RECENT RELEASE: Summer and Shadows by Kathryne Lentes (Excerpt + Q&A with Author)

RECENT RELEASE

Book Title:  Summer and Shadows (The Pact of the Veil, Book Two)

Author: Kathryne Lentes

Publisher: Nine Star Press 

Cover Artist: Jaycee DeLorenzo

Release Date: August 18, 2026

Pairing: FF

Tense/POV: first person/past tense 

Genres: Paranormal, Lesbian Urban Fantasy 

Tropes: Taboo, trans, poly, pansexual, shifter, elves, witch, magic, conspiracy

Themes: Self-acceptance

Heat Rating: 1 out of 5 flames

Length: 35 900 words

It is the second book in the series. (Book 1 The Night Menagerie)

It does not end on a cliffhanger.

Goodreads

Buy Links

Publisher  |  Amazon US  |   Amazon UK

The time is now; the city is LA. The hunt for a magical killer has begun.

Blurb 

Sah has gone through a lot in three years. I mean how often does a person find out their sister disappeared, meet a hot detective, get bitten by a werewolf, and discover they are part of a legacy of shape shifters? She thought her life would calm down and she could enjoy a summer vacation in LA. But now she is mixed up with the Fae and a magical serial killer. To survive she must find new allies and embrace her new self without reservation.

Excerpt 

There are real monsters in the world. I know because I am one of them. After three years, I was still trying to get my head around that fact, even though I was getting ready to attend a convention full of them. The Menagerie, as they called themselves, were a group of shapeshifters who hid from the world. Still, since their discovery was always a dangerous possibility, they had created an entire intellectual property called the Façade to coax people into their world. It started as a game, and with my introduction, they had added novels to the mix. Now, I was traveling to California to try to sell my recent bestseller to a movie studio. I wondered if Dominique would ever forgive me if a werewolf novel of mine made it to the Cineplex before she did.

She didn’t speak up. She was the main character in my first book series and the voice in my head when I was doing something I knew, in most plots, would end with me dead. We had had a really good run, and her adventures had brought me my first real success, but after most of the changes I had gone through, I had started a new urban fantasy series. It was almost autobiographical, not that anyone would ever believe it.

I mean how often does a person find out their sister disappeared, meet a hot detective, get bitten by a werewolf, find said sister, lose said sister and hot (now maybe new girlfriend?) detective, and blackmail an entire group of supernatural entities to get the pair of them back. Not to mention discover you are part of a legacy of shapeshifters and can now channel a snow leopard totem. And finish up by trying try to live happily ever after only to have to engage in a death match with a psychopathic grudge-bearing werewolf leader.

It was hard for me to believe, and I had lived through it—even if just barely. I took a deep breath and told myself to get out of bed. I don’t know why I was so focused on my past today when the future seemed so promising.

It was probably because Val was out of the house. This was the first big trip I was going to make without her, and I missed her. She was one of the only people I had ever met who accepted me for being the giant pansexual polyamorous mess of a partner I was. I looked in the closet, trying to decide on a dress to pack in my luggage. I was much more comfortable in jeans and a band T-shirt than I was in Chanel, no matter what my budget told me I could afford. I needed something more formal if I was going to meet with a movie producer. Great, now I was beginning to miss my sister Nisha. She was the clothes horse of the family and would not only have brought me six of her dresses but also tried to do my hair and makeup before I left. She was out in Montana with a pack of werewolves. My life was not the only one that had changed a lot in the last couple of years.

Q&A with Kathryne Lentes

Tell us something about yourself that most people don’t know.

When I was growing up, I once had 18 cats at the same time. We were not hoarders; we just had three cats that all got pregnant at the same time. It was the best two months for an eight-year-old that there could ever have been, but then we had to find new homes for them.

What’s your favorite scene in your latest book and what makes it a fave?

So, about a quarter of the way through the book, Sah, the main character, meets Belladonna, a mysterious woman who completely entrances her, and Sah, who specializes in maintaining control, finds herself becoming lost in the other woman’s presence. I think the scene lets the reader slide into Sah’s feeling of not knowing exactly what to do but wanting, needing something.

Would you care to share an excerpt from the scene with us?

Somehow, we made our way to her room, but I couldn’t recall how we got there. I felt like every one of my senses was keyed to her. She opened the door and gestured for me to enter. She entered after me, stood behind me, and gently pulled my arms to the small of my back. The restraint was light, but it affected me deeply. I wanted to say a thousand things, but it seemed like all the vowels and consonants had fled my head. She ran a tongue lightly up the side of my neck from behind and nibbled on my ear. The feeling was too much, and I stepped away from her and started to move toward the door. She caught me and pushed me against the doorframe.
“You can leave if you want. You just have to say it.”
“I… I’m not sure. This isn’t me. I am the strong one, but…”
“This is not about weakness. This is about setting aside your burdens for a night. Give me your submission, and I will give you what you need. Tonight, you will not have to make the family dinner, find someone a replacement phone, or save anyone.” The last was spoken in a whisper, and I shuddered.
“I want to stay.”

Let’s take off your author cap and put on your reader cap for a moment: What do you look for in a book, what sort of protagonists do you love, and do you have a favorite genre?

I am a big fan of Urban fantasy, and anything with sexy, sarcastic thieves involved. A few of my favorites are – Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files, Laurel K Hamilton’s Anita Blake, and Scott Lynch’s The gentleman bastards series.

What books and authors would you say influenced you to become a writer?

Well, like every fantasy author, I did first get the itch when my brother gave me a dog-eared copy of The Hobbit by Tolkien, but the people who I think really shaped and inspired me are Robert Zelazny and Steven Brust. Zelazny’s Amber series just blew my mind about how you could mix and match all these different genres, and Brust’s Vlad Taltos series, I think, was the best example of how you could have a high fantasy realm mixed with an urban setting.

What are your least and most favorite things about being an author?

I think the thing I appreciate most is having someone… anyone connect with something I have written. I have three books out, and anytime I see a review, even if it’s not the most favorable, I get a little jolt, thinking someone took time out of their life and it touched them enough to have an opinion. My least favorite aspect is that, besides being a writer, I have to be a PR/social influencer. I got into writing because I was drawn to the hermit lifestyle, and nowadays you really have to put yourself out there to get any sales at all.

What’s the best piece of writing/author advice you’ve ever received that you’d pass on to someone just getting started in the business?

I am not sure it counts as being given writing advice, but I read Stephen King’s On Writing a Memoir of the Craft even though I don’t love all his books; this passage spoke to me. “There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement kind of guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor.“ So I have always tried to remember writing is inspiration, but it is also work, hard work.

Have you ever written a line, paragraph, or passage, and thought, “Darn, that’s pretty amazing, even if I do say so myself”? What was it?

I tend to overanalyze the first line in my books, so when I came up with “There are real monsters in the world. I know because I am one of them.” I was kinda proud. I hoped it would grab people and make them want to read the rest of the book.

What’s the one genre/sub-genre you haven’t written yet, but would love to? What’s kept you from it so far?

I think I have always wanted to write a giant high-fantasy epic with, like, a dozen characters in the vein of LOTR or The Wheel of Time. Still, at this time I am kind of afraid of the time investment, and I am also very neuro-spicy and think I could easily get bogged down doing six months of world-building before writing a chapter. That is something I kind of like about Urban Fantasy: you really only have half a world to build.

If you could choose one of your books to be adapted for the silver screen, which would you choose? Why do you think it would translate well to film?

My longest work, Apocrypha, is an urban fantasy mixed with a hefty dose of cyberpunk. It tells the story of a pair of operatives fighting against racist cyber-psychos, zombies, and even a resurrected Fae God. I think that kind of thing would look really striking on the big screen or as an anime by somebody like Trigger.

If I were to interview your main characters, what would they say about you?

He seems kind of cruel. I like to throw my characters in the deep end and then figure out how I am going to get them out of it. But in the end, they do okay because, at the end of the day, I am a big fan of happily-ever-after.

If you could travel back in time, with all your years of experience and wisdom intact, what advice would you give to your teenage self?

It’s okay to be who you feel yourself to be. I spent many years denying feelings and thoughts about who I wanted to be, and it would have been great to have somebody come by and say a lot of people are going to hate you, but there will be people who will love you.

About the Author  

Kathryne Lentes has been writing stories as long as she could hold a pen in her hand. She is a transwoman who, when not working on her own projects, operates Paper Phoenix Ink, a blog showcasing queer creators. She is currently living in Saint Louis with her wife, two cats, and a pile of science fiction and fantasy books.

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