Page 72 of Hades

“It’s not opening day, but I wanted to make this special,” I tell her as I step back and bend down on one knee.

Pulling the robin’ egg blue box from my pocket, I take out the three-stone engagement ring I had custom made—one stone for our past, one for our present, and the center stone for our future. Tears are already flowing down Aradia’s cheeks.

“Aradia, I love you with my heart and soul. You were my past and you are my present. Will you do me the honor of being my future?” I say, holding the ring out in my shaking hand.

A barely audible “Yes” squeaks from her lips. “I love you so much, I will be your future. Always.” She says as I slip the ring on her finger. “I can’t believe we’re in Paris, on the Eiffel Tower,” She adds as I pull her into my arms.

Placing my finger under her chin, I tilt her head until I’m looking into her eyes, “ I would give you the world, my love, and all I would need is you by my side,” I tell her as I claim her lips. “I love you, in this lifetime and any other.”

THE END

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I hope you enjoyed HADES and all the sexy fallen angels in the Blood Angel Chronicles series. Word of mouth is crucial for any author to succeed. If you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review. Even if it is just a sentence or two, it would make all the difference and would be much appreciated.

Thank you.

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Okay so if you are familiar with my writing, you will know that this is the part of the book that is a mess. I write this after everything has been made pretty and is ready to go. So, it’s pretty raw and usually full of unedited errors. As a disclaimer, I always like to mention that even my editor the amazing Carolyn Depew (the BEST editor out there) doesn’t see this until it’s already gone to print, so don’t blame her for my poor grammar, misspelled words, wrong words or anything else, blame the public school system.

All right, let’s get to it.

I know what you are all asking, where the fuck is REAVER. Okay, I hear you loud and clear. But here’s the thing with writing, sometimes those mother-fuckers just don’t talk. I was writing REAVER (and yes there is a sneak peak at the end of this book) and had the brilliant idea to write HADES as well, AT THE SAME TIME. I probably should have made sure I didn’t have a stroke, because that was a bad idea.

Anyway, they were about even up until about 20K and for those of you who don’t speak in word count, about 5 chapters. At that point I realized that I needed to tell HADES story first to have a real good set-up for REAVER, so poor REAVER got shelved AGAIN. But rest assured he is now well under way. Oh, and thanks to HADES himself, Mr. Rengering, it looks as if there will be a few more Blood Angel Chronicle books, GABRIEL and I’m now toying with the idea writing a book for Pestilence. But those two things are a bit off in the future.

So, there I was with two books sitting at about 25% completion each and TNTNYC23 looming only 6 months away. And for those of you who don’t know, I do a release at TNT every year. So, it was imperative, to me, that I finish one, and HADES won out, but only by a small margin. I’m also sitting here with my fingers, toes and even legs crossed hoping that this gets to print in time. I need to pull one more miracle out of my ass to get this to TNT. Did I do it? Fuck, I hope so.

Now I know what you’re saying, Jennifer, why wasn’t HADES love interest Persephone? Well, HADES is a very loose retelling of the classic Hades & Persephone story, but I wanted it to be unique and personally, I didn’t want to go through the story calling his girl Persie. So, I went with Aradia. Google her, she’s pretty interesting in folklore all on her own (because you know how I like to put in little Easter Eggs). If you didn’t know that, go back and reread everything I’ve ever written, they’re all over the place. And YES, the secret chant to open HADES vault, his family’s long dead language… is written in Klingon and can be translated. What can I say, I’m a next level geek at heart.

What else, the pup / Hellhound Argos. Well in every telling of Hades there is his trusty Hellhound Cerberus. Now here’s the fun part, we might need a flow chart for this one. Argos is a city in Greece, also known as the birthplace of Hera (keep following me). Hera’s parents were Cronos & Rhea. Hera’s siblings… Poseidon, Demeter, Hestia, Zeus… and of course HADES. So Argos, is named after the city where Hades sister Hera was born.

Now what you need to know is I didn’t name the dog, I let HADES name the dog, so go ask him where the name came from.

Okay, enough book shit lets get onto thanking everyone who helped with this book.

To:Jacquie Morneau(AKA, Mom) Thank you for always being my biggest fan and giving me your opinion. I love you to the moon and back.

To:John(AKA, Mr. Field) Thanks for always supporting my crazy.

To:Tricia(AKA, my partner in crime and a hell of a navigator) Who has more fun than us? My ride-or-die bad ass bitch. Haunted prisons, haunted Asylum (who knew PA was that big). The Preakness. BFF, dead body photo shoot, What else! Bumble Bee Mud run. Thanks for being with my on this crazy adventure.

To:Carolyn Depew(AKA, Editor extraordinaire and nacho cheese queen) This is the woman that takes my mess of words and grammatical errors and makes them pleasing to the ear. Thank you so much for being so accommodating even when life got crazy. You are the best!!!

To:J.M. Walker(AKA, Formatting genius, and crazy runner) Mrs. Walker wasn’t able to format this book. But she did get to go to New Zealand and offered to do it if I couldn’t find someone to do it. But she would have been jetlagged and questioning her sanity. But she is still one of the best in the business and I wouldn’t have all the other books without her.

To:Andrea Miles Rhodes(AKA,Rescue Formatting Queen)Thank you for answering the panicked call of an author 30 days out from release day and needing emergency formatting. I so appreciated you helping make this possible, after all the Blood Angel Chronicles are your fault. “Think of a new take on vampires,” you said…and, well, here we are book 6.

To:Golden Czermak(AKA, The cover King & cover model super-genius) Thank you for being an amazing person and always quick to answer questions or give advice. And for changing REAVERS cover now three times. (Book 5, Book 6 and now Book 7) You have such a passion for what you do, and it shows in your impeccable work. Oh, and thanks for being human!

To:Daniel Rengering(AKA, Hades)Thanks for being the perfect Hades, and plotting out the next few books for me, laughing at my jokes and not being a total“bag of ducks”. Can’t wait for out next project… don’t worry no one reads this far anyway…well, at least not usually. Oh, and thanks for naming the dog.

To:YOU(AKA, the best readers out there) Thank you for taking the time to read what I’ve written. I can not express enough how grateful I am. You keep reading and I’ll keep writing.

The best Alpha reader team did NOT get a chance to read this book before it went to print because I was working on such a tight timeline. But I want to thank them anyway because they have been great: Tricia, Barb, Lizz, Lenore & Deb, I’ll get my shite together and get you some smut to read. Love you guys.

Whelp, that’s a wrap on another book.

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