REVIEW, INTERVIEW, & GIVEAWAY Cruxim by Karin Cox

CRUXIM BY KARIN COX

Amedeo is Cruxim—a rare, winged supernatural creature who knows neither his purpose nor his past, save but to feed on the vampires that plague the earth. When his one weakness, the girl and novice nun Joslyn, is taken and turned by his enemies, Amedeo vows never to rest until vampires are expunged from his world, even if that means killing Joslyn. But can he?

On his quest, he meets Sabine: a guardian. Half-woman, half-lioness, she is a Sphinx who has been protecting humans from vampires since the dawn of time. But when she fails in her task of protecting a young boy, she is relentlessly pursued by her evil employer, Dr. Claus Gandler, a scientist collecting a sideshow of freaks, and both she and Amedeo are captured and cruelly paraded in Gandler's Circus of Curiosities.

When the stakes are eternity in a cage, what will Amedeo sacrifice to save one or both of the women he loves?

This gothic paranormal novel explores the beast within amid a setting of mythology and forbidden love. Cruxim's dark world and conflicted characters are the antithesis of the sparkly vampire genre.

HERE'S WHAT I THOUGHT

After reading the blurb for Cruxim, I knew that I would most likely enjoy this book. It's paranormal/mythical characters are something I enjoy reading about, and I'd never read about a Syphinx, never mind ever heard about a Cruxim. So, I knew it was going to be a new adventure for me when I began reading.

We experience Amedeo's story through his point of view, something that was fairly new to me as well! I've read a few books in which it was a males point of view, but they were contemporary romances novels. Nothing prepared me to read through the eyes of age old, vampire hunting angel, and I loved it. Ame is focused on his mission and is hard and unattached, unless it comes to Joslyn or Sabine, both women who love him deeply. He loves them as well, but in very different ways.

I really enjoyed that aspect of the story, a kind of love triangle between Joslyn, a girl turned vampire, and Sabine, a Sphinx he finds that eases his pain of the fate of Joslyn. It's interesting and complex and you can feel Ame's emotions throughout the story as he battles his inner self over his love for both of these creatures. But what fuels Amedeo most is revenge, and that always makes for one heck of a story.

Although Ame is a strong and lovable character, it's the ladies of this book that really capture my heart. My affection for Joslyn was out of control. She's so innocent and pure, even when she endures the pain and challenges that she's faced and her body may no longer be innocent, her mind and love for Ame stays with her. I'm a sucker for a romance like that.

The other smaller characters that you meet along the way will capture your heart, freaks and oddities as they are. Cruxim  is filled with passion, revenge, action, and love all mixed together to form this story that is unlike any I've ever read. The ending had me in near in tears, but now I have to find out what fate lies ahead for Amedeo in the next book!

I GAVE CRUXIM

FIVE CUPCAKES 

Q&A WITH KARIN COX

A big thank you to the wonderful Karin Cox! She answered my questions with grace as I picked her brain! Want to know about a previous soap opera addicted boss, what her favorite part to write was, and how she writes or dies! I loved getting to know a little more about this author and I hope you guys do, too.

I know you’ve written over twenty-eight books and not all in the same genre! What was the genre that inspired your first book? Which was your favorite to write?
My first book was creative non-fiction, and it was inspired by the life story of an incredible Australian woman called Roma Blair, who spent three years in a prisoner of war camp in Indonesia during the second world war and then went on to become a Yoga Swami. I have ghostwritten several life stories in the first person. Ghostwriting creative non-fiction or memoir is great exercise in novel writing, because you already have the plot and the characters (although it takes a lot of time talking to the person and going through photographs and letters to get a good sense of them). From there, my job was to write it true, to make it interesting using scene breaks and pacing, and to structure it for maximum emotional appeal. I no longer ghostwrite, because much as I enjoyed it, I’d just prefer to be doing my own thing, telling my own stories, and publishing them under my own name. Most of my books have been children’s fiction or non-fiction, but I also love writing about history. I enjoy writing just about anything, bar shopping lists. But fiction and poetry are my true passions.   

Where do you get your inspiration and ideas from when writing? Do they just come to you or are they based on your own experiences or interests?
Mostly, they just come to me. Usually at 2 am in the morning when I’m trying to sleep—I am an insomniac. But I think every author weaves some of their own experiences or interests into their novels. Cruxim was such pure fantasy that it doesn’t have a great deal of the real “me” in there. I’ve never been a vampire, or in a freakshow (thank goodness), but I have been in a situation where I’ve felt like I was in love with two people before (and neither of them even knew it), so I can relate to the feelings Amedeo experiences. 

In Cruxim, we get to read from the point of view of Amedeo, a male immortal angel. How was it writing from a male’s point of view? Any different than from a females?
I don’t think males and females are all that different in terms of what we truly want out of life, but I do feel that, in relationships at least, men feel a real need to be a protector and I wanted to work in those strong feels of having to take care of the women in his life in the novel. That he is unable to protect them both, or even to really give either of them his entire heart, gives Amedeo a lot of guilt. Of course, Sabine almost resents his protection, because she is very strong herself, but his feelings towards Joslyn are largely paternal yet are confused by her beauty and his baser masculine instincts. It was hard for me to ensure that I made that realistic and that it didn’t come off too pervy. I hope that I managed to write a convincing male lead. Of course, him being a supernatural creature helps. He doesn’t have to be a typical man, in a sense. 

Anything that really sets the mood when you write? Do you need music? Or maybe just a quiet spot to hide away in? Any writing rituals?
I get very absorbed in my world, so I prefer to write late at night, from 9 pm to 2 am. I like the silence then, when my kid and my partner are asleep and my imagination can run away with itself. The biggest writing ritual I have at present is a program called Write or Die. I’ve spent so many years editing that it can be hard for me to let go and just hammer out a first draft. Very hard. And I am a terrible procrastinator, so if I have to fact-check, I’ll spend an hour googling a place or an object for historical reference, even if it only appears for one line in the novel! I set Write or Die to kamikaze, which means it will start eating my words if I linger for too long, and I force myself to do 1000 words in an hour. Then I later edit, research, fact-check and rewrite the heck out of it. It works for me. 

I always like to know about characters names and their origins. Where did Amedeo, Joslyn, and Sabine come from?
Funnily enough, Amedeo got his name from an ex of mine, a lovely Italian guy I met on my travels. However, the real Ame and my imaginary Ame have little in common, either in looks or personality (although the real Amedeo is also a great guy). He knows the character is named after him, too. I chose it because his name means “Lover of God” in Italian, and I wanted something with faint religious undertones and that was unusual but not hard to pronounce. Joslyn’s name was originally Josette, until I had a client send me a novel about vampires to edit and her lead was, coincidentally, Josette! Eventually, I came to like Joslyn better anyway.

And Sabine was always Sabine in my head, from the day I conceived the idea of writing a paranormal novel with a female Sphinx in it. The Sabines were a warlike Italian tribe, and in literature, the women were known to have thrown themselves between the warring armies of their tribe and the Romans, who abducted the Sabine women for wives, to end the conflict. I thought it was a fitting name for Sabine, who sometimes leaps in to save Amedeo’s butt. 

What was your favorite part of Cruxim to write? Which part was the hardest?
My favourite parts to write were the love scenes, or what I see to be love scenes: when Joslyn’s love for Amedeo first becomes clear, with the passion-fruit scene; Amedeo and Danette, and what happens to her; and the scene where he tries to save Sabine from the burning tent.

The hardest part was definitely writing the ending. I worried that some readers would be annoyed about what happened to some of the characters. But much more is explained in the sequel, which I am currently writing and which explains why things turned out that way. Basically, Amedeo finds out that maybe his upbringing isn’t as typical for a Cruxim as he thought it was.  

If you couldn’t be an author, what would your ideal career be?
Probably still an editor. I’ve worked as an editor for fifteen years, and I still love it; however, I really want to focus on writing my own books for a little while now.  

Since you’re your own boss now, tell us about the worst boss or job you’ve ever had.
Oh, goodness me—that’s classified information. I’ve had a few doozies. Working in the creative arts, you’re often working with people who are very passionate about what they do. That’s a great thing, but sometimes that goes hand in hand with mental illnesses or personality disorders, which can make things tricky. One hilarious boss I had, whom I loved to bits, was when I was backpacking around Europe. I worked for a lovely former beauty queen, who was sixty-odd by then and ran a restaurant on a Greek island. I worked there for several months and lived on her couch.

She had a huge appetite for wine (which often led to maudlin waterworks), for “The Bold and the Beautiful,” and being European for wandering about the house in the nude. But she was a real card. “Darleenk, come and watch the beautiful love story with me,” she would say when “The Bold and the Beautiful” came on, patting the couch (my bed!) next to her nude form. She was also always trying to set me up with rich Greek men, because she believed you had to marry money to be happy (and I certainly don’t believe that!). I think if I ever wrote about my time in Greece, people wouldn’t believe it was real. Truth is stranger than fiction! But she was a wonderfully generous and funny woman. 

Care to indulge us with three facts that your fans may not know about you?
I have two elbow creases on each arm, which sounds weirder than it looks (thankfully).

I can ride a horse like a maniac, when I get the chance, and I pretty much grew up on horseback.

I adore cats. They can be cruel and selfish and self-absorbed, but they’re so darn cute and funny and deeply self-conscious at times. I can’t help it.   

Do you have any nicknames? Share even the embarrassing ones
I have more nicknames than you can poke a stick at. Hardly anyone actually calls me Karin. Most people who know me well, including my family and friends, call me Kaz or Kazzy or Spazzy (because it rhymes with Kazzy!). My favourite nickname is one my dad called me as a kid: Grumbles. Because I grumbled a lot as a baby, apparently. My UK friends call me Skippy, for the obvious reason that I am Australian. My highschool friends no longer dare to call me Raggedy Anne (I was a gangly, scrawny rag-doll looking teenager). My partner calls me Kazmafarian, or another nickname that is endearing but too mortifying to ever be made public. 

If you had to pick one song to be played every time you walked into a room, what would it be and why?
Wow. Like a title fight song? That’s a hard one. “Kung Fu Fighting”—just for fun.

If I take a look inside your refrigerator what would I find?
At the moment: a big old mess! The power was off all day yesterday thanks to flooding in Australia, so it needs a good clean. Usually, you can count on finding cheese, lots of cheese. And wine. And there’s always milk and bread in there too, and broccoli (which is my toddler’s favourite food, weirdly).

And one last question. Any teasers, blurbs, or information about the next book in the series? I know I’m dying to know who that is at the end of the book!
Book II is tentatively titled Creche, and it reveals a lot about Amedeo that he doesn’t even know himself. Some of that helps to explain why things are as they are. There is also a lot more about Sphinxes and how they came to be, and, of course, Amedeo has to work through his feelings of guilt about what happens to his lady loves and find a way to fix things. Plus, there’s still plenty of vampires to fight. The lady at the end of the book will play a big role in Amedeo’s life, and was destined to.

CHECK CRUXIM OUT YOURSELF

You can find Cruxim on Amazon and Goodreads.
Check out Karin Cox on Facebook and her blog.

EXTRA, EXTRA! GIVEAWAY TIME!

Can we get an extra big hug over Karin's way? She's offered to giveaway FIVE Kindle copies(.mobi) away to my readers! Seriously, how awesome is that?! Make sure you send some love her way!

a Rafflecopter giveaway  

I RECEIVED A COPY OF THIS BOOK IN EXCHANGE FOR MY HONEST OPINION.