BLOG TOUR: The Offering by Rosary Deville (Excerpt & Giveaway + Q & A with Author)

BLOG TOUR

Book Title: The Offering

Author: Rosary Deville

Publisher: Self Published

Cover Artist: Zoe Perdita

Release Date: November 13, 2020

Genre/s: M/M dark erotica, taboo, mpreg, paranormal/urban romance,

shifter fantasy, werewolves

Trope/s: alphas and betas, strong/unruly protagonist

Themes: dubious/non consent. forced marriage, societal inequality,

abuse, violence, dom/sub, BDSM

Heat Rating: 5 flames

Length: approx. 65 000 words/ 250 pages

It is Book 1 out of 2. Book 2 will be released later in 2021.

Buy Links

SMASHWORDS

A beta in an oppressive werewolf society must participate in a mating ceremony where alphas hunt their future mates.

Blurb

As a beta in Wereduin society, Fern has no choice but to be mated when he comes of age. The ideal beta wereduin was subservient to their alpha, bears young, and knows their place in society.

Fern isn’t like that.

Rather than become an extension of his alpha, Fern wants to play in his band, hang out with his friends, and stay himself.

Now of age, Fern is to be placed in the Offering—an annual ceremony where alphas hunt and claim their beta mates. And whose attention does Fern attract? None other than Donovan Blackfang, a Highborne alpha who will stop at nothing but to claim Fern’s heart, body, and soul.

Excerpt

Someone grabbed the nape of my neck. Shit, no! Why hadn’t I paid more attention to my surroundings?

This alpha male was stout and gray. His jagged claws dug into my shoulder, and it ripped a cry from my throat. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another beta. This alpha must have been cornering her before I showed up. She didn’t look back at me as she made her escape. The alpha who had me could have come from my worst nightmares. He had a large scar across his eye. His thick, weather-worn hide told me he’d been at this game for a while. He could be my papa’s age, not that age mattered for werewolves, but his face was truly menacing. The glee I found in his glowing red eyes terrified me. Veins riddled his muscular physique. One of his ears had been chewed off. He gripped my shoulder, tearing my skin. I clawed at his hands, face, biting wherever I could as he forced me onto the ground.

I felt sure I was a goner when he was knocked off of me. Growling surrounded us. It was the large, black alpha that had taken on the slaver. He snarled at the alpha who had been about to rape me. Slowly, I crawled away on my hands and knees. That was when he turned his fangs on me, growling. He didn’t want me to leave, as if he already felt some ownership of me. Something in his eyes halted me and trapped my breath in my throat. I shook my head rapidly.

No!

There was no way I would be claimed tonight. And certainly not by a male. I took off running, leaving them to their fight.

It was over shockingly quick. The dark alpha won. My alpha. It confused me when I momentarily thought of him as mine. My body wanted to submit. Arousal grew heavy in my groin, heating up my body.

Hell, no!

Instincts be damned, I was not born so I could have some male alpha’s pups.

The black alpha picked up speed.

Just then, two alpha males sprang from either side of the woods. I ducked low, and they collided into each other. I dodged around them. The left one snatched me back before the alpha on the right knocked him to the ground.

Both alphas were beautiful—if I allowed myself to think something like that about the same sex. One was a scarlet red, while the other a golden bronze. Hopefully, the two would also stop the black alpha who still followed me, and I could make a getaway.

Both tried, not wanting to let a challenger slip by.

I dragged out a relieved sigh. Part of me was disappointed, and that part scared me. The rest of me was thankful. I didn’t want any of them to win—especially the strong dark alpha.

It was apparent by their beauty that all three alphas fighting over me were from the upper-class. But my eye was drawn to the dark one—jet black with those piercing neon-blue eyes and riddled, muscular physique. Of the three, he was the most handsome. Shaking my head and trying to remove those unwanted thoughts about the beautiful alphas fighting for me, I left them to battle.

When I heard them following me, I stole a glance over my shoulder. My heart stopped. Both the scarlet and golden-bronze alphas chased behind me. The dark werewolf must have been beaten. My heart sank. I wanted to slap myself. Why did I feel so let down?

I ran blindly through the forest and over the rocks until I backed myself against a cliff. Both werewolves approached me, snarling. I retreated as far as I could go before I drew my fangs. There was no way I was going down without a fight.

Perhaps they formed an alliance because they no longer fought each other. Instead, they homed in on me. Was I about to be claimed by two males?

How would they take me? I only had one opening. Would they both try to fit? My body trembled, but my beta brain started to submit. It craved having the alphas’ cocks inside me.

Backing away, I shook my head and crouched low. They sprang at me, but before they could touch me, a black shadow leaped from the cliff over my head. He landed in front of me.

There he is again!

The black alpha.

Gratitude overwhelmed me, and I could do nothing but stare at him. I wanted this alpha. I ached inside. Precum dripped from my hard cock. I wanted him inside of me.

Violently, I shook my head. No. I did not want to be claimed by anyone tonight. I found a small opening created by their fighting and snuck out. The black alpha growled at me, and I couldn’t stop my shiver. He wanted me to wait for him. He wanted me to let him claim me. Already, it felt like he had his claws around my heart.

Q & A With Rosary Deville

How long have you been writing?
I have been writing for as long as I can remember, but I only started to publish my work around 2015. However, all of that is under my real name, and not Rosary Deville. Shocker, I’m a pen!

Before you started, had you written any fan fiction? If so, what fandom?
Yes! I adore fan fiction. I started out with Star Wars fan fiction—the prequels actually. This was before I had embraced my love for M/M, but ironically, the characters that I love to read/write about were two men. Obi-Wan and his teacher, Qui-Gon (in my opinion, the only thing redeemable about those prequels lol). After that, I got into a lot of anime fan fiction, and here’s where it made a huge impact in my life. Prior to this, I came from a repressive background that was very homophobic. But through fan fiction, I was able to identify the characters not as scary or the other, but as human beings with the same desires and fears and interests as I do. So, in a way, you could say fan fiction saved my life—saved me from being a misguided, unintentionally bigoted individual. It also helped me become an advocate of LGBTQ+ rights. While I had other life experiences that helped me grow in this area as well, there’s no denying how much of an impact fan fiction had on my morality and the shaping of me as a person—definitely for the better.

Are you in agreement that writing fan fiction is a great way to hone ones’ craft – why or why not?
Funny that I didn’t mention any of the benefits of writing fan fiction in my last question, so now let’s get into that. Yes, yes, and even more yes! I look at it as being able to play in someone else’s sandbox. It strips out the world and character-building aspects and allows you to focus only on creating stories. So it’s a nice first step, as a lot of it is done for you. But it’s more than just that, as a lot of fan fiction doesn’t take place in the fandom’s universe, but in completely other ones, i.e. they just bring the characters into their own world-building. So this can definitely be used to hone your craft!

What was your first published book?
I can’t give this one away without revealing my actual name. While I don’t have any qualms with that, I like the idea of Rosary Deville being able to stand on her own. But let’s just say it was a short story in a post-apocalyptic setting. Also M/M of course, with the childhood friends trope.

What is your favorite sub-genre to write?
I like writing BDSM stories. It’s something I’m interested in, so a lot of my stories with Rosary, if not all of them (maybe not intentional) will be of that nature. My forte is the dom/sub arena.

Would you ever write a hetero romance? Why or why not?
Yes, I plan to write hetero romance. In The Offering, there is also hetero sex present. In their world, gender is irrelevant—so I have pairings of M/M, F/F, M/F, even MMF. I still call this an M/M novel because the main characters are men and they are the focus, while the other kinds of sex take place in the background.

What are your thoughts on erotica?
It should be embraced by our society, especially women because we have had our sexualities repressed and even condemned by society as a means of control. For instance, everyone expects men to think constantly about sex, but if women think too much about it, they’re given degrading names. This notion has been changing, and we’ve made great progress! Erotica helps that progress keep moving forward. There’s nothing to say that erotica written by men is not enjoyable, or also necessary in order to help fight the sex negativity that is still prevalent in our society. So it’s a team sport! Still, I think that women should be encouraged to write/read erotica to help them embrace their sexuality as healthy and normal.

As a gay fiction or m/m romance author, do you feel that the trend is changing where it is becoming more mainstream?
I can’t say that it is. I often feel like people want to make it its own genre, even if the only difference in the stories themselves are the gender of the people who the main characters want to have sex with. But I am a relatively new author, so maybe I will discover that this is becoming less the case.

What is your stance on the difference between male and female gay writers?
I think that authors write from their own experiences, and that can play a role. I interpretate the expression of ‘to write well, you have to write what you know’ not to mean that you have to be a gay man in order to write gay fiction, but that you need to pour a piece of your soul into it. And your soul is shaped by how you’ve experienced the world and how the world has reacted to you. So, yes, there will probably be a distinction. But you could say that even among the same gender, there are hugely different experiences in how that person perceived and was perceived by the world. So, there’s equally a chance to encounter the same amount of variety in authors of the same sex.

Do you think women making up a good portion of the m/m fiction writers detracts from the genre? Why or why not?
I think that depends on what your end goal here is. If it is to promote the work of homosexual male authors, then there is some truth to it. There are genres that are gay fiction that I don’t believe are considered to be the same as M/M (totally speaking through three-times removed here, so I could be wrong!). But I can understand why a gay man might feel frustrated by that, much in the same way I understand that a woman might feel frustrated by seeing a genre of women’s fiction where most of it is written by men. Now as I come into this genre as a woman, my experiences of it are different. Like I said, I write what I enjoy to read and fantasize about. Sex, romance, and everything in-between. So, my demographic is toward women. Not something I’m intentionally doing, but it is the nature of the beast. Take from it what you will. I hope both men and women can enjoy my writing evenly, regardless. But as I have experienced life as a woman (won’t say the number of years, sorry folks!), how I view the world and it views me will slip into my writing, so I can understand if that might make my writing unrelatable to some gay men. But that’s not my hope.

What is it about gay fiction or m/m romance that pleasures you to write it?
I’ve actually thought a lot about this question, as I’ve been interested in m/m fiction for a very long time now. I had to ask myself why. There’s the obvious one of being a woman who is attracted to men, the idea of seeing the romance of two beautiful men is obviously appealing. Much in the same way guys have been fantasizing about lesbians. But over the years, I think I’ve pinpointed it down to a level that goes deeper. I grew up in a very traditional, and repressive environment where women were looked at as inferior to men. So all of the hetero romance stories I read were never about an even pair. It was the guy who was the rescuer/pursuer, and the woman took a passive role. As I discovered homosexual fiction—this includes f/f—I found a way for me to be able to view relationships where the two partners were on even playing fields. This helped me grow as a person and in my own heterosexual relationships.

As an m/m romance or gay fiction writer, what stereotype of gay men bothers you the most?
This is a hard one. Coming from an anime background where there were clear distinct roles of top/bottom with the bottom acting very girly, I can see how this would get old fast! I think that came about as women from patriarchal societies put themselves into the role, and they were expected to be the submissive ones. They were also expected to like the manly man, hence the top had to be a certain stereotype as well.
I personally like to see a variety of characters. I think girly men and macho men (and everything in between) are both valid and something that needs to be present. Much like how there can be butch women and femme, and everything in-between. I think it should depend on the character, and who they are.

What promotional method works best for you?
I would love to be able to be more interactive promoting my stories. Like character interviews and sketches. But where I’m at right now, it is more of a traditional post-post-post on Facebook groups. I do love having my own Facebook group, and want to try to put a more interactive promotional method into place there.

Your favorite gay celeb?
Adam Lambert, hands down!

About the Author

Rosary is an author of erotica ranging from sweet and fluffy, to dark and taboo. She aims to foster a sex-positive experience for readers to indulge their fantasies in a fun and safe space. Sometimes she uses her writing to journey into the often hidden and taboo depths of human sexuality, and hopes readers will take away from her stories, not an acceptance of violence and sexual abuse, but rather a way to embrace their inner desires often shamed by society.