Belle, Damned

Things have been quiet in the Taylor household. I've been writing every day to finish my newest book: Belle, Damned.

It's a story about a nineteen-year-old girl named Belle who was killed in the 1600s for being a witch. Her ghost didn't go to heaven, so she decides to kill her killer. The good news is, it works -- she stops him from killing more people. The bad news is she becomes a demon.

When the story opens, Belle is a demon assassin in the modern era who kills evil people in order to get into Heaven. Her best friends are Typhoid Mary and a match girl who died from phlossy jaw. She works out of Hell, which is basically a maze of cubicles far below the earth, where demons like gargoyles, jackals, and golums work. 

 

There's also a gaggle of witches who fly on broomsticks, a magnificent bastard demon named Mephistopheles who works more for himself than Lucifer, a giant octopus, harpies, betrayals, magic, sacrifices... and of course, the Beast himself, Lucifer. 

It's a twist on Beauty and the Beast, though the romance isn't stereotypical, and the inanimate objects don't dance. I used the poem Belle Dame Sans Merci by Keats for inspiration (below). 

I'll have the first book available for beta readers. Let me know if you're interested in a free copy in exchange for an honest review! 


Excerpts from La Belle Dame sans Merci

“O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has withered from the lake,
and no birds sing.”

“I met a lady in the meads,
full beautiful, a fairy’s child;
her hair was long, her foot was light,
and her eyes were wild.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,
pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
they cried, ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
hath thee in thrall!’"

John Keats, 1819