius, the thing that he tries to hide with his glib humor and casual cruelty, is that he’ll never love again. Not like that. Not with a big L. His son is proof that he felt that way at least once, and that’s why Cassius is so willing to sacrifice everything for him.

            Is Cassius’ son his chance for redemption? Cassius neither needs nor wants redemption, so that’s really a pointless question. His son is, instead, his reminder that Alex was right all along. Love is the point, and we’re far less without it than we are with it. He kind of hates it when she’s right.

The Dark Man’s Son

By Meg Whitlock

Guardian Chronicles #1

Genre: urban fantasy

ISBN: 9781476329390 Smashwords/iBooks/Sony only

ASIN: B0088RTUJO

BN ID: 2940014752671

Number of pages: 285

B&N Amazon  Smashwords

Blurb/Book Description:

She claimed the muggers were demons, but of course Jason didn’t believe her. At first.

When a mysterious woman appears in a dirty alley to rescue Jason Latimer from a pair of muggers, he tries to write her off as a garden variety lunatic. But he can’t shake the memory of her intense green eyes that seemed to flash gold, or the glowing sword she’d worn on her hip.

She calls herself Alex (no last name) like she’d made it up on the spot, and she offers Jason her protection. From what, she can’t or won’t say. He refuses, and that night he dreams of a dark man with the same offer. His black eyes flash blood and garnet, and he smells of burning things. Jason refuses him, too.

A chance meeting brings Alex and Jason together again, and she tells him of the Guardians: two immortal beings created near the beginning of time with the express purpose of fighting for mortal-kind’s soul. She is Light, and the man from Jason’s dream is Dark. Jason must choose, because Lucifer, for reasons purely his own, has unleashed the armies of Hell to hunt Jason down.

But there are things about Jason that not even he knows, and he’ll face hard truths and bitter choices as he struggles to find his place in a world redefined. Will he rise to the challenge, or, when the time comes, will he falter?

From Renaissance Florence to the French Revolution, from World War II to the modern streets of New Orleans, The Dark Man’s Son is a riveting journey filled with unforgettable characters, wry humor, dark twists, and a touch of romance.

 

Meg Whitlock has been writing nearly all her life, and she’s glad she finally got over her laziness and wrote the book she’s been dreaming about for years. She graduated from Queens University of Charlotte with a BA in Comparative Arts with an Art History specialization and an Ancient History minor…which is a mouthful no matter how you say it. She has four cats (including an invisible one), a car named Babar, and a vivid imagination.

In 2001 her one-act play, “The Shoebox,” was produced by Catawba College in Salisbury, NC and presented at the American College Theatre Festival. She was honored by Art:21 and the Mint Museum of Art for her essay “Kara Walker: Using Stereotypes to Provoke Thought,” and she’s won awards for both her fiction and non-fiction writing.

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/megwhitlock 

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/megwhitlockwrites 

blog: http://blogbymegw.blogspot.com  

goodreads: http://bit.ly/NrUEZy

 Meg has generously donated a ebook copy of her book "The Dark Man's Son" to giveaway to one lucky commenter. Just leave a meaningful comment with your email address to be entered.