Nightmare Ink (Living Ink #1)

With the needle of a tattoo gun, Isa Romanchzyk has the power to create and destroy. In her shop Nightmare Ink, Isa helps those in need by binding the powers embedded in their Live Ink—the magical tattoos that can enhance the life of the wearer, or end it. But binding tattoos has earned Isa the contempt of her fellow artists—including her former lover Daniel.
When a friend comes to the shop with a tattoo on the verge of killing him, Isa can’t turn him away. For the first time in years, she works Live Ink into someone’s skin—something she swore she’d never do again. But breaking her vow soon becomes the least of her problems.
Isa is horrified to discover her friend’s body in the shop, but the real nightmare begins when she’s abducted and inked against her will. Now, as she seeks retribution from the man who betrayed her, Isa must figure out how to bind her Living Tattoo before it consumes her completely…
~ Bewitching BT

Amazon

NIGHTMARE INK was supposed to be a masterpiece, the pinnacle of subtle horror and creepiness.
It’s . . . not.

Maybe it’s because I’m a character driven writer rather than a plot driven writer. When I start a story, it’s really common for it to end up being nothing at all like I’d imagined when I first started. No word on how frustrated my editor may be about that – because I hand her a synopsis that bears no resemblance to the finished product except for the character names and maybe the general situations. Starting a story becomes an act of surrender. If I want it to work, I have to give up control. The characters take over and I simply follow where they lead. The result is a book that can’t be planned.
I’d intended for there to be a huge, painful body count. There is a body count – I leave it to you to tell me whether or not it’s painful. Let’s just say that I’d intended for there to be more. MORE. Not quite Game of Thrones Red Wedding more – but close. My secondary characters ganged up on me and laughed in my face when I tried to start killing them off. It became clear that Isa, my heroine, would rather die than let her friends be hurt – not that she always gets a choice on that.
To add insult to my injury of not having written the Great American Horror story, I discovered that apparently, you can take the writer out of romance, but you can’t take the romance out of the writer. I hadn’t intended for NIGHTMARE INK to be a romance. At all. Yet, some romance snuck in there. There may have been a few moments of author banging her head against her desk and whining, “Wait! No! This is supposed to horrible! STOP!” They didn’t. All that was left was for me to get over it and keep writing.
At least I like being surprised by my own book. Probably a good thing, because every attempt to force a story down a path I dictate has fallen flat. No matter what I do, once the writing starts, the characters rise up, tell me to sit down, shut up, and listen. I like to think my characters haven’t yet let me down, but what do you think? Can you tell the difference between a book written by someone who plots and one written by someone who writes by the seat of her pants?

About the Author & Links:

Marcella Burnard graduated from Cornish College of the Arts with a degree in acting. She writes science fiction romance for Berkley Sensation.

Her first book, Enemy Within won the Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice award for Best Futuristic of 2010. The second book in the series, Enemy Games, released on May 3, 2011.

An erotica novella, Enemy Mine, set in the same world as the novels was released as an e-special edition by Berkley was released in April 2012. Emissary, a sword and sorcery short story released in the two volume Thunder on the Battlefield Anthology in the second half of 2013.

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