A lonely witch longs for a change in her miserable love life, and decides to try out a powerful spell. Joan De La Haye has used her darkest pen in her new book Burning and brings you a grim tale of desire, magic and death.

Joan has been so kind to answer a few questions about her book and writing.

What is Burning about?
Burning is about a witch called Marcie Grove, who hasn’t had much luck in the love department and decides to summon an incubus with disastrous effects.

What inspired you to write the book?
I was attempting to write something romantic and erotic. People keep telling me that I should give it a try, so I did. Only it turned out to be anything but a romantic story. Probably the fact that an ex-boyfriend also asked me to name the lead character after him, probably didn’t help…

The good folks over at Solaris Books offered me a guest blog and editor of the brilliant anthology Two Hundred and Twenty One Baker Streets stepped up to offer his thoughts on that most enigmatic of characters, Sherlock Holmes.

Hey there, and thanks for having me on the Bookbeard’s Blog. I hope my own modest beard serves in this illustrious company…

So, with less than a week to go (at time of writing) before the release of my first anthology, Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets, I’ve been asked to write about the reinvention and appropriation of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. It’s an interesting question, and “reinvention” is, truthfully, an engaging idea. To reinvent; to invent again; to create what has been created already, because in creating it again we are both creating something new and shedding new light on the old.

Baker Streets has been described in more…

Sometimes with a novella like this the cover art is an afterthought and feels discombobulated. Not only does this cover look good and relate to the story but the back cover is the rear of the tarot card pictured on the front. Time, effort and skill went in to this cover and that made me want so see inside.

I don’t read much erotic fiction. Partly because I can feel myself blushing as I read the raunchy bits but mainly because I’d rather read about gruesome murders. The bonus for me in this book is that the sex scenes are all part of the setup for the murders. For me this story is a bit like a sparkly vampire story except instead of mooning around after abs of steel the women are making best use of those bodies and instead of a little love bite there is the whole essence sucking death thing going…