After losing both of his parents, Academy of Magecraft student Steven Durant doesn’t want to see anyone else lose a loved one before their time. Traditional resurrection methods, however, only create mindless, flesh-hungry zombies; they’re no cure for death. He’s certain his unique brand of necromancy—using alchemy and blood magic—is the only answer.
When his boyfriend, Dax Everhart, has a fatal accident, Steven sees no choice but to use his experimental Lazarus Elixir. Dax comes back wrong, but the more humans he consumes, the more human he becomes.
With the help of his best friends, his ghostly aunt, and her living doll homunculus, Steven fights to regain normalcy and repair his shattered relationship with Dax. But with Dax openly embracing his monstrous nature, Steven shoulders the guilt of assisting in a murder spree that could lead the mundane and magical police right to their door.
Title: My Boyfriend’s Back
Author: Elliot Cooper
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: October 10, 2016
Category: Romance
Genre: Paranormal, Horror
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Sex Content: Explicit
Pairing: MM
Orientation: Gay
Identity: Cis
Length: Novel
Words: 6100
Pages: 125
Cover Artist: Natasha Snow
Purchase Links:
NineStar Press: http://ninestarpress.com/product/my-boyfriends-back/
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Excerpt
Elliot Cooper © 2016
All Rights Reserved.
Catrina skipped through the garden, her bangs fluttering below the neat braid pinned across the top of her head. Her hair was darker than the rest of her unearthly blue-green form, the yard partially visible through her translucent skin and clothes. She flopped down on the ground in a way that made her appear to have mass and then poked at the fetid opossum corpse until she managed to flip it to its belly.
“Told you so,” she said matter-of-factly. “You didn’t use enough.”
Steven ignored her and kept digging. She didn’t have any idea what she was talking about. Catrina had admitted to him multiple times that she’d never dabbled in necromancy in life; she’d been too young to get much further than simple charms and potions. Back in her day, they hadn’t even had the local campus of the Academy of Magecraft, which meant she’d been homeschooled by his great-great-grandmother.
“Did you run it over yourself?”
Steven huffed in annoyance and jammed his shovel into the earth. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with one gloved hand and glared at the little ghost.
“No. I found it. I’m a necromancer, not a murderer.” He looked down into the hole he’d made, judged it to be deep enough for the poor animal, and then gently lowered the opossum body into the ground.
The potion hadn’t been potent enough, which wasn’t entirely his fault. Several of the ingredients were out of season and expensive. His little herb garden was already done for the year with the cooler fall weather turning the trees in his yard gold and umber. Steven didn’t like to waste any of his potion supplies and didn’t think it was a fault to be conservative with his elixirs.
Only maybe he’d been overly cautious. Maybe he needed to take a cue from his boyfriend, Dax, and get overzealous with his potion making and application rituals.
Steven’s mouth screwed into a sour frown at the thought as he shoveled the pile of dirt back into the hole.
“Is it really smelly?” Catrina peered up at Steven from her seat on the grass. She plucked at the hem of her dress and pulled it down over her knees.
“It’s not too bad.” Steven shrugged one shoulder as he tamped down the loose dirt with the flat side of the shovel. “I can’t even smell it now.”
“So that’s your ‘I just thought of something that offends my Stevie senses’ face.” Catrina pursed her lips at him and then skipped off toward the house.
“Don’t call me that!” Steven called after her. Catrina was the only one who called him that, and she’d done so since he was little enough to want to play games with her. But he’d outgrown the nickname a long time ago. It was a child’s name, not the name of a future world-renowned mage.
He heard Dax’s car pull into the driveway as he put the shovel and gloves back in the shed with the rest of his gardening equipment. At least Dax wouldn’t get all holier than thou about his failed attempt to raise roadkill from the dead. Again.
“Hey, babe!” Dax called to Steven as he walked around to the front of the house. “You wanna help me with these groceries? I got you a little something special.” He waggled his dark brows and grinned but then noticed his jovial expression wasn’t catching. “Everything all right?”
“Opossum number three was not, in fact, the charm,” Steven said with a shake of his head. He let out a sigh and sidestepped Dax to reach into the car for the bags.
Review by Elaine White
Book – My Boyfriend’s Back
Author – Elliot Cooper
Star rating – ★★★★★
No. of Pages – 126
Cover – Love it!
POV – 3rd person, 1 character POV
Would I read it again – Yes!
Genre – LGBT, Paranormal, Zombie, Romance, Friendship
*Warnings: (given by author): Suitable for mature readers. Depictions of blood, gore, and cannibalism.*
Wow! So, I’ll fully admit that I’m a bit of a wimp when it comes to zombie/gore stuff. But, as soon as I read the blurb and saw the cover, I knew I had to read this one. And, thankfully, the gore/cannibalism stuff wasn’t nearly as bad as some books I’ve read. It was all in perfect proportion to the story.
The main characters – Steven and Dax – were adorable right from the start. Their relationship was sweet, comfortable but also a little too comfortable and there were small signs that they took each other for granted.
Then everything changed when Dax died. I don’t feel like that’s a spoiler because it’s mentioned in the blurb, so I’m gladly going to say it again – Dax died! And I’ll admit that I was afraid that would be the end of Dax. He’s go on a murderous rampage, become some unrecognizable monster and he’d have to be destroyed or sent away.
Without giving too much away, I want to say that I loved the emotional progression of Steven and Dax’s relationship, the very real ups and downs (even though it involves zombies) and the very real implications of creating a mindless zombie, who slowly begins to show signs of the person he was before.
The ending, in particular, was a stroke of genius and so cleverly revealed. It wasn’t one of those unrealistic B movie films, where everything is all shiny and bright, but it wasn’t all doom and gloom either. It had the perfect blend of compassion, love, romance, and the reality of zombies and witches/mages existing within the world.
~
Overall, for me, this is a story of warning. A “be careful what you wish for” combined with the very sad, but real aspect of “you don’t know what you have until it’s gone”. Both those things, with the creative genius of the author, the skill of writing and plot forming, the pace and craft of the story, as well as the emotive way it drew me in, made this an instant winner.
Meet Elliot Cooper
Elliot Cooper is a creativity addict who enjoys writing stories that embody adventure, a hint of the taboo, and shadows that are deeper than they appear at first glance. He also enjoys video games and knitting, and lives in the southern US with his human and feline family.
Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/elliotwrites
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