K. A. is often also Dr. Laity to her students and others she's known as Captain Kate, but to her Chastity Flame fans, we'll always know her as Lady Fleming. Why? Why not?! Chastity is the female embodiment of James Bond, the creator of whom was the late, great Ian Fleming. What more fitting tribute to the creator of the Chastity Flame series.
By day, Kate is a literary professor teaching courses in medieval literature, film, digital humanities and popular culture . . . though at the moment she's taken time off to live in Scotland! Kate loves traveling and recently spent a year in Ireland, teaching on a Fulbright Scholarship at NUI Galway. There seems no end to Kate's accomplishments. So, too, as a writer.
An author of dozens of noteworthy stories, Kate is becoming best known for her Chastity Flame series, staring none other than Chastity Flame herself. A hat tip to Bond and a wiggle to Modesty Blaise ( (c)1963 Peter O'Donnell and Jim Holdaway), Chastity Flame takes her cue from the start as a sassy, sexy, up-for-anything girl. She goes in with both guns blazing and takes no prisoners, to coin a few cliches, but it's true. She's the heroine we'd all like to be -- to stand up for what's right, honesty and justice, and let's face it, to bonk the brains out of some sexy men along the way ;-)
In her latest adventure, Chastity is confronted by two serious problems, both of which need equal attention, both standing a chance of changing her life forever. As with the previous two books in the series, A Cut-Throat Business, is full of action and adventure, and sexy, sexy Chastity. Readers will find such a gripping story they wont want to put the book down until it's done. I love it when I can immerse myself in such a way that everything around me fades away until the last page is turned. It's like a dream where I'm the heroine who must save the world, but to wake up with the alarm clock in the morning to realize I'd only dreamed it. Only with this series, one can return time and time again to relive the experience.
Kudos *must* go out to cover artist S.L. Johnson for her innovative cover designs on this series. They're retro-relevant, sexy, and eye-catching, much like Chastity herself.
FREE BOOK - Kate is available today for questions. Leave a comment or question in the comments box below, along with your contact email address, and your name will automatically go into a random draw for a free copy of A Cut-Throat Business!
So let's check out this latest addition to the Chastity Flame Adventure series --
• • •
There’s a killer loose in London, protected in high places.
Chastity Flame needs to look in the places the police can’t — or won’t —
while a rogue colleague dogs her steps, looking for the key to secrets
in her past. Can she find the killer before his bloodlust rises again?
Will she expose her bitter rival before he targets more innocents? And
how will she cope with the most dangerous mission — moving in with her
boyfriend, Damien.Daddy's girl. That's what she'd always been. As she sprinted down the dark street, the phrase kept repeating in her head. Her heart beat a tattoo in her chest and her lungs burned as she raced along. Adrenaline filled her veins as she sought a way out, away from this, but she could still hear his footsteps behind her.
Daddy's girl. He had grinned as he said the words, onto her wavelength, her weakness, in just a few minutes of conversation. She had actually been pleased. He was smarter than they usually were, the men who fluttered around her like moths to a flame. She always found it easy to charm them, to make them desire her.
You'd hardly believe she had once been a plain tomboy. Her well-toned legs might be a legacy of that time, though exercise these days meant helping her maintain the look that turned heads. Right then she wished she'd worked more on pure endurance instead of shapeliness, because his seemingly tireless steps got closer as she grew tired.
She skidded around a corner and her terror exploded. It was a dead end. Panicking, her gaze darted back and forth, looking for some break in the brick walls that lined the narrow lane. With a glance over her shoulder, she stumbled forward into a ragged trot, eyes wild as she hoped there must be a way out of this. Someplace to hide would appear, like it always did in bad dreams, in movies, just when there was no more hope. Then a bin or a box would be there where you hadn't noticed, and behind it a narrow passage that led to freedom.
Her heart raced faster as the sound of his footfalls came closer.
Bricks, bricks, more bricks: up too high, a few windows with broken glass. If she had wings, a rocket, a fiery dragon—her thoughts were getting wild, hysterical. Isn't that the word they always used, the word only for women? She had such contempt for her gender. She had felt hunger and contempt in equal measures for men, those she desired and those who desired her.
He paused at the entrance to the narrow lane, staring at her. Earlier, she had preened as his interest became plain, but now she wished she had never seen him.
"Come to Daddy," he growled, in an obscene parody of the fatherly approval she craved.
There had to be some way out! She ran to the far wall, overly conscious of her own panting breaths. Her fingertips scraped against the bricks in vain, her overheated brain suggesting that there could be some kind of secret exit if she applied the right pressure. What was that movie where the bricks moved and opened, revealing a secret alley? When she realised it was one of the Harry Potter movies, a giggle began in the back of her throat.
This is what it's like to be hysterical.
• • •
K. A. Laity is the award-winning author of Rook Chant, Owl Stretching, Pelzmantel and Unikirja, a collection of short stories and a play based on the Kalevala, Kanteletar, and other Finnish myths and legend, for which she won the 2005 Eureka Short Story Fellowship as well as a 2006 Finlandia Foundation grant. With cartoonist Elena Steier she created the occult detective comic Jane Quiet. Her bibliography is chock full of short stories, humor pieces, plays and essays, both scholarly and popular. She also writes romance as C. Margery Kempe and Kit Marlowe.
Find K.A. Laity online at --
KA Laity
Goodreads
Amazon
A Knife and a Quill
Tirgearr Publishing
