Jessica Andersen hit gold with her idea to use the Mayan Long Count calendar as the concept for her Final Prophecy series. There will be a lot of interest and intrigue during the journey to the earth’s demise, so we’re doing our part in making sure everyone has a good taste of Jessica’s series.

So today we’re giving you a look at excerpts from the books so far in Jessica’s Nightkeepers series.  Check back throughout the day for the next installment. You don’t want to miss a one of them!

First up is Nightkeepers…..

According to the Mayan doomsday prophecy, time ends on December 21, 2012. In Nightkeepers, the last king of an ancient race of magi must team up with a sexy Miami-Dade narcotics detective in order to reunite his scattered warriors and fight the gods of the Mayan underworld. Wielding ancestral blood magic, the king must choose between his duty to avert the 2012 apocalypse and his love for the woman who is the gods’ destined sacrifice.

Summer Solstice, 2008

The blonde leaning over the garden center’s display table of annual flats was wearing a tight pink tank top and no bra. Not that Strike was looking or anything.

“I just love impatiens, don’t you?” She bent over further to select just the right six-pack of flowers, giving him an eye-full.

Hello. He dialed down the water wand he’d been using to fertilize the hanging begonias, and moved around the table. “Impatiens are pretty enough,” he said, pretending to look at the flowers. “But I prefer the full sun varieties, myself. No tan lines.”

She shot him a gotcha look before nodding at his right arm. “Nice ink. Aztec, right?”

He normally wore long-sleeved shirts to avoid just this sort of conversation, especially from people who noticed that his business partners, Jox and Red-Boar, wore similar glyphs. Today was summer-hot, though, and he’d gone with cutoffs and a black t-shirt that bared his marks: the jaguar that symbolized his bloodline and the ju that marked him as royalty.

“They’re Mayan.” He could’ve told her that the Maya had been the only society in the New World to develop a fully-functional writing system, or that it was because they, like the Egyptians two millennia earlier, had been taught by an older warrior culture that went back twenty thousand years or so to Atlantis.

He didn’t tell her that because one, she’d think he was whacked; two, lectures weren’t sexy; and three, the details, like the forearm marks, weren’t relevant anymore. The barrier was sealed, the Nightkeepers unnecessary. In four-plus years, the Great Conjunction would come and go with nothing more than a Michael Bay disaster movie and some empty hype.

Hopefully.

“Very nice,” she said again, and it was clear she wasn’t just talking about the marks.

“Thanks.” Strike was bigger than average- most Nightkeepers were, or had been- and he kept himself fighting fit. Add that to deep blue eyes, shoulder-length black hair worn in a ponytail regardless of trends, and a close-clipped jawline beard, and he had a look that either fascinated women or scared them off, depending.

The blonde didn’t seem scared as she took a long look around the garden center.

The sturdy barn-red store was flanked with plastic-covered greenhouses, with the one- and five-gallon shrubs grouped out front like leafy islands sprouting from an ocean of parking lot. The balled-and-burlapped trees were set around the perimeter, and tables of flowers and veg flats were strategically placed so shoppers couldn’t miss them on the way in. “This place is cute,” she said finally. “Yours?”

In other words, was he an owner, a contract landscaper working out of the nursery, or a schlub who, at thirty-three, watered plants for a living at seven bucks an hour? “Mine and my partners’,” he said, wondering how she’d react if he told her it was a little bit of all of those things.

He was part owner, along with Jox and Red-Boar, because all three of their names were on the Nightkeeper Fund started by his umpteen-great grandfather after he’d sold off most of the old artifacts. Strike also did some landscaping now and then, when he got the itch. And yeah, he was thirty-three, and although he had an MBA from Harvard Biz and used it to manage the Fund, at the moment his career pretty much consisted of watering plants and discussing the intricacies of dried versus composted cow manure.

That, and studying spells that hadn’t worked in twenty-four years.

“Want to give me a behind the scenes tour?” The blonde shot him a look of pure invitation that normally would’ve had his glands sitting up and taking notice. Now, though, his libido sort of shrugged and yawned, which gave him serious pause. Oh, come on. How could he not be interested in getting some of that?

He ought to be. . . hell, he was trying to be, but he was doing the auto-flirt thing- and had been for the past few weeks- all because of some seriously funky, sexed-up dreams that had him waking up horny as hell. He could clearly picture the woman in those dreams: her high-cheekboned face and pale blue eyes, a set of full lips that seemed made to wrap around a guy and hang on for the ride, and white-blonde hair that sifted through his fingers like spun platinum.

He looked at pink-top again to make sure. Nope, wrong blonde. Assuming, of course, there was a ‘right’ blonde. . . which was a serious stretch because even if the barrier was active- which it wasn’t- and he’d gone through the talent ceremony at puberty to get his full powers- which he hadn’t- Nightkeeper males weren’t supposed to be precogs. Which meant the dreams were just dreams, and he should be good to go.

Only he wasn’t.

“There’s really not much to see out back.” He smiled in an effort to soften the brush-off. “Besides, I’ve got to keep working. My boss is a real ball-buster.” There was even a bit of truth to that- Jox might be the royal winikin and thus technically Strike’s servant, but the garden center was his baby, and woe to he who skimped on watering duty.

Surprise flicked across the blonde’s face, along with a hint of temper he figured she was entitled to. “Really? Wow. Guess I called that wrong.”

“My bad, not yours.” He cranked the water wand and hit a hanging pot of salmon-colored begonias. “Enjoy the impatiens.”

As she huffed off and the begonia pot overflowed, a voice from behind Strike said, “What are you, fucking stupid?”

Exhaling and counting to ten backwards, Strike dealt with the water first, shutting it off and dropping the hose. Then he turned and held out a hand. “That’ll be five bucks, Rabbit.”

Wearing low-slung jeans, heavy workboots and a black hooded track jacket even though it was in the high eighties and rising, with the hood pulled up over his shaved-bald head and his iPod buds stuck firmly in his ears, Red-Boar’s seventeen year-old son was dressed to depress, and wore the ‘tude to match.

Smirking, the kid dug in his pocket, pulled out a ten and slapped it in Strike’s palm to pay the “no saying ‘fuck’ on the job” fine they’d been forced to institute when Rabbit graduated high school a full year ahead of schedule, blew off his SATs to joyride down the coast in Jox’s truck, and then emailed all his completed college applications to the US Embassy in Honduras while swearing to Jox and Strike that he’d submitted the apps on time.

He’d probably figured- hoped- that his father would cut ties after those stunts, leaving him free to do whatever the hell he wanted. Instead, Red-Boar- aka the sole survivor of the Solstice Massacre- had surprised all of them by rousing his PTSD-zonked self long enough to ground Rabbit’s ass, cancel his AmEx, julienne his license and order the kid to work at the garden center all summer, where he’d promptly started cussing out the customers. Thus, the fuck fine.

Strike pocketed the ten. “You want change?”

“Put it on account.” The kid’s eyes, so light blue they were almost gray, followed the blonde into the store. “But seriously. How can you not want a piece of that?”

“I take it you’re done pruning out back?”

Jox and Strike did their best to keep Rabbit away from the front of the store as much as possible because they never knew what he’d get into next. Sometimes his ideas were brilliant, sometimes terrifying, quite often both. But Rabbit was Red-Boar’s son, which meant he was one of them. It also meant that he was at a serious disadvantage, because his father was a head case and nobody knew a damn thing about his mother except Red-Boar, who wasn’t talking. So Strike tried to cut the kid some slack. In the end, the four of them were a family, albeit a seriously dysfunctional one.

Rabbit lifted a shoulder, still focused on the front of the store even though the blonde was long gone. “Why don’t you check on the pruning for yourself, Strike-out?”

“In other words, no.” Strike rubbed absently at his wrist, which had started aching early that morning, along with most of the rest of his body. He was tired, and vaguely pissed off for no good reason. There was nothing wrong, but there was nothing particularly right, either.

He was used to living with Jox, Red-Boar and Rabbit in a strange bacheloresque symbiosis that was part necessity, part history, but it wasn’t the life he would’ve picked. Four and a half more years until the world doesn’t end, he reminded himself. You’ve just got to hang on until then.

“Delivery’s here,” Rabbit said, shifting his attention as an eighteen-wheeler turned up the driveway. “I’ll sign for it.”

“No way.” Strike grabbed Rabbit by the back of his hood, knowing the kid was just as likely to blow straight past the truck and down the street to the liquor store, bucking for another shoplifting conviction. He headed the teen toward the greenhouse with a shove. “Prune. Now.”

“Fuck you.”

Strike patted his pocket, where he’d stuck the ten. “We’re even.”

He signed for the delivery- more cow shit- and headed into the store, which was functional and homey without being unrelentingly cute.

The walls were lined with shelves and bins holding everything from fifty-cent peat cakes to three hundred dollar customized bird feeders, complete with advanced squirrel deterrent systems that made no sense to Strike because, hey, squirrels were people, too. Rows of freestanding shelves held the seeds and chemicals, and twenty-pounders of fertilizer, crabgrass killer and Slug-B-Gone were stacked neatly in a row headed for the check-out area, where books and magazines competed for space with other point-of-purchase doodads. The counter was paneled in rustic wood like the rest of the shop, and the high-tech cash register was disguised to look like something out of the forties.

Behind the counter, Jox was perched on a barstool chatting with the blonde, who he’d apparently talked into a pink ceramic pot for her impatiens, along with a bonsai money tree.

The winikin was wearing khakis and a green long-sleeve jersey that covered the two jaguar glyphs on his arm- one for Strike, the other for his sister. Anna might’ve renounced her magic and taken off, but the bloodline connection remained unbroken. Jox’s dark skin was relatively unlined for his fifty-seven years, his close-cropped hair shot through with silver. He looked relaxed enough, but his expression was edged with the same tension Strike felt in his own gut, the same sense of dread mingled with anticipation.

The thirteenth prophecy spoke of the final five years before the Great Conjunction, when a great sacrifice would be required to keep the Banol Kax from coming to earth and precipitating the big Game Over. Thing was, King Scarred-Jaguar’s attack on the intersection twenty-four years ago had sealed the barrier, preventing the few surviving Nightkeepers- i.e. Strike, Red-Boar and Anna- from using their powers. The seal also prevented the Banol Kax- and the gods, for that matter- from even communicating with the earthly plane, never mind reaching through the barrier to posess a willing- or unwilling- host. In all those things, Scarred-Jaguar’s vision had proven true, though it had cost him the Nightkeepers.

Had it been worth it? Strike didn’t know, and a whole hell of a lot of the answer depended on whether the barrier stayed sealed through the final five-year countdown.

With her purchase concluded, the blonde wiggled out, winking at Strike. “Your loss.”

“No doubt.” He watched her go, thinking that Rabbit was right. He was an idiot. Scratching a red patch on his inner wrist- he must’ve gotten nailed by a spider or something- he told Jox, “Your shit’s here.”

“Thanks.” The winikin skirted the counter and headed for the back, where a set of swinging doors led to the warehouse and loading dock. “Watch the register for a few minutes. I want to make sure they didn’t send me broken bags again.”

“Ah, yes. A smell to remember.” Strike took Jox’s customary place on the barstool behind the counter, swallowing hard against a sudden, unexpected surge of nausea.

A glance around the storefront showed a few browsers, but nobody who looked like they needed immediate attention. Which was a good thing, because all of a sudden he wasn’t feeling so hot. His wrist was burning like a sonofabitch, and when he looked down he saw three right hands where there should’ve only been one. A quick grab told him he hadn’t sprouted extra limbs; he was seeing triple. He was also sweating like a pig, and the idea of sticking his head in the john so he could barf in peace was sounding real good.

Narrowing his eyes to cut the spin, he groped for the phone to buzz Jox out back, and came up with a utility knife instead. This’ll do, he thought out of nowhere.

Moving without conscious volition, he flipped the knife open and sliced the blade across his right palm. Blood spilled over, tracking down his wrist and across his glyph marks. Then the pain hit, first from the cut, and again when he slithered off the barstool and landed hard on his knees. His head spun and the nausea increased, but it was more like a pressure in his throat, a burning compulsion to say- what?

Jesus, what the fuck’s going on? he thought, but the acid burning at the back of his throat told his head what his heart already knew. It was the summer solstice, one of the four days each year that the barrier used to be at its thinnest, when a Nightkeeper’s powers had been strongest.

The barrier- and his powers- were coming back on line after all these years.

Panic mingled with excitement as blood dripped onto the floor, pooling near his right knee. The warm smell touched his nostrils, tangy and sweet and calling to something inside him, something that ripped at his chest like fear. Like heartache.

“Pasaj,” he whispered. The word was the basic command for a Nightkeeper to open a connection to the barrier, to his ancestors, and it hadn’t worked since the massacre. Except that now, gray-green mist filled his brain and the world started to slide sideways beneath him. “Pasaj!” he said again, louder. “Are you out there? Talk to me, damn it!”

He heard distant voices, a woman’s cry of alarm. “He’s bleeding! Someone help!”

Inside his head, though, there was nothing beyond the spin, and the terrible, awful pressure in his throat. Then he saw something in the grayness behind his eyelids. A single slender thread of yellow in the fog. Holy crap. Acting on instinct, he reached out with his mind and touched the thread, grabbed onto it, and whispered the second word of the barrier spell. “Och.” Enter.

And the world around him vanished.

Welcome back to Duck Chat!

Today we’re talking to Jessica Andersen, so pull up a chair and get comfy!

With the ancient Mayan prophecy as the backdrop for her Final Prophecy series, Jessica is right on track with some thrilling and intriguing work that readers are clamoring for, and it will take them straight to the supposed end of the world late 2012.

Born and raised in Massachusetts, Jessica is, of course, a New Englander at heart. During her grad school years, she did some scientific work and research for the genetic changes responsible for certain types of glaucoma, all of which help hone her writing skill to give thousands and thousands of romance readers such terrific books today.

Jessica will be popping in and out today, so now’s your chance to ask her a question to find out what you’ve always wanted to know when it comes to to her and her writing. So let’s chat!

DUCK CHAT: Jessica, congrats on the success of your series, Final Prophecy. First, would you tell our readers about the series overall, then we’ll talk about the books themselves.

JESSICA ANDERSEN: Hi, and thanks so much for having me for a visit!

Hmmm… a quickie on the series, eh?  Okay, here goes: Ancient prophecy holds that 12/21/2012 will bring a global cataclysm. Mankind’s only hope lies with the Nightkeepers, modern magic-wielding warriors who must find their destined mates and fulfill dire legends to defeat the rise of terrible Mayan demons.

In Nightkeepers, the king of the magi falls for a cynical narcotics detective and must decide between duty and desire when the gods choose her as their next sacrifice. In Dawnkeepers ex-lovers reunite to track down several critical antiquities, and must learn to trust each other in order to defeat an ancient and unexpected enemy. In Skykeepers, a driven warrior-mage rescues a beautiful nonbeliever who may be the key to a vital cache of artifacts, but his dark past threatens their growing love. The fourth book, Demonkeepers, will be out in April 2010!

DC: Has the series evolved as you originally envisioned it?

JA: I’d say that the overall arc has been pretty much how I originally sketched it out (so far, anyway). However, there have definitely been some surprises! Two characters have refused to die on me, even though that was what I had thought would happen. Another was killed unexpectedly. And a couple who I thought was a couple turned out not to be!  Eeek!

DC: What was it about the Maya Prophecy that drew you to begin writing your series?

JA: My parents took me out of school so we could travel down to the Yucatan a number of times when I was a kid, back before Chichen Itza was fully restored, and before many of the major ruins became tourist-ified. The ruins, roads, cenotes all made a huge impression on me, as did one particular Maya guide, who talked to me about anti-Mayan prejudice and some of their beliefs.  So when I was researching for a story and came across the concept of the 12/21/2012 end to the Maya calendar, I sat there and thought “I totally have to write about this!”

DC: If you could retire any question and never, ever have it asked again, what would it be? Feel free to answer it.

JA: LOLOL!  Okay … you know what? I’m quite honestly drawing a blank here. I guess I figure that if I’ve agreed to speak, blog, or otherwise, then I’m offering myself up to talk about whatever interests readers. That’s one reason why I try these days not to just cut and paste canned answers when I do interviews and whatnot. I may be giving the same information to similar questions, but I try not to let it sound the same too often. Besides, you never know … you might catch me in a weird mood and I’ll let rip with something I would normally keep under wraps!

DC: I’ve heard writers often say their stories take them in surprising directions, or dialogue flows from some unknown place. Is it the same with you? Do your characters surprise you sometimes?

JA: Most definitely! I’m usually in charge through the first two hundred pages of the manuscript, but after that, all bets are off!

DC: Let’s start at the beginning with book one, Nightkeepers. Would you tell us about Jaguar and Leah, with a look inside their story?

JA: Here’s a place where I’m going to deviate from my ‘no canned answers’ thing, because I think that the back-cover blurbs describe these stories very well:

As a Miami narcotics detective, Leah Daniels never knows how her day will turn out. But she certainly doesn’t expect to be strapped to a stone altar as the human sacrifice in an ancient Mayan ritual designed to coax a demon from the underworld—or to be saved by a handsome warrior-priest king who claims to recognize her from his visions.

Striking Jaguar thinks he is the last of the Nightkeeper warrior-priests, but as the end-time approaches, his mentor reveals that there are twelve others. In reuniting them, Strike—king by birthright—gains the power to summon a Mayan god to combat the demons. But the woman of his vision is the gods’ chosen sacrifice. Now he must decide between love and duty … or find another way to invoke otherworldly magic in a death-defying race against the end of time.

DC: Do you ever argue with your characters while you’re writing? Who usually wins?

JA: I wouldn’t say that I argue … it’s more that the words stop coming. If I think the story should go one way and the character needs it to go another way, I get blocked. Then it’s time for me to take a shower, muck a stall, go for a drive, do some mowing … something that’ll get my brain wrapped around what, exactly, isn’t working.

DC: What is sure to distract you from sitting down and working/writing?

JA: When I’m at the beginning of a story, almost anything. When I’m at the end of a story, almost nothing.

DC: The second book in the series is Dawnkeepers, where we meet Nate and Alexis. Please tell us about them.

JA: Again, from the back:

Nate Blackhawk can’t help but resent the demands of his bloodline. Unlike his fellow Nightkeepers, he isn’t about to let the gods determine his destiny—especially when it comes to love. Which means he refuses to submit to the unquenchable desire he feels for Alexis Gray, the shockingly beautiful trainee who first appeared in his visions. But that’s easier said than done, considering that Nate needs Alexis’s help in uncovering the seven Mayan artifacts inscribed with clues on how to defeat the demons.

Alexis is willing to do whatever is necessary to prove herself as a Nightkeeper. She believes in the life she was born into and the future the gods have written for her—even when it comes to Nate, who seems intent on ignoring the intense passion between them. But as she and Nate test their powers in a race to recover the seven statuettes before the demons do, Alexis finds it impossible to deny her feelings for the one man who’s destined to be hers.

The latest book in the series is Skykeepers, and Michael and Sasha are featured. Would you please give us some insight into their story?

Again, from the back:

Michael Stone is a man with a dark secret that has skewed his magical abilities dangerously toward the underworld. Seeking redemption, he sets out on a perilous mission to save the daughter of Ambrose Ledbetter, a renowned Mayanist who died before he could reveal the location of a hidden library. The Nightkeepers must find the library before their enemies gain access to its valuable cache of spells and prophecies.

Sasha Ledbetter grew up hearing heroic tales of an ancient group of powerful magi who were destined to save the world from destruction. She never expected that her bedtime stories would come to life in the form of Nightkeeper Michael Stone, or that she’d hold the key to the warrior’s survival. As Sasha and Michael join forces to prevent the imminent battle, sparks of attraction ignite between them, and they’re forced to confront the unexpected passion that brings them together … and also tears them apart.

DC: You have  an undergraduate degree in biology and a PhD in genetics. Did your education help when writing your books? How?

JA: My research training definitely helps me track down the information I need and want when I work on these books.  I love the history and the science of the Nightkeepers’ world, so the research has become as much a hobby as a job.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that as I write, I keep wanting to include all the cool details I’ve learned about. . . and usually wind up with a really fat manuscript. So then I have to cut it back by focusing on the details that need to be in the story for the sake of the romance and the plot, and aren’t just cases of me thinking ‘ooh, that’s cool!’

DC: How many books are planned in the series?

JA: I’m planning nine books and at least one novella, with the series finishing (you guessed it) at the end of 2012!

DC: What’s on the horizon for Jessica Andersen?

JA: The fourth Keepers book, Demonkeepers, will be out in April 2010, followed by Visionkeepers in October (or maybe November? I’m not sure). I can’t wait to share these stories with readers!!!

Lightning Round:

- dark or milk chocolate? Milk all the way!

- smooth or chunky peanut butter?   – Hmmm… depends on whether I’m feeling mellow (a smooth day) or kind of sharp (definitely chunky).

- heels or flats?   – OMG flats! I have one pair of high-heeled boots—if the dress doesn’t go with those boots, then it doesn’t come home with me!

- coffee or tea?   – Tea! Preferably Taso Awake.

- summer or winter?    – Can I say fall?  I’m a New Englander, so autumn has that perfect-temp-not-too-rainy-pretty-foliage thing going on.

- mountains or beach?    – Mountains, definitely. I love hiking and being active, and am not so much into water sports outside of chlorinated pools (somehow I’m always the one who steps on the jellyfish and/or snapping turtle).

- mustard or mayonnaise?    – A light scraping of both, one on each slice of bread. What? Me particular? Never!!  (Snicker)

- flowers or candy?    – Candy.  Total sweet tooth here.  Though flowers are a lovely touch, too J.

- pockets or purse?    – Purse. I’m not a girly-girl by any stretch, but I’m also incapable of remembering to check my pockets before putting things in the laundry. Having destroyed entirely too many paychecks in my time, I’ve forbidden myself to use my pockets.

- Pepsi or Coke?    – Coke. Or Red Bull. Both diet!

- ebook or print?    – I’m still a print girl, all the way. I’d like to say I’ll change for the sake of the earth, but I haven’t managed it yet…

And because we still enjoy the answers we get:

1. What is your favorite word?   – This week it’s ‘douchebag.’ I don’t know why, but it keeps popping up in my dialog.

2. What is your least favorite word?    – Colic.

3. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?    – Seeing someone do something amazing that I could never, ever do (e.g., Olympic-level athletics, great hip-hop dancing, etc.). It makes me want to go do the things I can do that not everyone else can!

4. What turns you off creatively, spiritually or emotionally?    – Arguing with my fiancé, worrying about the health of my family members, friends, or pets.

5. What sound or noise do you love?    – A really deep, strong bass line.

6. What sound or noise do you hate?    – Smoke alarms and snoring.

7. What is your favorite curse word?    – Frak.

8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?    – Helicopter pilot.

9. What profession would you not like to do?     – Bad helicopter pilot.

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?    – “The Rainbow Bridge is to your left.”

DC: Jessica, thank you for spending the day with us. It was a pleasure!

Winners, winners, win-ners! (Think a nifty little cha-cha tune). In this edition of “Catching up with Contest Winners,” We’ve got two winners of signed copies of Nightkeepers by Jessica Andersen. These lucky winners commented on one of the posts from Andersen’s guest day in June–see here. Lots o’ comments, lots o’ comments.

And the lucky winners are:

Ann_Hedonia

and

Greta

Congratulations! Please email your info to Syb: redwyne at gmail dot com. And please put “Andersen Contest Winner” in the subject line!

In our continued quest to keep you all as informed as possible, we have enlisted the help of Jessica Andersen, author of June release Nightkeepers. Nightkeepers features Mayan mythology and history. Don’t know much about the Maya, you say? Well, read on (and be sure to read Part 1 as well.)

Did you know?

• The ancient Maya worshipped their departed ancestors as being next to the gods. They believed that the best way to communicate with the gods was to be close to death, either through a near-death experience or an orgasm (the little death).
• The ancient Maya built tall pyramids not only in celebration of the gods and as astronomical tools, but also so they could act as landmarks, rising up from the otherwise featureless rainforest canopy.

• The ancient Mayan empire once included portions of Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Ecuador and Belize.

• Although called an empire, the ancient Mayan society was actually made up of loosely connected groups and kingdoms that often fought among each other, and took their defeated foes as workers. . . or sacrificial victims.

Do you feel a bit smarter? Read Nightkeepers and learn more!

Gwen’s review of Nightkeepers (The Final Prophecy, Book 1) by Jessica Andersen
Paranormal romance released by Signet 3 Jun 08

This is the start of what promises to be a very fun paranormal romantic suspense series. You can’t get a lot more ambitious than calling a series “Final Prophecy” and talking about how the world will end in our lifetimes. Luckily, Andersen delivers a fun story and engrossing romance to go along with the dire predictions.

I enjoyed this story. I wasn’t swept away in rapturous waves of “OMFG! YOU MUST READ THIS”-ness, but I did like it. I had a more “Hey – this is pretty good” reaction, with a couple of slow moments.

The only serious bone I have to pick with the book is it’s a LOT of world-building all in one little ol’ book. And it was CONFUSING at times. I much preferred the story when I could just focus on the characters and their relationships. But, even then there were a LOT of them to keep up with. I wanted to draw myself a “relationship map” so I could keep track of who was with whom, and what their relationship was with the rest of them.

The mythos behind the Final Prophecy series promises to be unique, if a bit unusual – Mayan gods and goddesses. Sherrilyn Kenyon’s new pantheon in her Dream Hunter books risks the same thing Andersen does – introducing a new pantheon to readers. When an author veers off the beaten path of Christian, Greek, and Roman pantheons they have to do one of two things: (1) spend a LOT of time in the book setting a reader’s baseline understanding, or (2) provide a glossary. Both are painful, but perhaps the glossary is the lesser of two evils (ask Ward). Lots of info dumping really, really slows a story down. I’ll be waiting to see how Andersen resolves this in book 2. I have a hard enough time trying to pronounce the names, let alone knowing what a god/goddess is supposed to represent or be able to do – all those X’s…

I enjoyed Andersen’s characterizations. I liked how her heroes and heroines were as normal as possible – foibles, mistakes, and normal tendencies in amongst the bizarre and otherworldly happenings. Some of the settings were stretching my ability to suspend disbelief, but I was able to just roll with it and enjoy the story. I really enjoyed Rabbit and the complexities behind his relationship with his dad. In fact, one of my favorite paragraphs is a scene with Rabbit in it:

[Rabbit] was doing his damnedest to keep the thing away from the sacred chamber, trying to give his old man and Strike a chance to save the world, but he was losing steam. His breath burned in his lungs, and his legs were on fire as he bore down and widened the gap, running with muscle and heart and a touch of magic, a litany of oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit, sounding in his brain.

That is just such a well-written scene. In just a few short sentences, the entire scene is set, characters are described, and the drama unfolds. Not too many authors are proficient enough to really do this so elegantly. Luckily for us, Andersen is one of those authors.

This was a good, ambitious book. I enjoyed it and will gladly read the next in the series, though perhaps not the exact moment it releases.

Grade: B-

Summary:

According to the Mayan doomsday prophecy, time ends on December 21, 2012. In Nightkeepers, the last king of an ancient race of magi must team up with a sexy Miami-Dade narcotics detective in order to reunite his scattered warriors and fight the gods of the Mayan underworld. Wielding ancestral blood magic, the king must choose between his duty to avert the 2012 apocalypse and his love for the woman who is the gods’ destined sacrifice.

Read an excerpt.

Nightkeepers by Jessica Andersen, the first book in the Novels of the Final Prophecy series, just released on 3 June 2008. It is the first book in a series featuring Mayan gods and goddesses and the END OF THE WORLD! Get your excerpt here. Ms. Andersen recently guested here at TGTBTU (see here and here). The Maya, huh? Certainly an unusual element for a paranormal romance novel. Since your knowledge of this ancient civilization may be a bit rusty (or non-existent), Ms. Andersen has provided us with some interesting tidbits.

Did you know…?

• During the spring equinox, the architecture and carvings of El Castillo, the main pyramid at Chichen Itza, form a snake-shaped shadow crawling down the entire side of the pyramid, paying homage to Kulkulkan, the Mayans’ feathered serpent god.

• The ancient Maya had the only fully developed writing system in the New World.

• Despite movies depicting Mayan gold, the Maya weren’t known as metalworkers. They carved stone, particularly jade and obsidian, worked pottery, wove intricate textiles and wrote books called codices that were made of folded fig bark painted with limestone. All but four of these books were destroyed by the Conquistadors and their missionaries.

• The ancient Maya built their intricately carved temples and pyramids largely without the aid of the wheel or metal tools.

Consider yourself smarter!

If you have been a reader of the blog for a while, you no doubt are aware I am something of a fan of Jessica Bird, a.k.a. J.R. Ward. I happen to think the author is beyond cool. I was blown away by Dark Lover and still to this day am in love with that book as well as Lover Awakened. Hey… everyone has a favorite brother.

When it came time to for Lover Enshrined I thought it would be tres nifty to have her CP, the ever nifty Jessica Andersen do the interview… we got lucky (or they gave in so I would shut up), at the end of the interview you can read how YOU can get lucky *G*

Dr. Jessica Andersen, author of the newly released paranormal Nightkeepers, interviews J.R. Ward, otherwise known as the WARDen, author of the also newly released Lover Enshrined. Read on…

Hey Duckies, author Jessica Andersen here! I don’t know where you all are at, but here in the Northeastern USA it’s hot as blazes. Hello, early heat wave! In an effort to cool things down, I thought I’d keep it light today. I’m joined by my good buddy and critique partner, J.R. Ward, and we’re going to do a little quacking about her awesome new release, Lover Enshrined, the sixth book in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series.

Jessica Andersen: Hey JR, dude. Thanks for agreeing to do this mini-interview!

J.R. Ward: Actually, thank you for doing it!

JA: Staying on that ‘keep it light and cool’ theory, I thought we could do a ‘these are a few of my favorite things’ list… so here goes. As always in the BDB books, Lover Enshrined has got a ton of great zingers and one-liners among the characters. What’s your favorite line in the book, and why?

JRW: Man, there are a number of them! I think my fav is when Wrath is explaining to John Matthew that the last time Lassiter, the fallen angel, was on the planet there was a plague in central Europe. Lassiter’s response: “Okay, that was SO not my fault.”

JA: Building on that idea, what’s your favorite scene in Lover Enshrined?

JRW: Lemme think… the one with John Matthew on page 497 (I’m quoting the page to avoid a spoiler) just tore at my heart, in a good way and a bad way. I also like the one with Phury on page 492… that was just a great scene (it’s the one where he emerges from the Scribe Virgin’s private quarters.) That one also leads up to my favorite line in the book: “He finally felt like the hero he had always wanted to be.” But my absolute favorite scene… was the one at the end when Z comes to Phury, with the Brotherhood. Got me all teary when I wrote it to be honest. It was so great to see the twins reunited and the Brothers all together… and yeah, that’s my fav.

JA: Thinking of the series as a whole, which of the book covers is your favorite, and why?

JRW: You know, I like them all but I think Dark Lover is my favorite. I love the red and the black, plus it was the first one and set the standard for them all. So, yeah, have to go with the king on that one!

JA: Okay, shifting the topic slightly, what’s the funniest thing a fan ever asked you, either online or during a public appearance?

JRW: Actually, I’d have to say it wasn’t a question, but how a question was raised. This lovely woman who always attends the Cincinnati signings, lifted her hand up to her face, putting it on her forehead (to indicate she had something to ask). The thing was, she had her fingers orientated so that it put a loser sign on her forehead as she looked up at me. I busted out laughing and was like, are you losering me at my own signing?! Of course everyone cracked up- she handled it very well, though. And she’s still coming to the signings!

JA: What was your favorite song (or songs) to listen to while you were writing Phury? Did you mainline the opera, or was the soundtrack straight up ZeroSum fare, or…?

JRW: Huh… well, I listened to opera a lot, yes. But as always there was rap and hip hop in my ears while I ran during the writing of the book. And when I run I plan a lot so even Phury was touched by the likes of Fifty and Pac and Kanye and Lil Jon and Jay-Z…

JA: When you’re treating yourself, what’s the treat? Chocolate? Massage? White water rafting?

JRW: Right now? Breyers vanilla and coffee ice cream!

JA: And now for the lightning round… please answer the following with a word or phrase only, no explanations:

Favorite DVD? “The Office”, any season

Favorite guilty pleasure on TV? “Flavor of Love”, any season

Favorite guilty pleasure in the fridge? Ice cream, see above

Favorite word for the Chicago Manual of Style? Okay that’s a trick question! LOLOLOL geeee I’d have to go with c***sucker.

JA: And finally, what is your favorite recent release about the Mayan 2012 doomsday and the men and women who are bound to protect us from the apocalypse?

JRW: OMG, it’s totally Nightkeepers by Jessica Andersen! Have you ever heard of her? Fabulous writer, wicked sense of humor… and excels at fondue. You.are.welcome.

JA: And there you have it, Duckies! Straight from the WARDen herself, a little light fun on a hot day.

Hi Duckies! Author Jessica Andersen here, hoping you’re as excited about the launch of Nightkeepers and my Novels of the Final Prophecy series as I am… or if you’re not, that maybe I can convince you to be. [Ed.: Nightkeepers releases 3 Jun 08.]

Given that it’s launch day, I thought it’d be fun to talk a little about the 2012 end date that forms the basis of Nightkeepers. First, let me start by saying that I’m not all that big on personal drama. Or if we’re being technical, I’ve got drama queen tendencies and have learned to control them most of the time, not the least because my beloved perpetual fiancé (PF), while normally a highly functional and enjoyable human being, can be prone to freaking out over random stuff.

PF grew up in the city, and although we’ve lived in the not-city for some time, he still regularly convinces himself that the enormous state forest behind our house is home to:

1. Yeti
2. Terrorists
3. Serial killers
4. Hantavirus
5. Ghosts
6. All of the above

The identity of the scourge is usually related, as you might guess, to whatever we’ve been watching on TV. And okay, the time the brown bear came up on the porch and looked in through the sliders probably didn’t help the Yeti thing. But still. Honestly.

Me, I don’t get too worked up about that stuff. I love disaster movies and end-of-the-world scenarios. I deal pretty well with emergencies. I slept through the millennium changeover, trusting that the computers would still work the next day. And I generally try not to talk myself into freaking out about Big Scary Stuff that might not be real. But that begs the question: what if it is real?

Which brings us to the premise of Nightkeepers. The basic blurb is:

The ancient Mayan Long Count calendar completes its five-thousand-year cycle on December 21, 2012. According to scientists, that’s the day that the sun, moon and earth will align at the galactic center, in a conjunction that some researchers predict could trigger cataclysmic upheavals (sun spots, magnetic reversals, etc.). The Novels of the Final Prophecy tell of the ancient Mayan myths that come to life in the last four years before 12/21/2012, and their opposition by the Nightkeepers, descendants of an ancient magic-wielding race sworn to protect mankind from the apocalypse.

In the first book, Nightkeepers, the last king of the magi is forced to team up with a Miami-Dade narcotics detective in order to reunite his scattered warriors and fight the gods of the Mayan underworld. Wielding ancestral magic based on bloodletting and sex, the king will have to choose between his duty and his love for the human woman who is the gods’ destined sacrifice.

Pretty cool, huh? At least I think so, and I had a heck of a fun time writing it. During the writing process, though, I did a ton of research into the 2012 end date. . . and I started to creep myself out, because entirely too many lines of evidence seem to point toward something happening on that day. On the scientific side, the 2012 conjunction is likely to bring massive sunspots that could very well mess up our satellites and/or burn through our weakened ozone layer. Other research points toward the earth’s weakening magnetic field, suggesting that a magnetic reversal is imminent, and hoo boy, wouldn’t that wreck havoc on the machines we depend on for our everyday lives?

We are now at the end of what the Maya called the Age of the Jaguar, which was said to be ‘a time when men turn away from the gods and look to machines.’ After the 2012 end date, the question is: will the world cease to exist, or will we enter the next age, the Age of Enlightenment, that of a more global consciousness?

I won’t go into all the arguments for and against (check out my site under the ‘Background’ and ‘References’ sections), but suffice it to say that even non-dramatic me is halfway to thinking that something Big and Bad could very well happen during the winter solstice of 2012. . . and that maybe, just maybe we’re going to need a group of heroes to help the cycle of time reset itself, ensuring that mankind will continue on toward globalization rather than apocalypse.

Or maybe that’s my own personal Yeti. Let’s just say I’ve been trying to keep PF away from my research material, and I’ve been careful to watch my Mayan documentaries after he’s conked out for the night… because the last thing I need is for him to convince himself that the 2012 doomsday is real. If that happens, I have a feeling I’ll be spending that night in a bomb shelter surrounded by canned beans and bottled water, rather than throwing a party, which is my current plan.

So, what do you think… Bomb shelter or party??

** We will be giving away two signed copies of Nightkeepers.  The winners will be taken from the comments on any Jessica Andersen post (here, any of the ‘Did You Know’ posts and the Book Alert).  Thanks **

I met Jessica Andersen in Dallas last year. I think I made an ass of myself standing line staring at her before I finally had to say I am sorry I KNOW I know you.

I am shy… I am working on it. We were chatting later at the Berkley party, when I found out they were her new publisher. I was delighted, being the Penguin whore that I am… and she said that word… paranormal. So I figured I was going to have to pretend to be interested to be nice.

Color me SHOCKED when she told me about the book. Serious… here is the summary

According to the Mayan doomsday prophecy, time ends on December 21, 2012. In NIGHTKEEPERS, the last king of an ancient race of magi must team up with a sexy Miami-Dade narcotics detective in order to reunite his scattered warriors and fight the gods of the Mayan underworld. Wielding ancestral blood magic, the king must choose between his duty to avert the 2012 apocalypse and his love for the woman who is the gods’ destined sacrifice.

I know! Have you heard of anything like it? For those of you looking for a new paranormal author and are tired of bloodsuckers (or just want a lil variety in your paranormal diet). Write down this date…

AVAILALABLE JUNE 3, 2008

Jessica will be chatting tonight at EnchantingReviews, visiting with Book Binge on Friday (And they will be hosting a contest!) and at Freshfiction on the 29th. AND she is rolling out a brand spanking new website tomorrow. I will try and drop you a note when it goes live – or feel free to post here and tell us *g*.And she will be one of our guest bloggers in June… most likely on the 3th. I will try and twist her arm into giving away a book. Now I will shut up and you can read what you are here for anyway… enjoy

E-X-C-E-R-P-T
from NIGHTKEEPERS by Jessica Andersen

With her purchase concluded, the blonde wiggled out of the garden center, winking at Strike. “Your loss.”

“No doubt.” Strike watched her go, thinking that Rabbit was right. He was an idiot. Scratching a red patch on his inner wrist- he must’ve gotten nailed by a spider or something- he told Jox, “Your cow shit’s here.”

“Thanks.” The older man skirted the counter and headed for the back, where a set of swinging doors led to the warehouse and loading dock. “Watch the register for a few minutes. I want to make sure they didn’t send me broken bags again.”

“Ah, yes. A smell to remember.” Strike took Jox’s customary place on the barstool behind the counter, swallowing hard against a sudden, unexpected surge of nausea.

A glance around the storefront showed a few browsers, but nobody who looked like they needed immediate attention. Which was a good thing, because all of a sudden he wasn’t feeling so hot. His wrist was burning like a sonofabitch, and when he looked down he saw three right hands where there should’ve only been one. A quick grab told him he hadn’t sprouted extra limbs; he was seeing triple. He was also sweating like a pig, and the idea of sticking his head in the john so he could barf in peace sounded real good. Squinting to cut the spin, he groped for the phone to buzz Jox out back, and came up with a utility knife instead. This’ll do, he thought out of nowhere.

Moving without conscious volition, he flipped the knife open and sliced the blade across his right palm.

Blood spilled over, tracking down his wrist and across his glyph marks. Pain hit, first from the cut, and again when he slithered off the barstool and landed hard on his knees. His head spun and the nausea increased, but it was more like a pressure in his throat, a burning compulsion to say- what?

Jesus, what the hell’s going on? he thought, but the acid burning at the back of his throat told his head what his heart already knew. It was the summer solstice, one of the four days each year that the barrier used to be at its thinnest, when a Nightkeeper’s powers had been strongest.

The barrier- and his powers- were coming back on line after all these years.

Panic mingled with excitement. The warm smell of his own blood touched his nostrils, tangy and sweet and calling to something inside him, something that ripped at his chest like fear. Like heartache.

“Pasaj,” he whispered. The word was the basic command for a Nightkeeper to open a connection to the barrier, and it hadn’t worked in twenty-four years. Now, though, gray-green mist filled his brain and the world started to slide sideways. “Pasaj!” he said again, louder. “Are you out there? Talk to me, damn it!”

He heard distant voices, a woman’s cry of alarm. “He’s bleeding! Someone help!”

Inside his head, though, he saw something in the grayness behind his eyelids: a single slender thread of yellow in the fog. A travel thread. Holy crap. Acting on instinct, he reached out with his mind and touched the thread, grabbed onto it, and whispered the second word of the barrier spell. “Och.” Enter.

And the world around him vanished.