About the Book

The Circle 2: Blood Gate
Genre: Urban Fantasy Romance
Length: 297 Pages
Release Date: August 5, 2014

Vampire Claire finds herself caught in the middle between her Master, Parker, and her Trigger, Andre. Little love is lost between the former friends, but somehow Claire must build a bridge between them when they are sent to Edgewood to settle their differences. The cost of her failure will be deadly.

Deep in the cellars of Edgewood, a game of sexual bondage unleashes unexpected dangers, twisting open, loving Andre into a secretive virtuoso of manipulation. Is this just another part of the game, or is he losing his mind? Parker will take desperate steps to protect his apprentice, but he won’t be dragged into the game with them.

Can Parker set aside forty years of bitter rivalry, or will he sacrifice Andre to save Claire?

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About the Author

Amy Lee Burgess lives and writes in Houston, Texas but her heart belongs to New England – especially in the autumn. Ruled by two dachshunds and addicted to Irish breakfast tea and the Walking Dead, she loves to write about vampires, wolf shifters, gargoyles and other assorted paranormal creatures.

Amy loves to travel to places like London England, Edinburgh, Scotland, Paris France and Providence, Rhode Island where she stalks the coziest Irish pubs she can find. She writes to trance and house music by candlelight and welcomes email from her readers – especially if they want to talk about the supernatural.

In Her Own Words…

Who has been the biggest influence on your writing? How so?

I don’t know if I have just one person I could say has the biggest influence. I have a group of women friends and authors who listen to me bitch and who help me through dark days as well as celebrate with me. Writing is an adventure. I sometimes picture myself on a raft going over the rapids and with me are people like Gemma Brocoto, Joanne Wadsworth, Tera Shanley, Sonya Clark, Alyssa Breck, Nerine Dorman, and Kimberly Murphy.

If you were to have sex with one of your characters, which would you choose, and why?

Oh dear. Well, I base most of my heroes on Stuart Townsend because BIG HUGE CELEBRITY CRUSH. Only, ha, I think I would like to sleep most with Parker from the Circle series and he’s NOT based on Stuart Townsend. But I love all his sex scenes very much. He’s a take charge lover who would make me fight to get on top and we’d both love every second of that.

Pitch yourself to shiny new readers in twenty words or less:

Exiled New Englander writing about all-too-human paranormal creatures. Trips to the bedroom are underscored by real emotion, conflict, and self-discovery.

Tell me about your groupies–what have been your favorite fan moments?

Looking at Amazon or Goodreads and seeing reviews in upcaps with people saying “I LOOOOOOVE THIS

SERIES!”

Slash two (or more) of your favorite characters from any book, film, or TV show. Tell us who they are, why you’re making them do naughty things, and their favorite position.

Okay. Picture Daryl from Walking Dead. He’s taking a shower in the third season prison. Dean from Supernatural walks in eating a slice of cherry pie. Daryl is obviously totally naked and Dean has only a towel because he’s going to take a shower too. Daryl wants to trade the soap for the pie and Dean laughs at the idea. He gives Daryl the finger and Daryl shrugs, but then tackles Dean. They go down on the concrete floor, scrambling for possession of the pie. Daryl gets on top of Dean and Dean goes to headbutt him, but they end up kissing instead. So they roll around in the soapy water and pie all over the floor and things get..steamy. Castiel walks in to say to Dean that he miscalculated and they are in the wrong universe and there are zombies in this reality.

He sees Daryl on top of Dean yelling, “Isn’t this better than pie? Tell me this is better than pie!”

Dean says, “OH, yeah. SO much better.”

Castiel says, “So, maybe this means I ought to wait five minutes before I bring us back to our reality?”

“Yes” Dean says. “And you will never speak of this again.”

“Hey, does the guy in the trenchcoat want to join us?” Daryl asks.

Things get..even steamier. And it’s way longer than five minutes before Castiel and Dean leave the Walking Dead paradigm.

Every author has pitfalls in their writing process. Describe one of yours, and what you do to dig out of it.

There always comes a time when one of my beta readers tells me I need to change something. Make my heroine less angsty and more take charge. Describe my gargoyle shifters in a more flattering light to appeal to the romantic side of my readers. Things like that. Generally, I get up in arms over the idea. How dare someone criticize my preshus snowflake babies? Then I start thinking, “Oh, hell. I think she has a point.” Then I agonize over how to fix the issue without  compromising my characters.

In the case of the angsty heroine, I ended up letting her help abused women with her vampiric psychic powers which led to all sorts of epiphanies for her as a character and a deeper sense of who she was for the reader to see. It made the book ten times stronger.

With the gargoyles? I don’t know yet because the book hasn’t come out, but I suspect readers will fall head over heels in love with my gargoyle shifters in both human and gargoyle forms!

What was the inspiration for your latest release?

I wanted one of my characters to have a bondage kink that he was afraid to show because it’s tied to something dreadful in his past. That was the main one for Blood Gate. However, the Circle vampires have been with me since just after Hurricane Katrina when I started writing about them in my attempt to mourn the loss of my home in New Orleans and come to grips with the idea I lived in Houston, Texas now.

The first book, Blood Gift, borrowed a lot from the original Circle series. This newest one, Blood Gate, not so much.

My mother always joked about her special place in Hell—just punishments for guilty pleasures. What guilty pleasures will send you to your special place in Hell?

Ha. I never feel guilty about things that bring me pleasure.

List 5 keywords for your genre and current title.

Paranormal. Erotica. Vampires. Bondage. Romance

In 100 words, write a paragraph including a favorite character from one (or more) of your books, a sex toy, and a very happy ending.

Here’s a scene which would take place after the end of Blood Gate. It’s from Claire’s POV.

Andre stood at the foot of the bed, naked, hands behind his back. What did he have hidden? I couldn’t investigate since I was tied to the bed with multi-colored silk scarves.

“Parker, what has he got?” I turned my head to where Parker stood, also naked, and sporting a huge erection. From his grin, he obviously knew what Andre was concealing.

“Blindfold.” Andre produced the black mask adorned with scarlet feathers with a magician’s flourish.

“We thought not being able to see what we were doing to you might be fun.”

Andre let Parker place the mask over my eyes and when darkness descended, I could only process with hearing, smell, and sense of touch. Someone put his mouth on my pussy while the other bit my throat, drawing blood. Andre. I could smell his cologne. I’d know Parker’s tongue anywhere, and I squirmed as he licked me, paying special attention to my most sensitive spot. Blindfolds were pretty damn cool.