Phoenix Legacy: Officially A Series!

Phoenix Legacy, the second novel, third story in my Phoenix Institute superhero romance series releases in ebook form today!

Night Owl Reviews made it a top pick, calling it a "wonderfully entertaining rollercoaster read."

Here's the official blurb:

Philip Drake is immortal by virtue of a psychic power that heals all but the worst injuries. He’s needed every bit of it as a black ops agent, a life so violent that the line between pain and pleasure is tangled up in his head.

When he walks away from the CIA, the last thing he expects is to discover someone stole his DNA to create a race of super-healers. And that the expectant mother is a woman from his past who’d consider it her pleasure to spit on his grave.

One moment, Delilah Sefton is listening to a seriously hot, seriously deranged man giving her some half-baked explanation as to why she’s pregnant with no memory of how she got that way. The next, armed men swarm into her bar, and she and Mr. Sexy-Crazy are on the run.

Safety at the Phoenix Institute is only temporary, but it’s long enough to put the pieces together. A madman plans to steal her son in a plot to take over the world. And to stop him, she must learn to trust the baby’s father—a man she blames for her greatest loss.

It's no secret I love superheroes and action stories and that my idea of a romance is The Terminator where Kyle lives at the end. But I also want my stories to have some resonance, like Lois McMaster Bujold's brilliant Vorkosigan series does for me, to the point where I've memorized individual lines of dialogue, like this exchange:

"It's an impossible job."

"That happens sometimes."

The exchange is from Bujold's Cordelia's Honor, one of my favorite science fiction romances, though you'll find it on the science fiction shelves. (If you've never read it, well, go buy it!)

There are a lot of sociological issues explored in Bujold's writing along with space battles, political machinations, scheming, fights, and various murders and, oh, some of the best characters I've ever read. Aral. :sigh: 

That depth is why I re-read the Vorkosigan series so often. 

I've no idea if I can do this resonance as well as Bujold and many other talented authors but there's no sense writing something if one doesn't aim high. 

So while I love that Phoenix Legacy is a fast-paced romantic adventure, I also wanted to cram it full of emotional intensity. The warped bond between Philip and Del leads up to their sex scene, which is not conventional in any sense of the word. I can only say that Philip's pain/pleasure confusion plays a large part. 

I'm extremely curious as to how readers will react to the scene and the one before it. I suspect if I say it out loud now, there are more than a few people who'll say "NO! That will never work," so I'm being cagey. It works in context, so I firmly believe. Also, Anne Stuart told me to go for it when I asked her about dark heroes, so that was all the reassurance I needed to let the story play out as it must.  

I think Legacy is very sweet in the end but see the above about my idea of a romance. :) 

The other question that I wanted to explore is how tragedy can follow a person through their lives and how they get accept it and move on. Philip is stuck in a violent moment that he thinks defines him for the worst. And yet...if he didn't want more, he wouldn't have saved his foster daughter, the eventual heroine of Phoenix  Rising, from some seriously bad guys.

Above: Philip saving Beth, in what he views as his one purely good moment in his life. Art is by the wonderful and talented Cassandra James.  

What is forgiveness or closure? Can the past remain in the past instead of defining the future? How does a person define themselves as good or evil? 

After I wrote the story, I was compelled to write an epilogue for Legacy. It put a lump in my throat, in a good way. 

I'm hoping it does the same for readers.   

Corrina Lawson is a writer, mom, geek and superhero thought not always all four of these things on the same day. You can find her at www.corrina-lawson.com