Welcome to my weekly Author Spotlight. I’ve asked a bunch of my author friends to answer a set of interview questions, and to share their latest work.
Today: Jessamyn St. Claire is an up-and-coming author of dark and thrilling gay fiction with plenty of action and steam in her stories. She lives with her family in the South, and is aiming to live her best writing life. Find her posting on Facebook, her Substack, or updating her Goodreads!
Thanks so much, Jessamyn, for joining me!
J. Scott Coatsworth: When did you know you wanted to write, and when did you discover that you were good at it?
Jessamyn St. Clair: I think somehow, I just always knew I wanted to write, and as a kid, I went for it when I hand wrote my own 59-page short story. It was essentially fanfiction. When I realized I was good at it was when I published a story for the first time. I couldn’t believe someone actually wanted to feature my written words in an anthology and pay me for it! I thought, “I must be pretty good for this to happen.”
JSC: If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
Also JSC: As clichĂ© as I find it sometimes, “Just keep going.” It really is the simplest, most effective motivation.Â
JSC: Are there underrepresented groups or ideas featured in Hunted? If so, discuss them.Â
Also JSC: Yes! I write mostly thrilling works with queer men and men of color. With my latest novel, Hunted, the idea came about because how many pure action-thrillers do you know of where the guy gets the guy in the end? Or where a biracial, gay man is the lead? Those were just a few questions I had that sparked my imagination and gave me the idea to write this series.
JSC: What is the most heartfelt thing a reader has said to you?Â
Also JSC: A lovely reader left a comment on one of my social media posts stating that my book, Hunted, deserves a lot more recognition. I nearly choked on my tears.
JSC: What were your goals and intentions in this book, and how well do you feel you achieved them?Â
Also JSC: My goal, always, is to write the best, most entertaining story that is true to my vision. I write the book I want to read, first and foremost. For Hunted, I aimed for intriguing characters (both hero and villain, alike), fun dialogue, a dark, urban setting, and a good balance of action and steam. I think I pretty much nailed it.
JSC: Let’s talk to your characters for a minute – what’s it like to work for such a demanding writer?Â
Also JSC: (Rei): “No, but like, she puts me through literal hell, and I still don’t get everything I want in the end? That’s so messed up, bro.”
(Nico): “I don’t understand why my path for revenge has to be a drawn-out revenge tour. How inept do you think I am?”Â
JSC: Were you a voracious reader as a child?Â
Also JSC: Yes! My mom got me started into reading at a really young age, before I was old enough to attend school. While all my siblings were away at school, I would escape into the stories she would read to me. That’s how my love for books grew. For a long time, I would often read over a hundred books a year and loved my school and local libraries.
JSC: Would you visit the future or the past, and why?Â
Also JSC: The future, hands down. I have to know if all my effort pays off in the end. Have I reached my dreams and goals and am I living the life I’ve always wanted.
JSC:Â If you could choose three authors to invite for a dinner party, who would they be, and why?
Also JSC: J.R. Ward would be my number one choice! Not only is she one of my favorite authors, but she’s also quite a personality—one you would NEVER guess just from looks alone. We would be thoroughly entertained the entire dinner. Christopher Rice, because I not only loved a few of his stories growing up, but I would love to get all the behind-the-scenes on his mother, Anne, whose Vampire Chronicles are some of my favorites, and I’d also be dying for production updates on the TV show’s third season. Tomi Adeyomi is a new to me author, but she’s so fun and eloquent, and I would love to pick her brain on a few authorly things.
JSC: What are you working on now, and what’s coming out next? Tell us about it!
Also JSC: Right now, I am finishing up edits on two completed manuscripts that I hope to have out in the next few months! One of them is Captured, book two in the Crosshairs series, and the other is an erotic standalone. If life stops life-ing so hard, you’ll hear announcement dates from me soon!
And now for Jessmyn new book: Hunted:
Nico Spadaro, the son of an infamous Cosa Nostra boss, is on a mission to find and kill the mob leader who sent a hit man after him and his family two years ago.
Rei Evans, who has no real direction in life, just lost his job and is on the verge of losing not only his boyfriend, but his livelihood.
When he takes a new job at Nico’s gentlemen’s club, Rei realizes that things aren’t what they appear to be. The head man-in-charge is using the club for illegal and shady dealings with Nico’s wealthy clientele. Rei tries to warn Nico about his right-hand man, but Nico is too consumed with his own obsession for vengeance to even notice, let alone care. It’s only when the situation takes a dark turn, threatening to upend Nico’s progress and targeting Rei, that both men will have to join forces to stop the operation before things turn deadly.
Get It On Amazon
Excerpt
Chapter 1
They called him the One-Eyed Dealer.
Between the clouds of smoke in the dark, good-timey atmosphere of the Downtown Memphis bar, Leon Nowak wasn’t much to look at. Just under six feet tall, short gray hair with a widow’s peak. Scowling. An angry gray eye, the left one concealed behind a black eyepatch, courtesy of his former pakhan.
Leon, however, possessed information on a man. A man that Nico Spadaro was going to kill.
He’d been watching Leon for a while now across the bar, unnoticeable in part to the packed patrons on a Friday night, the cold not enough to keep anyone away. When an hour passed, Leon fell into a typical pattern of smoking, drinking, and checking his watch. He glanced about and checked his burner phone, his agitation evident in the tic of his pale jaw. He slammed down the empty beer glass, signaling to the bartender to pour him a fourth round. Nico had been counting.
“Can I get you anything?” Another bartender asked him.
“Nothing for me, thanks.” Nico’s mind was clear, sharp, and focused. He needed to stay that way. After all, this was a dangerous man to deal with.
He swallowed down the rest of his water before sending a text to Leon’s burner phone.
Meet me in the Center Lane alley.
Leon snuffed out his cigarette then headed for the stairs. Smoking wasn’t allowed on the bar’s first level. Nico noted the unsteady steps despite the cool, composed demeanor. It was game time, as they say, for Leon, but his body wasn’t cooperating as well as he wanted.
Another five minutes went by before Nico followed after him, down the stairs and out the bar, away from the loud music and press of warm bodies. He huddled into his coat as the chilly night air seeped into him. Leon hadn’t carried a coat with him, instead dressed militarily in a black turtleneck sweater, dark camo pants, with boots. Nothing else despite the forty-degree weather. Then again, winters in Russia were much more brutal.
Nico strode past the security guard too engrossed in conversation with pretty girls to notice him. He tucked his gloved hand against his right side, undoing the pistol holster attached to his hip. His breathing steady, Nico made a turn into the alley, surrounded by brick on all sides. The stench of rotting trash from the dumpsters up ahead clogged his nose, threatening to water his eyes.
Leon turned his head, noticing his presence. “It’s about time you showed up,” he huffed, his clipped, accented tone punctuated by thick white breaths. “We were supposed to meet hours ago.”
Nico approached, avoiding the stationery cars of patrons unable to find parking elsewhere downtown. “Sorry, I was delayed.”
Leon squinted, his face made harsher. “I know you—”
Before he could reach behind him, Nico aimed his Glock at Leon’s face. “Don’t think about it.”
Leon held his hands out at his sides in plain view. He chuckled. “The Spadaro kid.”
Nico tucked the barrel of his gun against Leon’s chin and freed the pistol from the waistband of the dealer’s pants. He took two steps back, his aim returned to Leon’s face, his arm steady. He locked eyes with him, telegraphing the deadly intent coiling every muscle in his body like a spring waiting to launch if he didn’t get what he wanted. It’d taken too long to plan this rare meeting.
Nico was not about to fuck this up. “Tell me where Misha is.”
Leon snorted.
Nico struck out, the butt of his gun connecting with Leon’s nose.
The man groaned as blood gushed out instantly, stark against the hand he pressed to staunch the flow. “Blyad!” he swore, his teeth stained red. “Zhopu porvu margala vikoliu!”
“Where is Misha?”
Leon licked his lips, his deep laughter filled with amusement, though the twitch in his eye betrayed his true emotion.
Nico bared his teeth like a predator and swallowed his fear down like an aphrodisiac. There was no other feeling quite like knowing your enemy feared you. Even better, knowing they also knew just how afraid they were.
“You know Misha, yes? You know the kind of man he is,” Leon said.
“If what he did to your eye is any indication, then yes, I know.” Rumors abounded that the Russian mafiya boss had stabbed out Leon’s eye as penance for a ten million U.S. dollar loss on an arms deal gone wrong with the Somalians. But Nico didn’t need that tidbit to know how dangerous Misha was. All he had to do was press his fingertips to his own skin and touch the spot where the raised tissue sat, the scar having never completely healed courtesy of a bullet meant to kill him.
However, the tidbit had brought Leon squarely into his lap. After that international incident, the dealer was reportedly desperate to get back into Misha’s good graces and rejoin the Novikov clan. To do that he needed a big deal, one that would double the lost wages. A deal Nico had “promised” to the man when he’d finally contacted him. Though it’d taken months, playing on Leon’s desperation had been child’s play.
“Then you know I cannot just tell you where he is,” Leon continued.
“I’ll kill you if you don’t.”
“Yes, you’ll kill me, but you won’t torture me. Not like Misha will. I do not fear death, but I’ve seen what death looks like at the hands of that man. They do not call him Tat Golovorez for nothing, though throats aren’t the only thing he slits.”
The Cutthroat.
Nico had heard the familiar moniker a time or two since Misha Novikov barged into his life a couple years ago. The mob boss’s reputation preceded him, and Leon feared him more than anything else. Nico didn’t have the time or the patience he needed to make the dealer more afraid of him than Misha, if such a thing were possible. “You think I won’t torture you?”
“I can’t tell you his location, because I do not know. He could be at his penthouse in Hong Kong, or his flat in Budapest, or docked on his yacht in the Black Sea. I don’t know! Even if I did, I would never tell someone like you.”
Nico lowered the gun down Leon’s face, his neck, his torso. His heartbeat slowed. His vision dimmed around the edges, though his focus on Leon sharpened so much his eyes stung. In the pitch darkness of the night, Nico could make out that Leon’s gray eye was speckled with blue, and his gray hair retained some black, namely at the roots.
Nico was dissociating.
His finger hovered near the trigger. He would shoot this man and not feel a thing.
Approaching male voices followed by an aluminum can being noisily kicked down the alley brought Nico back to full attention.
The distraction cost him no more than a second, but it was enough for Leon to grab his wrist, squeezing hard in an attempt to make him drop his weapon.
Nico shoved his back against the dingy brick. He punched Leon in the mouth, in the nose, yet the man held on, using his free arm to lock their bodies together tight.
The gun went off.