Guest book review: Demon Hunting in the Deep South by Lexi George

Review by Sarah Jordan

Back of the Book Blurb:  Evie Douglass doesn’t know what’s worse—the demons secretly infesting her small Alabama hometown…or human belle-from-hell Meredith Starr Peterson, who’s made her life miserable since high school. But when the “Death Starr” is brutally murdered and Evie is the number-one suspect, she’s suddenly besieged by the evil-not-dead-enough and Meredith’s furious specter. The only way she can clear her name is to get out from under demon hunter Ansgar’s grim protection. He’s blond, breathtaking, and the most lethal of all his kin, but after years of teasing, Evie is wary of anyone who swears her plus-size self is beautiful. However, having Ansgar all over her is sparking outrageous powers Evie didn’t know she had. And she’ll face any ultimate evil to keep this sexy slayer in this dimension and in her bed for all eternity… 

Review:


Warning:  This is one of those books that keep you reading while you should be helping your kids with their homework, working, finding out what the new puppy is destroying, or listening to your husband talking about...something.  Too bad!  Because this is one of the funniest, wackiest and most romantic books I have read in a very long time.  Lexi George has one of the strongest, and clearest voices writing today.  Her writing is chock full of laugh-out-loud expressions and turns of phrase that add such personality and humor to every paragraph. 
Evie is a smart, sexy, curvy (uh, what happened to that scrawny cover model?) woman who is also shy and quiet by nature.  She has a fiercely loyal and fabulously outspoken best friend named Addy who is married to a demon hunter, and a mysterious recent past that has left her confused and lost.  Evie has been verbally abused by her bitchy former classmate, Meredith "Death Starr" Peterson, and her minions since they were children, and when Evie finds Meredith hacked to death at work, things don't look good for Evie.  Pretty soon mysterious things start happening (teleportation, fairies, sexy guys coming in to her) , and Evie thinks she might be losing her mind.  Before the book even gets to page 50, Evie has a hunky demon-hunting bodyguard who's crazy in love with her, an oddly perceptive (and hot!) sheriff investigating her for the murder of the Death Starr, a demon-possessed chihuahua and his nutty human mama, both on the run from a doggie serial killer, and the ghost of the rotten Meredith in her life.  Whew!  And then things really get going, so hold on tight.
One of the best things about this book besides the zany humor and fun, is the humanity of the characters.  Rather than cardboard-thin stereotypes, George has created people with foibles and talents, who try their best but frequently make stupid and hysterical mistakes.  There's a lot of love and a lot of heart in this book.  Add in hunky demon-hunters, violence, mayhem, deliciously hot sex, and baked goods, and you've got one delightful story.

Published in August 2012, this is the second book in Lexi George's funny, romantic series, following Demon Hunting in Dixie.  There is also a related short story in the book So I Married A Demon Slayer(reviewed on this blog).



For more information visit the author's website at www.lexigeorge.com

Interview and giveaway with Lexi George, Demon Hunting in the Deep South!

I was lucky enough recently to do a quick interview with the fabulous and funny paranormal romance author Lexi George. Below are the 5 questions i asked her and her wonderful witty answers. Enjoy!

Lexie's current book. Book 2

Demon Hunting in the Deep South


Demon-slayers, evil forces, and an uber-bitchy ghost . . .

Hotter Than A Demon In Panties

Evie Douglass doesn’t know what’s worse—the demons secretly infesting her small Alabama hometown…or human belle-from-hell Meredith Starr Peterson, who’s made her life miserable since high school. But when the “Death Starr” is brutally murdered and Evie is the number-one suspect, she’s suddenly besieged by the evil-not-dead-enough and Meredith’s furious specter. The only way she can clear her name is to get out from under demon hunter Ansgar’s grim protection. He’s blond, breathtaking, and the most lethal of all his kin, but after years of teasing, Evie is wary of anyone who swears her plus-size self is beautiful. However, having Ansgar all over her is sparking outrageous powers Evie didn’t know she had. And she’ll face any ultimate evil to keep this sexy slayer in this dimension and in her bed for all eternity…

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1. WHERE??? Do you get your ideas? This might be a question authors hear a lot but after reading your books i have got to know!  lol


Everywhere! Seriously, I get ideas from all sorts of people on the street, places, books, television, music, news articles—as zany as I get, I can never get crazier than real life! I read a piece in the news the other day about a woman who makes diapers for chickens, and I thought, That’s going in a book! There are all kinds of places in Alabama to get inspiration, like the Rattlesnake Rodeo in Opp, the local mud bog, and the Peanut Festival in Dothan. Also, I like to brainstorm with writer friends and they come up with some dandies! And, my family is certifiably nuts, so that helps. For instance, I had a great uncle who was nearly seven feet tall. When he died, his sister, Bertha Mae (I kid you not, that was her name!) came into the funeral home and fell out on the floor in a fit, because she was convinced my mother had cut his legs off to buy a cheaper coffin. They had to open the box and show the fool woman that my uncle still had his legs. I mean, that’s for real and that’s what I grew up with!

2. Would people who know you say your as witty and funny in person as you come across in your writing?

I think so. I was one of those awkward kids—tall and gangly, with big feet. It was either make people laugh or be the butt of their jokes. My dad had a very dry, charming sense of humor, and I loved being around him. Boy, he made me laugh. In my day job, I’m an appellate criminal lawyer, which means I see bad stuff all day long. You develop a sense of humor as a defense mechanism, I think, when you read murder, rape and mayhem. It’s either laugh or cry!
3. There are a lot of southernisms ( if that term is accurate) in your book. Is this truly how it is in your family and for you growing up?

Oh, yes, I love quaint and funny sayings, and superstitions. My dad was a real card and cracked me up. My mother, on the other hand, is a very proper, retired English teacher without a sense of humor. The bawdiness comes from my teenage years when I ran with a crowd of kids that liked to try and gross one another out. Hey, it was a small town and there was nothing else to do, but ride around and drink beer, and talk trash!

4. What is the most important thing you want people to take away from one of your books when they read them? How do you want them described?

I hope my books allow people to escape and that they make people laugh. I aim for my books to be entertaining, fast paced, and romantic. I try to write sex scenes that are emotional and draw the reader into the characters’ love story. My goal is to write multidimensional, sympathetic characters, and I want my characters to come alive for the reader, for them to be as real to the reader as they are to me. That would be wonderful.

5. What do you like to read when you have time to enjoy a book?

I love romance, both contemporary and historical. Janet Evanovich cracks me up, Loretta Chase makes me want to throw myself in front of a train, because she is such a wonderful writer, and I long to be at Hogwarts with Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse series is freaking brilliant, and now I am reading the third book of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, which is on HBO as A Game of Thrones. He’s another one that makes me want to turn in my laptop, he’s so gifted!




Lexi George is an appellate lawyer by day and a romance writer by night. She started her writing career in the third grade penning bad poetry about hydrangea bushes and Erik the Red. Ironically, she ended up marrying a Viking, a Northern boy who came to Alabama with the Air Force and stayed.


She wrote poetry all through high school and college. And then she decided to go to law school and the muse left in a huff. The muse hated law school.

The muse returned when Lexi’s oldest child was a toddler and Lexi has been writing ever since. After piling up an impressive number of rejections on her first book, a fantasy romance that she worked on for more than ten years, Lexi decided to try her hand at something else. The result was Demon Hunting in Dixie, a paranormal romance about demon hunters in the Deep South.

The second book in the series Demon Hunting in the Deep South, was released on July 31, 2012. Lexi has a novella in the Kensington anthology, So I Married A Demon Slayer. Book three, Demon Hunting in a Dive Bar, will be released in January of 2013.

The muse is very happy, and so is Lexi.

Visit Lexi on Facebook and Twitter and check out her website at www.lexigeorge.com
Lexi’s books are available from: Amazon.com , Barnes and Noble.com, BooksaMillion.com, Indiebound.org, borders.com, or your favorite retailer.


Lexi is giving away a copy of Demon Hunting in the Deep South in paperback! US only please. Sorry. Answer this question what things do you look for in a romance. LIke, do they like them dark and angsty, or funny or does it depend on their mood? Instant chemistry, or a slow, steady burn? All things tied up, or questions left unanswered? OR ask Lexi one of your own. Don't forget to leave your email address so we can contact you for your mailing address if you win. Giveaway ends Monday August 27th.





Book 1



Novella


Next book which is Book 3 out in January of 2013

 

Interview and giveaway with Awesome paranormal author Lexi George!

I was lucky enough to score a interview with wonderfully funny debut paranormal author Lexi George! I taxed her with answering 5 questions and one bonus question about herself and her writing.  I was lucky enough to read a copy of her debut Release Demon Hunting in Dixie and fell for humor of the book within the first few pages. Lexi's latest book is a Anthology book called So i Married a Demon Slayer where her novella "The Bride wore Demon Dust" can be found. I am happy to say the great humorous writing is there as well. Her cute and sometimes bawdy southernisms are to die for. Who knew that paranormal romance and funny could go together so well. Not to mention the hot sexy demon hunters. On with the interview.



1. What made you decide to be a writer and why did you pick humorous paranormal romance?

I wrote poetry up until law school and then the muse took a hike. She HATED law school. In my thirties, I got an idea for a fantasy romance about a 45-year-old woman who gets sucked into a magical alternate dimension and wakes up in another woman’s body. The idea wouldn’t go away, so I sat down and started writing. Worked on that novel for YEARS, joined a writer’s group and a local chapter of RWA, and started querying my by-then finished book.

After three years of querying and over 100 rejections, I finally got a clue that I needed to try something else. I decided to try my hand at a paranormal romance. I love romance and I love magic, and PN romance has both, so it seemed like a natural fit. As for the humorous part, it picked me! When I started writing Demon Hunting in Dixie this naughty, bawdy voice came out of me that I’d repressed since I was a teenager. It was both liberating and strange . . . like I didn’t know myself. The creative brain is very mysterious.

2. If you were to have a back up job besides the ones you have now what would you be?

I’d be a singer/actress. I love musicals and I love to sing. My husband and I actually met doing the play Oliver! He was Bill Sikes and I was the rose seller. Who will buy my sweet red roses? Two blooms for a penny.

Both our daughters have the acting bug. Bless their hearts, they got a double dose. I was active in community theater—I actually got to perform once at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival!—until I got the contract with Kensington. Something had to go, and acting was it. Right now, I’m the only one in my immediate family besides the dogs who’s not doing a play. The hubby was recently cast as Tevya in a local production of Fiddler on the Roof, and both daughters are doing plays. Sometimes I miss it, but I like writing more.


3. Where do you get all your funny southern humor? Do you know people who talk like they do in the book?

I have always loved euphemisms and funny expressions. I collect them like a magpie collects shiny objects. My dad had a wonderfully dry sense of humor, so I suppose I get my sense of humor from him. He was a total gentleman, however, and would be shocked, I think, at his daughter’s bawdiness.

In the South, people talk a lot and they are very colorful in their expressions, so, yes, I know people who talk like my characters in the book! Sometimes, when a character says something racy or inane, it’s totally me. I come across as a little staid and dignified, but once you scratch below the surface, it’s all there. Scary, huh?

I do have an appropriate valve when I’m out in public, though. I have a Southern mama, too!


4. What's the hardest part about writing the book Demon Hunting in Dixie and the Novella The Bride wore Demon Dust?

The sex scenes! I’d never written a sex scene until I wrote Demon Hunting in Dixie and it like to drove me crazy! I was intimidated and nervous, a total virgin at the writing-a-sex-scene thing. What would my mother think? My grammar school librarian? What would my uncle the Baptist preacher think?

Finally, I decided to quit being such a wuss and write the darn thing, for heaven’s sake. If you worry about pleasing everyone, you end up pleasing no one. Besides, I felt a little hypocritical. I mean, I LOVE a good sex scene when I read a romance, so why was I hair balling about writing one?

Having decided upon it, I then had to figure out how to approach the scene. I wanted it to be sexy and hot, but not too purple and flowery. Sex scenes are very important, in my opinion, as they represent the culmination of the physical and emotional attraction between the hero and heroine. I pulled my hair out over that first sex scene and then decided to write the kind of scene I like to read and hope for the best!


5. What say so did you get in the covers and titles? The titles are perfect if you ask me. Totally go with the books.

Technically, once you sell, you have no say-so in the title or the cover. Your publisher can wrap it up in a grocery sack and call it Attack of the Twenty-Foot Doo-Doo Heads From Outer Space if they want. I originally called the book Demons in Dixie. Megan Records, my editor at Kensington, wanted something about demon slayers in the title. After tossing titles back and forth for a while, we agreed upon Demon Hunting in Dixie. I think the title rocks and I LOVE my cover! I think it’s bee-yew-tee-ful.

6. Of course we have to ask if there is anything in the works for your next book yet. Can you dish for us and tell us anything about it?

Book two (tentatively titled Demon Hunting in the Deep South) is the story of Evie and Ansgar. It starts with a murder and poor Evie is the suspect. On top of that, she’s got a demon on her trail. Ansgar shows back up and acts as her bodyguard. She doesn’t remember him, because she has amnesia. She’s totally intimidated by this strapping, Viking god-like being, but she thinks he’s a hot-tay. Oh, and Mullet Woman from the novella is a secondary character! Love me some Mullet Woman.

I am currently working on Book three, which I call Demon Hunting in a Dive Bar. The heroine is a demonoid—half human and half demon, and she runs a bar for other demonoids. The hero is an uptight Dalvahni demon hunter, of course, in pursuit of a mysterious weapon the demons have developed to use against the Dalvahni. Think Superman and Kryptonite. He has no idea his real Achilles heel is a certain halfsie chick by the name of Beck. A demon hunter fall in love with the offspring of a demon? Pulleeze. And Beck thinks he’s a total pain in the behonkus. A cute pain, but a pain nonetheless.

Now for the books.



Demon Hunting in Dixie (April, 2011)

A warrior, a demon, and the girl next door…
Looking For Trouble

Addy Corwin is a florist with an attitude. A bad attitude, or so her mama says, ‘cause she’s not looking for a man. Mama’s wrong. Addy has looked. There’s just not much to choose from in Hannah, her small Alabama hometown. Until Brand Dalvahni shows up, a supernaturally sexy, breathtakingly well-built hunk of a warrior from—well, not from around here, that’s for sure. Mama thinks he might be European or maybe even a Yankee. Brand says he’s from another dimension.

Addy couldn’t care less where he’s from. He’s gorgeous. Serious muscles. Disturbing green eyes. Brand really gets her going. Too bad he’s a whack job. Says he’s come to rescue her from a demon. Puh-lease. But right after Brand shows up, strange things start to happen. Dogs talk and reanimated corpses stalk the quite streets of Hannah. Her mortal enemy Meredith, otherwise known as the Death Starr, breaks out in a severe and inexplicable case of butt boils. Addy might not know what’s going on, but she definitely wants a certain sexy demon hunter by her side when it all goes down…



So I Married a Demon Slayer ( August 30, 2011) Anthology.


In the lusty humidity of the Deep South, among the neon lights of Vegas, and the glitz of high-fashion, demon slayers are the new sexy…

“Hot!” by By Kathy Love
At Hot! Magazine, the devil really does wear Prada. When the CEO is an actual demon and the mail room guys are undercover demon slayers, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility for an up-and-coming photographer and a model possessed by much more than a sweet tooth to fall in love.

“What Slays In Vegas” by Angie Fox
When a sexy succubus comes up against a fearless demon slayer intent on killing her boss, a truly wild Vegas night turns into a quickie wedding. But in a city where anything goes, a demon slayer wedding a succubus is strictly forbidden. Which doesn’t mean either is rushing to jump out of the marriage bed.

“The Bride Wore Demon Dust” by Lexi George
He’s perfection in a tuxedo—more so out of it—and on a mission to protect his Alabama gal from the mysterious mayhem intent on her destruction. But the bride is a spunky steel magnolia with special powers of her own, determined to drop-kick evil forces across the state line and give her slayer a run for his money

Visit Lexi by checking out her website www.lexigeorge.com You can read the first chapter of her debut book "Demon Hunting in Dixie".
Find Lexi  on Facebook www.facebook.com/Lexi-George
and Twitter twitter.com/lexigeorge12

Lexi has offered a 2 copies of So I Married a Demon Slayer to two commenters today. She is also answering questions today so if you have any ask away. Must be a follower of this blog, leave a comment and a valid email address. Ends Friday October 7th. Sorry US only.


Giveaway extended until October 10th. Monday!!!